They arrived at the now-deserted mine and went inside, the four soldiers, the mage, and their helpless captive – dressed in rags. The Paralysis spell he had been under when they dragged him from the city had worn off in the time lag from fast-traveling by magic map from the outskirts of Imperial City to this remote corner of Cyrodiil. The mage had let his illusion spell lapse as soon as he had exited via the Imperial Palace's secret door, though he now wore the mask that was part of his persona as the infamous assassin.
They shepherded their captive down through the mine's branching tunnels, heading for a room where they planned to hold him until the mage could perform certain… operations on him. Then the captors would become the rescuers, and their triumphant re-entry into Imperial City would spell the downfall of Davos Appolonius and his son.
They had cleared the mine of any lurking denizens (goblins, for the most part) during the past week in preparation for this operation, this squad of the count's most trusted household guard. As they were now in on the secret of what had really taken place, the mage had orders to alter their memories as well. Both the emperor and the squad of guards would be utterly convinced that they had come here on a tip and rescued him from captivity by Davos' hirelings. Killing them would be counter-productive.
The emperor had been Paralyzed but aware as he'd been seized – after one of his own guards had requested his presence in a corridor on the Palace's second floor, on the pretense of seeing something he thought odd and wanted Giorgio's opinion on. Once he was immobile, they had carried him away through a secret door and along a narrow staircase that wound around the circumference of the tower, to exit through an equally secret door at ground level.
His personal guard, he had been sure it was him – but now he suspected it must have been this mage in disguise – had renewed the Paralysis spell on him and he'd remained inert, glaring at his captors, as they stripped him to the skin (the indignity!) and then re-dressed him in truly disgusting rags that reeked of the cheapest wine. Being unable to move, he had not seen what had become of his own clothing.
The soldiers had bound his hands before him and tied a rag around his mouth, preventing him from speaking in case the Paralysis might wear off. He'd been quite unaware that he was now wearing another man's face. Then the seeming imperial guard had cast the Paralysis spell one more time and returned inside the Palace, even as the soldiers took him in hand and had begun hauling him around the circle of Green Emperor Way, down into the Arboretum, and on a zigzagging path to the Talos Plaza District.
They had dragged the emperor into an alley and waited in darkness for a few minutes, during which time the paralysis wore off and he had begun struggling and making muffled noises through the gag. "You want your throat cut, it's easily accomplished if you keep making noise," one of the soldiers murmured with a dagger pressed to his throat, and he lapsed into silence. He guessed they must need him alive or he would simply have been killed – his predecessor had died by an assassin's knife, after all – but he didn't feel like pushing his luck and held his silence. He felt exhausted.
A few minutes later the mage had rejoined them, now wearing a cloth mask that completely covered his face, and the Paralysis spell had been renewed as he was dragged up the main road and out of the gates leading from the Talos Plaza District to the City Isle. The mage had then pulled out a magic map, and they'd traveled here.
They left Giorgio tied to the chair on which they'd seated him, but removed his gag. By now his fury and frustration were beyond bounds, and he immediately shouted, "I know you, Tertius! Did you think you could hold a dagger to my throat and I would not recognize you?" The Augustino and Terentius families had been close, and Giorgio had spent much time visiting with the count of Bravil. He knew many of Enzo's family retainers by sight.
Now he turned his head to the masked mage. "And you must be Alderion! I can scarcely believe that Enzo would betray me in this way. Since you evidently don't intend to kill me, you had better just let me go before there's hell to pay!" Deeply chagrined, angry at having his disguise penetrated, Alderion too let his tongue loose. But at least he had the sense to dismiss the guards first.
"You men, go to the quarters prepared for you and wait there for my orders," he said, and the four quickly left the room. Then the mage gave in to a sadistic impulse, knowing that anything he told the emperor would be forgotten in the next few minutes. He could say whatever he liked, enjoy the pain it caused, and not worry that it would ever come back to haunt him.
"Hah!" he said, ripping off the uncomfortable mask. "You and Enzo are such friends, are you? Yet it never occurred to you that one of his sons might make a better heir to the throne than that pathetic weasel Tiberius?" Giorgio was taken aback. This was about him naming Tiberius heir? It made no sense. "He's my own flesh and blood, my sister's son! Who else was I going to name, after the tragic loss of Bruno?" he asked.
"And who do you think orchestrated that 'tragic loss,' Giorgio?" Alderion asked – bile dripping from his words. The emperor was shocked. He had always respected and rather liked the Altmer mage, and thought that his long-standing loyalty to the Terentius family was laudable. He'd wished he had someone like that, who would put his master's family above all personal considerations. But this? "You…?" he asked hesitantly, fearing the answer.
"Oh, I certainly did my part," Alderion said with a sneer. "But my master Enzo gave the orders. It should have been him who the Council of Elders chose to take the throne, not you. The Terentius family's blood ties to the long-dead Septim dynasty are as close as yours." Giorgio's face had gone pale. Tonight had been an ordeal, certainly, but he remained confident that these people didn't intend to kill him. What shocked him was the revelation of just how badly he'd misjudged people he thought were his friends – and a fear of what was planned for him, if Alderion was revealing all this. If they didn't intend to take his life, they must mean to destroy his mind.
"Enough of this!" Alderion said coldly. He'd had his fun, enjoyed the look of anguish that had passed over Giorgio's face when he realized that a man he had thought of as a lifelong friend had commanded the murder of his only son. Now, with a slight gesture, he cast a Command spell on the emperor. This spell, used by the ancient Dwemer and lost for millennia, was one he had acquired only a year or so ago. It was so useful, he wished he'd had it decades before. And it was a pity that the effects were not permanent, as was the Spell of Seeming he'd developed. It would certainly have simplified the work he had before him.
To begin, he must erase the emperor's recent memories. Before he began to build the memories that would come, which would require a combination of potion, spellcraft, and careful direction, he must expunge any hint of the abduction, the journey here, the emperor's recognition of one of Count Enzo's guards and himself, and above all their recent discussion. "Tell me how you feel, Giorgio," Alderion commanded his captive in a kindly tone. The approach one took was almost as important as the spell itself, when addressing the enspelled individual.
"I'm tired – and angry," the emperor replied. The Command spell had taken away his mental focus, but Alderion's question had caused him to seek within. "I'm sorry you are not feeling well," the mage said soothingly. "Here, I have a potion that will make it all better. Drink it up, now." Better double up the dose, he thought. He regretted now that he'd spoken so freely, and he wanted to make absolutely sure that no trace of what had passed in the last hour remained in Giorgio's mind – perhaps to well up in dreams. "Drink both of these, I know they will help," he said.
The emperor, smiling slightly at the thought that he was in good and capable hands, obediently downed the contents of one bottle, then the other. It tasted delicious, quite refreshing. Soon a wave of numbness came over him, not like that… what was it that he had felt a while ago… was it a dream? What was I thinking? He smiled up happily at Alderion, still in the grip of the Command spell and pleased that he had done as requested.
Good, the mage thought. It seemed to be working as it should. This potion was of his own devising, and he had not had time to test it as thoroughly as he would have liked. One bottle, depending on the body mass of the recipient, would effectively erase the memories of one hour of subjective time. That was a little more than the amount of time that had elapsed since he had come in the guise of one of the emperor's personal guard – the man himself, stripped of his uniform, now lying dead behind a bush in the grounds surrounding the Palace – to lure the emperor away from the party.
Alderion was reasonably sure that the amount of actual time elapsed should not matter, though he'd never tried the potion with fast-traveling thrown in. Since anyone fast-traveling only had memories of a few seconds passing during the transition, it stood to reason that the hour's worth of memories erased would account the passage as having taken only those few seconds. The double dose was just to make sure – and if it meant the emperor could not remember some of the people he'd met in the reception line during the hour before the abduction, he could rebuild those memories– just as he would be rebuilding the memories of the hour after that.
When the emperor emerged from the trance produced by the second potion and its accompanying spell, he would remember being seized by hirelings of the Appolonius family, who would have revealed Davos' plan to fake his assassination and put his son on the throne (which plot, minus the switch of victims, had indeed been Appolonius' intention). In Giorgio's mind he would have been taken here and left trussed up, then heard a fight that resulted in his rescue by the forces of Count Enzo's household guard.
Bodies of the abductors, Appolonius tokens on their persons, were being supplied through the Spell of Seeming applied to beggars abducted from the streets of Bravil. Davos employed no regular guards, so of course he would have hired these mercenaries to do his dirty work. The emperor's clear memory of the information they would have revealed to him – all of it implanted in his mind, permanently, by Alderion – would drive the last nail in the Appolonius family's coffin.
The plan was brilliant, if he did say so himself. When it had been accomplished, the happy friendship between Giorgio Septim and the Terentius family would resume – closer than ever before, as Giorgio would also have been implanted with a desire to name Flavius Terentius as heir to the Imperial Throne. The lad was handsome, bright, charming, and a fine figure of a young man – everything the unfortunate Tiberius, damned by his father's plot, was not. Enzo was determined that Arturus, his first-born, would remain heir to Bravil.
But first, before administering the second potion and beginning his long work of rebuilding the past two hours of memories in the mind of his emperor, Alderion wanted to make sure that the old memories had been thoroughly erased. Any conflict between the new memories and old ones from the same time period could have disastrous results. "Tell me," he said to his subject, "What do you remember from the past two hours?" While the Command spell was in place he could include a command to ignore the minute or two of time before the second potion was administered.
The haggard expression had faded from Giorgio's face, and he looked years younger. Still a little pale, but as though all of his troubles had faded. As so they should have, if he no longer recalled being forcibly snatched and spirited away, then informed that a man he had thought a friend had betrayed him most horribly. "Remember?" he said, seemingly puzzled. After a moment he said, "I have no idea. And who are you?"
This surprised Alderion. He should have been recognized, though the context for his being here would be a puzzle. "I'm Alderion, and I'm here to rescue you," he told his captive, beginning to build the story that would become part of the emperor's new memories. Giorgio's innocent brown eyes filled with happiness for a moment, then looked lost. "Rescue me?" he said softly, "That's nice. But who am I?"