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Chapter 6

Eldrin stepped aside quickly and pulled the door open along with himself, and the pale creature on the other side of the door lurched forward. It was roughly as tall as Valka, undead yet sourced from no species of man or mer. It looked as though it had been rotting for days, skin having flaked off on parts of it to reveal muscle and tendon and sometimes even plain white bone. It stank of death, the stench a punch to Eldrin's face even with the door between him and it. The face seemed swollen and distorted, jagged yellow teeth clearly visible inside a lipless mouth. It looked as though its nose and ears had sloughed off naturally, the eyes sunken and shrunk so that they were barely even visible beneath the folds of skin. Bones protruded from its body at odd angles in places they had no business even being.

Valka looked up into a face that was not a face, into shriveled white eyes disappearing into lumpy misshapen brows. The thing breathed stench and horror out of a hole that must be a mouth because it was below where the nose had been. It swiped at his chest with a hand peeled down to bone and tendon. He did not attempt to avoid it as he leveled the spear at the center of its body. Pain raked across his naked skin and then the spearhead embedded itself in the thing with a bizarre_sklush,_as if he had cut into a pile of paper half of which was wet and half of which was dry.

The undead continued to press forward, forcing him back even as it walked up the shaft of the spear. He felt as well as heard it emerge from the thing's back without stopping it. Valka smashed his helmed forehead forward into the lumpy features, glad that he need not touch it with his skin. It stopped for long enough for him to step back, jerking at the spear.

Eldrin released the door and shifted the spear back into his right hand, looking up just in time to see the skeleton on the pedestal behind Valka rise. Its hands closed around the longsword as it swung its feet around to the ground with a light rattle.

"Valka!"

The skeleton ran at the Mazken but Eldrin dashed forward, past the bonewalker as it walked itself through with Valka's spear. He knocked the ebony blade away with his own weapon just as the skeleton tried to skewer Valka's back. The thing hissed at him, jaw clacking back and forth, and this time it slashed down at Eldrin spear. The heavy sword dragged his weapon down on impact and Eldrin's spearhead smacked against the floor, so he swept the spear at the skeleton's feet. It anticipated the move and darted back, just out of reach.

Valka's spear came free with some resistance, scraping against bone on the way out, and leaving the spear slicked with rotten black blood. The bonewalker roared when it had recovered from the brief stun, throaty and coarse. It raised its hands and fiery red magicka exploded from the palms to engulf the Mazken. Eldrin had neglected to warn Valka about the strength drain.

Sudden movement. Eldrin's voice, shout of warning and alarm, clash of weapons._Valka twitched to one side in time to see the Dunmer attempting to trip the skeleton in the fine robe, now animate and wielding an ebony sword._We do not belong here. This is his house, not ours.

In the moment of his distraction he realized that Eldrin had in fact prevented him from being stabbed in the back, and then magicka flared from his left as the forgotten bonewalker reached for him, perpetually grinning. The noise it made was felt as much as heard, and then he felt the spear suddenly grow heavy in his arms. The weight of the knapsack dragged him to his knees. Suddenly it was heavier than the weight of a body. He struggled to free himself from the straps as the undead raised a clawed foot with unerring purpose. He had only one arm loose when it kicked him in the chest. There was an audible SNAP on the right side as it impacted his pectoral and the ribs under it. He gasped, even now not wishing to give Eldrin the satisfaction of hearing him cry out.

The thing was off balance for that one instant. Valka seized the spear with both arms, though one was still fouled by a strap, and thrust upward. The spear went in again under what one might tentatively call the left breast, and a gout of horrid dark ichor sprayed over the shaft. The undead convulsed, throwing its clawed hands up, and then dissolved into sparks.

Valka freed himself of the other strap and scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could, looking around for Eldrin. Something fluttered inside him with every inhalation. He could feel his right lung starting to collapse, every slightest movement a stab of agony as breathing grew harder and harder.

Eldrin's eyes flicked sideways briefly at the noise of bones snapping, saw Valka on his knees, and sudden terror swelled in his breast. If Valka died, Eldrin would be finished before he had time to summon him again.

He'd let himself be distracted. Eldrin moved stupidly, thrusting at the skull just as the skeleton jerked aside and stabbed into the inside of his right elbow where only padding protected him. Eldrin screamed and shuffled back, yanking his spear up to a guarding position. The wound in his arm burned with the movement. The padding rapidly soaked through and excess blood pattered to the floor.

Valka took two steps forward, left hand seizing the back rim of Eldrin's cuirass to haul him behind the Mazken. He released magicka through that hand even as he parried another sword-thrust with the spear. The flat of the blade slammed the weapon's shaft back into his chest, producing a hiss of pain: he was no longer strong enough to push the thing away. The skeleton's grinning jaws clattered an inch from his face. He imagined, as spots began to form in front of his eyes, that he saw something moving in the deep darkness of the empty sockets.

He needed his left hand, his unwounded side. He could not wait to see if the Dunmer was completely healed: his rapid calculation passed the test of obedience.Without my left hand I die. If I die Eldrin dies.

Valka dragged his left arm around in an overarm swing, gauntleted fist clenched. It smashed into the skeleton's cheekbone with an audible clack, but he was too weak to destroy the thing that way. The undead was driven back a step, disengaging the ebony blade. It was fast, faster than the first one had been: it attempted to decapitate him immediately afterward. He stepped inside the swing, gauntlet raised again. Metal met bone with another sharp concussion as the sword clashed against the back of his helmet. The impact was jarring, and for a moment his vision was completely white, but he pushed forward anyway, thrusting the spear forward and upward against what felt like the weight of a xivilai dragging at his arms.

He did not see it smash the skeleton's face and skull, but Eldrin did. There was an explosion of dust, powdering his face. Valka sank to his knees to the noise of bones raining down into fabric. The ebony blade clattered to the floor behind him as the skeleton's arms and fingers disjointed one from the other.

His vision did not completely clear, still dark around the edges. He could hear his own wheezing breath, but it seemed distant, far away.This incarnation is ending.

"Urk," Eldrin grunted when he was yanked back, and then the wound closed up before he was even aware what was happening. He was transfixed by terror and awe as he watched Valka demolish the skeleton, an unstoppable force despite his injuries. He instinctively flinched back and jerked one arm up to shield his face when bone and blade came flying, but it didn't land anywhere near him.

Then he stared stupidly at the Mazken's heaving back for a moment before he finally got his feet to work. Eldrin's bonemold boots thudded loud and dull as he ran the few short steps, left hand falling to Valka's left pauldron as he released his heal. It was not nearly as strong as Valka's. The wounds would close slowly and Eldrin felt all of his magicka leeched away as he cast the spell a second and third time, leaving him to feel drained in a way he had seldom experienced.

Valka felt the weight of a hand on his pauldron and shut his eyes, waiting for the inevitable contact of tanto with throat. It was the most logical thing. Disincarnate, he would be resummoned without wounds or weakness, ready to fight again on Eldrin's behalf.

Faint blue light, visible through his eyelids. Things creeping and rearranging inside his body. Pain fading.

What?

Valka's eyes fluttered open as magicka sank into body and bone. His right lung reinflated slowly as air expired from his chest cavity. He turned to look up at Eldrin in surprise and confusion, eyes open wide. Then he remembered, and his gaze dropped as he reached to haul himself upright, propped by the spear. There was no more pain, but weakness still dragged at his limbs. He went to try to pick up the knapsack. It did not budge from the floor.

Eldrin backed away quickly when he saw Valka begin to move.

"That was amazing," he blurted. Truly, he had never seen such a display of raw power and skill. The wonder hidden by his helm turned to confusion watching Valka struggle with the bag. "Damn it, you were cursed? I don't think banishing you to the Isles and calling you again will fix it. You have to be restored at a shrine. Do you have those?"

_What was amazing? That I followed your orders, as I am physically compelled to do?_He gave Eldrin another confused look, this one briefer but almost panicked, jaw working. Nothing the Dunmer had done in the last five minutes had made even the slightest sense to him. Perhaps whatever had happened to him outside truly had deranged his mind, rendered him from cruelly purposeful to simply mad.

He had been asked a direct question, saving him from having to respond to something nonsensical.

"No, Master Eldrin," Valka said. He turned to drag the knapsack across the floor toward the open doorway, spear in his other hand, watching for any further dead ready to defend their places of rest from these interlopers.

Eldrin took note of the strange look on Valka's face and felt himself suddenly grow irritated. He couldn't accept a compliment from a worthless mortal, was that it? No, Eldrin realized. It was because Eldrin had shown him nothing but cruelty up to that moment. He lifted the visor from his face now that there was no danger, forcing a cold mask back on his face that in some ways did reflect his mood. Eldrin did not like himself very much in that moment for a number of reasons.

Within the door lay a small square chamber. Against the opposite wall there were three round stone-rimmed pits. The design of them said_pool_to Valka, but they were filled with ash or gray dust, not with water. Along the rim of each were laid scraps of dried plants, some so shriveled that they could no longer be identified. One fireflower was still bright, glowing faintly in the dim. The whispering voices were loudest of all here, though he still understood no words. Valka drew to a halt in the center of the room, looking around in vain for the source. There was a sort of narrow pyramid in each corner behind him, on the wall that held the door. Each had a dull violet stone set in a stucco rim on the room-facing side.

"I am sorry," he said aloud. "I will disturb you no longer than I must."

"Leave that, we'll get it on the way back," Eldrin said quietly, moving into the chamber. He cringed when Valka spoke.So he understands what we're doing.

In the very center of the centermost pit was a skull. It was bound up with crimson leather straps, the color still vivid through the ash and dust. Every exposed surface of bone was covered in writing in the daedric script. To draw near to it was to feel the increase of power under tremendous restraint.

"That's very sentimental of you," Eldrin said bitterly. He was honestly shocked by that. Valka didn't care about living mortals, so why did he suddenly seem to care for the dead?

"No, Master Eldrin." Valka shook his head, one hand releasing the handle of the knapsack with relief. That, too, confused him. "A Mazken cannot be near a fundamental order that is being disturbed and not know it. To seek out the ordered, the complete, and break and scatter it is the nature of our Lord and Master just as it is yours." Revelation burst across his mind. It was not a pleasant sensation. He stopped, turning to look at Eldrin with another strange expression, mingled horror and awe. "I - I understand something now that has often confused me."

MY nature is to break and scatter the ordered?_Eldrin thought. What is he talking about? He's been with me three days and every fight I've been in was escalated to that point by someone else!_

"And what's that?" Eldrin asked, genuinely curious, but wary of the answer. He had turned to look at Valka, one hand on his hip, spear against the ground. Turning his back to the skull made his skin crawl, and again Eldrin felt the sickening sense that something was watching him.

Valka looked away from that direct stare, stiffening his spine against the urge to take a step back. Eldrin felt some relief. The Mazken was learning his place. That meant Eldrin would not have to be cruel anymore. He sighed through his nose, a release of tension.

"A daedra often wonders why the Princes so desire the company of mortals," Valka said. "The worship of perishable creatures. But the answer is that you are like him in ways that we are not." The taste of it was bitter in his mouth. "He needs us to keep just enough order that_you_may survive in his kingdom."

"And how does it feel to know that you are not the chief interest of your own Prince?" Eldrin asked mildly, and turned to approach the skull, his apprehension growing with every step. The energy in the room seemed all wrong for a place of rest. He wondered if Valka understood the insult he implied by saying that Dunmer were anything like Sheogorath. His curiosity about Valka's world outweighed any offense, Eldrin was surprised to realize. There were mortals living in the Madgod's realm? How ghastly.

"I am consumed with horror," Valka said. His voice was paradoxically level. There was no reacting to that. He felt that his body was running out of the physical capacity to raise his pulse, veins beating in his head. It made just as much sense to walk calmly over and crouch down in front of the skull as it would to clutch at his skull and scream. He wanted more than anything to shrink to a pinpoint and cease to exist.

Everything I was told was wrong. The Aureal are arrogant and foolish, but so are the Mazken. We are not his favored servants. We are the caregivers of his pets, the handmaidens of his true loves.

Eldrin shot Valka a confused sideways glance. He thought the Mazken was being sarcastic, but that wasn't actually possible.Why serve the Madgod, then? You can't chose otherwise, can you?

"Do you have any idea what this writing says?" Eldrin asked, pointing down at the skull. It was bound up like a slave's might be, yet it had been placed in the central pit as if to honor it. Something about this was not right.

Valka attempted to read the words around the straps, rendering them into Dunmeris. "These are the words of binding in the name. These are the words of holding in the name. These are the words of restraint. These are. That he may never rise unbidden. That his power may be turned to us again. That he. That we." He leaned slightly to one side, trying to read around the edges. "The Tribe Unmourned. Consumed by our sins, we. Ending of the words."

The sensation of pressure in his head increased as he spoke, until he felt a buzzing in his skull like the sound of a hive. Valka felt dampness on his face and wiped at his nose. His gauntlet came away bloody.

Eldrin knelt beside Valka as he read the words, which at first seemed like gibberish. Eldrin's eyes narrowed on the skull, more confused than ever.

_The Tribe Unmourned._Eldrin's face contorted in horror and he looked sharply up at Valka, but images flashed rapidly through his mind's eye and he was suddenly detached from the room, from his body. The spear dropped from his hand and rattled on the floor. Valka turned sharply on one knee to see his eyes blank and distant inside the helm. The pain in his head receded as he stopped reciting the words.

"Master Eldrin?"

Eldrin was alone in a black void, a red glow at the very edge of his vision. The whispering voices rose higher and higher until they were screaming in Eldrin's ears, still too many, too jumbled for him to make out the words.

Row upon row of desiccated body lay lined upon the floor in a dark hall, eyes and mouths sewn shut, all covered in a layer of dust as if they had been stored in that state for years. Great square columns stretched up toward a vast, dark ceiling

A writhing mass of fleshy tubes pinned his every limb, sliding over his body, wrapping around his face. He was smothered, blinded. They were almost like dreugh tentacles but slender and dry. He could hear discordant music, a hundred flutes playing different songs while a drum pounded in his ears to the pulsing heartbeat of the living tubes that bound him.

It was all gone as quickly as it had happened, and Eldrin thought he must have seen a thousand horrible images crammed into a single moment, but most of them slipped away like water through his fingers. His head ached, heart thundering loud and wild. Blood was smeared on Valka's upper lip.

"Valka," he gasped. "What-?" His helmet was suffocating him. It was too much like the mass of tentacles that had pinned him. Eldrin struggled with the clasps in a panic and finally ripped it free, gasping for breath, terrified with every inhalation that he would taste that strange, sweet incense again. His hair had been tied back in a low knotted bun to fit in his helm, now messy and trailing stray strands of hair that were damp with sweat.

Valka helped the Dunmer claw the helmet loose, looking at his face with a confused frown. Some of the horror of realization gently faded as he grappled with_now_. Something was very wrong with Eldrin and it was not the blessing of the Madgod. That was another thing that he would be fundamentally able to recognize.

"The skull is an object of power," he said. "And to repeat even part of the binding ritual is to strain what flesh will bear. It must be meant to be read in turn by several, or by one who is to be a willing sacrifice to the words." He looked again, his frown deepening. Eldrin had not been hurt in the same way that he had. He was not bleeding, he breathed as though he had been running. "What happened to you?"

For a moment he forgot his fear. Nothing made sense. Fear and submission belonged to the world that was sane.

"I don't know," Eldrin panted. His hands were trembling, nails digging into the helmet as he lowered it to brace against his hip. If he hadn't already been on his knees he thought he might have stumbled again, and he didn't need Valka's help, damn it. Why was this sense of deja vu so persistent?! The images in his head, the words Valka spoke, why did he feel he had seen and heard them all before?

"I was seeing things, horrible things, but at the time I saw them it didn't seem horrible. I was being suffocated by...tentacles..." Eldrin touched his neck. Then his face hardened and he dropped his hand to pick up his spear. Why was he telling this to Valka? "Take the skull. That- that's what I came for. We need to get out of here."

Valka picked up the skull carefully in his gauntleted hand. He did not want it to touch any part of his bare skin. It whispered to him words that he did not understand, and in contact with the thing he felt something trying to work its way into his mind, something living and yet dead, but he was not what it sought. It found no purchase.

Without waiting to watch Valka pick up the loathsome thing Eldrin hurried back to the doorway, to the pack Valka had left. He tugged at it experimentally. Eldrin could have struggled with the weight if he really wanted to, but he was in a hurry and didn't want to trudge all the way back to Ald'ruhn with 80-some pounds on his back. He couldn't just leave the bag because his name was sewn into the lining, and his father might question where all the saltrice went to if Tsamabi mentioned it. He would compromise. Eldrin ripped open the bag and began hauling out the burlap sacks, throwing four of them them in a pile on the floor. The fifth one ripped from the bottom as he lifted it, saltrice spilling into his pack and over the floor.

"Damn it!"

Valka rose and turned, skull in one hand, spear in the other, and saw Eldrin struggling with the knapsack. When the bag tore he stared at it blankly for a moment. The contents had been grains of some plant. It was obviously heavy, but it was definitely not mortar or stucco or any other building material. Eldrin was muttering a string of curses under his breath, shoveling saltrice out of his pack and flinging it aside by the handfuls. There were several other bags still in the pack which he would take home with him, and perhaps no one would notice some had been lost.

Valka walked over to prod another sack with his spear before Eldrin could tell him not to. It split, spilling more grain onto the dusty floor.

There was no maze, and Eldrin had nothing with him that he could use to wall me up. He wanted to break me so that I would obey. There was no chance that he would actually do it.

He could not feel anger. He could not feel anything at all other than dragging fatigue.I can serve the Madgod by taking care of his pets in the Isles, or I can serve him as the slave of this cruel insane idiot. Either way there is no meaning in it.

"Hey!" Eldrin's head jerked aside to watch the sack Valka ripped spill across the floor. The keeper of the tomb was going to be very confused when next they visited.

"Eldrin Llethri, you are a worse liar than I am," Valka said wearily, and turned toward the door. "Will you have me carry the pack or not?"

"I should have let you bleed out," Eldrin snapped as he rose and angrily heaved the pack up and onto his back. "It's still- oof. It's still pretty heavy. You'll be too slow."

He was livid. Valka knew of his ruse. It had all been for nothing! He knelt to snatch up his spear and helm, his boots a rapid and furious_clud-clud-clud_as he stormed out the way they had come. He kept his eyes away from the bones scattered on the floor. Eldrin had thought about rearranging the skeleton on the table again, but that would just raise too many questions. The less he gave the Nazthiri family to ponder, the better.

""I am very confused as to why you didn't," Valka said.

"And what are you talking about, anyway? You can't lie," Eldrin growled without looking back.

"I cannot lie because you have prevented me, not because I am incapable of it. Do not your people call mine Dark Seducers because you believe us deceitful?"

He followed Eldrin slowly at first, then faster, forcing his legs to work until the muscles burned just to catch up. Whether from the effects of the strength drain or the skull or both, suddenly he struggled to keep pace with someone he could normally outrun without being out of breath. The upward ramp was an agony. He felt he could hardly breathe as he struggled up toward the outer door.

"I didn't realize you'd been cursed with the strength drain. At the time, it seemed like the practical thing to do." Eldrin was glad he had that excuse to fall back on so that Valka wouldn't guess how unpleasant a task Eldrin found slitting his throat to be. Actually, unpleasant was too mild a world. It had sickened him. If he didn't usually have a few sips of sujamma before bed it might have kept him up.

Eldrin could hear labored breathing behind him. He sighed noisily and rolled his eyes, slowing his pace. It would make the most sense for Eldrin to dismiss Valka and go home alone. But then he would have to carry the skull. And then he would have to walk through the foyada alone. What if the hallucinations started again? What if they got worse and Eldrin never snapped out of it?

"I don't know," Eldrin said wearily, hand on the door, half-turned to look at Valka while he caught his breath. Why was he suddenly so chatty? His eyes flicked down to Valka's bared nipples. "I thought the name had more to do with, you know," he made a humming sound and tilted his head to indicate Valka's lack of coverage, eyes rising to Valka's face again.

Valka stared at the floor, teeth gritted as he labored to catch up with Eldrin. His humiliation was complete. He had been deceived completely by Eldrin, stripped of all dignity, healed by a creature who would have died in minutes without him here and was now deprived of the only thing he might have still treasured as superior to the Dunmer. On top of the undesirable revelation he had had he did not know how he would stand it.

I have no choice.

"There is that also, of course," he said, leaning on the wall with one arm. "To me that also falls under the heading of lying, which is why I did not attempt it after I was given that prohibition. And you are obviously already attached to the mer Teris."

Eldrin looked as though he'd been sucker-punched in the gut, mouth dropping open and eyes widening in cold horror. His fingers tightened on the things in his hands.

"What are you- I'm not- It isn't- Damn it all, Valka!" he finally snapped, extremely agitated. Was it that obvious? Did people know? Zoso and Lothon and, oh, merciful Tribunal! Did Teris know? "Why would you ever say that? He's my_friend._" Eldrin sounded sick.

Valka recoiled, half-raising one gauntleted arm even though that would be completely useless against someone whose voice controlled his every action. He was left cupping the skull as if it were a weapon.

"Please don't - I -"

Get hold of yourself. The worst he will actually do is kill you. You know that now.

He forced himself to lower his arm, leaning on the spear as he looked past Eldrin at the wall.

"You walked him home when he was drunk and urged him against further actions that would be harmful to him, even though you regularly take actions that are harmful to you. He is the one that is with you when the others are not. Perhaps I have misinterpreted that." That wasn't a lie. He was genuinely confused now as well as frightened, unable to calm his pounding heart and head.

Confusion washed briefly over Eldrin's features and then his face and shoulders slackened and he just seemed miserable. Eldrin felt utterly defeated. By everything. Valka's cowering bothered him very much, but Eldrin didn't know why. Tsamabi's cowering was annoying too, but it was at least consistent with her betmer nature. Mazken were ancient and strong and supposedly evil. It didn't suit a warrior like Valka.

"I'm not going to hit you," he said tiredly, and pushed open the door, leaning into it with his entire body as he stepped outside. Valka followed Eldrin out, still at a loss. He carried the skull in his hand, ignoring the parasitic whisper in his mind.

I am not your prey. Be silent.

The world was muted tones of red and gray, the late noon sun hidden by hills to the West. Even the sky above looked as though it had been bleached. It was growing colder. Wind would have made it even worse, but the air was calm and eerily silent, broken only by the occasional distant baying of a strider that echoed down the foyada from miles away.

Eldrin moved slowly, burdened by the pack, by the guilt of what he had done in the tomb, by heartsickness, by confusion and dread. He kept his eyes on the ground.

"You didn't misinterpret it," Eldrin eventually said. He didn't know why he was saying it. Valka wasn't his friend, Valka didn't care. Eldrin thought he had kept his attraction well-hidden. There was not a single person in the world he had even hinted it to. His feelings for Teris hurt him every day and he had no one to tell it to. "Teris is engaged to a woman, like I am. But he wants his marriage."

"So he does not feel as you do," Valka said. "And if he did, you would not be able to act on it. Does your society prohibit the love of man with man?" He had been aware that the old magister was married, but apparently he hadn't seen much of his wife. Certainly Valka had never been brought to any place resembling the home Eldrin lived in.

"Not really. But two males can't produce children so marriage between them is considered pointless. It's also slightly rarer to find another person who is same-sex attracted. And there is my family's status to consider. Whoever I marry has to be a good match financially, right? I guess if I were a commoner this wouldn't be such a problem. There'd be less pressure. Anyway... All of that is moot. Teris will never feel for me what I feel for him and that's the only part of the equation that matters." Eldrin felt ill. And he felt stupid.Pouring my heart out to a daedra who cowers in fear of me. How strange my life has become.

"Can you even understand the concept of love, Valka? I thought daedra didn't have families or anything like that." He was a little confused about why Valka would have noticed such a thing to begin with.

"Of course I can," Valka said. There were internal pressures at work in Eldrin's life that he had not realized existed. He told himself that he should not care, that what he had said before was quite true and that no incident in a mortal life was worth his attention.

But that was not the Madgod's view. The Madgod, who trafficked with mortals in ways and at times that his servants did not understand.

And I am trapped with Eldrin until he passes the ring on or dies. Perhaps if I understand his life better he will bring me less misery.

And perhaps it will just give broader context to the next time he tortures me in some way. Hurrah.

"We feel pain, and fear it. We feel shame, and fear it. We feel loss, and fear it. We hate the Darkness, and fear it," he recited softly. "Without the ability to love how could there truly be loss?"

This was too much for Eldrin. Valka was nothing like his preconceived notions of daedra. He was not like a dremora, who seemed capable of little more than growling insults. Talking to Valka was too much like speaking to another mer.

"So you-" he cleared his throat and finally raised his head, glancing sideways at Valka, a little embarrassed. "You have someone back in the Isles?"

Valka shook his head. "No. I have been had by women, of course, but their relationships of note are not usually with men. With other men there is often competition, and we are fewer in number. It is not impossible, but it is less likely."

Eldrin was even more confused.You've been "had" by women? That's a strange way to put it.

"So let me get this straight," Eldrin said slowly. "You're capable of love. But women just use the men for sex and men are competing- for what? What does that even mean? The more you speak of your life in Oblivion, the worse it sounds to me."

"For favor," Valka said. "A few of us will attain rank through greater merit, or by obtaining the God's notice when he is in a better mood, or by attracting the favor of a higher-ranking officer. Do you not compete with the males of your acquaintance? You seem to have an antagony with Zoso Vorfayn."

"Yes," Eldrin admitted, smiling bitterly. "I guess our worlds aren't so different. Everyone is competing constantly. House against House, name against name. You have to look a certain way, act a certain way, speak a certain way. You have to know the right people. If you do anything wrong people talk, and if you do everything right people just make up a reason to talk. It's exhausting and it never ends."

"Eventually it ends," Valka said. "Unless you are set to guard a tomb as an undead, I suppose. Does that happen to most people?"

"No, and the guardians were mostly servants in life. Lower-caste people. That won't happen to me, and even when it does they are released eventually. We - mortals, that is - will go to the otherworld, the house of spirits, when our lives are over. The idea of dying scares me, but I think I'll take it over being resurrected to hell again and again for all eternity." Eldrin said it mildly. He didn't mean it as an insult.

"We often ask why you do not despair," Valka said. "But yes. That sounds a less dreadful fate. I will never advance again now, and without the ability to advance it is unlikely I will have enough time free to seek out another. Even in a hundred or two hundred short years it is possible you will meet another Teris, Master Eldrin."

Eldrin cringed. Intellectually, he knew that he would someday get over Teris and move on, but right now even the idea of that hurt him. And if he were trapped in an arranged marriage, that only made it more difficult...

"What do you mean that you'll never advance? When I die you'll... be.. free." Eldrin trailed off quietly, looking back at the ground. His brows furrowed as if working out a puzzle that took all of his concentration.

Until you sell the ring, or bequeath it to your children, or it is lost long enough to give me hope and then found again, as it was last time,_Valka thought. _He did not articulate this. There was no point in arguing with Eldrin, and if he provoked the Dunmer he would only make his own lot worse. He looked at Eldrin sideways, watching him frown at the ground. He turned his face away after a moment's startled paralysis, remembering not to keep looking at the mer's eyes.