Blackfeather Woods And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play.

Atshen was no man of stealth. Even through a life in the Blackfeather Woods, he lacked the stealth and cunning the others had. And yet he was a man of darkness. But sometimes darkness was oppressive and brooding and heavy rather than light and cloying and stealthy. Atshen was darkness of the former kind, rather than the latter.

This was true in the way that Atshen was unprepared for him, of a lighter, more ingenious kind of darkness and shadows. Atshen fell before him, and Miraak was quick to clamber over him and grasp the man's throat in his teeth, not biting down but holding him there.