Chapter IV
The Hist
Legate Cimber strode across the battlement, casting his troubled gaze out to the surrounding mangroves. How he wished to leave this Black Marsh and go anywhere else in Tamriel.
He nodded to the two Argonian guardsmen who stood under the shelter outside the Lilmoth barracks. The Lilmothian lizardfolk had seemed on edge since the earthquake. The storm was getting worse too and Cimber had to hang his aegean cape to dry inside the council room.
He stood over the circle table and considered his priorities, as he moved a figurine of an Imperial soldier across a large map of the country toward the Morrowind border, mentally resolving that slave problem.
A regrettable issue, but there are more pressing matters.
A figurine of an Argonian representing Commander Xode sat over the dot labeled Bright-Throat Village.
Cimber had been expecting his report to arrive earlier that evening, but the courier had brought only an unusual report from the Imperial station in Leyawiin. Apparently, the Sul-Xan naga tribe recently vanished from the northwestern Blackwood region.
Good riddance to the cultish savages. Maybe they returned to the hist.
Cimber pinched an ebony miniature crocodile and prayed Shor’s wrath upon his elusive target. It had been three days since Amuzei escaped from Blackrose Prison, but Cimber had every road and village in Murkmire patrolled and all ports closed without reservation.
It was only a matter of time.
/
Commander Xode stood on the porch outside Yinz’r’s shack, long arms folded across his leather-armored chest, struggling to think. The rain sprinkled drops of tranquility on his frowning face.
He had heard it just as the others did. The Lilmoth Hist tree had called to every egg child in Bright-Throat Village, “tsona Lilmoth”, to swim to Lilmoth. Perhaps the call had been felt by others in the Marsh. Any Saxhleel in Murkmire, at least, should have been close enough to feel the summon.
The Hist’s call was not heard the same as speech, but it was understood soundly as words, translated from the sudden rhythm adopted by the swishing mangroves and innumerable wind chimes that the Bright-Throat hang in the north glade.
It was his Imperial duty to arrest or kill Amuzei and he had him, but this summoning was accompanied by sacred expectations, necessitating this untimely truce. It would be a mark on his own soul to bring Amuzei to harm whilst the Tree waited for his arrival.
Xode sighed and returned inside the house, where the others awaited his agreement. That is what it would be, of course. Nobody present intended to offend the Hist, Xode included. They looked at him.
“Tsona Lilmoth,” was all he said, but it meant much more to the Saxhleel than even the Jel attempting Dunmer could have interpreted.
/
“Wait,” Ulene said, drawing the attention of the roomful of Argonians. “We cannot go to Lilmoth, straight into the clutches of that bloodthirsty Nord.” She looked at Amuzei, unable to believe he was willing to go along with this.
And enthusiastic about it!
“We will not give you over to him,” the female soldier said. “That would go against our customs.” Uko was her name.
“That,” Commander Xode remarked, “depends on who you ask, but you have my word; I will see you and your captain safely to the Hist.”
Amuzei nodded and Ulene wondered if he had gone mad.
The trees are calling to them…
After the meeting, Ulene walked across the boardwalks, indifferent to the rain, which had softened a bit since the Call.
I need to get out of here.
Her eyes lingered on the little ferry boats. It would be easy to escape now. She was alone and--
“Cool rain on my scales,” Hides-His-Teeth said, rising out of the water beside the boats.
Ulene jumped. “What were you doing down there?” She asked and hoped his answer made more sense than his greeting.
She smelled watermelon as he climbed onto the boardwalk and set down a big glass jar he was wearing on his back.. It was filled with red sea grass and a dark shape swam within.
“Gathering reagents.” Hides-His-Teeth said.
Ulene dared not ask what for. Whatever was in the jar was flashing a caustic green as it slapped against the glass walls.
“Did you also hear the Call?” she asked.
He wagged his fingers like there was something stuck on them. “Of course.”
“So, you will be going to Lilmoth with the rest of them?”
Hides-His-Teeth waved his hand dismissively. “Right, right!” He dropped something inside the jar, replaced the lid, and slipped the rope straps over his shoulders.
He started toward the center of the village, where the Bright-Throat Hist glimmered plum. Ulene watched him go, remarking how strangely the Argonians behaved, then he turned and pointed a claw at the ferries.
“Were you swimming away?”
“Of course not,” Ulene said, “but we cannot just tsona Lilmoth.”
“Your Jel is good for a dark elf,” he smiled knowingly. “I see your heart. I can drug him and send you on your way.”
She gave that no consideration. There was no way she could transport herself and an unconscious three-hundred pound body across the distance to escape. He might even come back once he woke up.
Ulene sighed and followed Hides-His-Teeth to the town hall, which would have been considered a regular sized house anywhere else.
Inside, the village elders were giving directions in preparation for the urgent trip. A hundred multihued Bright-Throats came and went into the night, performing tasks with militant efficiency
/
Amuzei had agreed to the kaen--the war commander’s--demand to have his man, Swims-in-Skies, at the helm.
The Lukiul, those Argonians who have assimilated with the Empire, seemed surprised at his level of compliance, but from his prisoner perspective they were doing a great deal of work for him.
The Imperials are holding the Sorrow at Lilmoth.
“What are you looking so wet about?” Xode said.
“I have not seen the Festering Jewel in years,” Amuzei lied. Only a few months prior, he had sold a profitable load of ill-acquired exotic pelts to a fence from the local chapter of the Thieves Guild.
“You would be wise to look from outside the walls,” he said. “The Legate would have your soul in a gem and that dropped in the ocean.”
“Aye,” Amuzei chuckled and placed a couple of cannonballs beside the heavy guns.
“Unnecessary,” Xode said.
“May it be so,” he replied, rubbing his gun-powdered hands together.
/
It was just after noon when the rain stopped. Ulene stretched away a cramp as she stood up from a crate in the galley and strolled out to the mahogany deck of the canary yellow-sailed ship.
The Painted Tortoise was a hulking vessel, larger than any she had ever seen in Morrowind, but she had unfond memories of a run-in with the Imperial ship-of-the-line Solitude, Legate Cimber’s flagship. Reportedly, it was under repair after one of his ventures offended the Thalmor.
She took a deep breath of drenched air full of salt and hinted with ash. Goosebumps rose on her arm as she looked out across the bow.
There was a towering limestone monument nestled inside a clearing, partially concealed by the incessant line of trees on the coast, which were spindlier near the ziggurat and twisted in unnatural arrangements.
“What is that?” Ulene asked Uko, but Hides-His-Teeth offered his explanation immediately, as if she had asked what color the sky was.
“That is Xinchei-Konu, a grand calendar.”
“My people keep our calendars in desks.” Ulene said.
“Can your calendars control the weather?” Uko tapped her arm against hers, then joined Hides-His-Teeth and a couple of Bright-Throats in nonsensical laughter.
Ulene moved on, but the ominous monument visited her dream that night.
/
Xode dined with Captain Swims-in-Skies and the elders from Bright-Throat Village. The spacious Captain’s quarters of the Painted Tortoise was populated with a long triangle dining table, a little bed, and a great oak desk that was home to all manner of navigational tools and charts.
Flickering candlelight washed in and out of the jade moonlight spilling in from the cabin windows. “What for?” A faded Bright-Throat posed the question and not for the first time since the Call.
“The Hist will reveal that to us in its presence,” another elder said.
“Why though?” Xode spoke up. “Why are we left to hatch in the dark?”
As glorious as this pilgrimage was, it made little sense to Xode and he could not imagine the others felt any different. The party brooded for a moment of silence.
“A great wave approaches,” Swims-in-Skies said. “Let us hope we are not headed down the river to meet the sea.”
Xode did not know why, but he felt certain the Hist was rallying them for battle.
Who is the enemy?
/
Uko climbed down the ladder from the crow’s nest, feeling a little queasy. Being up there too long tended to make her seasick. One of the Bright-Throats could take a turn on lookout.
Uko was going to talk to Ulene. She was a pirate and had stuck a blade in Uko’s comrade, but she had done it to protect her own. Uko was never particularly fond of Ladius, anyway.
She had observed Ulene walking out to the deck, looking troubled in an amber nightgown. Uko supposed she had reason to fear. Perhaps she did not realize how afraid of the unknown they all were.
“You sleep in a rough nest?” Uko asked.
“What, no?”
“Yet you are awake.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Tomorrow will be big.”
“So you must rest,” Uko encouraged, placing her hand on Ulene’s shoulder. Their eyes met and she smiled warmly. Uko lost her nerve and her eyes strolled over the tree-lined coast. Ulene was beautiful.
“Thank you, f’lah,” she said.
“I do not know your word ‘fla.’”
“Beeko.”
“In House Dres I was n’wah.” Uko said. Embarrassment ate her up immediately.
“You were a slave?”
“Yes, then I was bought by a Telvanni who died in Cyrodiil, leaving me free. I joined the ranks for a sense of purpose and requested a station in my homeland.”
Ulene’s scarlet eyes were full of kindness, but her beauty made them intimidating. “Who are you?” Uko asked, feeling she knew a part of the answer.
“Ulene Hlaalu.”
“You are a princess.”
Her elegant sable face broke into an uncourtly smirk, which was entirely too handsome for Uko to handle. Her eyes glued to her feet.
“Hardly. I was a deposed member of a Great House. Now, I am first mate in a gang of pirates.” She said, taking Uko’s hand.
“I see no gang. Only a beautiful Shadowscale.” Ulene’s warm hand slipped away, and Uko mourned the embrace.
“Amuzei will be the death of me, but I owe him my life.”
Uko nodded, but she remained on deck a long time after Ulene returned to bed, wishing things would have gone differently.
She wished a lot of things in her life had gone differently.
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