Rabbit-ra rabi vabi
Ixii-kodara renrij vabi
Steal a black book from an abbey
(Ahzir traajijazeri)
Look within and it will ferry
Looker to the great library
Ink-walled prison; this one's earned it
Destined for a long internment
Alive in Mundus-barred adjournment
Didn't heed her wise discernment
Nixinee read the poem for the third time. Her face was hard, her jaw tight. She hadn't been the one to write it in her journal. The poem hadn't been there at all that morning when she'd tucked the journal into her pack and led Basil, her camel, down the broken road from Elinhir toward Belkarth. It had appeared sometime before she opened the book again at her early afternoon break. Now her half-eaten apple sat beside her, forgotten, as she flicked her eyes across the words.
"Rabbit-ra rabi vabi; Nixii-kodari-" She muttered rapidly, trying the familiar words on her tongue. "Rabbit-ra-rabbit-vabbit- ah, fuck."
She knew who had written the poem. She just didn't know how, or why. She picked up her apple. Ants had already found it. She decided to let them have it. Nixinee didn't strictly need to eat anymore; vampirism had altered her metabolic habits. Still, she liked to keep in practice. It would be embarrassing if she ever had to attend a fancy dinner and discovered she had forgotten how to chew.
"Come on, Basil," she said as she stood and dusted off her robes. She slung herself artlessly onto his back and nudged his flank. Naturally, he didn't respond until he decided he was finished grazing, but Nixinee had adopted a bemused patience when it came to her companion's recalcitrance, and soon enough they were ambling westward.
She didn't know if the cloaked, half-faced figure was still following her. She supposed she would find out soon enough.
Nixinee had gone to Elinhir to meet the scholar Phrastus in hopes that he could shed some light on something she had picked up while investigating the cult of Mephala in the western Colovian highlands: an enchanted puzzle box that Nixinee had yet to unlock. Unfortunately, Phrastus had packed up and left for parts unknown; the shady fellow who tried to sell her the scholar's home claimed that he had moved permanently to the Imperial City. Given the state of affairs in central Cyrodiil, Nixinee thought that to be unlikely indeed.
Her sights then shifted to Sentinel, the Redguard capital. It was all the way across Hammerfell from Elinhir, but it was still the closest major center of learning and culture that wasn't overrun by war or Daedric invasion. It wouldn't be Nixinee's first trip across the harsh Hammerfell wilds. She had bought Basil from a cheerful woman outside the gates of Elinhir and had gotten underway.
The towering crags and empty, arid stretches that gave Craglorn its name juxtaposed with gentle slopes that led to idyllic streams and rivers that themselves fed into lakes where nereids frolicked. Stark beauty and serenity came together into something greater than the individual elements. Nixinee could see why Craglorn attracted determined settlers despite the harshness of the environment. In the day and a half it took to reach Belkarth, she wrote page after page in her journal about the landscape. Every time she turned a page, however, she flipped back to the poem and read it again.
Belkarth was a sleepy town, despite the grand size of its few buildings. The stablehand at the Crossroads Tavern seemed able enough, so Nixinee felt all right about ducking inside and sampling a bottle of local wine. It was heavy on the alcohol and tart as a Coldharbour chokecherry, and Nixinee gave the bartop a sharp pound of appreciation as she winced through the flavor.
"It's good, yes?" Ogondar the barkeep said, grinning. "My winery is just outside town. I used to be a meadhead back in Falkreath, but after I made a batch of wine from these Crag grapes, I never looked back."
Nixinee just nodded, still waiting for her throat to resume normal operation. Ogondar laughed.
"It's like licking a fruity netch," Nixinee said after a few seconds, which got a bigger guffaw out of the barkeep.
Ogondar nodded toward the door behind Nixinee. "Up that hill, where the Star-Gazers have their little observatory? That's got more agreeable soil. I wish they'd rent me a plot there. The old monks used to make a sweet sloe wine that was incredible. When I first came to this benighted hole, I had a glass from one of the last bottles left after they abandoned the place."
Nixinee's brow furrowed. "Monks? That wasn't always an observatory?"
"It was an abbey, yes, but I think the observatory was built by the monks," Ogondar said. "You'd want to talk to the Star-Gazers. They have archives of the history of the area, and all sorts of books besides."
Steal a black book from an abbey. Nixinee looked over her shoulder at the window near the door, up the hill to the towering Ra Gada structure beyond. She sipped the bottle idly, then swore as the astringent wine caught her unaware in her distraction. Ogondar's laugh echoed through the inn.
Twelve years before, Nixinee was within a high-towered mystical enclave herself, studying at the Arcane University in the Imperial City. Well, not studying at that exact moment, twelve years prior to when she sat in Belkarth's inn drinking tart wine. Instead, she and her roommate and dearest friend, Sahira-daro, were in the upper level of the lustratorium, leaning by a window and waiting for an alembic to bubble over a small flame.
"Rabbit-ra rabi vabi," Sahira-daro was saying, enunciating each phoneme, yellow eyes sparkling with mirth.
"Rab - rabbit-ra rabi vabi," Nixinee parroted, trying not to laugh at her verbal clumsiness.
Sahira-daro squeezed her eyes shut and flicked her ears, the closest that Nixinee had ever seen her come to laughing herself. "See? You did it, rabbit."
Nixinee stuck her tongue out at her companion. "Why does Ta'agra have such unnatural, mid-lingual 'r' sounds? Only the rolled 'r's are normal. You have to swallow half the sentence to pronounce it correctly. Rabbit-ra rabi vabi; Nixii-kodara renrij vabi," she said, trilling it out easily with the coronal rhotics of the Altmer tongue.
The Khajiit snorted. "You keep eliding the 'k' in 'kodara' into a 'ch'."
"And that's another thing. I looked it up. 'Kodari' isn't a real honorific. It's nonsense."
"Not nonsense," Sahira-daro said, inspecting the back of her hand. "Just a few honorifics put together. It's a common trope of Khajiiti satirical poetry; I'm surprised you're not familiar with it."
Nixinee chewed on it for a second. "Ko, daro, ri? Ko as in wizard, right?"
Sahira-daro nodded. "You have it, rabbit." Nixinee rolled her eyes at the forced rhyme. Sahira looked pleased with herself.
"I'm nobody's ra," Nixinee said. "That's a bit too grand for a lowbrow tongue-twister."
"You should see what Radurra-dra has to say on the matter," Sahira said.
That evening, the Star-Gazers were preoccupied with a religious calamity. Nixinee had to deflect several pleas for assistance on the walk from the front door of the observatory to the common area. Finally she found one devotee who understood that she was on a quest of her own and didn't have time to solve all the problems in the world. Muhay at-Naruk was grey and bookish and seemed more interested in the observatory's library than in the crisis of faith that had overturned the Star-Gazers' anthill.
"It's a good night for study," Muhay said as he led Nixinee up the stairs to the larger shelves on the upper level. "The cloud cover means fewer people packed into the building to look at the stars and wring their hands. Don't get me wrong; I'm concerned as much as anyone. I simply have faith in history. No crisis has continued forever, unless you count the creation of the Mundus as a crisis for the Aedra, and even then it'll all end someday, I'm sure."
Nixinee decided she liked Muhay.
"Here are the volumes on local history," Muhay said, waving toward a bookcase. "There are the Mages' Guild volumes. The Fighter's Guild has two shelves on the last case over there. Not much for reading, those folk." He grunted in disapproval. Nixinee smiled.
"Thank you," she said.
"I'll leave you to it, then," Muhay said, creaking his way downstairs.
Several of the books had black covers. None of them had any answers for Nixinee. Nothing about Khajiiti culture, language, poetry; nothing about the Arcane University; nothing about alchemy. Nothing that linked to the tongue-twister, that day in the lustratorium, or the mysterious poem in her journal.
After two hours of skimming, Nixinee pushed the books aside and opened her journal. The poem was still there. It was definitely written in ink, but it was a finer ink than the homemade nutshell brew that Nixinee used when on the road, and the words weren't indented by the passage of quill or nib.
Nixinee started a new entry, her fifth one after the poem, and quickly recorded the events of the afternoon in broad strokes. Normally she thought about the specific commentary she would enter once the ink was dry on the first rush of words, but this time she was distracted, churning the poem in her mind. Something was off about that second line. Why did it say "Ixii" rather than "Nixii"? It seemed strange that something magically inscribed would have such an error.
Even if she didn't require sleep, Nixinee could still get mentally fatigued. She reshelved the books and gathered up her things. She needed to spend a few hours in the room she'd rented at the inn anyway to keep up the appearance of mortal frailty lest unpleasant questions begin circulating.
Before she left, she grabbed another couple of books from the Mages' Guild shelves and signed them out from the on-duty guildmate, promising to return it the next evening. Even if the observatory's library couldn't shed any light on the poem, Nixinee had other concerns nipping at her heels, and the collection on First Era Mephalic cult practices was of interest in that arena. The night wouldn't be a total loss.
In her inn room, Nixinee turned the words over again and again in her mind. Ahzir traajijazeri, or we take what is rightfully ours. The verb denoted a direct taking, implying force rather than theft or trickery. In Khajiiti society, that was a bold stance, one only acceptably applied against outsiders or betrayers. It seemed to contradict the prior line's directive to steal the book.
Nixinee flopped back on the bed in frustration. The books she'd checked out of the observatory were stacked on the nightstand, untouched. Her journal lay open beside her. She couldn't focus on anything with the stupid poem chasing its tail in her head.
It was such a lackluster poem, too. Nothing on the order of what Sahira-daro and Nixinee were writing at the University, and those had been jejune at best. Unless she'd suffered a head injury in the past year, Sahira-daro wouldn't stand for anyone to see a scribble like that. It made Nixinee question whether her companion was actually the author.
But who else would open with that tongue-twister? And why was the damned 'N' missing?
Prison; internment; Mundus-barred adjournment. That pointed to being trapped somewhere in Oblivion. Nixinee had warned Sahira-daro away from her fascination with Daedric knowledge. When the Soulburst happened, Nixinee lost touch with her, but she presumed that the event was enough to drive the point home. Sahira-daro wasn't dumb by any means.
Didn't heed her wise discernment. A clumsy acknowledgement: "Yes, you told me so."
If Sahira-daro was trapped in some other plane and needed help, why make things so cryptic? Why not just state the problem plainly, maybe draw a map? Perhaps the nature of the sending placed restrictions on the message. Or, possibly, Sahira-daro wanted to obfuscate the message in case it was intercepted… though it was less a matter of obfuscation than it was simple unhelpfulness.
Nixinee didn't often miss the need for sleep, but nights like this made her long for unconsciousness.
The first patters of rain on the roof pulled her off the bed. She leaned against the sill of her open window and looked over Belkarth's market square, its stalls empty, awnings rolled up for the night, the gentle burble of the fountain suddenly drowned out by the downpour that followed only a few moments of warning drizzle. A few voices cried out in disappointment from the tavern below - the tired late-night stragglers who had planned on leaving after one last round.
Across the stream beyond the square, a figure hurried up the hill toward the observatory. The rain and distance made details difficult to see. Nixinee rushed to douse the lights in the room. Back at the window, she whispered a spell to enhance her vision. As the figure passed the last waylamp at the top of the hill, Nixinee saw the purple trim on her brown cloak.
The half-faced figure had followed Nixinee all the way to Belkarth. She must really want that box back.
A week ago, Nixinee had been crouched in the middle branches of a tree in the hills to the west of Green Lake, somewhere between Chorrol and Elinhir. The group of Black Dagger bandits she was tailing had settled in for the night and were chatting around the campfire before first watch.
"You figure they're night people or day people?" one asked. "I mean, they're Daedra worshippers, so that makes you think 'night people', right?"
"What are you on about, moron?" another said. "What's this 'night people' mess?"
"You know what I mean," the first said defensively. "If they habiturally have rituals at night, they'll be asleep during the day."
"Habitural riturals," a third said. He laughed raucously. No one else seemed interested in the joke.
A fourth said, "They're spider cultists, right? Maybe we oughta slip in at night and join in on whatever service they're conducting." That drew a few cackles.
Nixinee tuned out the rest of the conversation; it went more or less in that direction until the bandits banked the fire for the night and went to sleep. She leaned against the trunk of the tree and mused. This was the third time she had just happened to come across a Mephalic cult in her wanderings. "Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, but a third time is enemy action," Flemus of the Bretons had said.
At sunrise, while the bandits were in disarray after discovering the exsanguinated bodies of the two who had been posted for final watch, Nixinee slipped into the cave where the cult held rituals. She kept vision spells up to see invisible guards. There were none. The cave was warded, though these were simple enough to overcome. There were no cultists to challenge her. The cave was decorated with a relief depicting Mephalic worship; Nixinee took rubbings. Broad, armless couches surrounded a large, upholstered altar. Nixinee was careful not to touch any of the plush surfaces; who knew how often they were cleaned?
At the foot of the altar, Nixinee saw the box. It had a low-level invisibility charm on it. She might not have seen it if her spells hadn't been up. It fit nicely into the upper section of her pack.
Nixinee put new wards up on the cave before leaving. The cultists would immediately know that someone else had been here - as if the stolen box wouldn't tip them off - but the wards might keep the bandits out.
"Rabbit-ra rabi vabi; Nixii-kodara renrij vabi," Nixinee repeated to herself as she walked up the hill toward the observatory. The sun blazed today, turning the puddles left from the night before into a sweltering sauna, but the rain-refreshed smell of the grass and the fresh air off the lake to the south were welcome after having spent time traveling the bleak badlands of Craglorn.
This is my rabbit of great importance; this is Nixii the landless, clever wizard of great importance. The -ra suffix didn't just mean "great importance"; it implied an outsized impact, the sort of thing reserved for political, military, and cultural leaders. Though, admittedly, there were more private uses for the honorific. It had taken Nixinee a few years, but she finally did read what Radurra-dra had to say about it. She wished she had looked it up before graduation.
Why drop the 'N'? Why remove the first letter in her name?
The Mages' Guild associate was surprised that Nixinee was returning the books first thing in the morning. She was cheerful and engaging, and it wasn't hard for Nixinee to get information about the robed figure from the night before. The woman had come to consult with Muhay about one of his arenas of expertise, the et'Ada as known in Redguard myth. Because she had arrived late at night during a storm, she was given leave by the Fighter's Guild, who functioned as security, to stay at the observatory until morning. She read on the upper level for a few hours, but when the rain stopped, she left, even though the sun hadn't risen and Muhay had yet to begin his day. As far as they knew, nothing was missing, so they didn't think the woman had been a thief.
"Did anyone get a good look at her face?" Nixinee asked.
"She had a half-mask on," Anya, the Guild associate, said. She was from High Rock, thirty years old but still the youngest associate at the Belkarth enclave, so Nixinee had gathered. "The kind someone might wear to cover up a scar in high society. She didn't seem high society, though, from what I hear."
Nixinee let Anya draw her into a conversation about the Mages' Guild and magic in general. Anya was impressed that Nixinee had attended the Arcane University; she was forlorn that she hadn't taken the opportunity to enroll before the world went to hell. They spent some time talking about the Star-Gazers and birth signs. Anya had been born under the Ritual. Nixinee didn't put much stock in birth signs herself, but Anya seemed unsurprised that she was a Sun's Height baby.
After a few minutes, Nixinee had thought of one more question: "She didn't take anything, but did she leave anything?"
They found the book on the shelf. It was a study of the cultural saints of the Khajiiti people during the struggle of the early fourth century 2E, written in Ta'agra. Its cover was black leather that bore no markings, not even a title stamp; likewise, there was only a blank page where the title and author information should have been.
"This is fortuitous," Nixinee said. "I'm always interested in Khajiiti history and culture. I know the circumstances around this text are strange, and I'm sure the Guild and the Star-Gazers both want a look at it, but I'd love to borrow this tonight, Anya." Nixinee wasn't sure if Anya was being friendly or flirtatious, but either way she was grateful to get what she needed with relative ease. Still, she wondered if she would feel less guilty about using what would ordinarily have been a pleasant connection if she took Anya to the tavern for a friendly drink after she'd figured this whole thing out.
Muhay didn't show up that day, but one of the other Star-Gazers, Feldrasa, told Nixinee that he sometimes stayed home after a rain because of his arthritis. Nixinee left for her inn room at lunchtime, bringing several books with her, including the untitled book in Ta'agra. She spent the afternoon reading.
The half-faced woman was waiting in the tavern when Nixinee came down for dinner.
It was a clear night, and the tavern was busy keeping up with locals and travelers alike. NIxinee felt confident that she wouldn't be ambushed if she sat down across the small table from the woman. The server came by as she sat, and Nixinee ordered an ale.
"You have something of mine," the woman said.
Nixinee raised an eyebrow. "Maybe more than one thing of yours. What brought you into town? Wanted a little chat with one of the Star-Gazers about the et'Ada? Maybe one of the et'Ada in particular? Spin me a tale, I'm listening."
The woman rolled her eye. "Don't get hung up on it," she said. "I'm sure you've got worries of your own. No need to get involved with my personal business."
They listened to the tavern noise, eyeing each other. The server brought their drinks - the half-faced woman had ordered Ogondar's special wine. Nixinee raised her mug to the woman as the server withdrew. "That's powerful stuff," she said. "Hard, but worth it."
They drank for a while, until Nixinee broke the quiet again. "You must have had the wine before. I made quite a face when I tried it yesterday."
"When you try all sorts of new sensations with your tongue, your tolerance for unusual experiences grows," the woman replied.
Nixinee wasn't sure if that was supposed to be an innuendo or if she was just reading too much into it because the woman was probably a spider cultist. She decided not to respond.
"You have my urn," the woman said.
"I don't know anything about an urn," Nixinee said.
The woman's eye narrowed. "The urn with the puzzle lock."
Nixinee finished her ale and leaned forward. The woman was wearing a mask over the right side of her face, just as Anya had said. It was much easier to look at than the chitinous plating that Nixinee had glimpsed when she first saw the woman half a week ago. Nixinee figured the woman would call it the blessing of the Spider or the Spinner or so forth. It wasn't so bad, as magical disfigurements went; Nixinee wasn't sure why it so bothered her. Maybe it was because it was an unmistakable, possibly irreversible symbol of submission to a Daedric power.
"Why do you want it?" Nixinee asked.
"It's mine, obviously."
"Is it yours personally, or does it belong to the cult as a whole? Or to Mephala or whatever?"
The woman drank again. Nixinee saw her eye squeeze just a little and was heartened that the wine had at least some effect on her.
"It's all the same thing. I'm no weekend cultist looking for a good time."
Nixinee snorted. "But the good time doesn't hurt, right?" The woman smiled. Nixinee smiled back.
The half-faced woman tipped back the last of her wine, grimaced, and pushed back from the table. "I'll see you around. Maybe we'll bump into each other later if you go out for a bite." She emphasized the last word. Nixinee's smile disappeared. "Don't worry about me. I'm no threat to you or your belongings. But I will have my urn back before you leave Belkarth." She left a few coins on the table and went up the stairs to the guest rooms. Nixinee watched her go, then looked at the table and smiled again. She appreciated someone who tipped well.
After a night of study, Nixinee had to conclude that there wasn't anything special about the book. No magical auras, no strange phrases that might denote a secret within. Only the missing title and author. It was a solid historical treatise, written with both an outsider's fascination and an insider's humor and pathos, so it made for pleasant reading even if it was a dead end. Nixinee wished she knew who had written it just to track down more of the author's work.
The sky at false dawn was brighter than the post-storm gloom of the prior day, but the sun had only forced the cloudline to retreat to the west, not routed it entirely. In other words, it would be an excellent day for fishing. It was a quirky enough hobby, especially for someone who didn't need to eat her catches, but Nixinee enjoyed the solitude and the repetitive routines. In the process she had also become something of an amateur ichthyologist. She had a small, untouched log book ready to record data on her catches in Craglorn. The first entry in a new book excited Nixinee in an embarrassingly childish way; the prospect held more anticipation for her than the fishing itself.
She packed her line and hooks in a hip pouch and removed everything from her pack but a small net and her survival kit. After some consideration, however, she put her books back in the pack, including the titleless volume from the Guild. The half-faced woman may have said she wouldn't touch Nixinee's things, but Nixinee didn't exactly trust her.
Staff in hand, pack on her shoulder, and hood drawn against the sun, Nixinee set out walking up the River Huntsman. North of the main road on which Belkarth lay, the river branched and formed a large islet before coming together again and feeding into the lake. Nixinee did like a good islet. She explored it and found that the head of the islet had a beautiful view of a twenty-foot waterfall further upstream, and the widening of the river at the split promised excellent bank-pole fishing. She set about locating a good green sapling to strip for her pole.
An hour later, as the clouds began slowly reclaiming the sky, she had her pole sunk into the soft bank, the weighted line trailing in the calm flow with a trio of small lockpicks hanging from the tip of the pole as a soft alarm, while she sat against a large rock in the shade of a copse of trees and reread the black book. She was so engrossed in the tale of Eshita of Pa'alatiin that she didn't realize she was no longer alone until a voice shocked her out of her reverie. Nixinee banged her head on the rock in her full-body surprised jerk.
"I didn't peg you for an angler," Anya said. The Guild associate was bending over the pole and inspecting its knife-smoothed surface. She wore light leggings and a sleeveless jerkin; her bare arms were evenly toned to her face, so Nixinee supposed she didn't wear the robes of a scholar in her off hours.
Nixinee pulled her pack from the rock and tucked her book inside. "I didn't realize you had me pegged for anything," she said, keeping her voice neutral. She hadn't anticipated running into Anya out of her prior context. Her encounter with the half-faced woman had her on edge.
Anya flicked a finger against the lockpick arrangement, eliciting a delicate chime. She straightened and stretched, chin tilted up to the sun; from Nixinee's perspective, Anya's arms framed the waterfall, and the lines of the cascade flowed into the woman's warm, Breton-brown hair and features with just a hint of fey angularity from some distant meric ancestor. Nixinee had long ago abandoned the slavish aesthetic devotion of her wealthy Altmeri background, but every so often there was something in the world that brought flashes of Ayleid poetry to mind. She turned her eyes and fiddled with her pack.
"I try not to prejudge people," Anya said. "They're invariably more interesting than I give them credit for. Sometimes they're even interesting to me before I catch them unawares in the middle of their secret pastimes."
Nixinee wasn't sure if Anya's tone was teasing or needling. "It's not secret," she said, frowning. "What, should I introduce myself as Nixinee the fisherwoman to everyone I meet?"
Anya cocked her head toward the head of the pole and its improvised alarm. "I'm sure you have plenty of other hobbies," she said lightly.
A few years ago, Nixinee would have reddened at that.
"Anyway, I didn't mean to intrude. I'll leave you to it." Anya inclined her head and turned.
"Wait," Nixinee found herself saying. Anya looked back over her shoulder, her hair lining up with the waterfall again, just so. Ah, hell. "If you're not in any hurry, I wouldn't mind a little company."
The lockpicks jangled brightly, and both women looked toward the pole, now straining against the gentle current.
"And I'll throw in lunch as well," Nixinee said, drawing her hood up as she rushed out of the shade toward the bank.
The fish turned out to be a river cod large enough to feed them both. Anya wanted no part in cleaning the fish, but she compensated by showing her competence in setting up a roasting spit. She also contributed the cheese and berries she had brought for her own lunch, wrapped in a lattice of chestnut leaves and slung near the fire to warm and absorb the smoky steam. They ate from a communal plate using their own travel utensils and talked about places from their travels. Belkarth seemed to be the only locale that both women had seen, but between them they had covered quite a lot of Tamriel.
Nixinee let Anya guide her into more personal conversational territory, though she skimped on the details of her time since the Soulburst. She learned that Anya had apprenticed in Daggerfall as an alteration specialist, then moved to Skaven to follow her then-girlfriend's master research project on the Sword-singers. When they broke up, Anya joined the Mages' Guild full-time and moved back to High Rock. The wilds of Hammerfell had captured her heart, though, and she took the opening at Belkarth without hesitation four years ago.
"I love traveling," Anya said, "and I'm not sure this will be my home forever. But for right now, this place makes me happy." Her forkful of fish and berries had stayed arrested halfway to her mouth for the past five minutes as they talked. Nixinee tried not to smile watching her. She found herself having to remember to keep eating, but then again, that was always the case.
"What do you like about it?" Nixinee asked.
"The sky," Anya said. "It's absolutely amazing - or it is when it's not covered up." The clouds had finished their steady march across the sky, though it was still too warm for Anya to take her light traveling cloak from her pack. "I'm not surprised at all that the Star-Gazers picked this as their home. The change in the sky's color over the day seems easier to see - it goes from pale blue at the horizon to this deep, gut-punching indigo right overhead, and then at sunset, if you're standing in the observatory-" She grated out a sound of bliss that came straight from her solar plexus, and Nixinee had to cover her mouth as she laughed mid-chew.
Anya kicked her playfully. "Don't tell me you don't know what I mean. And then there's the wildlife! I mean, scorpions that weigh half again as much as me can be scary, but they're gorgeous, too. And the welwas that the Iron Orcs keep remind me of the mastiffs we breed back in Daggerfall. They're powerful, and they can turn mean quickly when it's needed, but they're really just big, dumb dog-things, and I kind of want one to snuggle." Now it was Anya's turn to laugh at Nixinee's skeptical expression.
"You make it sound so much more pleasant than it actually is," Nixinee said. "I feel like I'll look at Craglorn in a whole new light from now on."
Anya's eyes mixed demurity and smugness in equal measure. "I'm glad to have done some good, then." She finally brought the fork to her mouth. Nixinee again thought of the memory of blushing - the buzz in the cheeks, the heat around the eyes. She wondered if she would forget it altogether someday.
"I suppose you've got a date with your books this afternoon?" Anya said.
Nixinee shrugged. "I did. I think maybe I've done enough reading, though. It would do me good to get out of my own head for a while."
Anya looked down at the plate and rolled a blackthorn berry with her fork. "There's someplace I wouldn't mind showing you, if you're still interested in company," she said.
"I am," said Nixinee. She twitched as the first drop of rain fell square on her nose. Both women hurried to pull their gear and the remains of their lunch under the trees, laughing.
The rain was less imposing than the prior storm, passing after half an hour's time. The trees offered only partial protection. Both women agreed to dry off and change before meeting at the foot of the hill in town.
Nixinee had only one spare outfit. She had passed some of the last hours of the night of the first storm washing it, banking on a clear sky for drying in the morning, so luckily it was clean. It was a light Nordic jerkin set, picked up in Riften to replace a robe in which bloodstains had set before Nixinee could tend to them properly.
The half-faced woman was at the bar downstairs. Nixinee flicked her eyes away as soon as she saw her, but the woman caught her looking and cleared her throat. Nixinee sighed. She couldn't afford to brush off anyone who knew her secret. Maybe she should just kill the woman in the night and be done with it.
"Buy you a drink?" the woman asked, as Nixinee sat beside her.
"What do you want," Nixinee said, more a resigned statement than a question.
The woman twisted her glass on the bartop in slow turns. Her eye didn't leave Nixinee's. Nixinee focused on the one eye, not wanting to see the other set in its chitinous orbit behind the woman's mask. "Why did you take it?"
Nixinee thought of a smartass response, but anything she had to say in that vein would fall flat. "I want to know why I keep running across your lady," she said. "Either she's yanking my chain, or someone else keeps pushing me into her. I don't like being manipulated. I want answers."
"Everyone runs across her on a consistent basis," the woman said. "That's what comes of her having threads everywhere. Most people live and die without recognizing it. I imagine even you only see the most blatant of the threads you keep tangling yourself in."
Nixinee stood. "If that's all you wanted, I have someplace to be."
"And someone to be there with," the woman said.
The point of annoyance in Nixinee's head ballooned into a ball of fury. She leaned invasively close to the woman. "Your issue is with me," she hissed. "You breathe in anyone else's direction, I'll happily confiscate what little face you have left."
"Careful," the woman said, "your demeanor is slipping." But Nixinee had seen her draw back.
"You're out of Belkarth by sunrise," Nixinee said. When she turned to leave, she couldn't stop herself from shoving her shoulder past the woman on her way.
The woman said to her back, "I will be." There was no fear or contrition in her tone.
"This is not what I was expecting," said Nixinee as she drank in the waterfall in the center of the ruin. Light from two enormous chandeliers played in the water as it coursed from the rain-swollen river above through a grate to an outlet in the lake just outside. The sight dismissed the foul mood the half-faced woman had given her.
Anya spread her arms wide. "This is a major Nedic site. Belkarth was built right on top of it. And very few people even know it's here, let alone study it." Anya outdressed Nixinee easily in a smart, urbane brocade outfit in an Orcish cut with silk elements, and her hair was pulled in a bun with a pair of crossed sticks. Nixinee tried not to look at her neck too obviously.
"I bet," Nixinee said. She had noticed the marking on the hidden door that led to the entrance by the lake: an outlaws' refuge. "Seems like a well-kept secret."
Anya studied Nixinee's wary expression for a second. "I did some checking," she said finally. "A woman has to be sensible. I didn't mention your name, but you fit the description Nuifa gave me, one 'mercenary mage of minor repute, a white-haired Altmer of tall stature and bookish frame, the Landless Witch'."
Nixinee sighed in frustration. Bookish frame? What the hell was Nuifa doing this far from Rawl'kha, anyway? "That woman runs her Jode-damned mouth too much."
When Nixinee was silent for a while, Anya said, "I hope I didn't weird you out, asking about you and then bringing you here."
Nixinee shook her head and smiled at Anya. "No. You're right; it's better to take precautions. And I'm glad to see this. I wasn't planning on hunting out the local refuge while I was here, and I would have missed this amazing sight." Not only the waterfall, but all the relief carvings in the wall, and the Nedic architecture. She moved to study a panel that depicted the Celestial Steed in the typical angular Nedic fashion. Runic characters beneath were arranged in a square pattern; they resembled Daedric runes, but the correspondence wasn't close enough for her to understand the writing.
Anya let her look in silence for a moment before saying, "The academic side of me desperately wants to let the Star-Gazers know about this place. As it is, I've taken tons of rubbings and filled two journals with what I've found here, but I'm no Nedic historian. My specialty is in the unidirectionally anti-entropic tendencies of alteration spells. Interesting enough, but not broadly applicable to the scholarly pursuits."
"Ha! My sixth-year thesis was on the the metaethics of dark magic within the Imperial classification system. At least your specialization has concrete application."
Anya smirked. "Sounds like a horseshit thesis, if I may be blunt."
Nixinee snorted. "More like a springboard for me to criticize the arbitrary nature of the University's divisions of magic. I compared it to the Shad Astula school's eight-school system and denounced them both soundly as poppycock. Little did I know that Gabriele Benele was one of the members of the board against whom I had to defend my thesis - and she had just written a proposal that the Mages' Guild adopt the Shad Astula system for instructing novices and was in the process of advising the same for the Arcane University."
Anya howled with laughter, drawing some eyes from the underworld folks on the level below. Nixinee elbowed her and grinned. "Come on, chuckles," she said. "Show me the rest of this illicit lair."
They wandered from panel to panel, then to the grate at the base of the waterfall. Anya must have given the fences advance notice of her plan to show the place off; they gave the couple some looks, but no one interfered.
A hallway angled into a side chamber. The light from the torches and the chandeliers barely touched the room. Anya lit a gentle, yellow magelight. The walls were covered in Nedic writing, cracked and pitted in patches, always in the same square arrangement as in the panels in the main room.
"Two mages in a room in a secret thieves' lair within an ancient ruin," Anya said, sidling closer to Nixinee. "It's like a scene out of an adventure tale."
A few years ago, Nixinee's heart would have beaten faster; her face would have flushed. Now all she could think was that, for all that Anya had asked around, there were fundamental things about Nixinee that she didn't know, that she couldn't possibly accept. She swallowed and turned her head to the writing. "You know, I wonder why these runes are framed in such regular arrangements," she said. "How is Nedic writing read, anyway? Top to bottom, right to left? Diagonally?"
"Maybe it's flexible," Anya said, pulling Nixinee closer still. "I'm sure you could try it all sorts of ways and see what works."
Flexible. See what works. Top to bottom.
Nixinee realized what the poem was.
She also realized that she couldn't do this, here, right now. She put her arms around Anya's waist and sighed. Anya's brow furrowed; she searched Nixinee's eyes.
"I've been honest with you, Anya, but I haven't been open," Nixinee said. "I want to treat you fairly, to give you all the information you deserve."
Anya's expression of concern relaxed. "Then tell me now," she said. "I'm sure it's not as much of a problem as you think it is."
Nixinee dropped her head back and closed her eyes. Was she taking a stupid risk? Yes, of course; that was her hallmark. "Not here. Come to my room. I'll explain everything there."
Only four people who weren't vampires themselves knew about Nixinee's status. It wasn't something she wanted getting around outside the community. Not that there really was a community, per se; vampire clans tended to self-destruct, in her experience. But one could generally trust vampires to not set hunters on other vampires.
Anya sat on the edge of the bed in Nixinee's rented room. Nixinee's books - well, the Guild's books, and Nixinee's journal - were still spread on one side of the bed. Nixinee sat on the windowsill, pensive.
"Do you trust me?" she asked.
Anya's expression was uncertain.
"I trust you," Nixinee said. "That is, you feel trustworthy." Even saying that much set the voice of caution going in Nixinee's mind - you're giving her leverage over you. "If I don't tell you what's going on, then I'm worried I'll hurt you."
"Does this have to do with the books?" Anya asked.
Nixinee nodded. "Part of it has to do with the books, and an old friend. We met at the University. We've kept in touch since we graduated, at least until I lost track of her about a year ago. I think she might have used magical means to send me a message. I think she's in trouble, and I'm trying to help her."
Anya pulled into a cross-legged position. "What's the message?"
Nixinee sat down beside her and pulled a loose scrap of paper from her journal. She'd written and rewritten the poem on it, trying to untangle its secret. She handed it to Anya. "I thought this was the message. I guess it is the message; the thing is, she hid something in the structure."
"It's an acrostic poem," Anya said immediately.
That would be three times in one day that Anya would have made a mortal Nixinee flush. "I only now figured that out, when we were in the refuge. How did you know?"
Anya put a friendly elbow into Nixinee's ribs. "I like riddles and logic puzzles and such. You develop techniques to solve them over time. If it was only a poem, I wouldn't think twice, but knowing it was a secret message, I just started looking at it with those techniques. So what does 'risallidad' mean?"
"Ri'sallidad," Nixinee said, the mid-lingual 'R' coming easily. "Martyrs, or honored dead, in Ta'agra. I don't think it's important on its own. I think it has to do with this book." She grabbed the titleless volume. "A black book from an abbey - a former abbey, anyway. The word suits the topic of the book, yet it doesn't appear within the text at all. I'm betting Ri'sallidad is the keyphrase to unlock a scrying or teleportation enchantment, and since it hasn't been activated just by me saying it aloud, I'm also betting it has to be inscribed somewhere - probably on the title page."
Anya took the book and flipped through it. "But this was the book that strange woman left."
Nixinee exhaled through her nose. Well, Anya had taken her on a date to a thieves' hideout; she couldn't blame Nixinee for this. "The woman's after me because I stole an urn from a Mephalic cult site in Cyrodiil. I don't know why she put the book there, but maybe Sahira-daro - the friend who sent me the message - well, maybe she arranged it somehow, or foresaw it."
Anya closed the book and held it for a moment. "You shouldn't go unprepared," she said. "I have some potions that sharpen the mind and improve spellcasting, and a few for healing as well. You've got room for those in your pack, right?"
Nixinee had the manners to look sheepish. "I've ruined a wonderful day and a romantic moment. I can't ask anything of you."
Anya grunted in frustration. "Auri-el, save me from Aldmeri propriety. Come up the hill and let me give you the damn potions. Do the keyphrase thing from the safety of the observatory. When you get back, then we can talk about romantic moments, all right?" She kissed Nixinee on the cheek, put the book in her lap, and hopped up and out the door.
Nixinee rubbed her cheek and stared dumbly before standing and gathering her things. She had never gotten to bring up her vampirism.
The book lay open before Nixinee on the reading table. The quill in her hand was fresh; the ink in her well was newly mixed. Anya stood to one side. Oscar, one of the guildmates and brother of the chapter's magus, stood on the other. He maintained a ward dome over the table and Nixinee to isolate the guildfolk and the Star-Gazers from anything that might happen.
Nixinee looked at Anya and smiled. Anya nodded.
The quill drew ink. She inscribed Ri'sallidad in Ta'agra on the book's title page. She watched as the ink dried. Nothing was happening.
Frowning, she closed the cover. As the pages slapped together, Nixinee felt the sizzle of a magical effect dispelling. The book's cover was still black, but now it felt slick, like eelskin, and an impossible creature of tentacles and claws was embossed on its surface. Hesitantly, Nixinee opened it again-
- and an inky mass erupted from the page, whipping around her head, snaring her shoulders and torso, yanking her inside. She screamed, and a part of her calmly wondered if the scream was sucked into the book as well, or if those outside the ward could hear it. She felt the book slam shut behind her, and everything went dark.
Apocrypha was uninspired, as Daedric planes went.
"Books, I get it," Nixinee muttered as she walked across a footbridge to another cylindrical spire. Books were on shelves. Books lay open on the ground. In places books made up the structural elements around her. Even Coldharbour had a more interesting theme.
Most of her spells had stopped working the moment she'd arrived: her suite of vision and hearing enhancements, and more distressingly, her guise spell, the one that kept her vampiric nature hidden. It stood to reason that, in a plane dedicated to the unearthing and cataloguing of secrets by its Daedric master, all outside illusions would be laid bare. Nixinee wondered if the inverse were true, and native deceptions would be undetectable.
The book had come with her, and now that the complicated glamer had been removed, it contained a partial spell of returning that only required the reader hold the rest of the spell in her head to appropriately direct the flow of magicka. It was simple, really.
Nixinee descended a spiral staircase, kicking over a stack as she went. In the room beneath, Sahira-daro looked up from the tome in her hands. Her eyes arrested Nixinee at the bottom stair.
"You came," she said.
Nixinee wondered if she would have cried, had she still been mortal.
"This one thought the spirit was a test," Sahira-daro said. "No, that is not true. This one convinced herself that the spirit was a test so that pursuing the books was justified. You see why the poem said that this prison was deserved."
Nixinee snorted. "Don't give me that defeatist garbage. If nothing else, you're too pragmatic to believe a line like that."
Sahira-daro looked down. "A year in Oblivion has made this one less foolhardy."
Nixinee moved to take Sahira's hand, but the Khajiit quickly drew it back. Nixinee felt as if a nail had been driven into her chest. There it was: the response of a mortal to a vampire. The years they had spent together, and the years they had written to each other while they were apart, meant nothing in the face of that gulf.
"How did you get the message to me?" Nixinee said, trying to push past the discomfort.
"Hermaeus Mora rules this plane," Sahira-daro said, "but he is not as omniscient as he purports to be. There are ways for a clever person to cloak what she does in shadow. Still, this one does not want to reveal everything until we are safely back in Mundus."
Nixinee pulled the black book from her pack. "Then let's get going."
"Wait," Sahira-daro said. "There are a few volumes this one needs to bring. They're small, but very important. Do you have anything with you that might protect them from Herma-Mora's sight?"
Nixinee rooted through her pack. Sahira looked over her shoulder. "What about that?" She pointed to the urn.
"It's a Mephalic artifact," Nixinee said. "Might work, might not. Isn't Mephala supposed to be Hermaeus Mora's sister?"
"Inasmuch as Daedra can have such affiliations, yes," Sahira-daro said. "But this one is willing to give it a try."
"I haven't been able to open it," Nixinee admitted.
Sahira-daro reached for it, stopping partway. "Perhaps this one might try?" At Nixinee's nod, Sahira-daro pulled it from her pack and began examining it.
After a few minutes of quiet, Nixinee said, "I would say that it's probably too difficult to work out, but it took me days to realize the word you hid in the poem, even with such an obvious clue as dropping the 'N' to draw attention to the first letters, so maybe I'm not one to talk."
"Do not sell yourself short," Sahira-daro said distractedly, turning the urn over and tracing lines with her deft claws. "Were you not once called Nixii-kodari, the clever wizard?"
Nixinee looked aside. "Only one person ever called me that. I'm afraid I've never lived up to anyone's expectations, yours included."
Sahira-daro continued to tinker. "Will we do the pitiful unpacking of your self-loathing now? Because if so, this one gets to wallow in defeatist garbage without your complaints." The Sahira-daro of twelve years ago would have been sharp, but now her voice wasn't unkind. Nixinee was going to reply, but something Sahira-daro did resulted in a series of rapid clicks, and the lines on the urn's boxy lid became a spider-leg tangle that ratcheted apart and revealed an empty interior.
"What the hell did she want the box back for so badly if there's nothing inside?" Nixinee huffed.
Sahira-daro began shoving four small books into the urn. "You can ask her when we get back," she said. She pressed a hidden switch, and the urn closed again. "Let us return to the world of mortals."
Nixinee brought out the book and offered her hand. Sahira-daro took it, but she could feel the cold in her former companion's grasp. Nixinee completed the spell, and the book claimed the two with its violent grip.
They arrived outside Belkarth, at the north of the islet made by the River Huntsman, not far from the fire ring where Nixinee and Anya had roasted their lunch. It was night. The half-faced woman was waiting for them.
Sahira-daro handed the urn to her. "As promised," she said quietly.
The woman took the urn. "Mephala thanks you both," she said.
"Just a damn minute," Nixinee started, but Sahira-daro cut her off.
"This was the price for the message. I was to deliver secrets from Herma-Mora's realm to Mephala in exchange for freedom."
Nixinee stared hard at the woman, who had the decency to not look openly triumphant, even if Nixinee could see it dancing in her eyes.
"She used us both," Nixinee growled.
The half-faced woman shook her head. "The entire mortal realm is constantly used for the Princes' amusement. You happen to have come out ahead this time; your friend is free from Apocrypha. You said before you wanted answers, but you're far too small and naïve to understand them even if you had all the information. You're embarrassing yourself."
Sahira-daro snarled. "Our bargain is complete. That does not give you leave to insult this one's friend, spiderling. Scuttle back to your mistress and be done with us."
The woman inclined her head to them both, turned, and disappeared into the night.
Nixinee looked into Sahira-daro's eyes. Sahira-daro looked away.
"I guess you won't be staying the night in Belkarth," Nixinee said.
Sahira-daro kept her face turned. "It would be wisest to begin the return home as quickly as possible. There is much ground to cover."
"I won't try to say that I'm not changed, but maybe I haven't changed in the ways you might think," Nixinee said.
Sahira-daro looked at her again, steadily now. "It has been a very long time, Rabbit."
"It has," Nixinee said, and she realized she felt the relieving absence of a tension she hadn't known she carried. "But a good friendship is a hard thing to give up, even if it's only a friendship on paper."
Sahira-daro smiled and took her hand. Nixinee pretended not to see the flinch she hid. "This one will write you, worry not. Though in these landless days, this one is not sure where to send the letters."
Nixinee squeezed her friend's hand and let her go. "For now, you can deliver them here to Belkarth. Do you remember Nuifa? She's apparently decided to make this her new home. She can get me letters from the underground routes."
"Thank you, Nixii," Sahira-daro said. Then she, too, was gone.
Nixinee lay on the riverbank and stared up at the stars. It seemed that there were a few missing after all. Maybe the Star-Gazers were onto something.
After a few minutes, Nixinee heard someone approach. She realized she hadn't re-established her sensory spell suite and cursed herself for a fool. But it was Anya, who sat on the damp grass beside Nixinee.
"Ex-girlfriend," Anya said more than asked.
Nixinee looked back to the stars. "I'm not sure," she said.
"Ex-something," Anya offered, and Nixinee laughed and nodded. Anya stood and offered Nixinee her hand. "Come on, you foolish woman. Let's get back to town."
"How did you know we'd end up here?" Nixinee asked.
"I didn't," Anya said. "But that woman seemed to know. When you didn't reappear after a couple hours, I got distracted and went looking out the window. I saw her leave the inn and decided to follow her. I was waiting behind a rock until my legs went numb before you two finally showed up. I almost didn't recognize you."
A shock of terror went through Nixinee as she realized that her guise was down as well. Her mouth worked a few times, but she was unsure of what to say. Finally she hid her face in her hands.
Anya nudged her with her boot. "Give me credit," she said. "I mean, I didn't know exactly what the other thing you wanted to tell me was, but it's hardly the worst thing that you could have revealed. Besides, the hood in full sunlight was a little much. You're not as slick as you think you are." She knelt down and pulled Nixinee's hands away. "Show me your real face."
Nixinee watched Anya inspect her.
"Eh, you're still plenty cute. Now up! It's late, and I want dinner. You're buying because you put me through all this." She tugged on Nixinee's arms.
"Stop. Wait," Nixinee said. "That woman was Mephala's agent in all this. She put the book there, and she led me to it. What if her leading you out here is somehow part of one of Mephala's plots, too?"
Nixinee had never been kissed just to shut her up before. She decided it wasn't half bad.