Pitiless Games, Chapter 13: When Despair Speaks

[aithne]

Chapter Thirteen entertains some entirely unwelcome guests, and is called When Despair Speaks(and on AO3. Full text also below the cut.) Chapter is SFW; story overall is rated M.

Title: Old Roads: Pitiless Games
Rating: M (for the sexytimez, and for occasional graphic violence)
PC: Amell
Word Count: ~118k, ~9k this chapter
Spoilers: At this point, it's not so much spoilers as it might not make any sense if you haven't played through Origins/Awakening...
Summary: Amaranthine is destroyed, and Warden Amell travels to Vigil’s Keep to take command. But one either must play the game of politics or be used as a pawn, and like it or not, every last one of Kathil’s demons are about to come home to roost... Amell/Zevran/Cullen, post-Awakening, multiple viewpoints, Part 5 of Old Roads.

Old Roads IS FINISHED! I'll be posting the last three chapters over the next few days.  Enjoy the ride, guys, things are about to get seriously crazy here...

(also, Kathil will be showing back up on Formspring shortly.  :)

 

 

Thirteen: When Despair Speaks

 

But when Despair speaks, do not all mortals listen?
When she who bends the soulspires with her presence
and stirs waters where she steps calls, do not all mortals answer?

They spoke in the tongues of mortal flame, and created
those they called Listeners, a thousand thousand hearts beating
with a single purpose: to find Elpis, mortal-named Hope,
the Voice that bound our world’s heart together,
mountain-born Elpis who drank the floodwaters down.  
Listeners went tumbling through the Veil, mortal and demon and hunger,
claws and bone and magic—

Oh, if it were only so!  
If only they had not been bound in the hunger of the mortals,
if only those trapped had not tumbled screaming through the Veil!

 

—from the Canticle of Demons, stanza five: of the Twisted

 

---

Cullen:

Some things were as inevitable as winter, war, and chewed boots when there were puppies about.

One of those things was that, eventually, Eamon was going to find out that Anora was in Vigil’s Keep.  What Cullen hadn’t expected was that Eamon would come to him about it.

“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” he said.  “You really should speak with Kathil about it.”

Eamon looked pained.  He had come to find Cullen in the salle, timing his appearance for just after morning practice.  Cullen was holding an armful of potmetal swords, still.  “The Warden-Commander has apparently decided that I am not worth listening to,” Eamon said.  “I was hoping I might appeal to your reason.  Anora is a dangerous woman.  Maker knows I saw that up close too many times during her reign.  Ferelden cannot afford another struggle over its leadership now.”

Cullen shrugged and started racking the practice swords.  “She’s a guest here, the same as you.”  He dropped a sword into the rack with an unnecessary amount of force, eliciting a satisfyingly loud metallic rattle.  “You haven’t yet told me what you want us to do with her, or given me a good reason to try to intervene with Kathil.  Not that I ever have much luck talking her out of anything.”  He racked another sword, frowning.

“You have more influence with her than I.”  Eamon took a ragged breath.  “If you would turn Anora over to my guards, I can have her on her way back to her prison before sunset.”

He slammed home the last sword and turned to face the old arl.  “Her mother might object.”

“Her mother?”  Under the beard, Eamon’s jaw hard gone hard.  “Celia is dead.”

There was a soft cough from the doorway of the salle.  “I am afraid that is not quite the truth, is it?”  Both of them turned to see Celia striding across the wooden floor of the salle, her footsteps silent but for the swish and rustle of skirts around her ankles.  “And well you knew it, Eamon Guerrin.”

Eamon had gone pale—no, not pale, gray.  “You—you are—”

“Back in Ferelden,” she said, and glanced at Cullen.  “Briefly.  To put your mind at ease, Eamon, we are on our way north, to never trouble you again.  But you will not imprison Anora.  I will not allow it.”

Eamon raised his hand, briefly rested his forehead in his palm.  “Loghain said you were dead.  That you had left Gwaren, but succumbed to the winter fever on your way to Denerim.  I had no reason to believe that was not the case.”

“Didn’t you?”  Her expression held a hint of savage mockery.  Cullen thought that he wouldn’t like being on the receiving end of that look even a little.  “You’re telling me that baby brother Teagan—” she pronounced it as the Orlesians did, with emphasis on the last syllable— “did not mention that I might have had a reason to leave my home in such haste?”

He was silent for a moment.  Then the arl inclined his head towards Celia.  “He told me.  I had to press him on the subject, but he told me.  But we had no reason to believe that you hadn’t died as Loghain told us.”

“Except for how very coincidental it all was, yes?  And how my former husband fell under the influence of Rendon Howe afterward.”  Celia was standing stock-still; filtered afternoon light through the windows softened her skin and set it nearly to glowing.  She glanced at Cullen.  “It is one of the oldest stories.  A woman weds a hero, but it turns out that heroes often do not make good husbands.  When he is gone for months, she turns for companionship to an arl’s younger brother.  When a sometime ally of her husband discovers the affair—and the consequences of it—she flees.”

Eamon growled.  “Don’t forget the fact that it turns out that your mother was Orlesian royalty.”

“There is that.”  She smiled at Eamon, utterly serene.  “Of course, she was in both disgrace and exile, married to a Ferelden cabinet maker.  Anything I have accomplished in this world is despite her ties to Empress Celene, not because of it.  But this is old gossip, and I doubt that Warden Cullen wishes to hear us rehash old arguments.”

Cullen cleared his throat.  “It is...interesting.  Eamon, I don’t think you’re going to win this one.”

“I can see that.”  Eamon’s jaw was still hard; his lips pressed tightly together, nearly hidden by his beard.  “You said you were going to be on your way?”

“As soon as my son’s Mabari is weaned and ready to go with us.”  Celia’s smile widened; Eamon looked positively ill.  “My son Sionn.  He looks very much like his father.  You should meet him, Eamon.”

Eamon’s mouth opened, then closed.  He took a breath, visibly reaching for his composure.  “If you think it wise.”

“He is a Fereldan, through and through.”  Her eyes were half-lidded.  “Good afternoon, Eamon.  Warden.”  She turned and walked deliberately out of the salle, still silent except for her skirts. 

Cullen was left with Eamon.  He glanced at the arl, at a complete loss for words.  The color was returning to Eamon’s face, and he took a long breath.  “That woman.  She was always trouble.  Like mother, like daughter.” 

“Did you know she was alive?” Cullen asked.

“I suspected.  Loghain was many things, but a good liar was not among them.”  He shook his head slowly.  “I just hoped she’d stay wherever she was.  Would you do me a favor, Warden?”

“What favor?” he asked.

“Tell Kathil that she harbors within her walls not one but two people who threaten the stability of this country, and if she doesn’t do something about them, I will.”  His voice was grim, holding not threat but certainty.

Cullen’s mouth was abruptly dry.  Kathil had been friends with this man, in a way—but now she was wary, and he understood why, now.  The wolf is old and he grows tired, but he still has fangs, and his mind is undimmed.

“I will let her know,” he said, and bowed slightly.   Then he left, trying not to hurry, nowhere near as composed as Celia had been.  He’d talk to Kathil, then Leliana.  Surely the bard would know whether Eamon could actually hurt them, if he put his mind to it.

Have faith.  All will be well.

He just wished he could believe it, some days.

---

Jowan:

Perhaps in another life, he would have been a stonemason.

He was setting a row of stones in a hole in a wall near the outer gates.  There was little ambiguity with a wall like this.  The stones fit, or they did not.  There were no shortcuts, magical or otherwise, to the discipline of taking stones from the barrow and placing them in the wall.  The dwarves who were in charge of the wall-building seemed to regard him as something of a curiosity, the mage who actually volunteered to help with the walls.  He suspected they had given him this hole to repair to keep him out of the way.

The work kept him out of the Vigil, at least, and that was all to the good, considering the company they were hosting.  Not just Eamon and Isolde—Jowan had successfully avoided being in the same room with them except for the one formal court that had been held in the fortnight since they had arrived—but Ser Rylock as well.

She had changed little since he had last seen her, when they had parted at Little Oakford.  But she had arrived a week ago and kicked up a fuss at the gates, telling the guard that she was here to join the Wardens.  In frustration, they had finally gotten Kathil to the gates.  Rylock had told her in no uncertain terms that, by the Maker, she was going to stay on their doorstep until they took her in.  Kathil had surprised them all by giving Rylock a long look, and then telling her to take her things to the Warden wing.

He tried to be suspicious of her, but the Templar was so unabashedly herself that he honestly couldn’t believe that she was a Chantry spy. He’d tried to talk to Kathil, to bring up the disaster that Ser Rialt had been.  But she’d just looked at him.  He’d thrown up his hands and walked out. 

It was a beautiful day, cloudless skies a benediction over the Vigil, warm enough to make working shirtless an entirely appealing prospect.  In just trousers and boots, Jowan might have been any of the other men and women working the walls—except for the Warden’s Oath around his neck and the scars on his arms and hands, that was.  He attracted only a few cautiously curious glances from passersby making their way through the gates.  No one bothered to speak to him.

Jowan put a stone in a gap and wiggled it, frowning.  It settled in—not perfectly, but it would do.  With mortar, it would do just fine. 

“Of all the places I expected to find you, this was the very last,” a familiar voice said behind him.

He turned, startled.  Delilah Howe was standing there, her son on her hip.  Next to her was Ser Rylock, wearing that familiar forbidding look on her face.  She was in armor—plain, not embossed with a flaming sword.  “Were you looking for me?” he asked after giving Rylock a careful nod.  “The Commander knows where I am.”

“Not looking, as such, but here we have found you.”  The shadows still gathered in Delilah’s gray eyes, sorrow settling in.  The loss of her husband had struck her hard, and she was still largely ensconced in a private world of grief.  Still, she’d made an effort to be friendly with him, despite knowing what he was.  He appreciated it, but tried to keep his distance.  “I wanted to take Thomas to see a place outside the walls that we used to go to as children.  Gwen graciously agreed to accompany me.”  Her gaze flicked over him evaluatively.  The tiny smile that curved her lips suggested that she liked what she saw, even if she wasn’t aware of it.

Nathaniel would kill me.  Besides, there was Keili to think of. 

“It’s not safe outside the walls, Maker knows,” Rylock said.  “And I need to take my mind off of tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry too much about the Joining,” he said.  “Or try not to, at least.  It looks like I owe Ilse a new mule.  She bet me that you’d be up here to join the Wardens before winter.”

“She did, did she?  She’s a meddlesome old woman, but she’s not often wrong.”  Rylock smiled a little.  The expression looked decidedly odd on her face, as if she wasn’t used to it.  She turned to Delilah.  “We should go—oh.”  There was a rising murmur at the gates.

Jowan turned, and saw what Rylock had seen.  Unbidden, his heart clenched tightly as his fists suddenly were.  He stepped back into the shadow of the wall, cold on his bare shoulders.

Knight-Commander Greagoir was at the gates, scowling at a guard who was attempting to deny him access to the Vigil.

Retired Knight-Commander, he reminded himself.  Still.  Best hope he passed by and didn’t spy Jowan.  He pulled on his shirt to the accompaniment of a gimlet glance from Rylock.  The scars on his arms itched with the weight of her regard.  He stepped back, put his back against the wall, lowered his head so sweat-damp hair fell into his eyes.

At the gate, Maverlies had arrived and was giving the gate guard a tongue-lashing.  “The Commander has approved his entrance herself, you blighter, which you would have known if you’d bothered to check the list.  Rock-hauling rotation for you tomorrow, and maybe next time you’ll remember to use whatever is rattling around in that skull of yours.  Knight-Commander, I apologize for this idiot.”

“It’s just Greagoir now,” he said, in that tenor voice that had rung in the Tower for decades.  “If you’d let the Commander know I’m here?”

“I can do better than that,” Maverlies said.  She sounded as if she were smiling.  “This way, ser.” 

They were walking towards where Jowan leaned against the wall.  Rylock’s spine stiffened, her shoulders straightening as if the appearance of a former Knight-Commander were enough to recall endless hours of standing at attention in armor.  Please, let him pass by, he prayed.  Please.  If anyone is listening—

Nobody was.

“Jowan,” came Greagoir’s voice, as if from a great distance.

He looked up.  The former Knight-Commander was standing scarce six feet away, staring at Jowan as if he had just turned over a rock and found something genuinely unpleasant beneath.  He looked so different out of armor.  Smaller.  “Warden Jowan now,” he said, and blessed the fact that his voice refused to shake. 

“So I’m told.”  The expression on Greagoir’s face didn’t change.  “The Grey has always been a haven for the worst that Thedas has to offer.  And the best.”  His tone said quite clearly in which category he considered Jowan.

“I am sure the apprentices whose lives I saved by undoing the demon’s work in the Harrowing Chamber would agree with you,” he said, unable to help the astringent edge of his voice.  “Not to mention the Templars who would have been killed had the creature been allowed to remain.  But we fixed your problem and took ourselves away.  Allowed you lot to live another day.”

To Jowan’s surprise, Greagoir’s expression softened, just a little.  It was as if a granite cliff face had somehow turned to sandstone—still rock, but slightly more yielding.  “Were you so unhappy in the Tower?” he asked.  “Was it such a terrible place?”

He stared.  This was the man who had sent Lily to the Aeonar, had tried to send Kathil.  Whose blade had drunk the blood of who knew how many apprentices and mages.  Standing here, out of armor, his only weapon the sword hanging from his belt and without even a shield...the world was shifting beneath Jowan’s feet, and he did not like it in the least.  He gestured sharply at the barrow of stones nearby, waiting for him to return to his task.  “Out here, I can occasionally be more than the power I was born with,” he said. “Sometimes, I can fix a wall, or patch a roof, or defend a village against a darkspawn attack.  The Chantry locks us up and sets guards over us to remind us that to most, we are nothing but a route for demons to get into the world.  Is it really such a surprise that some of us would prefer to be useful than to be safe?”

Because safe they had been, watched over every moment, living lives of quiet desperation. 

One corner of Greagoir’s mouth tugged upward, almost as if he intended to smile.  “Both you and that girl.  Spirits too wild to ever successfully confine. Irving argued to have both of you made Tranquil, but there was only evidence that you had begun experimenting with blood magic, not her.  Instead, he put Kathil through her Harrowing too young, and was surprised when she survived.”  He turned away from Jowan, towards Rylock.  “You look familiar, Ser...?”

“Rylock,” she said.  “I’m the one who was always sent after Anders.”

“Ah.  That’s right.  And if you’re here in Vigil’s Keep—”

“I’ve been recruited into the Wardens,” Rylock said.  She gave him a steady look.  “I decided that my talents could be better used here.”

Maverlies put her hand on Greagoir’s elbow.  “Ser, if we make haste we can be into the dining hall before dinner is served.”  He nodded, and let the lieutenant guide him towards the inner ward.  They disappeared into the cloud of people who walked through the outer ward, intent on their own business.

Rylock inclined her head at Jowan, and she and Delilah walked away without another word.  He took a long breath, and turned to the wall once more.

Stones.  Stones, and walls, he understood.  He would patch the wall and try to forget the sensation of the earth shifting beneath him, as if the world had changed utterly while he wasn’t looking.  He’d stick with what he understood, and try to let the rest take care of itself.

In the back of his mind there was Lily, always Lily, and it was no demon’s voice that rang in his memory.  Get away from me, blood mage.

He put another stone in the gap.  Stone and mortar.  He would patch the wall, and it would stand.

---

Kathil:

She studied the miniature portrait in her hands.  “Revka,” she said.  “No wonder she went by her family name.”

“She was named after her grandmother, so the family records I found claim,” Alfstanna said.  Kathil’s half-sister tapped the pile of faded, crumbling parchment sitting on the table next to her chair.  “Father kept everything concerning her in a locked chest in one of the storage rooms.  Typical of him, really.  He couldn’t bear to let anything of hers go, but he couldn’t stand it being around him, so he hid it away.”

The miniature was of a young woman, perhaps eighteen years old, her light hair tumbling loose over one shoulder.  She was dressed in a simple gown perhaps made of lawn or another light fabric, but the jewels in her hair and around her wrists spoke of her family’s wealth.  She sat in a chair , her hands folded in her lap.  The artist had painted her with a smile on her face, but there was something inexpressibly sad in her expression. 

Leaning against the leg of her chair was what appeared to be a pillow, and there was a symbol embroidered on it—a stylized pair of griffons facing each other, knotwork intertwined between them.  “I think that’s the family crest,” Alfstanna said.  “From what I can tell, this was painted just before she left Kirkwall for Ferelden.”

“Is there anything in those papers that said why she came here?”  Kathil turned over the miniature, looking at the back.  At her feet, Lorn stirred and lifted his head; next to him, Cerys was napping in a basket.  This was the single reception room on the Warden wing, a small room meant for intimate meetings.  “If she was from an old, rich Kirkwall family, I don’t see how she ended up in Ferelden.”

Alfstanna nodded.  “From what I can piece together from the letters, Father was not Revka’s first husband.  She was married very young—the records say she was thirteen—and had a child in short order. The baby was taken away to the Kirkwall Circle of Magi at three years old.  The family fell on difficult times, after that.  Revka’s twin sister Leandra fell in love with an apostate mage, and they fled here to hopefully find a better life.  Revka followed after her husband put her aside.  Somehow, she ended up meeting Father, and marrying him.  At least, I think that’s what happened.  I don’t know what happened with Leandra and Malcolm.  There are letters that speak of children, but Revka died so long ago that I have no idea where they might have gotten to.”

“It was good of you to bring this to me,” Kathil said, setting the miniature on top of the stack of parchment.  “I admit that I wasn’t expecting you to come.  Waking Sea is a fair distance from Amaranthine.”

“Shesen—remember her?—gave me a talking-to after you left, when you visited.”  Alfstanna had a rueful-half-smile on her face.  The arlessa had arrived about noon, part of the steady stream of incoming visitors.  Instead of riding in a carriage, she rode with her men, wearing leathers and a pair of longswords that had seen much use.  “She told me in no uncertain terms that I was to get over you being a mage, because—and I quote—’the two of you are two stones from the same outcropping, stubborn and proud’.  It took me a bit, but I managed it.  That you were partially responsible for having the arldom restored—well, I owe you a debt, and being angry wasn’t repaying it.”

That Shesen had been involved in Alfstanna’s change of heart did not surprise Kathil.  “The banns have been supporting you?” she asked. Outside the door, footfalls went past—booted feet, several of them, which had to be Sigrun and Nathaniel coming back from patrol.

Alfstanna nodded.  “We’ve been dealing with raider attacks.  The Avvars have been troublesome, much more so than usual, and the number of men who turn to banditry as a profession has been growing.  Someone is funding them, I think.  I’m working on finding out who.”  She gestured at herself, at the leathers she still wore.  “Father’s spirit would never rest well unless I was out there leading my men in battle, so I am on the field with Seahold’s men.  We’ve saved villages and crops, and the banns are grateful.  Mostly.” 

In the basket, Cerys stirred and woke.  Kathil leaned down to scoop her up.  opened her eyes and blinked, but did not cry.  “You can’t ever make everyone happy,” she said.  Still, I’m glad to hear you’re doing well.  And glad you came.” 

It surprised her a little that it was true.  Alfstanna’s outright rejection of her when she’d stumbled into Seahold, years ago, had been a wound that she hadn’t realized had finally healed.  She’d been nearly out of her head with pain still, returning from a visit to Orzammar that she still didn’t quite properly remember.  (Dagna had taken her in.  Or had that been a dream?  Difficult to tell.) 

“I was glad to be able to come.  If nothing else, it’s been amusing to watch you scandalize people.”  Alfstanna’s smile was genuinely bright.  Cerys stretched and wiggled with a rooting motion that Kathil had come to understand meant that she was hungry.  “And that little one wants her supper, I think.  I won’t disturb you any longer.”  The arlessa rose, her leathers creaking.  “I believe I know where to find my people.  My maid probably wants me to change into something pretty.” 

Kathil nodded, and let her go.  Se rearranged her shirt and let Cerys latch on, closing her eyes briefly as she felt the now-familiar rush of sensation as Cerys began to suckle.  And for this moment, for this still time in a small room in the Vigil, with dogs at her feet and her daughter at her breast, she could forget the approaching trouble, forget everything but the bewilderingly fierce feeling that was stealing over her, a primal force that she might call love.

I would burn the world to keep you safe.  And perhaps I will.

Cerys finished her meal soon enough, and after a bit of tending fell asleep again.  Kathil put her back in the basket and reached for her sword.  She’d been working on the blade when the page had arrived and announced that Arlessa Alfstanna wished to see her.

She unsheathed Spellweaver, ignoring the sparks that coruscated along the length of the blade.  She’d had this blade for—how long?  Six years.  She’d killed an Archdemon and a host of other, lesser creatures with it.  The curve of the blade, the notch near the hilt, the hilt whose wrappings she had replaced time and time again—the sword was as much a part of her as her arms, familiar as her own hands. 

As was the strange presence within the sword, something akin to intelligence.  “Old friend,” she murmured as she pulled out her whetstone, cloth, and oil.  “We’ll be put to use again soon.”

She rasped the stone along the blade, working the edge and smoothing out nicks.  The awareness within the blade subsided a bit, as if it were a cat she were stroking to sleep.  The sparks on the metal dwindled, almost vanishing.

The mageblade was the only one of its kind she had ever come across, and no armorer or enchanter she had ever found had any idea how to make another.  When she wrapped the shield of the Fade around herself, it existed on both sides of the Veil at once.

That was the only time the mageblade was ever truly awake, the only time she could feel the alien intelligence within it roar to attention.  It was no demon.  Perhaps it was a fragment of whatever ancient blacksmith had forged it, or a remnant of the first heart’s blood it had ever tasted.  Whatever it was, it seemed happiest when she was walking an old road.

Old roads.  A blade that would suffer the touch of none but a mage skilled in an art that had been nearly extinct for centuries.  An entity beneath the Vigil that was made of memory.

It was not a plan that was coming together in her mind.  Merely a set of thoughts, tending towards the same goal—a victory that might be claimed nearly bloodlessly, if she had the nerve to reach for it.  If it worked.  If it didn’t kill her in the process.

She oiled the blade and slid the metal home in the sheath.  “We will see, old friend,” she murmured.  “We will see.”

---

Zevran:

He walked through the midnight silence of Vigil’s Keep, Cerys in his arms.  She had recently taken up crying as a fairly serious hobby, and the only thing that soothed her was to be walked about.  They took turns, Cullen and he more than Kathil, who was wearing herself thin with the many demands on her time and energy.  By silent accord, when Cerys woke up in the middle of the night and if feeding and changing did not quiet her, either he or Cullen would take her out for a stroll and let their mage sleep.

Tonight, it was his turn.  Cerys’s wailing had dwindled down to a discontented murmur, and he shifted her in his arms.  Truth be told, he did not mind this duty in the slightest, except for the fact that it took him from a warm bed and the most agreeable company in the world.  In the silence of the small hours, he would talk to his daughter, murmur stories that he half-remembered being told by the whores who had raised him.  And he would think, pick apart the conundrums of the day, tease out the meanings in the flurry of activity that was the Vigil at the moment.

In some far-off courtyard, drunken voices were butchering a song only vaguely recognizable as “The Shores of Par Vollen”.  He paused at a window, looking down at the inner ward.  The half-moon served only to deepen the shadows, and nothing stirred. 

And that was a problem, wasn’t it?  Nothing was stirring.  The erstwhile Queen and her mother were still in residence, though the Mabari they had been waiting for was weaned and passage awaited them in Amaranthine.  Arl Eamon was stalking the Vigil, the promise of a storm in every step.  More people arrived every day; there was an assortment of Ferelden nobility in residence at the moment, as the celebration they had been promised was less than a fortnight away.  It was a delicately balanced situation, and the spark that might make the whole situation explode was not leaving.

It made the back of his neck prickle and itch.  Leliana, he knew, was not pleased; nor was the Tevinter mage she was so taken with.  (And she had been a surprise, had she not?  A dangerous woman, nearly as dangerous as their bard, and far more of an unknown quantity.) 

A step in the hallway made him prick his ear and half-turn, automatically shielding Cerys with his body.  The figure at the end of the hallway stepped into the light of a wall-hung lantern, and resolved itself as Greagoir.  “You are up late,” he said, and smiled.  “And you do not have the excuse of having a very cranky and tired infant who wishes to be walked about, yes?”

“I do not sleep much, these days,” the Templar said, and inclined his head.  In that motion, in the lamplight, the resemblance between him and Cullen was striking.  Looking at Greagoir, it was possible to see the man that Cullen would be in forty years.

Then he remembered, and an all-too-familiar pang lanced through him.  He ignored it.  He was very good at ignoring that particular pain, the knowledge that letting Wardens into one’s heart was a guarantee that it was going to be broken far sooner than one might like. 

“Would you like to hold her?” he asked.  Greagoir nodded and came forward, passing through shadows as he did so.  The signs were visible, if one cared to look.  His hands trembled, and there were brief moments when his expression went blank, as if he were trying to think of something but could not remember what it might be.  He has a year left, Kathil had said.  Perhaps two.

He took Cerys gravely.  The baby, evidently intrigued at the prospect of being handed to someone she didn’t know well, stopped fussing and shoved her fist into her mouth, blinking sleepily up at Greagoir.  None of them truly knew how to deal with the Knight-Commander—Kathil was cautious and wary despite her best intentions, Cullen clearly wanted some sort of connection with the man who’d fathered him but had no idea how to go about it.  Zevran, as well, trod carefully.  If it had to do with Cerys, he always salted his actions with more than a modicum of caution. 

For his part, Greagoir was looking down at Cerys with a look that spoke of perhaps just a little bewilderment.  “It’s...strange to think of having a granddaughter.  Even if, perhaps, in a rather roundabout way.”  He gave Zevran a sharp glance.

Zevran chuckled deep in his chest.  “I will share details if you wish, though I think you perhaps do not wish.  Suffice it to say that Kathil claims us both as Cerys’s father, and Cullen and I are content with that.”  And there was a challenge in his words, one that he knew Greagoir heard: are you going to bare your teeth and pound your chest about how immoral we are, perhaps?

“I have seen stranger things in my time,” Greagoir said.  “There truly is nothing new under the sun, after all.”  He looked down at Cerys again, and shook his head.  “I cannot help but think of this little one as a glimpse of a life that passed me by, long ago.”

And what, precisely, did one say to that?

He opted to lean against the wall, trying to calm his jangling nerves.  Really, Ariani.  Are you so protective of her that her grandfather holding her is cause for alarm?  But even wry acknowledgement did nothing to ease the alarm that was spreading through his chest..  A breath passed, then another.

Greagoir’s eyes narrowed.  “Something is wrong.”

Zevran shook his head, trying to clear it.  “It is simply late—”

“I served in the Tower for thirty years,” Greagoir said.  “I know the moods of a keep and I tell you that something is wrong.” 

There was a quick, light patter of feet approaching, and a small figure rounded the corner and came into view.  “Erlina,” Zevran said.  “What passes?”

Her face was pale in the lamplight.  “Anora sent me to wake the Commander,” she said in that perfectly aristocratic Orlesian accent.  “Sionn spotted lights from the walls where there should be no lights.  He and Remy are waking the guard, quietly.”

“We have unwelcome company, then.”  He held out his arms, and Greagoir handed the baby to him.  “Not unexpected, but—they could have chosen their timing a little better, no?”

Erlina shook her head.  “If it’s the Chantry, this is the precise timing they would want.  They will seek to humiliate and discredit the Warden-Commander in front of the nobility.  But, quickly!  We must go.”

The rest of the night was spent on the battlements, arraying archers and sending orders quietly through the ranks.  Kathil was beside him as the sky began to pale, Cerys sleeping in her sling, cradled against her.  “Look,” she said, and pointed.  Her scarred face was pale and strained.

He drew a breath, feeling dismay despite himself.

The Chantry had arrived, indeed. 

---

Lorn:

His human tries to explain standoff to him, but he does not quite understand.

He understands that they are dug into this stone den; he understands that those who are arrayed outside are against them.  What he does not understand is waiting.  They are not even growling at one another.  They are simply passing pieces of paper through the gate every so often.  It has been days.

He lies by his human’s feet, letting the pup tug on his ears.  Fiann lies with her head on his hip.  People are coming and going in this place-surrounded-by-stone, the scent of barely suppressed panic in the air.  Those who are not fighting have been moved into the stone den proper, and have been given instruction to stay there.  Outside, there are knights.  Many, many knights. 

Lorn used to like knights.

“If it comes down to a siege, we’re outnumbered thirty to one,” his human is saying to her dust-knight.  “Not just Templars out there, either.  There are mercenaries, as well.”  She rubs her forehead with a hand.  “I ought to string Eamon up.”

“And that would lose you Alistair’s support as well as any credibility you’ve built up with the nobility,” her dist-knight says.  “Which he is betting will protect him.  He’s gambling that you’ll give Anora up in order to help make this problem—” he waves a hand at the big gates, closed tightly— “go away.  With just the Chantry to deal with, we might prevail.”

“Except that I offered the hospitality of the keep to Anora,” his human says.  “The Wardens can’t allow anyone they’re protecting to be taken from them.  It’s a small precedent, to be sure, but it will be followed by another, and another.”  She sighs gustily.  “Just because she’s overstayed her welcome doesn’t mean I can throw her to the wolves.”

“Then I hope you have a plan,” the dust-knight says, and there is a growl in his voice.  “We’re not ready for a siege.”

“I know.”  The words are a small, trembling sigh from his human.  “I know.”

And she turns away, and she is shaking, and the smell of dust is emanating from her.  There is no word that the humans have for that scent, for the thing that makes his human smell that way.  It is sorrow, and other things besides, and he does not like it when she smells that way.

She drops to one knee beside him; he lifts his head and presses it into her thigh.  Her hand on his neck is cold.  “You will protect Cerys,” she says.  “You and Fiann.”

Yes, they will.  Because they are good dogs.

“The best,” his human says.  “The very best.”

And she has made a decision, and lightning is mingling with dust, and—

Smoke.

He whuffs once, urgently. 

“There’s a fire on the other side of the gates!”  The dust-knight points.  “They’re—are they trying to burn through the gates?  They have to know that’s idiocy—”

His human’s elf is there, then, though Lorn did not smell him coming.  “Only if they did not have barrels of something I think might be a touch explosive poised to throw at the gates, no?  They will force us to defend the outer ward—”

The world bends.

He is curled around his human’s pup in her blanket, and her mouth is open and she is screaming, and people around them are screaming, and his human and her elf and her dust-knight are picking themselves up from where they have fallen and Fiann is on her feet and howling, howling—

The gates are gone.

Lorn surges to his feet, growling, and his bold heart is leaping in his chest.  For he is a good dog, and he has a pup to guard, and he fears nothing in this life or the next.  Not even death.

His human picks up her pup and hands her to the tall archer, then speaks a word to Lorn.  He and Fiann lope next to the archer as he runs towards the heart of the stone den, where they will guard the pup.  He knows about guarding dens.  A den as fine as this one will stand a long time, even without gates.

It is time, and past time, and those who growl at them will be silenced at last.

---

Leliana:

Amity had slipped away from her.

She sighted on one of the armored men shoving their way through the erstwhile gate and her world narrowed down to the still point that was his throat. 

Breathe in.

“FIRE!”

The deadly song of thirty arrows flying through the air sounded, and some of the men on the gate fell.  Leliana nocked another arrow and spared a glance for Lieutenant Maverlies, who was standing next to her.  “On your mark.”

Maverlies grinned and drew.  A heartbeat later, she barked “Fire!” once more, and the song of the arrows sounded again.  Ahead of them, chaos reigned as swordsmen clashed, holding the gap in the wall.  The Templars had used their abilities to good purpose, casting a series of cleansings through the gate just after the explosion.  But their planning had paid off; only Kathil and Jowan, the two mages who recovered the most quickly from the cleansing, had taken the full brunt of it.  Amity had been on the fringes of the cleansings when they’d hit.  Keili and Kinnon were stationed in the inner ward precisely for that reason.

Sigrun went pelting past, daggers bared, and slashed into the fray.  Oghren was already in there, roaring.  The opposition surged forward, trying to break through, and the defenders shoved back.  There were no Templars in the gap.  The front line was made up of mercenaries.  “Split!” Maverlies shouted. “Half with Leliana, half with me, flank the gate!”

They divided with no fuss, and Leliana led the archers around to the left, so they could get a better view of the chokepoint.  She tried to find Amity, but there was no sign of her.

At least there wasn’t until a few moments later, when a knot of people shoved their way towards the front lines—Kathil, Keili, Jowan, and Kinnon.  Amity trailed behind.  The Warden-mages were moving fast; the Templars were likely readying a second volley of cleansings.  “Fire!” Leliana shouted, and her arrow flew true even as she was reaching for the next. 

Blessed are those who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter.

“Maker,” she murmured.  “Protect us from your faithful, for they have lost their way.”

The prayer was lost in the din of the battlefield, shouts, screams, orders barked and those in the front lines gave way, stepped back, fled—

A wave of fire shot through with lightning rolled over the mercenaries, and beneath it men and women died.

Leliana had seen Keili work before, create storms of deadly intensity with less effort than it took most mages to light a campfire.  She had never seen the Primal mage work with another mage, but that was exactly what she was doing now, she and Jowan and Kinnon chanting in unison, Kathil at their backs with her hands spread.  Within ten heartbeats, every person in the gate arch and for twenty yards beyond it was dead.

Behind the other mages, Amity was gesturing and speaking rapidly.  Within the gate arch, the air began to shimmer.  A moment later, the gap in the wall was filled with a shield seemingly made of blue and violet light.  An arrow, loosed by some wag on the other side of the wall, impacted, sparked, and fell to the ground.

I am not the sort of mage who rains fiery death down on my enemies, Amity had said, once.  Instead I bind them, slow them, alter their perceptions. It is a far quieter power, and easy to hide.  And extremely useful, in my line of work.

Leliana let out a long breath and put the arrow in her hand back in her quiver.  “Bows down,” she called.  “We’re done for the moment.”  The archers nodded and obeyed, and Leliana went in search of Kathil.

She was in the center of a knot of Wardens, all peering through the shield to the forces beyond.  “They’re backing off for the moment,” Sigrun said, a spyglass to her eye.  She paused and fiddled with the glass, twisting it.  “I think they may have brought some ballistae, though.”

“The shield is only a stopgap,” Amity said.  “It will start to thin in an hour and disappear completely in two.”  She looked at said shield with a critical twist to her mouth.  “Not my best work, but it’s a larger portal than I’ve ever tried to shield before.”

“It worked,” Leliana said.  Zevran brushed by her, came to twine his fingers with Kathil’s.  Leliana stepped forward to do the same with Amity.  “Well.  We have earned some breathing room, but what do we do with it?”

Kathil straightened, her free hand going to the hilt of her sword.  “We parley.  Time to talk face to face with the Grand Cleric.  Amity, if you open that shield for me to pass, can you re-cast it?”

“Give me a quarter hour,” Amity replied.  “But yes.”  She leaned into Leliana, putting her shoulder against her. 

Kathil closed her eyes for a moment. “Could someone do me the favor of fetching Nathaniel here?  I have some instructions to give him.”  She opened her eyes and looked around at all of them, her mouth set in a grave line.  “I’m going to see if I can get the Grand Cleric to come talk to me, face to face.  I’ll need to go out there.  Alone.”

“No!” Zevran and Cullen said, almost in unison.  They stopped and glanced at each other.  “It is madness, Kathil,” Zevran continued.  “Truly.  We have not come all this way for you to simply throw away your life like this.”

“They have us pinned down, and we cannot afford even a brief siege,” Kathil said.  “And I am not going to throw my life away.”

“You and five hundred Templars,” Cullen said, sounding almost strangled.  “Tell me how this ends with you alive, because I don’t see it.”

Kathil shook her head.  “In the Grand Cleric’s ideal world, this ends with me humbly bending the knee to her, admitting I was wrong, and letting her Templars into Vigil’s Keep without a fuss.  And handing over Anora, into the bargain.  She knows we’re at a disadvantage, and she knows I have twenty-five banns and arls in here to witness.”

“You could threaten to kill them if she doesn’t back down.” Sigrun said. 

“I doubt she cares,” Leliana said.  “The Ferelden Chantry is very aware that its power is beginning to slip.  If we threaten the nobility, they will simply use that to prove that we are in the wrong, and they are right.”

Zevran was eyeing Kathil.  “I believe that look on your face means that you have a plan.”

She quirked the scarred side of her mouth.  “Yes.  It involves me going out there and burying the sword, and talking to Grand Cleric Elemena.  If I do this right, they will all go home without so much as another crossbow shot.  If I do this wrong, well...just hope I do it right, yes?”

“Bury the sword?” Sigrun asked.  She peered up at Kathil, suspicion written on her face.

“An old Fereldan custom,” Leliana said.  “The person who asks to parley buries the tip of their sword in the earth.  It means you intend to bargain in good faith.  But unless I’m mistaken...Kathil, what are you planning to do?”

She shook her head.  “It would take too long to explain, and here’s Nathaniel.  I need to talk to him for a moment.”  She pulled the archer aside and began talking in a low voice.  Nathaniel’s face went stony, and he shook his head, but Kathil snapped at him that I am your commander, and he subsided.

Then she came to Leliana.

She had seen her friend angry, mourning, heartbroken.  She had stood beside her as they fought an Achdemon together.  She had seen ice take her expression, had seen her inexorable as a glacier in the face of overwhelming odds.

She had never seen this expression on her face before, and it frightened her to her bones.

“I’m glad you came back,” Kathil said.  “Whatever happens...do what you must, Leliana.”

She stepped close and took Kathil’s face in her hands.  The expression in her eyes changed not a flicker.  “I will.  As you have always done what you must, dearest.”  She leaned in and laid a kiss on the mage’s forehead.  Her skin was cold despite the warmth of the day, and the smell of lightning stung the back of Leliana’s throat.  “Be careful,” she murmured.  “Your daughter needs you.”

“I know.”  Just those two words, uttered with something not entirely like dignity, and Kathil was pulling away from her.  Leliana let her go, watched her turn away. 

It felt familiar, this moment.  It was Vigil’s Keep instead of Denerim, the Chantry instead of the Archdemon, but the moment was the same.  If we do not see each other again, dearest, I hope that you always remember that I love you.

Leliana breathed in.  Put her arm around Amity.

Waited to see how the song would end.

---

Kathil:

There were so many people here, and nothing she could say to any of them.

Leliana, she knew, understood.  Nathaniel was not happy about his orders, but he would do what she’d told him if it came to that.  The others Wardens she spoke to briefly but could give them no details about what she was about to do, or why.

Greagoir was there, watching her, and she nodded to him as she passed by.  Words choked her throat, things she could never say.  I am sorry that Cerys is too young to remember you.  I wish we all had more time.

She came back around to Cullen and Zevran, who pulled her into a three-way embrace before she could object.  “You cannot do this,” Zevran said in a low, fierce voice.  “Mi alma, you must take us with you.”

“Taking you out there with me would only put all of us in more danger.”  She set her forehead against the side of his head.  He was feverishly warm against her, she could feel it even through her armor.  “Zev.  You must survive.  Both you and Cullen.  Cerys needs her fathers, and I need to know that you are all safe.” 

“Even if Elemena agrees to this, we still have the mercenaries to deal with,” Cullen said.  “I don’t trust them not to decide that they’d be better off eliminating you.”

“And you being out there would help me how, exactly?”  She twisted her mouth.  “Except to get us all killed.  Please, the two of you.  Trust me for a little bit.  I need to know that whatever happens, the two of you will be able to take care of Cerys.  If everything goes wrong—well, you both know the plan.”

The plan being a bolthole that few knew about that led into the mountain behind the Vigil.  It came out some distance from the fortress.  From they would go to Amaranthine, and then take  a ship to Orlais and find somewhere they could hide themselves until Cerys was grown.

Zevran was looking at her steadily.  “You are planning on doing something foolish,” he said.

“Probably,” she admitted.  “But like I said, if this goes well, we can end this without further bloodshed.”

He took a deep breath, and there was a solemn darkness in his expression.  “I am put in mind of the day you said goodbye to me at Denerim’s gates.  Only this time you will be truly alone.  There will be no Alistair to guard your back, no Leliana to cut down your foes as they approach, no Wynne to keep you standing when you are injured.  If you truly wish to die, there are better ways.”

She couldn’t explain.  It would take far too long, and Zevran and Cullen were unlikely to think the gamble was worth it.  She tightened her arms around the two of them, and they pulled her closer.  She fought tears—if she started crying now, she might not stop. 

Kathil could not afford to lose her resolve now.

“I have to do this,” she said.  Then she kissed Zevran, lips and tongues lingering.  Then Cullen, whose mouth was hard and angry on hers.  “I should go.  I love you, both of you.”

It was one of the hardest things she had ever done to pull back from their embrace, to turn away from their questioning and fearful expressions.  They stood shoulder to shoulder as they watched her go.

She approached the barrier.  There was a troop of Templars on the other side, eyeing the shimmering in the air.  The bodies of the mercenaries had been dragged to the side and laid out in neat rows by the fence.  “I would speak to Grand Cleric Elemena, alone.  I will come outside of the shield, by myself.  I will bury the sword and talk truce with her.”

One of the Templars, the apparent leader, narrowed his eyes.  “You are a mage, Warden-Commander.  Why should we trust you?”

“You may use the cleansing on me if it will make you feel better,” she said.  “Just—tell her I wish to talk.” 

The Templar nodded and gestured at one of his fellow, who strode off into the small army gathered outside the Vigil.  The Templars in their emblazoned breastplates and their skirted robes stayed separate from the mercenaries in leathers and mail, and the glances exchanged between the two groups were full of unease if not outright hostility.  Strange times made for strange bedfellows indeed, and Kathil wondered just how Eamon had managed to pull this off.  He had said nothing to her when she’d asked, turned away when she’d lost her temper and shouted.  “I am done with you,” was all he’d said.

The crowd in front of the gates stirred, and the Grand Cleric emerged.  She was leaning on the arm of a young Chantry sister.  Though she moved slowly, and rumor was that she was mostly deaf, there was still a fierce intelligence in her expression.  She stopped, and spoke briefly to the sister, who nodded and raised her chin towards Kathil.  “Her Grace would speak to the Warden-Commander.  She must submit to the cleansing before she approaches.”  The mousy little woman had a surprisingly strong voice.  “Her Grace would like nothing better than to end this without more bloodshed.”

“As would I.”  She took a breath, raked her hand over her hair.  “Amity.  Lower the shield.”

The Tevinter woman murmured, and the shield sparked and vanished.  A moment later, the familiar feeling of the cleansing rolled over her, so much harsher than she was used to.  She bowed her head and let the nausea pass.

Then she raised her head and stepped forward, through the gate arch.  She felt rather than heard the shield come up behind her.

Please, whoever might be listening...let this go well.  Else we all may be lost.