The King And I
Chapter Thirty-Eight – If You Do Not Have The Name, You Cannot Give Him Anything RealIt was quiet in the Palace. From the east-facing window in the Royal bedchamber, a thin line of pre-dawn light began to seep over the horizon. Ghostlight. In its transitory glow, everything was the soft colour of a spiderweb – the polished stone of the Palace wall, the filmy draqes hanging like discarded wings… and the face of the woman.
It wasn't only the ghostlight that made her face grey, of course. Dunmer are all grey; ash grey. But there were three spots of bright blood-red that sang out in the chill dawn, and two were Morgiah's eyes.
The third was something she held in her hand. It was hard and faceted. It seemed to glow from within, pulsating like a heartbeat.
There was a knock on the door, and she slipped the thing into the bureau drawer quiet as a whisper before the servant entered.
"Your Highness, it is time."
Morgiah stood.
*
Almalexia was a spectacle of colour and light.
After the sudden shock of the eruption, the atmosphere of the city had turned to one of carnival. Rumours of the manner of Helseth's demise had flown though the streets – he was mad, he had gone to Red Mountain to end his life – no, he had secretly been plotting with the Emperor to subdue Morrowind for once and for all, using deep sorcery to make the mountain to explode – no, he had been devising a scheme to
overthrow the Emperor, and it had gone terribly wrong… and so on. The tales ranged from the wildly erroneous to the dangerously accurate, but of course, the people would never know which was which. The eruption had proved short-lived, and that was all that mattered.
The rumours all agreed on one thing, however: Helseth was dead. And fairly or unfairly, the people of Morrowind had decided this was something to celebrate. Cruel, but predictable – old King Llethan had been popular, and Helseth had not. Such is the fickle nature of public opinion.
In the bedecked streets, the festivities were tinged with fever that comes from intense fear mixed with tentative hope. Speculation ran like wildfire; What was this Morgiah like? Would she be a strong ruler? Those who knew of her exploits in Firsthold said yes. Some simply declared anyone would be better than Helseth. Some said no; she was the King's blood and sooner or later, madness will out.
Time will tell.
In a dingy bar seething with gossip and scandal, a mer with a crossbow on his back stared vacantly into the throng.
Solon had not left the city. Something was keeping him here, although he couldn't have said what. After all, he had a plan now, a plan that involved returning to the Ascadian Isles to take the reins of a new and very interesting career… And yet, he had passed by the city gates a dozen times in the last three days and not gone through.
He had the vague notion that he should contact Nenya before he left – perhaps Caius, too. But then again, he had never bothered informing people of his whereabouts before – why start now? Nenya would have means of finding him if she really needed to, not that that was likely. No, that could not be what was keeping him here. What, then?
Unfinished business with Morgiah? No, their dealings were well and truly concluded. She had dismissed him. Anything that happened to her was no longer any concern of his, and with Dren dead, neither did he need her protection.
He knocked back a glass of sujamma with practised ease, but the strange feeling in the pit of his stomach remained. He could not get used to this…
sensitivity. He used to be a fortress, and now sixty years of repressed emotions were swarming over his battlements and playing a fanfare. But
why?It must be Dren. Giving up control for even one moment had broken some kind of dam in him, and now he couldn't patch it back up before the water flooded through. Well, he would not tolerate it any longer. He had been taking control all his life; he could do it again. He was going to leave, and he was going to do it now.
He banged the glass down on the counter and stood up.
Something caught his eye.
Oh, said his mind.
Oh. Oh.The world narrowed to a finger-width.
She vacated the dark corner from which she had been watching him, winding through the crowd until they faced each other. Her copper hair was less thick and had lost some of its lustre, he saw, and a terrible scar stretched from chin to ear. A scalloped gold earring hid the edges of an ear mutilated by burning tongs.
He found it hard to speak. "I thought you were dead."
Felara Ules smiled, proving that while the vitality had been burned from her face, it could not be taken from her eyes. "So did I. For a while."
For the first time, he found himself lost for words.
He knew infatuation - not from himself, of course, but from others. This was different. You don't brave torture just for a pretty face. What did she want? Revenge? He couldn't have blamed her for that… but impossibly, her eyes told a different story.
He found his voice. "I… what they did to you…"
Her eyes took on a haunted look, chin tilting up defiantly. "You'll repay me, don't worry. But first… we have business, you and I. We have a national crime ring to operate."
He couldn't believe it. "You read my mind."
"No," she said. "You read
mine."The grin spread all over his face; he couldn't stop it. Yes, he would repay her. It might take years; decades, even. The longer the better. He would enjoy every second.
He angled his arm. "Shall we?"
She laughed the same laugh she had before, sliding her arm through his.
They stepped out into the city air.
*
The sun set, turning the world to gold in a single glorious minute. Two figures stood on a balcony overlooking Mournhold's Brindisi Dorom.
"I couldn't sleep until I heard word you were back in the city," confessed Bomba 'Lurrina to Nenya. "When I saw the smoke …"
"I've faced worse than a volcano," Nenya grinned.
Bomba opened her mouth to speak, but decided that on reflection, this was possibly true.
"So what happens now?" Nenya asked her. "What will you do?"
The Khajiit shrugged. "What is there ever to do?"
"I mean, where will you go? Back to Daggerfall?"
Bomba 'Lurrina hesitated. "I don't know… it was my home out of necessity, but is that enough? I don't own myself any more. I haven't for nearly thirty years."
Nenya looked down, picking at the buckle of her gauntlet. "The thing about being a hero," she said slowly, "is that if you don't watch it, you lose yourself to the legend. You get drowned. You're public property."
Bomba 'Lurrina smiled sadly to hear her own advice spoken back at her. In the pale gold of the dusk, her eyes were soft. "It happened to me," she whispered, turning to look at the younger girl, "but I don't think it will happen to you. You are young, and you already have something else to live for." She looked out to the sun, a rueful smile forming on her lips. "I got drowned years ago. I don't really belong anywhere now, not even Daggerfall."
Nenya frowned. "Don't be an ass. You don't have to give yourself up to a myth, a
story…" she set her lip. "Go back to Elsweyr."
Bomba's eyes widened. "Elsweyr? I… couldn't, I left so long ago…"
"Find your clan, your family. Find yourself, or you'll never know."
The Khajiit was silent for a long time. Then- "And you? What will you do?"
"The same," she said, her voice full of quiet joy. "Home. Skyrim."
"And you think they will let you just walk away?"
Nenya shrugged, mischief in her eyes. "Oh, I'll tell them I'm going to Akavir or something."
Bomba 'Lurrina shook her head, a smile on her lips. The sun's rays struck out over the city, bathing the world in rose.
"Look," she said softly, pointing over the balcony. "The procession has reached the Temple."
In the plaza below a column of people was slowly materialising, flanking the ornately dressed figure at its centre. Their emergence marked the end of a winding path through the city, past the massed ranks of the commons up to the Temple dais. Almalexia's remains may now be gathering dust somewhere in Clockwork City, but the Dunmer were traditionalists, and the house of the goddess had been a coronation site for thirteen hundred years.
"Do you think she'll be a good queen?" Nenya looked worried. "Fat lot of good us going through all that ruckus if she turns out to be Helseth the Second."
The Khajiit smiled. "I think nine times out of ten, the Mournhold née Wayrest royal family is the last thing you expect."
Below, fanfare rang out as the distant Princess turned to kneel on the ancient stones. Bomba 'Lurrina faced her companion and took her hand, lacing their fingers together.
"Our paths are leading us in opposite directions," she told the younger girl gently. "I'm older than I act, you know. If I go to Elsweyr and you go to Skyrim, it is likely we shall never see each other again."
Nenya crushed their entwined hands to her chest, for once seeming as young as she was. They looked at each other, Nerevarine to Emperor's Agent, hero to hero.
Suddenly Nenya smiled, and the sky was outshone. "The Elder Scrolls can go hang," she whispered. "The future is never written."
*
The sinking sun blazed through the Bamz-Amschend statue and reflected off a crown, scattering light onto the upturned faces in the Plaza Brindisi Dorom. On the eve of 10th Rain's Hand 3E 429, Hlaalu Morgiah became Queen Morgiah I of Morrowind.
Despite the ominous calendar date, it did not rain.
*
Vivat Morgiah Regina.*
Everything heals in time.
Life resumed its inexorable pace, and Morrowind remained Morrowind. Countries are remarkably resistant things, and by and large the Dunmer don't allow volcanic eruptions to intrude on their day-to-day lives, having been used to such things for rather longer than their interprovincial neighbours.
As for the first actions of the new queen, they were unexpectedly devout. She would ensconce herself in an undisturbed room of the temple, she informed her court, to fast and pray and mourn her brother. The Dowager Queen Mother would not only handle the affairs of state for the first three weeks of the new queen's reign, but in a touching display of familial love, insisted on being the one to deliver the meagre supplies of plain bread and water to her daughter's isolated sanctuary.
Rumours of this arrangement soon spread among the commons, who approved. Helseth had never spared much time for the gods, and prevalent opinion agreed that a pious monarch would make a pleasant change. The sight of Barenziah bringing small baskets of loaves to the temple each morning was strangely moving.
On the third morning, the Barenziah bought her daughter's bread from a street vendor in the Great Bazaar, much to the delight of the general populace. With a fond smile at the gathering of pilgrims at the temple door, she disappeared through the small passage leading to Morgiah's sanctuary. Once inside, away from the crowd's gaze, she put her parcel on the table next to the baskets of the previous two days. All were unopened, and filled with now rather stale rolls.
She cast an eye around the empty room, smiled, and left.
Three hundred miles away, an unadorned carriage carried Queen Morgiah I towards the Dragontail Mountains, Helseth's abandoned Mantella hidden under a fold of her cloak.
*
The ghostfall was as dark and boundless as she had remembered.
What was
not familiar was the weight, as she clung to the edge of Oblivion with hands that were not hands. It had not been like this with Tellanaco; speed she remembered, yes, frantic rushing and the taste of tin and her heart in her mouth, but not this awful
heaviness – and why would that be? It dragged at her eyes and her breath. It dragged at her mind with fingers of black glass.
All Morgiah could do was hold the Mantella out like a beacon and wait for something, anything, to happen.
She had been received at the inner sanctum of Scourg Barrow two days ago with quiet courtesy. If the inhabitants were surprised, they did not show it, which perplexed her – surely the loss of their ancestral leader should have thrown them into chaotic disarray? But Necromancers are no strangers to death, and perhaps they had known all along that she would come. She showed them the cloak-clasp, told them what she knew, and watched as they drew the circle and charred the ancient brooch over a chalice of pearlescent fire.
Remember the name.She knew what she must do. She'd known ever since that terrible evening in Mournhold Palace when she felt Hermaeus Mora clawing at her mind, saw the ash and fire in the meeting-room, picked the cloak-clasp up off the floor. She knew she'd need it, because she'd read the words in Karethys' summoning book more than thirty years ago in the Wayrest Royal Library.
for these beyngs an addytyonal levele of controle ys requyred. Thys maye be obtayned bye havynge yn thy possessyon an objecte formerlye belongyng to the partycular spyryt. Yn cases of extreme magnytude, thy wyll be compelled to speake the true and byrth-gyven name of the spyryt at the performance of the ceremonyeThirty years, and the page still stood as vividly in her memory as the day she had read it. It had flashed before her eyes when she had seen a name in letters of fire from the depths of prophecy in the Glenumbra Moors, and again when she took the clasp from its bed of ash, and finally when her hand had closed on the impossible Mantella that should have been burning in the heart of Red Mountain hundreds of miles away... but wasn't.
She had once declared that she didn't believe in fate. Perhaps this was her castigation.
Remember the name. Names have power. If you do not have the name, you cannot give him anything real. Remember the name and do not stop, do not tarry, even for a moment. Remember the name.Morgiah opened her mouth and spoke the birth-given name of the King of Worms.
It rippled outwards from the body she didn't have, fluttering like parchment, like smoky birds. The ripples grew and grew until Oblivion resonated with the sound of her voice, the name she alone in the whole world knew. And suddenly, blissfully, the weight dropped away as if she had been lifted out of a vice.
"I knew you would come."
Her heart leapt so far she thought she could see it, for one moment, glistening like a diamond in her hands. The words came from behind her, but she did not turn around.
Her voice was clear as a chime in the whispering air. "And I knew you would not have gone through."
"Knew? Or only hoped?"
She smiled for pure joy; she couldn't help it. "Did you
know I would come? Or did you only
hope?"She could feel his answering smile; she had always known his moods. "I might not have dared even that much had I been alone. One may be overwhelmed by Oblivion even with five thousand years of arcane knowledge, but
two may join forces to cling to the precipice on the hope that an old friend may come to show them the way back."
A stab of realisation crackled through her like lightning; there
were two presences behind her...
"Divayth Fyr?" she gasped, breathless.
"None other. You know, I was hoping that when we returned, we might make of him an
academic acquaintance."At first she was robbed of words, the mouth she didn't have falling to the floor. Then suddenly she laughed with delighted abandon, thirty long years crystallising into a single perfect moment.
She turned around, finally, and saw what he was.
"You are different," she smiled, holding out the Mantella.
"You are not, and I am glad," he said as he took it.
She thought back to Tellanaco, the years spreading out in her mind, a landscape of jade hills and saffron valleys and violet horizons. "You never did tell me my shape."
He pushed the Mantella into his heart as if through paper; it glowed red. Blood and sunrise and promise. "I have one bottle of the Karnver Falls 409 vintage left; if you come and share it, I may yet enlighten you."
She tipped back her head and laughed again, laughed like chiming bells, like crashing waves, like celebration. It echoed over and over until the darkness rang with it.
The soulgem cascaded into blinding flame, the world collapsing in on itself, the ghostfall dying, the air of Mundus touching her face like a lover's fingers.
Above, Tamriel's first star winked into the sky.
*
*
» Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:58 pm 
I love it! Also, hey Peleus! Great to see you again 
Any more projects on the horizon? 
). Now we're all finished I thought some people might be interested to browse through them, so I set up some galleries on my gaming photobucket. Where possible, I have all the available in-game canon versions of characters alongside modded interpretations. 
