I continue my investigations in Windhelm with a trip to the morgue, aka the Hall of the Dead. Aside from the blessings of Arkay it's a swing and a miss. I take to wandering around the city and its docks in the pre-sunrise dawn looking for anyone suspicious before, by sheer chance, I stumble across the Aretino residence. I get Lydia to wait inside the door while I use an invisibility potion to approach a young lad. He is doing the black sacrament, but he's not part of any secret society or anything like that. I chat to him and pick up a quest to speak to someone at an orphanage in Riften. The lad has procured a human heart from somewhere, but there is no prompting that will lead me to interrogate him about the three missing girls.
I weigh the boy up as a suspect. He'd be able to get close to the victims because they wouldn't initially be afraid of him. He could turn on the waterworks, tell them about his plight as a poor orphan, and then lure them back to his house where he could stab or poison them or something. On the negative, he'd still need to have a bit more physical strength than he has to actually murder someone I think. And also this whole black sacrament thing is to summon someone to do his dirty work for him. Why go to all the trouble if you have to kill more people than you actually want killed? No, he's not a suspect. He could have taken the body parts from the Halls of the Dead, or bought them off a soldier who has taken to collecting trophies, or something like that.
I try speaking to the Shatter-Shields, who are the family of one of the deceased. Only the father is talking about my helping out, and it's something about finding a piece of jewellery, which sounds tedious and fraught with unforeseen difficulty. I opt out, and instead start planning my journey west to join up with the empire's forces in Solitude. I tell myself the murderer will get swallowed up in the collateral damage of the war.
Lydia and I pop to the king's palace to get any last intelligence that might aid the war effort, but Ulfric is much more frosty towards us now that I've repeatedly declined to join his band of rebels. I do find Wuunferth, a wizard of some description, who seems to only be concerned with the money in my pocket. I grab some awesome sounding spells, including one that will magically form a sword for me to wield. I'd like fairly soon to ditch all my weapons other than my bow, and I feel this will be the final piece toward making that happen.
It's 3:45pm when we leave the palace, which means we should probably stay another night in Windhelm. To kill the time I persuade Lydia to come with me and investigate the fort just up the road that we passed when we first came here. It is called Morvunskar, and seems to be home to yet more novice mages. Although at one time I considered these people to be arch villains, I now simply feel pity for then as they are incinerated by my highly trained destruction magic skills. They should have stuck with Winterhold, as my college education gives me a new and formidable advantage in the brief encounters.
We get inside and overhear a discussion between two of the mages about a prison in the basement. Lydia and my new chain lightning spell deal with the chatty magicians, and with a little searching we find the door to the basement. I put a fire rune in front of it, but I'm not really up for encountering whatever grossness lies below. Lydia and I try sleeping in one of the beds, but there are enemies too nearby, so we head back out and turn south to Mixwater Mill. We grab 8 hours peaceful rest in the worker's quarters, and then at 7am on Morndas Lydia and I plan our trip to the imperial home ground.
We'll take the river route back to Whiterun, and hopefully not run into the dragon that ambushed us last time when we came the other way with Maurice. Then from Whiterun we'll travel north east aiming for a gap I can see on my map between two mountains where a new river starts. Following that river we can either go straight to Solitude or head first to Morthal. It is a long trek, maybe even three days of solid travelling, but there's no time like the present. I figure we can maybe pick up some supplies from the farms around Whiterun, and there's bound to be somewhere to stop on the way if we need it.
We meet an Orc who sells me some moon sugar, a lady called Ardwen, a short lived novice necromancer, Balbus picking his bits and bobs for the gourmet, and then we're back in Whiterun. We pass the a Western Watchtower ruins at 10:30am, and I decide we'll press on while the going's good, though we give Fort Greymoor a sensible bit of distance. I get to the gap in the mountains with only a few wolves to give me grief, but for some reason Lydia has disappeared. I decide it is maybe because I left the road, and she is now running a lap of Skyrim to try to get back to me. I continue my travels, and get myself to the north bank of the river flowing towards Solitude.
It's just after 1pm when the river turns north at some falls and I take a look at the map. If I get my toes wet I will come to an island that separates me from Solitude, but the more sensible thing to do will be to spend a night at Morthal and head on to Solitude tomorrow. That means continuing on what is now the east bank of the river, as it heads out towards the northern sea. Lydia shows up again just as Solitude comes into view in the distance. It's high on a cliff overlooking a scattering of small islands in the river, and tempting as it is to try island hopping towards it, I stick with the plan of getting to Morthal first.
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