Tamriel Data:The Mask and the Mirror

Book Compilation
Added by	Tamriel Data
Note
This is a compilation of books assembled for easier reading.

The Mask and the Mirror

by Llandyne Vandoroth

A tale of a Nord assassin who encountered the Morag Tong.

---

Book I

[About the Author:

Llandyne Vandoroth is a Dunmer author of great skill. Originally from the city of Almalexia, she has made her home in Sarchal, seeking to sate the more refined literary palate of the west.]

Bronjar Clean-Clothes had been with the Brotherhood for a great many years. He did well because he had no principles when it came to targets, and somehow even less when it came to pay. From a poor family in Haafingar, Bronjar was satisfied with any contract that provided a room with four walls and a new shirt. As the years went by, however, he dreamed of bigger things, mostly bigger rooms, and found that even the sum he was paid by the Brotherhood for barely discriminate slaughter wouldn't foot the bill.

It was in late Evening Star that he received what was to be his longest-running and highest-paying contract. The Brotherhood had learned that a member of the wretched Morag Tong would be passing through Haafingar on route to Wayrest, and it fell to Bronjar to fell him.

The plan was simple. Bronjar would take a seat at the inn, whose window provided him a perfect view of the city gate, and would sip fine mead in comfort while waiting for that ragged eastern murderer to shamble through it. Fortunately, the wait was a long one, spent enjoying the attention of a black-haired serving girl and a seemingly endless mug of mulled mead. The Dark Elf of the hour didn't appear until it was almost dawn, and Bronjar spotted him at once. He did not skulk in the shadows like an amateur, trying to hide his plain iniquity, nor did he walk boldly down the middle of the street whistling a jaunty tune. Instead, he walked halfway between the street's side and its center, seeming to pant and gasp with weariness after what was no doubt a long and tiring journey for such an unassuming elf. He was outfitted in an almost absurdly typical fashion, with a warm fur robe, a simple walking stick, and a dagger of a type that could be bought at any smithy in Skyrim. On his back was a leather pack filled to bursting, so much so that a rag peeked out from the flap. Bronjar could have (and would have) bet anything that this pack contained the eyebrow-raising uniform of the fabled assassins of Morrowind, complete with his true weapon: a dagger which was no-doubt fine enough to slit the throat of a Potentate out of Reman antiquity.

Bronjar coolly threw some septims onto the table and strode out, affecting a drunken stagger before he had even left the common room. Of course he was not drunk, never on a job, but a drunken Nord shambling after you was less conspicuous than a sure-footed one wandering the streets of Haafingar so late at night. One was on his way home after a typical night of raucous drinking, the other an agent with some immoral purpose wanting the cover of night to carry it out.

The Dark Elf dipped into the city's second-seediest flophouse, and by the time Bronjar followed him in he had already paid for and vanished to a private room. Coins changed hands, and the Nord, who had abandoned his inebriated gait for softer footfalls. crept towards a door at the end of the hall. He pulled his own unadorned tanto out of its tucked-away sheath and prepared to, quickly and quietly, fling wide the door. He was relying on the draft to extinguish the candle whose light flickered beneath the ill-made portal, and on his own speed to strike the first blow. Rarely were Bronjar's assaults such unsure throws of the die. He was usually sought after for his willingness to kill even the most pitiful, but now he had been paid for an act which was foolhardy to attempt no matter the skill of the chosen agent.

The door did its work, and Bronjar had only a moment of candle-light to spy the elf pulling a curved dagger from beneath the bundled clothes of his pack. A dagger he would never again use. By the time Bronjar had shut the door and lit the light, the Morag Tong assassin was choking on his own blood on the floor of the filthy inn. The Nord was leisurely in his next steps, knowing that no witness had seen, heard or cared what had happened. He examined the dagger first. Finding it to be of superior make and obviously enchanted, he carefully hid it in his loose shirt. Next he took each item out of the dead assassin's pack one by one, discarding each article in turn until he came to the most striking. It was a black leather mask with strange insectoid eyes and long, sheath-shaped covers for the assassin's elven ears. It was obviously very well made, and Bronjar was surprised to find that it fit him, and further that it didn't obscure his sight or periphery in the slightest. Indeed, the strange eyes almost seemed to make him more aware of his surroundings. After this, he only found a small gray paper, bearing the name of some irrelevant Merchant Prince who no doubt traded out of Wayrest, the felled Assassin's now unattainable goal.

Bronjar decided he would spend his pay on a fine room at the inn he had so enjoyed, and for the next week drank, talked, and boasted of heroic feats of cleverness and strength. And each night, back in his big room, he stared at the strange mask of the nameless dark assassin. He wondered how much his victim had been paid to travel so far and risk so much, knowing full well that Mephala's hands were forbidden from reaching westward. And after this full week of short days and long nights, he had made up his mind. He would travel east and find out how the Dark Elves rewarded those who spilled blood for their aspirations.

Book II

The trip was long and uneventful. A small, timber-laden cutter took him east from Haafingar to Winterhold, where he booked passage on a larger ship, this one a Hlaalu merchant vessel bound for Narsis. Bronjar Clean-Clothes, however, stole away as soon as the ship docked in Blacklight, preferring that none should know of his true destination. He made his way south until at last he came to the city of Silgrad, which squatted like a strange bug above the fungal marsh that the natives called a Meadow. Before he entered the city, he slipped the mask on his face and obscured his hands with gloves. Some padding in the upper portion of his leather breastplate completed the look, that of an unusually tall Dunmer who spoke little, but bore the helm and red-jeweled scarf of a Morag Tong assassin. It did not take long to find the Tong. Indeed, he noted with no small amount of wonder that their hall was clearly marked and well-known by the locals. It, like the agent he had felled in the west, neither hid nor announced itself, but instead simply was.

It also surprised him how simple it was to receive work. The black-clad Dunmer woman simply looked over his outfit and eyed his knife. With nary a single spoken word he was handed a paper, a plainly written order describing who was to be killed, without seal or code to hide its meaning. And Bronjar set to his work. He did not count the dead, and their names left him even as the writ slipped through his fingers.

For many long years he plied his trade in the east, until at last he had made himself monstrously rich. In all this time he spoke so little that when his lips were forced to part, his voice came out as a dry and hoarse croak, which echoed in his mask with the lilt and the loose speech of the lowborn Velothi he so often heard. Until at last he "retired", slipping away west to the shambles of Mir Corrup. There, his gold bought him a suite of many rooms and a cup whose bottom never saw the light but through the red-glass shine of shein and West Weald wines. Bronjar had no fear that he would pauper himself, for in his long service to the Morag Tong he had acquired a clattering hoard of golden septims, stained just as much by the cloying stench of eastern incense as with blood.

It was one evening, many nights and cups later, that Bronjar squinted as he looked at the naked light which illuminated the luxurious silken sprawl of his bedchamber. A light which seemed magnified and bewitched by a massive silver mirror that rested atop a groaning and long-suffering cabinet. The mirror must've been there the entire time, of course. The big rooms he now called his own would've had previous owners, unable to hold on to them by reasons of destitution or death, and Bronjar must've bought that mirror from them alongside the bed and dressers and wine racks.

But it was as if he'd never really looked at it. It was a fine thing, reflecting the whole room with perfect clarity. Indeed, as he walked toward it he could see no distortion of shape or color. And he could see himself. He hadn't looked at himself for a while, either. Bronjar drank much and slept little, and those merriments had left their mark. His largesse still attracted crowds at the local casino. And it also attracted a steady company of beautiful hangers-on, despite his aged face and now-silver hair that shone almost unnaturally bright.

As Bronjar lay down to sleep that night, long having dismissed the courtesans and servants, he found no rest. Dimming the lanterns and snuffing the candles did nothing. Shutting the doors and shuttering the windows did less. After all this and more the room was still just as bright as it had been before his efforts. At long last his gaze fell upon the looming silver mirror. Now he noticed that it did not reflect the light of the room, but instead amplified it. Bronjar took a step toward it, realizing at last that something was off about the reflection. An obvious mistake, which resided not in warped glass, but in the essential tableau. Though he had locked and barred the door to his chamber some time earlier, he saw in the looking glass that it was flung wide, and that the yawning night lay beyond it. As the Nord looked on helplessly at the reflected suite, a stealthy agent crept through the door, all clad in the raiment of Mephala's own hands. And still he could not move, fixed on the image of that blade of the night as it stepped closer, closer and yet closer. No footfalls filled his ears, nor could he hear the breath of his murderer, even as the mer stood directly behind him. The only thing he saw was his sure and imminent end, reflected clear as sunlight in that cold-silvered glass. At the last moment he threw up his hands and collapsed to the floor.

"Aieee!"

Moments passed, and somehow he drew breath again. He shakily looked about the room and saw nothing, no skulking actor, no bladed mer, and no wide-flung door. He was alone.

This macabre scene repeated itself night after night. After a long day of wine, women, dice and song, he would retreat to his chambers only to look on helplessly as the mirror showed him visions of his death at the hands of some new Dunmer assassin. When he looked at himself in the lurking silver mirror he did not see the hale and robust Nord of his youth, but a decrepit old man. His skin had paled and become ashen, deprived almost wholly of sunlight, his body had become withered and cadaverous, refusing to be sustained by wine and dice alone. His eyes had become red and bloodshot, bearing witness to his restless nights.

At last, after many months of nocturnal horror, he went to his bedchamber with dagger in hand, the curved and loathsome implement he had looted all those years ago in Haafingar. When the assassin came, he was calm once more, steeling himself with memories of old scraps and gold he had earned for them. His breath was shaky, his voice raspy. He turned at once and screamed.

"You filthy n'wah! I'll kill you!"

But as he turned around he saw all too late that there was indeed nobody behind him, no masked and cowled agent of personal doom. He had selected a grand downward stroke which was to plunge behind the collarbone of his would-be killer. Instead, the blade continued down, seeking promised flesh, to find itself buried in his own stomach. Blood and wine alike spilled across the gaudy carpet as he cried out and collapsed. The door broke open with a crash as a Nord guard and a Dunmer courtesan rushed in. The courtesan knelt in his blood and cried out, trying in vain to staunch the blood.

"Sera, what have you done?"

She lifted his head to her knees, and it was then that Bronjar Clean-Clothes looked for the last time at that repugnant silver mirror. That mirror which sat like an accursed Kothringi idol on the dresser above him. In it he saw no face save his own, the ashen, red-eyed face of the assassin which had so many times tried to kill him, and had now succeeded. Sitting perversely next to his own image was the black, insect-eyed mask which he had worn for those long years, and with his last grating words he cursed it.