Stranger Days, One Wizard's Run-In with Death Options

[Kitchen.Sink]

Stranger Days

Spring in Anvil is cloudy and hot. The houses, all white stone and terracotta, sweat in the evening heat like the trunks of forest trees that drip in mist. A handkerchief, I admit, helps keep the moisture off a damp man’s face. The seagulls, too, as if the air were thick enough to deny them flight, rest upon the rooftops as the sun begins to set and watch the sea shimmer until the world goes dark. Foam flares up round the outlying rocks. Nor should I neglect to mention the out-of-work sailors who congregate in the seaside doorways of the bars along the pier—swarthy men who would rather stand and sulk than sweat out in the heat to earn a day’s wage. The open fruit crates are also an interesting see; much the way the deckhands chant as they toss them to the pier, an occasional apple or tangerine bouncing out for an eager kid to catch. Yes, and the smell of morning brine is perhaps the pleasantest scent from which to wake. How could even my jaded tastes deny it? Anvil was awash with the subtle and mysterious.

It was on such a morning that I first came upon that city’s gates. I remember I had not long before borrowed a thatch fan off one of my novices, and, as my entourage was stabling their mares, I leant upon a splintered beam and dozily fanned my face. The stable-girl smirked from the loft overhead, for I must admit that I looked every bit the image of the Altmer fop unable to bear the heat, as portrayed in the popular novels so prevalent among the low class women of Cyrodiil. I considered making a scene, but really, it was much too hot for it. When my assistant, a blue eyed Breton hardly worth his weight in dirt, conveyed that the rest were ready, I ushered us inward with a laggard wave of the fan.

The guards parted the gates; whereupon, my party and I marched straight for the structure with the hanging blue and gold sign of the Mage’s Guild, so conveniently located near the entrance.

“Now listen to me,” I warned. “If any of them get the silly idea to start slinging spells, do not entertain the even sillier idea of slinging spells back. Just call out and I will put an end to their ambitions quick enough.”

With that warning out the way, my men flung open the copper tarnished doors and set upon the place like wolves out to rip the meat down to the marrow. Bookshelves toppled. Tables overturned. A rather ambitious Khajit hurled a bench out one of the second story windows, much to my amusement.

A lady, a fellow Altmer like myself, who had daintily propped her bare feet upon the welcome desk, tossed her dusty book down and cried out, “Just what is the meaning of this intru…”

Her voice sputtered out of words when she saw my face.

“What in the names of the Nine are YOU doing here?” she asked in our native Altmer, now standing.

“You know full well who puts the pork in my pie.”

“So Traven knows about this?”

“Did you not hear the words I just spoke?” I asked as if sighing, “Or are you so out of practice, Carahil, that you can no longer understand our mother tongue?”

“Why was I not told of this beforehand?”

I waggled a finger. “We could not have you doctoring the books, now could we?”

“Is THAT what this is about?”

“Of course. Your expenditures far exceed the allowance the University has allotted you; at least, that’s what our agents out and about tell us.”

Her face clouded into an uncomprehending blankness. “But we replied several times by stating that an independent and anonymous donor—”

“Yes, I read all that in the reports.” What I dared not finish saying was that in my decades of investigative experience, independent and anonymous donors were often Necromantic cults funneling their funds to spies ‘on the inside’. Though I would loved to have mocked her all the more, I kept quiet about my intentions, so as to leave her and the others supposing that my men and I had come only to settle the books and keep the accounts in line. If a Necromantic spy were indeed numbered among the Anvil chapter, then that sorry soul would be left to a leery pondering over why mere accountants and auditors would scour the site before so much as sneezing on a book of figures.

Carahil surveyed my outfit from Elven head to sued-smothered toe, scowling as she inquired “How’s the weather out there?” (No doubt, she was referring to the faint sea of sweat apparent round the collar of my robe.)

“You’ll have ample time to evaluate the weather,” I said smiling, “on your way to the inn outside town.”

Her brow furrowed up into that high-strung fury common to the facial constitutions of all us Altmers. I decided to ask the obvious, just to blow a bellows over the red coals smoldering in her. “Do you truly think that we could be done in a day?”

“This is ludicrous! What about all our research?” she had started hollering in my ear, now in the common tongue. “What about the alchemical services we provide this city? What about all the correspondence and supplies mailed here? What about all the sensitive instruments that require careful attention and daily maintenance? What about—”

“Those are all very pressing questions,” I conceded as one of my aides handed me a sweetroll from off a table nearby. “And, I assure you that you will have ample time to ponder them further on your stroll to the inn.”

“Stroll to the inn? We are walking there?”

“You are walking there, yes. I figured that since you were so interested in the weather that I would give you plenty of time for inquiry.”

All the men within earshot broke out in howls and jests.

From the open doorway came the distinctive clanking of interlocked chain that any decent thief would know signifies the approach of a no-good lounge-about that others, in willful ignorance, refer to as a city ‘watchman’. My experience has been that these men and women of the ‘watch’, whatever the city in Cyrodiil, do little more than watch their thumbs as they sit twiddling them. He entered and, upon noticing that I was the authority, greeted me with the usual Redguard snarl. “You mind telling me what’s going on here?”

“Owhhh…” Still boorishly chewing on a mouthful of that roll, I waved for my assistant to display our authorization papers while I hastened to swallow. “We are here on behalf of a special department of the Arcane University to investigate the flow of assets—”

“Look, that ain’t none of my concern. What I want to know is why there is a bloody bench out in the street.”

“Oh, you have my humblest apologies. My men will tend to that immediately.” As I spoke, several rushed out to haul it back inside.

“They better get all the glass up, too.”

“Yes, yes. No doubt.”

Carahil, much in a whimsical mood that morning, decided to make mischief. “Guard! Are you not even going to skim their papers? I suspect a forgery! This man and his rabble are acting on—”

“It ain’t none of my concern, lady.” He said as he left without even glancing back at her. My men jeered all the more.

By this time, the three other inhabitants of the Anvil chapter had been herded together and driven out into the street. The little Bosmer, Thaurron I think his name was, kept clutching at an imp and claiming that this fiendish pet of his was unsettled by the sun and would ultimately be unable to sleep at the inn because it preferred felt coverings on its bed. I heard someone yell at him to shut up. The alchemist, a giant Dunmer in a silly purple suit, shaded his face with his hand and stared at the glass scattered along the cobbles. The final denizen, a shirtless Imperial, stood there stupidly with a dazed and uncomprehending wonder in his eyes, as if he had just been shaken from sleep.

With my hands raised I addressed them from the steps. “Quiet now! Quiet. You shall all be relocated to an inn not far outside of this fair city. I must warn you, this is not optional policy to be implemented at your leisure. You will be under armed guard. No one will have access to you, and you shall have access to no one. As for the duration, I am still unsure of this myself. Shall it take weeks? Certainly. Shall it take months? Most probably. If you are upset about this gross mistreatment, then take the issue up at the next Council meeting. Till then, farewell.”

Three battle-mages (the only three among my party) escorted them towards the inn, not without much riotous chatter on the part of the displaced inhabitants. I resumed fanning myself as I watched them wander off into the heat curling up from the distant cobbles; I confess, also, to indulging in a bit of snickering when I noticed Carahil stumble on the lower length of her awkwardly long dress. Were she not such a pompous dilettante I might even have found her attractive. Only a tad, though. Not long afterwards my assistant joined me on the steps to offer up a report.

“It seems,” he said in subtle agony, “that the half-naked Imperial and the idiot Bosmer were researching some bit of obscure, esoteric Arcana and were rather prolific in the matter. They have left us with an entire storehouse of notebooks to sift through.”

I sighed.

“Yes, even more,” he continued “is that Carahil was involved in some scheme with a Bruman member to try and extract the medicinal properties of alchemical plants to be utilized in one-time, instant cast scrolls. She too has left us with voluminous amounts of notes and correspondence.”

I puckered up the pinkness of my lips a little, to express my displeasure in silence. He and I both knew then that Anvil’s heat would have us simmering for months. Through the swaying of my simple, thatch fan I asked “You have visited this city before, Breton. Tell me then, where does a sweltering Elf go to find some relief from this weather?”

“At the docks a breeze rolls in quite often from the sea.”

I informed him that should he need me, I would be idling the day away at the docks, most likely fanning myself in the shade of an overhang and sipping from time to time on some cheap vintage from the Surille Vineyard.

TO BE CONTINUED…

[Kitchen.Sink]

Stranger Days, Pt.2

My assistant entered after a steady knock, carrying in with him a ledger and lit candle. The room remained quiet; its shadows shifted in the flickering. After a bit of peering he seized an overturned candleholder from the nightstand nearby and rather carefully wedged his little wax stub into its joint, as if the wick might explode were he to jostle it too abruptly. He cleared his throat. Upon passing the ledger to me he pointed at a spot near the top of a dusty page and leaned in a little with his hand on the holder, to brighten the writing on my behalf.

“Here it is,” he whispered. “Here is the first questionable donation and it comes months before we initially expected. If you leaf through the ledger you will find that twice, at the beginning and end of each month, Carahil receives septims from that mysterious donor. But this one, this donation comes two months before the rest, and is in one large quantity.”

“She has not accounted for this early one, has she?”

“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “I have read the transcript of her interrogation several times and she accounts for all of the mysterious donations except this one.”

“Have you brought this to her attention? Have you interrogated her once more?”

“No m’lord, that is why I woke you. The night crew just discovered it and, of course, if I am to order another interrogation in the morning, I will need your orders.”

I set my feet to the floor and wandered over to the open window (since it was Carahil’s old room the thick stench of rosewood was suffocating with the window shut). Outside the moonlight was speckled on the low roofs all dabbed here and there with dew, and though there was no breeze astir, I took an especial delight in seeing one of the city towers loom bleak and perilously black against the night’s horizon. This was the second time in the three weeks of our investigation that I had been woken before the morn.

“She claims,” I pondered out loud, “that all the donations came from bags bestowed by the mail courier. Many people throughout the city have confirmed this fact. The mail courier said that the bags were simply dropped into his delivery box with the standard shipment of letters. Carahil was in the clear…”

“Do you then think that she might be the one we are after?”

I waved his idea away. “No, certainly not. She might be a pig-headed and thoroughly frivolous buffoon, but she is no defiler of the dead. If she were, more evidence would have cropped up to support that conclusion by now. Besides, if she thought those septims were in any way dirty, she would not have recorded the amounts into the ledgers and simply spent the sum elsewhere, in other towns where our agents would not have been able to track her spending.”

“So, what’s the be done with her?”

I rested a hand on the window’s lip and tussled, like a professor at his perch, with the vast and impenetrable possibilities. An idea stumbled in. “This initial, unaccounted-for donation must be the one where she first met the donor and ironed out the details of their scheme.”

“So she is a Necromancer!”

“No, fool, let me finish before you interject. I suspect that she has not mentioned this meeting because she feels, in gracious ignorance, that she is protecting someone. This other someone, the invisible donor, is most likely the very slaughterfish we are out to slay. With Carahil being so obsessed by her research, most anyone under any half-credible guise could manipulate her.”

“So…”

“Fine,” I said getting a little gruff, “go and fetch an envelope and some paper. I shall teach you what it takes to work this craft.”

When he returned I whirled some words across the paper in a quick chicken-scrawl, folded it up, and then sealed the envelope in the saintly yellow seal of the Guild. I told him to send it to the University once morning broke. He dutifully bowed and left, peeping through the ever-narrowing crack of the door as it closed, probably questioning my sanity, up until the lock clicked shut and he was sent drowsily on his way. A little wind blew through the window. I sprawled out atop the covers and sweated that sleepless night away trying to remember the final few lines of a song I had heard years before.

Two days passed, a summation of the previous weeks for me: sweat and Surille wine. I did have one pleasant diversion, a mild debate between a Nord sailor and I over the flow of ocean currents off the Summersets, but I fear that most considered me the victor merely because of my robe and title, rather than for the strength of my reasoning.

It was on the morning of the third day, as I sat breakfasting before my usual journey to the Flowing Bowl, that the reply to my letter arrived within a solemn leather bag. The note inside read: Here it is. I ordered that Carahil be brought to me at once and that my sluggish assistant be woken and ferried down from his comfortable cot upstairs to the dining hall where I ate. He came down scratching his head.

“Now you shall see what it takes to make this wage, my humble assistant.”

He looked incredulous.

When Carahil was finally brought in, her hair laughably unprepared, she was seated across the table from me and told that she could eat as she pleased. She countered by clenching her lips and staring at the ceiling. The crisp smell of butter and fresh fruit, however, pulled her attentions to the plates arranged before her and before long she was chewing gleefully, glad to be rid of that inn’s pigswill for just this meal. I smiled and nudged my assistant’s elbow before flinging the leather bag onto her plate.

“Open it.”

She stared at me, seething.

“I should have known,” she said now shaking her head. “I should have known…”

“Oh, get on with it.”

She plucked the bag up out of her eggs but made sure to lick the taste from her fingers before unraveling the binding at its top.

“Any day now,” she kept saying, “any day now I will have you begging—”

Suddenly she gasped and flung the bag back onto the table where, in truly dramatic fashion, an impenetrably black stone slid out and tapped against a wine glass near the table’s center. She and my assistant both leapt back a little in their seats, wincing.

“It shan’t hurt you,” I assured them. “T’is only a stone. A black soul stone perhaps, but a stone nonetheless.”

She stood with her back stiffened, expression rigid. “What is the meaning of this?”

“One of my men uncovered it here, Carahil. Things are completely beyond your control now. You have two options: talk…”

“Or?”

“…or rot.”

TO BE CONTINUED…