The Longest Road – Ch. 5 – 4: An Enthralling Presence

  • Thin rain fell in gauzy sheets, covering the world in a soft gloom.  We set out over the high bridge spanning the two sides of town.  It was on this south side that the paupers lived:  the millers, bakers, miners.  The houses were older and ramshackle compared to those around the Four Shields Inn on the northern side, whose families bourgeoned on the proceeds of Imperial traffic to the blacksmith and nearby outpost.

    Here and there a burned shell of a building squatted on the turf, still inhabited by families too poor to leave the remains of their homes.  A dirty marketplace hid behind the neater façades of the street-front shops.  I could hear locals haggling in a half profane, half slang language.

    As we passed the edge of the town, slowly plodding by the smelters that pumped sooty smoke into the wind, the sky darkened and a heavy gust of wind tore at our clothes.  With a rising hiss the downpour came, beginning softly to the north and sweeping southward like a curtain being drawn over the land.  In minutes the horses were clopping through deep mud that covered their hooves.  Progress was so slowed that we had to dismount and trudge through the muck with them.

    Some miles down the road, a low footbridge lifted us out of the mud, and we flung ourselves on the edge, out of breath and cold.  Dusk was already coming upon us, and I worried that the rain might have washed away any trace of the priest.  Distantly, I remembered an overturned merchant's cart that Derkeethus and I found on this same road some months ago.  There had lain a Redguard peppered with arrows; her goods scattered and horse slaughtered.  The thought gave me chills.

    "Somehow, I don't think our moth priest made it to his destination," I said.

    "Why do you say that?"

    "Just a feeling."

    Evidently, he hadn't.  For another mile up the road was an overturned carriage and a slain Imperial soldier.  His neck was shredded open and old blood lay caked at the bottom of a puddle.  Meeko sniffed cautiously about, whining as he surveyed a horse, destroyed in a similar manner as the man before me.

    "Just a feeling, huh."  Valindor frowned and searched the surrounding area for any other dead.

    While I heaved the Imperial's body off the road and propped him against the bottom of the carriage, Val returned with a disconcerted look on his face.  "What did you find?"

    "A dead vampire and this," he replied, extending a waterlogged note towards me.  The ink was badly smudged and I couldn't make out the words, but at the bottom of the parchment was a watermark.  Gently, I traced it with my fingertips, thinking of where I had seen that shape before.

    "Didn't Serana have a brooch with this shape?"

    "That's what I was thinking.  I guess it's a family symbol?  It could have been her, though."

    "No, I don't so.  She was locked up in that castle, and even for a vampire, it's unlikely she could travel that fast.  Especially in daylight."

    "I haven't found any sign of a priest.  Wherever he is, he's dead or long gone by now."

    "Well, he can't have gone far," I sighed, trying to quell the growing sense that our quarry was slipping farther away as we stood there and ruminated.  Rain continued to patter lightly on my hood, and the sensation was slowly driving me mad given my current frustration.  Clutching my hood in hand, I was about to tear it off my head when Meeko galloped down the road, barking excitedly.  "Meeko!  Get back here!"

    He stopped for only a moment to stare at us before resuming a slower pace that wagged back and forth across the road.  When I looked after him, I noticed faint splotches of red mixing into the dun earth.  Hopeful, I followed, Valindor hesitating behind me.

    "I don't like where this is heading," he said as he caught up to me.  His eyes flicked to the dark, rain-stained hills dotted with pines.

    "Neither do I, but if that moth priest was taken somewhere, it'd be best to find him."  Yet my heart was heavy, and part of me desperately wanted to turn back for the night.

    Meeko led us on a wavering track around rocks, through grass, and across the road.  We climbed into the hills gradually.  Every few hundred paces, I spotted a divot in the soil where a boot was caught and then yanked.  Whomever this trail belonged to had been dragged, and the sight of Serana's crest suggested this moth priest had been important to them.  Important enough to assault a carriage and leave sloppy remains in haste.

    Maybe they need to read the Elder Scroll.  Which only brought to mind how little I knew about the things.  What was inside of one?  Some kind of magical power like the White Phial?  Knowledge?  What kind of knowledge?  I knew that knowledge could ruin a man or mer just as easily as it could empower him.  Just look at what happened to Morian Zenas, a conjurer who was so obsessed with knowing he was lost to Herma-Mora's endless library.  I certainly hoped this Elder Scroll wasn't actually an artifact of the Daedric Prince, but there was no way of actually knowing until we found the priest.

    At last, the trail led us to a cleft in the rock, where a bloody handprint smeared upon entrance told us we had found the hiding place of the moth priest.  Above, the rain finally blew away, leaving frigid air in its wake.  Outside of the cave, ancient stone obelisks protruded from the ground like rotted teeth.  In the center of these, Meeko sat, unmoving.  I tried calling, pushing, and shouting at the dog, but he refused to move, offering only a complacent smile as if to suggest he'd done his good deed for the day.

    "All right, Meeko.  You can guard the entrance," I said in resignation.  The dog closed his eyes contentedly in acceptance of his new duty.

    "There're probably vampires inside."  Val's hand rubbed anxiously at the aging wound on his shoulder.

    "Yes.  And their thralls."

    "Thralls?"

    "People they've mentally enslaved.  They do anything their master asks.  You remember that Nord back where we found Serana?  That was a thrall."

    "We're going to have to kill those slaves, aren't we?"  I nodded grimly.  Valindor paled and turned a little green.  He took a few steadying breaths as if to gather his courage, then, seemingly unable to find it, took a long draught from a flask on his hip.  Puckering, his face scrunched into a grimace.

    "Val, just think of it as putting them out of their misery.  They won't offer us any choice, and there's no way to undo what's been done to them.  They've been destroyed in one of the most horrible ways possible."  When I saw he was still nervous about killing living people, I took his hand and squeezed it.  Another long sip from the flask went down his throat, and I felt a shudder pass down his arm.

    "All right.  Let's go find the priest."

    "That's right, focus on the positive," I encouraged, though I certainly didn't feel positive about this mission.  With grim determination, we entered the dark gap, fighting a rise in bile at the overwhelming smell of mold and decay as well as my own claustrophobia.

Comments

1 Comment
  • Matt Feeney the New Guy
    Matt Feeney the New Guy   ·  April 26, 2013
    Meeko amuses me. Though so does the rest of the chapter :P