Our conversation turned to other topics for a time, and we enjoyed the comfortable ease of one outcast relating to another. However, the topic eventually circled back to that of the metaphysical. I sipped from the milk wine, not unlike jagga, brought by the innkeeper and plunged forth into a topic I saved for last as one hides an ace in their boot.
"There is another matter I'd like to ask you about," I prefaced, trying to quell the anxiety squirming in my belly, or perhaps that was only the drink.
"By all means, my child."
"What happens to a soul when someone dies?"
"That all depends on how the person died," he replied with a puzzled frown. "Generally, souls pass on to Aetherius. Though sometimes they remain in Nirn for good or ill. It is the job of any priest of Arkay to ensure all souls leave this plane."
For a moment I sat silent, idly picking at a wheel of goat cheese on the table, lost in thought. Outside, rain steadily pattered on the thatch roof, and a bucket sat near at hand to catch the rhythmic drip of a leak. Then I pressed on, feeling that I might as well finish what I started, "What about the Soul Cairn?" Runil gazed at me sharply, his milky eyes boring into me as if he could discern the essence of my very being.
"Do not ask me of that blasphemous place!" he hissed, the whites of his eyes showing terror.
"But do souls not go there? Couldn't I bring one back?" The priest made to stand, and desperation grasped at my heart. Clutching his robes, I pleaded, "Please, just tell me. Yes or no. Is it possible to bring a soul back?"
"Arkay, forgive me," Runil muttered. With a heavy sigh, he peered at me for a long time as if weighing whether or not his own soul was worth risking the wrath of the Aedra of death and passing. "Yes," he replied at length, "It is possible to retrieve a soul from the Soul Cairn."
A fierce elation and hope boiled in my chest. "Where is it? How do you get there?" I rushed, heady with emotion.
"I will not tell you any more of that horrendous place. It is a blight upon the eye of Anu, and you'd do better to put that notion out of your mind. I know not how you came to know about the Soul Cairn, but you'd best forget it," the Altmer said with finality. There would be no further discussion, I knew, and to push the topic further would only risk losing him as a source of information. It didn't matter. I had the confirmation I had been searching for for months. The Soul Cairn did exist and I could enter it. Now it was only a matter of finding the portal and gaining entry.
Runil gave me one last, searching look before exiting the inn. Getting to my feet, I slowly paced the main room of the inn, ignorant of the looks others no doubt threw my way. What they thought of me no longer mattered. I felt vindicated. Derkeethus shouldn't have died. It should have been me, I thought, and even as I did, his name brought a fragment of a memory to mind. Images of scaled hands shaking the white hands of Nord courtiers in perhaps the most ludicrous con of my life.
Except it wasn't my life, it was my fallen friend's, yet these thoughts persisted as if I once existed in two places at the same time. Sometimes, I wondered if I had absorbed part of his soul into myself, perhaps to compensate for the half destroyed with the release of the Wild Hunt. "Nothing is without a cost." A motto I felt I knew from Derk's life prior to our meeting.
Heaving a breath to ease my helical thoughts, I stood by the fire, hoping to chase the chill of strange memories from my mind. If I admitted certain truths to myself, there were times where I questioned whether or not that night on the tower was nothing more than a strange nightmare. That Derkeethus merely left for Black Marsh to conclude some other business and had forgotten about me. Or that we had both died on the cold slopes of Hrothgar the Terrible and all had been a fragmented vision of what could have been--that this life was no longer real. Superstitious nonsense is what that is. What evidence do I have of such ridiculous notions.
The bard's flute cut through my ruminations, sending a lilting tune through the air, strange and wholly unfamiliar. "Ah, yet another Breton lament over something as mundane as the very sky," murmured a thick Bosmeri accent behind me.
"You would be the expert on that, I suppose," I replied, turning to find Valindor standing too close for comfort. He wreaked of wine already, and his face glowed a vibrant shade of pink.
"Of course, I would," he mumbled, slipping into the tongue of Valenwood.
"You've really been drinking too much and we've only been here for an hour or so."
"Come here, sit with me," he said, guiding me by the shoulders and fairly pushing me onto a nearby bench. "An' speak your mother tongue. You're starting to sound like the locals."
"Very well," I replied in Bosmeri.
"And we haven't been here for an hour. We've been here the whole morning! But that's all right. I forgive you. You had...things...to...do. Things to do." The mer swayed a bit as he slumped next to me. An arm was thrown across my shoulders and I was crushed into his side. "What were you doing over there?"
"Talking," I replied, trying to regain a little breathing room. He would have nothing of it and held me fast, bright eyes locking with mine.
"Talking... Awful lot of talking for...you. Yes, you! You. I mean you. No more talking now." Valindor drained his tankard. For a moment, I thought he might try to kiss me, and maybe he was going to, except his eyes never opened once they closed.
A dull thump rattled the wooden plates, knocking over a poorly balanced wine bottle that toppled to the floor, leaking its contents everywhere. Several patrons turned at the sound, and upon spotting me, their eyes narrowed and heads shook. Valindor's head rested on the table in a drunken stupor.
"Can you believe that? The witch is at it again," I heard someone whisper too loudly.
"At least it's not one of the townsfolk. I hear she steals their souls and sell 'em to Hircine to play with."
"Shor's bones..."
"Just don't look her way. She might snare you, too."
Gently I shook the Bosmer, trying to wake him up and snap some sense into him, but he lay inert. Deciding to let him come to his senses on his own, I stepped out into the rain with my bundle in hand to the blacksmith up the street. Whiterun awaited us, and I planned to make use of whatever daylight was left to prepare and cover some ground, whether Valindor joined Meeko and I consciously or not.
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