Je relance le sujet, car il ne reste plus que 3 livres à traduire, mais ces derniers me dépassent totalement. Je n'arrive vraiment à sortir une traduire correcte. J'espère que quelqu'un sera en mesure de m'aider
. Voici les livres en question :
-An Introduction to Scale Armors (Une introduction aux armures d'ecailles)
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The reason my Da was no good at scale and chain is that he was no good at sewing, and had very big hands.
Me, I have small hands, and I got brought up sewing. I got brought up smithing too, though. I seen the scale some of the soldiers brought back, and I seen slaughterfish, and I sewed those scales onto a shirt, all overlapping like the slaughterfish do. Two threads at the top of each.
Steel's heavier than slaughterfish scales. The trick is to make a very big batch of them and make them thin at the top. The thread will snap before the steel does but it's easier to punch the holes then. They can't be too thick at the bottom though or when someone hits them they guide the blade straight up between the scales and that's bad. You hammer the edge of each scale down and then the blade goes up over one and up over the next one and your soldier gets to go underneath the blow and if they don't have scale or chain or plate then the other one dies pretty quickly. It doesn't take long to hammer it once you get used to it.
With chain, there's no thread to snap. You make very thick wire by drawing out the steel. It's easier if someone's around to help, but otherwise do it on a cold day and it doesn't get sticky as you make it. There are lots of cold days here.
Then you use tongs, and you make a ring and twist it at the top and bottom ever so slightly. Then the next ring goes inside that one, and the one after that, and the one after that. You can put a wire through the ones on the outside too so that they stay in place and it looks all neat. The twistier the ring, the stronger the chain, but you have to make more rings.
If the scale or chain breaks then you just replace the chain or scale that broke. My Da always said that it was better to make armor that broke and was easy to fix, and he was right about that.
He said not to be afraid of the forge, too. I think it's good to be a bit scared around it, and don't turn your back on it, and don't get drunk and fall in it, not ever. Not even if you're the nicest smith in Skyrim.
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The enigmatic Maqamat Lusign is little known in the Imperial provinces, being less prolific than his protege, the Khajiiti Cherim. Only three of his works are resident in Cyrodiil. "Introduction to Malachite" still hangs in the Imperial Palace alongside her sister, "Quicksilver."
Both images are part of his Lithic series. The Malachite tapestry, the fifth, is typical of Maqamat's work, depicting a woman who represents the stone or gem on which the image is centered. The figure in "Introduction to Malachite" is rendered delicately, life-sized, her hand extended to greet the Altmer ambassador. As is typical, a scene lies behind her and to the left, but unlike the other Lithic tapestries, the scene is of trees, rather than people. A distant forge lies on the right, with the smith visibly working bellows. A young man stands beside her, offering her a pale, green bottle together with a fine golden goblet; a refreshing drink for the heat of the day.
The play of light and dark in both tapestries is pronounced, being similar to the way it is seen by the eye, rather than any absolute shade of color. In contrast to the other tapestries, the smith glows in the forge fire, while Malachite, standing in daylight, is almost shadowed by the sun behind her, and from a distance appears only in silhouette.
The sister tapestry, "Quicksilver", is the last in the series and is known, of course, to be a portrait of Maqamat's wife, Jyllia. I asked who the woman represented by Malachite was, and received a small smile in return. "A visitor to the Summerset Isles, during my time there," he said. "A very kind and beautiful lady. Without her encouragement, perhaps I would never have become a tapestrist."
Thinking of the tales hidden in "Quicksilver" and the other tapestries, I asked him, "Is there a story here, in this weaving?"
"Of course," he replied.
When I pressed him, he merely looked at me with confusion, as if he had forgotten who I was, then smiled benevolently and went back to where our tea lay, cooling and undrunk.
If that had been all that Maqamat Lusign had said, the interview would have been short. But when the enigmatic master is silent, his work speaks for him. As with "Quicksilver," there are hidden details in the tapestry, and here they tell more than just a personal tale.
The trees are hardwood. The smith is working the bellows behind in order to produce a fierce flame with the wood he has already cut. A flute lies on the wall-stones of the forge, and it is only with a keen eye that one can see it is not wood or bone, but copper, and that it is not quite horizontal, but tilted as to draw air into the forge itself. Malachite wears a dress in the color of her name, but also a brooch, surrounded by moonstones. In the foreground, the bottle offered up by the youth has been blown from some kind of green glass.
Malachite's dress and brooch are both a match for the bottle; the eye is inevitably drawn to it.
Looking more closely, it can be seen that the shape of the bottle is the same as that of an Altmer warrior's helm, inverted, and the goblet in his other hand is etched with a pattern like that of a storm-tossed wave; filled not with spring water, but with pure brine.
By the time the tapestries arrived in Cyrodiil, it was known that the armor of the elves was molded, like clay, rather than forged, and that brine was used in the cooling. It was assumed that the finer green armor, of similar appearance, was shaped using similar molds. The appearance of the bottle suggests a different crafting, and the title of the piece suggests the substance.
The Lithic tapestries were crafted as a gift to the Empire: ten beautiful images, each one delicate and extraordinary in its crafting. "Introduction to Malachite," though, would have caught the Emperor's attention. Malachite herself bears a passing resemblance to the Empress, and the smith in the background has the same dark, trimmed beard as the Emperor himself; more suited to nobility than to the working man.
Each of the ten Lithic tapestries took well over two months for Maqamat and his apprentices to produce, and each one is a masterpiece. It would be impossible to think that this one, of all of them, contained the true message. Impossible to think that the others were but pretty diversions. Impossible, save for the smallest detail of all.
The young man offering up the bottle is a tapestrist, and still bears a needle tucked into his belt; small enough that an Altmer customs officer might miss it altogether. The needle is attached to the last thread of the tapestry, uncut. It is a real needle, rather than embroidered in place, and it is made of sharp, green glass.
The Empire's recent discovery of the blown glass technique for malachite has not pleased the elves.
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There was once a banker in Cyrodiil who warned me against over-investing in anything that was turning sour. She spoke of the times she had seen good money poured after bad, and the unwillingness of both Mer and Men to relinquish that which they had once favoured. I think it was the memory of her that saved me from those last few chambers in Kemel-Ze, for without remembering her words I would have certainly stayed and dared its dangers, and probably died in the process.
After we defeated the great effigy of the Dwemer king, the doorway which he had been guarding was open to us. A wide passage led onwards, buttressed by pillars banded with that strange Dwemer metal. For some distance it weaved its way through the rock, avoiding unseen geological obstacles, until it opened out into a great arched cavern. Constructs high above us held lights that still glowed, even after all these years in the dark. In that white luminescence we could see that there were further doors at the far end, but we never had the chance to explore them. As I stepped out, something flew from the opposite end of the room and pinned my robe to the stone floor. I knelt to free myself, but even as I did so, I felt the crackle of lightning across my fingers. I gasped in pain and felt my magic flee me. Another bolt slammed into the wall beside my head, but the explosive power of this second bolt was significantly greater, and I found myself knocked off my feet.
It was Tuen Panai who saved me, tearing my robe free and dragging me backwards into the corridor. The lithe Dark Elf was quicker than any of us, and seemed to shrug off any sense of danger. Having pulled me back, he determined to poke his own head out into the space.
He came back with one of the bolts held carefully between finger and forethumb, so that we were able to see it. Without touching the head, he showed us the hollow point. As I have detailed in the accompanying drawings, this bolt had four delicate arms, within which some magical substance had been imprisoned. We spent some time passing it around and commenting on its strange power.
Further attempts to enter the space were met with similar ferocity. Panai seemed determined to recover one of the more explosive bolts, or at least its shrapnel, but Roland Nordssen persuaded him to leave it alone and I echoed the sentiment. We had plenty of wealth with which to return to Cyrodiil, and no need to risk our lives for further gain.
That bolt was the last of the artifacts we took from Kemel-Ze. As with the other Dwemer constructs returned to the Imperial capital, it resisted attempts at breaking down the metal, and until we discovered the trick of Dwemer smithing as mentioned in my previous volume, we were unable to free the captured substance. Eventually, though, it revealed itself to be nothing more than a small glass bead. Some resinous substance had been smeared around the outside, and around that was a shell of void salts - rare, but not unknown to Imperial conjurers. Our experiments with fire and ice salts have proved that the smithing technique may be used with any properties of Destructive magic, provided that the glue used to keep them in place is organic in nature. With further experimentation we were able to prove that the magic of the bolts was entirely separate from the metal, and the Imperial fletchers have successfully transferred the knowledge to their arrows. It is only the rarity of the salts themselves that keeps us from similarly arming every archer.
For myself, and for Roland Nordssen, the archaeolgical mysteries that we had uncovered were recompense enough for our endeavours, and we are both famous as a result through the whole Empire. The two of us never did return to that chamber, to risk again those strange machines and their ferocious attacks. Another expedition was sent after a few years, and found the great crossbows silent. The rooms beyond were empty. I heard from their reports that in the place where the corridor emerged, and where I had been pinned and almost killed, the floor and the wall were both scored and shattered as if a thousand bolts had landed there. It must have taken considerable patience to exhaust the machines, and more still to gather up every bolt carefully between finger and thumb.
It was only much later that I heard the rumours from Vvardenfel, of missiles whose explosive power was far in excess of anything we could conjure, reminiscent of that bolt whose power knocked me from my feet there in the depths. I spent a fair fraction of my fortune attempting to track down one of these "Ten Penny" bolts, and to find Tuen Panai himself, until the memory of my banker friend surfaced once more and I decided to cease the investment.
I would give much to find that lost art. Dwemer ruins score the rock beneath us deeply, and we have not explored them all. Perhaps some future generation of archaeologists as intrepid and fearless as Panai will discover it.
For now though, the elusive Dunmer has vanished, and with him, the last of the secrets of Kemel-Ze.
