Chapter 6: Life in the sun

My dreams, perhaps unsurprisingly, were all of dark, shadowy figures and grievous wounds. I felt awful when I woke. The scorching sun was beating down on my face, I was covered with insect bites, and it seemed as if my whole body ached. Magicka had seeped back into my body as I lay there unconscious through the early hours of the morning. Closing my eyes against the sun, I concentrated on my beloved healing spell and felt the aches, bruises and lacerations of the night before all fade away. Sitting up I saw the door to the smuggler's caves swing shut, and heard what sounded like padded feet run away on the other side.

I thought of the black-armoured man that had attacked me in the caves. I had slept in the only exit from the caves (as far as I knew), and since I found myself still breathing, I assumed that my assailant was still inside. Not wanting to take any chances, I drew my saber and threw the door open wide, flooding the first chamber of the caves with morning light. Nothing. I didn't think my relatively clumsy attempts at stealth would help against this foe, so I took up the first available torch, made sure it was burning brightly, and continued slowly into the caves, checking every corner as I went.

I drew near to the slave pen where I had last seen the khajiit and argonian people I had freed the previous day without encountering any living thing. I called out to them, asking if they were alright. After a moment a khajiit voice floated back.

"We are still here, Edward Frost." I rounded the corner and approached the slave pen. In the light of my torch I could see Baadargo - the muscular male khajiit who had first asked me to free him and the other slaves - standing in the doorway to the pen. Behind him the rest of the khajiiti and argonians were curled up on the cave floor, apparently asleep. "Although we think it was you who brought the black-dressed man among us, we still owe you a debt for freeing us." He nudged one of the discarded slave bracers with his foot. "We watched over you last night as you slept in the doorway. We saw that no harm would come to you, as..."

I stopped him. "You are all unhurt, aren't you?" He nodded, stepping between the sleeping bodies of the other ex-slaves to kneel down in the centre of the pen. Leaning forward and twisting an arm up behind his back, I realised that it had been he that I had seen held down the night before: he was re-enacting what had happened. "The man took us by surprise. He grabbed us, put a blade to our neck. He was asking us: 'where is this Breton man - he has black hair - he was here before - where is he?!'" The muscular khajiit shook his upper body at each exclamation, as if being interrogated. "He wanted us to stay quiet, but our friends," he indicated the sleeping bodies, "were scared and made noise. You heard us and came running, so the man let us go; so maybe it was good after all." Baadargo stood up, bowing to me as he did so. "Apologies, Edward Frost. We did not help you in your fight." He indicated my tattered, blood-stained clothes and armour. "We know how difficult it was. We would have helped, but we were thrown down and hit our head. We were asleep." He grinned sheepishly, revealing a row of pointed teeth. "The others were too weak still."

I found it a little difficult to work out when Baadargo meant 'I' and when he really meant 'we' or 'us'. Every khajiit I had ever met referred to him or herself in the plural sense. It could be confusing.

At that moment I saw Baadargo's pupils contract slightly, coming closer to diamond points; a faint reflected light had passed across his face. The sound of the door to the caves closing echoed softly through the cavern. Baadargo, apparently still sorry he had been unconscious for most of the last disturbance, leapt forward, heading for the exit. I raced after him, holding my torch up high and keeping a wary eye out in case of some kind of ruse. The agile khajiit reached the door well before me, and I found him outside in the sunlight twisting his head around in all directions, sniffing the air. After a moment we gave up the search, seeing no sign of my mysterious attacker. Baadargo assured me that it had indeed been the 'black-dressed man' who had just left the caves and passed this way. He told me he couldn't tell which way he went. The khajiit was shifting his weight anxiously from one foot to the other; and I could tell he wanted to get back to the other ex-slaves, still asleep in the slave pen. I bowed to him.

"Thankyou, Baadargo. Thankyou for watching over me." The great cat bowed in return and dashed back into the smuggler's caves.

After bathing in the sea to wash away the blood that seemed to permeate every one of my belongings, I decided that it was time for me to leave Seyda Neen. My first couple of days there had seen me terrorised by skeletons (and other necromancers' leftovers), almost killed numerous times, and hunted by a deadly and mysterious assassin. Yes. It was definitely time to move on and try my luck elsewhere. I made a quick stop at the tradehouse to buy some new clothes, then set off in the morning sun: bound for the nearby village of Pelagiad.

Chapter 5: The Shadow

I retired early that evening, bedding down near the campfire where I had disturbed that crazed woman earlier in the day. The battles I had fought that day had left me almost completely drained of magicka; I judged I would need the extra sleep. I often wondered why it was that one's magicka was only naturally restored through sleep. As a child I had believed that it was dreams that did it, since spells took such mental focus to cast. I believed that the intense experiences and memories gained through dreams - through being in effect false experiences - acted as a kind of buffer for one's real memories: one's real mind. I thought that this buffer enabled one to concentrate well enough to cast spells without eroding the mind itself. The theory was linked with the concept of how much one needed to concentrate to remember a dream. My theory always fell to pieces when I tried to put it into words; as you can see.

As an adult I didn't know what to believe: no-one had been able to disprove my dream theory, but no-one I had known growing up had ever really taken it seriously, either. All I knew is that on days that I had drained my magicka reserves, I always had vivid dreams. That evening I dreamt of the night it had all gone wrong for me: the night I was caught in a noble's house, stealing. It was a cat that had given me away: by hissing at me. In my dream the grey cat hissed and spat again and again, backing away as I frantically tried to calm it. I realised that again, my dream was merging with the waking world, and I forced my way up from sleep. The campfire had gone out long before, and I cast my gaze about the dark cavern trying to work out what had woken me.

A chorus of loud - and very real - hissing came from deeper in the caves: in the direction of the slave pen. I scrambled to my feet, searching around for my helmet. Soon I was creeping towards the disturbance, slowly drawing my iron saber so as to not make any noise. As I came within sight of the slave pen, the interior still mostly lost in gloom, the hissing stopped. I came to a halt also, hunched over, straining my eyes to see into the pen. All I could make out were the reflective eyes of the khajiiti ex-slaves, glinting in the distant light of a torch somewhere behind me. They looked as if they were all backed against the walls of the cave, their eyes wide with fear, staring into the centre of the pen. All except one: as my eyes adjusted to the darkness a little more I thought I could see one of the khajiit people crouched down low in the centre of the pen, in what seemed a fairly awkward manner. In fact, he - or she - looked to be being held down.

"Hey -" I began, "what's..." I didn't get any further than that, as the crouching khajiit suddenly fell forward and a dark shadow of a figure that had been hidden behind him (or her) leapt forward, closing the distance between us in an instant.

I felt my chainmail cuirass being drawn to the side, and then the feeling of a cool breeze in a place I had never felt before. It took me a second to realise that my chest had been sliced open and I was feeling the passage of air through the wound! Doing my best to ignore the pain that came a second later, I swung out clumsily at waist level, in a wide arc, and felt the saber connect with something. I still couldn't see anything more than a dark shadow in front of me, so I took that opportunity to dart back the way I had came, to a place with a little more light. I felt a glancing blow to the top of my helmet as I vaulted over the top of a set of steep wooden steps, twisting in mid-air as I fell, to land facing the way I had come.

There were a couple of torches in this cavern, and I had turned just in time to see a figure dressed all in black leap from the top of the stairs, a wicked-looking single-edged short sword - an Akavirian wakizashi - raised above his head. I focused the energies of my Frostbite spell into my left hand and managed to catch his wrist with it before his blow could land. He howled with pain, but too late I realised that he was holding another wakizashi in his left hand: he broke my grip by giving me a painful cut in my midriff. Now bleeding heavily I rolled with the force of his blow and tried to scramble away, concentrating my healing spell into my hand and then swiping it across both wounds in one movement.

The dark figure was too fast for me: I couldn't escape him. Heart pounding, I stood my ground and did my best to fend off his attacks. After a few moments of whirling and flashing blades, I was becoming desperate. I had managed to land a couple of blows, but my attacker hardly seemed to feel them. In contrast I had expended most of my magicka in healing myself. I estimated that I had enough left to either heal myself or use my Frostbite spell one more time. I was bleeding from multiple wounds again and was about to cast my healing spell when luck smiled on me and I managed to push both of the black-garbed man's blades aside, putting him off balance for a moment. Again focusing the Frostbite spell into my left hand, I grabbed ahold of his throat and squeezed. The aching cold of the spell sunk through the fine black chainmail he wore and into his neck.

Gasping desperately, he threw his arms up to break my grip and throw me off. I could tell he couldn't breathe: he clutched at his throat, leaving himself open to attack. I stepped forward, swinging from the waist up, dealing him a great slicing blow from his stomach up and across his chest to his shoulder. During the struggle we had found ourselves by the deep pool of water I had washed myself in earlier. The great blow I dealt him knocked him from his feet and into the water, where he disappeared from sight.

I could barely stand I was bleeding so badly. I lurched towards the exit, hoping to get away and run for the Seyda Neen guards. As I left the cavern I glanced over my shoulder and saw the dark figure on hands and knees half-submerged near the edge of the pool, heaving and coughing through his black mask, trying to get his breath back. Seeing me looking, he muttered a curse and threw himself backwards, disappearing again into the inky blackness of the water. I kept running.

At the entrance to the caves I slammed the door behind me and slumped to the ground in the doorway, within view of a clump of glowing mushrooms. I could go no further. I bandaged my wounds as best I could with my shredded clothes: I had no magicka left to heal myself. I stretched out on my back, my head on the dirt. I inhaled the thick, humid air of the swamp at night, and gazed up at the sky. The winking, twinkling stars seemed to go out one by one as I lost consciousness.

Chapter 4: Manacles

My search of the smuggler's cave did not take long, as the recently departed occupants had not kept much in the way of valuables; at least, not much of value to me. I took all I could carry that seemed like it could be some value to Arille at the tradehouse: a few weapons, some alchemical reagents, and what appeared to be a couple of potions or liqeurs secreted away with some small pouches of ... sugar. It held the appearance of sugar, at any rate, but thinking of the deranged woman I had killed earlier and the sugary crystals caked around her mouth, I suspected that it was not the sort of sugar one used in the baking of cakes. I placed a couple of granules of the sugar on my tongue and let them dissolve. It had a sweet but tart flavour, and at first I didn't notice anything other than that: a pleasant taste. Gradually I realised, though, that I was feeling less and less guilt about having killed three people that day. I reasoned that their deaths should have been weighing heavily on my conscience; and up until that point they had been.

The sugar was a drug. My upbringing had taught me two things about drugs: the first was that they generally made you a witless fool; and the life I led meant I needed my wits about me at all times. The second was that they were always valuable. I dropped the pouches of sugar into my sack; if I could find someone who would buy such a thing, I could certainly use the money. One sniff of the heady contents of the two flasks found with the sugar told me that they were not simple liqueurs, either. I stoppered them carefully and took them with me also.

My guilt over having caused the deaths of the smugglers was somewhat alleviated when I discovered something that accounted for the relatively few valuable items I had found among their things. On my way out of the caves, I encountered a rough wooden gate set into a narrow opening in one of the cave walls. The gate was haphazardly constructed, with generous gaps between the wooden slats nailed vertically across it. There was obviously some space or passage behind it, but it was too dark to see more than that. Slowly drawing my saber I crept towards it, squinting into the dark space there. With a crash, someone slammed into the gate from the other side and pressed their face into one of the gaps between the wooden slats. The furry muzzle and glinting eyes revealed it to be a khajiiti male: one of the cat-people from Elsweyr.

"Breton!" He shook the gate violently. "You killed the criminals, yes?" I looked behind me and realised that this khajiit would have been able to see my fight with the robed wizard from his vantage point behind the gate. "Free us, please!" Pushing a powerfully muscled arm through a gap in the gate, he indicated the lock holding the gate shut with a clawed hand. I noticed a heavy-looking bracer on his wrist as he did so. It glowed dully in the gloom of the cavern, and had an iron ring hanging from it: it was a manacle more than a bracer. I realised the khajiit was a slave. I had found a key in one of the smugglers pockets, and I quickly found that it fit the lock on the gate perfectly. As I turned the key I noticed several more sets of glinting, luminescent eyes staring at me from the gloom of the slave pen. There were more people in there: several khajiiti and a couple of argonians, or "lizard-people".

The slave's bracers were cleverly constructed so as to require two hands to unlock them: one to turn the key, and one to squeeze the opening mechanism in just the right way at the same time. Locked and immovable as they were, this meant that even if a slave somehow managed to get ahold of the key to their bracers, they would not be able to remove them on their own. This of course would not hinder a group of like-minded slaves, as I witnessed directly. The khajiiti male at the gate snatched the key from the lock (and my hand) as soon as I unbolted it, and set about freeing the rest of the khajiit and argonian people from their bracers before finally being freed himself. The next I knew I was being smothered in a suffocating bear hug from the muscular khajiit, whose name I learned was Baadargo. Several other furry and scaly (respectively) bodies soon joined him.

I talked with the ex-slaves briefly, and what they told me of their treatment at the hands of the smugglers served to ease my mind of the burden I felt for having killed them. Although... I don't think I'll ever forget how the first woman began to cry when she realised she was going to die. In any case, the khajiiti and argonian people I had freed were effusive in their thanks. Some people... a lot of people - consider the so-called "beast races" to be little different to their domesticated cats and the small skinks that dart from rock to rock in their gardens, due to how similar they look. They treat them as animals. It's something I've never understood: you can talk to them like anyone else. These particular ex-slaves told me that they would remain in the caves for a time to regain their strength: something that the bracers they had been wearing made necessary.

I could tell that the bracers were magical from the way they glowed, and I picked one up to examine it more closely. I felt a tug at my magicka when I gingerly touched the inside of one of the bracers with a finger; similar to the feeling I get when I cast a spell. The slave bracers were obviously designed to remove any possibility of a slave using magic to escape. They were awful objects, and I left them all in the dirt where they lay to visit Arille and sell him things I thought were worth something.

Arille took all the weapons and alchemical ingredients I had found, but refused to even touch the unusual liqueurs and pouches of sugar. He told me that the "liqueur" was called "skooma", and was refined from "moon sugar" like that in the small pouches I held. He also told me that they were indeed both potent drugs and worth quite a bit. I would have felt concerned over Arille calling the town guards for my posession of the drugs, but I saw him eyeing the broken links of my chainmail and the rips and tears in my clothes - I'm sure he had a good idea where the drugs had come from. So far, from the people I had spoken to since I arrived, it seemed that contraventions of some laws tended to be overlooked if they somehow involved known criminals coming out the worse for it.

I was left with a comfortable number of gold septims and the need for somewhere to stay the night. No power in the empire could have made me set foot in the "abandoned" necromancer's shack again, so the smuggler's caves seemed the ideal choice. Besides, I had new friends there.