30 - Eldaline and the Merry Men

30 - Eldaline and the Merry Men

Mar 17, 2023

While south of the mountains, Skavild was running away from the Penitus Oculatus, north of the mountains, a badly-disguised Thalmor soldier called Aranwen was leaving the city of Whiterun under protest.

"... and remember that some of us lowly rank and file still have to work, so, enjoy your dancing and parties and fine-dining while I'm guarding the most boring prisoners in Skyrim in the most boring building in Tamriel."

"There were absolutely no parties or dancing before you arrived. That one was entirely your doing." the Second Archivist shouted, as Aralina watched damply.

"Hey," ordered the nearby guard. "I can't hear what you girls are shouting about, but stop causing a scene or cause it somewhere else." In fact, the rainstorm had started to gather thunder-clouds quite fast.

Aranwen, however, did not stop. "And as for this dragon, Second Archivist Eldaline, you should know better than to hide from it like a cowering peasant, or are you predisposed to cowering from anything shaped like the Imperial insignia? Because some of us decent Altmer of decent family would rather die than surrender."

"Aranwen, you will retract this insubordinate remark and apologise for speaking out of turn." Aralina began.

"No." Eldaline said dully, and that was all. The thunder-clouds began to join the conversation and lightning fell upon them.

"Kyne spare me!" cried the guard. And though he felt very tingly, something had either spared him, or lightning was not as dangerous as his mother had told him.

Where Eldaline and Aralina stood the air grew heavy and warm, and for a moment they saw only the expanse of Aetherius before them.

"What was that?" Aranwen demanded, slowing her flounce.

"I must be hearing things." she said. "Oh, and it's raining. Thank you so bloody much."

Eldaline watched her continue flouncing away down the road. Nothing swooped out of the sky to devour her, and nothing roared in the clouds.

Eldaline watched her until she was out of sight and then tried to remember where she was and where she should go now.

"Second Archivist!" called Aralina. "Should we not go indoors?"

Eldaline turned and looked at her. Eventually she smiled a little, and followed.

The Second Archivist's spirits were revived by some coffee Aralina had bought for her from a friendly Redguard in the market, but aside from a small crowd outside the door of the Book and Scroll Repository, most of the other traders had not yet opened their stalls.

Only the local alchemist was about. Look at those layabouts with nothing to do all day but buy books. She thought. They would be better off learning something useful.

Eldaline had been around Whiterun long enough to recognise them, in her own way. There was the Battle-Born woman whose purple shirt she had stolen, Braith's Mother, the husband of the purple shirt theft woman, the Redguard called Nazeem whom she had abducted on the way into Whiterun, Carlotta, the woman she had frightened for fun, a Gray-Mane woman whose secret marriage to a Battle-Born Aranwen had exposed to her mad uncle and whose brother she had kidnapped some months before, their father the blacksmith, and the blacksmith's other son, who had asked her to perform a questionable act with a lightning spell. They had all come first thing to collect their expensive early copies of 'The Bounty Hunter' by Doryli Vlars.

"It is so exciting." said Alfhild Battle-Born. "The story takes place entirely in Whiterun. The book will more than make up for misplacing my favourite purple shirt."

"I've asked everyone in Whiterun to keep an eye out for your shirt, my darling." said Idolaf, her husband.

"It wouldn't surprise me if in envy the thieves stole all my clothes too, thinking it would make them look better." said Carlotta Valentina.

Nazeem did not offer his opinion on either statement. "I wonder when Doryli Vlars visited Whiterun. I bet it's the aunt of that Dunmer mercenary."

The gleefully-listening sharp ears of the real Doryli Vlars were startled by a voice from behind her. It said, "Hello!"

"What?" Eldaline demanded.

"It's me, Solgory the Bold, or Solgory the Magnificent, the children's entertainer from the Merchants' Guild. I heard you were struck by lightning, and I just came to ask you if you were all right."

"I am often struck by lightning, thank you, I am very well." Eldaline said. "Flopsy, stop hiding behind that wall, we are perfectly within our rights to be here."

"I wasn't hiding, Second Archivist, I was examining a daisy."

"It looks as though they have all got their hands on the Bounty Hunter. Look."

"Is it a good book?" said Solgory.

Eldaline waved a hand. "Just some soppy old rubbish for bored people. Nothing world-consuming. World-shattering, I mean. World-consuming doesn't even mean anything."

"I'm sure I heard somebody say something similar the other day." said Solgory. "Or did I dream it?"

"Looks as though they are already most of the way through the first chapter outside the shop." Eldaline peered over the wall. "Page fifteen, I think."

Aralina asked, "Why do you think so, Madam?" because before midday, Eldaline liked to be asked how she worked things out. In the evening she was too tired.

"They are all trying to work out who the villain is. The chapter culminates in two people making opposing claims, and it is not immediately obvious which one is false. Let us go and interrupt them before they hurt themselves."

There was moderate consternation as Whiterun's new book-club discussed their findings.

Braith's mother had collapsed in a delighted heap. "I hope Minari follows Osgald into the ruin against her better judgement. Braith, you should read this book. It will teach you everything you need to know about grown-ups."

Braith had found somebody's mug from a summer fair the previous evening and had decided to turn to drink.

"But if Osgald's information came from Thane Fenrig, he might be barking up quite the wrong tree." said Alfhild. "And then, he will hardly rise in her estimation."

"But," Idolaf said, "Thane Fenrig clearly has designs on Aldar's position as the Jarl's favourite advisor. But is also a brave warrior of good reputation. I don't understand. One of those two things must be false."

"What are you all doing lurking about in the street like book perverts?" Eldaline sneered. "When I was a little elflet I used to trip people like you and push their heads in their lunchtime soup." This was not true. She only wished it was. Eldaline had been a morbidly quiet and passive elflet.

"You're just one of the Aldmeri Dominion's glorified thugs, Eldaline." said Nazeem. "You wouldn't understand intellectual and complex works like this."

"Not everything is black and white." Idolaf agreed. "Speaking of black and white, my wife used to have a purple shirt just like that."

"... And then..." Braith was being informed by her mother. "... Osgald disappears into the dark tunnel, and Minari is left wondering if she should help him, despite her misgivings. You should marry a bounty hunter, Braith, I did, and look at me."

"She'll go in after him." Nazeem insisted. "I know she will, because I read faster than you. On page twenty-three she's got lost, and Osgald and Aldar are blaming each other for her disappearance, and Fenrig is trying to turn the situation to his advantage, but at the same time, he is the only one who could traverse the Hall of the Harrowing and Eternal Spoon."

"I almost hope he doesn't succeed," said Idolaf. "but, he fought so bravely in the war. I don't understand."

"I liked the part where Osgald took off his shirt." said Braith's mother. "Braith, put that drum back on the market stall where it belongs."

The Hall of the Harrowing and Eternal Doom. Thought Eldaline. That's what I get for writing fast. Were all the copy readers in Morrowind killed in the Red Year?

Once the crowd had dispersed, or at least gone somewhere else, Eldaline said, "I know that you have no prior experience, Solgory. But since you already have the armour, have you never considered joining the Blades?"

"Oh, no." Said Solgory. "As I've said, you're wrong to encourage me to join an illegal organisation. That's called entrapment, and you seem nice, but I won't do it."

"She is not encouraging you. She is merely enquiring if you ever considered joining." said Aralina.

"But you killed them all." said Solgory.

"I am tired of this detail being lazily brought up whenever I raise the subject with anybody." Eldaline sighed. "Somebody is going to kill that dragon before it drives me mad, and it might as well be somebody who is dressed for it."

"I think you're looking at this problem too rigidly." Solgory pursued them through the market.

"How dare you insinuate that the Second Archivist is a single-minded lunatic?" said Aralina.

They stopped in the Wind District to watch a press of people causing an obstruction while stopping to discuss 'The Bounty Hunter' by Doryli Vlars, and spoil it for people who hadn't read it yet. The guards were threatening to arrest anybody who gave away the end of chapter two.

Heimskr was very upset, but at least he could now blame his lack of a congregation on popular culture.

"That is what I do." said Eldaline. "An idea enters my mind, and stays there, and will stay there, until I am dead."

"But that isn't good!" insisted Solgory. "I was like this, once. You must learn to embrace different perspectives and new ideas."

"Yes, different perspectives." said Eldaline. "I have found a new idea for you to embrace, Solgory. You will join the Merry Men."

"The Companions, Second Archivist." said Aralina.

"Yes, them."

Solgory followed, but nevertheless protested, "But, I'm not fighty. Not at all. There's plenty of honour in joining the Companions, but they won't let me in."

"That man, over there, wearing the rare armour in the style of the Akaviri Dragonguard." Eldaline pointed furiously, once on the terrace of Jorrvaskr. "He wants to join the M... Companions. Turn him into a fighter, so he can kill the dragon."

The curly red-haired woman looked disappointed. "We'd love to. But there's no more room. Our new recruit is taking up all our Harbinger's time. He'll have to apply again next year."

"Oh, no, what a shame!" said Solgory.

"I offer you a man with a powerful beard and genuine and hugely expensive Dragonguard armour, and this is your response? Ungrateful human. Which presumptuous rank amateur has joined so recently?"

"Carlotta the Slayer." said the curly red-haired woman.

Eldaline paused long enough to consider this, and anyway, stopped gesticulating. "I am so happy for you all."

"Perhaps there is some truth in what the human said, about my being a single-minded lunatic." she said, to the window inside Jorrvaskr.

"I really didn't say that." said Solgory.

"I have walked the wastes of Oblivion." Eldaline explained. "And I have faced the Alik'r in the desert, and fought with ancient spirits and sand storms."

"You are known for displaying admirable bravery when we were under siege at Anin Shar, Second Archivist." said Aralina.

"Yes. They say I do not know enough to get out of the way of a charging mammoth."

"I have snarled into the face of my doom and defied it many times. I have treated with the King of Worms, and obtained my very own phylactery, and paved my own road to the immortality of undeath, and I peered into the glowering darkness of my own heart."

"But this dragon has turned me into a coward. At the moment of its coming, I was diminished and made less than any other person. This would not have been possible, if it had not always been the case, and all the power I have hoarded counts for nothing."

A voice spoke behind them, and when Eldaline looked, this was because a man had appeared while she had been talking to the window.

"When I was little, I was scared because everything else was big and strong." said the man.

"So I got big and strong too so the only things I got scared of were bigger and stronger than me. But I still didn't like being scared, so then I got bigger and stronger again."

"Then I was the biggest and strongest thing I knew. So I wasn't scared of anything. Because nothing else was bigger or stronger than me."

"And I thought everything was all right. But it wasn't all right, because I'd forgotten about being scared."

"Then one day I saw a giant. Then I was scared again. And it was even worse than before. Then I realised. Everybody who's little and weak is lucky because they get to be scared all the time. So they just get used to it. So maybe the way I did it wasn't the best way."

"I'd write a book but I'm busy getting big and strong."

The man wandered off.

The lightning storms continued over Whiterun Hold for many days.

But on the fourth day, there was a repeated flash in the sky, over the same part of the valley.



- continues -

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