#dagoth uthol

It was a dark thought, one that unsteadied her further. She wanted to rage at him, she wanted to welcome him, she wanted to hate, she wanted to love...and Ouada, noting this, said that she should speak to him sooner rather than later, as being stuck like this would help no one.

It took a week before she was brave enough to go back up those stairs.

Voryn was waiting for her in the first room when she opened the door.

"I was beginning to think you would never return," he said.

"I had considered it," Sadara replied. She looked over his tray of food. He'd devoured everything. "I am through with wasting time on a lost cause."

"You did not tell me she was--"

"You wouldn't have listened." She took a seat on the other side of the table, "And I was not going to bring her up here to hear you call her bastard dragonspawn."

"She looks just as I did at that age," he said, and he seemed to grow quiet at that.

"If you are trying to raise my hopes just to dash them again--"

"I was under the impression that any children would take--longer to arrive. I was sure."

"You were wrong," Sadara said, "She is yours. There was...no one else. The last time I had even touched a man was decades before. The emperor was a friend, but you were...it doesn't matter now."

"You are...raising her in the Imperial fashion," Voryn said. His tone was almost careful. He couldn't be afraid of her, could he? What was that quietness?

"I am. I was raised this way, and Azura has done me no favors since I picked up that ring. The curse she laid on me still holds." Sadara took a deep breath. "The daedra have never given me anything but grief. Except perhaps for Sheogorath. He gave me a Spear I sold to a museum for what felt like a king's ransom in gold."

"And your ancestors?" he asked. "Is what the girl said true? They do not speak to you?"

"No," Sadara said, "I tried to speak to them after leaving you the first time, and then again after saving you. They wouldn't even acknowledge me. I could feel it - they were there, talking among themselves, but they wouldn't say a word. Azura was eager to tell me that she had ensured they would know all. The sin of mercy, she called it."

She looked toward the doorway to what passed for his bedroom.

"I have lost everything else because of you. I don't intend to lose her too."

"Oh, yes," Voryn's tone shifted, directly into the old disgust he had when she first showed him the babe three years ago, "I am sure your emperor leaves you absolutely destitute."

"You above everyone else should know what it's like to have virtually no one. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you preferred being locked away and speaking, touching no one. Maybe you preferred being alone. Maybe I should have left you there." Sadara took a deep breath.

"You should have stayed," Voryn said, with a definite edge in his voice, "I would have made you a queen."

"I didn't want to be a queen, Voryn. And what would I have been queen of? A legion of the dead, your worshipers who drank your poison whether they wanted to or not. What you were making was not a kingdom. It was a graveyard."

She looked toward his bedroom again, and at the light streaming through it.

"Red Mountain was just ash and misery. Grey and black, death everywhere. Here is...there's color, there's life. I don't want Sunnar to think that the way you lived is normal. I don't want her to think that worship of that kind is right." She took a shaky breath. "But perhaps this is my fault. I saw...I saw Voryn, because he was all I wanted to see. I only thought of what you could be, instead of what you were."

She looked down at her hands.

"Had you but used my name...I might have bent. I might have stayed."

"Why does this matter? You are Nerevar reborn. You are Nerevar. Why should I not call you by your name?" He seemed genuinely baffled at the idea.

"Because it is not my name!" Sadara said, "I did not stop being Sadara when Nerevar came along! He did not consume and replace me!"

Though he had spoken to her...once or twice. He seemed tired, in a way, though he did praise her for doing what none other saw as necessary. Who needed mercy so much as Lord Dagoth, who had dwelt so long in darkness?

You have shown him a ray of light, and I can only hope he is wise enough to see it for what it is. He and I will have words otherwise.

"It had been so long, and you were...I loved everything about you, save for the thing that kept us apart. You were wise, you could make me laugh, you made me feel...as if no one else mattered. And then when I had completely given you up, you gave me her."

She finally managed a smile.

"She is...she is more like you than sometimes I want to admit. When I told her you were dangerous, and you shouldn't be approached...she was determined that she would fix you. Because she had my potions, you see, and my potions fix people."

"I never took you for an alchemist," Voryn said. He seemed quieter again.

"It's easy money," Sadara said, "Health potions for injuries, stamina potions to...prevent injuries, cure disease potions for diseases...and so on. I learned the trade from a cousin I...don't speak to any longer."

Silence.

A silence that dragged on, that finally, he broke.

"What do you want from me?"

"I don't know," Sadara said. "At first I just wanted you to be a father, even if you never looked my way again. Now...I don't know. The emperor seems to think that you would be eager to do something about Baar Dau, which he is equally eager to have something done about. The Tribunal are doing nothing about it but emphasizing how the people of Morrowind must love them for it not to harm the province."

Another pause. He seemed to be thinking.

"And when I had served this--imperial dog's purpose?"

"The emperor said he would let you rebuild your House. The dissident priests can share their evidence of the destruction of House Dagoth - the truth is already coming out about so much, and their enemies would probably be willing to buy this too...so long as you had someone like him to give a stamp of approval, as it were."

"As if it would be so easy," Voryn started to snarl. "As if he could simply sign a piece of paper and declare the taint surrounding House Dagoth gone."

"All he has to do is say Akatosh did it," Sadara said. "The imperial dragon cleansed your mind of darkness, and--"

"And it would make me look weak! He likely expects me to worship his infernal dragon too, doesn't he?"

"Not at all," Sadara said, "He would rather you didn't worship the daedra, but he wouldn't require you to worship the Nine. If he is trying to hurt anyone with this, it is the Tribunal. For all your hatred of him, he takes the security of Tamriel seriously, and to have the Tribunal neglect an obvious danger is...well. As I said, he is willing to let you declare yourself and rebuild your House, if you will ensure that Baar Dau is dealt with."

Another, much longer pause.

"I ask again: what do you want from me?"

"Not to worry that you are going to start plaguing people again. Not to worry about watching you. If you do start behaving as a father, that you not teach her the things you tried to instill in the minds of your followers. I ask nothing else. As I said...I don't want to be a Queen. I saw enough of what can happen in a royal court when I was in the Iliac Bay." She shook her head. "Kings whose murders were aided by their own sons. Princesses trading things to necromancers to grab at crowns. Lords trying to have me killed because I exposed their plots. Fights over who would control Numidium a second time."

"I had heard news of that," Voryn said, "And that several things impossibly happened at the same time."

"I only chose one of the options, so that the Underking could rest at last. And yet even now people speak of me giving it to others. No. I want to stay out of big things like that from now on. I have my work, work enough to eat well and to give Sunnar anything her heart desires. I haven't had to worry about my mother dying in more than thirty years. I am happy like this."

She looked up at him.

"Sunnar suggested you might talk to your ancestors. Maybe they can help you where I can't."

She lifted a brass plate and two candles into sight, then the House Dagoth cup she had gotten from Kogoruhn.

Voryn took them all, and seemed to be at a loss for words. But at least he spat no insults, and that was enough for Sadara to be content.

-----------------------

The moment she left, he arranged the plate, the candles, and the cup. It was crude, but it would serve. At least the cup had a sigil of House Dagoth on it...

He lit both candles and began to speak.

"Ancestors of House Dagoth," he said, the words almost unfamiliar in his throat, "I have nothing to offer, but I seek your counsel."

At first he felt nothing. He had made some offerings now and then as Dagoth Ur, but not nearly as often as he had in his first life. But he felt the stir, the watchfulness, all the same.

"Voryn."

"It's Voryn."

"Is it really?"

He didn't know what to say at first, or even who to address, a problem that only grew worse when he heard a handful of much more familiar voices.

"Little brother, you live?"

"Little Vo..." This one, a woman, whose voice turned sharp. "You live, and you have said nothing to us before now? Shame on you."

"Mother," Voryn said, losing his words for a few moments, "I have not known what to say."

"Then you will listen to what I and the others have to say, for we have plenty to relay. First: you are the last of us, with our name, and so it is on you to ensure we survive."

"I have tried to--"

"You were corrupted," said a deeper male voice, one Voryn had not heard in even longer of a time than his mother, "And you could not see what was happening, could not understand the danger of the swelling darkness inside you."

"But my brothers, what of their death? Should they not be avenged?"

"We were not murdered," came Gilvoth's voice, the same even tone he had had in both his lives, "We were released, brother. When life faded, when I rejoined the ancestors...when we all did, we were free. And if you mean the Tribunal's actions - Sotha Sil is already dead. Almalexia and Vivec are losing all they have gained, piece by piece. That is a slow if sweet revenge."

"We followed you for this vengeance because there was no other choice. Because the Tribunal had to pay for what they had done," another voice--Endus? Odros? It was always hard to tell them apart. "But now they will. They have lost nearly all of their power, and will lose their worship, too. It is almost better than killing them."

"But you're still here," Araynys piped up.

"Which means," their mother's voice said, "As I said, that it is on your shoulders to ensure that you do not remain the last of us."

"There is a daughter," Voryn said.

"A daughter you have not even introduced to us!"

"Shame on you!"

"I wasn't sure she was mine at first." Voryn tried to protest, but he only heard sighs and groans in reply. "Sadara is a 'friend' of the emperor, how was I to know the child was not his until I saw her?"

One argument after another was shot down. She was faithless - a funny answer to some of them, who stated he lived and breathed even after his defeat, how was that faithless? She had deceived him - had his plan not made that necessary? She had kept his daughter from him - had he not denied being the father?

"If you wish to honor us," another voice said, "Then do whatever it takes to keep House Dagoth alive."

"You resent the empire," a voice he was almost sure was Uthol said, "They have committed many sins against our people, it is true, but you...we...have lived under less friendly regimes, and survived. Who is to say you will not do the same here?"

"Especially since this Hlaalu woman of yours is on good terms with this emperor," his mother said, "We would welcome such a woman into the family. Were it not for her you would be rotting beneath the lava."

"Bring the child to us, when her mother allows it," the voice he was almost certain was his father said, "Let us see the first new Dagoth in two eras."

"And Voryn," Gilvoth spoke up again, one final time, "By all rights you shouldn't be alive at all. Try to remember how lucky you are. You have an option many of us no longer do."

"We could have broken the empire," he said, at last growing weaker in the fact of their arguments. "Stamped out the name of Tiber Septim. I could have done it, within a generation."

"But that's not what happened, Vo," his mother said, "And--oh, excuse me, young man. This is not something you should be listening in on!"

There was some protest. Apparently, someone else was joining his ancestors on this little session.

"Young! I am not young!"

Wait, was that--?

"You're younger than me, and you always will be, canvasari."

"Canvasari? Why, I ought to--no, that's not what I'm here for. Voryn. Voryn, are you listening?"

Voryn could still barely believe his ears. He had heard that voice in his dreams or remembrances of the past, oh, so many times before.

"Nerevar?"

The voice was some odd mix of furious and desperate, and he couldn't understand why. At least in the case of the latter.

"You're damned right it's me! You've got the chance of a lifetime here, and you're wasting it! WASTING it! Revenge is all well and good but you've got to move on or you'll be stuck in this attic until the end of time, and I know you don't want that!"

"Well, of course not, but--"

"But nothing! The next time she comes up here tell her you're taking the deal. You're going to do what I never got to do, and you're going to be happy about it. Or I'll make sure you never get a good night's sleep again!"

"Shut your mouth, Nerevar," Gilvoth said, "You know you're the one who got us all into this mess."

"How was I supposed to know--"

A cacophony of arguing followed, but the session had served its purpose.

Voryn, sighing, snuffed out the candles and looked at the ceiling.

They were right, weren't they? What good was pride in his former purpose if it was all he had left?

He resolved to speak to Sadara the next time she appeared, to take the offer that she had had extended.

He resolved not to waste this chance.