Chapter Text
A cold sunrise rose over Keizaal, pushing past the clouds in hues of yellow and pink. Paarthurnax sat in the courtyard of High Hrothgar, waiting patiently as the sun reached golden fingers to brush the frozen lands far below. He turned his head at the sound of the doors opening behind him.
The Dovahkiin emerged, as pale as the snow that lay in scattered drifts about the courtyard, and on her arm was Arngeir. She descended the steps assisted by the old Nord, then thanked him politely and bade him leave her, which he did only reluctantly. She approached the dovah then, a mantle of wolfskins held loosely about her slender shoulders. Paarthurnax wondered if she had ever noticed that the cold hindered her less than her Summerset kin.
“Drem yol lok, Dovahkiin,” he greeted her.
“Drem yol lok, Paar-thur-nax,” she replied, struggling only a little with the pronunciation of his name. Her Tamrielic accent was improving from when they had first met.
The Altmer settled upon a broad rock, wincing only a little from her healing wound. “Thank the Divines for fresh air. I thought if I was cooped up in that stuffy monastery for one moment more, I would surely go insane. Arngeir can be fussy enough to put any mother hen to shame.”
She glanced up at the dragon. “But I am sure you are well aware of this.”
Paarthurnax smiled, grateful that her spirits were not greatly dampened. He turned then to more serious affairs. “Dovahkiin, I am in your debt.”
The mer turned her face away, abashed. “There is no debt. I did only as anyone would.”
Mortal logic never ceased to amaze—and sometimes infuriate. Paarthurnax gave a snap of his jaws. “Dovahkiin, you took a blade for my sake. None of my kin among the dov would have ever done the same. Not even Alduin, who shares...shared...my blood and breath.”
His amendment was slight, but the Dovahkiin noticed, as did she the minute sadness that crept into the gray dragon’s voice.
“I am no dovah,” she said softly, gazing down at her pale, mortal hands resting in her lap.
“Not in flesh,” Paarthurnax agreed. “But in soul, you are as much a child of Bormahu as I. It is for this that Alduin despises you, and, I think, the only reason that Delphine also would take an interest in you. She was remorseful over her deed, you know. Krosis ahst sod.”
The Dovahkiin scowled. “I have long believed that she sees me only as a pawn. Had she succeeded in slaying you, she would have regretted nothing right up until my blade entered her heart. I treated with her only out of necessity.”
Her words took Paarthurnax back many long ages to when he too had treated out of necessity with the Dwemer. Though he had ended up worse off for it, without such desperate action he would not have met the Falmer, whose line had outlasted even the mighty Deep Folk. For when, in a single day and night of misfortune, the Dwemer race had vanished from Mundus, their slaves the Falmer had remained.
“If you say there is no debt, then I bow before your conviction,” the old dovah said at last. “Perhaps, in a sense, it is as you say after all.”
The Dovahkiin frowned. “What do you mean?’”
But Paarthurnax only chuckled. “Lingrah tey. A story for another time, mal briinahi.”