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.3

My men and I lay motionless. All around us the field of gold grass swayed, while the smell of the sea, a small consolation in the heat, was pervasive, yet pleasant in the breeze. It had been two hours since we last stirred. The interval had been spent with us on our stomachs, restless yet without a word, sweltering in a state of unslackened thirst. By this point my men were yearning for orders (as well as an end to the clouds of swirling gadflies and the inquisitive grasshoppers that would burrow in the folds of one’s robe); I yearned only for the handle of my fan. Peeping through parted strands of grass I kept an eye on the quiet cottage some distance ahead, a simple stone and thatch bungalow on a ridge, its angles somewhat crooked against the sky—the supposed location where Carahil first exchanged Guild secrets one windy autumn afternoon for an impressive sum of gold. She had said without reserve that her research cost an arm and a leg, and that she had recorded the sums into the ledgers to hopefully stave off suspicion. I informed her that arousing suspicions is a poor means of avoiding them and that what had initially cost an arm and a leg might well cost her a neck. We had sent her off on a wagon in shackles.

This aforementioned cot on a ridge was the residence where an old classmate of Carahil’s dwelled. She had stated several times during our second interrogation that Janus (the old classmate in question) had contacted her knowing full well that she needed funds, which he was more than willing to provide her in exchange for the smuggling of a few dusty pages of no real importance out of the University’s archives. In the end their first deal proved to be the founding of a glowing friendship: she could always use a few septims more, while his desire for weathered scrolls and musty books proved insatiable.

Suddenly the wind stopped and the field went still. I raised my sweating head a little over the grass-line and noticed my scout, a very quiet Khajit, waving a limp paw from alongside the cottage. It was the signal we had been waiting for: all clear, prepare the advance. I stood and navigated us through the intricate pathways in the grass and finally up the ridge where I took a second to glance back and curse at our old crevice.

“I’ll be damned. Some spots in that rut are much too shallow. I bet you could spot a robe or two from up here.”

“Yes,” said my scout, “I saw three of you, in fact. But, there’s not a soul up here to have seen anything—a living soul, at least.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wait till you see what is in here.”

I followed my scout inside, ducking at the low threshold, and, upon blinking the spots from off my eyes, a scene unfolded slowly from out the shade: a bed with ruffled velvet covers at its base, an untouched bookshelf (each book organized by height), and finally a dead man hunched over a writing desk. With the exception of the spray along the wall and the subsequent puddle of dried, crusty blood within its center, the desk itself was also neatly arranged. No signs of a struggle. So far as I could tell, the corpse matched the description of Janus perfectly. I lifted his stiff head and noticed a single cut across the neck—one sharp, unhesitating slice.

“How long has he been dead?” asked my scout.

“No more than three days. The body is still in a state of rigor mortis.”

Several of my men entered and surveyed the state of things. Before I could ferry them all away on the grounds that a murder scene cannot be trampled on before thorough evidence is collected, my assistant interrupted by pointing to a side door and asking the scout, “Does that lead to a cellar?”

“Presumably, I tried several times to pick the lock, but it wouldn’t budge. We need to break it down.”

“I wish you had told me that sooner,” I said as I cast a detect life spell over myself.

Suddenly a purple speck flashed across my sight, burning from under the boards at our feet.

“There’s someone down there,” I whispered.

Everyone’s eyes went wild.

“Whatever you do, do not panic.”

I removed my shoes and crept quietly across the boards, summoning two additional men inside. Before they could enter I suggested with a series of silent gestures towards my socks that they should also lose their boots. The three already inside followed suit.

“Since it is safe to assume that Janus was a necromancer,” I said preparing them, “we can also safely assume that that person down there might well be a necromancer. Maybe even our murderer.”

I pointed at one man then another. “I want you to cast a silence spell, and you to cast drain magicka. If this person is in armor, cast a drain strength spell to be safe. But, do be careful, this person might very well be a hostage or some innocent hideaway. Avoid a fight if you can.”

My assistant spoke up. “But what if whatever down there is something nasty?”

“If that proves to be the case, then I will sense a sharp disturbance in the surrounding magicka. I will be down there quick enough. As it stands, each of you needs some experience.”

The five of them huddled near the unassuming door, more inclined to listen inward than move. I cast an accusing finger over my scout to send a clear signal that he should have already kicked it from its hinges. He raised his paws as if to say “fine, fine!”; after steadying a foot near the knob, he kicked, and in one smooth motion the door burst open and everyone stumbled down the steps.

I crossed my arms and listened. An awkward silence ensued. Then came the muffled exchange of words, followed by several shallow spikes in the surrounding magicka; nothing of much concern, though. A bout of crashing and crackling erupted before being followed by shouts and the flow of steps back upward.

My assistant emerged with a woman wrapped round his arms, her long hair hanging limp and ragged, a seeming mop of black bristles. He threw her down hard, where she hung limp a second on her knees before collapsing in on herself.

“Theatrics don’t assure leniency,” I stated. “In all honesty, your days are most likely done. Just tell me what you know and maybe I can keep a noose off your neck.”

“Do you think it’s you I fear!?” She shouted so loudly that everyone leapt a little.

“Are you the one who so graciously slit Janus’s throat while his back was turned? Of course, it is not as if I care, I just would like to know when my enemies start turning on each other like the rabid dogs that I always knew they were.”

She offered a crooked smile in reply. “You don’t know a damn thing, do you? I thought you bloody buffoons might finally have been onto something. I see that the Guild is still just as blind as ever.”

I waved her away. “Tie and gag her. They always act this way at first; until they realize just what we are capable of doing.”

“You won’t get a single thing out of me!”

“Yes, you are quite right about that,” I said with my usual smile. “I will get far more than just a single thing.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

This post has been edited by Kitchen.Sink: Jun 18 2008, 06:14 PM