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Chapter 8: Secrets in Saarthal
Saarthal! The College was still excavating there and they were letting him tour it. Master Tolfdir led the small group past the new security door the College had put up to keep the lower levels sealed. Research down there was by approval only even after the Eye of Magnus had been removed. This little tour was for Baladas and Calcelmo. They hadn't known about the Eye until Curtis had drunkenly blabbed that secret at the welcoming dinner for Calcelmo two days ago. It wasn't something the original staff at the College talked about openly. Curtis's ears still smarted from Tolfdir and Urag ripping into his sorry, hung-over hide about revealing things during a public party — especially College secrets — that he, publicly known to be a refugee from Solstheim, wasn't supposed to know about.
The less said about Urag's reaction of having to share knowledge with Baladas, the better.
Tolfdir told the story of Saarthal to the three master mages — Mysticism Master Edd Theman was also on this tour — and Curtis's dumb ass was to be the ass carrying lunches and supplies and to stay dumb.
The draugr had been cleared out, burned, and ashes reburied in a special ceremony conducted by the Priestess of Arkay from Windhelm. Traps had been disabled and were being studied. The dais where the Eye had been found had some of the interesting script that they were still struggling to identify and decipher. The three elven masters agreed that none of them could see any familiar words. "Does it have to be words? Couldn't it be theoretical math symbolism?" asked Curtis. Tolfdir glared at him and he decided that the word wall in the next chamber was calling to him.
He took his time setting out the contents of the picnic basket. There wasn't anything to warm up or cool down, all the food was in enchanted containers that kept their contents at the perfect temperature.
"Baladas and Calcelmo agree that the two likeliest places to find such similar symbolism are nigh impossible to get to," said Edd, formerly "Fast Eddie" Theman from the Morrowind game. The dunmer smiled at him and sat on the trunk beside Curtis and also looked at the word wall. "Calcelmo says the sacred archives of the Sunbirds of Alinor, ancient explorers who flew ships into Aetherius, are firmly under control of the Thalmor high command and none but them have access. Baladas says such formulations might be found in the personal laboratories of Sotha Sil in the Clockwork City, the portal to which no one knows. If the dwemer had such knowledge, we've yet to find any written evidence. Their peculiar powers of the Calling, their mind links, probably made physical recording of knowledge unnecessarily redundant and not worth the effort.
"What made you think of mathematics instead of words?"
Curtis shrugged. "What else is there? You got normal speech, you got magic speech. And a smartass scientist and story writer stated something like, 'any sufficiently advanced technology is just magic to others.' Something like that."
"This writer..."
"Uh. Asimov, I think."
"Imperial?"
"Foundation and Empire, yeah." Curtis got up and went to the word wall, splaying his hands over the gouged surface. "An incredible power device is found in Saarthal. No one knows who created it or who placed it here. Now we find evidence of dwemer nearby. And the dwemer like esoteric and forbidden knowledge. I mean, they even built a scanner to read and record an Elder Scroll; like, watching an eclipse through a pin-hole to observe without being blinded. We just need to get in there, to whatever's under Skytemple Ruin, and find out if it's just a, a trade settlement or something more. How is the Eye related? Because the dwemer source all their power from geothermal which the Eye isn't. The ayleid sourced planar and daaedric which the Eye isn't, I think. Not sure 'bout that one 'cuz I don't know squat about Ayleids."
"The Eye was before my arrival," said Edd. "Also before yours. Tolfdir only speaks of it because you brought it up. How do you know of this mystery device? How can you speak so certainly of its power derivation? And what is this about an Elder Scroll?"
"Shit." Curtis double fist-bumped his own skull. "Sorry. Tolfdir's right; I really should shut up more."
Edd surprised him by laughing. "So you're another one with a secret life and inconstant past." Curtis was afraid he'd continue probing but the other seemed to prefer filling his plate. They made small talk about the excavation work. Curtis tried to recall as many info bits he could about Edd Theman.
The game was Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. Fast Eddie. If the player pursued the quest to join House Telvanni, you eventually rise to the rank of Spellwright and before you can go any further you have to recruit a Mouth to handle your politics while you go about your more important duties of being a wizard. When you ask the other Mouths in the council chamber for recommendations, they point you to Fast Eddie or Eddie the Rat. You find Eddie hiding out in Balmora. He's a bit of a disgrace for having left House Telvanni to join the outlander Mages Guild of the Empire. If you ask Blades Spymaster Caius Cosades about Edd, he'll let you know Edd has been or is an information source of theirs about House Telvanni. Why Eddie wants to be someone's Mouth isn't really known; he just dreams of being one. He can be sent on jobs once recruited.
Edd back then was a sorcerer and lawman of the House. Common Destruction practitioner. Curtis couldn't imagine what the mer went through between then and now that turned him from Destruction to Mysticism. He wanted to ask him more about the Nerevarine, but when he tried vague questions hinting of his interest, Edd was quick to shut down. Curtis could understand that. You find out your boss is the great hero of prophecy and once he does his job of killing off the false gods and the great demon, leaving your civilization leaderless and without gods, he hightails it the fuck outta there just before you get hit by a meteor and the gates of hell open up. Kinda like that evil fairy godmother's song in that Shrek movie. "Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods? Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?" (Don't hit me, Azura, I really don't mean to say you're an evil fairy godmother! Just a daedric one.)
The others joined them for the late lunch. The subject shifted to the word wall and the nord prophesy of the Dragonborn, the current dragon crisis, and then, of course, to the Dragonborn herself, the Archimage. A brilliant but erratic mage was the picture Tolfdir painted. Of course, the thu'um was an incredible power but the Archimage was not interested in definitive, rigorous studies of her innate dragon power. She found it difficult to take a calm researcher's position when her dragon hunting duties kept her in constant travel and she knew firsthand the destruction the dragons left in their wake. She was also a hard person to keep in one place for any length of time to work up or work through studies.
Baladas wanted to know how she traveled. By foot and horse and carriage? He was appalled. Neloth, her sponsor, may consider her only a hireling in his House and treat her like a lackey only fit to run errands, but she is Dragonborn and Archimage of Winterhold and therefore deserves special consideration if for no other reason that she now also represents House Telvanni. So he would take it upon himself to teach her the basic skills of levitation, teleportation, and recall though it galled him to do Neloth any favors even indirectly.
Although teleportation, he admitted that it would be a bit difficult in Skyrim in any case because of the lack of location beacons. He certainly couldn't find any. If she wanted to reinvest in teleportation magic, it was going to be a large job of re-establishing a network of beacons. The strongest of the ancient Skyrim beacons that he could sense was in Windhelm, but it had a strong warning mark there that safety had been compromised.
Candlehearth Hall, Curtis immediately thought. The magical, ever-burning candle the building was named after was what remained of the ancient wayshrine. Yeah, you'd teleport right into the main fireplace and into a hall full of anti-magic nords. He'd let Tolfdir know that later and Tolfdir could tell Baladas why using that location to teleport into was a really crappy idea.
Yeah. The Dragonborn really needed fast travel instead of just riding her magic skeleton horse between locations no matter how fast and untiring it was. The skeleton horse was new to Curtis who figured this was another game mod feature to the Vampire and Dawnguard factions he'd only just recently learned about. Without fast travel, it was no wonder it was five years and counting since Alduin reappeared and the Dragonborn was still nowhere near being able to take him down. Reality, baby. Hoofing it in real time around Skyrim to gather Words and experience and skills wasn't any sort of easy, speedrun game. No running from Winterhold to Windhelm in a day. That was at least a week of travel on foot provided you're in fit condition, minimally encumbered, and your average walking speed was 3.0 to 3.5 miles an hour; and then you walked sun-up to sun-down, ate while walking, and only stopped to take a quick squat. And that was also, of course, if you didn't go wandering off the road and you didn't encounter bad weather, bandits, wolves, bears, etc. And here to Labryinthian? Months of travel. Then figure the Dragonborn spent days fighting her way to Morokei and then more months of travel to get back, and also presuming she hadn't taken any injury during the battle that needed days of recovery.
And in all that time poor Mirabelle and Tolfdir kept the College together while Ancano sucked in more power and Archimage Aren was in a coma. And still in his universe Mirabelle got gypped and got killed. She had been shielding Tolfdir as he again interfered with the power transfer from the Eye to Ancano as he had done between the Eye and the draugr lord in Saarthal. One of many interferences to slow down Ancano until the Dragonborn could return. Only by then, Ancano had finally detected their interference, had lashed out, and she'd taken the fatal brunt of it. Holding long enough for the College to be evacuated before her shielding collapsed and she'd gone up in flames from the power of the Eye.
"Mathematics is a very good deduction," said Baladas, turning to look at Curtis. "From what I've read of Urag's notes (Oh, shit!) You made mention of 'atomic energy,' can you explain more of that?"
"Uh, no," said Curtis, glancing uncertainly at Tolfdir's expressionless mask. "Not my area of expertise. That kind of math has nothing to do with what I do. I build houses and offices, not worlds." Tolfdir's ice-blue eyes got icier. Shit. It was gonna be another bad lecture after this.
"What notes are these?" asked Calcelmo. Baladas just smiled smugly drawing a displeased scowl from the other.
"Curtis," said Tolfdir, "is our local idiot savant, Calcelmo. His name, as you may have noted, is not dunmer. We believe he's had too close an acquaintance with Sheogorath because of his delusion of having lived another life and, perhaps, Hermaeus Mora because of his unusual breadth of knowledge while displaying appalling ignorance in many other aspects. We have been documenting many of his ramblings. Many of his terminologies are confusing and take some time to correlate. I believe his use of 'atomic' refers to aetherius energy."
"Maybe,' said Calcelmo thoughtfully. "But it is a unique phrasing and may have some significance of structure that reflects an approach that may be worth considering in light of his current offerings to this College and its pursuit of knowledge. May I be allowed to see some of these documents?"
Tolfdir shook his head and apologetically said, "At the moment, we are limiting access. The raw data needs a great deal of effort to sort and analyze. It's easier to talk to Curtis. And that in itself can be confusing enough. Like Apocrypha, it is too easy to get distracted and lost." Calcelmo was clearly not happy with that, but accepted Tolfdir's authority on the matter.
Curtis gave his best village idiot's grin and excused himself to deliver the supplies he'd pack-muled in for the other researchers in other parts of the excavation. As he delivered supplies, he mulled over that end battle in Saarthal. How had Tolfdir broken the link between the Eye and the draugr? Why did he fail to break that link between the Eye and Ancano? One easy explanation that Ancano's interaction with the Eye had been as a living intellligence while the draugr was a dead, lesser wizard with a powerful staff and the amulet piece he'd helped murder his father for. (Question: why did the nords bury an evil wizard and his followers in a chamber holding a mysterious power device they'd buried down here to keep it away from the snow elves? Had they already forgotten the Eye was down there when they chucked the bodies in hundreds of years later?)
Anyway... Tolfdir. When he was doing what he was doing he probably was flying on instinct, like a combat veteran, a trained athelete. Don't think about it; just do. How fun was it going to be (and how mad it would make the old man) to set Baladas and Calcelmo on him to reverse engineer whatever he did to find out why his tactics worked with the Eye, and therefore get some clue as to how the Eye worked. Nothing messes your stride and makes you self-concious like people poking at you and asking you to self-analyze why you did what you did.