Corpus Tamrielicum - The Imperial Library

316 2. THE ELDER SCROLLS CHAPTER 2: DAGGERFALL
And that's exactly what he did. While King Caladan and his subjects scratched their heads in
puzzlement, nobody saw a small fat white tree grub plop to the cobblestones beneath the main
balcony and immediately curl up, glistening and quivering.
III.
Einlea was terrified. What had happened? Well, she had seen enough of Loziard's magic to
know what had happened. But why? Why would he do this to her? She didn't have long to
ponder the question. A huge black hound, hundreds of times her size, ran to the cobblestone
where she lay, and almost gobbled her with one slurp of his tongue. From somewhere, she
found the wherewithal to roll out of his way and into the crevice between the stones. His
HUGE slurpy tongue followed her, drooling and panting great hurricanes of hot awful breath
down at her. But just as the tongue was about to lick her into the waiting stomach, the hound's
owner yanked his massive chain and pulled the beast toward home. It is true that Einlea, in
her life as a human, was self indulgent and not inclined to effort or resource, but that was
merely because she had no need of either. In the following days, she had cause to discover
plenty of both within her. After the incident with the hound, she knew she must go far away
from people and dogs. And she knew what kinds of creatures dined on grubs, too. She slept
out of sight under leaves, in places where grubs would not likely be sought.
Even so, Einlea's days were filled with terror and adventure. There were circling hawks by
day and owls by night. A bear, tearing at a rotting tree trunk, gobbled grubs, indistinguishable
from Einlea, by the hundreds, as she watched in horror from behind a nearby rock. The
smallest stream was now an enormous, gushing torrent, to be crossed in a nutshell under the
greatest of peril. Einlea passed these tests, along with many others, and she passed them well.
It was on her tenth such day that a clumsy boot kicked aside the piece of bark under which
she had sought shelter from the sun. Blinded by the sudden light, she heard an exclamation
from high above. Then, before she could react, two fingers dropped from the sky and plucked
her up and deposited her firmly inside a huge fist.
Ten days ago, Einlea would have been paralysed with terror. But that was ten days ago. Her
mind raced. "Who is this clumsy idiot, anyway??" she thought, "and what on earth does he
want with a tree grub? At least he didn't squash me on the spot. That's encouraging, isn't it?
So he must be here to rescue me.." She wriggled and squirmed in his fist until she could see
his face, high above her, between two of his fingers. "Ugh. A beard. If I'm going to be
rescued, why can't it be by a fine young prince?" But it then occurred to her that she was
speaking from old habit. "I wonder how many of those foppish boys could have survived
these past ten days?" She laughed, thinking of them. "Not many, I bet. Those who wouldn't
have curled up and died immediately would, by now, be whimpering and crying for their
mothers." She looked at Kieran again. "Well ... maybe he would look better if I wasn't looking
straight up his nostrils. Ouch.. Why isn't he more careful with me??" And then it occurred to
Einlea that, if this oaf were truly rescuing her, he probably would have said something to her.
"Uh-oh." Einlea's heart raced and she started wriggling furiously , imagining the worst of all
possible deaths. "He must be going fishing." Einlea couldn't do much in her current state, but
she could spit. And spit she did. In quantities unimaginable for so small a grub. She spit and
spit and spit until her tiny grub mouth was too dry to spit another drop. She felt Kieran's hand
squirming and thought, "It's working.."