image [https://i.imgur.com/pMZm76y.png]

Thankfully Benezia left me in Marius’ care and we spent the better part of the afternoon perusing the shops and booths that thrived across the neat streets of the waterfront, especially in those days when many stores in the city proper were boarded up on account of the riots.

A plump seamstress spoiled me rotten with compliments as she outfitted me in her wide-windowed showroom while Marius malded on the stoop. I chose matching leather riding gloves and boots the color of moss, ribboned by a ruby red trim. Besides that I purchased light brown pants that caught a gold hew in sunlight, cream undershirts, and an emerald hued hooded riding jacket whose rough texture belied its ability to slick off rain. I was flexing my gloved fingers, marveling at their suppleness as I heard the outrageous price presented to Marius. The meager groan it evoked told me we were still far from his limit.

Next was a leatherworker for a water skin and satchel — sturdy and cut in that rough northman fashion. At a booth I picked up a simple linen bedroll that frankly failed to impress me but I felt pressed enough for time to accept it. At a porter's shop that overpowered the senses with the smell of smoked meat, we filled my satchel with jerky, hard cheese, and tack bread. As Marius bickered over the cost of salt I slipped a bottle of port into my pile, winking at the clerk who dutifully added its cost into the total sum without comment. Diluted into the larger price I profited it over Marius' continued cries for mercy.

The only 'no' I heard that afternoon was at a blacksmith's. I had barely put my fingers on the door when Marius butted in.

"Caius said no weapons for you."

"But I'll be out in the wilderness, in Elsweyr no less. Surely a dagger just to scare off—"

"No weapons," he insisted.

It was unfair, particularly with my connection to magic severed by the manacles. I would be completely reliant on Benezia for protection.

I shrugged off my frustration, looking about the street for any other merchant I could subject Marius to. “I don’t suppose you know of any bookstores in the area? I wouldn’t mind something to pass the evenings on.”

“I have plenty of books at home, my boy. Pack enough to break your back toting them.”

I shrugged and was about to depart when a hoarse voice rose beside us. It was a beggar squatting in the shadow of the blacksmith’s doorstep; a square jaw protruded from under a ragged hood, grown over with the coarse beginnings of a beard.

“You want books? Try the store over there, stranger.” And he pointed to a narrow alley a ways down the street. "Best bargains in the empire, make more of a man!"

I thought it rather bold of a vagrant to speak of self improvement, but thanked the man regardless and thought nothing more of it besides directing Marius to tip him a septim, which he did with minimal grumbling.

It was a good thing too, for his advice proved accurate. The winding alleyway ended in a drab storefront bearing a sign which read 'Of Curios Mind'.I pushed in, leaving my dog Marius on the porch again, and asked the ghostly pale man at the counter whether he had any books on the spirituality of the Khajiit or more specifically their beliefs around fate and their ruling Mane.

It was dim on account of the windows being papered over, but by blue magelights the fellow blinked at me, one droopy eye lagging behind a partial veil of pale hair. "That's an exceedingly specific request."

"I suppose I'm a man with exceedingly specific interests," I confided, feeling devilishly cocky in my new swashbuckling mercenary ensemble.

The bookseller eyed the ceiling for a moment as if waiting for the voice of a god to instruct him. "Yes, I can show you something."

I told him I appreciated it and the queer fellow led me on with hands clasped as if in prayer, past bookshelves stacked two rows deep, with every spare corner dotted by verdigris coated curiosities and fetish stones. The air was thick with the acrid scent of old books tempered by incense steaming off a bronze burning dish.

Ash tickled the back of my nostrils nearly to the throat and I had to pause stepping over piles of spillover literature to sneeze several times. The man did not seem to notice, and once recovered I jogged between towering shelves to catch up, finding him paused in another sunless corridor of bookshelves. The store was deeper than it initially appeared.

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His fingers danced like insect legs over book spines until he struck his target. Pulling it clear, he offered it up to me. I read the flowing golden script on the cover aloud: "Eophicles' Treatise on Lunar Causality."

"One of a kind, exceedingly old. Out of date — or so some would say. But some ideas are called that, out of date, without becoming incorrect. If you understand my meaning."

I didn't at all, but assured the odd man I did before thanking him. I flipped through the pages under the bookseller's lopsided gaze. The book was as promising as it was unexpected, dated to before the empire's founding and handwritten by the eponymous Psijic monk Eophicles who claimed to have toured with the Moon Bishops of Elsweyr as they visited the desert chiefdoms and coastal republics on a desperate quest to find the reborn Mane at after his previous incarnations death. The pages were equal parts flourishing prose, crooked personal notes made in margins often overgrown to dominate entire pages, and hastily drawn diagrams of what appeared to be interlocking lunar, human, and cat-folk life cycles. Curiously the last twenty or so pages were bare yellowed paper.

"This is incredible," I said involuntarily, regretting it instantly as I was forced to ask for the price.

The bookseller just shook his head, his eyes on the ceiling again. "Priceless, unfortunately."

"Come man, this is a bookshop isn't it? That man out front owes me a goodly sum of coin, you need only but name your price."

His lips tightened, the lines of his face deepening as if I'd interrupted him in the middle of a private fight with a lover. "It's not about the money. This book is not worth your money, do you understand?"

He yanked the book from my hands, my mouth still clenched in shock as his skeletal fingers constricted and bent the cover so fiercely I feared he would rip it in half before my eyes. "This book… this book. Did you look upon its final pages?"

"I saw that they were blank."

"Not blank, no. They are unwritten. Unplanned, incomplete, and forgotten by an uncaring author who thought nothing for all the poor fools who would read the damned thing. A fool like me, like you perhaps if you'd have your way."

I bit back my tongue as I saw tears squeeze into the corners of his pitiless eyes, sweatdrops lit blue upon his brow. He continued on in the droning monologue of a man wasting away chained to a wall, worn ragged by his own company without relief.

"We are left to wander and wonder, lost in a dream without end. For the waking dream can only be put to rest in one way, and in this dream I read a book without end — so how could it end? It dwells in my mind still. Unfinished, unresolved, unkind to an audience who indulged his selfish whims, acted as willing pupils to his every word until at the promise of finality we are abandoned! I will not lead another living soul astray to this haunting absence of finality."

"Perhaps he just died?" I offered.

"No, I sought out the records. The fool Eophicles lived for decades after."

"All the same, that book could be worth a great deal to me. Why not give it to me and be rid of it?"

A teardrop fell into the darkness about his feet. "Because I cannot stop reading it! It occupies my unsatiated mind even now. The only solace I find is in rereading what is there and putting the inevitable hollow end from my mind for a brief time. You may read the book in my shop however, although I suggest you do not risk becoming lost in the dream as I have."

"But I depart the city tomorrow, even I can't read all of this in that short a time."

"The better for you then, I think. Please put it aside, my patient customer. Pretend I never burdened you with this book's existence."

It was a pickle for sure. The book was precious, yet the miserable kook had wrapped his mind around it in a knot tighter than any physical chain could manage. But I had an idea.

"What if I could fill out those final pages for you? I'm something of an academic myself, and I'm scheduled to meet the Mane of Elsweyr and his court in the coming days. Perhaps I could learn the conclusion to the author's tale right from them — the latest reincarnation’s thoughts on it at least — and insert it, or at least write you an appendix."

His face twisted as he processed this. "Truly? You expect to meet the Mane? That's a rare honor for an outsider."

"I make no empty boasts, sir."

He let out melodious breath before pushing the book back to me, as one might handle a venomous snake.

"When you finish, bring it back to me."

"I will."

He covered his mouth as a giggle escaped. "And to think, a true ending should just wander into my shop! I'm in your debt sir, but please do not dawdle. I need that book."

"I never do."

Now giddy, the bookseller began to offer me all kinds of free books: a copy of the Khajiit’s holy scripture, the latest imperial census, a crudely bound pamphlet of apocrypha on the Hermaes Mora. All gifts, he insisted, but I rejected them for weight reasons alone — the hefty treatise was already a snug fit in my satchel. But the thought struck me that I might have an opportunity to earn brownie points with my captor turned guardian, Benezia.

I looked about to confirm the shop was empty. "Do you have any good romance novels? Not for me you understand, a gift for a lady companion of mine."

"Of course, of course, never any judgment from me, my good customer. We all contain multitudes, do we not?" He routed around an upper shelf for a moment before producing a small novel of modern vintage. "Twice Loved, but not once read. Brand new, and just for you — I mean your friend."

He saw me out the door, still praising my scholarship and wishing blessings of the seeker upon me, but there was a misery in his lingering gaze as I departed with the treatise now etching a square indent on my satchel.

Marius walked alongside and was baffled when I informed him he could keep his coin purse closed, but he was in no mood to argue it. We retired to his manor for the evening to rest and prepare for what was to come.