I woke up with my body burning in a constant blaze and squeezed into something breathing. My right hand was pressed against soft beaded skin interrupted by a thin break. For a moment I lay there, feeling quite comfortable, if not very feverish, until the toking of a raven reminded me that I was in the middle of a lake in Forsworn territory. Snapping my eyes open, I looked around me, searching for drawn weapons and fur-clad men. There were none.
Relaxing, I almost drifted back to sleep before I realized I should not be feeling warm. I should not be touching skin. I should not be this close to Derkeethus. Carefully, I slipped out of his grip and padded over to the water, meaning to wash my wounded hand. The air was cold and I saw my breath coming out in a thin mist. My head swam as I stood, but where I expected weakness, I only felt a wiry, wild kind of strength. In the center of my chest, I felt a wellspring of magicka, as if my inner resources had increased overnight.
When I looked at my hand, I saw it was covered in fresh blood. Alarmed, I checked myself, then looked Derkeethus over. The wound on his stomach, a mere scratch, had been bleeding overnight and bright smears in the shapes of fingertips spread over the area. With a frown, I unbound and washed the poisoned hand. The swelling had gone down, but from the thumb to the tips was numb to my will. I could still feel things, but I couldn't move my fingers. And yet, they seemed to move of their own accord. Around the punctures the flesh was angry red with thin threads of greenish black running outward under the skin. This was no infection I had ever seen, but still, I pressed some of the ground chitin paste into the wound before retying the bandage.
As I worked, I felt a twinge in my shoulder. In the reflection of the lake, I saw a row of pink weals curving towards my neck. "Perfect," I sighed, adjusting my tunic so they wouldn't show. I didn't want Derkeethus to know he'd bitten me in his sleep. I didn't want to have that discussion. I was sure it was an accident. People did strange things in their sleep. Like smear blood all over their hand, I thought scathingly as I awkwardly pulled my glove over the bandage.
"You shouldn't sit over there. You'll freeze." I jumped at the sound of his voice, thick with sleep.
"I saw someone lurking on the other side of the lake," I lied.
Derk grunted, looking out towards the Nord camp to the south. "How's that hand?"
"Belligerent and numb, but I don't feel too bad otherwise. Still on fire, but it's not anything I can't handle." I glanced at my friend, smiling ruefully. He gazed back searchingly, displeasure easing into his face. After a moment, he nodded and handed me my pack, carefully placing the briarheart, its spines closed, inside after giving me another one of those piercing looks.
We scattered the remains of the fire, tossing the charred stones over a waterfall as we crossed the lake, heading north one more. Low clouds hung in the predawn sky, and as I climbed a boulder to asses our next course, the sun began to rise. It lit the clouds with a pure, golden fire.
"Which way back to food and warmth and loose change in thin pockets?" Derk asked with a grin.
"You just can't keep your hands to yourself can you?" I laughed.
"Never. I should have been called Pinches-Your-Pockets."
Still laughing, I replied, "Well, if we keep following the river, we'll eventually hit a town."
Crouching behind a cluster of rocks, I whistled softly, mimicking a bird. Over the rise of the next hill, a quiet nicker echoed down to us as Nael and Burrs returned. As I extended my hand to greet my horse, she shied away with wild eyes. Her nostrils flares wide as she smelled my hand, and belatedly I realized it was the one that was poisoned.
"Nael, shh. It's okay. It's me," I said, putting that hand behind my back. This time she allowed me to approach, though she still remained skittish and unsure, eyeing my right side warily. I sighed, feeling the hand clench tight of its own accord. I couldn't say for sure that I wouldn't hurt Nael with that hand. It was beyond my control, and I did not know what it might try to do. Remembering the eyes of the Forsworn who bore the plant blossom, it would result in nothing good. The best I could do was bind it and keep it out of the way.
We headed northeast away from the lake and down a steep set of inclines covered in cropped grass and soft moss. The Karth River roared away on our right, shrouded in a thick mist in the cold, early morning air. Once again the land was strangely empty of life, though I heard the odd bird call or rustle far away in the brush. Even the insects seemed to stay away. I looked at my right hand, which was currently resting acquiescent on the saddle horn, and wondered. Did they all know I was marked?
When the sun was properly awake and alert, the low clouds had morphed into a veil of fog. A crumbled, overgrown shrine gaped at the canyon. The moist air felt soothing against my skin, which had once again begun to burn unpleasantly, and even the chitin paste couldn't completely ease it away. A coil of energy in my chest wound tighter still, and absently I watched spells flicker into my hand. Some I recognized. Others I did not. I kept the hand in front of me, away from the sight of Derkeethus and Nael. I didn't want to worry them unnecessarily, but this new development was unnerving.
Curious, I peeled off my glove and peered at my hand. The dark threads had advanced well beyond the palm and crawled up my wrist, moving even as I watched. Not knowing what else to do, I tied a strip of leather about my forearm and pulled it tight. Then sighing and trying to take my mind off of things, I half-turned to Derk, "Tell me about your naming day."
"Where's this coming from?" he asked, surprised.
"It just occurred to me that I've never heard you talk about that. It's supposed to be some kind of important day for your kind, isn't it? Like when a Bosmer makes their first bow."
The Argonian sat quietly for a moment, and in addition to feeling his hesitation, I caught dim, flickering images in the back of my head. Trees, swamps, water, small scaly hands clutching the limbs of trees. Memories.
I sighed. Now we were sharing memories. At last the fleeting images stopped and he settled on one: Small hands clutching a polished ball of violently glowing dried sap.
"On my naming day, I missed the ceremony. I had run off into the the Hist grove, afraid that I would be named something stupid. There I found a chunk of dried sap, and determined, I tried to lick the sap by myself. I wanted to make my own name.
"It didn't work. The sap was too dry, it did nothing to me, but the Hist, to their amusement I suppose, had left it sticky enough to stick to my hands. So, I ran back to my family, screaming in fear at the top of my lungs, my hands glued to the ball until they were able to get it off me with oil. The whole tribe had heard me from miles away. The ceremony was over for everyone else, but the elders insisted I go to the Tree anyway. And Derkeethus was what they named me," he finished with a half-smile.
"What does it mean?"
"In Cyrodiilic, they would call me Shouts-For-His-Elder." We were both silent for a while as we followed the cliffs downward once more. The air felt crisper--sharper. Off in the distance, the faint outline of a city on a great precipice loomed darkly. At last, we had something to aim for.
Around us the scraggly trees changed into pines, returning us once more to a semi-sheltered state among the trees. I felt some of the tension ease as I listened to the wind through the pines, a sound mimicked by the crashing river. Here and there a few tree stumps littered the forest, becoming more numerous as we progressed. I gazed at them, feeling morose at the lost of those beautiful trees.
"And what about you?" Derkeethus asked, breaking the long silence. "What happened when you made your first bow?"
"Ah, that's a simple tale. My father took me out hunting one day, but before we left he took away the bow he had given me and my arrows. We were perched in a tree at the time, and without a word he pushed me off to the ground. I was supposed to hunt the first creature I saw and craft my bow from its bones, then somehow find my way back home." Pausing, I recalled that terrifying feeling of helplessness as I scrambled on the forest floor for a weapon.
"What did you hunt?"
"It would be my luck that the first thing I encountered was a basilisk sunning itself. Seeing as I'm here talking to you now, I succeeded. But barely. By the time I returned home, I was bewildered and half-feral with terror. After all, I was only seven at the time. I had a serviceable bow, though, and I had it for number of decades before it was beyond repair."
"Decades!" Derk squawked, then recovering himself and clearing his throat. "What happened to it?"
"A Breton who was courting me in Chorrol got sick of my 'wild ways' and decided the best way to make me settle down would be to break my bow and burn it. I nearly killed him for it, but I didn't escape unscathed," I replied, tracing my fingers over my cheek and feeling the old scar from the wine bottle he had swung at me. I felt Derkeethus tense, and supposed he had seen the memory for himself.
At last the pines gave way to the grinding of a wood mill and a small path leading around the back of a house. We emerged, the mists burning away in the early afternoon sun, leaving a faint, rose-tinted haze. Of course, that could have been my perception of the light twisting as the coil in my chest tightened and grew larger.
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