Opportunities

Fourteen: After Every Plan

So this was the essence of the plan: to go into the only publicly accessible part of the Imperial Palace, the meeting hall of the Council, turn an hourglass, and leave again. Then we were to go out to the Arboretum and sneak through a sequence of hidden doors, tunnels and sewers, all just to reach another part of the Palace.

It was a testament to how well-guarded the place was, now that it was too late to do anyone any good. Now that it was Chancellor Ocato who lived there and not an Emperor. Ocato’s bad luck that he was born an Altmer, the race men equated with slavery and megalomania: it made the rumor that he’d secretly been behind the entire Oblivion Crisis that much quicker to spread. In fact the mistrust might have spilled over onto the Arch-Mage and from her to the Altmeri in general, except that she’d – well. It was hard to tell exactly what had happened, because the story was already getting swallowed up in the same kind of religious miracle talk that had risen up around Martin Septim. But somehow she was gone, and the temptation to hold her whole race at fault was somehow gone with her.

The only meaning it all had to me was since it had happened so recently, the locals had a lot of other things to think about besides me and Othrelos wandering into the Council chambers. All routes up were guarded, locked, and impassable, but this was not equally true of the route down. One easy lock, one inattentive guard. What harm could anyone do in the basement?

The hourglass was surprisingly large, and Othrelos gallantly stepped forward to move it without my asking. And that was that – nothing we could see or hear changed. “Think it did anything?” I muttered.

He shrugged. “I suppose we’ll find out.”

For as many of my fellow thieves swore by using the sewers to move through town unseen, I had never tried it before. I promptly swore to myself that I never would again. It was dank, and dark even when I cast lights for us, and the stench was awful. That was to say nothing of the crawling mass of mud crabs underfoot – peculiarly aggressive animals. I was torn between wanting to make a point of eating them in the future, in vengeance, or making a point of not eating them because of how many I’d encountered in filthy sewers.

Othrelos realized before I did where our route was leading us, and slowed down, looking concerned. “Under the Bloodworks,” he whispered to me, and immediately I remembered the rumor that worried him. I’d always taken it as just an ironic joke: vampire lair under the Bloodworks of the Arena, ha ha. Anyway, it wasn’t as if this would be the first time we’d dealt with vampires. Not even the first time lately.

All the same, we began to take more care about being hidden and quiet, and that was for the best, since the vampires really were there. Luckily for us, they were not banded together for battle like the last ones we’d met: they were each off in their own little corners of their shared territory. We were able to avoid most of them entirely, and those we did have to fight, we fought two to one.

Actually, there were probably one or two vampires we avoided twice, because this part of the sewer was as unfamiliar to Othrelos as it was to me, and even more than usually twisted in on itself. But eventually we found the locked gate for which the Gray Fox had given us a key, the one that should lead into the section of sewer directly underneath the Palace District.

It always feels a little bit like cheating, using a key. But sometimes it’s the only option.

The way through the heart of the sewage system was much more straightforward, and strangely, also featured vampires. I wondered how they’d gotten hold of a key to the gate – we did find that they had one – and then wondered if it had been a vampire from whom the Gray Fox had gotten our key.

When we passed through the door at the far end, we knew we had to have reached the Old Way. Suddenly the architecture was quite different: pale and squared off and formal and elaborate, like –

“Like an Ayleid ruin,” Othrelos said, confirming my thought.

“I guess it makes sense,” I answered. “If the Palace is really what’s left of White Gold Tower.”

He turned to look at me with a mischievous grin I knew well. “Welkynd stones?”

I smiled too. “Maybe. We’ll have to keep an eye out.”

Here it was wraiths instead of vampires. The first one hurt me before we got it down, and while I drank my potion I felt stupid that I hadn’t changed weapons in anticipation. Ancient ruins, high risk of wraiths. Obvious in hindsight. On the other hand, we did both immediately start to think in terms of traps, which meant that the maces that swung down from the ceiling in one hallway failed to hit either of us in the head.

We crept through room after room, hall after hall. It seemed to go on endlessly, palace enough for ten Emperors, all abandoned and left to the wraiths – oh, and zombies as well. And no Welkynd stones, although we found chests with money and other small items. I had no idea any more what time it was, and a little wearily, I thought of how funny it would be if I ended up calling on the keepers of the Scrolls in the wee hours of morning.

One of the many halls finally opened out into a large room with a balcony that loomed over us, and at the other end –

I jerked Othrelos back by the shoulder and crouched, recognizing the shapes. Dark Welkynd stones, on either side of the facing hallway that was the only other opening into the room. He shot me a look of confused alarm as I hissed and stared at them… and nothing happened.

He stooped there patiently with me for a long moment before he finally asked. “What?”

He’d never seen one – they were rare, almost a myth. I explained quickly. Then I crept out, slowly at first, testing when they would react to our presence. Nothing. I looked up behind me at the balcony, and nothing threatening was there, either. Finally I relaxed and waved for Othrelos to come into the room. He passed me and approached the gate, investigated it.

“No good,” he said. “It must open by – yes, I see a switch up there.” He gestured up toward the faint blue light above us and to the left, where one arm of the balcony met the wall that held the gate. But the stairs up to it were ruined.

“Heft me up,” I said, and we assumed our positions. We’d done similarly a number of times before, climbing into windows. I stepped onto his waiting entwined hands, and he shoved upward as I jumped. I looked back down at Othrelos for a second. “Hmm. Think this was the jump he was worried about?”

“It could have been, if he’d been expecting you to be by yourself. Try the switch.”

I did, and nothing happened. We both looked around, and realized there was another switch at the opposite end of the room, also up on the balcony level. I trotted casually around to it and hit it as well. There was the clank of the gate starting to open – and another sound too, a sinister hum. I recognized it even before I could turn to see the dark red glow spark to life. “Run!” I shouted.

Lightning hit the spot where Othrelos had been, but he was sprinting for the gate. I jumped down and followed, and heard the second blast behind me. Othrelos hit the door before I did, and managed to throw it open before I ran headlong into him. We kept running down the new hall for a bit before we stopped to realize we were out of range.

“I hate those,” I panted.

Something between a gasp and a snicker. “Can’t imagine why.”

It had been silly to think of the last room as large: the one we entered now was so enormous that I could imagine building a village in it, like the massive caverns where I’d found Othrelos. An immense statue stood, raised and very prominent, at the opposite end from where we were. There were balconies, of course. Refreshingly, there were some of the benign Welkynd stones we’d been hoping for. There were also zombies.

We went through a long, messy process of killing undead things, looking for doors, finding them locked, looking for switches and pressure plates, finding that they opened things a world away from where they were, killing more undead things. It began to seem ridiculous.

“I may go a step further,” Othrelos said when we stopped to catch our breath, “and hate Ayleids.”

I chuckled. “Really? Just now? Not for, you know, the centuries of slavery?”

He grinned playfully. “I’m a mer. They never enslaved us.”

Our last switch had actually moved walls back in the main room, letting us up onto a platform that faced the great statue. As we stepped onto it, we heard the low rumble that meant it was one huge pressure plate. The statue opposite us slowly turned, and a hatch opened in its belly.

“That’s got to be your shot,” I said. Such a small target from this distance. It was definitely a good thing Othrelos had come with me.

He nodded, staring at the opening intently. He drew a regular arrow, fitted it to the bow, fired a test shot to measure the distance. It clattered to earth near the feet of the statue, and he nodded again. Next he drew the arrow to which the Gray Fox had fitted the key-shaped point, and aimed it with more care. I stood and watched, trying not to move or even breathe for fear of disturbing his concentration.

The arrow flew, and seemed to hang in the air forever before we heard the distant clink of metal on metal. The statue itself lifted up, and there was a stairway leading beneath it.

Othrelos grabbed me to him and kissed me, his lips soft despite the tension in his arms. “It’s all you from here,” he whispered. “We can’t both be Celia.”

“You’ll be all right going back?”

He nodded. “I know where all my hazards are. I’ll meet you back at the house. Shadow hide you, Lum.”

I kissed him back one more time, and all the adoration mixed with all the eagerness to go forward made me feel wonderfully alive. I ran from him toward my secret door, and didn’t think twice until I heard his voice calling my name, far behind me.

I turned, and realized two things: that my route to the stairs was flanked by two smaller statues, and that those were moving now, toward me. As I reached for my sword Othrelos was running and shooting at the same time, trying to reach us. The fight did not do us lasting harm, but we did have to split the last healing potion, and then kiss each other a few more times, before I could proceed again.

Now it would all be about sneaking and chameleon spells. I was on much surer ground with that than with crawling through dungeons and killing monsters. And that was for the best, because my safe, secret way opened out into a barracks. Happily I’d already started to move with stealth in mind, and there was a shift change underway, which stirred up a bit of chaos in which it was easier to get lost. I followed the new shift out into the hallway.

Down the hall away from the guards, to a locked door. I didn’t sense anyone on the other side, but one of the guards moving away from me started to head back. I picked the lock as quickly as I could, slipped through, and quietly closed the door again behind me. Then waited for several seconds to see if the returning guard came as far as the door, if he suspected something wrong. Nothing.

A long, slow creep to a second door, a second lock to pick. The next hall was curved: I went around to the left, and found a door that would not respond to lockpicks. It was locked some other way, perhaps with a switch. I was close to something important. I moved slowly back the other way, looking for the answer. Back around to where I’d started, and then down the right arm of the curved hall, with an abrupt stop when I realized there was someone there.

He was dressed like the blind priests. Yes, I remembered: the order of priests blinded by reading the Elder Scrolls. This had to be the place I wanted, which made it all the more pleasing to see the switch behind him. I took a few very deep, quick breaths, then one more deep one that I held while I moved past the priest, hit the switch, and moved away again, so that he would not hear my breathing.

The door was open. Inside was the library itself, and its blind priests. I glanced at their eyes quickly to make sure they showed no glimmer of ability to read faces, and then stopped sneaking and walked casually toward the table where they waited. “Celia,” one of them said, and with no other preliminaries, another produced the Scroll. Then they left me, presumably to let me read.

Just like that. I picked it up and stood for a moment with it in my hands. An Elder Scroll. Now all I had to do was get back out. I got up, careful not to make noise, so as not to let them think I was done and ready to give the Scroll back. Back the way I came? Ah, no: that door had locked again, still unpickable. They were not prepared to let me out until I returned the Scroll. That realization was oddly delightful. Immortal fame should not come easily, after all.

There were no other doors I could see, but there was a flight of stairs. I tried that, and found that up the stairs were more blind priests. But I’d had practice for this, and I moved through them, slowly and quietly, until I reached the door on the far side. Still no safe way to go back down, so I kept going up. Up led me into still more priests – their private quarters, I gathered. Past that was a rather more lavish apartment that must belong to someone important.

No obvious way out of here either, other than the way I’d come. Curse it, there must be – but I didn’t have time to think about it, because I could hear someone coming behind me. There was nowhere, there was nothing to – there was a fireplace. An enormous fireplace, and when I hurried to it wondering if I could conceal myself behind its screen, I saw that the grate was loose and the flue wide.

A woman behind, me, I could tell by the voice. A mage, I could tell by the sound of magicka gathering for a blast. I jumped.

I seemed to fall for hours. It was plenty of time to wonder how many stories I was going to drop, and how hurt I would be when the ground and I were reunited. Strangely, I couldn’t quite tell whether I was having the time of my life or feeling terrified that I was about to die.

I didn’t. I hit the ground and felt a strange cushioning beneath my feet. I struggled to land straight, to not fall forward or backward onto my hands. As I crouched down close to the earth, Springheel Jak’s boots came apart at the seams and collapsed in ancient leather puddles around my feet.

Ah. That was the jump he had been worried about.

Around me were the crumbling Ayleid walls of the Old Way. I was as good as out.

Me and an Elder Scroll.