Yesterday's Shadow Options

[Olen]

Its been a while since I wrote anything of length but, after a few false starts, I have churned out the first few thousand words of something which could get fairly large. I'm not totally happy with it (though I doubt I ever would be) but it should improve as I get back into writing, any comments et al would be appriciated.

1. Gold

I shivered as an icy breeze touched me. Was it real? Yes. I brushed aside my doubts. The Wolverine Hall was built by dunmer: of course it was dark, damp and cold. So cold. I pulled my cloak closer about me and looked around the gloomy room of the Mages Guild. A few guttering candles cast a sickly light on heaps of shadowy grimoires. Crazy reflections scattered from the grease-smeared tangles on an alchemy table. The creation of a deranged glassblower with hiccoughs. In spite of it being Evening Star there were still a couple of mages braving the winter on Azura’s Coast. They kept their rheumy eyes fixed on whatever devilry they were working on and ignored me. I waited idly and rubbed at my arms.

A door opened and I got a brief glance of a small room behind before it was shut again by the old Argonian who entered. A frown flickered over his features as he regarded me with sharp red eyes, “You must be the man from the Fighter’s Guild. Not what I expected, but no doubt Hrundi knows what he’s at,” Skink-in-Trees’-Shade smiled, his teeth were green from chewing hackle-lo, his sour breath twisted my stomach, “I have work for you.”

“I know. What I don’t know is why you couldn’t have left it with Hrundi like any normal contract, your demands are already weird enough.” My breath left a plume of steam in the air.

“I think eight thousand drakes is enough to allow me to make demands,” the lizard paused, I shivered but said nothing. I couldn’t afford not to get the contract. “I know well enough what is required and agreed it with Hrundi but the job itself requires discretion. Hrundi lacks discretion when he drinks…

“Three months ago I sent a group to investigate a ruin on the coast north of Firewatch, just south of Ilethi Point. The last report I received was dated late Frostfall, over six weeks ago. I want you to find out what happened.”

“What sort of ruin is this?” I said warily.

“Its… unusual. That’s why we want to investigate it and why this situation requires subtlety. I would send my own mages but it is deep in Telvanni lands.”

“Has it occurred to you that four men might be hard pressed to clear a ruin full of Telvanni?” I never understood why mages just didn’t get fighting. Another icy draught brushed me. I shivered and scratched an itchy patch on my arm.

“If it is then you will know what happened, investigate as far as you can and return. But I suspect that it is not. Most likely messages have just gone missing, as they do.” Argonians are hard to read but it didn’t take any guile to know Skink didn’t believe it. Neither did I, why spend eight thousand septims to get the best and go to such lengths of secrecy for missing reports.

I said nothing. Nothing I was likely to say would be helpful. I needed the job.

For a moment Skink was hesitant then he said, “If that is all you had best prepare. I will have a boatman waiting for you at dusk,” I nodded and turned to go but he continued, “A word of warning: do not use any teleportation near the ruin. We do not understand why but the only attempt to date prove quite… messy. If you do get into a tight spot read this,” he proffered a scroll and a money pouch, “I will know and do what I can. Otherwise do not rely on magic.”

He stopped abruptly and turned back towards his room. I was about to leave again when he called back, “And by the nine get yourself a fix with that gold. You scratch like a nix with mange.” He shut the door behind him.

For a moment I was too shocked to move. Was it that obvious? It was four days since my money had run out. I’d gone longer, but only once. Descending the dank spiral stair made my stomach shrivel and, backed up by the bag of gold, firmly killed any thoughts of going another hour without. I paused outside the fighter’s guild to fight down nausea before I went in.

Hrundi was waiting for me, “What did the old lizard want?” he asked.

“They’ve lost a bunch of folk investigating some ruin.” I wasn’t sure if Skink wanted Hrundi to know and I didn’t care.

“Same old,” Hrundi ran his fingers though his greying beard, “If I had a hundred drake for every mages’ guild expedition I’ve bailed out the mages would have paid me,” he rumbled a laugh, “So where’s the catch? You don’t give four folk a year’s wage for nowt.”

“He wouldn’t say but he wants us at the dock this evening.”

“Then Lysander won’t be joining you, news is his silt strider crashed, driver was probably pissed. I can’t see him arriving before tomorrow night.”

“Damn, that’s a problem,” it was too. Lysander was the only person I had directly asked for. The fighter’s guild in Morrowind was a shadow of what it had been before the oblivion crisis. “Are any of your local boys a quarter competent?”

Hrundi laughed mirthlessly, “You ain’t got a whole lot of choice. I’m too old, Sondryn’s already on a contract. That only leaves young Varnan.”

“There’s only three of you in the guildhall?”

“Yes. Who would want to be here? It shouldn’t matter though, the other two are good.”

“So you keep saying. Where are they?”

“Stocking up in town, I sent them to get the supply list you left.”

“Good,” I turned away from Hrundi. Now Skink had given me means to get it skooma was all I could think of. I hurried though the damp corridors and out into the squalid courtyards of the Wolverine Hall.

I kept close to the wall out of the wind-driven sheets of rain. The guard on the bridge looked as grey as the iron sky. The instant I stepped onto it I was soaked to the skin, to my left, and mercifully downwind, the giant fungus houses groaned in the storm. I turned away from them toward Muriel’s, golden light shone though the windows. I pushed the polished doorknob and stepped into the warm air of conversation and rich smell of roasting meat and beer.

However inviting I had no intention to take a seat in the common room. I hadn’t been in Muriel’s in years and didn’t remember the place. It didn’t matter. All corner clubs are essentially the same. I started upstairs and sure enough found a much smaller room full of distinctly shady characters. A grey-haired altmer looked at me as she would a gaur’s leavings on the street. I barely noticed, I could smell a sickly sweetness in the air. A dunmer opposite caught my eye and nodded. Apparently it was that obvious.

I wandered over to him. “You got skooma?”

“Yes, the finest in all Vvardenfell. You got money?” I hate pushers. There’s something about them which makes my fists itch. And they all claim to have the best.

“Let me see the goods,” I growled.

The dunmer paused to brush an imaginary piece of lint from his opulent, yet slightly too gaudy, clothes before reaching into a bag and withdrawing two vials. “This,” the dunmer gestured to the larger one with a bejewelled hand, “Is good stuff, Hlaalu import. Came in though Lake Hairan along with the standard stuff. This, on the other hand, is Tenmar white – costly but well worth it to the discerning palate.”

“How much?”

“Forty gold a quarter for the standard, sixty for the Tenmar.”

The bag had two hundred and fifty in it, even allowing for the high prices on Vvardenfell I expected more. “Half a bottle of the cheap for two hundred.”

“Not a chance. That should be five hundred.”

“I’m buying bulk. Two hundred.”

“Three hundred.”

“Ok two fifty and you’ll throw in a dash of that Tenmar white or I’ll take my business elsewhere.”

The dunmer scowled then got out his scales. I got out my pipe. His eyes widened momentarily as I measured out my dose.

[Olen]

I admit it is perhaps a little slow moving (probably because I was reading Robert Jordan at the time I was writing this section). Anyway I promise things will speed up. And without further ado:

2. Asea

“So after all that when I found the shrine there was only a half naked Khajit who had owned the lettuce of sheogorath for years. Turns out the only special thing about it was that it hadn’t gone rotten. Ha, those were the days.” Hrundi drained another bottle of mead and grinned though his white beard. Then he frowned, “Things were better then. Nothing’s what it once was.”

“So you say,” I said taking a draught of ale. Sadith Mora didn’t seem so cold after my smoke in Muriel’s but it still wasn’t warm. I didn’t have the money for decent repairs, let alone any new equipment, so I took advantage of Hrundi’s offer of hospitality. “So you say…” I repeated.

“I suppose a lot of this was before your time, before the blight was an problem even. Did I say I gave the Nerevarine some contracts?”

“Yes,” Hrundi mentioned this whenever he drank, which was all the time.

“Ha, I’ve already told you, eh Firen?” I smiled at his pronunciation of my name. It was Nordic, like my grandfather, so in truth he probably said it better than I, even so it sounded strange. “Those were the days. You must have got up to some shenanigans in your youth?” He opened another bottle of Old Frostmoth. I raised an eyebrow; they hadn’t made that since the imperials had abandoned Solstheim years before.

“Not really, “ I paused, it was a long time since anyone had made me reminisce. My name was about all I wanted to recall, though why my imperial parents would hinder their son with it baffled me. “I was in a small farming village in Cyrodiil then the legion in the aftermath of the crisis…” I stopped. The ability of a few bottles of beer to loosen the tongue has never ceased to amaze me. When people drink together a bond is formed, I knew Hrundi far more closely then than I had that morning.

“I suppose it was interesting. Leave to see the world?”

“You might say that.” I said flatly, hoping my tone would change the subject.

Hrundi missed the hint. I wasn’t surprised. “Why else would you join?”

“I had no money, no food, no home and a bunch of bloated corpses for friends and relatives.” Fortunately that shut him up, I wanted to salvage what remained of my good mood.

Before the silence got too uncomfortable the door opened and a man hauled a sack in. Green: the word sprung into my mind. No scars spoiled a face he evidently spent too long looking at. His blonde hair hung to his shoulders, just right to get in the eyes or for grabbing. His muscles were yet to develop the wiry tone of anyone who had spent too long in the guild. I met Hrundi’s gaze. “I didn’t know you trained raw recruits out here.”

He grimaced, “We don’t. That’s Varnan, your fourth man.”

I wasn’t sure whether to rant or laugh. After a moment I opted for the latter. The recruit looked at me with a puzzled expression and approached when I’d finished. “Hello sir,” I rolled my eyes, “I believe you are to lead the next job sir. I’ve purchased the necessary supplies.”

“Great,” I muttered, “I’m Firen.”

“I know sir. It’s an honour to work with you. Sir.” I groaned inwardly. You don’t do as many contracts as I had without getting known. People always seem to expect greatness.

I turned back to my drink and wandered if he really had managed to get the elbow grease and left-handed crossbow bolts I’d added to the list when Hrundi had told me a youngster was buying supplies. I hoped, at least, that he had made a fool of himself trying.

***

The choppy waves coruscated in the light of the full moon. The small boat Skink had arranged us danced over them with all the smooth elegance of a troll on moonsugar. A lull in the wind brought the sound of Varnan vomiting noisily over the side. I smiled at Keersk. The argonian took another swig of mazte and smirked back. The two other fighters Hrundi had arranged seemed fine. Although a bit odd the dunmer woman clearly knew her stuff, and by his sense of humour the way he drank I was astounded I’d never worked with Keersk before. I certainly intended to again, even if he was a filthy lizard.

“Ah it’s a good contract for him,” said Keersk. I wasn’t sure if it was the mazte or the angry scar across his throat which made his voice sound like a bag of gravel.

“Perhaps. But we don’t really know what we’re going to find.”

“That is the best bit,” he said. I laughed and he passed me the bottle. Its contents tasted vile but I took a swig anyway. “It’s a big payoff,” said Keersk, his face suddenly serious, “When I get it I’ll have enough to return to the marsh. And I will this time.” I wandered how many times he had said it before.

The dunmer woman rolled her eyes behind him. “Not if you don’t sober up a bit before we land,” she said.

“Oh Thyra,” said Keersk, “I can hardly hold an axe without some beer.”

Thyra laughed and took a seat next to him. “I’ve certainly never seen it and we’ve worked together enough.”

They made a strange pair. Keersk was old for a fighter, well past his prime. His equipment was in a worse state even than mine. He had scars within scars but that he was still alive meant he couldn’t be too bad. At least so I hoped. Thyra was quite a different matter. She was still young, especially for a mer. She might have been attractive, at least to the slightly distorted type of men who look at mer like that, were it not for her cropped hair and the brutal pragmatism of the male clothes she favoured. I could see her argument but it had the effect of making her look rather unsettling.

She noticed me watching at her and I looked down, embarrassed. She ignored me. “The captain says we’ll be there an hour after midnight. Wherever there is,” she said.

“Its all he says and all the dour fetcher,” muttered Keersk.

I nodded, “There is a few leagues north of Firewatch. I wasn’t allowed to tell you that until we were on the boat. I wasn’t meant to tell you anything.”

“That explains the secrecy,” said Thyra, “I thought it was a bit much for a normal contract but the Telvanni have been worse than ever the last couple of years.” She picked up a leather bracer and started polishing it.

Keersk slurped more mazte then said, “In my experience when magic types go missing there are three possible reasons: they’re not reporting, they’re trapped or they’re dead. The solution to each is simple.”

“That’s what worries me,” I said, “Why pay so much and send four of us? It doesn’t add up.”

Thyra stopped her polishing, “Either they know something, or more likely they suspect. Whatever it is they don’t want anyone else to find out. The less of us there is the less likely the secret escapes.”

“Well that’s comforting,” said Keersk. I couldn’t have agreed more.

Shortly after Varnan came down from the deck looking slightly green. “I think I can see some land,” he said taking a seat by Thyra and starting to polish his own meretricious armour. Keersk’s expression made it clear enough he thought about as much of it as I. It was showy but offered the protection of leather with about twice the weight. I said nothing and left to the back of the hold and my pack.

The bottle was in its own pouch; I glanced back to check they weren’t watching before taking it out. I had hoped to go without until tomorrow morning but it was just too tempting. I let a little of the oleaginous liquid ooze into the dent under my thumb and sniffed it sharply. It stung my nose and sinuses but almost immediately I felt tension leach away. Lusty fire rushed though me like gold. I put the bottle back and returned to the table.

“Land ho,” called the tillerman up on deck.