"That's all the dinner guests unfrozen." said Ondolemar. "At least, I think so. Did the steward always look like that?"
Melaran, the court wizard, said, "How long is Sheogorath the Daedric Prince of Madness going to need to stay in the Jarl's quarters?"
"Two weeks." said Eldaline. "At the very least. He mustn't be moved, unless, you're happy for his mind to be cast adrift and the delicate balance of Aetherius to be thrown into disarray. I don't mind, obviously, but you might."
"I wouldn't mind either, Second Archivist." said Ondolemar.
"And I can't stress this enough." she said. "Don't give him any cheese. I don't care how pathetic he looks."
Erdi knelt by the resting Prince of Madness. "Not even blue cheese?"
"Especially not blue cheese." said Eldaline. "Do you want to overexcite him? Being turned into a mammoth gave him a very nasty shock."
Jarl Elisif demanded, "But, where am I going to sleep?"
"You can take my old bed in Thane Erikur's house." suggested the court wizard. "It'll build character."
"Or," suggested Eldaline. "You could take your old bed in Thane Erikur's house, and chivalrously let the Jarl use your quarters."
"I can't do that, my bed is, special." said Melaran.
Skavild said, "Special, for your back?"
"Yes. And my quarters are full of very mysterious magical items. The Jarl would definitely blow herself up. So, no. Nobody's going in my room."
"This is hardly fair on Jarl Elisif." insisted her steward, Falk Firebeard.
"I said, the Prince can't be moved. I don't make the rules."
"Ha ha ha." said Ondolemar. "I mean, sorry."
"Do you think you are suited to this task?" Eldaline asked the cleaning maid. "He just needs dusting twice a day. I mean the Daedric Prince, not the court wizard."
"Yes! It will be so exciting! I have never looked after real royalty in the palace!"
"What about my late husband, King Torygg?" The Jarl asked.
"Yes." said Erdi. "And him, too."
The Jarl turned back to follow the Second Archivist with an indignant gaze. "I cannot believe that Tynus killed Ollani. I cannot believe that you, as Doryli Vlars, would allow it. Please, reconsider."
"It's monstrous." said Melaran. "To think that a senior official of the Thalmor could even think of killing a fictional character."
"I'm sorry the publisher changed your story, Eldaline." Skavild said. "But I confess I felt sorry for the poor lady elf, and after she freed all her slaves the moment she acc... axy... assy... got her own city."
"Although I am distressed by what we discovered, perhaps it's for the best." Jarl Elisif explained. "Now, you will be able to change the original ending."
Eldaline stalked away from the Prince's sick-bed, bristling. She turned abruptly in the middle of the carpet. "Ollani is dead, and she is staying dead."
"But, why?" grunted Falk. "It would be so easy. Tynus should have defied that bastard, Sir Urdoc, or slain him for demanding his lover's death."
"Yes. Who are we talking about again?" said Ondolemar.
"Because I felt in my heart that she was dead!" Eldaline cried. "Phynaster's boots! My agony! My ruin! My dull, slow heartbreak! Inconvenient to the childish reader, swept aside like an unpleasant salad!"
"But Tynus loved Ollani." said Erdi. "He would never kill her."
"Well, he stabbed her through the chest and watched her die in misery on the floor. Why are you all so unhappy? How can you despise Sir Urdoc? I made him do it. None of them are real people. I was real." Eldaline found a chair beside the fire. She had been about to shout at them all, but could not even find the strength to wave her arms. "I was starving when I wrote Ollani and Tynus, abandoned by the lover who persuaded me to go and starve in the first place, finding the life of an outlaw did not suit him after all. I was born poor, so he assumed it suited me."
"Your former life is forgotten, Second Archivist." said Ondolemar. "You do not need to say anything to these people."
"That book was my heart! I tore out my heart and offered it to the world in my desperation. And all the world would rather throw it away to make Ollani happy, Ollani, who is not real."
Skavild stirred. "Come on, Eldaline, let's go to the fishquay and get you some mudcrab legs."
"Nobody wanted to make me happy."
"I've learned another new thing about daedra, though." Skavild said, once they were leaving the palace. "I didn't know that Daedric Princes had to stay in bed for two weeks after a surprise."
"They don't." said Eldaline.
And a few days later, everybody was happy to be back at work.
"You've put a barricade on the road." observed Commander Luridius Amavo of the Penitus Oculatus.
"Commander Amavo!" cried Agent Aralina.
"I have just heard about your ill-fated recent expedition to Stros M'Kai!"
"How tragic that so soon after losing your eyebrows in that unfortunate accident with the fireball, you should be stung on the buttocks by a scorpion and be deprived of your manful urges!"
"Why are you shouting?" said Luridius Amavo.
"Do you suppose they will ever come back? I saw a scorpion when I was in Stros M'Kai. There are some very big ones. Was it a big one that stung you upon the buttocks, Commander Amavo?"
"And to think that after your sacrifice, your expedition was fruitless, and the Imperial Orrery still doesn't work."
A short distance up the hill, there was a man in the bushes. He was watching the barricade.
His name was Thorald Gray-Mane, and he was on his way to the Stormcloak camp with a very important message.
He laughed quietly to himself. "Both of you, just keep talking. Don't mind me, I'm happy to wait until night falls before I move on. That Thalmor road-block is as useful as a cow on wheels."
"That's because it's a diversion." said another voice from a different bush.
"Wot?" said Thorald, and was surprised by a helmet, which travelled at speed towards his head and did not stop.
Thorald fell over.
"Nyeh." said Aranwen.
She returned to the shrubbery and re-emerged with a humming staff. "All right, how to use this again?"
"Oh, yes. Like this." she said to herself, carefully aiming the nose of the staff away from the reclining Thorald.
There was a bright flash into the sky above Dragon Bridge.
"Take this barricade down immediately." ordered Commander Amavo.
"Wonderful!" Aralina exclaimed, gazing up the hill.
"What do you mean, wonderful?"
"Soldiers of the Thalmor! The Commander of the Penitus Oculatus is quite right! Dismantle this barricade."
"All right, Commander Aralina." said the guards from the Bureau of Advanced Communications.
"What's going on?" demanded Amavo.
"We are behaving unreasonably and interfering with an important thoroughfare!"
"We shall return to Solitude forthwith. Good-bye, Commander Amavo."
"Lies are not only for stupid people. Never limit your lies to the stupid, else you risk losing the large clever audience that longs to hang on your words and so look even cleverer. In the following chapters, I will list the kinds of lies pallatable to the learned, and disassembled and illustrate methods of constructing a great number of such untruths as quickly as possible, as a counter to the inevitable evidence to the contrary thrown up by well-meaning meddling people.
If these guidelines are followed, you will soon be able to count on an efficient and significant army of clever people, telling stupid people that there are wiser reasons to believe the things they do already."
- Second Archivist Eldaline Alkinour
"Second Archivist, we would very much like you to help us with a matter." said the apprentices from the Imperial City, politely accosting her in a corner of the Bard's College and not allowing her to escape. Eldaline continued to privately use easier names for them.
"What is this matter?"
"Our project to persuade the Lusty Argonian Literary Appreciation Society that Altmer and Bosmer are being fed to vampires in the Imperial Prison is not taking hold as we hoped." said All Right I Suppose, I Fought With His Father, He Is Greatly Missed.
"Why not?" said Eldaline.
"They openly mock the rumours we have carefully laid, and Canorion the treasurer is still citing concrete evidence that disproves them. But Third Archivist Hiriel will not sign the application to have him go missing, unless we spoke with you first." said Slightly Less Stupid Than Hamster Dead.
"You're giving up, then?"
"I don't see what else we can do, Second Archivist." said All Right I Suppose. "We have tried everything. Canorion is known to be insolently intelligent."
"Is he perhaps offended by the base idiocy of the rumours you have provided?"
"Yes, Second Archivist," said Slightly Less Stupid. "but it is very effective among other groups."
All Right I Suppose added, "Idiots, for example."
"I understand." said Eldaline. "Do you suppose Canorion would like some more intelligent, reasonable-sounding disinformation? Something to suit his educated cynicism? Feeding elves to vampires is clearly only believed by idiots."
"Perhaps," said All Right I Suppose. "elves in the Imperial City have been forbidden from trading, from observing the Elder Council, and from using the cleanest wells."
Second Archivist Eldaline risked a brief glance at the window to see if the sun was out. "Good. Oh, but don't tell him. Let him stumble on this scandal by himself. Better still, have it partially concealed. The conspiracy will consume him to madness. Then introduce him to somebody who already believes that of which he feverishly convinces himself. I hope that your troublesome treasurer will be doing your work for you by Mid-Year."
"Thank you, Second Archivist."
"I am glad to have helped you, but you worked most of it out for yourselves."
"It all seemed so difficult at the beginning." said The Wheel Is Turning But The Hamster Is Dead.
"Alas, there is nothing difficult about what we do. Our work is brutishly simple. Those who work to undo it, they are the clever ones. They have my eternal respect. For they have only one truth to unpick a thousand falsehoods, one by one."
"Is the truth not subjective, Second Archivist?" said Slightly Less Stupid.
"Who told you that? An idiot? No, there is only one truth. And nobody has a greater love for it than I do. It is bound by many weaknesses. I know them all."
