Trovommi Amor: A Dark Mirror

[onemorealtmer]

It's taken a year (OMG seriously??) but Trovommi Amor is written in full; it only remains to post the last few connecting chapters.  When they're all up individually, I will also be putting up the whole arc as a pdf.  Once more I thank our blessed padrona twist_shimmy for be ta.  Old readers, this chapter falls between the Love Threeway and Dark Ale.  New readers skimming for sexings (you know who you are), click the Dark Ale link for the next sexing in sequence.

Title:  A Dark Mirror
Words:  1477
Rating:  PG-13 default
Characters:  Zevran/f!Tabris (Taniva) with Zathrian
Summary:  The plight of the Dalish causes Taniva to reflect on her own past.  Piracy is discussed.

<- Previous: Dragons in Silk

 

A Dark Mirror

 

            She knew she shouldn’t laugh.

            It was a miracle that they had even found them again – the same tribe of Dalish that had refused to treat with them before.  But here they were, not further gone from their previous location because werewolves had attacked them, and half their hunters were too sick from their bites to be moved.

            So now, they wanted help.

            But Taniva also needed theirs; and after all, they were elves, and they hadn’t been actively unkind, at least not to her or Zevran.  Just condescending.  So even though the conversation about werewolves kept reminding her of when Zev had said the Dalish saw themselves as wolves and him as a stray dog, she held down the impulse to laugh.

            “You understand,” she said as placidly as she could, “that if I save your hunters, I will have to borrow some of them back against the Blight.  Do you concede that?”

            “Yes,” Zathrian sighed.  “I have little choice.”

            “Neither do I.  Don’t expect me to feel guilty for making you help save yourselves from worse than werewolves.”

            How glibly she said it: worse than werewolves.  But going into the heart of the Brecilian Forest was different from skirting its edges.  The ordinary wolves attacked them.  Bears and spiders attacked them.  The trees attacked them.  An abandoned campsite they happened across turned out to be a demon’s lair, and when it had lulled her companions to sleep she had to fight it alone for all their lives.

            Actually, the werewolves themselves were the least violent things they encountered.  They fought, yes – but they always began by telling Taniva to turn back and leave them alone.  It might have caused her to wonder, if not for the elf woman they found freshly turned, who told them how her blood was burning and begged for death.

            That was enough to keep everyone motivated through the interminable conversations with the rhyming tree that were required to get its help in breaking the spell that hid the werewolves’ lair.  Growing up, almost the only tree in her experience had been the vhenadahl, an object of community reverence and the location of many of her childhood memories.  Now she was beset by violent trees and trees that rhymed, and she was not sure she liked green things at all any more.

            The werewolves had taken over an ancient elven ruin – a fact Taniva realized gradually and with growing ambivalence.  There had been a time when the city elves had been the strong ones, when her kind had not been divided up into slaves on one side and beasts on the other.  Here it all sat, lost, and none of them remembered how it had been....

            Again, still, the werewolves themselves were the least of her problems.  There were ghosts here, figurative and literal.  And a young dragon, and giant accursed spiders, which meant repeatedly fighting their way out of nets of cobweb that dropped from ceilings onto them.  She hated that particularly, but at least Zevran’s exaggerated noises of horror as he picked webbing out of his hair were worth a giggle.  (And then he would pick it out of her hair, which was a convenient excuse for stolen moments of closeness between battles.)

            Several stories down into the earth, the werewolves finally put up a fight, at least at first.  But again, their apparent leader – this one called himself Gatekeeper – called on them to stop, and this time he asked them to agree to parlay.

            Fine, she thought.  If this Gatekeeper answered to the “Lady” they kept mentioning, then she was a step closer to the source.

            The “Lady” was green.  And apparently a shapeshifter, since she also claimed to be the wolf Taniva had been sent to find, the source of the werewolves.  And the story she told about why all of this was happening was –

            Taniva recoiled from it as if she had been punched in the stomach. 

            “I must speak with Zathrian,” the Lady insisted.  “He must put an end to this.”

            He must?  He had only done what – if Taniva had been a mage –

            But he had done it so long ago.  Generations had come and gone since then.

            She turned toward her companions feeling hollow.  “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.

            She did, really.  Even if she hadn’t, it would have been clear in Alistair’s face what the “right” thing to do was.  But it was grabbing Zevran’s hand that gave her the strength to nod and leave the werewolf lair to seek Zathrian and bring him back.

            It was not a surprise to learn that Zathrian had followed them and was not far away, nor that he was angered by the Lady’s request to speak with him.  She was the curse that made the werewolves what they were, after all; and he was the one who had set her there.

            “Did the spirit also tell you what those men did to my children?” Zathrian hissed.

            Taniva nodded, trying to hold the sickness out of her face.  Killed the son and raped the daughter.  She knew far too well.  “But those men are dead,” she told him.  “Long ago.  None of these people had even been born then.  You can’t... you can’t punish them forever.”

            If she had been a mage, how many generations would the curse on Denerim have lasted? 

            “Please, Zathrian, you can’t,” she whispered.  “Be better than they were.”

            Maybe he could sense how deeply she understood.  He let her lead him back to where the Lady was waiting, and there he ended both the curse and himself, leaving behind a pack of half-wild shems to learn how to be people again. 

            The girl who inherited his position in the Dalish tribe promised their help against the Blight.  In that sense, everything had worked out.  Still, it was not a thing to simply be forgotten, its scraps cut into triangles and stitched into her victory quilt.  Taniva found herself still thinking about it after they had left the Dalish camp for the last time to make their way back out of the forest.

            “You are taking this one too hard, I think,” Zevran observed, alternating between rubbing her neck and playing with her hair.

            She didn’t look up from the map she was trying to pretend to study.  “Of course I am.  I would have done the same thing he did, if I’d known how.”

            “I know.”  He planted a quick kiss on her shoulder.  “He succeeded, and he lived a long life, and now we have what we need.  It could hardly have gone better.”

            You don’t understand.  My father wouldn’t have.  He didn’t fight for my mother, and he wouldn’t have fought for me.

            She sighed.  “Everything is always so big and serious.  Maybe we should have run off with Isabela to be pirates after all.”

            “Ah, I see!”  Zev chuckled, nibbling playfully at her throat.  “You miss Isabela, do you?”

            She smirked a little, but contained herself.  “I was thinking more of the piracy.”

            “Hmm, yes.  That might make an excellent career for you when this is over.  Although in that case, we should have asked Isabela how she kept her skin that soft.  It is not usual among sailors.”

            “You’re being silly when I am trying to read this map.”

            He sat back away from her.  “Of course, my dear Warden!  You must go on.  Big and serious, as you put it.  Proceed.”

            The silence was dizzying.  She wasn’t used to winning these things.  Now she felt obligated to actually plot their course on the map, even though it was really Alistair and Wynne who could make sense of such things, and she only looked at them by herself for appearances.  She ran a finger across the scroll from the word Brecilian to the word Orzammar, slowly and thoughtfully as if it meant something.

            He was close behind her again.  She could feel him there, lurking.  Prowling.  She tried to ignore him but couldn’t help herself.  “What are you doing?”

            He answered in a whisper full of ridiculously false menace.  “Overhauling you on the starboard side.”

            She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it was the way Isabela’s men had talked.  She snickered a little and peeked at him over her right shoulder, where he was creeping toward her on his hands and knees.  “Zevran – ”

            “Pirate Zevran.  Surrender quietly, lass.”

            She knew she shouldn’t laugh – it only encouraged him.  She started giggling anyway.  “No!”

            He grinned and shook his head.  “Stubborn wench.  Then prepare to be boarded.”  With that, he pounced.  Her shrieking brought no help, a testament to either how much trust Zevran had earned or how accustomed the party had become to hearing Taniva shriek.

            Or it meant that they could make out the words, “No fair tickling!”

 Next:  The Girl Who Never Was ->