28th Last Seed

'Lalaine, what are you doing here?' Drelis had thought he was alone; the library had been quiet all morning and master Earmil was snoozing in a corner somewhere.

'Phane and I thought you might like some company,' said Lalaine, sitting on a pile of A Brief History of the Empire II. 'He's around here somewhere, probably looking through an illustrated anuad.'

'Aren't you supposed to be at the castle?'

'I was, but Phane helped me get free for the day. Here he is now.'

Phane strolled down the aisles, grinning. 'How are you, Drelis?'

'What's this all about?' Drelis put his books to one side, his nose twitching. 'The two of you are up to something.'

'Come on Drelis,' Phane pleaded. 'You know exactly why we're here. We want to hear more about the orc smith and the dragons in Skyrim.' Lalaine nodded agreement.

'Right now? You two are impossible, honestly.' It seemed as though he was about to kick both of them out of the library, but at the last moment he gestured for them to follow him to a desk standing in front of a wide window seat. He sat down and shuffled through the tomes that were piled on the desk, revealing a dusty collection of leather-bound pages that Phane and Lalaine both recognised at once.

'Lydia's diary!' Lalaine exclaimed, a little too loudly.

Drelis put a finger to his lips, shushing his friends as he scanned the document. 'There isn't that much detail here about Khargol's movements after the dragon at Riverwood you know.' He flipped a page, and then another. 'Most of what Lydia wrote down was related to her by Khargol when he returned to Whiterun a few days later. I only have an outline of the events between his visits to Breezeholm.'

'Well, tell us what you can,' Phane suggested. 'I'm sure our imaginations can do the rest.'

Drelis shuddered. 'I'm so glad you're not a historian, Phane.' He composed himself and took one last look at the quiet library aisles. 'Like I said, the details are scant. Lydia claims that Khargol visited Falkreath, the town in Falkreath Hold to the south-west of Whiterun. It was a dreary place, damp from rain and fog, it's people miserable and unenthusiastic.

'Falkreath's main attraction was, of all things, its graveyard. The largest graveyard in Skyrim, it was claimed. That gives you an idea of the town's mood. The hold itself was a green, verdant valley. Forests, wild game, mountain streams, fresh air, and Lake Ilinalta; but history had a grim hold on the land. Some people whispered that the melancholy mood was the work of a daedra, but in truth no one knows why Falkreath is such a sad place.

'Khargol visited Jarl Siddgeir, who he describes to Lydia as "young, irresponsible, and likely open to corruption." Falkreath was siding with the Empire for the civil war, but the conflict had yet to rear its head in the hold. The jarl did not seem to be concerned either way; so long as he could go out riding and hunting, he could not care less about the Stormcloaks or the worship of Talos.'

'Sounds like my kind of guy,' murmured Phane, smiling even as the others scowled. 'I don't see what's so bad about it. A dragon could burn your house down tomorrow, or a bandit could take everything you own. Why play it safe all the time and live a boring life when you can enjoy yourself?'

'Perhaps the responsibility of a public office is just too much for you to comprehend,' chided Lalaine. Phane shrugged, more interested in the rest of the tale. 'Did the jarl have a task for Khargol?'

'Not that we know of,' admitted Drelis. 'Bizarrely enough, Khargol then journeyed east, up the mountain slopes, to Helgen. Bandits had settled in to loot the burned-out shell of the outpost, but other than that it was safer than the last time Khargol had seen it. There was no roar from Oblivion or beating of black wings; a dragon had not nested in the ruins.'

'Why did he go back to Helgen?' asked Lalaine.

'I couldn't say,' Drelis spread his hands. 'It was en-route to a cave called Haemar's Shame but your guess is as good as mine as to why he journeyed there in the first place. He described it as icy and cold, too cold for anything living to find comfortable. "Snow had blown in and covered almost everything. Even the cook fires could not keep it at bay." There was a coven of vampires there, worshiping some sort of blasphemous idol, but Khargol refused to go into more detail on the subject.'

'How odd,' Phane remarked. 'Do you think it was something he wanted to keep from Lydia? A secret?'

'Perhaps,' said Drelis. 'But that is where Lydia's records of that particular journey end. After clearing out the vampires of Haemar's Shame, Khargol followed tracks in the snow to a barrow called South Shriekwind Bastion.'

'Now there's a foreboding name if ever there was one,' Phane slapped his thigh. 'I wouldn't go near a place named Shriekwind Bastion, not for a thousand septims!'