The rebuilding and resettlement of the Holds continued apace, with every sign they would be successful. Despite the embargo – or perhaps even because of it, Rynandor allowed; he didn't know for certain the Empire's desired policy and it might be an unwittingly harmful one – trade was now nearly what it was before the first rift opened. Life in Summerset was not only celebrated, but actually lived.
One celebration took the form of a painting in the palace of Alinor, showing Rynandor's defense of the Crystal Tower. Absurdly, it portrayed him in the ceremonial top-knot braid, which glinted silverly atop an overblown Antus Pinder pose – as though the first thing he had done after waking to a thousand dying screams was fix his hair. But that was the topknot he wore now. If Fintar and the rest of Arranelya's vaunted circle dealt so thoroughly and effectively in image, he'd be a fool to forgo the field entirely.
For, with the Isles stabilizing, it was at last the appropriate time for Rynandor to speak some uncomfortable truths he had to this point kept firmly under his cloak.
Not of his visions. His visions could, he knew, be prevented, and when last he'd prayed to Auri-El that he dream the future of Summerset, he'd seen only a confused panoply, more worrisome for the breadth of the whole than for any of the parts. A patch of tundra where two armies of men had fought a ruinous battle. A Breton watchman running wild-eyed for the shore. A tall figure in a gold-threaded black robe, walking what looked to be a bridge on Lake Rumare. A thin and haggard Dunmer archer, presented with silver arrows. A Khajiiti noblewoman, raising her arms in an ecstatic gesture of supplication.
And one image that did have a clear bearing on the future of Summerset. High Queen Faltana, dead, her body lashed to a post in Alinor Square.
No, if he was to change the course, it would do him no good to begin like that.
And there would be no betrayal of state secrets, either. There was no surer way than that to fall on the sword of his own rhetoric. But he knew, and that was enough to put fire in his heart. It was enough to convince him that all the varied and distant fear and death he saw in his visions had the Thalmor at the root.
The daedra don't come near because they know an assault would be fruitless, he had heard one expert at guesswork tell another in the Sunhold refugees' quarters. And that expert had guessed right. There was power in the daedric siege engine to lay low any wall, yes – any but the walls of Crystal-Like-Law.
As a certainty, this was known to but a few. Rynandor knew. Dagon surely knew. High Commander Fintar knew, for the Chamber of the Wise had entrusted him with the protection of the stone at the heart of the Tower.
And, though Fintar knew in no uncertain terms the grave importance of his duty, the Mythic Dawn – not the most careful of sinister societies, when blood was in the air – had slipped through his defenses without raising the smallest of alarms. And even as in the night, the daedra came with their captives, there was no word that there was anything amiss with the stone, that the Crystal Tower was as vulnerable as any mundane structure.
No charitable option presented itself. The case was black, or it was blacker. Yet Fintar, swanning about without a trace of remorse, collecting accolades and position like peaches from the orchard, had Arranelya's full corroboration, and that of the other Thalmor among the Wise.
(What a phrase that was. Rynandor had had much opportunity to lament the presumptiveness of the term "Wise" for those whose ancestors happened to be privy to the highest secrets, but the very idea of Thalmor wisdom trumped them all.)
But in claiming they had put an end to the Anguish, they had overstretched themselves. Rynandor had been presented with a small demonstration of Dawn Magic a few years ago – a group of mages had changed the shape of a hill, and brought lightning down upon the new pinnacle. Cardinal elements, they had explained. Primordial forces. Certainly, a power to be reckoned with – but, as practiced by mortals, not a power that stirred a blade of bloodgrass outside Nirn. This, then, was Rynandor's staging point; the rest would become apparent as a consequence, if at all.
From the desk, he took up his notes and his Trials of St. Alessia. All was now in order. As he ascended his doorstep onto the hill, he inhaled sharply and had to spend a moment leaning against the rail; despite the healer's best efforts, his hip and left leg had never fully recovered from being crushed in the Tower's collapse. He'd gone further distances with far greater setbacks than that, though; after the moment had passed, he set out as briskly as he could for the ampitheatre of Lillandril.
His speech at Lillandril had indeed provoked a murmur. Cloudrest, having stood safely apart from the Oblivion Crisis by the narrow paths carved right up to its gate, gave him a polite but indifferent reception. When he spoke at Firsthold, though, there began to be talk of action: contesting Thalmor appointments to councils and captainships.
But thus far, that was the pinnacle and from there, he was only losing ground. Since Firsthold, things seemed to keep falling away.
High Priestess Narinelle of the Grand Shrine of Auri-El had been arrested in a tavern brawl which she initiated – the evidence was indisputable and she gave no excuses – and this caused more than a few foolish wits to wonder whether this instability passed to Rynandor, who had always taken her spiritual advice very gravely.
The Cyrodiilic Saint Alessia, having put an end to the Merethic Era, was anathema to a handful even outside the Thalmor, to the degree that they refused to believe, or perhaps even hear, the first word of any work that portrayed her in a positive light. This handful (abetted, quietly but with a poison-dart accuracy, by Arranelya herself) began to forewarn audiences of his dangerous ideas.
The greatest disaster lay entirely at his feet. Rynandor had succumbed – and the struggle was a short one – to telling his High Queen everything he knew, but he did it without preparation, in a rush and a jumble. And now, hers was among the loudest of the voices questioning the sanctity of his mind.
But if he was in the middle of a morass of folly, there was no sense to stopping there. Thus it was that this evening, he addressed the people of Sunhold to parry the charges. (In truth, most of them were strangers to the city – resettlers from other parts, and the subtler strangers who were the new-forged veterans – but they would be true people of Sunhold soon enough.)
His reception promised to be a chilly one. For one thing, Fintar was scheduled to speak after he was, having the last word of the evening. As there were bread and drink and bards scheduled in the Pavilion before he spoke, Rynandor walked among the crowd, not finding much reassurance in the knowing whispers and sudden silences that followed him about the room.
"Well, all right, assume that he is crazy, then," said one voice that didn't trouble to suppress itself. "Would that change what I saw? Does it wipe all the Sigil Stones in the Summerguard halls from existence? Does it mean that Dawn Magic does have power over an entire Oblivion plane, or that – what, did Rynandor plant a text every Cyrodiilic schoolchild knows centuries in advance, on the off chance daedra would try killing us all someday? He didn't make it up, Fiorana, I studied it myself."
"Lathenil, if you're actually suggesting..."
As Rynandor looked to the source of the first voice – a short, slight, barely-grown mer with buggy eyes – something happened that hadn't happened to him for more than a century. A waking vision. He saw this mer, impeccable of clothing but hollow of face, dropping to kneel before Ocato of Firsthold with a gratitude so immense it looked to cause him pain.
The Lathenil before him, however, paled and crumpled at his prolonged gaze. "Oh, gods. You remember."
"Don't be ridiculous; he heard you talk about him," snapped the priestess he had been speaking to. "He fled the Tower and thinks he could have saved it all by his armorless self," she explained as Lathenil made gestures of useless protest. "And that you had enough spare time to pick out his face in the crowd."
"Do you wish me to condemn you, that you still live?" said Rynandor, deciding to take the plunge. One thing was certain, after all: Ocato, first servant of Uriel VII, would never see eye-to-eye with anyone who equated humans with the muck on their boots. "No, the mer I see is no coward. I see resourcefulness, and loyalty, and above all, tenacity. I see a mer who pursues a thankless-seeming task long after anyone else would have given up hope, and thus reaps a harvest that no one else could have realized."
Lathenil stared, his eyes more protuberant than ever. Finally: "I'm... very sure that you've mistaken me for someone else, magister. But – but that's not to say I intend to disappoint you," he added, and Rynandor knew he meant it to the core.
The beginning of Rynandor's speech was greeted – indeed, assailed – by a cavalcade of catcalls.
"Can't stand anyone else getting the glory, can you?"
"Keep raving! My pleasure!"
"You want to finish what Alessia started?"
"Why so soft on Camoran's boys?"
"Sorry! I can't hear you! Sorry! Say that again?"
Rynandor shook his head at the inanity he was expected to rise to and cast a spell to amplify his voice. (This had the irritating side effect of amplifying every other noise he made as well, from his footsteps to the rustling of his papers, but he could bear with that.) "It appears many present are reluctant to hear my arguments before they refute them. If there are any academy staff here this evening, I would have them take note for admissions purposes."
The catcallers fell back into silence or their private conversations, to scattered applause.
"Well, as you are apparently aware, I am Sage Rynandor of Lillandril. A veritable atronach of madness or political scheming; I'm not certain which. The trouble is that my story came second – for while Arranelya and the rest were telling of their greatness and being showered in laurels, I deemed rebuilding a higher priority.
"Many of you, who have come to Sunhold in order to-"
Evidently he wasn't the only one who had learned the amplifying spell, for he began to be shouted down anew.
"Rebuilder, you say! Can you bring back my sisters in the Tower?"
"Justice for the dead of Sunhold!"
"Gods' blood, why is this bastard the one to survive?"
Rynandor slumped against the podium, feeling the throbbing pain in his leg. Next, they'd doubtless accuse him of losing the Tower himself.
No. Phynaster save them, that was next. So few had survived that disaster. He was one. Commander Fintar was another. It was, to so many, one mer's word against another's – and they'd already decided which word to believe.
If he could even make himself heard, what could he say against this calumny? Anticipating an accusation only made it all the stronger. To speak of the stone was to betray the most sacred laws of the Wise.
So he allowed the accusers to shout uncontested until they subsided, gave them his condolences, and pressed on with the rest of the speech as he'd planned it. Though further efforts to drown him out were perfunctory, he fared no better at persuasion than he had in those first few minutes.
Then Fintar took the floor. His speech was short, succinct and unimpeded.
"On behalf of the High Queen and her council – under the Blood-Iron Provision –"
Rynandor turned back, found Lathenil's eyes – easily, for the youth was midway through getting to his feet – and shook his head emphatically.
"Rynandor of Lillandril is to be sequestered, pending exile, on charges of disrupting what fragile peace has emerged from the Anguish."
The Blood-Iron Provision meant that no one would know his place of detention, and he would not be permitted to mount his own defense. They were terms meant for the remnant of the Mythic Dawn, but there was nothing between Rynandor and the letter of the law.
Then he was exiled. So be it.
"Keep an eye to the truth," he said by way of farewell – the enchantment had worn off, but his voice carried in the awed hush of the moment. "Mark what the Thalmor do next. Remember me."
And then two soldiers of the Summerguard were at his side, escorting him away.
He was kept in impenetrable darkness, his magic powerless. He himself did not know where he was. All he had for company was the taste of prison rations and the sound of his own voice.
His voice, which entreated Auri-El one last time for visions.
The visions had shifted somewhat. Some had gone away, and others come in their place. A gibbet being readied on the White-Gold Tower. Corsairs locked in combat with Hammerfell warships. A young Nord with prematurely white hair, which he darkened with trembling fingers. Five mer gathered around a rough stone table in a rough stone house, a hushed intonation on their lips and smoldering fire in their eyes. And in place of the Redguard man he had seen before, it was Lathenil who presented the Dunmer archer with those silver arrows.
The course had changed – but he couldn't say if it was for the better. And whatever changes had been wrought upon the future, the High Queen was still dead in Alinor Square.