CHAPTER IV – Funeral Rites

It wasn't too long before there were steps coming down from the stairs to the second floor, when I heard the Jarl asking in a very disgusted voice:

"Agh! What's that horrible smell?"

"Oh no, I left a potion cooking when she arrived. Damned interruptions!" The educated voice of a man answered. It lazily dragged every word as he was trying not to put all the effort required to make them manifest.

Hasty steps were followed by a gray robed figure running towards the alchemy table and almost tripping with the desk. The confirmation of my suspicions about him made me smirk from the chair. He didn't notice me yet, so I continued to watch in silent amusement.

The mage was going for the pair of pincers I had used to start fixing his mess and then paralyzed in action. His eyes were examining the table and slowly dawned on him there was nothing to fix anymore.

"Someone was here… otherwise this would have burned. It was probably her. " The mage murmured to himself as the Jarl was arriving. "...got to thank Delphine next time I see her."

'Delphine?!’ That can't be a common name in Skyrim… he couldn't be referring to that rude woman that almost pulled a knife on me when I came into Riverwood.

The heavy hand of Balgruuf landed on my shoulder and pulling me away from my thoughts as he loudly declared "See, he was already here waiting! Farengar, this is Dar'Aldair, your new assistant."

The mage turned abruptly to find me smiling at him. He stopped himself short from going right back towards his work station, no doubt to check for missing pieces and ingredients. I would have to get used to that in this land.

Before giving them a chance to jump at more conclusions I decided to explain myself.

"Greetings, mage. When this one came here he found a sample of spriggan sap near it's boiling point…" Farengar made no comment as I related what I did with the luxury of details.

At the end he sat behind the desk and looked at me like he had never seen another living creature in some good time. He finally spoke in the same lazy tone.

"No one mentioned the hired muscle had a functioning brain this time. That's quite unusual, Jarl Balgruuf."

‘Finally a compliment for good Aldair!’ I puffed up in the chair at the comment! I was almost convinced everyone in this city had a knack for doing me in.

"Don't get too excited, Farengar, it occasionally stops working." Balgruuf said, clearly entertained.

Well, that victory was short lived.

"I can still work with that." The mage became busy digging up scrolls and books from the space under the desk.

"You two can continue working on this. Do everything he asks from you, Khajiit." And the Jarl left.

I turned my eyes towards the court wizard whom still had his head beneath the wooden table, pulling all manner of parchments and creating yet another mess. He wasn’t like the methodical folk in the Sinod, at all.

“Here’s it! For a moment I thought I had lost it.” Farengar said, straightening in his chair with a large scroll in his fist. “Come closer, I think you need to see this.”

I stood up to the peer at the paper: It was a map of Skyrim with several locations marked in colorful circles. They were few and evenly distributed across the holds and some of them were crossed with a large mark; I wasn’t sure of what it could mean but still adventured to guess based on Jarl Balgruuf’s explanations.

“By any chance are those the locations of the Dragon burial sites you were watching over?”

The mage looked at me slightly surprised again, studying my face and the various gold earrings hanging in my ears. I noticed that despite his deep eye sores the rest of his face was free from wrinkles and no gray hair was in sight. So young in such a position was bound to be arrogant.

“Yes, that’s exactly what they are. The Jarl mentioned he told you this but I didn’t expect you remembered or even understood. Maybe you’ll actually make my job easier unlike the usual fools he throws at me.” He explained while rummaging again in the drawers of his desk. After a minute of search he found a small box of chalk.

I wasn’t surprised at all to learn Jarl Balgruuf took reckless decisions others had to deal with later... A true Nord to the bone. Farengar continued to explain, using a long piece of chalk to point:

“We determined the dragon mounds weren’t being sacked at random, there is a pattern and it comes from the south of Skyrim, spreading from the east with every new report… But we don’t have the location of every one of them. They are very ancient, dating back thousands of years, although I have found a solution!”

He explained this as if it were a puzzle he was trying to finish, a child discovering he enjoyed solving problems.

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“On an old book about the history of this area I discovered there is a primitive registry in one of the nearby nord crypts, one very close to little Riverwood.” He said, tracing a line under the name of the town in his map. “This registry should contain the location of all the sacred grounds of the ancient Dragon Cult in Skyrim, and there we are going to find the bones.”

“And this “registry”… wouldn’t the paper be torn down and useless by the passage of time?” I asked thinking of the dried and dusty remains of civilization we found beneath Helgen.

“Paper? Bold of you to assume ancient nords would be wasting their time crafting paper. No, they used anything durable at hand… wood, metals, runes on the walls… even rocks sometimes! They would carve the materials with their weapons and their arms.” The Nord love for the most delicate arts was not new it seemed. But to Farengar I said:

"So this one is looking for a lump of wood or rock with carvings on it... Inside a gigantic ancient tomb. This might take a while wizard, those places are massive." I told him in a lower voice, thinking they had no idea of what they were asking of me. How didn't they know I would just run away once I was free?

Farengar smiled to me and said "Aha! Yeah that's a real problem, I'm glad you noticed! You're cut from a very different cloth than most mercenaries, I was tempted to just send the next fool to wander the ruin for a month if they didn't ask." He mentioned casually, not noticing my wide eyed stare.

He continued in his idle tone "I had that factored in and investigated more... The map is a sacred item for the ancient nords, so it must be interred in the main chamber along with other treasures, deep within the crypt. But you must be careful, bandits might have taken residence inside."

Great, just a couple hours here and now I was going to be sent inside a death trap to look for a rock. ‘No one wants to give poor Aldair some easy coin.’ I surmised internally.

I sighed, feeling that coiling danger I perceived in the Great Hall had doubled in size within hours. The mage was looking at me expectant, what did he want? I estimated he expected more inquiries from me, so I obliged.

"There's something that doesn't make sense to Khajiit. This one has a question." I told the mage and his expression changed to gleeful interest. What a strange man. "You're sending Aldair to retrieve a map so you can, this one speculates, watch over the mounds that fit the pattern... But what for, exactly? If Dragons are truly coming back to life isn't that very dangerous? To the point no one sane would willingly walk into it?"

Farengar's smile widened in a wild gesture just before he sat back in the chair cackling.

My whiskers twitched briefly as they detected a guard leaning inside the room to check on the situation. She shook her head from side to side briefly and left the room again. I waited for the mage to calm down and he finally talked.

"This is ridiculous! A criminal is the first person to make that deduction since I proposed to search for the blasted map, by the eight divines I have no words."

"Does that mean that the map is useless? If we find it, it would be too dangerous to use." I had the sinking feeling this young mage was completely careless if his actions ended up killing someone. Or in other words me.

"The map would be useful but not in the way Balgruuf wants to. An... Associate and me have a theory, Dar’Aldair. Well, more of an hypothesis." He explained like a teacher, standing up to his audience. "Dragons are not normal creatures, they can't really die. If you manage to kill one, the soul will remain behind and the creature will be reborn eventually... That's what ancient texts say, anyway."

By associate he probably meant the name he murmured earlier... 'Delphine, huh?’ I focused my attention back to him.

"...so they had to use these rituals to seal the dragon bones away lest the creatures returned. Your average grave robber has more common sense than messing with those incantations, but even if they did they would soon find failure… almost no one has that kind of power, and that’s where our hypothesis lies.”

I could see on his hyperactive hands Farengar was enjoying this too much. Now I felt bad about the poor man not having any contact with an intelligent life form in the last weeks. I decided to indulge in his scholarly attitude, impersonating my best stuck up scholar voice from the time I posed as an apprentice in the Synod.

“Please tell this one this postulation, this matter of dragons could unravel a world of possibilities to observe and study.” I told him eagerly.

He responded as intended, becoming more worked up, if that was possible.

“Exactly! Just imagine the reputation I could get from documenting all of this…” His eyes looked to the ceiling as his mind wandered away from the topic. I knew better than interrupting some absent minded mage and remained silent. He soon became aware of his daydreaming and returned.

“My apologies, I am derailing now. As I was saying, think about this: They aren’t just reviving by themselves, they can’t. Something or even someone is bringing them back to life! Whatever it is, it has to be incredibly powerful, and I mean on the level of mages such as the King of Worms or The Wolf Queen. We need to predict the next locations to be raided so we can uncover the culprit or at least understand better what is going on. No need to think in stopping it right now, I doubt we can.” He finished his explanation almost jumping on the balls of his feet, no doubt seeing something like this was getting the better of this bored magician.

I became silent with my eyes fixed on the map. As everyone around me explained what was going on, a known pressure was increasing in my chest, threatening to break something and choke me. The King of Worms? The most powerful necromancer in recorded history could have a hand in this? Of course it made sense, coming back to life… It could be the greatest reanimation ritual ever performed!

“Hmm… that would be really bad if you are right, court wizard. There’s no other explanation than a demigod necromancer?” I asked hopefully.

“There are some ancient prophecies related to dragons but they are dated, supposed to have occurred thousands of years in the past. All civilizations have their world ending stories and ancient Nords were not the exception… they just had dragons at hand to make it more plausible.” Farengar explained, back to his seemingly bored self. “I have not discarded anything yet, but first we have to deal with the things we can explain, to some extent. Do this and come back to me.”

He turned around to his alchemy table and lighted up the small furnace-like tower.

“Now, if you excuse me I must tend to my work, the Jarl requested that you look for him as soon as we were done.” He started turning around, reaching for the cooked spriggan sap, but he stopped and looked at me again. “When Balgruuf told me he had found an assistant for the job I expected another dimwitted sellsword that wouldn’t be able to form a coherent sentence. However I was met with an open discussion of my theories. It has been months! For that, I thank you and… wish you good luck. Don’t die out there.”

Farengar looked a bit awkward and turned back to his table to work. I thanked him honestly while saying goodbye… and despite the pleasant exchange, fear was holding me tightly as this mystery unraveled to show me something worse.