A Question of Faith

The Reach's crisp, mountain air had chilled the sweat on Tariq's dark brow by the time his work was done. Wiping it away with the sleeve of his ochre robe, he cast aside the spade and let it clang, untended, in the grass. It wouldn't have done to be so careless with one of his own tools, but the shovel no longer had a master. Its blade would rust and haft would rot away unmissed.

Unbowing his back for the first time in hours, he felt relief as it snapped back into place, but none of the pride that should have come with a task completed. Before him, in the grass beside a lonely trail through the Reach's stony hills, lay two plots of freshly-turned soil marking the boundaries of graves. The earthy smell of drying dew now overpowered the reek of carrion in the meager camp the deceased had left behind, but several patches were still stained with the dark color of cured blood. Tariq felt a renewed weight press down on his shoulders, and took a seat, legs crossed, by the foot of the plots.

His attention had first been drawn around noon, he recalled, by the wispy lines of smoke drifting up from between boulders lining the path as he made his way south through the river valleys running straight through the Reach just below the upper border with Haafingar. Not that he was intent on going south, it was merely a convenient road. It was what Tariq did, wandering this way and that along whatever course the river or road or prevailing wind took him, normally a way of life suitable only for vagabonds, but Tariq's anointment as a priest made him welcome most places he went. Today, he'd hoped, his vestments would make him welcome in the encampment of some fellow traveler to share stories of the road and perhaps a meal, but when he'd arrived, he'd found only disaster.

Around the coals of a dying fire lay spilled provisions and a tent collapsed on the splinters of its shattered, wooden frame. The bodies of a Dunmer and a Breton lay nearby, bellies torn open and pounds of flesh missing, while across the path, the skinned carcass of a massive bear drew swarms of black flies. Tariq's first thoughts had flown to bandits, but it didn't seem likely. Not only were the victims' wounds typical of a bear's savaging, but their possessions had mostly been left where they lay, though he did notice their pockets had been looted through for coin and a knife was missing from its sheath on the Dunmer man's belt. A bear could have attacked, then in turn been killed by a passing hunter or adventurer later. Then he'd reconsidered. He was in the Reach, known as home to the savage clans of the Forsworn. It would not have been beyond them to mask their attack as the work of an animal, desecrating the corpses themselves. It was in his best interest, he considered, to move on as quickly as he could, but he couldn't leave the dead to be further torn apart by scavengers as those to come before him had.

Before he could depart, there was just one last rite to be observed; a benediction, the reciting of a prayer to one of the Divines to bless the souls of the departed and ensure they would not be disturbed. But, he wondered as the thought suddenly struck him, to which Divine should he dedicate the burial? Normally, funeral rites fell within the realm of Arkay, keeper of life and death, but then, these deaths had occurred in and because of the untamed nature of Skyrim's wilderness, and that was Kynareth's domain. Perhaps she was the proper deity to look after their souls? Tariq himself was a priest of Stendarr, but was qualified to observe the common rites in any deity's name, and knew that to dedicate a burial to the wrong one put the journey of the departed souls to their proper afterlife at risk. How could he proceed uncertainly with their well-being in his hands?

Mulling the problem over, he began to meditate, and reached into his pack set within arm's reach to withdraw a long, wood pipe and a leather pouch. Once he'd taken a suitable pinch of dried grasses from the latter and ignited it in the pipe's wide end, he set the stem between his lips and inhaled, drawing warmth from the smoke into his lungs to stave off the cold of winter's last weeks and stared, puzzling, at the open earth.