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Someone is following him.
The knowledge comes to him with the primal certainty that only arises in moments of self-preservation. Somewhere upslope, behind him and to the west, at least one pair of eyes is meticulously tracking his passage.
Falion sighs. He was hoping to make it through this pass without violence, but he knew the risks he was taking when he chose this route. The benefit of shaving five days off the journey to Morthal was worth the chance of running into the Forsworn, or some other feral creature of this wild slice of the Reach.
He keeps a measured pace, hands steady on the reins, and keeps his eyes forward. No use alerting the watchers. Unless they decide to attack, he might as well continue making progress, and if they do, he can handle at least a few of them. Could even hold his own against a hag, although he would bet the hedge witches and spiritual leaders of the Reachfolk don’t regularly haunt mountain passes waiting to pounce on unsuspecting passersby.
As it turns out, the feeling doesn’t disappear, but neither do any furious natives appear to attack him, and he marks the passage of time through the rest of the afternoon by the slow advance of golden light across tawny canyon walls. The spring evening air is heavy with the scents of dust and juniper berries when the sun finally dips behind the Druadachs and the light begins to fade in earnest. Finding a suitable place to camp doesn’t take long, as this country is all eerie rock formations and sheltered coves, and all of it is off the beaten path. Only the most intrepid travelers come this way. The thought makes him chuckle, low in his throat, and his own voice sounds strange in his ears.
He hobbles his horse—it has no name, he’ll sell it as soon as he reaches Morthal so there didn’t seem to be any point—and builds a firebreak from chips of ancient stone, lighting the dry tinder with a wave of his hand. Even though his campsite is relatively well sheltered from the road, and there’s no wind to blow the smoke wide, he knows the fire is a risk. But if the ranging denizens of the Reach already know he’s here there’s no point in subtlety. He can still feel the unseen watcher, lurking in the gathering dusk.
Still, though, there’s no need to tempt fate more than absolutely necessary, so he settles for a cold supper of bread and shortfin jerky, not wanting to draw the attention of any predators with the scent of cooking meat. As he eats he watches the shifting colors of the streaky clouds in the sky. The red of the sunset over the Druadachs looks like blood.
Ignoring the watcher is a simple matter of unlimbering his horse of its heavy saddle bags full of all of his research materials and settling in beside the fire with his latest translation work. The set of rubbings are from a stone tablet found in an ancient Direnni burial tomb and the script is almost certainly Daedric in origin, though of no dialect he has ever encountered. The phonemes are familiar enough, however, and he thinks he is close to a functional translation; at least functional enough that he can…
The snap of the twig sounds loud in his ears, primed as he is for any unnatural sound. He makes no move to indicate he’s heard it, but keeps his head down, skimming his fingers over each line of the document as if he’s completely immersed. He breathes deeply, centering his awareness, and draws upon his magicka to quest outward with a sixth sense he cannot name until he feels the sympathetic echo of another sentient presence not ten yards away, just on the other side of the massive boulder to which his horse is tethered. Not a whole band of Forsworn, just a single person, in fact—if he’s not mistaken—a child.
Interesting. The feeling of surprise is an unexpected delight. Out of sheer curiosity he decides to attempt to draw the watcher out, intrigued by what could be driving this audacious spirit to track him all day through such wild country. Perhaps food will do the trick. He sets down his work and gets up to rummage in his bags, portions out a second helping of bread and fish, then arranges it on the ground to look as if he carelessly dropped it when unloading his horse. All his other provisions and valuables he carries over to his place by the fire and arrays them close at hand. He leans back against the bags and picks up his translation work again, but soon after lets his head droop back against the rock wall and loll to the side. One long, heavy lock of hair swings down across his face and tickles his nose, but he doesn’t move. He lets his eyes fall closed, but keeps them open just a crack.
It doesn’t take long for his visitor to emerge. Cautiously at first, the unknown child edges around the far side of the boulder, keeping one suspicious eye on Falion where he ‘slumbers’ and one eye on the hindquarters of the horse. Smart—Falion watched this horse almost take out the groom at the stables in Markarth, which was a fortunate incident all things told because it netted him an excellent price.
The child is half dressed, wearing only a threadbare tunic that may have once been blue, and scrawny, with bare feet and a dirty face and the concave chest and distended belly that signal mild malnutrition. It might be a boy or a girl, it’s impossible to say definitively, but for some reason Falion thinks she might be a girl. Matted hair the color of ash bark curtains her face, but bright gray eyes peer shrewdly out from among the tangles.
She inches cautiously into the ring of firelight, then darts back at a snort from the horse. Falion very carefully does not move, keeping up his charade of peaceful rest. She watches him warily for a moment, then, seemingly satisfied he is well and truly asleep, creeps forward with impressive stealth. Snatching up the food soundlessly, she darts away into the shadows, leaving not a crumb behind.
Falion can’t help the tiny smile that quirks the corner of his mouth. Because as beautiful as it is, Skyrim is full of hard and hollow places, and the Reach is harder than most. This child is a fighter, and he can respect that. He casts his spell again and senses her close by, crouched around her prize like a carrion bird. She didn’t get very far before falling ravenously upon the meal. He hopes it won’t make her sick.
Knowing his unseen tail is a malnourished child and not a territorial tribesman is comforting, although it occurs to him that he should have realized sooner that no Forsworn would have waited this long to attack. He rouses himself to do a bit more work on the translation, musing irritably yet again that it would have been a lot more gratifying to present these findings to Aren in person. Falion would love to watch the flicker of grudging admiration—and frustration—pass across that old mer’s sharp features, but he will be forced to submit this work via written correspondence. No matter; the true implications will be just as thoroughly explored from the remote privacy of Morthal. After all, it doesn’t matter where one traverses the eternal door into the Infernal Realms—the swamp is as good a departure point as any.
Falion only looks up from his work when he develops a painful crick in his neck and realizes he is hunched nearly double, his nose a bare hand’s breadth from the pages. The light from the fire has died down to a red glow, bright coals flaring and waning. He arches his back and stretches, wincing at the loud cracking noises from his spine, and is suddenly struck by the vastness of the night sky above, a great black bowl dotted with countless points of light. The sight jerks him back to the present, and he sits there for a moment, feeling the hard ground beneath him and the cold stone at his back, letting the soft night sounds of the Reach wash over him. A nightjar trills in the near distance; a breeze rustles the sharp leaves of the scrub.
He heaves himself up to check on the horse—drowsing—and traces a slow circle around the perimeter of his camp, laying down a ward that will wake him if the visitor returns. Then he wraps himself in his cloak and settles back into his place beside the fire, leaning against his saddle bags, steeped in the heavy, constant heat from the coals. It isn’t long before he is lost to dreaming.
***
The next day it rains. The Reach doesn’t have dramatic rain like he’s seen in the south of the country, thunderstorms sweeping in out of a cloudless sky; no, rain in the Reach is a thin, pissing drizzle—something to do with the mountain range hemming in any moist westerly winds. He huddles in his oilskin cloak, ensuring it’s spread out behind him over his bulging bags of documents and sensitive magical paraphernalia. It’s been years since he left Sentinel, and one would think a decade in Winterhold would have acclimatized him to the freezing cold and wet, but he has more or less resigned himself to Skyrim’s weather being his constant nemesis, the price he pays in order to enjoy the wild charms of this country. And besides, he is moving to a swamp—a swamp which, if Jonna’s correspondences are to be believed, is quite wet.
His mount does not seem to notice the downpour, but he supposes equine Reachfolk are perhaps just as stubborn and hardy as the two-legged sort. It’s peaceful, riding through the rain, the quiet hiss all around and the smell of wet stone. He finds it surprisingly easy to quiet his mind, anchoring his awareness in the physical, the rhythm of his horse’s steps and the accompanying swaying of his body.
His young shadow is still close behind, a fact he realized soon after starting out that morning. He is surprised she’s still following him this late into the afternoon, especially given the rain. He can’t say for certain it’s the same girl, but the energy is definitely that of a child, and the furtive movement patterns are the same. Given how thin and scrawny her body was when he glimpsed her in the low light, he wouldn’t be surprised if she is desperately hungry and merely following a good lead for another meal. He wonders idly where her parents are, if she is native to one or another of the hill tribes that must populate these craggy cliffs, possibly even now observing his passage.
The road grows narrow and twisting, wending its way close between two tall overhanging bluffs blooming with lichen. The sound of the rain echoes, hissing, in this deep corridor. This would be an ideal place for a Forsworn ambush, but he senses no presence nearby, not even that of the child. Perhaps she has grown weary of following him—he is frankly surprised she managed to stay close for even this long, given how emaciated she looks.
There is a section of the Direnni translation that has been eluding him, and he chews on it as he rides, turning over various interpretations and comparing against other texts he has seen. This find, acquired from one of his most prized contacts in High Rock via Markarth at great cost, is certainly distinct in its morphology from anything he has seen in the College’s archives. Perhaps he’ll write to Vedran at the Arcane University when he arrives in Morthal, ask him to confirm the accuracy of the notes he has on the Lexicon; his copy is old, and perhaps there has been some revision in the intervening years since he last studied it himself.
Occupied with these thoughts, he passes through the narrow canyon and eventually emerges into a broad gorge, juniper growing thick and pungent on either side of the road. The rain shows no sign of letting up as the day wanes, so he resigns himself to the search for shelter. As luck would have it, he quickly finds a shadowed enclave at the base of a massive sheer rock face, not quite deep enough to be dubbed a proper cave, but dry and more or less enclosed on three sides. The roof is high enough that he can lead his horse in out of the rain, but then steeply slopes down so that he has to crouch. Best of all, the space is nestled among sheer cliffs and boulders—he will be well protected from unannounced approach.
The damp chill has soaked into his bones and he craves warmth, so he builds a small fire near the mouth of the enclave, positioned as best he can manage to ensure the smoke will blow out. He sits beside the fire, looking out at the gray gathering darkness, watching the curtain of rainwater running off the sheer cliff face at the mouth of his shelter sparkling in the firelight.
He could settle in to do some scroll work, but before he makes any moves he casts his awareness out into the rain once more. Surprise lances through him at the familiar presence: the child is back, lurking in the downpour just outside the cave mouth. Somehow she must have caught up to him.
If she is so determined to have tailed him all day on foot through pissing rain, she must be desperate indeed, although clearly also highly suspicious. Despite himself he finds that he is very curious about this plucky little creature. She must be resourceful and stubborn as a mule to survive in such a hard place as this, if she is indeed alone in the world.
How to lure her out? He only wants to help her, but if he’s being realistic, he would hardly advise any child in a similar circumstance to heed the summons of a strange man alone in the wilderness, especially one with interests in the same sphere as Falion’s own area of expertise. A sardonic smile comes to his lips. A quandary.
As soon as the coals are hot enough he props up his small kettle and fills it with water, then adds a scoop of concentrated meat stock and a handful of lentils to boil, along with a hefty pinch of spice. It isn’t long before the aromas drifting from the pot are downright mouthwatering. He sits back to wait, hoping it’s enough to lure her out. In the meantime, he makes a cup of tea.
Sure enough, he can sense her creeping closer. It’s almost full dark now, and the firelight has ruined his night vision besides, but he imagines he can almost see her crouched just outside, peering at him with those bright gray eyes, rainwater plastering tangled hair to her scalp. On a hunch, he takes a breath, stilling his mind, and immediately senses the fleeting spirit of a hare, already half out of this plane. He binds it, drawing it to himself through the indefinable not-distance, and the pearlescent shape of it materializes quickly on the cave floor. Long ears twitch as the spirit-hare eyes him warily. He smiles, then loosens the compulsion on the animal’s tiny consciousness, and the hare thumps its back foot then takes a long leap toward the cave mouth.
A flash of movement in the shadows, and eyes shine in the darkness—he has drawn her out.
The food is ready. He fills his single bowl with torn chunks of bread then ladles the steaming gravy over the top. Moving slowly so as not to startle her, he moves around the other side of the fire and lays the dish on the ground, then returns to his seat. He calmly drinks the rest of his tea and refills his cup with gravy. Ignoring the lurking child and the spectral hare now snuffling around in the sodden scrub grass at the edge of the cave, he starts on his meal, keeping his eyes on his food and his shoulders relaxed. Calm and unconcerned. Unthreatening.
It doesn’t take long. A wet, dark head pokes through the curtain of rainwater still cascading down over the mouth of the cave. Cautious as a squirrel, the little girl approaches on silent feet. Out of the corner of his eye he can see her head swiveling between him and the ghostly hare, still munching unconcerned on the grass. She stops before the plate of food, her body still angled so as to be able to make a quick escape, and studies him suspiciously.
He doesn’t look her in the eye, but nods in her direction, toward the plate of food. Whatever she was waiting for, this seems to have satisfied her, because quick as a flash she crouches down and drags it toward her, then starts eating with both hands, as fast as if her life depends on it. Perhaps that approach is based in experience, he thinks grimly.
“You’re going to make yourself sick,” he says, his voice soft and mild, then adds, “and there’s more where it came from. I won’t hurt you.”
She only stares at him, peering out from among her curtain of wet scraggly hair, chewing determinedly. In the firelight, dead on, he has the opportunity to study her again. He hadn’t been confident she would even understand him, given the wild Reach clans sometimes don’t speak Cyrodiilic, but upon closer inspection he thinks she’s a Nord. There’s a sturdy build to her, even underfed as she is, and a strong Nordic jawline. But here in better light it’s impossible to ignore how precarious her condition is. Her skin is pallid and faintly blue in places, her eye sockets dark with the purple of a bruise, and every so often a shudder wracks her small body from head to heel.
She finishes her entire bowl before he’s even halfway done with his own meal. Falion picks up the rest of the loaf of bread and slowly and deliberately tosses it to her across the fire, aiming not to startle her. She snatches it out of the dirt and immediately starts tearing at it. He notices she has inched closer to the fire, too, and is glad to see her shivers seem to be lessening.
“What’s your name?” he tries, and gets no answer. “My name is Falion.”
She has finished with the bread. It probably isn’t wise to give her any more food, since she clearly hasn’t been eating well and it might be too much for her stomach, so he settles back to see what she will do. Certainly she doesn’t seem excited to rush back out into the rain—she is still watching him warily, eyebrows furrowed in suspicion.
The hare hops back into view, whiskers twitching. The furrow between the girl’s eyebrows smooths as she watches it, and she tentatively extends a hand. Falion exerts the smallest pressure on the tight knot of instincts that is the hare’s consciousness in the back of his mind and the creature takes one short hop toward the child, then licks her finger with its tiny tongue.
An actual giggle bursts out of her. Falion grins, surprised at the relief that washes over him at the sound. “He likes you.”
“What’s his name?” Surprise lances through him. Cyrodiilic, with the rounder edges of a Reach Nord, as opposed to the harsh Eastern burr.
“He hasn’t told me,” says Falion. “What do you think his name is?”
She studies the hare for a second, stroking one of his long ears with two fingers. “Ysgramor Long-Ear.”
“Ah,” says Falion, nodding solemnly. “A king. If I’d known we were going to be in the company of royalty, I would have prepared a more impressive meal.”
The girl peers up at him from beneath her tangled curtain of hair, her small face skeptical. “Where are you going?”
“I’m on my way to Morthal,” says Falion. “My sister lives there.”
She doesn’t say anything, only sucks the end of one sodden tendril of hair into her mouth and chews on it, studying him thoughtfully.
What a curious little creature. Falion tries again. “Won’t your family be looking for you? Not a good night to be out in the dark and wet.”
Just like that, her face shutters. Her mouth drops into a hard line and she scuttles backward away from the fire, scrambling to her feet to dart back out into the rain.
“Hold on,” calls Falion. “You’ll catch your death, it’s too early in the season to be running about half-clothed. Take this.” He rummages in one of his saddlebags and withdraws an old wool tunic. It will be like a long dress on her, but it’s warm. She hesitates, hovering just inside the mouth of the cave, still watching him with that flat, skittish expression. He holds up the tunic, then tosses it to her.
It lands in the dirt a few paces from her. She stares at him for a moment more, then darts forward and scoops up the bundle of cloth, clutching it to her chest. A moment later she is gone, back out into the dark, rainy night without a backward glance.
Falion shakes his head, hoping she has somewhere warm and dry to return to for the night. He wonders again what sad circumstances drive her desperation as he cleans up the remnants of supper, but at least she’s had a hot meal. And she’s clearly not helpless; no weak child could survive the Reach alone for long. By the look of her she’s been on her own for awhile.
Regardless, he’s done what he can for now. Putting her out of mind, he sets up his travel desk and scrolls to do some work, fixing a dim yellow magelight to hover overhead. He still feels frustratingly stymied on the Direnni translation, so he might as well do some transcription. Conjuration scrolls are notoriously tricky, and the savvy buyer knows to closely evaluate any potential purchase—it is all too easy for an intrepid end user with more ambition than knowledge to find himself holding the frayed end of the metaphorical leash. Falion’s own derived methodology greatly enhances the safeguards for the unprepared user, allowing him to operate with assurance that no aggrieved family member will come to hunt him down when their scroll-conjured storm atronach turns on them against their intentions.
The pervasive hiss of the rain and low crackling of the flames fade into the background of his awareness as he lowers himself deep into concentration, and when he resurfaces several hours later, the night is pitch black and the fire is nothing but deep red coals.
***
She doesn’t reappear until he’s stopped for his midday meal, pulled up to rest beneath the spreading branches of a large acacia.
When he awoke that morning, the rain had stopped, and he rode out of the gorge surrounded by a Reach sparkling and steaming in the midmorning sun. His young tail was nowhere in sight, and he did check every hour or so. He’d begun to think she had given up for good, having had a few solid meals and new warm clothes, but now here she is, peering around the drooping branches of the tree. His old saffron-yellow tunic hangs to her knees, sleeves rolled into fat cuffs around her thin wrists.
“Hello,” he says mildly, masking his surprise and delight at her reappearance. Somehow he has developed a peculiar affection for his intrepid little shadow, and the reaction surprises him very much—he has never been particularly fond of children, but there’s something about this one that captivates him. Perhaps it’s that he, too, is a bit of a feral thing at heart, drawn to wild and dangerous places, growing roots against all odds in a foreign and sometimes unfriendly culture, in turns indifferent or hostile depending on which robes he’s wearing. He’s found a way to thrive in defiance of these mundane challenges, and something in this wild child strikes a resonant chord in him.
“Would you like some fish?” He wraps a chunk of smoked abecean in a torn scrap of waxed paper and holds it out.
To his surprise, she approaches and takes the food directly out of his hand this time. Though she retreats to a safe distance afterward, she doesn’t immediately start devouring the meal, instead studying him with those strangely intense gray eyes.
“You shouldn’t go this way,” she says, and her voice comes out clear and loud and not at all timid. “There’s Forsworn.”
Falion’s eyebrows climb. “Are there?”
She nods decisively. “I found a better way. You have to follow me.”
Taken aback, he packs up the rest of his meal and leads his horse out from beneath the acacia, then follows the scraggly barefoot child down the road while she gnaws on the chunk of smoked fish. She doesn’t seem concerned to have him at her back, but walks with conviction. Not far down the road she turns off into the brush, weaving between the boulders and gnarled scrub, heading for the steep cliffs.
He follows, leading his horse carefully among thorny brush, and quickly the road is lost to sight. The slope of the land climbs steadily toward the cliffs, and he wonders if the path she has chosen will accommodate his horse, but he needn’t have worried—as they pass around the curve of an enormous boulder a cleft in the rock comes into view, invisible from the road. It is narrow, but wide enough to accept Falion and his horse, and it looks steep but passable.
“How did you know about the Forsworn?” he asks the girl, only half expecting a response, but to his surprise, she answers.
“I scouted,” she says proudly. “I’m a good scout. The Forsworn like to watch the road from the hills. But if you go higher in the hills, you can watch them.”
A smile comes to his lips. He was right about her. “A good scout is a valuable companion indeed.”
“I used to be in charge of watching the hawks, to keep the chickens safe,” she says, leaping up onto a low ledge jutting out from the sheer wall of the pass and then jumping back down again. “I had a slingshot to keep them away.”
“Ah—a warrior too, then,” says Falion. They are well in the shadow between the cliffs now. The floor of the pass rises and curves out of sight ahead. He can feel no nearby presence other than some large predator that might be a sabre cat, but it seems to be sleeping, or at least showing no signs of moving in their direction.
“I’m not a warrior,” says the little girl, and suddenly she sounds sullen.
“How did you come to be alone out here?” asks Falion, making his voice as gentle as he can.
She doesn’t meet his eyes, just leaps up on the ledge again and hops along, not looking back at him. His tunic flaps around her like wings. “Me and Pa were going to the city with the wool from the spring shearing. I was in the wagon, playing with Kirsta, so I didn’t see…there were loud voices and Pa yelled to me to hide in the wagon, so I hid under the wool. Everything was shaking.”
She stops, leans down to pick up a rock, examines it, then hurls it at the far wall. She looks back at Falion as if to check that he is still there, then leaps back down from the ledge and scampers ahead, up the steep slope that has just come into view around the curve. “I was scared, but I wanted to help Pa so I couldn’t stay in there, but when I came out of the wagon there was no one there. I looked everywhere but Pa was gone, and so was Sprout.”
“What about Kirsta?”
“I lost her,” comes the mournful reply. “She fell in the river when I was trying to catch a fish. She had wool in her, not beans like Kati did, so she floated, and I jumped in and tried to get her but I couldn’t.”
Ah. He marvels again at her gumption. It’s not just any child who would dive into that mighty river—it had to be the Karth—without a second thought to retrieve a lost doll.
“You never found Sprout or Pa?”
She doesn’t look back at him, still resolutely plowing ahead up the slope, but she shakes her head emphatically. “I looked everywhere. Pa would never leave me, and Sprout loves me, I always feed her oats, so she must be lost too.”
Falion has a grim suspicion about what happened to both Pa and the horse; it’s a relief that she wasn’t able to find either of them. “So you’ve been on your own since the early spring?”
Now she does look back defiantly, her small, dirty face scrunched up. “I can take care of myself.”
“I can see that,” says Falion. Though her story is troubling, and she has no doubt seen hardship the likes of which most children her age can’t conceive, he finds himself fighting a smile.
The shadows are receding and the chasm walls ahead are striped in warm afternoon light. As he leads his horse up the last of the steep slope, the walls of their passage fall away. Suddenly they are standing on a flat ledge, a sheltered promontory beyond which the whole of the Reach appears spread out like a spectacular diorama.
Ribbons of mist still linger in the seams between crags of rock, an encroaching army of cypress and acacia swarms proud over the hills, and through it all the mighty Karth carves its path, inexorable as the dusk. In the near distance, a standing stone crowns the crest of a round knoll, an explosion of wildflowers adorning its feet like a crowd of supplicants.
“It’s this way,” says his companion, scampering across the ledge to peer down a shallow decline leading away. She has led him through the ridge and out the other side. He can see the road below wending its way among the hills, and guesses this route cut off a good two leagues of the most treacherous part of the Reach, if the cart driver he met outside Markarth is to be believed.
“What’s your name?” he asks again, and this time she answers.
“Agni,” she says, and she meets his eyes proudly, sweeping tangled hair out of her face with one hand.
The decision comes to him with an instinctual certainty he can’t describe, out of that deep inner core of self. This was never in the plan, but as the course of his singular life thus far has taught him, the best things rarely are. “Agni, how would you like to come to Morthal with me? There are chickens that could use protecting by someone who knows how to use a slingshot, and a wizard is lesser without an apprentice.”
She studies him, thinking, not appearing the least bit surprised or alarmed by this suggestion. Then she shrugs and nods. “Okay. Can I ride the horse?”
Falion hoists her up into the saddle and shortens the stirrups so her bare feet can reach. As he turns away from the view to lead the horse down the winding path, it occurs to him that his life has been marked by a series of crossroads thus far, and this one seems more momentous than most. But as Agni begins a long stream of relentless chatter about the harsh and wondrous things she has seen while surviving the Reach, and realization dawns that he may never experience true silence again, Falion perceives the quiet dissolution of his unacknowledged loneliness, the welling up of a new fount of altruistic fulfillment, the weight of the mantle of guardianship as it settles upon his shoulders.
An owl swoops overhead, silent and knowing, as they descend out of the chasm into gathering dusk.