Dance in the Fire |
raggidman
Prince
Registration Date: 06.01.2006
Posts: 3,317
Location: where my heart is
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Here are the first two chapters of this wonderful book with thanks to
the Imperial Library at gamingsource.net As you see the tale begins in
Cyrodiil, but continues swiftly on to Valenwood. Enjoy.
All 7 Chapters now posted. Hope they will answer many of your questions, and provide rich ground for new ideas...
Dance in the Fire
Chapter 1
Reading this chapter raises your Acrobatics skill.
Scene: The Imperial City, Cyrodiil
Date: 7 Frost Fall, 3E 397
It seemed as if the palace had always housed the Atrius Building
Commission, the company of clerks and estate agents who authored and
notarized nearly every construction of any note in the Empire. It had
stood for two hundred and fifty years, since the reign of the Emperor
Magnus, a plain-fronted and austere hall on a minor but respectable
plaza in the Imperial City. Energetic and ambitious middle-class lads
and ladies worked there, as well as complacent middle-aged ones like
Decumus Scotti. No one could imagine a world without the Commission,
least of all Scotti. To be accurate, he could not imagine a world
without himself in the Commission.
"Lord Atrius is perfectly aware of your contributions," said the
managing clerk, closing the shutter that demarcated Scotti's office
behind him. "But you know that things have been difficult."
"Yes," said Scotti, stiffly.
"Lord Vanech's men have been giving us a lot of competition lately, and
we must be more efficient if we are to survive. Unfortunately, that
means releasing some of our historically best but presently
underachieving senior clerks."
"I understand. Can't be helped."
"I'm glad that you understand," smiled the managing clerk, smiling
thinly and withdrawing. "Please have your room cleared immediately."
Scotti began the task of organizing all his work to pass on to his
successor. It would probably be young Imbrallius who would take most of
it on, which was as it should be, he considered philosophically. The
lad knew how to find business. Scotti wondered idly what the fellow
would do with the contracts for the new statue of St. Alessia for which
the Temple of the One had applied. Probably invent a clerical error,
blame it on his old predecessor Decumus Scotti, and require an
additional cost to rectify.
"I have correspondence for Decumus Scotti of the Atrius Building Commission."
Scotti looked up. A fat-faced courier had entered his office and was
thrusting forth a sealed scroll. He handed the boy a gold piece, and
opened it up. By the poor penmanship, atrocious spelling and grammar,
and overall unprofessional tone, it was manifestly evident who the
writer was. Liodes Jurus, a fellow clerk some years before, who had
left the Commission after being accused of unethical business practices.
"Dear Sckotti,
I emagine you alway wondered what happened to me, and the last plase
you would have expected to find me is out in the woods. But thats
exactly where I am. Ha ha. If your'e smart and want to make lot of
extra gold for Lord Atrius (and yourself, ha ha), youll come down to
Vallinwood too. If you have'nt or have been following the politics hear
lately, you may or may not know that ther's bin a war between the
Boshmer and there neighbors Elswere over the past two years. Things
have only just calm down, and ther's a lot that needs to be rebuilt.
Now I've got more business than I can handel, but I need somone with
some clout, someone representing a respected agencie to get the quill
in the ink. That somone is you, my fiend. Come & meat me at the
M'ther Paskos Tavern in Falinnesti, Vallinwood. Ill be here 2 weeks and
you wont be sorrie.
-- Jurus
P.S.: Bring a wagenload of timber if you can."
"What do you have there, Scotti?" asked a voice.
Scotti started. It was Imbrallius, his damnably handsome face peeking
through the shutters, smiling in that way that melted the hearts of the
stingiest of patrons and the roughest of stonemasons. Scotti shoved the
letter in his jacket pocket.
"Personal correspondence," he sniffed. "I'll be cleared up here in a just a moment."
"I don't want to hurry you," said Imbrallius, grabbing a few sheets of
blank contracts from Scotti's desk. "I've just gone through a stack,
and the junior scribes hands are all cramping up, so I thought you
wouldn't miss a few."
The lad vanished. Scotti retrieved the letter and read it again. He
thought about his life, something he rarely did. It seemed a sea of
gray with a black insurmountable wall looming. There was only one
narrow passage he could see in that wall. Quickly, before he had a
moment to reconsider it, he grabbed a dozen of the blank contracts with
the shimmering gold leaf ATRIUS BUILDING COMMISSION BY APPOINTMENT OF
HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY and hid them in the satchel with his personal
effects.
The next day he began his adventure with a giddy lack of hesitation. He
arranged for a seat in a caravan bound for Valenwood, the single
escorted conveyance to the southeast leaving the Imperial City that
week. He had scarcely hours to pack, but he remembered to purchase a
wagonload of timber.
"It will be extra gold to pay for a horse to pull that," frowned the convoy head.
"So I anticipated," smiled Scotti with his best Imbrallius grin.
Ten wagons in all set off that afternoon through the familiar Cyrodilic
countryside. Past fields of wildflowers, gently rolling woodlands,
friendly hamlets. The clop of the horses' hooves against the sound
stone road reminded Scotti that the Atrius Building Commission
constructed it. Five of the eighteen necessary contracts for its
completion were drafted by his own hand.
"Very smart of you to bring that wood along," said a gray-whiskered
Breton man next to him on his wagon. "You must be in Commerce."
"Of a sort," said Scotti, in a way he hoped was mysterious, before introducing himself: "Decumus Scotti."
"Gryf Mallon," said the man. "I'm a poet, actually a translator of old
Bosmer literature. I was researching some newly discovered tracts of
the Mnoriad Pley Bar two years ago when the war broke out and I had to
leave. You are no doubt familiar with the Mnoriad, if you're aware of
the Green Pact."
Scotti thought the man might be speaking perfect gibberish, but he nodded his head.
"Naturally, I don't pretend that the Mnoriad is as renowned as the Meh
Ayleidion, or as ancient as the Dansir Gol, but I think it has a
remarkable significance to understanding the nature of the merelithic
Bosmer mind. The origin of the Wood Elf aversion to cutting their own
wood or eating any plant material at all, yet paradoxically their
willingness to import plantstuff from other cultures, I feel can be
linked to a passage in the Mnoriad," Mallon shuffled through some of
his papers, searching for the appropriate text.
To Scotti's vast relief, the carriage soon stopped to camp for the
night. They were high on a bluff over a gray stream, and before them
was the great valley of Valenwood. Only the cry of seabirds declared
the presence of the ocean to the bay to the west: here the timber was
so tall and wide, twisting around itself like an impossible knot begun
eons ago, to be impenetrable. A few more modest trees, only fifty feet
to the lowest branches, stood on the cliff at the edge of camp. The
sight was so alien to Scotti and he found himself so anxious about the
proposition of entering the wilderness that he could not imagine
sleeping.
Fortunately, Mallon had supposed he had found another academic with a
passion for the riddles of ancient cultures. Long into the night, he
recited Bosmer verse in the original and in his own translation,
sobbing and bellowing and whispering wherever appropriate. Gradually,
Scotti began to feel drowsy, but a sudden crack of wood snapping made
him sit straight up.
"What was that?"
Mallon smiled: "I like it too. 'Convocation in the malignity of the moonless speculum, a dance of fire --'"
"There are some enormous birds up in the trees moving around,"
whispered Scotti, pointing in the direction of the dark shapes above.
"I wouldn't worry about that," said Mallon, irritated with his
audience. "Now listen to how the poet characterizes Herma-Mora's
invocation in the eighteenth stanza of the fourth book."
The dark shapes in the trees were some of them perched like birds,
others slithered like snakes, and still others stood up straight like
men. As Mallon recited his verse, Scotti watched the figures softly
leap from branch to branch, half-gliding across impossible distances
for anything without wings. They gathered in groups and then
reorganized until they had spread to every tree around the camp.
Suddenly they plummeted from the heights.
"Mara!" cried Scotti. "They're falling like rain!"
"Probably seed pods," Mallon shrugged, not turning around. "Some of the trees have remarkable --"
The camp erupted into chaos. Fires burst out in the wagons, the horses
wailed from mortal blows, casks of wine, fresh water, and liquor gushed
their contents to the ground. A nimble shadow dashed past Scotti and
Mallon, gathering sacks of grain and gold with impossible agility and
grace. Scotti had only one glance at it, lit up by a sudden nearby
burst of flame. It was a sleek creature with pointed ears, wide yellow
eyes, mottled pied fur and a tail like a whip.
"Werewolf," he whimpered, shrinking back.
"Cathay-raht," groaned Mallon. "Much worse. Khajiti cousins or some such thing, come to plunder."
"Are you sure?"
As quickly as they struck, the creatures retreated, diving off the
bluff before the battlemage and knight, the caravan's escorts, had
fully opened their eyes. Mallon and Scotti ran to the precipice and saw
a hundred feet below the tiny figures dash out of the water, shake
themselves, and disappear into the wood.
"Werewolves aren't acrobats like that," said Mallon. "They were
definitely Cathay-raht. Bastard thieves. Thank Stendarr they didn't
realize the value of my notebooks. It wasn't a complete loss."
Chapter 2
Reading this chapter raises your Block skill.
It was a complete loss. The Cathay-Raht had stolen or destroyed almost
every item of value in the caravan in just a few minutes' time. Decumus
Scotti's wagonload of wood he had hoped to trade with the Bosmer had
been set on fire and then toppled off the bluff. His clothing and
contracts were tattered and ground into the mud of dirt mixed with
spilt wine. All the pilgrims, merchants, and adventurers in the group
moaned and wept as they gathered the remnants of their belongings by
the rising sun of the dawn.
"I best not tell anyone that I managed to hold onto my notes for my
translation of the Mnoriad Pley Bar," whispered the poet Gryf Mallon.
"They'd probably turn on me."
Scotti politely declined the opportunity of telling Mallon just how
little value he himself placed on the man's property. Instead, he
counted the coins in his purse. Thirty-four gold pieces. Very little
indeed for an entrepreneur beginning a new business.
"Hoy!" came a cry from the wood. A small party of Bosmer emerged from
the thicket, clad in leather mail and bearing arms. "Friend or foe?"
"Neither," growled the convoy head.
"You must be the Cyrodiils," laughed the leader of the group, a tall
skeleton-thin youth with a sharp vulpine face. "We heard you were en
route. Evidently, so did our enemies."
"I thought the war was over," muttered one of the caravan's now ruined merchants.
The Bosmer laughed again: "No act of war. Just a little border enterprise. You are going on to Falinesti?"
"I'm not," the convoy head shook his head. "As far as I'm concerned, my
duty is done. No more horses, no more caravan. Just a fat profit loss
to me."
The men and women crowded around the man, protesting, threatening,
begging, but he refused to step foot in Valenwood. If these were the
new times of peace, he said, he'd rather come back for the next war.
Scotti tried a different route and approached the Bosmer. He spoke with
an authoritative but friendly voice, the kind he used in negotiations
with peevish carpenters: "I don't suppose you'd consider escorting me
to Falinesti. I'm a representative for an important Imperial agency,
the Atrius Building Commission, here to help repair and alleviate some
of the problems the war with the Khajiit brought to your province.
Patriotism --"
"Twenty gold pieces, and you must carry your own gear if you have any left," replied the Bosmer.
Scotti reflected that negotiations with peevish carpenters rarely went his way either.
Six eager people had enough gold on them for payment. Among those
without funds was the poet, who appealed to Scotti for assistance.
"I'm sorry, Gryf, I only have fourteen gold left over. Not even enough
for a decent room when I get to Falinesti. I really would help you if I
could," said Scotti, persuading himself that it was true.
The band of six and their Bosmer escorts began the descent down a rocky
path along the bluff. Within an hour's time, they were deep in the
jungles of Valenwood. A never-ending canopy of hues of browns and
greens obscured the sky. A millennia's worth of fallen leaves formed a
deep, wormy sea of putrefaction beneath their feet. Several miles were
crossed wading through the slime. For several more, they took a
labyrinthian path across fallen branches and the low-hanging boughs of
giant trees.
All the while, hour after hour, the inexhaustible Bosmer host moved so
fast, the Cyrodiils struggled to keep from being left behind. A
red-faced little merchant with short legs took a bad step on a rotten
branch and nearly fell. His fellow provincials had to help him up. The
Bosmer paused only a moment, their eyes continually darting to the
shadows in the trees above before moving on at their usual expeditious
pace.
"What are they so nervous about?" wheezed the merchant irritably. "More Cathay-Raht?"
"Don't be ridiculous," laughed the Bosmer unconvincingly. "Khajiiti
this far into Valenwood? In times of peace? They'd never dare."
When the group passed high enough above the swamp that the smell was
somewhat dissipated, Scotti felt a sudden pang of hunger. He was used
to four meals a day in the Cyrodilic custom. Hours of nonstop exertion
without food was not part of his regimen as a comfortably paid clerk.
He pondered, feeling somewhat delirious, how long they had been
trotting through the jungle. Twelve hours? Twenty? A week? Time was
meaningless. Sunlight was only sporadic through the vegetative ceiling.
Phosphorescent molds on the trees and in the muck below provided the
only regular illumination.
"Is it at all possible for us to rest and eat?" he hollered to his host up ahead.
"We're near to Falinesti," came the echoing reply. "Lots of food there."
The path continued upward for several hours more across a clot of
fallen logs, rising up to the first and then the second boughs of the
tree line. As they rounded a long corner, the travelers found
themselves midway up a waterfall that fell a hundred feet or more. No
one had the energy to complain as they began pulling up the stacks of
rock, agonizing foot by foot. The Bosmer escorts disappeared into the
mist, but Scotti kept climbing until there was no more rock left. He
wiped the sweat and river water from his eyes.
Falinesti spread across the horizon before him. Sprawling across both
banks of the river stood the mighty graht-oak city, with groves and
orchards of lesser trees crowding it like supplicants before their
king. At a lesser scale, the tree that formed the moving city would
have been extraordinary: gnarled and twisted with a gorgeous crown of
gold and green, dripping with vines and shining with sap. At a mile
tall and half as wide, it was the most magnificent thing Scotti had
ever seen. If he had not been a starving man with the soul of a clerk,
he would have sung.
"There you are," said the leader of the escorts. "Not too far a walk.
You should be glad it's wintertide. In summertide, the city's on the
far south end of the province."
Scotti was lost as to how to proceed. The sight of the vertical
metropolis where people moved about like ants disoriented all his
sensibilities.
"You wouldn't know of an inn called," he paused for a moment, and then
pulled Jurus's letter from his pocket. "Something like 'Mother Paskos
Tavern'?"
"Mother Pascost?" the lead Bosmer laughed his familiar contemptuous
laugh. "You won't want to stay there? Visitors always prefer the Aysia
Hall in the top boughs. It's expensive, but very nice."
"I'm meeting someone at Mother Pascost's Tavern."
"If you've made up your mind to go, take a lift to Havel Slump and ask
for directions there. Just don't get lost and fall asleep in the
western cross."
This apparently struck the youth's friends as a very witty jest, and so
it was with their laughter echoing behind him that Scotti crossed the
writhing root system to the base of Falinesti. The ground was littered
with leaves and refuse, and from moment to moment a glass or a bone
would plummet from far above, so he walked with his neck crooked to
have warning. An intricate network of platforms anchored to thick vines
slipped up and down the slick trunk of the city with perfect grace,
manned by operators with arms as thick as an ox's belly. Scotti
approaches the nearest fellow at one of the platforms, who was idly
smoking from a glass pipe.
"I was wondering if you might take me to Havel Slump."
The mer nodded and within a few minutes time, Scotti was two hundred
feet in the air at a crook between two mighty branches. Curled webs of
moss stretched unevenly across the fork, forming a sharing roof for
several dozen small buildings. There were only a few souls in the
alley, but around the bend ahead, he could hear the sound of music and
people. Scotti tipped the Falinesti Platform Ferryman a gold piece and
asked for the location of Mother Pascost's Tavern.
"Straight ahead of you, sir, but you won't find anyone there," the
Ferryman explained, pointing in the direction of the noise. "Morndas
everyone in Havel Slump has revelry."
Scotti walked carefully along the narrow street. Though the ground felt
as solid as the marble avenues of the Imperial City, there were slick
cracks in the bark that exposed fatal drops into the river. He took a
moment to sit down, to rest and get used to the view from the heights.
It was a beautiful day for certain, but it took Scotti only a few
minutes of contemplation to rise up in alarm. A jolly little raft
anchored down stream below him had distinctly moved several inches
while he watched it. But it hadn't moved at all. He had. Together with
everything around him. It was no metaphor: the city of Falinesti
walked. And, considering its size, it moved quickly.
Scotti rose to his feet and into a cloud of smoke that drifted out from
around the bend. It was the most delicious roast he had ever smelled.
The clerk forgot his fear and ran.
The "revelry" as the Ferryman had termed it took place on an enormous
platform tied to the tree, wide enough to be a plaza in any other city.
A fantastic assortment of the most amazing people Scotti had ever seen
were jammed shoulder-to-shoulder together, many eating, many more
drinking, and some dancing to a lutist and singer perched on an
offshoot above the crowd. They were largely Bosmer, true natives clad
in colorful leather and bones, with a close minority of orcs. Whirling
through the throng, dancing and bellowing at one another were a hideous
ape people. A few heads bobbing over the tops of the crowd belonged
not, as Scotti first assumed, to very tall people, but to a family of
centaurs.
"Care for some mutton?" queried a wizened old mer who roasted an enormous beast on some red-hot rocks.
Scotti quickly paid him a gold piece and devoured the leg he was given.
And then another gold piece and another leg. The fellow chuckled when
Scotti began choking on a piece of gristle, and handed him a mug of a
frothing white drink. He drank it and felt a quiver run through his
body as if he were being tickled.
"What is that?" Scotti asked.
"Jagga. Fermented pig's milk. I can let you have a flagon of it and a bit more mutton for another gold."
Scotti agreed, paid, gobbled down the meat, and took the flagon with
him as he slipped into the crowd. His co-worker Liodes Jurus, the man
who had told him to come to Valenwood, was nowhere to be seen. When the
flagon was a quarter empty, Scotti stopped looking for Jurus. When it
was half empty, he was dancing with the group, oblivious to the broken
planks and gaps in the fencework. At three quarters empty, he was
trading jokes with a group of creatures whose language was completely
alien to him. By the time the flagon was completely drained, he was
asleep, snoring, while the revelry continued on all around his supine
body.
The next morning, still asleep, Scotti had the sensation of someone
kissing him. He made a face to return the favor, but a pain like fire
spread through his chest and forced him to open his eyes. There was an
insect the size of a large calf sitting on him, crushing him, its spiky
legs holding him down while a central spiral-bladed vortex of a mouth
tore through his shirt. He screamed and thrashed but the beast was too
strong. It had found its meal and it was going to finish it.
It's over, thought Scotti wildly, I should have never left home. I
could have stayed in the City, and perhaps found work with Lord Vanech.
I could have begun again as a junior clerk and worked my way back up.
Suddenly the mouth released itself. The creature shivered once, expelled a burst of yellow bile, and died.
"Got one!" cried a voice, not too distantly.
For a moment, Scotti lay still. His head throbbed and his chest burned.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw movement. Another of the horrible
monsters was scurried towards him. He scrambled, trying to push himself
free, but before he could come out, there was a sound of a bow cracking
and an arrow pierced the second insect.
"Good shot!" cried another voice. "Get the first one again! I just saw it move a little!"
This time, Scotti felt the impact of the bolt hit the carcass. He cried
out, but he could hear how muffled his voice was by the beetle's body.
Cautiously, he tried sliding a foot out and rolling under, but the
movement apparently had the effect of convincing the archers that the
creature still lived. A volley of arrows was launched forth. Now the
beast was sufficiently perforated so pools of its blood, and likely the
blood of its victims, began to seep out onto Scotti's body.
When Scotti was a lad, before he grew too sophisticated for such
sports, he had often gone to the Imperial Arena for the competitions of
war. He recalled a great veteran of the fights, when asked, telling him
his secret, "Whenever I'm in doubt of what to do, and I have a shield,
I stay behind it."
Scotti followed that advice. After an hour, when he no longer heard
arrows being fired, he threw aside the remains of the bug and leapt as
quickly as he could to a stand. It was not a moment too soon. A gang of
eight archers had their bows pointing his direction, ready to fire.
When they saw him, they laughed.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to sleep in the western cross? How're
we going to exterminate all the hoarvors if you drunks keep feeding
'em?"
Scotti shook his head and walked back along the platform, round the
bend, to Havel Slump. He was bloodied and torn and tired and he had far
too much fermented pig's milk. All he wanted was a proper place to lie
down. He stepped into Mother Pascost's Tavern, a dank place, wet with
sap, smelling of mildew.
"My name is Decumus Scotti," he said. "I was hoping you have someone named Jurus staying here."
"Decumus Scotti?" pondered the fleshy proprietress, Mother Pascost
herself. "I've heard that name. Oh, you must be the fellow he left the
note for. Let me go see if I can find it."
Chapter 3
Reading this chapter raises your Athletics skill.
Mother Pascost disappeared into the sordid hole that was her tavern,
and emerged a moment later with a scrap of paper with Liodes Jurus's
familiar scrawl. Decumus Scotti held it up before a patch of sunlight
that had found its way through the massive boughs of the tree city, and
read.
Sckotti,
So you made it to Falinnesti, Vallinwood! Congradulatens! I'm sure you
had quit a adventure getting here. Unfortonitly, I'm not here anymore
as you probaby guess. Theres a town down rivver called Athie I'm at.
Git a bote and join me! Its ideal! I hope you brot a lot of contracks,
cause these peple need a lot of building done. They wer close to the
war, you see, but not so close they dont have any mony left to pay. Ha
ha. Meat me down here as son as you can.
-- Jurus
So, Scotti pondered, Jurus had left Falinesti and gone to some place
called Athie. Given his poor penmanship and ghastly spelling, it could
equally well be Athy, Aphy, Othry, Imthri, Urtha, or Krakamaka. The
sensible thing to do, Scotti knew, was to call this adventure over and
try to find some way to get back home to the Imperial City. He was no
mercenary devoted to a life of thrills: he was, or at least had been, a
senior clerk at a successful private building commission. Over the last
few weeks, he had been robbed by the Cathay-Raht, taken on a death
march through the jungle by a gang of giggling Bosmeri, half-starved to
death, drugged with fermented pig's milk, nearly slain by some kind of
giant tick, and attacked by archers. He was filthy, exhausted, and had,
he counted, ten gold pieces to his name. Now the man whose proposal
brought him to the depths of misery was not even there. It was both
judicious and seemly to abandon the enterprise entirely.
And yet, a small but distinct voice in his head told him: You have been
chosen. You have no other choice but to see this through.
Scotti turned to the stout old woman, Mother Pascost, who had been
watching him curiously: "I was wondering if you knew of a village that
was at the edge of the recent conflict with Elsweyr. It's called
something like Ath-ie?"
"You must mean Athay," she grinned. "My middle lad, Viglil, he manages
a dairy down there. Beautiful country, right on the river. Is that
where your friend went?"
"Yes," said Scotti. "Do you know the fastest way to get there?"
After a short conversation, an even shorter ride to Falinesti's roots
by way of the platforms, and a jog to the river bank, Scotti was
negotiating transport with a huge fair-haired Bosmer with a face like a
pickled carp. He called himself Captain Balfix, but even Scotti with
his sheltered life could recognize him for what he was. A retired
pirate for hire, a smuggler for certain, and probably much worse. His
ship, which had clearly been stolen in the distant past, was a bent old
Imperial sloop.
"Fifty gold and we'll be in Athay in two days time," boomed Captain Balfix expansively.
"I have ten, no, sorry, nine gold pieces," replied Scotti, and feeling
the need for explanation, added, "I had ten, but I gave one to the
Platform Ferryman to get me down here."
"Nine is just as fine," said the captain agreeably. "Truth be told, I
was going to Athay whether you paid me or not. Make yourself
comfortable on the boat, we'll be leaving in just a few minutes."
Decumus Scotti boarded the vessel, which sat low in the water of the
river, stacked high with crates and sacks that spilled out of the hold
and galley and onto the deck. Each was marked with stamps advertising
the most innocuous substances: copper scraps, lard, ink, High Rock meal
(marked "For Cattle"), tar, fish jelly. Scotti's imagination reeled
picturing what sorts of illicit imports were truly aboard.
It took more than those few minutes for Captain Balfix to haul in the
rest of his cargo, but in an hour, the anchor was up and they were
sailing downriver towards Athay. The green gray water barely rippled,
only touched by the fingers of the breeze. Lush plant life crowded the
banks, obscuring from sight all the animals that sang and roared at one
another. Lulled by the serene surroundings, Scotti drifted to sleep.
At night, he awoke and gratefully accepted some clean clothes and food from Captain Balfix.
"Why are you going to Athay, if I may ask?" queried the Bosmer.
"I'm meeting a former colleague there. He asked me to come down from
the Imperial City where I worked for the Atrius Building Commission to
negotiate some contracts," Scotti took another bite of the dried
sausages they were sharing for dinner. "We're going to try to repair
and refurbish whatever bridges, roads, and other structures that got
damaged in the recent war with the Khajiiti."
"It's been a hard two years," the captain nodded his head. "Though I
suppose good for me and the likes of you and your friend. Trade routes
cut off. Now they think there's going to be war with the Summurset
Isles, you heard that?"
Scotti shook his head.
"I've done my share of smuggling skooma down the coast, even helping
some revolutionary types escape the Mane's wrath, but now the wars've
made me a legitimate trader, a business-man. The first casualties of
war is always the corrupted."
Scotti said he was sorry to hear that, and they lapsed into silence,
watching the stars and moons' reflection on the still water. The next
day, Scotti awoke to find the captain wrapped up in his sail, torpid
from alcohol, singing in a low, slurred voice. When he saw Scotti rise,
he offered his flagon of jagga.
"I learned my lesson during revelry at western cross."
The captain laughed, and then burst into tears, "I don't want to be
legitimate. Other pirates I used to know are still raping and stealing
and smuggling and selling nice folk like you into slavery. I swear to
you, I never thought the first time that I ran a real shipment of legal
goods that my life would turn out like this. Oh, I know, I could go
back to it, but Baan Dar knows not after all I've seen. I'm a ruined
man."
Scotti helped the weeping mer out of the sail, murmuring words of
reassurance. Then he added, "Forgive me for changing the subject, but
where are we?"
"Oh," moaned Captain Balfix miserably. "We made good time. Athay's right around the bend in the river."
"Then it looks like Athay's on fire," said Scotti, pointing.
A great plume of smoke black as pitch was rising above the trees. As
they drifted around the bend, they next saw the flames, and then the
blackened skeletal remains of the village. Dying, blazing villagers
leapt from rocks into the river. A cacophony of wailing met their ears,
and they could see, roaming along the edges of the town, the figures of
Khajiiti soldiers bearing torches.
"Baan Dar bless me!" slurred the captain. "The war's back on!"
"Oh, no," whimpered Scotti.
The sloop drifted with the current toward the opposite shore away from
the fiery town. Scotti turned his attention there, and the sanctuary it
offered. Just a peaceful arbor, away from the horror. There was a
shudder of leaves in two of the trees and a dozen lithe Khajiit dropped
to the ground, armed with bows.
"They see us," hissed Scotti. "And they've got bows!"
"Well, of course they have bows," snarled Captain Balfix. "We Bosmer
may have invented the bloody things, but we didn't think to keep them
secret, you bloody bureaucrat."
"Now, they're setting their arrows on fire!"
"Yes, they do that sometimes."
"Captain, they're shooting at us! They're shooting at us with flaming arrows!"
"Ah, so they are," the captain agreed. "The aim here is to avoid being hit."
But hit they were, and very shortly thereafter. Even worse, the second
volley of arrows hit the supply of pitch, which ignited in a tremendous
blue blaze. Scotti grabbed Captain Balfix and they leapt overboard just
before the ship and all its cargo disintegrated. The shock of the cold
water brought the Bosmer into temporary sobriety. He called to Scotti,
who was already swimming as fast as he could toward the bend.
"Master Decumus, where do you think you're swimming to?"
"Back to Falinesti!" cried Scotti.
"It will take you days, and by the time you get there, everyone will
know about the attack on Athay! They'll never let anyone they don't
know in! The closest village downriver is Grenos, maybe they'll give us
shelter!"
Scotti swam back to the captain and side-by-side they began paddling in
the middle of the river, past the burning residuum of the village. He
thanked Mara that he had learned to swim. Many a Cyrodiil did not, as
largely land-locked as the Imperial Province was. Had he been raised in
Mir Corrup or Artemon, he might have been doomed, but the Imperial City
itself was encircled by water, and every lad and lass there knew how to
cross without a boat. Even those who grew up to be clerks and not
adventurers.
Captain Balfix's sobriety faded as he grew used to the water's
temperature. Even in wintertide, the Xylo River was fairly temperate
and after a fashion, even comfortable. The Bosmer's strokes were
uneven, and he'd stray closer to Scotti and then further away, pushing
ahead and then falling behind.
Scotti looked to the shore to his right: the flames had caught the
trees like tinder. Behind them was an inferno, with which they were
barely keeping pace. To the shore on their left, all looked fair, until
he saw a tremble in the river-reeds, and then what caused it. A pride
of the largest cats he had ever seen. They were auburn-haired,
green-eyed beasts with jaws and teeth to match his wildest nightmares.
And they were watching the two swimmers, and keeping pace.
"Captain Balfix, we can't go to either that shore or the other one, or
we'll be parboiled or eaten," Scotti whispered. "Try to even your
kicking and your strokes. Breath like you would normally. If you're
feeling tired, tell me, and we'll float on our backs for a while."
Anyone who has had the experience of giving rational advice to a
drunkard would understand the hopelessness. Scotti kept pace with the
captain, slowing himself, quickening, drifting left and right, while
the Bosmer moaned old ditties from his pirate days. When he wasn't
watching his companion, he watched the cats on the shore. After a
stretch, he turned to his right. Another village had caught fire.
Undoubtedly, it was Grenos. Scotti stared at the blazing fury, awed by
the sight of the destruction, and did not hear that the captain had
ceased to sing.
When he turned back, Captain Balfix was gone.
Scotti dove into the murky depths of the river over and over again.
There was nothing to be done. When he surfaced after his final search,
he saw that the giant cats had moved on, perhaps assuming that he too
had drowned. He continued his lonely swim downriver. A tributary, he
noted, had formed a final barrier, keeping the flames from spreading
further. But there were no more towns. After several hours, he began to
ponder the wisdom of going ashore. Which shore was the question.
He was spared the decision. Ahead of him was a rocky island with a
bonfire. He did not know if he were intruding on a party of Bosmeri or
Khajiiti, only that he could swim no more. With straining, aching
muscles, he pulled himself onto the rocks.
They were Bosmer refugees he gathered, even before they told him.
Roasting over the fire was the remains of one of the giant cats that
had been stalking him through the jungle on the opposite shore.
"Senche-Tiger," said one of the young warriors ravenously. "It's no
animal -- it's as smart as any Cathay-Raht or Ohmes or any other
bleeding Khajiiti. Pity this one drowned. I would have gladly killed
it. You'll like the meat, though. Sweet, from all the sugar these asses
eat."
Scotti did not know if he was capable of eating a creature as
intelligent as a man or mer, but he surprised himself, as he had done
several times over the last days. It was rich, succulent, and sweet,
like sugared pork, but no seasonings had been added. He surveyed the
crowd as he ate. A sad lot, some still weeping for lost family members.
They were the survivors of both the villages of Grenos and Athay, and
war was on every person's lips. Why had the Khajiiti attacked again?
Why -- specifically directed at Scotti, as a Cyrodiil -- why was the
Emperor not enforcing peace in his provinces?
"I was to meet another Cyrodiil," he said to a Bosmer maiden who he
understood to be from Athay. "His name was Liodes Jurus. I don't
suppose you know what might have happened to him."
"I don't know your friend, but there were many Cyrodiils in Athay when
the fire came," said the girl. "Some of them, I think, left quickly.
They were going to Vindisi, inland, in the jungle. I am going there
tomorrow, so are many of us. If you wish, you may come as well."
Decumus Scotti nodded solemnly. He made himself as comfortable as he
could in the stony ground of the river island, and somehow, after much
effort, he fell asleep. But he did not sleep well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 4
Reading this chapter raises your Acrobatics skill.
Eighteen Bosmeri and one Cyrodilic former senior clerk for an Imperial
building commission trudged through the jungle westward from the Xylo
River to the ancient village of Vindisi. For Decumus Scotti, the jungle
was hostile, unfamiliar ground. The enormous vermiculated trees filled
the bright morning with darkness, and resembled nothing so much as
grasping claws, bent on impeding their progress. Even the fronds of the
low plants quivered with malevolent energy. What was worse, he was not
alone in his anxiety. His fellow travelers, the natives who had
survived the Khajiit attacks on the villages of Grenos and Athay, wore
faces of undisguised fear.
There was something sentient in the jungle, and not merely the mad but
benevolent indigenous spirits. In his peripheral vision, Scotti could
see the shadows of the Khajiiti following the refugees, leaping from
tree to tree. When he turned to face them, the lithe forms vanished
into the gloom as if they had never been there. But he knew he had seen
them. And the Bosmeri saw them too, and quickened their pace.
After eighteen hours, bitten raw by insects, scratched by a thousand
thorns, they emerged into a valley clearing. It was night, but a row of
blazing torches greeted them, illuminating the leather-wrought tents
and jumbled stones of the hamlet of Vindisi. At the end of the valley,
the torches marked a sacred site, a gnarled bower of trees pressed
closed together to form a temple. Wordlessly, the Bosmeri walked the
torch arcade toward the trees. Scotti followed them. When they reached
the solid mass of living wood with only one gaping portal, Scotti could
see a dim blue light glowing within. A low sonorous moan from a hundred
voices echoed within. The Bosmeri maiden he had been following held out
her hand, stopping him.
"You do not understand, but no outsider, not even a friend may enter," she said. "This is a holy place."
Scotti nodded, and watched the refugees march into the temple, heads
bowed. Their voices joined with the ones within. When the last wood elf
had gone inside, Scotti turned his attention back to the village. There
must be food to be had somewhere. A tendril of smoke and a faint whiff
of roasting venison beyond the torchlight led him.
They were five Cyrodiils, two Bretons, and a Nord, the group gathered
around a campfire of glowing white stones, pulling steaming strips of
meat from the cadaver of a great stag. At Scotti's approach, they rose
up, all but the Nord who was distracted by his hunk of animal flesh.
"Good evening, sorry to interrupt, but I was wondering if I might have
a little something to eat. I'm afraid I'm rather hungry, after walking
all day with some refugees from Grenos and Athay."
They bade him to sit down and eat, and introduced themselves.
"So the war's back on, it seems," said Scotti amiably.
"Best thing for these effete do-nothings," replied the Nord in between
bites. "I've never seen such a lazy culture. Now they've got the
Khajiiti striking them on land, and the high elves at sea. If there's
any province that deserves a little distress, it's damnable Valenwood."
"I don't see how they're so offensive to you," laughed one of the Bretons.
"They're congenital thieves, even worse than the Khajiiti because they
are so blessed meek in their aggression," the Nord spat out a gob of
fat which sizzled on the hot stones of the fire. "They spread their
forests into territory that doesn't belong to them, slowly infiltrating
their neighbors, and they're puzzled when Elsweyr shoves back at them.
They're all villains of the worst order."
"What are you doing here?" asked Scotti.
"I'm a diplomat from the court of Jehenna," muttered the Nord, returning to his food.
"What about you, what are you doing here?" asked one of the Cyrodiils.
"I work for Lord Atrius's building commission in the Imperial City,"
said Scotti. "One of my former colleagues suggested that I come down to
Valenwood. He said the war was over, and I could contract a great deal
of business for my firm rebuilding what was lost. One disaster after
another, and I've lost all my money, I'm in the middle of a rekindling
of war, and I cannot find my former colleague."
"Your former colleague," murmured another of the Cyrodiils, who had
introduced himself as Reglius. "He wasn't by any chance named Liodes
Jurus, was he?"
"You know him?"
"He lured me down to Valenwood in nearly the exact same circumstances,"
smiled Reglius, grimly. "I worked for your employer's competitor, Lord
Vanech's men, where Liodes Jurus also formerly worked. He wrote to me,
asking that I represent an Imperial building commission and contract
some post-war construction. I had just been released from my
employment, and I thought that if I brought some new business, I could
have my job back. Jurus and I met in Athay, and he said he was going to
arrange a very lucrative meeting with the Silvenar."
Scotti was stunned: "Where is he now?"
"I'm no theologian, so I couldn't say," Reglius shrugged. "He's dead.
When the Khajiiti attacked Athay, they began by torching the harbor
where Jurus was readying his boat. Or, I should say, my boat since it
was purchased with the gold I brought. By the time we were even aware
of what was happening enough to flee, everything by the water was ash.
The Khajiiti may be animals, but they know how to arrange an attack."
"I think they followed us through the jungle to Vindisi," said Scotti
nervously. "There was definitely a group of something jumping along the
treetops."
"Probably one of the monkey folk," snorted the Nord. "Nothing to be concerned about."
"When we first came to Vindisi and the Bosmeri all entered that tree,
they were furious, whispering something about unleashing an ancient
terror on their enemies," the Breton shivered, remembering. "They've
been there ever since, for over a day and a half now. If you want
something to be afraid of, that's the direction to look."
The other Breton, who was a representative of the Daggerfall Mages
Guild, was staring off into the darkness while his fellow provincial
spoke. "Maybe. But there's something in the jungle too, right on the
edge of the village, looking in."
"More refugees maybe?" asked Scotti, trying to keep the alarm out his voice.
"Not unless they're traveling through the trees now," whispered the
wizard. The Nord and one of the Cyrodiils grabbed a long tarp of wet
leather and pulled it across the fire, instantly extinguishing it
without so much as a sizzle. Now Scotti could see the intruders, their
elliptical yellow eyes and long cruel blades catching the torchlight.
He froze with fear, praying that he too was not so visible to them.
He felt something bump against his back, and gasped.
Reglius's voice hissed from up above: "Be quiet for Mara's sake and climb up here."
Scotti grabbed hold of the knotted double-vine that hung down from a
tall tree at the edge of the dead campfire. He scrambled up it as
quickly as he could, holding his breath lest any grunt of exertion
escape him. At the top of the vine, high above the village, was an
abandoned nest from some great bird in a trident-shaped branch. As soon
as Scotti had pulled himself into the soft, fragrant straw, Reglius
pulled up the vine. No one else was there, and when Scotti looked down,
he could see no one below. No one, that is except the Khajiiti, slowly
moving toward the glow of the temple tree.
"Thank you," whispered Scotti, deeply touched that a competitor had
helped him. He turned away from the village, and saw that the tree's
upper branches brushed against the mossy rock walls that surrounded the
valley below. "How are you at climbing?"
"You're mad," said Reglius under his breath. "We should stay here until they leave."
"If they burn Vindisi like they did Athay and Grenos, we'll be dead
sure as if we were on the ground," Scotti began the slow careful climb
up the tree, testing each branch. "Can you see what they're doing?"
"I can't really tell," Reglius stared down into the gloom. "They're at
the front of the temple. I think they also have ... it looks like long
ropes, trailing off behind them, off into the pass."
Scotti crawled onto the strongest branch that pointed toward the wet,
rocky face of the cliff. It was not a far jump at all. So close, in
fact, that he could smell the moisture and feel the coolness of the
stone. But it was a jump nevertheless, and in his history as a clerk,
he had never before leapt from a tree a hundred feet off the ground to
a sheer rock. He pictured in his mind's eye the shadows that had
pursued him through the jungle from the heights above. How their legs
coiled to spring, how their arms snapped forward in an elegant fluid
motion to grasp. He leapt.
His hands grappled for rock, but long thick cords of moss were more
accessible. He held hard, but when he tried to plant his feet forward,
they slipped up skyward. For a few seconds, he found himself upside
down before he managed to pull himself into a more conventional
position. There was a narrow outcropping jutting out of the cliff where
he could stand and finally exhale.
"Reglius. Reglius. Reglius," Scotti did not dare to call out. In a
minute, there was a shaking of branches, and Lord Vanech's man emerged.
First his satchel, then his head, then the rest of him. Scotti started
to whisper something, but Reglius shook his head violently and pointed
downward. One of the Khajiiti was at the base of the tree, peering at
the remains of the campfire.
Reglius awkwardly tried to balance himself on the branch, but as strong
as it was it was exceedingly difficult with only one free hand. Scotti
cupped his palms and then pointed at the satchel. It seemed to pain
Reglius to let it out of his grasp, but he relented and tossed it to
Scotti.
There was a small, almost invisible hole in the bag, and when Scotti
caught it, a single gold coin dropped out. It rang as it bounced
against the rock wall on the descent, a high soft sound that seemed
like the loudest alarm Scotti had ever heard.
Then many things happened very quickly.
The Cathay-Raht at the base of the tree looked up and gave a loud wail.
The other Khajiiti followed in chorus, as the cat below crouched down
and then sprung up into the lower branches. Reglius saw it below him,
climbing up with impossible dexterity, and panicked. Even before he
jumped, Scotti could tell that he was going to fall. With a cry,
Reglius the Clerk plunged to the ground, breaking his neck on impact.
A flash of white fire erupted from every crevice of the temple, and the
moan of the Bosmeri prayer changed into something terrible and
otherworldly. The climbing Cathay-Raht stopped and stared.
"Keirgo," it gasped. "The Wild Hunt."
It was as if a crack in reality had opened wide. A flood of horrific
beasts, tentacled toads, insects of armor and spine, gelatinous
serpents, vaporous beings with the face of gods, all poured forth from
the great hollow tree, blind with fury. They tore the Khajiiti in front
of the temple to pieces. All the other cats fled for the jungle, but as
they did so, they began pulling on the ropes they carried. In a few
seconds time, the entire village of Vindisi was boiling with the
lunatic apparitions of the Wild Hunt.
Over the babbling, barking, howling horde, Scotti heard the Cyrodiils
in hiding cry out as they were devoured. The Nord too was found and
eaten, and both Bretons. The wizard had turned himself invisible, but
the swarm did not rely on their sight. The tree the Cathay-Raht was in
began to sway and rock from the impossible violence beneath it. Scotti
looked at the Khajiiti's fear-struck eyes, and held out one of the
cords of moss.
The cat's face showed its pitiful gratitude as it leapt for the vine.
It didn't have time to entirely replace that expression when Scotti
pulled back the cord, and watched it fall. The Hunt consumed it to the
bone before it struck the ground.
Scotti's own jump up to the next outcropping of rock was immeasurably
more successful. From there, he pulled himself to the top of the cliff
and was able to look down into the chaos that had been the village of
Vindisi. The Hunt's mass had grown and began to spill out through the
pass out of the valley, pursuing the fleeing Khajiiti. It was then that
the madness truly began.
In the moons' light, from Scotti's vantage, he could see where the
Khajiiti had attached their ropes. With a thunderous boom, an avalanche
of boulders poured over the pass. When the dust cleared, he saw that
the valley had been sealed. The Wild Hunt had nowhere to turn but on
itself.
Scotti turned his head, unable to bear to look at the cannibalistic
orgy. The night jungle stood before him, a web of wood. He slung
Reglius's satchel over his shoulder, and entered.
This post has been edited 4 time(s), it was last edited by raggidman: 08.05.2006 22:48.
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08.05.2006 15:33 |
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raggidman
Prince
Registration Date: 06.01.2006
Posts: 3,317
Location: where my heart is
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Chapter 5
Reading this chapter raises your Marksman skill.
"Soap! The forest will eat love! Straight ahead! Stupid and a stupid cow!"
The voice boomed out so suddenly that Decumus Scotti jumped. He stared
off into the dim jungle glade from which he only heard animal and
insect calls, and the low whistling of wind moments before. It was a
queer, oddly accented voice of indiscriminate gender, tremulous in its
modulations, but unmistakably human. Or, at very least, elven. An
isolated Bosmer perhaps with a poor grasp of the Cyrodilic language.
After countless hours of plodding through the dense knot of Valenwood
jungle, any voice of slight familiarity sounded wondrous.
"Hello?" he cried.
"Beetles on any names? Certainly yesterday yes!" the voice called back. "Who, what, and when, and mice!"
"I'm afraid I don't understand," replied Scotti, turning toward the
brambled tree, thick as a wagon, where the voice had issued. "But you
needn't be afraid of me. My name is Decumus Scotti. I'm a Cyrodiil from
the Imperial City. I came here to help rebuild Valenwood after the war,
you see, and now I'm rather lost."
"Gemstones and grilled slaves ... The war," moaned the voice and broke down into sobs.
"You know about the war? I wasn't sure, I wasn't even sure how far away
from the border I am now," Scotti began slowly walking toward the tree.
He dropped Reglius's satchel to the ground, and held out his empty
hands. "I'm unarmed. I only want to know the way to the closest town.
I'm trying to meet my friend, Liodes Jurus, in Silvenar."
"Silvenar!" the voice laughed. It laughed even louder as Scotti circled
the tree. "Worms and wine! Worms and wine! Silvenar sings for worms and
wine!"
There was nothing to be found anywhere around the tree. "I don't see you. Why are you hiding?"
In frustration born of hunger and exhaustion, he struck the tree trunk.
A sudden shiver of gold and red erupted from a hollow nook above, and
Scotti was surrounded by six winged creatures scarcely more than a few
inches long. Bright crimson eyes were set on either side of tunnel-like
protuberances, the animals' always open mouths. They were legless, and
their thin, rapidly beating, aureate wings seemed poorly constructed to
transport their fat, swollen bellies. And yet, they darted through the
air like sparks from a fire. Whirling about the poor clerk, they began
chattering what he now understood to be perfect nonsense.
"Wines and worms, how far from the border am I! Academic garnishments, and alas, Liodes Jurus!"
"Hello, I'm afraid I'm unarmed? Smoken flames and the closest town is dear Oblivion."
"Swollen on bad meat, an indigo nimbus, but you needn't be afraid of me!"
"Why are you hiding? Why are you hiding? Before I begin to friend, love me, Lady Zuleika!"
Furious with the mimics, Scotti swung his arms, driving them up into
the treetops. He stomped back to the clearing and opened up the satchel
again, as he had done some hours before. There was still,
unsurprisingly, nothing useful in the bag, and nothing to eat in any
corner or pocket. A goodly amount of gold (he smiled grimly, as he had
done before, at the irony of being financially solvent in the jungle),
a stack of neat blank contracts from Lord Vanech's building commission,
some thin cord, and an oiled leather cloak for bad weather. At least,
Scotti considered, he had not suffered rain.
A rolling moan of thunder reminded Scotti of what he had suspected for some weeks now. He was cursed.
Within an hour's time, he was wearing the cloak and clawing his way
through mud. The trees, which had earlier allowed no sunlight in,
provided no shelter against the pounding storm and wind. The only
sounds that pierced the pelting of the rain were the mocking calls of
the flying creatures, flitting just above, babbling their nonsense.
Scotti bellowed at them, threw rocks, but they seemed enamored of his
company.
While he was reaching to grab a promising looking stone to hurl at his
tormentors, Scotti felt something shift beneath his feet. Wet but solid
ground suddenly liquefied and became a rolling tide, rushing him
forward. Light as a leaf, he flew head over feet over head, until the
mudflow dropped and he continued forward, plunging down into a river
twenty-five feet below.
The storm passed quite as instantly as it had arrived. The sun melted
the dark clouds and warmed Scotti as he swam for the shore. There,
another sign of the Khajiiti incursion into Valenwood greeted him. A
small fishing village had stood there once, so recently extinct that it
smoldered like a still-warm corpse. Dirt cairns that had once housed
fish by the smell of them had been ravaged, their bounty turned to ash.
Rafts and skiffs lay broken, scuttled, half-submerged. All the
villagers were no more, either dead or refugees far away. Or so he
presumed. Something banged against the wall of one of the ruins. Scotti
ran to investigate.
"My name is Decumus Scotti?" sang the first winged beast. "I'm a
Cyrodiil from? The Imperial City? I came here to help rebuild Valenwood
after the war, you see, and now I'm rather lost?"
"I swell to maculate, apeneck!" agreed one of its companions. "I don't see you. Why are you hiding?"
As they fell into chattering, Scotti began to search the rest of the
village. Surely the cats had left something behind, a scrap of dried
meat, a morsel of fish sausage, anything. But they had been immaculate
in their complete annihilation. There was nothing to eat anywhere.
Scotti did find one item of possible use under the tumbled remains of a
stone hut. A bow and two arrows made of bone. The string had been lost,
likely burned away in the heat of the fire, but he pulled the cord from
Reglius's satchel and restrung it.
The creatures flew over and hovered nearby as he worked: "The convent of the sacred Liodes Jurus?"
"You know about the war! Worms and wine, circumscribe a golden host, apeneck!"
The moment the cord was taut, Scotti nocked an arrow and swung around,
pulling the string tight against his chest. The winged beasts, having
had experience with archers before, shot off in all directions in a
blur. They needn't have bothered. Scotti's first arrow dove into the
ground three feet in front of him. He swore and retrieved it. The
mimics, having likewise had experience with poor archers before,
returned at once to hovering nearby and mocking Scotti.
On his second shot, Scotti did much better, in purely technical terms.
He remembered how the archers in Falinesti looked when he pulled
himself out from under the hoarvor tick, and they were all taking aim
at him. He extended his left hand, right hand, and right elbow in a
symmetrical line, drawing the bow so his hand touched his jawline, and
he could see the creature in his sight like the arrow was a finger he
was pointing with. The bolt missed the target by only two feet, but it
continued on its trajectory, snapping when it struck a rock wall.
Scotti walked to the river's edge. He had only one arrow left, and
perhaps, he considered, it would be most practical to find a
slow-moving fish and fire it on that. If he missed, at least there was
less of a chance of breaking the shaft, and he could always retrieve it
from the water. A rather torpid, whiskered fish rolled by, and he took
aim at it.
"My name is Decumus Scotti!" one of the creatures howled, frightening
the fish away. "Stupid and a stupid cow! Will you dance a dance in
fire!"
Scotti turned and aimed the arrow as he had done before. This time,
however, he remembered to plant his feet as the archers had done, seven
inches apart, knees straight, left leg slightly forward to meet the
angle of his right shoulder. He released the last arrow.
The arrow also proved a serviceable prong for roasting the creature
against the smoking hot stones of one of the ruins. Its other
companions had disappeared instantly after the beast was slain, and
Scotti was able to dine in peace. The meat proved to be delicious, if
scarcely more than a first course. He was picking the last of it from
the bones, when a boat sailed into view from around the bend of the
river. At the helm were Bosmer sailors. Scotti ran to the bank and
waved his arms. They averted their eyes and continued past.
"You bloody, callous bastards!" Scotti howled. "Knaves! Hooligans! Apenecks! Scoundrels!"
A gray-whiskered form came out from a hatch, and Scotti immediately
recognized him as Gryf Mallon, the poet translator he had met in the
caravan from Cyrodiil.
He peered Scotti's direction, and his eyes lit up with delight,
"Decumus Scotti! Precisely the man I hoped to see! I want to get your
thoughts on a rather puzzling passage in the Mnoriad Pley Bar! It
begins 'I went weeping into the world, searching for wonders,' perhaps
you're familiar with it?"
"I'd like nothing better than to discuss the Mnoriad Pley Bar with you,
Gryf!" Scotti called back. "Would you let me come aboard though first?"
Overjoyed at being on a ship bound for any port at all, Scotti was true
to his word. For over an hour as the boat rolled down the river past
the blackened remnants of Bosmeri villages, he asked no questions and
spoke nothing of his life over the past weeks: he merely listened to
Mallon's theories of merethic Aldmeri esoterica. The translator was
undemanding of his guest's scholarship, accepting nods and shrugs as
civilized conversation. He even produced some wine and fish jelly,
which he shared with Scotti absent-mindedly, as he expounded on his
various theses.
Finally, while Mallon was searching for a reference to some minor point
in his notes, Scotti asked, "Rather off subject, but I was wondering
where we're bound."
"The very heart of the province, Silvenar," Mallon said, not looking up
from the passage he was reading. "It's somewhat bothersome, actually,
as I wanted to go to Woodhearth first to talk to a Bosmer there who
claims to have an original copy of Dirith Yalmillhiad, if you can
believe it. But for the time being, that has to wait. Summurset Isle
has surrounded the city, and is in the process of starving the
citizenry until they surrender. It's a tiresome prospect, since the
Bosmeri are happy to eat one another, so there's a risk that at the
end, only one fat wood elf will remain to wave the flag."
"That is vexing," agreed Scotti, sympathetically. "To the east, the
Khajiiti are burning everything, and to the west, the High Elves are
waging war. I don't suppose the borders to the north are clear?"
"They're even worse," replied Mallon, finger on the page, still
distracted. "The Cyrodiils and Redguards don't want Bosmer refugees
streaming into their provinces. It only stands to reason. Imagine how
much more criminally inclined they'd be now that they're homeless and
hungry."
"So," murmured Scotti, feeling a shiver. "We're trapped in Valenwood."
"Not at all. I need to leave fairly shortly myself, as my publisher has
set a very definite deadline for my new book of translations. From what
I understand, one merely petitions to the Silvenar for special border
protection and one can cross into Cyrodiil with impunity."
"Petition the Silvenar, or petition at Silvenar?"
"Petition the Silvenar at Silvenar. It's an odd nomenclature that is
typical of this place, the sort of thing that makes my job as a
translator that much more challenging. The Silvenar, he, or rather they
are the closest the Bosmeri have to a great leader. The essential thing
to remember about the Silvenar --" Mallon smiled, finding the passage
he was looking for, "Here! 'A fortnight, inexplicable, the world burns
into a dance.' There's that metaphor again."
"What were you saying about the Silvenar?" asked Scotti. "The essential thing to remember?"
"I don't remember what I was saying," replied Mallon, turning back to his oration.
In a week's time, the little boat bumped along the shallow, calmer
waters of the foaming current the Xylo had become, and Decumus Scotti
first saw the city of Silvenar. If Falinesti was a tree, then Silvenar
was a flower. A magnificent pile of faded shades of green, red, blue,
and white, shining with crystalline residue. Mallon had mentioned
off-hand, when not otherwise explaining Aldmeri prosody, that Silvenar
had once been a blossoming glade in the forest, but owing to some spell
or natural cause, the trees' sap began flowing with translucent
liqueur. The process of the sap flowing and hardening over the colorful
trees had formed the web of the city. Mallon's description was
intriguing, but it hardly prepared him for the city's beauty.
"What is the finest, most luxurious tavern here?" Scotti asked one of the Bosmer boatmen.
"Prithala Hall," Mallon answered. "But why don't you stay with me? I'm
visiting an acquaintance of mine, a scholar I think you'll find
fascinating. His hovel isn't much, but he has the most extraordinary
ideas about the principles of a Merethic Aldmeri tribe the Sarmathi --"
"Under any other circumstances, I would happily accept," said Scotti
graciously. "But after weeks of sleeping on the ground or on a raft,
and eating whatever I could scrounge, I feel the need for some
indulgent creature comforts. And then, after a day or two, I'll
petition the Silvenar for safe passage to Cyrodiil."
The men bade each other goodbye. Gryf Mallon gave him the address of
his publisher in the Imperial City, which Scotti accepted and quickly
forgot. The clerk wandered the streets of Silvenar, crossing bridges of
amber, admiring the petrified forest architecture. In front of a
particularly estimable palace of silvery reflective crystal, he found
Prithala Hall.
He took the finest room, and ordered a gluttonous meal of the finest
quality. At a nearby table, he saw two very fat fellows, a man and a
Bosmer, remarking how much finer the food was there than at the
Silvenar's palace. They began to discuss the war and some issues of
finances and rebuilding provincial bridges. The man noticed Scotti
looking at them, and his eyes flashed recognition.
"Scotti, is that you? Kynareth, where have you been? I've had to make all the contacts here on my own!"
At the sound of his voice, Scotti recognized him. The fat man was Liodes Jurus, vastly engorged.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 6
Reading this chapter raises your Mercantile skill.
Decumus Scotti sat down, listening to Liodes Jurus. The clerk could
hardly believe how fat his former colleague at Lord Atrius's Building
Commission had become. The piquant aroma of the roasted meat dish
before Scotti melted away. All the other sounds and textures of
Prithala Hall vanished all around him, as if nothing else existed but
the vast form of Jurus. Scotti did not consider himself an emotional
man, but he felt a tide flow over him at the sight and sound of the man
whose badly written letters had been the guideposts that carried him
from the Imperial City back in early Frost Fall.
"Where have you been?" Jurus demanded again. "I told you to meet me in Falinesti weeks ago."
"I was there weeks ago," Scotti stammered, too surprised to be
indignant. "I got your note to meet you in Athay, and so I went there,
but the Khajiiti had burned it to the ground. Somehow, I found my way
with the refugees in another village, and someone there told me that
you had been killed."
"And you believed that right away?" Jurus sneered.
"The fellow seemed very well-informed about you. He was a clerk from
Lord Vanech's Building Commission named Reglius, and he said that you
had also suggested that he come down to Valenwood to profit from the
war."
"Oh, yes," said Jurus, after thinking a moment. "I recall the name now.
Well, it's good for business to have two representatives from Imperial
building commissions here. We just need to all coordinate our bids, and
all should be well."
"Reglius is dead," said Scotti. "But I have his contracts from Lord Vanech's Commission."
"Even better," gasped Jurus, impressed. "I never knew you were such a
ruthless competitor, Decumus Scotti. Yes, this could certainly improve
our position with the Silvenar. Have I introduced you to Basth here?"
Scotti had only been dimly aware of the Bosmer's presence at the table
with Jurus, which was surprising given that the mer's girth nearly
equaled his dining companion. The clerk nodded to Basth coldly, still
numb and confused. It had not left his mind that only any hour earlier,
Scotti had intended to petition the Silvenar for safe passage through
the border back to Cyrodiil. The thought of doing business with Jurus
after all, of profiting from Valenwood war with Elsweyr, and now the
second one with the Summurset Isle, seemed like something happening to
another person.
"Your colleague and I were talking about the Silvenar," said Basth,
putting down the leg of mutton he had been gnawing on. "I don't suppose
you've heard about his nature?"
"A little, but nothing very specific. I got the impression that he's very important and very peculiar."
"He's the representative of the People, legally, physically, and
emotionally," explained Jurus, a little annoyed at his new partner's
lack of common knowledge. "When they're healthy, so is he. When they're
mostly female, so is he. When they cry for food or trade or an absence
of foreign interference, he feels it too, and makes laws accordingly.
In a way, he's a despot, but he's the people's despot."
"That sounds," said Scotti, searching for the appropriate word. "Like ... bunk."
"Perhaps it is," shrugged Basth. "But he has many rights as the Voice
of the People, including the granting of foreign building and trade
contracts. It's not important whether you believe us. Just think of the
Silvenar as being like one of your mad Emperors, like Pelagius. The
problem facing us now is that since Valenwood is being attacked on all
sides, the Silvenar's aspect is now one of distrust and fear of
foreigners. The one hope of his people, and thus of the Silvenar
himself, is that the Emperor will intervene and stop the war."
"Will he?" asked Scotti.
"You know as well as we do that the Emperor has not been himself
lately," Jurus helped himself to Reglius's satchel and pulled out the
blank contracts. "Who knows what he'll choose to do or not do? That
reality is not our concern, but these blessings from the late good sir
Reglius make our job much simpler."
They discussed how they would represent themselves to the Silvenar into
the evening. Scotti ate continuously, but not nearly so much as Jurus
and Basth. When the sun had begun to rise in the hills, its light
reddening through the crystal walls of the tavern, Jurus and Basth left
to their rooms at the palace, granted to them diplomatically in lieu of
an actual immediate audience with the Silvenar. Scotti went to his
room. He thought about staying up a little longer to ruminate over
Jurus's plans and see what might be the flaw in them, but upon touching
the cool, soft bed, he immediately fell asleep.
The next afternoon, Scotti awoke, feeling himself again. In other
words, timid. For several weeks now, he had been a creature bent on
mere survival. He had been driven to exhaustion, attacked by several
jungle beasts, starved, nearly drowned, and forced into discussions of
ancient Aldmeri poetical works. The discussion he had with Jurus and
Basth about how to dupe the Silvenar into signing their contracts
seemed perfectly reasonable then. Scotti dressed himself in his old
battered clothes and went downstairs in search of food and a peaceful
place to think.
"You're up," cried Basth upon seeing him. "We should go to the palace now."
"Now?" whined Scotti. "Look at me. I need new clothes. This isn't the
way one should dress to pay a call on a prostitute, let alone the Voice
of the People of Valenwood. I haven't even bathed."
"You must cease from this moment forward being a clerk, and become a
student of mercantile trade," said Liodes Jurus grandly, taking Scotti
by the arm and leading him into the sunlit boulevard outside. "The
first rule is to recognize what you represent to the prospective
client, and what angle best suits you. You cannot dazzle him with
opulent fashion and professional bearing, my dear boy, and it would be
fatal if you attempted to. Trust me on this. Several others besides
Basth and I are guests at the palace, and they have made the error of
appearing too eager, too formal, too ready for business. They will
never be granted audience with the Silvenar, but we have remained aloof
ever since the initial rejection. I've dallied about the court, spread
my knowledge of life in the Imperial City, had my ears pierced,
attended promenades, eaten and drunk of all that was given to me. I
dare say I've put on a pound or two. The message we've sent is clear:
it is in his, not our, best interest to meet."
"Our plan worked," added Basth. "When I told his minister that our
Imperial representative had arrived, and that we were at last willing
to meet with the Silvenar this morning, we were told to bring you there
straightaway."
"Aren't we late then?" asked Scotti.
"Very," laughed Jurus. "But that's again part of the angle we're
representing. Benevolent disinterest. Remember not to confuse the
Silvenar with conventional nobility. His is the mind of the common
people. When you grasp that, you'll understand how to manipulate him."
Jurus spent the last several minutes of the walk through the city
expounding on his theories about what Valenwood needed, how much, and
at what price. They were staggering figures, far more construction and
far higher costs than anything Scotti had been used to dealing with. He
listened carefully. All around them, the city of Silvenar revealed
itself, glass and flower, roaring winds and beautiful inertia. When
they reached the palace of the Silvenar, Decumus Scotti stopped,
stunned. Jurus looked at him for a moment and then laughed.
"It's quite bizarre, isn't it?"
That it was. A frozen scarlet burst of twisted, uneven spires as if a
rival sun rising. A blossom the size of a village, where courtiers and
servants resembled nothing so much as insects walked about it sucking
its ichor. Entering over a bent petal-like bridge, the three walked
through the palace of unbalanced walls. Where the partitions bent close
together and touched, there was a shaded hall or a small chamber. Where
they warped away from one another, there was a courtyard. There were no
doors anywhere, no any way to get to the Silvenar but by crossing
through the entire spiral of the palace, through meetings and bedrooms
and dining halls, past dignitaries, consorts, musicians, and many
guards.
"It's an interesting place," said Basth. "But not very much privacy. Of course, that suits the Silvenar well."
When they reached the inner corridors, two hours after they first
entered the palace, guards, brandishing blades and bows, stopped them.
"We have an audience with the Silvenar," said Jurus, patiently. "This is Lord Decumus Scotti, the Imperial representative."
One of the guards disappeared down the winding corridor, and returned
moments later with a tall, proud Bosmer clad in a loose robe of
patchwork leather. He was the Minister of Trade: "The Silvenar wishes
to speak with Lord Decumus Scotti alone."
It was not the place to argue or show fear, so Scotti stepped forward,
not even looking toward Jurus and Basth. He was certain they were
showing their masks of benevolent indifference. Following the Minister
into the audience chamber, Scotti recited to himself all the facts and
figures Jurus had presented to him. He willed himself to remember the
Angle and the Image he must project.
The audience chamber of the Silvenar was an enormous dome where the
walls bent from bowl-shaped at the base inward to almost meet at the
top. A thin ray of sunlight streamed through the fissure hundreds of
feet above, and directly upon the Silvenar, who stood upon a puff of
shimmering gray powder. For all the wonder of the city and the palace,
the Silvenar himself looked perfectly ordinary. An average, blandly
handsome, slightly tired-looking, extra-ordinary Wood Elf of the type
one might see in any capitol in the Empire. It was only when he stepped
from the dais that Scotti noticed an eccentricity in his appearance. He
was very short.
"I had to speak with you alone," said the Silvenar in a voice common and unrefined. "May I see your papers?"
Scotti handed him the blank contracts from Lord Vanech's Building
Commission. The Silvenar studied them, running his finger over the
embossed seal of the Emperor, before handing them back. He suddenly
seemed shy, looking to the floor. "There are many charlatans at my
court who wish to benefit from the wars. I thought you and your
colleagues were among them, but those contracts are genuine."
"Yes, they are," said Scotti calmly. The Silvenar's conventional aspect
made it easy for Scotti to speak, with no formal greetings, no
deference, exactly as Jurus had instructed: "It seems most sensible to
begin straightaway talking about the roads which need to be rebuilt,
and then the harbors that the Altmeri have destroyed, and then I can
give you my estimates on the cost of resupplying and renovating the
trade routes."
"Why hasn't the Emperor seen fit to send a representative when the war
with Elsweyr began, two years ago?" asked the Silvenar glumly.
Scotti thought a moment before replying of all the common Bosmeri he
had met in Valenwood. The greedy, frightened mercenaries who had
escorted him from the border. The hard-drinking revelers and expert
pest exterminating archers in the Western Cross of Falinesti. Nosy old
Mother Pascost in Havel Slump. Captain Balfix, the poor sadly reformed
pirate. The terrified but hopeful refugees of Athay and Grenos. The
mad, murderous, self-devouring Wild Hunt of Vindisi. The silent, dour
boatmen hired by Gryf Mallon. The degenerate, grasping Basth. If one
creature represented their total disposition, and that of many more
throughout the province, what would be his personality? Scotti was a
clerk by occupation and nature, instinctively comfortable cataloging
and filing, making things fit in a system. If the soul of Valenwood
were to be filed, where would it be put?
The answer came upon him almost before he posed himself the question. Denial.
"I'm afraid that question doesn't interest me," said Scotti. "Now, can we get back to the business at hand?"
All afternoon, Scotti and the Silvenar discussed the pressing needs of
Valenwood. Every contract was filled and signed. So much was required
and there were so many costs associated that addendums and codicils had
to be scribbled into the margins of the papers, and those had to be
resigned. Scotti maintained his benevolent indifference, but he found
that dealing with the Silvenar was not quite the same as dealing with a
simple, sullen child. The Voice of the People knew certain practical,
everyday things very well: the yields of fish, the benefits of trade,
the condition of every township and forest in his province.
"We will have a banquet tomorrow night to celebrate this commission," said the Silvenar at last.
"Best make it tonight," replied Scotti. "We should leave for Cyrodiil
with the contracts tomorrow, so I'll need a safe passage to the border.
We best not waste any more time."
"Agreed," said the Silvenar, and called for his Minister of Trade to put his seal on the contracts and arrange for the feast.
Scotti left the chamber, and was greeted by Basth and Jurus. Their
faces showed the strain of maintaining the illusion of unconcern for
too many hours. As soon as they were out of sight of the guards, they
begged Scotti to tell them all. When he showed them the contract, Basth
began weeping with delight.
"Anything about the Silvenar that surprised you?" asked Jurus.
"I hadn't expected him to be half my height."
"Was he?" Jurus looked mildly surprised. "He must have shrunk since I
tried to have an audience with him earlier. Maybe there is something to
all that nonsense about him being affected by the plight of his people."
---------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 7
Reading this chapter raises your Mercantile skill.
The banquet at the palace of the Silvenar was well attended by every
jealous bureaucrat and trader who had attempted to contract the
rebuilding of Valenwood. They looked on Decumus Scotti, Liodes Jurus,
and Basth with undisguised hatred. It made Scotti very uncomfortable,
but Jurus delighted in it. As the servants brought in platter after
platter of roasted meats, Jurus poured himself a cup of Jagga and
toasted the clerk.
"I can confess it now," said Jurus. "I had grave doubts about inviting
you to join me on this adventure. All the other clerks and agents of
building commissions I contacted were more outwardly aggressive, but
none of them made it through, let alone to the audience chamber of the
Silvenar, let alone brokered the deals on their own like you did. Come,
have a cup of Jagga with me."
"No thank you," said Scotti. "I had too much of that drug in Falinesti,
and nearly got sucked dry by a giant tick because of it. I'll find
something else to drink."
Scotti wandered about the hall until he saw some diplomats drinking
mugs of a steaming brown liquid, poured from a large silver urn. He
asked them if it was tea.
"Tea made from leaves?" scoffed the first diplomat. "Not in Valenwood. This is Rotmeth."
Scotti poured himself a mug and took a tentative sip. It was gamy,
bitter and sugared, and very salty. At first it seemed very
disagreeable to his palate, but a moment later he found he had drained
the mug and was pouring another. His body tingled. All the sounds in
the chamber seemed oddly disjointed, but not frighteningly so.
"So you're the fellow who got the Silvenar to sign all those
contracts," said the second diplomat. "That must have required some
deep negotiation."
"Not at all, not at all, just a little basic understand of mercantile
trading," grinned Scotti, pouring himself a third mug of Rotmeth. "The
Silvenar was very eager to involve the Imperial state with the affairs
of Valenwood. I was very eager to take a percentage of the commission.
With all that blessed eagerness, it was merely a matter of putting
quill to contract, bless you."
"You have been in the employ of his Imperial Majesty very long?" asked the first diplomat.
"It's a bite, or rather, a bit more complicated than that in the
Imperial City. Between you and me, I don't really have a job. I used to
work for Lord Atrius and his Building Commission, but I got sacked. And
then, the contracts are from Lord Vanech and his Building Commission,
'cause I got em from this fellow Reglius who is a competitor but still
a very fine fellow until he was made dead by those Khajiiti," Scotti
drained his fifth mug. "When I go back to the Imperial City, then the
real negotiations can begin, bless you. I can go to my old employer and
to Lord Vanech, and say, look here you, which one of you wants these
commissions? And they'll fall over each other to take them from me. It
will be bidding war for my percentage the likes of which no one nowhere
has never seen."
"So you're not a representative of his Imperial Majesty, the Emperor?" asked the first diplomat.
"Didn't you hear what I'm said? You stupid?" Scotti felt a surge of
rage, which quickly subsided. He chuckled, and poured himself a seventh
mug. "The Building Commissions are privately owned, but they're still
representatives of the Emperor. So I'm a representative of the Emperor.
Or I will be. When I get these contracts in. It's very complicated. I
can understand why you're not following me. Bless you, it's all like
the poet said, a dance in fire, if you follow the illusion, that is to
say, allusion."
"And your colleagues? Are they representatives of the Emperor?" asked the second diplomat.
Scotti burst into laughter, shaking his head. The diplomats bade him
their respects and went to talk to the Minister. Scotti stumbled out of
the palace, and reeled through the strange, organic avenues and
boulevards of the city. It took him several hours to find his way to
Prithala Hall and his room. Once there, he slept, very nearly on his
bed.
The next morning, he woke to Jurus and Basth in his room, shaking him.
He felt half-asleep and unable to open his eyes fully, but otherwise
fine. The conversation with the diplomats floated in his mind in a
haze, like an obscure childhood memory.
"What in Mara's name is Rotmeth?" he asked quickly.
"Rancid, strongly fermented meat juices with lots of spices to kill the
poisons," smiled Basth. "I should have warned you to stay with Jagga."
"You must understand the Meat Mandate by now," laughed Jurus. "These
Bosmeri would rather eat each other than touch the fruit of the vine or
the field."
"What did I say to those diplomats?" cried Scotti, panicking.
"Nothing bad apparently," said Jurus, pulling out some papers. "Your
escorts are downstairs to bring you to the Imperial Province. Here are
your papers of safe passage. The Silvenar seems very impatient about
business proceeding forward rapidly. He promises to send you some sort
of rare treasure when the contracts are fulfilled. See, he's already
given me something."
Jurus showed off his new, bejeweled earring, a beautiful large faceted
ruby. Basth showed that he had a similar one. The two fat fellows left
the room so Scotti could dress and pack.
A full regiment of the Silvenar's guards was on the street in front of
the tavern. They surrounded a carriage crested with the official arms
of Valenwood. Still dazed, Scotti climbed in, and the captain of the
guard gave the signal. They began a quick gallop. Scotti shook himself,
and then peered behind. Basth and Jurus were waving him goodbye.
"Wait!" Scotti cried. "Aren't you coming back to the Imperial Province too?"
"The Silvenar asked that we stay behind as Imperial representatives!"
yelled Liodes Jurus. "In case there's a need for more contracts and
negotiations! He's appointed us Undrape, some sort of special honor for
foreigners at court! Don't worry! Lots of banquets to attend! You can
handle the negotiations with Vanech and Atrius yourself and we'll keep
things settled here!"
Jurus continued to yell advice about business, but his voice became
indistinct with distance. Soon it disappeared altogether as the convoy
rounded the streets of Silvenar. The jungle loomed suddenly and then
they were in it. Scotti had only gone through it by foot or along the
rivers by slow-moving boats. Now it flashed all around him in
profusions of greens. The horses seemed even faster moving through
underbrush than on the smooth paths of the city. None of the weird
sounds or dank smells of the jungle penetrated the escort. It felt to
Scotti as if he were watching a play about the jungle with a background
of a quickly moving scrim, which offered only the merest suggestion of
the place.
So it went for two weeks. There was lots of food and water in the
carriage with the clerk, so he merely ate and slept as the caravan
pressed endlessly on. From time to time, he'd hear the sound of blades
clashing, but when he looked around whatever had attacked the caravan
had long since been left behind. At last, they reached the border,
where an Imperial garrison was stationed.
Scotti presented the soldiers who met the carriage with the papers.
They asked him a barrage of questions that he answered
monosyllabically, and then let him pass. It took several more days to
arrive at the gates of the Imperial City. The horses that had flown so
fast through the jungle now slowed down in the unfamiliar territory of
the wooded Colovian Estates. By contrast, the cries of his province's
birds and smells of his province's plant life brought Decumus Scotti
alive. It was if he had been dreaming all the past months.
At the gates of the City, Scotti's carriage door was opened for him and
he stepped out on uncertain legs. Before he had a moment to say
something to the escort, they had vanished, galloping back south
through the forest. The first thing he did now that he was home was go
to the closest tavern and have tea and fruit and bread. If he never ate
meat again, he told himself, that would suit him very nicely.
Negotiations with Lord Atrius and Lord Vanech proceeded immediately
thereafter. It was most agreeable. Both commissions recognized how
lucrative the rebuilding of Valenwood would be for their agency. Lord
Vanech claimed, quite justifiably, that as the contracts had been
written on forms notarized by his commission, he had the legal right to
them. Lord Atrius claimed that Decumus Scotti was his agent and
representative, and that he had never been released from employment.
The Emperor was called to arbitrate, but he claimed to be unavailable.
His advisor, the Imperial Battlemage Jagar Tharn, had disappeared long
ago and could not be called on for his wisdom and impartial mediation.
Scotti lived very comfortably off the bribes from Lord Atrius and Lord
Vanech. Every week, a letter would arrive from Jurus or Basth asking
about the status of negotiations. Gradually, these letters ceased
coming, and more urgent ones came from the Minister of Trade and the
Silvenar himself. The War of the Blue Divide with Summurset Isle ended
with the Altmeri winning several new coastal islands from the Wood
Elves. The war with Elsweyr continued, ravaging the eastern borders of
Valenwood. Still, Vanech and Atrius fought over who would help.
One fine morning in the early spring of the year 3E 398, a courier arrived at Decumus Scotti's door.
"Lord Vanech has won the Valenwood commission, and requests that you
and the contracts come to his hall at your earliest convenience."
"Has Lord Atrius decided not to challenge further?" asked Scotti.
"He's been unable to, having died very suddenly, just now, from a terribly unfortunate accident," said the courier.
Scotti had wondered how long it would be before the Dark Brotherhood
was brought in for final negotiations. As he walked toward Lord
Vanech's Building Commission, a long, severe piece of architecture on a
minor but respectable plaza, he wondered if he had played the game, as
he ought to have. Could Vanech be so rapacious as to offer him a lower
percentage of the commission now that his chief competitor was dead?
Thankfully, he discovered, Lord Vanech had already decided to pay
Scotti what he had proposed during the heat of the winter negotiations.
His advisors had explained to him that other, lesser building
commissions might come forward unless the matter were handled quickly
and fairly.
"Glad we have all the legal issues done with," said Lord Vanech,
fondly. "Now we can get to the business of helping the poor Bosmeri,
and collecting the profits. It's a pity you weren't our representative
for all the troubles with Bend'r-mahk and the Arnesian business. But
there will be plenty more wars, I'm sure of that."
Scotti and Lord Vanech sent word to the Silvenar that at last they were
prepared to honor the contracts. A few weeks later, they held a banquet
in honor of the profitable enterprise. Decumus Scotti was the darling
of the Imperial City, and no expense was spared to make it an
unforgettable evening.
As Scotti met the nobles and wealthy merchants who would be benefiting
from his business dealings, an exotic but somehow faintly familiar
smell rose in the ballroom. He traced it to its source: a thick roasted
slab of meat, so long and thick it covered several platters. The
Cyrodilic revelers were eating it ravenously, unable to find the words
to express their delight at its taste and texture.
"It's like nothing I've ever had before!"
"It's like pig-fed venison!"
"Do you see the marbling of fat and meat? It's a masterpiece!"
Scotti went to take a slice, but then he saw something imbedded deep in
the dried and rendered roast. He nearly collided with his new employer
Lord Vanech as he stumbled back.
"Where did this come from?" Scotti stammered.
"From our client, the Silvenar," beamed his lordship. "It's some kind of local delicacy they call Unthrappa."
Scotti vomited, and didn't stop for some time. It cast rather a
temporary pall on the evening, but when Decumus Scotti was carried off
to his manor house, the guests continued to dine. The Unthrappa was the
delight of all. Even more so when Lord Vanech himself took a slice and
found the first of two rubies buried within. How very clever of the
Bosmer to invent such a dish, the Cyrodiils agreed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also by this author: "The Asylum Ball" in Daggerfall books.
By the way, when asked if he would make a book about Scotti that takes
place in Akavir, Ted "Tedders" Peterson replied thus: "What a
suggestion. Poor Scotti barely survived the Bosmer! Throw him in with
immortal vampire snake thingies? That?s too sadistic even for Waughin
Jarth, who, between The Asylum Ball, The Wolf Queen, Feyfolken, and A
Dance In Fire, is pretty well-known for his dark humor... If Uriel V?s
army was decimated in Akavir, what are the chances of Scotti lasting
five minutes?
On the other hand, I?m pretty sure Jarth did write a series about him
in Black Marsh... If I can find a copy of it to translate it into
Cyrodilic..."
This post has been edited 4 time(s), it was last edited by raggidman: 08.05.2006 22:47.
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08.05.2006 22:36 |
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