User:JohnB/Fanfiction/The Case of the Odd Pair

by JohnB

“I can see nothing,” said Watson.

“On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences.” –The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

I stood with the hetman of Ald'ruhn and the head priest over two corpses lying in an embrace on the pavement in front of the temple door. What made it so bizarre was that one corpse was a recently deceased young Dunmer woman, maybe in her twenties, and the other was a defleshed skeleton, obviously deceased for much longer.

"Well, what do you make of it?" asked the hetman.

"Certainly an odd pair, wouldn't you say? And frankly, I have no idea why you summoned me here," I answered scratching my head. "Isn't this what your house guards should be investigating?"

"Well, Master Cyreril, for one: you must know what the guards do with unidentified corpses -- dump them into a common pit and sprinkle lime on them, no questions asked. For another: being an astrologer, you are probably the most educated individual in this vicinity, so your ability to figure things out would be most useful to us."

I gave him a frosty stare. The ability to give wilting stares should be considered an Altmer attribute because we do it so well.

"Sir," I responded perfunctorily, "can you not distinguish between an astrologer and an astronomer?"

"Begging your pardon, Master Cyreril," he responded sheepishly bowing repeatedly, "I will endeavor to do so from now on."

I got down on one knee and surveyed the newer corpse.

"Is this body position exactly as you found it this morning?"

"That it is, Master. I was called here by the the Reverend Tuls Valen."

I turned to Rev. Valen and inquired, "So you were the one who found the bodies here?"

"That is correct."

"And haven't touched anything?"

"Also correct."

"How do you think they got here?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Master Cyreril."

I pulled the young woman's left arm from the skeleton, and I immediately found a massive signet ring on her thumb. Normally, a signet ring displays the owner's family crest, but this one showed two strange interlocking symbols.

"Hmmm, not her ring. It belongs to an adult male."

The hetman and the reverend looked at each other.

"Begging your pardon again," the hetman flustered, "but how can you be so sure?!"

"Do you ever wear a ring on your thumb? Furthermore, young women don't take to wearing such table-knockers."

"Her boyfriend's?" Rev. Valen suggested.

"What is known as a 'friendship ring' is bought for that purpose--a pre-engagement ring--and is worn on the same finger as an engagement ring."

I pulled the right arm from under the skeleton. There was a second ring on her right ring finger.

"I can't tell what this is, but it looks enchanted," I said to Rev. Valen.

"If I'm not mistaken, it must be a shadow ring."

"A shadow ring?"

"Yes, it provides two minutes of chameleon and can be reactivated until the enchantment runs out."

I removed both the rings from the hands.

"These will help in the investigation. Oh, and let's not get the house guards involved in this. I suspect this young lady was retrieving the remains of her lover. It would be a shame if she gave her life on his behalf and then got chucked into a common grave with all the riff-raff who overdose on moonsugar. We will have to get this body into cold storage for the time being."

I returned to my tower outside the town and sat down to make a charcoal rubbing of the signet ring. Then I took a magnifier and examined the interlocking symbols very carefully. They weren't Tamrielic. Each language spoken by the various races in Vvardenfell has its own writing sytem. I took the L volume of the Encyclopedia Tamrielica and looked up "languages". A table of alphabets showed that these symbols were Nordic runes, specifically a V and an S. "Von Stinkenfeld", perhaps? Or more simply just "Volker Schmidt"? The Nords of Vvardenfell normally go by heroic nicknames they give themselves, like "Thorin Oakenbrain" or "Greta Guttersnipe", so this was getting me nowhere.

The fact is that, out of regard for our Dunmer cousins, I don't feel much in the way of friendship for Nords, or "fellow-feeling" as they call it in their own language, so I know next to nothing about these hairy beastie-boys who somehow manage to get stripped to their birthday-suits by the witches they encounter. But if I'm going to make any headway in this investigation, it is to the Nords I must turn for help.

The next day, I headed to the Rat-in-the-Pot inn in search of a Nord. I approached one.

"Seen any elves? Yuk-yuk-yuk!" he asked.

I fixed my fearsome gaze on him.

"Would you mind repeating your question?" I asked slowly and succinctly.

"Uh, n-nothing."

"Well, a stupid question deserves a stupid answer," I responded. "Was that you standing immobile in the Grazelands some time back because some wiley little witch turned the tables on you?"

I was only making that up, but he blushed and sputtered some gibberish by way of explanation.

"Well, your secret is safe with me, provided you give me some answers to a hard nut I'm trying to crack."

I showed him the signet ring and asked what it might mean. He responded that signet rings are only used by Nords who want to appear respectable in the upper echelons of Imperial society. And the only uppity Nord he knew of was a certain Sorkvild in Dagonfel.

"BINGO!" I yelled.

"Huh?!"

"Not V and S, but S and V!"

I thanked him and gave him a sizable tip to buy a big stein of mead. He still looked puzzled by my reaction but shrugged it off as he took the tip and headed to the bar.

I returned to the reverend and told him the good news.

"I'm afraid you'd better back off," he warned darkly. "This Sorkvild is one of the most fearsome mages of all time."

"Then why was I asked to investigate this?"

“How can you be sure it was him? Couldn’t the ring just as easily have belonged to a Stefan Veit?”

I said nothing to let him consider what a stupid suggestion that was.

“So, how many Stefan Veits are there...”

“All right! All right!” he blurted. “But why this Sorkvild?”

“He’s a freaking NECROMANCER!!! And we have a defleshed skeleton on our hands! Look, do you really want me to solve this case or not?”

He looked torn between wanting and not wanting.

“He’s so...frightening!”

“Frightening? Are you serious? That young lady was probably even more frightened but went ahead and entered that tower alone.”

“Look, when people in this part of Vvardenfell vanish, we generally know where they went -- into Sorkvild’s Tower.”

“So it's okay for him to take other people's daughters but not your own.”

“I didn't say that!”

"Then don't try and hinder this investigation!"

I told him that, to clinch this case, I had to get evidence from Sorkvild's end. I instructed the reverend to spend as much time as possible in the courtyard in front of the temple.

I arrived in Dagonfel with the shadow ring and a scroll of Almsivi Intervention. I entered the tower and told the guard I’d come on business. He let me pass, but while he wasn’t looking, I activated the shadow ring and entered the floor above.

Sorkvild was at his desk, and as I counted off the seconds I prowled around, careful not to make a noise. I reactivated the shadow ring a few seconds before it was to expire. There was nothing that seemed even remotely out of place until I came back to the trap door. There seemed to have been a skeleton nearby, but now there was a only bit of bonemeal and a locket. I picked it up and found it opened like a book showing two miniature portraits of two young girls, one on each flap of the locket. This was the evidence I needed, but it wasn't what I had expected. On the back was engraved in Tamrielic, "To Daynila, from your loving sister Thelama".

“HEY!” Sorkvild shouted.

I nearly wet myself when I found I was fully visible again. I spun around just as a Greater Bonewalker threw a spell at me. It hit just as I activated the Almsivi Intervention, and my life was ebbing away quickly as the reverend hastily dragged me inside to the Shrine of Saint Meris and get immediate relief.

Later, after a criminal accusation was made, a platoon of battlemages brought Sorkvild out of his tower in chains, clapped a slave bracelet onto his arm to prevent him from conjuring an army of Bonewalkers, and loaded him into a wheeled cage to transport him to the capitol to be broken on the wheel and then hung in his own entrails as a warning to necromancers. The Ald'ruhn congregation assembled to celebrate a requiem for the two girls as they were interred in the ash pit there. The priest, hetman, and I then celebrated our success at the Rat in the Pot.

“Honestly, Master Cyrirel,” the hetman said after we toasted each other, “It's hard to imagine what might have happened in that tower.”

“Your honor,” I responded, “I can't make much out of it either. All I know is that there were two sisters. One had vanished, and the other somehow found out she’d met her end in Sorkvild’s Tower. That amazingly intrepid girl crept around Sorkvild’s lair, taking his signet ring from the desk and depositing her locket near the skeleton of her sister near the trap door. But the shadow ring was no longer operable when Sorkvild spotted her. She carressed the skeleton and activated the Almsivi Intervention just as the conjured Bonewalker hit her with its spell. Unlike myself, she had nobody to carry her inside, so she expired at the temple entrance soon after she arrived. Now it's very clear because it could have happened to me.