Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

all?”
    “Well, I guess we thought it would come to that,” Oluth said.
    “Who is ‘we’?” Glim asked.
    “Oh.” He looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”
    “Tell me what?”
    “The younger skraws. We call ourselves the Glimmers. We’ve pledged to follow you and help you.”
    Glim absorbed that, feeling claustrophobic.
    “Listen to me,” he said. “Our goals are simple: We want a substitute for the vapors, so you don’t have to tear your lungs up and die early just to do your job. We’re looking for ways to inconvenience the lords, to make them aware of your needs. We don’t want it to come to a fight.”
    “Right,” Oluth said. “Inconvenience them. Like how?”
    “Well, what do we skraws do? We keep the sump working. That means food, water, nutrients for everyone on Umbriel and the fringe gyre—and of course, we bring the newborns into the world. We just need to emphasize our worth by showing what happens if things don’t get done down here—or if things break, clog up, and so forth. Do you understand?”
    Oluth nodded vigorously. “I do!” he said. Then his gaze darted past Glim. “What’s that?”
    Glim followed his regard to a small embryo sac, nearly transparent, and the thing curled in it. It was still small, but it wasn’t like a baby—more like an unfinished and undersized adult. It had scales and was a pale pink color with huge eyes and tiny little claws.
    “It’s an Argonian,” he said.
    “It looks a little like you.”
    “Soon enough it will look a lot like me,” Mere-Glim said. “I’m an Argonian.”
    He’d known it was going to happen, but now that it had, he felt a sort of sick spot in his gut.
    He needed to see Annaïg.

    “I really am sorry I tried to kill you,” Slyr told Annaïg.
    Annaïg blinked and glanced up at the gray-skinned woman fidgeting across the table from her.
    “Have you tried again, or is this still about last week?” she asked.
    Slyr’s red eyes widened. “I haven’t tried again, I swear.”
    “Right. So you’ve apologized already,” Annaïg said. “This means you’re now wasting my time.”
    Slyr didn’t reply, but she didn’t leave either, just stood there, shuffling her feet a bit. Trying not to let her irritation show, Annaïg bent back to her task of emulsifying horse brains and clove oil, whisking the gray matter vigorously and adding the oil a few drops at a time. When it reached the consistency of mayonnaise, she set it aside.
    Slyr was still standing there.
    “What?” Annaïg exploded.
    “I—you haven’t assigned anything for me to do.”
    “Fine. I assign you to go sit in our quarters.”
    “I have to work,” Slyr said. “Toel thinks little enough of me as it is. If he finds me idle—I worry, Annaïg.”
    Annaïg closed her eyes and counted to four. When she opened them, she half expected to see Slyr lunging at her with a knife, but Slyr was still just standing there looking pitiful.
    “Go husk the durian,” she said.
    “But—”
    “What now?”
    “Durian is so
smelly.
” She waved the back of her hand at Annaïg’s preparations. “What are you doing there?”
    She’s just spying, Annaïg thought. Trying to steal my ideas.
    It didn’t matter, though, did it?
    “I’m extracting terror,” she said.
    “Come again?”
    She lifted the emulsion. “Terror, fear, happiness—any strong emotion leaves something of itself in the brain.”
    “But if the soul has fled, hasn’t all of that gone with it?”
    Annaïg smiled, despite the company, and scraped some of the emulsion into a glass cylinder, divided three-quarters of the way down by a thin membrane.
    “What’s that?” Slyr asked, indicating the divider.
    “It’s the humorous membrane from a chimera-eel,” she replied. “It’s what allows them to change color to suit their emotions. I’ve altered this one to let only terror through.”
    “You’re filtering horse-terror through eel-skin?”
    “Very specially prepared