Board Thread:Skyrim/@comment-111.94.98.19-20130417065558/@comment-8089746-20130417150155

A similar thing happened to me, except he never even killed the dragon to absorb its soul. He just stood there ethereal, his dragon minion just stood there, and Sarohtaar flew around attacking them both, which did nothing. There seem to be a lot of these sorts of bugs.

Something like that happened to me a total of three times, and each time I had to reload a save from before the start of the battle. As far as I know that's the only thing you can do.

To avoid absorbing the dragon soul yourself, you can stand far away from the dragon sacrifice, so that Miraak is closer to it than you are.