At last, a chance to deal with Vaerunne. She was finally going back to her room. I cast invisibility on myself and slipped in behind her.
\pard\sa200\sl276\slmult1 With Azura's help, I cast a brief invisibility spell on her, and her mirror scolded her (in Azura's voice) for cutting things so fine. "You almost let the spell expire!"
Vaerunne watched herself re-appear in the mirror, so now she knew she really had been invisible. A thin, clingy silk robe appeared behind her, (held by me), and she slipped into it just before I knocked on her door, from the inside. She answered the knock, to find nobody there.
Turning back into her room, she saw me dispel my invisibility. And of course, my clothes re-appeared with me. In just the way she knew the spell worked. I watched her start to understand that she hadn't needed to take her clothes off to be invisible. And the little guilty smile told me she'd enjoyed walking around naked, even if nobody could see. She was starting to notice that the robe I'd provided left little to the imagination, too.
Azura silently confirmed for me that we'd completed this task, so there was just Glardir to deal with. I went back out to ask Erudil who Glardir was.
"She's the reason this all happened in the first place," he confessed. "If I hadn't been trying to impress her, I would never have gone near that book. It wasn't in the restricted section of the library for nothing!"
When we found her, I could see his point; she was extremely cute. We still had one more victim of the book to 'rescue'. And this one would be different. Glardir knew she wasn't herself any more, so simple contradictions wouldn't work. Glardir was actively embracing her new role, as if she'd written it herself.
"If you're not Glardir, who are you?" I asked.
"Oh, such pride! Such braggadocio! You would have made a splendid character in my story, if not for your bull-headed meddling! My name is unimportant\f1\emdash the play's the thing! The story!\f0\lang1033 \f1\lang9 You know it well by now. You've been reading it all along!"
\f0\lang1033 "You're the author. \i The Illuminus \i0 is your story?"
"Yes! And it would have been a far better tale without you in it! Any of you, in fact. You're boring! Ordinary! I need finer muses \'85. The library! Yes, there are splendid books in there! I'll use them to weave a true tale of terror!"
And she disappeared. At least she'd told us where she was going, so we followed.
\lang9 ---
This act of the play took a slightly different form from the first. Instead of the scholars acting out the characters of the books, Glardir had managed to summon the spectres of the various antagonists of the books to attack us. We not only had to defeat them, but to stop more from appearing, we had to put the books back on the right shelf.
Since there was not a lot of variety to the process, even if there was variety in the foes, I won't go into detail. It would be as laborious to recount as it was to endure.
The final foe was of course the subject of the book, the Illuminated One himself. By this time, his hold on Glardir had been weaked by our work, and she was almost free of the spell.
"No more! Get \'85 out of my head!"
The Illuminated One seemed to have lost interest in her. He gladly let her leave. She'd become as boring as the others.
But of course, it wasn't all over until we'd beaten him down, and put his book back where it belonged.
Finally we could go looking for Sapiarch Hannayel. We didn't find her, but we did run into a Bosmer maid, who just finished cleaning her room.
"The two Sapiarchs arrived a few days ago, but only Sapiarch Hannayel stayed. She's working on a book of some sort. I think that's what she told me. Don't know where the other one scampered off to. She hasn't been back to her room in quite a while, though."
She let us in, in case there was any clue as to where Hannayel had gone.
"Does this room seem a bit small for a full Sapiarch's quarters?" I asked Raz.
"Now you mention it, this one does find it a bit cramped. Perhaps there's more to it, a hidden entrance, perhaps?'
We looked around a bit, and noticed a lot of books just lying around. We began to suspect a puzzle lock to that hidden entrance Raz had suggested. Then Raz found a handwritten note, but it was in code.
"Raz thinks he knows what code this, but it will take him some time to decypher the message," he told me. "This one is unsure what you could do to help while he works on the code."
I had an idea. I'd left a loose end with Vaerunne that she was likely to be unravelling about now.
I found her in her room, looking at herself in the mirror. She was still wearing the robe I'd handed to her. When she saw me enter the room, she cast invisibility on herself, without saying anything. A minute or two later, she re-appeared, naked.
"My spell doesn't last long at all," she noted. "So everyone must have been able to see me walking around. I'm still trying to decide, if I'm ashamed of myself for doing that, or annoyed with everyone else for ignoring me. Probably the latter. I'm an exhibitionist by nature, or that story wouldn't have appealed to me."
"If the story you were acting out was the one I think it was, then they just didn't see you. The enchantment made everyone do things the way it happened in print, where the woman involved wasn't really invisible either. So they were never quite looking in the right direction at the right time."
"Except for you."
"And maybe Meredil the Archivist. He'd apparently seen someone that got him lusting after her, but depending on what he'd been reading, I could be mistaken about who that was."
Vaerunne laughed out loud at thought of Meredil the meek having thoughts like that. "I'm tempted to go visit him and pretend I'm still under the enchantment, just to see how red he can go," she told me with a wicked grin on her face.
"He might never forgive you if you did that! And I don't want to start any new problems. Perhaps with the robe on? You could ask him what he was reading when it happened, and find out if you were part of the same story, or separate ones. He'll probably need someone sympathetic to confess to, and you'll find out if anyone other than me got an eyefull."
The way she reacted to that idea convinced me that she hadn't noticed Raz staring at her, at least. And she probably would be sympathetic to Meredil, and just tease him gently. Loose end duly tied, if loosely, I could get back to helping Raz.
By the time I got back to Razum-dar, he'd made some sense of the note. There were four books that we'd need to place on pedestals, somewhere. His best guess was the study hall in the main building. We did find a row of four pedestals, so now it was a question of finding the right books.
"And the order of placement," Raz reminded me. "I would assume left to right, like reading a book, but what determines the right order?"
"She gave us the order in the note. I assume you've determined which books she referred to?"
"Yes, of course!" So the first book is the one about the Sload, and the second is the one about the Maormer, then the Sages of the Crystal Tower, and finally volume 4 of the Year 2920."
I was placing them as he read them out, and as I place the last one, a wall disappeared, and the room was suddenly twice as big. Sapiarch Hannayel was seated in the additional half.
"Who are you? If you'rte the person who's been following me, I'll ... I'll scream!"
We explained that the head of the College of Sapiarchs had sent us to find her, and the other sentinel, being concerned for their safety. She seemed relieved that she hadn't been imagining things.
"I told Imredil we were being followed! This must be a serious matter if Sapiarch Larnitille sent you. Is it something to do with the Alliance war?"
"No, Daedric Princes, actually," I replied. "Do you know where we can find Imredil?"
"Princes, plural? One would be bad enough. Imredil went to hide in King's Haven. He like poking around in there anyway, so hiding out there wouldn't be any burden."
"Raz will explain things to the pretty Sapiarch and make sure she returns safely to Lillandril. You go find the one in the ruins."
