“No. I’m asking you to kill him.”
Her throat closed, and for a second she couldn’t breathe. “L-Lord?” she stuttered.
“He’s hard to catch, this one, and the skraws are loyal to him. And even if I were to really bend my mind to it and catch him, killing him would only make him a martyr. I don’t need that at the moment, any more than I can afford to slaughter all of the skraws and start again.”
She tried to still her shaking, which had grown worse. “What do you want me to do, then?”
“He’s the only Argonian in the sump. It should be simple enough to introduce something into the water that will kill him without affecting anything else. I want it to look as if he died of natural causes. Do that for me.”
She tightened her mind, pushed herself further out-away from her weak corpus-and met Umbriel’s gaze squarely.
“I will, lord,” she promised.
And so she returned to her kitchen, and she made a poison.
FIVE
After another two days of mostly silent trudging, Attrebus smelled salt air, and the land dropped jaggedly until they emerged onto a strand of black sand where gray waves lapped halfheartedly at the shore. Up the beach, perhaps a mile away, he could make out what appeared to be crenellated towers rising from a promontory.
“Do you think that’s it?” he asked.
“Well,” Sul said, “it’s someplace.” He turned and set off toward the castle.
For a time they saw only sea birds and occasionally odd three-tusked creatures sunning on some of the rocks. They had slick but hairy hides, paddlelike forelimbs with three toes, and no hind limbs at all, but instead a tail shaped like that of a shrimp. On land they were clumsy, but once in the water they seemed at ease, even elegant. Attrebus’s stomach was quite empty, and he found himself wondering if the things were edible.
They reached the castle a few hours before sunset, or at least the rock it stood on and the small village between it and the sea. There wasn’t a dock as such, but a number of boats pulled up on the beach-some with substantial keels-suggested deep water offshore. A group of mostly women was crowded down near the boats, picking through fish lying in a couple of large troughs. Most had the flaxen hair and pink cheeks of Nords, although he saw a young Dunmer woman among them.
The village was no more than about twenty buildings, one of which had a placard with the promising words char bucket printed on it. He and Sul made their way there.
It was a tight little place with walls of undressed stone, a shake roof, and no windows, but inside it was warm and smelled pretty good. The oldest elven man Attrebus had ever seen watched them enter with obvious curiosity.
“You want to eat?” he asked.
“That would be good,” Sul told him.
“Do you have money?”
For answer Sul tossed a couple of coins onto the counter. The man nodded and left through a side door, returning a moment later with two steaming bowls of something and some bread. It turned out to be some sort of chowder, and despite some unfamiliar flavors, Attrebus thought it was the best thing he had eaten in a long time, possibly because he hadn’t eaten anything in a long time.
A few moments later two flagons of spiced mead joined the stew, and Attrebus felt officially happy.
He looked up and saw the old man still regarding them.
“It’s okay?” he asked.
“Delicious,” Attrebus replied. “My compliments.”
“You come up from Oleer Mar?” he asked.
“Down from the mountains,” Sul said. “Not much to see.”
“What is this place?” Attrebus asked.
“The village?” the man asked. “Sathil, after the castle, I guess. We don’t call it much of anything.”
“Sathil? They were allied with house Indoril, yes?” Sul said.
“Not Hleryn Sathil, not for a long time,” the fellow said. “Declared himself independent when he came here back in ’sixteen.”
“Why?” Attrebus asked.
“Why not? If the Great Houses couldn’t stop the wrack of Morrowind, what good are they?”
“I see your point,” Attrebus replied, although it actually made very little sense to him. “Did you come up here with Sathil?”
“No, I settled here a few years ago when my ship wrecked on the coast. I like it up here. It’s mostly quiet, not like the city. A few raiders now and then, but Sathil is still capable of handling that.”
“Still capable? Is something wrong with him?”
“Never mind,” the man said. “I talk too much.”
“Do you think he would mind if we pay him a visit?” Attrebus asked.
“Sathil?” He looked surprised, then contemplative. “Well, you never know, do you? He might. Do either of you have any sorcery?”
“A little,” Sul said.
“He used to entertain a lot of sorcerers. Not as much lately. Anyway, his gates will be closed by now, but you could go up there in the morning. In the meantime, how about a couple of nice beds?”
“And a hot bath?” Attrebus asked hopefully.
“Now, that’s just crazy talk,” the fellow gruffed.
The beds weren’t so nice, but they were better than cold dirt. Breakfast wasn’t much either-a thin porridge and a bit of dark bread. But it was enough, and the cocks were still crowing when they started up the approach to the castle.
The path was wide enough for wagons and not too steep for them, but by the time they reached the top of it, Sathil village was tiny below them. The walls of the castle were living rock for the first fifteen feet or so, polished smooth as glass, and then for another ten feet they were carefully fitted stone. It would be a hard place to take; except for the road, there wasn’t any place for siege engines, and the two towers that overlooked the gate seemed pretty capable of defending the approach.
The gate, a thick wooden affair heavily banded with steel, was closed, but a fellow on the wall hailed them as they approached. Like most of the villagers, he seemed to be a Nord.
“Haven’t seen you before,” the fellow commented.
“We’re travelers,” Attrebus said. “Naturalists, actually. We hope to catalogue the flora and fauna hereabouts.”
He saw Sul’s eyebrow lift, but otherwise his companion didn’t react.
“Do what?” the Nord asked.
“You know-those things on the beach, for instance, with the three tusks…”
“Horkers? You’ve come to look at horkers? Must be a boring place you’re from, lad.”
“I’m from the Imperial City,” Attrebus said. “I’ve been commissioned as part of a project to write a new guide to the Empire and surrounding countries.”
“Well, this isn’t the Empire, you know,” the man said.
“Right,” Attrebus agreed. “Hence the ‘surrounding countries’ part. I was rather hoping to gain Lord Sathil’s patronage for a time, while we’re doing our cataloguing.”
“Cattle hogging? What does that mean?”
“No, I mean-writing down types of things and describing them.”
“You’re going to write about horkers?”
“Yes, and whatever other things might be of interest in the area. Wildlife, geography, culture and customs, places and objects of power, those sorts of things.”
“Places of power, eh? Are you a sorcerer?”
“I am not. That is my companion’s specialty.”
