image [https://i.imgur.com/7ZQbE80.png]

I found myself in a hell of a situation. The Mane who had a death warrant on me was now my nominal master, or at the very least had accepted me as a sort of ad hoc adviser. As I left the garden a monk-initiate approached me and offered to guide me to my quarters — a squat tent by the blackstone outer wall. Later, Keyes joined me there.

He sat across from me, pale hair spilled over his bad eye. "Are you well, Berry?”

“I’ve been better. I just hadn’t expected them to be so prepared to do battle, or so near to each other.”

He shrugged. “What will you do when they meet?”

The heat was stifling. “Walk with me,” I said.

Outside was nearly as sweltering, but there was at least some breeze. We walked aimlessly between tents like unwiped spider webs between majestic black stone fortresses pillars and crumbling templests. On the opposing floodplain I saw Telvaani slave soldiers drilling. It was a curious thing to see, Khajiit in strange insectoid armor, no doubt the sons of field slaves raised in the far east, now returned to their homeland to serve as a dispassionate tool of power against their own people — a snake eating its own tail.

The whole place stunk of sweat and old feces particles washed down clotted gutters by the rain.

“I don’t know what I’ll do. Try talking again, I suppose.” I shook my head. “You don’t have to stay, by the way. You can take the treatise and go.”

“Leave with the book? How could I leave with the book in whose pages you walk? Surely you’ve realized by now that it is in some way your own, or you are its, just as I am.”

“That damn book is worthless. I’ve been lugging a paperweight across the entire wastes of Elsweyr. It doesn’t have an ending”

Keyes laughed. "Hardly. There’s nothing actionable in the book for you, you’re right insofar as that my dear customer, because Eophicles lived many centuries ago during daylights long since set, different birds flew over his oceans on winds you will never know — so there can be no easy answers from the past. But think on this — what have you learned about Eophicles’ the person? About all people perhaps?”

“Nothing. Not a damn thing,” I shouted, earning a glance from some passing warrior-monks. “What did he do — he failed to raise help at the capital, rallied a few stragglers to try and rejuvenate the Maneship spiritually, likely created the cursed mirror that has haunted me all my life and now wreaks havoc on Elsweyr, and then seems to have failed in an attempt to create duels to the death. Any actual solution is unwritten, which leads me to think he must have screwed that up even more royally than I have!”

Keyes’ gave an unsightly smile. “And there you have it.”

“What, that he was embarrassed? Too humiliated to write down his failure?”

“Perhaps. What pages have you left blank from your own life?”

I paused to stare at him, feeling uneasy.

“Berry… in all the time we have been together there is only one person whose name you haven’t spoken. Your actual brother.”

My throat tightened.

“You need to have it ready, Berry. It’s been long enough. And the power it wields is uniquely potent in this situation — it is a gift, to know a man through his own words, through an entire book even more so, and then also to know man by his omissions. But for Stranger and Deviator there is an even closer bond of shared life experience — there is nothing more powerful, and it is yours to do with as you will. Every being in the world, of sufficient intelligence, has one such word.”

It had begun to rain and turned to wipe my eyes, and when I turned back he was gone.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

***

The Southern Mane decided later that afternoon that were to march to battle. Immediately.

We left behind a floodplain torn to muddy slop by rank after rank of southern spearmen, saber wielding professional soldiers, and many mercenaries. I rode at the head of the army.

Before we departed, Mistress Vendrela had dragged me to the stables and gifted me a queer beast called a guar at the mane’s request (since I was of a rank higher than command soldier, and lacked a mount), a graceless bipedal reptile of sorts from from her homeland. Her mercenaries were lousy with the flatulent creatures with whom the local graze did not seem to agree. The rocking of it made me motion-sick in a way I associated more with the sea than any horse, and they growled incessantly from both ends.

To my dismay, Vendrela took a special interest in me and my mastery of the creature, teasing me as bad as any schoolgirl. It was an unwanted bit of flattery. My thoughts of course were always with my beloved Aiera. Still, Vendrela was generous with her company as we navigated the overgrown and waterlogged byroads along the Xylo river — always with her wicked smirk turning up to mirror her scar as she cracked jokes at the expense of her lieutenants, striking smarter than any whip strike.

The Telvaani formed the vanguard, spearmen armored like cephalopods at the perimeter and mages mounted on guars stinking up the core. Behind us a seemingly endless baggage train of both wagons and plain clothed civilian porters formed our core with phalanx on either side, flags waving in the air like the countless legs of some ungodly millipede flipped onto its back.

The royal guard haunted us, riding off in small parties on senche-back to scout ahead, only to re-emerge, grim and demon masked from the jungle bush to rejoin the army.

We were deep into monsoon season, but made steady progress between blinding downpours, and the hardy southerners marched without complaint. It created an uncomfortable feeling of being trapped in one's own heat and humidity in a sweaty immobile prison even as my guar stomped forward, flattening mud splashing across the low fordable ebbs in the many tributaries of the Xylo.

I’d met with him to discuss before the march and His Holiness had been withdrawn since our conversation, never peeking beyond the curtains of his palanquin. He had accepted my words, the entirety of my story, with a quiet if wounded dignity, asking only a few clarifying questions that night in the monastery gardens. His wet eyes had shown with Sucunda's silver for a moment after I'd finished speaking, heart in my throat, I wondered if I would be exiled again, or killed properly this time.

But in the end he nodded and in a hushed whisper told me he believed everything I'd said. I'd told him everything — my childhood, my research, the deviation, and even my exile. He did not say as much, but I believe he had long suspected — just as I once had — that there was more than mere coincidence to curiosities of his life.

I thought of his face often and it fueled a mounting dread in me. A nagging self-doubt that grew into a full-blown anxiety suppressed with cheap wine. Perhaps I was more full of wind than my guar; after all, what did I know of military strategy and politics? If this document proves nothing else it should show that I barely grasp the principles even of my chosen profession as an academic in the study of destiny.

This short journey to meet the northern army was unlike any I had been on previously. Specifically, being with an army I learned created a constant tension over the inevitable success of your quest to draw blood — for an army is a creature with blades for limbs and thus only one conclusion.

Fortunately, the only village was deemed friendly, and the townsfolk just watched with pleading eyes, grateful we did not stay.

I should add here that Keyes made a piss poor manservant (that being his new station due to my elevation in role) since he had not eaten in decades and thus struggled to relate to my need for a nightly dinner. This again put me in the company of Vendrela, who's slaves at least knew how to roast a freshly ice-bolted marsupial to perfection.

A saving grace in all of this was that at least Chevalier Rokash kept his distance, for he distrusted the Telvanni nearly as much as me. My dreams that night were miserable. but somewhat mollified by a carefully rationed supply of jungle mash (a sort of wine largely composed of bananas that tasted like a yeasty head of some baker rising dough). But my true tormentor was my allergies, which after a day or so spent amongst large numbers of Khagiit had flared up horribly, turning my nose into a leaking sieve.

That morning the royal guard scout detachment came riding back into camp like oblivion's fire licked at their heels. Word spread quickly that our foe was less than a day's march ahead. Keyes and I were dismantling our tent when the crunch of plated armor forewarned us of Chevalier Rokash's approach. He had the face of a coffin bearer.

"Stranger!" He beckoned me with a gauntleted hand. "He wants the Stranger's council."

"Say that again, louder this time my dear Rokash, so I can hear you!"

And to my eternal delight the humorless cat took me at my word; he looked as though he tongue-wrestled a lemon. "His Holiness wants the Stranger's council! It must quit its dithering and come with Rokash right away."

"Then he shall have it."

He walked beside me, but kept some distance. Finally I asked: “And what do you make of all of this Rokash?”

“Rokash is eager to slay the heretics and save the realm.”

“Did His Holiness… explain the situation to you?”

“What situation? We know where the usurper is. If it means battle strategies then no, there is no plan yet.”

I held back a chuckle, earning me a glare. “You really haven’t changed at all.”