Thief, The Thousand Thefts of Ahezzar, Part I

Contents:

Chapter I: Sentinel

Chapter II: The Party

Chapter III: Arrest

Chapter IV: The Sand Pits

Chapter V: Escape

Chapter VI: The Alik'r, The Salt Flats, Saved by Saltmen

Chapter VII: Return to Sentinel, The First Map

Chapter VIII: The First Turn of the Pick Pays All Debts

Chapter I: Sentinel

Dawn breaks, unconquered by night, as it has so many times since the mythic first, and a thousand Yoku sun gods, anon Magnus elsewhere, dance their waking creep o’er the Alik’r sands. Aloft the Steed wheels off its wine-dark stage and all wear their sweat in kind. In that reaching light, which splintermakes the shadows of palm and parapet alike, walks a boy of eighteen, water jug in hand, towards the dew sails of his fathers estate. See him now draw of the cistern’s lapis, like unto his eyes in that morning sun, and stopper the ampule with the hurried certitude of youth’s boredom. The name of his father, Anselm do Hegathe no Shira, was given him and he wears it with pride though conventions have strayed the old-form. He is called Ahezzar af-Anselm, son to the 3rd Vizier of Ramzi, high-king of all Hammerfell, and in the cockless meridian of morning he returns to the kitchens, his shadow made a man before him by the new day.

Rufa, already stinking of cardamom and clove, greeted the boy as he entered the kitchen, his apron stained brown with lambsblood and his wrinkled face streamed with tears before a pile of rough chopped onion.

“They make us cry to remind us, boy,” Rufa spoke as he opened the door. “These onions first grew in Yokuda, just like your ancestors and mine, but they did not make us cry in those old days. They know, if we don’t cry we will forget those lands and their lessons in the bliss of the present. Yes, when we cut the onion, as Ansei did cut the Atomos, we cry. Be thankful we cry.” The boy looked down, his eyes already stinging.

“Rufa, why does father play at being a Crown? We’re Forebears by blood.”

“Blood,” Rufa carefully chose his words, His eyes fixed on the boys own blue pools, “is a kind of tyranny. Ever we struggle, with or against it. Your father believes in Ramzi, he knows him to be just, whatever his failings.” Rufa poured the chopped onions into a cast iron pot in a plume of stinging steam. “There are fools who hate the king, just as there are fools who love him. Your people, my people, Crown or Forbear we are all Redguard and the new ways have merit like unto the old.” The onions began to sweat as Rufa stirred saying, “See how the onion, which made us cry, now becomes sweet. There are two sides to every story, boy. Best not judge the sweet off the sting or likewise the sting off the sweet. We must take the evil in man in like measure to the good so that we may find balance between the two. Satakal is the light and the dark both and while we walk his tail we know we will eventually come upon the head for it bites at the tail. Now bring that water over here- Yes, right there, that’s fine. Now, bring these leavings to the midden and go join your father, breakfast will be but a bit longer.”

Anselm sat at the table surrounded by maps of Sentinel, the city he and the boy called home. Some denoted public works, aqueducts and sewers, others plotted properties and still more showed causeways, trails and goat paths. Interspersed were star charts and harvest ledgers in a tea-stained jumble of velum and paper. The boy had always been fascinated by his fathers maps. It seemed he who could read them had a certain mastery over the land, just as those who read the stars seemed to have a mastery of fate. His father was dressed in simple robes for his office and at his hip hung an old Yokudan dagger, a orichalc heirloom from days when the warrior wave crashed upon the shores of Tamriel in times of further myth. Rufa soon entered the room with two plates of lamb and onion and a platter of unleavened bread and the scent of them filled the room to the arched ceiling and danced about the mosaic stars before wafting down to the boys nostrils. Anselm nodded Rufa back to the kitchen and set into the lamb in silence.

“Father, after my studies I’m meeting with Sayma. Lazar has invited us to his fathers estate for the Koomu Alezer’i.” the boy proclaimed, mouth half full of lamb. His father cast a stern look up from his meal and the maps he even now studied but his brow lightened as it alit on his son.

“Very well, Ahezzar. See that you give a kiss to Sayma for me and let Lazar’s father know I’ll be sorry to not attend myself. This Knahaten business will keep me, it seems for yet a while longer.” He unhooked the dagger from his belt and slid it across the table to the boy. “Wear your best robes and take the family dagger, I’ll not have my son looking so disheveled amongst such honorable company.”

Lazar’s father was also a Vizier to High-King Ramzi and the two boys had been friends since birth. Sayma was the boy’s betrothed since sixteen and they were to be married the following spring, though he and Lazar had vied for her affections for some time before. He and Lazar shared distant blood, both Forbears and sons of the Ra’Gada. Sayma was a Crown, daughter to the cartographer who supplied Anselm with his myriad maps. The boy finished his lamb and sopped the last of its drippings off the plate with a corner of bread.

“What news of the Flu father?” asked the boy.

“Grim indeed lad. It spreads unhindered across the southlands, scouring Hegathe and Rihad.” Anselm pulled forth a map from the pile. “See this.” he pointed to Hammerfell as the boy went to stand behind him “Sources say it will not span the Alik’r. The coastal winds keep us safe for a time, Tava keep us.” Anselm’s aged finger swept the area of the map he knew to be the desert, rendered here in ink with minuscule sloping dunes. “Ramzi has stopped trade across the desert for now and ships from the south and east are turned away in port.” He now pointed across the Illiac. “Even to our north the Gardner dynasty has fallen in Wayrest and the kingdoms of Highrock quake to the core.” Anselm put the map back atop the pile of papers as Rufa came back in to collect the plates. The boy clasped his father on the shoulder.

“I’m sure the royal alchemists will devise a cure before it sees our walls, father. Their cunning knows no limits.” he said and with that he helped Rufa in bringing the plates to the kitchen. Outside, the late summer sun had burned off the morning’s dew and Sentinel now bustled with all manner of city life.

Sayma greeted the boy at the his stable house with a playful kick from behind as he was bridling his camel, Ush Ush. “Oh noble Ahezzar do Sentinel af-Anselm No Shira!” she proclaimed in mocking platitudes “please do not punish this poor peasant for her insolence!”

He spun and grabbed her by the waist shouting, “I’ll have you flogged, scandalous wench!” They both broke into laughter and shared a kiss.

“Lazar is out by the road,” she said pointing. “He brought me out to meet you.” The boy vaulted himself onto Ush Ush and extended a hand which Sayma took and used to hoist herself behind him. The camel let out a bellow and the boy lightly whipped him with his crop, bringing the beast around to the road.

Lazar sat with graceful bearing atop his own camel, its auburn blanket and bridal contrasted against couplings of silver that glinted in the afternoon sun. His father, though occupying the same position in court, did not shun wealth as the boys father seemingly had, and it was never more apparent in Lazar and his mount than when the boy heeled the shabby Ush Ush abreast to him. “Suffer me a race, dear brother?” asked Lazar. “First to my estate’s gate shares the first dance with your lovely bride-to-be!”

The boy smiled at him. “I would, save this dreadful weight that sets to break poor Ush Ush’s back” he said stealing a coy glance at Sayma.

She pounded his shoulder with a laugh and, grabbing the crop from his hand, hollered, “Ugakta Ush Ush! They slander you!” as she whipped the camel to life. He took off in a cloud of sand with an angry bellow and the stupefied Lazar prodded his own camel to a run in their wake.

They reached the gate, Lazar ahead by a hair and laughing each. “A good race Ush Ush,” Sayma whispered in the camels ear. “Without this lumbering man you and I would go far in the cross-desert races!” The boy laughed as he dismounted and helped her to alight at the estate’s ornate gate. Lazar had already left his camel with a stableboy and now walked up to the boy with arms outstretched. The friends embraced in brotherly love while the stable boy came back for Ush Ush and lead him away, spitting, by the bridal.

“By Akatosh my brother, you nearly had me!” quipped Lazar and the boy twitched with an imperceptible wince at the imperial nomer. “But I declare, a battle so well fought deserves a feast and feast we shall! Come! Come! let us enter and be announced. I’m sure my father will love to see you both.”

Chapter II: The Party

See The sun now set o’er the Illiac and the bays glister-danced surface makes a mirrored imago of the indigo and flaring pink desert sky. Ruptga’s many children turn in the burnishing firmament above and below the three companions walk a torch-lit footpath to the manor house from which there drifts muffled merriment and the doleful chords of an agarwood Ooud. At the outer perimeters of torchlight burrow-beetles and scorpions leave day’s dens to stalk the cooling sands and jackals call in high yelps from the hills. The camels are not restless this night, as Last Seed inches ever towards its ides, and they do chew in grain sacks and drink of trough with little concern for the acts of men. The three pause at the closed door of ornate cedar and ebony carvings and night’s calm is broken by the festival din inside.

Here we are,” Lazar said with a smile, “Blessed Koomu Alezer’i to us all who have something to reap!” and winking at the boy with chin pointed toward Sayma, “And something to sow.”

Besilked servants bowed to the three and manned the cedar and ebony manor door and a valet announced them by all manner of appropriate honorifics to the guests within. The boy felt an unease at the pomp which reminded him more of how he imagined a Breton or Cyrod court to behave. Maybe, he thought, I am more Crown than I know, what a keen betrayal of blood! Indeed, The sins of the father are lived out through the son.

Lazar put his arm in the crook of the boys own which shook him from his thoughts and lead him through the foyer to where his father sat at a low table with other white whiskered men discussing obtuse politics and foreign affairs. “Ah, Lad!” the old man said heartily. “The favorite nephew I never had, how fair you this fine night? Has your father deigned bless us with his august wit?”

The boy shook his head. “No sir, Father is busy with issues of the Flu, he sends his deepest apologies and regrets at being unable to attend.”

The old man smiled. “Ever the sedulous servant, that man. As it is the Koomu Alezer’i I do give eight-fold thanks for his presence in court. We would all do well to model our lives on Anselm do Hegathe no Shira.” He slowly rose, hand on one knee then the other, with the creaks of age. “But come lad, you must now drink for two!” he exclaimed leading the boy to a counter where a servant poured tall glasses of pomegranate wine. The boy took the glass with thanks as Lazar came up beside him, a glass of his own outstretched and leading Sayma by the hand.

“My brother, I just now had to save your bride-to-be from the unctuous ramblings of old Yakul, who may have talked her to an early grave! Do be more careful.” Sayma shot the boy a sarcastic look from behind Lazar’s back and the boy could not help but laugh.

He quipped, “Indeed, Yakul’s breath alone could knock a camel to its knees.” They clinked their glasses together in salute.

Lazar spoke. “Long Life Ahezzar, I give thanks for my truest friend.”

The boy held his glass aloft in like kind. “Long life and a good woman to you Lazar, a friend such as you deserves both and more.”

Just then, in time to the distant toll of a bright bell, servants in bright silks streamed into the foyer and began leading the guests to the dining hall where they were arranged about a long cedar table, one unbroken trunk as long as a small ship and half as wide, upon which was set such a feast that even masterful Rufa might balk in disbelief. Lentil soups in ornate silver bowls and stacks of flatbreads like little towers littered the table, fruit salads and platters of grape leaves stuffed with beetle cheese surrounded a whole roast welwa whose eyes had been replaced with ruby dates and which held in its mouth a gold-leafed apple. Pomegranates and oranges and multitudes of nuts were squeezed in-between and around the platters and bowls so that the entire table, save the place settings, was full such that no wood could be seen. Above the table the ceiling, in mockery of usual superstitions, had been enchanted by a illusion mage to look as if twirling bare-chested dancers vaulted its heights, spinning with orange silks that looked as fire carried up in a desert whirlwind. The guests didn’t seem bothered by this flagrant use of elf-magicks save a few old raga who scoffed and glanced with disapproving looks that masked a thinly veiled interest in the gleeful bodies. The boy sat near the head of the table, next to Lazar and, further on, his father on the left and Sayma to his right whose attentions were turned to a noble woman intent on making her newest bangles seen at the cost of any meaningful conversation. In turn wine was poured and drained and platters emptied and returned, each course making like the skins of Satakal and beginning anew as the prior ended, until all sat with full bellies and swimming heads. Lazar leaned over to the boy and clasped his hand. “Brother, I’d like to speak to you in private after the dance, I have some news of benefit to us all.”

After the feast they danced in the twirling and stomping fashion of Hammerfell, Sayma sharing the first with Lazar but ever after dancing only with the boy and above on the ceiling the enchanted dancers twirled in time.

In the late hours of the evening Sayma took her leave of the boy with a kiss. “Tomorrow, my love, I’ll call on you when your lessons are complete but now I must go help my father with a shipment.” she twirled once more as she left and he stared long after her going until he felt Lazar’s hand on his shoulder.

They sat with a bottle of wine between them in Lazar’s study which had been built adjacent to his room when he announced he would follow his fathers footsteps into politics not six months back. The boy had no such aspirations, content he was to carry on the cartography of Sayma’s father when the time came for that. They sat in silence some time by the glow of a bug light Lazar’s father had imported from Morrowind to help his son study long into the night.

“My dear friend,” Lazar finally spoke. “Times are changing in Hammerfell. You’ve seen it, I don’t doubt, as have I.” He sat forward in his chair. “The king looses favor, even amongst the Crowns who loved him so, and alliances are being struck across the continent. Power is being consolidated while the Empire crumbles.” His eyes became transfixed on the lapis of the boy’s own. “The Crowns no longer know what is best for the people, only we Forbears see that an alliance is needed with the men of the north. Those southern elves are unifying as are the lands of the far east, but to what ends we do not yet know. It is time for change, my friend, true change!”

The boy, in some shock, exclaimed, “But the old ways, the Na-Totambu—“

“Are antiquated.” Lazar interjected. “Men of our blood pioneered the Yokudan’s future in bleakest day when they sailed east to Tamriel! Men of our blood will pioneer in this new time of need as well, the Na-Totambu and the Crowns will only serve to stifle us.” Lazar began to speak more fervently, his voice still low but rising. “You must understand. I think of you as more than a friend, you are a brother and I love Sayma and your father deeply. Try to see through my eyes, Ahezzar, I act in your intrests. I act to keep you all safe.” His eyes caught the bug light’s glow and incandesced as if by ancient fire “If we are to live as a free nation the king must be disgraced, or he must die.”

The boy looked fearful and incredulous. “You speak of treason Lazar. You are my friend but this is highest treason! My father, when he hears of this—“

Lazar interjected again, “Will join us, must join us. He is still Forbear by blood.”

The boys hands were clammy and a pit had developed in his throat, his best friend, the son of the king’s vizier, a traitor to Hammerfell of the highest order. He couldn’t think, he felt sick. Never had he felt he was in danger in the presence of his friend before but now he began to fear for his life. “B-but,” he stammered “How could— How would you—“

“The plague, Ahezzar, the Knahaten Flu. We will bring it into Sentinel and the king will be disgraced. The people will see it as punishment from the Divines for his failings as a king, and with luck he may believe it himself.”

A breath starved “No—“ was all the boy could muster, as if Tava’s wind had left his lungs for good.

“You surely fear for your safety, brother, I understand. This plague is nasty business. I give you my word you and your father, Sayma and her’s… I will do all I can to keep you safe in the coming storm. In its wake we shall have a new king, a Forbear king, who will lead us towards a bright future and, our part in it all will be unasked. We will be the secret heroes of the people, brother!”

The boys breath refused to return, “You— Can’t!”

“Can.” Said Lazar “Can and already have.” he looked down at his clasped hands “The first shipments of infected blankets were brought into the city walls by my agents today. Symptoms will begin to develop as early as tomorrow.”

“I— I must go.” the boy meekly mustered and he stood to leave. “I… I know not what to say. This is madness, Lazar.” Lazar was out of his chair in a flash and he grabbed the boys wrist hard, his fingers where pushing into his wrist.

He was shouting now, “I did this for all of us, brother! I did this for every last one of us. For you, for me, for Hammerfell, for Sayma!”

“Sayma will never forgive you!” Shouted the boy, “Nor will I!” He wrenched his wrist free and swung at Lazar but missed. “Lazar No lo’igra! Deceiver! Snake!” and with that he fled the manor with Lazar calling his name after him from the balcony. He reached the edge of the grounds and the stable house and set about cutting loose Ush Ush from his post and went galloping into the night with the stableboy running out souring confusedly after him.

Chapter III: Arrest

The desert night had grown the kind of cold that sends lizards into deep sand but the boy’s blood ran hot and his mind raced as he rode back to his fathers estate. How could his trusted friend commit such a terrible act, and in the name of Hammerfell no less? How deluded and cruel. Yet could he truly not have seen it? How had not a glimmer of treachery shown in his friends eyes before? Did Lazar’s father know, or worse, was he accompliced? Thoughts of the night flashed about him with such lucidity that he swatted Lazar’s beaming face from his view as he rode. As the boy rounded the road to his estate he saw in the distance torch bearing figures outside heading up the footpath to his father’s door. Another figure sat on horseback a ways off at the roads edge and when he saw the boy’s approach he rounded his horse to face him. The boy quickly drew up with the reigns and Ush Ush, with a startled bellow, reared and turned in swift obedience to the command nearly knocking the boy from his perch. He kicked his heals and swatted the camel into a run. If Lazar’s men were already at his father’s they would not be long for Sayma’s as well. He tore through the streets of Sentinel and across the main bridge that spanned the low markets until he got to the harbor quarter where Sayma lived with her father. In a frenzy he burst into their house calling her name.

Sayma’s father was attending his desk and a commission when the boy thrust open the door with a shout in and in the commotion his pen snagged and carried an inky gash across the vellum simulacra of Sentinel, marring the estates he was studiously rendering. He rose angrily to his feat as fast as his old legs would let him and clasped the boy by both shoulders who was now panting and heaving and in-between trying to shout Sayma’s name.

“Sayma’s gone lad,” the old man said trying to calm the raving boy. “She’s out delivering maps to a client. Onsi’s Bones, what’s the peril, my boy?”

He was in tears now and couldn’t muster clear thoughts between his gasps. “Deceit— Traitor— Must get Sayma— leave quickly! The flu— Oh god the flu, Arman, it’s here. Sen Tang Mongo! Arman, please let me— Go!” He broke free of the mans concerned hands and fell to the floor but quickly gathered himself up. Arman looked with worry at the boy, whom he had never seen act with so little restraint, but his breath stunk of wine.

“My boy, please try to explain! For my sake, help me understand!” he exclaimed but the boy had pulled a scroll case off the wall and was stuffing it with rolled up city maps from across the continent and blank parchment.

“I’m sorry— I’m sorry—“ he shouted behind him as he flung wide the door, “I must get Sayma before—“

As he stumbled from the candle lit house into the midnight streets his eyes adjusted on a desperate scene. Around the door in a semi-circle stood Lazar’s men and a few members of the town guard, swords drawn at the ready and pointing inward towards him like a inverse sun. Behind them, yet a few more paces past the limits of the light spilling from the doorway, sat more men on horseback, the ones from his fathers estate. A few men advanced on him and in the scuffle one struck him where skull weds spine with the pommel of his sword sending the boy careening to the ground. As he struck the sandswept street with his face he felt himself fall farther, below the ground it seemed, as if in dark water. He was turning over and over in that blackness and he made to look up and saw his own body where it yet lay. Its hands were lashed and it was hoisted by two of the men crosswise an empty horse’s saddle where it was strung together by wrist and ankle below the horse’s midsection . A third man was trying to get a hand on Ush Ush but the beast reared free and stormed into the night in a haze of moonlit dust. He tried to call out to his body but his cries were mute and his limbs too numb to move. He felt himself rising back towards the limp vessel but as he reached the surface of the street the whole scene had faded into an inscrutable darkness.

Brief pulses of consciousness greeted the boy on that journey, one prompting struggling and another firm blow to the neck, but never for long enough for a bearing or even time for a thought to pass. In half consciousness he was an animal, reduced to instinct and fear, and in unconsciousness he felt, saw and thought nothing. The heartbeat of cognizance continued through the night until he finally grasped that he was no longer lashed to a horse but lay sideways on fine sand in pitch dark room where he finally slipped into a fitful sleep.

Chapter IV: The Sand Pits

He awoke the next morning to a singular beam of light that bore warmly on his face and made him squint awake. Motes of free dust danced and swayed in that ray, which came from a high slit window some twenty feet up. The circular room was utterly black save that lutestring beam and, unlike those motes, he found himself restrained. One ankle was still bound, run through with a chain that fastened him with some leeway to one side of the room, and as he struggled to sit upright he heard distant echoes of lamentation and fear from unknowable quarters and closer still a quiet moan from the far side of the room. His senses furnished naught save a hammered tin plate and a small wooden bucket which he kicked at and felt with his feet. Below him the fine dry sand of the floor, which seamed not to hide a stone bottom for it was somewhat soft, seemed pregnant with past tears. The boy sat in this darkness for many hours and he wept for his situation, he wept for his father and Sayma, of whose fate he was uncertain, and he wept for Lazar, his friend, who had only recently died to him. He wept till tears would come no more and his eyes were swollen and red.

Presently he heard a heavy key turn and a large bolt shifting in the wall. A door’s outline cracked in the dark like a golden seam in the Mundus and three figures stepped into the room. Their entrance set the motes a flutter. The first man held a lamp that illumined the three and the boy could see he was a bulbous Redguard whose fat seemed to hang in unnatural ways and who stood in a cotton sarong and bore sores that traveled from his navel to cloth-covered regions south. The second man was also a Redguard but older, more handsome, and bearing smartly cropped hair and a pointing black finger of a beard. The third man was an Altmer with brassy urinous eyes and high knifelike ears and a body so covered in soot to seem at first glance Dunmer. The sootdark elf sunk to his haunches and studied the boy as the bulbous Redguard handed off the lamp and closed the door behind them. It was the older Redguard who spoke first. “We find ourselves in your venerable company, oh cherished guest, but have not yet had the honor of your name.”

The boy began to speak and his parched mouth muddled out the words, “Were am I?”

“Are you a man of Sentinel?” asked the old Redguard.

“I am,” managed the boy.

“And yet you do not know? Suffer a try, man. Where indeed?”

“I do not know,” Said the boy.

The sootdark elf spoke now in a sort of bookdumb apery of the Redguard’s words, “Ye find yourself in the noble company of the esteemable and great warden, this man who humbly asked ye a question ye’ve yet left unanswered, most rudely I might add.”

“But I must know, where am I? Why am I being held here?” stammered the boy. The sooty High Elf struck him hard across the face leaving a black smear on his cheek.

The old Redguard spoke, “You must know, as any son of Sentinel should, you find yourself a guest in the Sand Pits, which are my charge and lifelong work.”

The Sand Pits were a prison, not spoke of in polite company, nor written of in any book, and indeed more of a tall tale to keep children in line than any reality, in the deepest shifting dunes of the Alik’r. It was said to be sunk down into the desert so that scarcely the tops of its towers could be seen amidst the dunes. Some even claimed the prison did move about under desert and would sink and surface at times as if by disturbing magics. The boy had heard of the prison before but It always seemed too fanciful and terrible for reality.

“Matters not… Your name I mean,” said the warden. “I was but trying to extend a courtesy.” He now held the lamp close to the boys face. “You see, most guests forget their own names in due time or set to gibbering. This is a place where people are sent to be forgotten and I think, my guest, that someone must want very badly to forget you.” He now handed the lamp back to the bulbous Redguard. “Likewise, I do not know your crime, nor would I bother to ask it. You’re here, that makes you mine, and that is all that matters.”

The soot-elf was standing again. “Ye’re allotted a meal once a day. Platter by the door or ye get no sup. Waste bucket too… Once a day, by the door. Miss it and live with yer stink.”

“Do try to survive,” said the warden as the purulent redguard opened the door for him. “I get five gold a day to hold you, and your suicide would cast such a bleakness over these happy halls… It would break my heart.”

The soot-elf followed in tow, taking a moment to kick at a lump of tattered rags on the far side of the room, which let out a stifled grunt as he did, and all three were soon shut and bolted on the other side of the door. Moments later a slot in the bottom of the door scraped open and the Soot-elf’s dark face appeared there for a moment.

“I’ll be seeing ye the morrow, honored guest, to welcome ye in earnest. Do wear something nice.” He was grinning with mossy yellow teeth that stood out in the dim shadow of his face. “And mind the ceiling, ’tis made of lead to invigor yon Magnus’ mighty heat… For comfort’s sake, I assure you.” With that his face receded and the slot scraped closed once more.

After the three mens footsteps trailed off down a hall the pile of rags at the far side of the room began to rustle and rise, though the boy could scarcely see it in the dark. It shuffled and swayed closer to him dragging a chain behind and he cowered, scooting himself back towards the wall till he was sitting against it. The swaying pile of rags came to stop under the window’s slim light and creaked upright then two slender orange arms emerged from its folds and pushed back the draping tatters that covered an unmistakable Khajiiti face. The Khajiit dropped on its haunches to get a better look at him and rasped, “Nak Vethiit rabiba?”

“I’m sorry I don’t—“

“Nov nak?”

“No I… Don’t understand.”

The Khajiit seemed lost in thought then slowly, as if grappling the words from distant mental reaches, said, “Vethiit new to Khajiit. Does he have name for this one’s knowing?” The boy gave his name and the khajiit took it, rocking back and forth as he squatted, and moving the letters about in his mouth as if they were marbles. “Ahezzar. Ah-heh-zar… hezzar… Zar zarrr zaaarrr.” The boy worried he might be mad. “Jajo fa vaba— Excuse, This one is J’zar-Dar… Khajiit is sorry for not have talked to man in long moons. His head speaks Ta’agra too long only.”

“Its fine,” the boy said. “I’ve never met a Khajiit.”

“We share like name, Vethiit, though mans call this one Ten-Paw”

Ten-Paw was tall and emaciated, of dirty orange fur with bands of white-rimmed black like a tamed senche the boy had once seen in court but with kinder and wilder eyes. Atop his head was a full head of orange hair that was matted into long orange snakes and wrapped about like a turban. Down the Khajiit’s cheeks a matted mane hung like a beard. The Khajiit produced from his rags a filthy yellow candle stub that looked as if he had made it from earwax and which was strung through with a wick of braided orange hair. He struck a small rock on the wall till it sparked the wick and he held the lit candle up to the boy’s face. It stunk horribly and made him retch. “Jone and Jode both wax and wane thirteen times since J’zar first prisoner here,” said Ten-Paw indicating the far wall with his candle which illuminated an etched quilt of tally marks in the stone. “Vethiit is his first company. Do cells grow full?”

“I don’t know,” the boy replied. “I’m not a transfer… I only just was thrown in here, and unjustly!”

“All prisons are unjust,” said Ten-Paw. “Thijizzrini. Laws of man and mer. Foolish and easy used for selfish ends.” The boy was weeping again at his cursed fate but Ten-Paw now grasped his hand in his claws. “Dov ibo. Dov ibo. We wait, Vethiit, but J’zar will think. Ahzirr se vako ayath suno… We will see sky before death. Do oh ibo dorr jaadi, do not cry for jailer’s deeds, give them silence only, no satisfy their cruelty. This one is happy for company. Jer an ahziss lhajiito.” With that the strange Khajiit took the boy in his arms and held him to his stinking chest and he could not help but weep again for long hours until he finally fell asleep.

He woke to the slot being scraped open and a ladle protruding inside the cell. Ten-Paw was already at the slot with both their tins and the ladle dropped a pallid mass in each. “Aypo drops the food if tin is there or not,” said Ten-Paw. “Better to use tin and be spared the grit. Is bad enough as is.” The boy thanked him and took the offered tin. It was bad, worse even, the worst food he had ever tasted. A weak and running porridge, souring, peppered with bits of bone, gristle and beetle carapace. He could not keep it down. Ten-Paw laughed a bit at his green stomach but doubled back in comforting apologies. “In time will stay. Khajiit has keen nose, took him weeks.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he gasped between heaving. “You take it, I can’t.”

“No, you try again later.” Said the khajiit “This one will not see Vethiit die.” He was picking beetle from his teeth, “Magrupal— Sundas is bread. Is not much better.”

Just then a key began to turn in the lock, and Ten-Paw’s ears pricked. He turned hurriedly to the boy, his eyes wide, and whispered, “They come to brand Vethiit. Khajiit sorry he can not help. Suffer silent or beating worse,” and he scuttled, chain in tow, back to his side of the room and collapsed back into a pile of rags as the door creaked open. The soot-elf entered the room with the bilious Redguard behind who bore a torch and a handheld stove of burning coals. The soot-elf had in his hands a long iron brand that ended in a round symbol like a snake eating its tail.

“Yer proper welcome has arrived, oh honored guest!” spoke the soot-elf in mock pomp and the Redguard set down the stove by the boys feet and handed over the torch to the elf. The Redguard approached the sitting boy who kicked at his bulging gut but the Redguard swiped him with the back of his hand like a mallet and wrestled him to submission with both arms behind his back. The boy could feel the Redguard’s stinking breath on his neck and the wetness of his stomach against his bare back and he writhed to be free. He struggled to kick over the stove but the soot-elf quickly slid it beyond his reach with a foot. “Hold still ye wretch,” Shouted the Soot-elf, “or ye’ll smudge my masterwork!” He was now holding the end of the brand into the stove and pumping a foot bellow to excite the coals to hotter course.

“The brand is Satakal, Redguard. Ye know it?” he laughed at the boy. “To remind ye that yer sentence has no end! That it has no beginning neither! Aye, ye’ve always been here, in this very cell, since gods first stalked the Mundus and here ye will remain ever after! There is no life but this!” He plunged the glowing iron into the boy’s chest and it hissed and crackled as it went. The boy screamed, writhed left and right, kicked and struggled but the metal would not leave his chest. It burned an eternity and he felt his skin bubble and pop and the iron’s fire plunging deep to the bone which he swore he felt to char. He tried to smash the back of his head into the redguard but felt himself drifting off in the pain, growing weaker. It was in him, around him, through him, and he fainted to the sound of the soot-elf’s glee.

He awoke with his head in Ten-Paw’s lap who was patting the wound with his rags and spitting on it intermittently. He had a fat lip and bruises around his elbows and shoulders. He dared not look at the wound but it throbbed with the memory of fire. The Khajiit tore a few long strips of fabric and wrapped them about his chest till the wound was covered. “Will hurt to come off,” Ten-Paw said, “but no infect Vethiit. You gave Aypo the blood in nose as well. He leave in tears.” The Khajiit opened his robes. “See here, Vethiit,” he said revealing his own circular scar, “they do wrong by all.” He now flicked his tail around and caught it in his paw. The boy noticed through wincing eyes that the Khajiit’s tail was shorter than it should be and was bald and scarred at the end. “They cut it. Make this one eat his own tail while they watch. Whip him till he finish every last bite.” Even in the near blackness of the room the cat’s eyes seemed aglow with green fire “This one will see black elf and Aypo paid, warden too. Sleep, Ahezzar, and dream bright moons”

Chapter V: Escape

Now see the shifting sands from out yon high slit window roil, free god-authored pasts of rock or ossified wood, yea Earthbone too, now ground to endless particle in crashing waves of men on Mundal shores, carried here in Tava’s helix rise or there swept deltic out to sea. Before such dry and endless sea the sunken towers’ crowns, and yea the lives inside, are brief, and yet, persist as audience of dusts do count five years of turning stars above. In those days the flu has spread, who’s deathcarts follow and fatten such casketmen that survive. Ramzi barricades the Samaruik against but death finds other grips within and ‘fore the month is past all those behind his palace doors have starved. Yea plots unravel true and in uncertain dins of public halls does ride the man Fahara’jad. High King who’s keen and noble like and even good at heart, but even he knows not what blackwrought lengths did elevate him so. In like to Highrock’s Gardner graves which seed new liege in kind, so too in Sentinel, Forbear upsets a Crown to wear his own. So Covenant come and power shifts and raga live but naught is known to cat and man away. They languish still, aetherbaked ‘neath leaden roof, yet grow so too in each and yea together.

Ten-Paw and the boy had shared each’s treasured company for longer than either could now remember but time had not passed unreckoned for the boy could scarcely still be called as such, bedighted as he was in unkempt beard and oily mop, and though his eyes still pierced with blue they dimmed in malnourishment. The Khajiit too had aged, his whiskers stretching coarse and crooked and his manspeak growing leaps in company of the boy. Indeed they each had learned their companion’s past and shared all left to share and the boy learned scant Ta’agra and the cat scanter still Yoku. When talk turned to escape they both hushed up and thought. Aypo, the bulbous Redguard whose true name they did not care to know, called such by them in Ta’agra “Spoon” for his ladle’s daily incursions, would make the first of many challenges. Also of trouble was the prisons nature, so mythologized by tired wives who terrified their children with tales of a towered keep that could sink beneath the sands at will. This tale was true. By unknown magics the keep would sometimes set to sinking and the walls and ceiling would descend on them while the desert floor below remained such that they could scarcely lay prone to not be burned by the leaden roof. They had tried to dig but each handful of sand they moved would tumble down the hole’s lees with the next. They had even tried to smuggle sand out, bit by bit, stirred into their daily waste but each time the castle sunk a fair bit more would spill in through the window slit. They had reckoned by Ten-Paws diligent tallies that this sinking and surfacing had a pattern, surfacing, they guessed, closer Sentinel to intern new guests and sinking again to move further from the city. They could not know if they were surfaced in the Alik’r’s heart or closer the coast but either way they had to wait till it reared itself from the sands to make a move.

“Today, Vethiit, is our day.” said Ten-Paw and the boy only nodded in agreement concerning himself with tracing the bubbled scar tissue of his brand. His finger twirled and twirled the mark, as it did most days, in absent mechanical habit. Even after all this time he only had two wishes, seeing his father and Sayma safe and lopping Lazar’s smug head clean off his shoulders while looking him in the eye. Ten-Paw had admonished this as foolish and urged him leave the past and start anew but when he would not concede the Khajiit had offered to teach him ways of stealth upon their escape, at the very least, in thanks for his share in their conspiracy and friendship. Morning sun in its wirestring ribbon lit the room and the ceiling stood high above them. They knew the prison was above the sands.

When Aypo opened the slot of the door and thrust his ladle inside the boy began to shout and plead to him. “Help me man! Oh gods, Oh Divines, help me! This old cat breaths no more! Your ward has died in the night and his smell grows foul! He’s shit himself and all!” The Redguard’s face appeared in the slot and witnessed, by the window’s slanting light, Ten-Paw face down in the sand, his outline damp with drying urine. The slot scraped closed and the boy heard him fidgeting with the keys followed by the tell tale sound of the drawing bolt. The Redguard lumbered in on stubby legs with a long wood club and bent to inspect the cat. He poked at him a few times then rolled the cat over with the end of the club and squatted over him. He had his hand hovering over Ten-Paws mouth, feeling for breath, but the cat held it firm. The boy was rising behind him, desperate quick, and threw his own chain about the Redguard’s neck and pulled with as much force as he could muster. Aypo dropped the club and the boy hung on his back while he tried to stand, swinging by the chain leftwise and right. Ten-Paws eyes shot open in a flash and, though his claws had been ground to dulled nubs by his jailers, he managed a furious swipe across the redguard’s belly which did a gruesome job of opening him onto the floor. Aypo sputtered and his hands darted down to gather up his entrails which he now was cradling and trying to stuff back in. Pink spittle foamed about his mouth as he collapsed in a bloody heap, the boy still atop him and pulling for good measure. Ten-Paw was already fishing the key ring from under him when the boy released his hold and soon they had unclasped their ankles and were running from the room.

They darted down the sand floored hallway with no discernible direction in mind, spurred on in both hope and hopelessness. In that mad dark scramble they came upon a kitchen with its door ajar, inside was a simple bed with a side table and washbowl and across the way were myriad wood stoves and ovens on which boiled the foul porridge that had been these last year’s sustenance. There at the bedside the boy recognized a glimmer of his past life, the orichalc dagger that had been taken from him during his arrest lay next to the washbowl and the map case of Sayma’s diligent make hung by a strap round the bedpost. He hurried into Aypo’s kitchen and gathered up the last two bits of his past in addition to a leather water skin which he filled and stoppered, his hands still shaking from the violence. The two ran on.

They rounded corner after corner and hall after hall of selfsame doors to theirs until they came to a hall in which one of the doors was ajar and was casting from it a russet glow into the hall. They crept up to the door and the boy peered through to the scene within. A man was shackled to the wall by both wrists and the soot-elf stood before him, black as ever, with the Satakal Brand plunged into the stove at his feet. He was reciting his welcoming speech to the man with the same forced verbosity he had afforded the boy.

“—is Satakal, ye know it? To remind ye that your sentence has no end! That it has no beginning neither! Aye, ye’ve always been here since gods first stalked the Mundus and here ye will—“

Before the soot-elf could finish his practiced monologue the boy was behind him and had driven the dagger firmly under his shoulder blade. He wheeled around, urine yellow eyes wide in shock, but already the boy had prised the brand from his hand and, seeing the soot-elf’s awegaped mouth, forced it down his throat with a terrible hiss. They loosed the prisoner’s shackles which sent that unknown man crumpling to the floor in tears and quit the room before he had collected himself. Behind them came the clatter of alarm and yet more men of the warden. They turned up a stair and charged, two steps per stride until at last, at the stairs apex, a trapdoor above them yielded to blinding sun.

It took almost a full minute before they could see in that light, so accustomed they had become to near sightlessness, and shapes and tones came slowly and painfully. They stood atop one of three tall sandstone towers, each connected by an arch supported skyway that bounded a host of smaller spires just peaking above the dunes which they knew to be the cells. There were no walls, only the towers and desert which hid the connecting tunnels below. They spied at the foot of their own tower a large door, the entrance to the prison, and outside it were lashed some twenty camels that bellowed anxiously all and together were looking to the west, who’s orientation the boy gathered from the shadows that the late morning sun cast ahead of the camels’ stares. He followed their gaze west, then up, and beheld a looming wall of sand the likes of which neither the boy nor the cat had ever in all their desert dwelling days imagined. The roiling storm rose a mountain’s height into the sky and stretched the horizon, Tava’s wrath itself manifest. It would be on them in minutes. Below their feet came pounding at the trapdoor and muffled yells and the boy slid the metal scabbard of his dagger through the latch to keep it barred. “We’re through!” He yelled, “If the guards don’t kill us that storm will no doubt do it with glee.”

“Ahziss ko traajir zara vado jaadi jaji vara vasa!” Shouted Ten-Paw and the boy understood him to mean, “This one would gladly take the wind over they that are below.”

“Then we jump!” He yelled over the din of the coming storm and, hands clasped together, jump they did.

They hit the peak of a dune which had pushed itself against the tower’s base and the boy felt his ankle dislocate on the impact but before he had managed to register the pain he and J’zar both were tumbling down the dune in a flurry of troubled sand. Ten-Paw hoisted him to standing.

“My ankle!”

“No time to cry!” the Khajiit yelled, supporting him by the pit of his arm, and together they hobbled towards the camels. Ten-Paw took the boy’s knife and hacked each one of the camel’s moorings loose and they all took off towards the east save one whose reigns the Khajiit caught and held. He hoisted the boy atop the camel and climbed on it himself and they took off away the storm which now towered overhead. Above them the prison guards had burst through the trapdoor and some were knocking arrows into bows but all were overcome by the sandstorm before they could let fly.

The escapees rode hard as they could surrounded by the biting sands and howling winds until they too were overpowered and the camel fell in a plume of sand that was carried up even as it was made and lost amidst the wind. J’zar pulled his robes over them both and the camel’s recumbent head and they all shared breath for hours as the storm whipped about them in primeval fury.

Chapter VI: The Alik'r, The Salt Flats, Saved by Saltmen

“Does not the serpent made of sky above reflect the serpent made of the sea below? Yea, it is so.”

-Knowing Satakal, Seven Redguard Maxims

House of The Thief, Master Rising. Prograde Tricky Planet, Tu’whacca, in northern hemisphere. Recumbent Atronach on western Horizon

Long dark hours passed under the Khajiit’s cloak and they felt the storm deposit against them, grain by grain, a carpet of sand. Their breath shallow, even the camel’s, in that cloistered dark. When, at last Tava’s verbose remonstrations had ceased to blow the camel became restless and struggled to stand, its head still covered with them to protect it from choking. As it stood so to were they forced up, finally daring to push out, with difficulty, from under the sandstorm’s accumulation. They arose in small cataracts of sand, like Ra Netu self-exhumed under a grip of foul sorcery.

The Sand Pits were nowhere to be seen amidst the sea of dunes they found themselves in, nor was any evidence that man or mer had ever existed on Nirn at all, so empty their environs. The day’s light, only just now returned to them with the passing of the storm, was already fading to twilight. The boy had his weight off his ankle and he struggled to erect himself, clutching Ten-Paw’s shoulder and sucking through his teeth in pain. “Sit,” said Ten-Paw, “this one will reset you.”

Ten-Paw was crouched in front of the boy, the affected foot cradled in his lap. He was grasping it by the heel and the ball and crooning reassuringly in Ta’agra. Just then Ten-Paw’s eyes went wide in surprise, staring at something behind the boy and he exclaimed, “Jone and Jode! What is that?”

The boy whipped his head around in fear but saw nothing in the darkening sand. The Khajiit’s feint enacted, he twisted the ankle, graceful but quick, popping it back in place unceremoniously. The boy yelped as the pain changed from a throb to a sharp dart up his leg.

“You have a god for that, Vethiit?” Laughed Ten-Paw.

“We do,” cried the boy holding his ankle, “God of Never Trust What’s Behind You Really Exists. God of Never Trust A Sugarshit too!” They both laughed, the boy wiping tears from his eyes, grimacing as he chuckled.

In time Ten-Paw had bandaged the boy as best he could and they sat together sharing of the water-skin and assessing their possibles and circumstances.

“We’re lucky,” said the boy “This camel and what little water we managed to take may yet save us.” He was looking up at the sky. “I think I can guide us North. Wherever we are in the Alik’r, North will lead us to the Illiac.” He traced the constellations in the sky to Ten-Paw. “You know the moons better than I ever will, J’zar,” said the boy, “but the stars are a walking map to any of my people who still watch them. There! You see? The Thief above us, right at Firmament’s zenith. That means we are in the House of The Thief, the month of Evening Star. Yes, there’s the Tricky Plane(t), it holds dominion over The Thief, Imperial Astronomers call it Arkay.” He paused. “There,” he said sweeping his arm down and pointing over the dunes towards the setting sun, “off that way, just next to sun’s last glimmers! You can barely make it out. The Atronach, recumbent on the horizon, has not yet left the sky. It must be early in the month. The sun sets to the west so the Atronach will too as it gets deeper into Evening Star. If we can keep it to our left as we travel, we should be able to find our way even by night.”

Ten-Paw clapped his hands together. “You read the heavens like an Elder Scroll, Vethiit. This one never knew!”

“We never had a chance to see the stars before,” said the boy, “I had almost forgotten how they looked in that cell. Lucky thing about the stars, you may not notice them a month or a year but they will always be there when next you have need to see them. Our recognitions persist in a comforting way, hazarding such ancient reckonings anew whenever we look up with the purpose to see.”

They mounted the camel and rode long into the night, The Atronach on its side ever to their left, and on until morning broke to the east. At dawn they took inventory of the land and sheltered against now scorching heat in the shadowed lee of a large dune. Ahead of them the dunes gave way to a swath of flat ochre earth, festooned with dark pebbles. “When yon sun reaches its highnoon throne I fear we’ll get to know the God of Light That Bakes Us Whole,” said the boy but the Khajiit was only half listening, eyes squinting at the horizon where there was a seam of glimmering silver between the delineation of sky and sand. It seemed to flutter, distorted in the heat.

“Bright Moons!” shouted Ten-Paw “Does this one go mad in the heat, Vethiit?” The boy followed his gaze and landed on the seam, a jeweler’s phantom necklace splayed lean and straight across the farthest dunes. Was it… A vast and shallow lake? It couldn’t be. Atop the watery seam a city looked to be floating, first inverse then not, stacked upon itself as if mirrored down and up. A mirage.

“You’re a walker of the Khaj, Ten-Paw, like to me. You know it as well as I, it is nothing but a high and wellwrought mirage!”

“J’zar is no fool, of course it’s a mirage! You think this one some spoiled kitten, raised in gentler lands? Think he’ll run to lap that specter’s lake and leave parchtounged?” he scoffed. “What’s atop it, that city, this one has seen phantoms like this. The true city is beyond. If we can get abaft it we may be saved!” Ten-Paw mounted the camel and offered a hand to the boy “We storm the mirage!”

Their water had been drained to the last drop by that morning’s end and now, as the sun above threatened to glassmake the ground below, the boy and Khajiit both were raw of rash and burn. J’zar had a better time of it, his fur protecting him from the baking rays, but he was overheating and his energy waned like a retrograde moon. They took turns riding the camel, their last grace, for fear of wearing it to death. The flatlands they had surveyed from the dune were far greater than either had foreseen and after hours the dusty ground turned first to baked clay, tilemade by crossing cracks, and further on to salt.

It had been no mirage, that distant water. It now lay about them, real as the boy’s own hands, in those salt flats and it stretched for numberless miles in every direction, still and eternal. The water was no more than a quarter inch at most and under its skim the bonewhite salt refused it from land below. It sat there, unmoving and unbroken like an infinite mirror around them. The sky was reflected without blemish in every direction so they could scarcely tell where it converged with true sky and Magnus was made a twin. The only thing they had to orient themselves were the illusory floating mountains and distant spires of the city, which seemed now just as far away as when they had set out, islands of reality amidst an unreal sky.

They persisted with bowing legs and buckling knees until at last the sun had set, taunted all the while by the undrinkable water. It was so pregnant with salt that, as it climbed the cuffs of their dragging pants and evaporated off, it grew on them in pronounced deposits of boxy white crystals which they had to stop to loose. They stubbornly persisted against the mirror, now by night, and the stars danced twice, as above, so below. What beauty, what terror in that second uninhabitable sky, which multiplied the stars in cosmic begetting. The boy stared down at his face and he realized it was the first time he had seen that reflected other since the days he spent at his father’s estate. Nothing in the cartography of that face sparked a recognition and he wondered, ‘will Sayma even know me?’

They walked on. Above them and below Big Papa’s children danced in an arcing bow that was reflected into a massive circle and the boy’s finger mindlessly traced his scar. The starlit hoop kindled an old maxim to Satakal in his mind, “Does not the serpent made of sky above reflect the serpent made of the sea below? Yea, it is so.” They floated through that universal sky, causing scant ripples in their wake as if they hung in the High Void itself, marooned Mananauts adrift in the waters of Oblivion.

Many more hours had passed before they caught a glimpse of dry land, a lightless smear of an island some few-hundred yards out and past that in the water sat many equally sized and spaced mounds, visible in the dark only for their lack of castback stars. The thought of more sand and desert did not excite hope in the boy but anything seemed preferable to the saline skim.

Ten-Paw, who’s turn it had been to walk before the camel sunk to his knees in the water and would not rise. The boy tried to dismount to help him up but his legs went belligerent from dehydration and they buckled as he touched the ground sending him face first into the colossal puddle. He struggled up, clothes sopping saltwater, and dragged J’zar onto the little island where he fell at his side, spent utterly.

The boy awoke to cracked and wrinkled hands cradling his head, feeling his brow. Another pair of hands were putting a water-skin to his parched lips. He coughed at the sudden rush of water and tried to sit up but the hands kept him supine. “Lay back, traveler, hours more and we’d have burnt offerings to the God of Takes Us While We Wander and sung you off to Tu’Whacca.” The boy did as asked and drank again from the skin. Ten-Paw was receiving a skin similarly next to him. The merciful hands belonged to a threesome of workers, one of whom now pitched a shade blanket and, as the boy gained his bearings, he saw he was still on the thin island from the night before. The strange starless piles he had seen were manifold mounds of salt set to drying amidst the mirror.

The camel was gone, wandered off in the night not content to be dragged down with its hapless drivers. “You must be mad or desperate to travel across the flats,” said one of the saltmen, “even by– Especially by night.”

“Neither mad nor desperate,” lied the boy “We went awry the road to Sentinel. We’re merchants but our camel and all our stock… Waylaid by highwaymen and driven drakeless into the back country.” This was the first lie of note the boy had spoke save those white and nervous lies of youth.

“Diagna’s sideways member!” said another of the saltmen, “You two own fortunes extreme, eh? One moment driven into the salt yet the next across them alive. Your highs reach the stars yet your lows plumb the trenches, Travelers. As it happens you find yourselves not far off Sentinel’s gates.”

“Then the city we saw, the mirage in the sands?” said the boy.

“Aye, real enough. A trick of the light casts it, Ruptga so be it, but a truth lies further still. We make for Sentinel the morrow. If ye help to load our camels, when you’re recovered well enough, we offer you company, sup and drink enough to reach her walls.”

Ten-Paw and the boy sat under the shade cloth drinking from the skins a few hours more. The saltmen gave them pulped aloe and cactus which they graciously received and set the salve to skin, easing their burns. The saltmen returned to the shade cloth at noon to quit the sun and a small luncheon of musky camel jerky and green olives was served. They napped and chatted through the midday heat and J’zar impressed the saltmen with tales of Senchal, Corinthe, and Dune. Before long the boy felt he had strength enough to help the saltmen work and they gave him a spare pair of duneripper scale boots and a shovel.

They spent the remaining hours of light shoveling salt into large pannier bags which the camels bore and as the sun set in a brilliant orange sliver they were mounted and riding north. One of the saltmen rode in front with a lodestone compass and oriented them against the brightening sea of stars.

Chapter VII: Return to Sentinel, The First Map

“Temperance is even more necessary outside the law than within.”

-Thief’s Journal, Sentinel

Morning light spilled through the city gate such that it gold-rimmed the silhouettes of the saltmen and their traveling companions alike. They looked, at a distance, one and all like disguised vassals of Meridia, demons whose inner radiance seeped the seams of shabbily tailored mortal costumes. A pit had been growing in the boy’s stomach since they had first seen the morning lamps and sinews of breakfast smoke that trailed off of distant Sentinel but now, as they grew nearer the gates, a palpable fear set him to a sickness he hadn’t felt since first choking back Aypo’s porridge in the pits. He trailed the saltmen and was scratching furiously at his head, overcome by a nervous fit that manifested in an itch insatiable, a paranoid brood of phantom lice. Ten-Paw pulled his camel next to the boy’s and caught his arm. “Tranquil moons, Vethiit. Play any character you need to pass the gates but pray don’t play the madman.”

The boy felt a small warm bead sliding down his forehead and, thinking it sweat, he made to wipe it with his shirtsleeve. He paused when it bloomed crimson on the dirty rags. He had drawn blood in the anxious picking and scratching.

“What can I do, Ten-Paw?” pleaded the boy, “What if the guards know my face? What if the warden has sent news of our escape ahead of us?”

“This does not worry J’zar.” Said Ten-Paw “But your nervous ticks do. Only one who is mad or stupid would feel no fear, this one does not fault you that. Be simply as you are, feel as you truly feel, let yourself be tired, Vethiit. Be the tired salt-caked man you are, nothing more.”

Robed and turbaned guards buttressed the gate and one of these held an occluding hand out towards them. The guard’s palm had been tattooed with a sigil of Fahara’jad which the boy did not yet recognize. The saltmen, the boy and the cat halted all before the guards who looked over the saltweathered five with the hurried scrutiny of duty, checked the camel’s pannier bags with a probing rod to ensure the salt hid no contraband and began to wave them through. The boy felt a weight lifting from the pit of his gut as he nudged the camel past the guards who spared him no second glances. As Ten-Paw passed them, though, one of the guards barred him with the probing rod against his chest.

“You, Khajiit, are you with these men?” he commanded.

“This one is their companion, yes.” Said Ten-Paw. “He travels to market to ensure they receive fair compensation for their labors.”

“A Baandari?” spoke the second guard. “Forgive us, Khajiit, but you may not enter the city. We’ve only just loosed fair Sentinel from the dread Knahaten and the high king has decreed that all Betmer conduct their business from outside the gates until such time that all Tamriel is utterly expunged of it.

“This one does not understand,” said Ten-Paw, “he has neither seen the sugared sands of Elsweyr since before the Flu nor has he crossed tails with lizardfolk in all his days.”

“All the same, you’ll have to join your fellows in the gate-house camps after they conduct their business within, the king affords no exceptions to his decree,” said one of the guards as the boy rounded his camel along side of J’zar’s.

Ten-Paw leaned in and whispered to the boy, “Go and do your business, Vethiit. This one will abide by these decrees and wait with the other Baandari in their camps. Come and find him when your business in the city is concluded.” The Khajiit now pulled him in close and barely breathed his next line, “Temperance is even more necessary outside the law than within. Do not proclaim yourself as returned from the parapets, use caution even with those you trust, the pits still hunger for us, Vethiit.” Ten-Paw released the boy and nodded to the guards as he dismounted and turned from the gate, making his way to a clutch of brightly colored carpet-walled tents pitched in the shade of Sentinel’s wall. The boy rounded the camel and proceeded unmolested through the gate. Inside he returned the camel to the waiting saltmen with thanks and set off into the city on foot.

Sentinel was a grand cacophony of sweet nostalgia and troubling paranoia. Every street and every window seemed to both inspire fear in and comfort the boy. Every merchant’s shout was familiar, every opening door a new danger. He resolved to first visit his father, making clear everything that had happened to him and laying bare Lazar’s betrayals. Together they would expose Lazar before the king. Next he would find Sayma and beg her forgiveness for leaving so long and unannounced. And finally he would request the king pardon Ten-Paw for services to the state in helping him bring the traitor to justice.

The boy noticed new regalia and banners hanging from doorways and walls and new flags flying o’er Sentinels domes and towers. Gone were Ramzi’s sigils and in their place new heralds flew, some contrasting blue against the sandstone and emblazoned with a silver lion. This troubled the boy, Lazar’s skeins seemed to have unraveled true and unquestioned. It’s no matter, he thought, Lazar’s betrayal wasn’t just against Ramzi, it was a betrayal of the people. Who knows how many innocents died in the plague. The new king, whoever he is, Forbear or Crown, will surely see reason. He resolved his courage with these thoughts as he set down the road to his fathers estate. I will have justice, he thought, Lazar will pay.

It was not his father’s sole house servant, Kaftee, who answered his knocking, nor was it Anselm, but Rufa. The cook, who held many years when the boy knew him, looked even more ancient now, his face marked by deep trenches of age and liver spots speckling his balding crown like dark constellations. The boy’s face lit up at the sight of his old cook and teacher but the gaze returned was cold and impersonal. No recognition of the boy sparked in the old cook’s eyes. The boy brushed back his oily hair to show the cook his face with a smile but the cook’s stare continued heedlessly and it sobered him.

“What business do you have here, stranger?” inquired the cook.

“I–” the boy fumbled for words remembering the Khajiit’s advice, “I am here to inquire about the whereabouts of a boy, Ahezzar af-Anselm. Is his father home?”

“Nay,” said the cook “that is a painful name to remember. Come in traveler, we now have questions for each other.”

The boy followed Rufa into the house of his youth. It was dark inside and the furniture was covered by great bolts of cloth such that they hung like ghosts in the light-starved hall. As they passed farther in the boy’s unease grew. It seemed empty, lifeless, a shell devoid of the meaning it held for him in halcyon days. They passed through the dining room with its vaulting mosaic of stars now hidden in the shadows of drawn curtains and descended the stairs to the kitchens which Rufa’s small room abutted. They went into that room and Rufa motioned to the boy to sit at a table near the hearth. The old cook stooped and stirred its coals to new life and threw a splintered chair leg into the fireplace.

“Ahezzar is a name I don’t have cause to speak these days,” said the cook.

“He vanished not long before the flu took hold of Sentinel. It is said he was apprehended by the king’s own men while engaged in a treasonous plot. He was accused of bringing the flu within the city walls to spark discord between Crown and Forbear. An attempt, they say, to ignite civil war. I’m told he died fleeing.”

“But surely you don’t believe that slander?” said the boy, shouting inside his mind at the injustice done his name. He was reeling.

“I knew Ahezzar from birth, knew him to be a just and thoughtful boy. To this day I struggle to understand how the only son to the honorable Anselm do Hegathe would, or even could, act as he is said to.”

“But where is Anselm now?” Asked the boy. “His house seems dark and dust lays thick in it.”

“Indeed,” said the cook looking down, “Anselm was so distraught to have lost his son… The dishonor of the events, you see… The piecemeal news of his capture and demise… He couldn’t– My master and friend took his life this First Seed. Found him hanging myself, though that’s all I’ll say of that tragedy. I simply watch the house until such day that the king’s treasury reclaims it for the crown.”

The boy was struck dumb with emotion and fought not to show it. He tried to steel himself against the news but tears began to well in his eyes. His father, dead. Taking his life in dishonor. Dead by the boy’s own hand. No, dead by Lazar’s fell workings. That snake, No’loigra… His hands were balled in fists that drained of color as he clenched them. He steadied his quaking voice against the news, a poorly trained actor who was now forgetting his script.

“Wh-What news of Ahezzar’s betrothed?” he asked. “Would she know where to find the boy?”

“I think not,” said Rufa. “She wedded his friend not long after Ahezzar’s disappearance. I believe she has a child by him. Though neither have cause to visit with me, this house holds dark memories for them both I think.”

Pain amongst pains. Sayma wedded to Lazar and a child born by them. His cursed friend had taken every joy he knew, dashed his future against the rocky shores of the illiac, and kept the best of the broken pieces for himself. The boy self-swallowed in his sadness went silent and the cook posed his own question. “What cause do you have to look for Ahezzar? Why pry open such unhappy scabs?”

“I’m a friend, looking for the boy,” he lied “to see justice done. I don’t believe this narrative of treachery true. I hope, one day, to see his name returned to honor.”

“Best leave unhappy pasts to the sands of history.” said Rufa “The boy is dead, or rather dead to us who remember him. Pray leave him to Tu’whacca and the Far-Shores where, if his honor is truly intact, he may yet know peace.”

The boy thanked his old and oblivious cook and turned to leave, hiding tears he could no longer control. He staggered forth from the dark house into the midday sun and set off for Lazar’s manor with boiling blood.

He still had his possibles tucked into the folds of his tattered robes, the Yokudan dagger by which he would slay Lazar and Sayma’s city maps which had not left his side since he had retrieved them in the pits. He now pulled out the map case, a simple cylinder of leather tooled with an embossed serpent which wrapped the tube from end to end. He uncoupled its brass fasteners and pulled out the roll of studiously rendered maps. He flipped through them, each delicately colored and ornately bordered, until he had the map of Sentinel before him. He marked his fathers house with a square within a circle and thought to himself, by this mark I know that house to be empty of any value. I’ll know I have no cause to return.

He came upon Lazar’s estate in the afternoon sun and noted its newest feature. The whole of the grounds had been encircled with a fence such that the only serviceable entrance to the manor passed through the stable house and a guarded gate. He was pacing the limits of the fence in red thought when he saw her through its bars. Sayma, beautiful as she was his last free night, sat at a fountain beyond the fence. She was looking away from him so that he caught her profile, contrasted before the shimmering water. He was about to call out to her, to shout with joy that her Ahezzar still lived and loved her, when her child, a little black haired boy, ran up and clung to her robes. With a beaming face she lifted the child and cradled him and the boy outside the fence was broken anew.

He spent a while yet observing his lost love and her new child. They seemed so joyful. Never had he seen her so happy or beautiful as she was with that child. Each step Lazar’s son took seemed to brighten her more and to cut the boy deeper.

He soon had to look away, still clutching the fence’s bars and he wept there for a time. He had in his mind expected a sorrowful Sayma, locked in a tower against her will, like the thread of so many old yarns, in need of rescue. Yet here she sat, not just free but happy too. She didn’t need him, this tired broken convict. His desire for revenge and justice that before had consumed him seemed to weakly ebb and when a patrolling guard came along to shoo the boy from the fence he didn’t resist at all, simply wandering back to the markets like every other broken beggar. He produced the Sentinel map again as he walked and marked Lazar’s house too, empty.

Chapter VIII: The First Turn of the Pick Pays All Debts

See the boy, now swept down in the lees of sand danced streets in brightening midday sun, gutterkin and faceless by friendmade fate. Who drags those sands to find lost name but comes up blank and even civic domes turn their golden faces from the sight. What itinerant demons set to squat in such a vacant home as the selfless man? When autochthon of family blood departs what tenant yet remains? Yea, the name did die in that prison cell but lo’ a body with his face persists. History scorned, pariah-made, and something of a fire endures behind those eyes. See him set upon such venging streaks now redder than that father’s selftook own. One tyranny is lifted, that of blood and noble thought, as another’s grip enclasps. The tyranny of justice left undone, whose price is steeper than any one man can haul.

The pit in the boys stomach had grown, by broken heart or, less sentimentally, hunger, and he saw no course but to return to Ten-Paw and ask his advice. He hadn’t even felt so alone in the Sand Pits and now desperately sought the Khajiit’s company in the Baandari encampment. Ten-Paw was sitting on an ornately spun carpet in one of the tents speaking Ta’agra with an older white-haired Khajiit. The older cat sat bare-chested and cross-legged with a similar turban of dreadlocked hair to Ten-Paw and the two, it seemed, were sharing a bowl of sugar. They talked like those who knew each other in younger days or at least shared that certain camaraderie. He pushed open the flap of the tent and stepped inside, stooped under its ceiling, and the older Khajiit did bow his head in greeting.

“Shijoh,” the old cat said. “J’zar-Dar tells this one many things of your adventures, Vethiit. Rare for a shave-skin to help our kind as you have.” The boy noticed as he spoke the older Khajiit’s eyes stared through him, two cloudy bowls of milk. He was blind. Ten-Paw nodded to another Khajiit who brought the boy a plate of steaming food which he set into it with unashamed hunger, still fighting back tears at the reopened wounds of youth. When he was finished the older Khajiit put his hand into the boys robes and felt the scar on his chest. “You two have suffered much at Vethiit hands, boy. J’zar has told this one your bitter tale. What did you find in the city?”

“Nothing,” said the boy, “nothing of my old life. My father is dead, my name known only for treason I did not commit, and my love happily shares a child with my betrayer. It seems not even my face remains, I am unrecognized by even my most adored teacher.”

“Then you are truly free,” posited the old Khajiit but the boy only groaned.

“Free to be hunted? Free to rule no house and eat garbage from midden heaps? Free to die alone and starving? What good is that freedom?!”

“This one thinks you miss his point, Vethiit. You have the freedom of a no-face man. The boy you were, Ahezzar af-Anselm, is dead. Now you make the man you want, the man you can, in his stead. This one never promised you happiness but you are free. It took this one long moons to claim back his name. This one was slave to Dunmer. He spent many moons under Dres whips and in their shackles.” The Khajiit put forth his wrists where the boy saw two scarred and hairless rings. “Many Khajiit, Sakhliit too, died by Dres hands. So too died this one, so Dunmer thought. But this one rose from the deadcarts and slew his masters with the sharpened femur of his fallen friend. This one saw his justice done and he ran. Vaba Maaszi Lhajiito. Sometimes, It is necessary to run away. For when you run you live to fight another day. Vethiit would do more good alive and free than dead or jailed. You are now free of Thijizzrini, you can be more than you were.”

"Thijizzrini. You remember this word? said Ten-Paw, “Khajiit have no Ta’agra for ‘rules’ or ‘laws’ only ‘foolish concepts’. These ones are no Baandari, though they hide it well, they are Renrija Krin, as is J’zar.”

“Renrija… Krin?”

“The Laugh of the Landless, The Mercenary’s Grin,” said Ten-Paw. “The group is fragmented these days as always, it’s hard to pin down a group with no true dogma. Some fight with the elven Dominion in the south, some have even become privateers for the All-Flags Navy, call themselves ‘All-Fangs’. Others rove with no allegiance at all, it’s difficult to describe, Vethiit. We follow whim yet we love our home. Gzalzi vaberzarita maaszi. Absurdity has become necessity.”

The old Khajiit now spoke and his voice sounded as if it came forth in two tones at once, both purring and hissing. “This one is Dro’Baash-Dar and he had thought J’zar-Dar long dead. You do Khajiit and Renrija much kindness, Vethiit, this is why we sup you and offer this advice. The mans have declawed you. If you strike at them in vengeance now it will be as Alfiq pawing at great Senche-Raht. Not much good. You raise your name’s flag and it will be torn down in as much time. Your Lazar is not here either, Dro’Baash has asked after him. He travels abroad to Daggerfall on errands for new king, Fahara’jad. I will let J’zar-Dar teach you Renrija ways but you should leave Sentinel. Leave and not return.”

Ten-Paw took the boys hand, “We Renrija understand revenge. I know it to be in your heart, Ahezzar. To seek your justice, be free of law. Be free of revenge too, then exact it in freedom.” The boy was staring at him confused. “Q’zi no vano thzina ualizz. When I contradict myself I speak the truth. You’ll get it in time, Vethiit.” He now beckoned the boy to pull out his maps which he did. Ten-Paw was reading the map of Sentinel and he paused on the boy’s mark over his father and Lazar’s manors. “What is this mark, Vethiit? Oh? Empty? This one likes this mark. We’ make more tonight while Khajiit shows you how to skirt Thijizzrini.”

That night Dro’Baash led them to a knot of vandalized sandstone walls standing lorn and hoary outside the city limits. What remained of those blasted ruins and their low walls traced a vague labyrinth in the sand, oddly meditative to walk. The older Khajiit lead them with broken eyes and somehow never missed a step. They came upon, past that ancient knot and its derelict pillars, a thick sandstone door shut against the sand in a small rocky scarp. Comprising the forgotten door, which in all his time living in Sentinel the boy had never seen, were two massive slabs fit so snug that one could not slide an edge of elfglass betwixt. Dro’Baash carried on unconcerned until he stood just shy of the door and with one claw he gave the door a certain rhythm of taps. After the final tap he traced his claw down the door’s seem and it shivered to life opening itself to a dark sand-floored hallway within. A language of ornament like to the old tombs of the Na-Totambu decked those halls and, farther in, down a flight of sandstone steps, the boy thought he saw lantern light and he heard an unmistakable but muffled tavern din.

“Many cities have these,” Ten-Paw was saying as they descended, “refuges of ill repute, magicked and warded against detection and needing passcodes or handshakes to enter, a den of thieves, a veritable rogues gallery. They know no governance and have only passing relation to The Guild.”

The hallway opened to a massive subterranean chamber, a grand cistern under Sentinel proper, supported by a forest of sandstone pillars which reared themselves from dark water. Its far walls stretched further than the limits of torch and lamplight that now illumined their approach, such that the boy could not see how far back the cistern really stretched. The columns were spolia, mismatched repurposings of older ruins, and some grew green with waterscum. Dividing the cistern’s expanse was a wide sandstone causeway and atop that it were tents, thick carpets and wooden deckings which all were populated by dark-faced but revelrous rabble. Stalls were manned, goods exchanged, It was a strange and alien bazaar.

“You do not need to mind your map-case so closely,” laughed Ten-Paw, “there is some honor among thieves.”

“I never knew such a place could exist right under my– the guards’– the king’s nose!” Exclaimed the boy whose senses were being overwhelmed by the black market’s enchanting arcades.

Gaudy prostitutes mingled with Imperial turncoats and shifteyed merchants hawked all manner of enchanted bauble and trinket. Walls were lost behind a patchwork of mastercraft paintings. A mad looking Breton passed them, stooped with the weight of hundreds of brass charms about his neck, lapis eyes set into brass hands, amulets of Morwha and little hammers of Julianos, Khajiiti Dro’kin beads and Nibenese badges, all wards against any devisable curse or hex. He spit in his hand and showed it to them as they passed then jingled off into a dark corner.

“Chezan!” Ten-Paw was calling to a Khajiit who was languidly leaning on a bestrewn and trinket buried counter smoking a hookah. He was twirling his beaded mane in a clawed finger.

“Var an Khaja, trevan.” said Chezan and the boy understood it to mean, “Sugar and Sands, friend.” The two Khajiit embraced and Chezan turned and hugged Dro’Baash. “Ahnurr, Renrija na zivsho vara dorr jajo pal!”

“Chezan is a fence, Vethiit.” Ten-Paw was saying to the boy. “This one, and others like him will launder ill-gotten goods, make clean those things we take”

“But what honor is there in theft?” The boy asked, “I was made criminal unjustly. Now you say I must self-fulfill that accusation? What cause have I to become what my accusers would have me be?”

“Ahzirr Traajijazeri. We justly take by force, Vethiit. Your honor will do you no good starving and washed up in the gutters of the streets. Think of the many backroom handshakes between politicians, those brokerings of power with no regard for common good, which got you here. Cystic wealth grows across Tamriel at the expense of the people. There is an honor in lancing that boil. ”

They continued on past the bazaar and its tavern platforms to the far side of the cistern. At that far end they found a hole had been broken through from the cistern into a root cellar. Dro’Baash left them there and returned to Chezan.

“From here we go in stealth, Vethiit. Just stay low and quiet, keep behind me and make no sudden movements. Tonight this one shows you the Renrija ways!”

They passed through the cellar and out a wooden bulwark into the warm Sentinel night. Jasmine and Pomegranate wafted through the air and the town was quiet save some distant jackal cries from further out to sand. The boy had some idea where they were, behind the Sisters of the Sands Inn. They crept up behind the tower of the Mages Guild and came to an enchanter’s shop, its door was locked.

“Now this one will teach you to pick a lock,” whispered Ten-Paw producing a small roll of leather bound with a strap. He unfurled it and produced a few long metal picks. “To pick a lock these tools must become extensions of your self. You must feel the inner workings of the lock, imagine it in your mind’s eye. Picture, Vethiit, five pins that push into a cylinder, Yes? In a row, five pins sit, and all are held by springs. Now push the pins down one by one until you feel their ‘sweet spot’, when they lock in place. Push too hard, spring recoils and breaks the pick. Too gentle and the pin won’t stick, yes? While you push the pins keep tension on the cylinder with this.” He produced a bent flat piece of metal. “This is a tension wrench. Once all pins are locked in place turn tension wrench and bolt opens faster than Argonian maid in hatching season. Simple, yes?”

“I– Yes, simple enough. I think I can do it,” whispered the boy.

“Good,” Ten-Paw said, “You try and this one will keep watch for guards.”

The boy had difficulty picturing the pins. He felt at them with the pick, testing their resistance but none were sticking. He probed at the lock for a long time and Ten-Paw was getting more and more frustrated, hissing directions and tips at him. Once, as he felt the first pin lock in place, Ten-Paw had to grab him and pull him around the corner of the shop, as a patrolling guard silently passed.

“Mind your back while you work!” J’zar was angrily whispering.

“Bu–But if I’m looking over my shoulder… I thought you were looking out for us,” the boy argued back.

“Indeed. But this one will not always be here to play lookout for you. Now, try again, Vethiit.”

Finally the boy cracked the lock and the door relented with a sigh. The burglars crept into the house and Ten-Paw immediately went to a safebox behind the counter. The boy helped the Khajiit crack that too and they crept out the back of the shop through a window. Outside the boy produced his map and, thinking a bit as he crouched there in the shadows, he put two marks over the shop. One mark, a circle with a divided triangle inside, denoted “Locked” while another, a diamond with a barred rectangle within would denote “Strongbox”.

They carried on like this long into the night, creeping, then picking, then taking what gold and valuables they could and all the while the boy marked the map further with more symbols, Guard routes and dangerous homes, wealthy homes versus empty, strongboxes and locked doors, until the map sat heavier with annotating ink.

They came at last unto the fence of Lazar’s estate and they watched the dark windows for a time. “You know what this one thinks, Vethiit,” said Ten-Paw looking over at the boy with concern.

“Aye,” the boy replied “Not yet, friend, you were and are right. Everything must be just so for my return. I must clear my name, see justice done, and dazzle Sayma all in the same breath. Let’s head back to Dro’Baash-Dar, I’d like to leave this city for a while,” he was jingling the bag of coins he had amassed, “and I think I’ve now the means to do it.”

J’zar was beaming at him. “The taste of gold is like sugar, friend, this one worries he has given you the sweet-tooth.”

“Just so,” smiled the thief and the two stalked into the night together.

Continued in Part II