"Runil? No, miss, ain't seen him for days."
"Did he say where he might have gone? A letter? Note? Message?" I gripped the edge of the counter harder than strictly necessary, feeling at my wits end.
"Maybe he went on a pilgrimage?" Valindor offered hopefully as he sipped from a goblet of wine.
"Pilgrimage! Pilgrimage to Riften's meadery 's more like it!"
"Narri." Valga glowered over the bar at the barmaid with lips pursed so thin they almost disappeared. Narri, in turn, sashayed to the nearest table, bending low to refill a gentleman's drink.
"He's a drunken lout! A good for nothing! What kind of priest spends all his days with his nose buried in a goblet?" she spat, her face forming an unbecoming snarl of disgust.
"Yer just upset 'cause he's spurned you time and agin," crowed a weathered, browbeaten man, speaking as if from personal experience. His deep-seated eyes hovered over me for a lingering moment, resulting in Narri's scowl darkening like a storm. The expression infected Valindor as well, though it wasn't directed at me. Shifting, I turned my back to them, wanting nothing more than to disappear. No one in the inn seemed to recall Runil's actual disappearance, and I couldn't understand why. He was the town's priest--the only one responsible for putting the dead to rites in their graves in a place utterly devoted to Arkay. It didn't make any sense.
"Thank you anyway," I sighed at last.
"Anytime."
Rousing my friend from his wine, I motioned to the door. We would go to the mer's house ourselves and see what we could see. As my hand alighted on the door's handle, a shadow loomed to my left. I tensed in alarm, my hand already on my sword before I was even aware of it, then I relaxed when I noticed the obvious drunken sway.
" 'ey, wha's that green stuff floatin' around you?"
"What 'green stuff'?"
The man drew sloppy loops in the air with a finger. "That."
"I don't see any green stuff. Do you?"
"Nope, not a thing," chimed in Valindor.
"Oh..." The dark-robed Imperial furrowed his brow in deep concentration before looking back at me in vague bewilderment. " 're you sure?"
Without answering, we stepped out into the street where a drizzle coated our clothes just enough to make them damp and clingy. Quietly, we walked down the main road passing through town, the tiny stone-and-thatch houses slouching tiredly in their small, untamed yards or leaning precariously over the lane. We turned left down a dirt path that passed Mathies' farm. One of his cow's lowed at us, causing the man to look up despondently from his work, if one could call it that. For he stood in the middle of his field, pushing the dirt to and fro as one pushes food around on their plate when they aren't hungry, but want to appear to be eating.
The path sloped into a swampy depression where the graveyard lay, the tombstones sticking through the earth like uneven, grey teeth. A small altar to Arkay sat just beyond a set of pillars draped in fabric the color of blood. "Did you feel that?" Val's voice came out in a hoarse whisper.
"Yes. Arkay is watching us, I think."
"I'm not sure I enjoy the thought of that," he replied with a worried glance at the altar. Neither did I. A cold presence sat on top of the house as if it were always winter. Here, the sun was obscured by clouds and even the rain fell a little harder and cooler. Runil's house always seemed cursed in this way.
Nervously, I rapped on the door. There was no answer. I pressed my ear to the wood and listened. "Runil! It's me, Gwaihen. Can I come in?" Suddenly, a burst of activity rustled on the other side along with a deep voice swearing and heavy boots clanking as they approached.
"What do you want?" growled a large Nord.
"Kust, have you seen Runil? I need to speak to him." I cast a glance around, feeling like we weren't alone.
"It's urgent," my friend added.
"There's no one here by the name of Runil."
"I heard someone else in there." The Bosmer next to me pushed into the door, squeezing his head through the gap. Quickly, I made to pull him back, afraid the Nord would shut the door on his skull. His dour, tense posture certainly implied he was thinking of doing just that. Instead, he pushed Valindor away rudely.
"Get out of here!"
"Isn't that Dexion?"
Kust groaned and opened the door, knowing the secret was out. Just under the man's large arms, I spied the moth priest's head bowed as if in prayer before another altar to Arkay. "You have five seconds to explain what you're doing here."
"Durak was here, wasn't he."
Kust chewed the inside of his cheek and bored a hole into the doorframe until he sighed in a defeated manner, scrubbing a leather-gloved hand over his cropped hair. "Yes."
"What happened to Runil?"
"I don't know." At my cocked brow, he glowered at me, shifting his weight from one foot to another. "I don't know. He just wasn't here one day. Might have said something before that about cleansing a glade or something."
"Kust? We have guests? Why are they standing out in the rain?" wavered Dexion's reedy voice. The door was opened a little wider and we slipped inside. The home was barely large enough to contain a single bed, much less the three that were crammed into the corners of one half of the one room. A random assortment of books, trinkets, and clothing were scattered about the living space. On the opposite side sat the altar with a well-varnished bench and fresh candles arranged neatly before the sigul of Arkay. It was a sparse space otherwise, with only the herbs lining the walls offering anything in the way of decoration. Their dry, woody scent was amplified by the fire roaring in the grate.
"Good to see you're safe after all," Valindor commented.
"You! From the cave. No! What are you doing here?" Dexion backed away from the shrine so quickly he bumped into it and knocked it over. "Oh, Divines forgive me for ever leaving the Imperial City..." With trembling hands, he righted the altar, Val rushing forward to rearrange the candles. The moth priest waved him away dismissively.
"Dexion," I began, "You probably know why I'm here--"
"Yes, you want to read that damnable Elder Scroll!" he spat. As if realizing what he just said, he put his head in his hands and uttered a string of low pleas.
"And I need to know where Durak took the scroll, and how to read it."
"Why should I tell you? For all I know, you're one of them. After all, the Dawnguard told me you were with the Family."
Kust drew his mace and advanced on me menacingly, disbelief and rage arguing all over his face. "What? A vampire? In the house of Arkay? Such blashpemy, how dare you--"
"I'm not a vampire. But I'm also not with the Dawnguard. Not anymore. Dexion, I fear Durak is going to do something very dangerous with that scroll."
"So, why do you need to read it? Why not just take it back?" the Nord interjected.
"Because... Because..."
"Because Y'ffre wants her to read it. He has a mission for us," Valindor replied brightly. "I don't know what exactly that mission entails, but I see now it's something she must do. Do you not see his blessing all over her?"
Dexion squinted his aging eyes, searching all around me for some sign, until, at last, he appeared to find something. For a moment he was silent, staring off into a spot just over my shoulder as if he was very far away. Then, quietly, he began to recite his answer as if it had been scripted long ago and now he was only just coming to understand the words. "He will take me to my home among my little sisters, dun but fair. Following is the spriggan with body of flesh and blood, whose soul lies strewn between the realms. Among my sisters I will be read, after the spriggan drinks and gem lies cold. Hither and yon shall souls be sent, beyond the barriers to Azura's sorrowful garden.
"That was what Runil said before he left for the Ancestor Glade. He must have seen it in a dream--the elf had more connection to the realm of the Elder Scrolls than I ever did. He would have made a talented moth priest. You'll find him there in the mountains on the east side of town."
"What does it mean?"
"I haven't the foggiest," the elderly Imperial replied with an ironic smile. "To read an Elder Scroll, you need only be receptive."
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