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peopleofthedas2011-12-07 12:28 am
morwen_eledhwen) wrote in peopleofthedas2011-12-07 12:28 am
Unbound, Chapter 10: Sunder Armor (DAO fanfic)
Title: Unbound, Chapter 10
Characters: F!Amell/Loghain Mac Tir
Rating: T
Summary: Another ancient legend falls to the Grey Wardens, and another priceless artifact is bartered for the war effort. Everyone is apparently too busy talking to notice.
Edit: Now with pictures by ShiningMoon!
Click on the pic to be taken to the original page on deviantArt.com and leave cookies and squee for my wonderful illustrator. Link to the chapter is still below.
As always, I must thank my betas Josie Lange and ShiningMoon for kicking my perspective and my style into shape, and ShiningMoon for providing art which you can see by clicking the link to her gallery on DeviantArt. A couple reviewers of my last chapter must also be given credit (or blame, as the case may be ;P), as the Keening Blade would not have received nearly as much stage time in this chapter if they had not expressed an interest in it. See, reviews do make a difference!
And of course, credit must be given to BioWare for creating the Dragon Age universe, including Gaxkang... damn them.
In many respects, the dwelling place of Vilhm Madon was exactly what anyone would expect to find in that part of town: a single living space with no inner doors, the front room separated from the back by an enormous stone fireplace set into the wall that left only a narrow opening into what was presumably the resident’s sleeping quarters. But the Warden did not need to feel Alpha tense and bristle at her side to know that something about the place felt –not wrong, exactly, but off, as if the room itself was ever so slightly out of focus. “Hmm,” said Loghain, and that about summed it up.
A man had emerged from the shadows of the back room and stood regarding them in the firelight. “Hmm,” echoed Zevran, looking at him. Alpha began to growl softly. At first, the Mage could not decide what felt off about him, either. He stood upright, proud, with no sign of old age’s debilitation or decay. His hair, however, was nearly white, and lines normally associated with age adorned his face, though the skin itself was smooth and full as a young man’s. The lines themselves seemed –perfunctory somehow, she thought. Suddenly, the Warden realized what it was that bothered her. Vilhm Madon looked like a bad painting –a rendition of an old man by an artist who had never actually seen one in his life.
The man, whoever he was, did not seem frightened or angry at suddenly having armed and suspicious guests in his front room. He did not even look surprised. If anything, he looked relaxed, even amused: arms crossed unconcernedly behind his back, eyes brightly flickering over the faces of his visitors as if he was actually quite tickled to see them.
“Grey Warden, is it?” he asked pleasantly. “Strange, that I should rate such a visit in a time of Blight,” He rocked forward and then back on his toes, like a small boy with a secret. “And the Regent, as well? I am honored.”
“You are also mistaken,” said Loghain. “I am no longer Regent. Your information is outdated, Madon.”
“Ah,” said the man. His face made a bald mockery of disappointment. “Yes, circumstances are certainly –fluid, these days,” he said. “It is difficult to keep up. But what can you expect from a poor old shut-in such as myself?”
His eyes danced, inviting them in on the joke, and the Mage understood that Vilhm Madon’s pretensions were not meant to fool anyone at all –unless a visitor came seeking to be fooled, of course. Loghain looked him skeptically up and down.
“I think you insult our intelligence, ser,” he said, “or else you sadly overestimate your powers of disguise.”
“On the contrary,” answered Madon. “I would have insulted your intelligence by attempting any disguise at all. Even your rather splendid hound knows why you are here.” He shook his head knowingly at Alpha, who bared one large tooth.
“What is the Unbound?” asked the Mage.
The man seemed pleased to be asked, and to indulge the Warden’s curiosity. “I had heard that you were a scholar,” he said. He rocked up on his toes and back again.
“The Unbound is exactly what it says,” he declaimed. “It is freedom. Freedom from death, from life; freedom from pain and want and worry. Gaxkang is bound to nothing, and so Gaxkang has everything –everything and anything.” He opened his hands to them and smiled. “It is this freedom that they seek, the ones who follow the stories,” he said. “They seek what the Unbound has to offer, which is whatever they wish: whatever they think they need to become Unbound themselves.”
“It sounds a bit like the Fade,” said the Mage.
His neck bent once in what might have been a nod or a bow. “A fair analogy, Warden,” he answered. “Mages in the Fade take on some of the nature of the Unbound; all creatures but the Dwarves do also, when they dream; most of all, when they die.”
“I have met some madmen in my time who also fall into that category,” said Zevran.
The eyes glittered in the firelight; Madon’s small, tight-lipped laugh sounded again. “If lunatics, dreamers, and the dead are the Fade,” he said, “then Gaxkang is the Black City: always in sight but never in reach; promising the secret and the forbidden; home to the divine and the cursed each in their turn.”
“And you consider yourself the mouthpiece of Gaxkang in this world, I take it?” asked Loghain. “Are you his representative, or his slave?” He waved a derisive hand at their surroundings. “What would that make this place, then –the Black Hovel of Denerim? Huh,” he scoffed. “In my opinion, Madon, you have been swindled just as badly as the unfortunates you’ve lured here.”
The Mage raised a hand to interject, like a student signaling for attention in class. “You say that the Unbound offers the freedom of each heart’s desire; but the stories we followed here promised treasure only,” she said. “Surely, Gaxkang does not mean to say that great wealth spells freedom for every person alive?” She shook her head. “That sounds a little –banal, really, for one with such mystical opinions of himself.”
“Nor would it be true,” said Zevran, “though I say it as one who knows what it is to own nothing. In some ways, a state of absolute poverty can be very liberating.”
“The stories are set deliberately to entice a certain kind of seeker,” said Madon smugly. He cocked a finger and a knowing look at the Mage.
“You wonder how it is that the string of disappearances has gone for so long unchecked, Warden,” he said; she nodded. “It is because Gaxkang knows better than to meddle with those who might be missed. He targets the small-minded, the greedy, the desperate. These are adequate for his purposes. Those who know such people will not be surprised when they do not come back, and will not seek to discover what became of them. These stories, which you find so banal –to the right kind of seeker, they glow like beacons in the dark, promising safe harbors of ease and idleness. The adequate ones find the beacons, and –I find them.”
“We are not the first non-treasure-hunters to visit you, Madon,” said Loghain. “I happen to know that Howe sent some of his men round here shortly after the Alienage uprising, looking for traitors and subversives.”
“Those men met an old, deaf, filthy recluse,” said Madon, “as do all those who come here without an invitation.”
“Then why have we met you?” asked Loghain, gesturing at the figure before him. “You knew the Warden Commander on sight. So does everyone else in Ferelden. And though I am no longer Regent, there are those who might still look for me, if I were suddenly to vanish from the earth.”
“Indeed,” agreed Madon. “Eyes are on both of you from a very high vantage, Grey Wardens. But even if I were to appear to you old and feeble, would you let it rest? Once your great quest was finished, would you not seek the answer to the riddle?”
The Mage nodded solemnly. “I would,” she said.
Vilhm Madon shook his head. “And then I would become nothing more in this world than a minor aside in the tale of the great Grey Warden and the Blight of Dragon Age. No,” he said, and his voice grew suddenly cold, stern, implacable. “I cannot hide in your wake. But I will not be a footnote! Witness Gaxkang!”
“I –what?” said the Warden, and then she felt that shifting again. It was more than just a noise or motion; she felt the fabric of energy that connected her to the Fade twist, and knew that the part of her that always walked there was being moved. The Mage gasped, her mind choked by the toxic atmosphere of her enemy’s domain. She recognized the taste of it. It felt like the time she had fallen on her back during a training exercise in the Tower. She had sustained a deep knot in the middle of her spine where she could not reach, and the thick, grating ache of it inside her was maddening. Its affliction was a sickness that no purge could cure, a shortness of breath that tightened with each inhale, a weakness in the limbs that engendered a hopeless fury. The healers in the Tower had mended it as soon as they could, but not before she had threatened to blast out the knot herself with all the spells at her command. All of that had happened years ago, but she had been reminded of that feeling for the first time just a few months before, at Redcliffe Castle, when she had encountered the corpse of a man possessed by a Pride Demon.
“Revenant!” she called out.
“Braska!” cursed Zevran. “I hate these things!”
Everyone in the company had learned or been told what to do when “Revenant” was called. Those wearing lighter armor knew the importance of keeping away from the heavy, slashing strokes of the Warrior’s blade. Zevran would apply the assassin’s Mark of Death to draw his comrades’ attention to the enemy’s vulnerable spots, and then keep his knives well coated with poison and aimed at the Revenant’s back. The Mage would serve up paralyzing and healing spells as needed, as often as possible. Above all, everyone would stay in motion and surround the Revenant so that it could neither fix on a single target, nor strike everyone in the party all at once. It was not a perfect strategy, by any means, but it was the one least likely to require injury kits when the battle was over.
However, it appeared that Gaxkang –and how long ago, wondered the Mage briefly, had the real Vilhm Madon died and surrendered his body to the demon known as the Unbound?—was familiar with this strategy and had anticipated something of the sort. As his enemies fumbled for their weapons, he positioned himself in the gap in the wall by the fireplace, filling the narrow space so that he could not be surrounded. The Mage saw him draw a long, cold sword; it rang with the dull, deadly tones of iron in winter, or of the darkest corners of the Fade: high and lost and desperate. He drove the point of the sword into the floor of the hovel and the Mage felt her body being pulled by Gaxkang as her spirit had been moments before. Like four beasts tethered to the same stake, she and her companions were dragged against their wills into the shadow of the Revenant.
Alpha howled; the Mage, as soon as she could wield her staff again, sent a Paralyzing spell directly into the demon’s face. Gaxkang halted with his sword in midair; Zevran slipped under the frozen blade, applied the Mark of Death, and darted away. All too soon, however, the Revenant began to stir. Loghain raised his shield and drove the edge of it with short punishing bursts into the demon’s solar plexus. Gaxkang appeared not to defend himself at first, though the Mage could see a shield of his own resting against his back. Instead of reaching for it, he spread his arms wide. A wave of entropic energy burst from his outstretched hands and over the four of them. The Mage felt suddenly that she could barely lift her staff; Loghain cried out as his shield faltered on the last stroke and nearly pulled him over with its weight.
“Steady, everyone!” shouted the Warden. Leaning heavily on her staff, she flung a spell of disorientation at Gaxkang, which missed, and then another paralyzing spell, which held the Revenant just long enough for everyone to back up a pace or two and shake off the aura of weakness that had enveloped them. Regaining his feet, the Mabari growled and advanced on his enemy; on the Mage’s right, Loghain did the same. Zevran’s blades danced in the firelight, gleaming with Crow poison. The Starfang clashed with bright singing fury against the hollow knell of the Revenant’s blade; the Assassin’s knives darted behind his enemy’s knees, slashing and retreating. Alpha’s jaws clamped down on Gaxkang’s free hand that reached for his shield.
Then the Fade shifted again, the form of the Revenant twisted, and the Mage found herself looking at the Pride Demon’s other incarnation: the obscene mitre and grinning half-skull of the Arcane Horror.
“Look, Warden!” shouted Loghain over his shoulder. “A Warrior that turns into a Mage! What will they think of next?”
“Shut up!” she yelled.
All at once the Warriors and the Rogue found their strokes going wide of the mark. Loghain roared in frustration as the Starfang waved ineffectually just shy of his enemy’s robes. The Arcane Horror rose and called forth a cascade of ice over Loghain’s head and shoulders. The Mage, hearing Alpha’s strident barks, turned and healed her frozen Champion, who shook himself and aimed the Gwaren shield with murderous rage at the demon’s midsection. The shield, just like the weapons, missed. Zevran cursed again, picked up a chair and flung it at Gaxkang. It struck the demon in the face, causing no damage; the Mage noted, however, that thrown objects did not seem to be subject to the misdirection hex that Gaxkang had cast on them.
“Zev!” she called out. “Bombs!”
“Ahead of you, boss!” came the Elf’s answer, followed by a blast of electricity.
He was not fond of them, preferring the more elegant silence of poison and backstabs, but Zevran did possess the skill to make grenades that carried a certain amount of elemental damage on top of their concussive force. As the company regularly inured itself against the Mage’s lightning spells, he kept a stock of electrically charged grenades at his belt so that he could throw them at need into a crowd without fear of damaging his comrades. He began now to toss these at Gaxkang, giving himself and the others time to recover and wait out the effects of the misdirection hex. The demon seemed discomfited by the unexpected attack, and Zevran laughed. The Rogue’s bombs earned a cheer from Loghain as well, while Alpha barked fiercely and sprang forward, teeth and claws bared.
Just before he reached his mark, the Mabari dropped suddenly in a heap on the floor. The others gaped at him, but could not move a muscle as Gaxkang stunned them all with a blast of magic that made their ears ring. When the Mage cleared her head, the Revenant stood once more before them. It held its shield before it now, broad and square, emblazoned with a snarling wolf’s head. The Warden glanced at her companions. They were not as quick as she to shake off the stunning spell, and lay or stood motionless as the great cold blade swung down. Fortunately, however, they had managed to split up just enough before being immobilized so that the blow could fall on only one target. The Revenant’s sword bit into the joints of the armor at Loghain’s sword arm; as he jolted awake he cried out in pain. The Mage, wincing, healed him. Zevran and the Mabari stood, regaining their bearings, only to be dragged forward once more with the others by Gaxkang, who towered over them all, seemingly untouched by any of their efforts.
“I am really getting tired of this,” remarked Mac Tir as the Pride Demon shifted and became the Arcane Horror once again.
The Champion squared his shoulders and drove forward with a flurry of blows and shield bashes before the next misdirection hex could hit him. When it did, Zevran stepped forward and resumed his barrage of shock bombs. All the while, Alpha barked and howled and did his best to knock the demon over, or at least throw it off its balance by yanking at its limbs or robes with his teeth. The Mage alternated lightning spells with arcane bolts, watching her companions carefully as Gaxkang froze, stunned or hexed them, healing each of them as needed.
After only a few minutes –though it seemed an age since she had opened the door to Vilhm Madon’s hovel and walked inside—the Mage was more exhausted than she could remember being. Her mana was almost completely depleted, and she had cast more healing spells in a short time than she ever had in her life. Gaxkang gave her companions no time to heal themselves with poultices. The others were also showing fatigue, falling back into defensive postures now more often than not, striking out only when they could gather enough strength. Zevran threw his last grenade and gave his Commander a sad, shaky smile as it burst, jolting the demon but failing to bring it down. Then the Arcane Horror stunned them all again.
The Mage came to a few seconds later to see the Revenant with its back to her; the others, less resistant to magic than she, faced Gaxkang in a quiescent row. Alpha lay once again crumpled on the floor. Loghain and Zevran stood side by side, slumped forward, helpless. The backs of both of their necks showed palely in the firelight. Their heads were close enough that one stroke of a longsword would part them both together from their shoulders.
The Mage, bent with weariness, gathered the last of her mana and sent forth a Paralyzing spell. It struck the Revenant’s helm and bounced harmlessly away.
The Pride Demon’s blade whistled mournfully as it rose. Gaxkang gathered his strength.
Gritting her teeth, the Mage reached for a short knife that she kept at her side, a knife that she had used in the past only for skinning and cleaning game, or for cutting the bonds of prisoners in the Arl of Denerim’s estate. Now she grasped the handle and plunged it into the flesh of her left arm, just above the elbow. At the same time she reached into the Fade and her memory, finding strength in the blood that poured from her. Her lips formed words she had heard months before in an old man’s voice, trapped in the tower at Soldier’s Peak.
Blood burst from the suddenly gaping wound, driving the Mage to her knees, but a surge of spirit energy went with it, driving into the heart of Gaxkang. The Revenant’s arm wavered as it strove to keep its balance, and the finishing stroke never fell. Loghain, Zevran and Alpha woke, shook themselves, and fanned out, resuming the attack from as many angles as they could reach. The Mage, still on her knees, fumbled with shaking fingers in her pack until she found a lyrium potion. She rose even as she downed it, feeling strength and clarity flooding back through her. Planting her feet, she shot a lightning bolt squarely between the demon’s shoulder blades.
Whereas before he had treated them as challenging but still ordinary adversaries, opponents with which to toy as a cat would with a mouse, now for the first time Gaxkang seemed truly enraged. With a gesture of contempt, he cast an aura of weakness over her three companions. Then, in a whirlwind of Fade shifts that left the Mage dizzy, he froze them in place as the Arcane Horror and changed swiftly back to the Revenant, leaving his place in the chokepoint between the two rooms of the hovel to bear down on the Warden and the Warden alone. Though she knew it was pointless, the sight of him caused the Mage to step back, pursued by the snarling wolf’s head, until she ran out of room before the great fireplace. Gaxkang’s sword rose and fell; the Mage’s defensive spells blunted the force of the attack, but they would only hold out for so long, and she could feel them weakening. She twisted and ducked, sending out blasts of lightning and arcane bolts when she could focus, but she was tired, and Gaxkang was as fast with the blade as Loghain, or faster, and the blows raining down on her would not let her focus for long. Her spells were weak; but still she lost mana, and still the blade sang its hollow song as it struck at her.
The demon took its damage as well, however, and yet did not transform back into the Arcane Horror. The Mage wondered why –it would seem the sensible thing for Gaxkang to do, as its arcane form would naturally have a higher resistance to magic—until her store of mana began once again to reach its ebb. The Fade, she noticed, was dead on both sides in this room. Could Gaxkang finally have reached the limit of his magical reserve, and be unable to cast? She felt a faint lift of hope: she may yet, she thought, lead everyone out of this unharmed. If she could just hold out a little longer—
The Revenant struck; the Mage heard a tearing sound and felt a blast of air on her middle. Had he cut through her robes? She looked, and saw a crease in her abdomen that had not been there before. Blood was gushing from it. She staggered, and the blow that was meant for her neck missed, but the pommel of the great sword collided sharply with the back of her head. As she fell, she heard a bellow of rage, followed by an Antivan battle cry and a volley of deep-throated barks. Her last vision before the blackness descended was the wyvern of Gwaren rising up behind her enemy and crashing down between his shoulder blades, along with a furious lash of blue fire.
The first sense to return was her hearing, and the first voice she heard was Zevran’s.
“That, as a man I once knew used to say, is a lot of blood,” it said.
The voice came from quite nearby. From the sound, he must be hovering over her somewhere close. From the pull she felt in the taint, Loghain was, too. Alpha she could hear padding and panting back and forth across the floor of the hovel. Everyone was all right, then. That was good. If everyone was all right, she would be able to stay where she was, prone on the floor with her face buried in the crook of her arm. When she had lost consciousness, she had also lost the ability to sustain the Rock Armor and Arcane Shield spells that protected her. Since the night that their camp was attacked by Darkspawn a few months ago, she had kept the spells cast around her even as she slept. They gave her far better defense against both physical and magical damage than her robes would indicate, but the spells had a tendency to dull her senses somewhat. Now she felt as though large hands had been cupped to her ears, turning every whisper into a shout. The little room reeked of sweat, of blood, and of Mabari; Alpha had evidently expressed his opinion of Gaxkang by marking something close by. The idea of opening her eyes on top of everything else made her nauseous.
“I can’t see where it all comes from, can you?” said Loghain. “Perhaps we should shift her?”
A scrape of light boots on the floor as Zevran took a step back. “Perhaps we should first move this—” here the Elf said something uncomplimentary in Antivan—”that has fallen on her. At least some of the blood we see here is his, I believe.”
As he spoke, the Mage did indeed feel something loathsome draped over her lower legs. She clenched her teeth against an even stronger urge to be sick, relaxing only when the two men grasped the cloak and rapidly decaying form of Vilhm Madon and began to heave it off her.
Zevran chuckled amidst his grunts of effort. “Truly, my friend,” he said to Loghain, “your vengeance is swift and brutal. I am surprised that this Gaxkang even had time to turn around before he became suddenly Unbound all over his parlor floor.” He chuckled again. “Normally I would envy any man who I found lying on top of our brave Commander, but this time, no… “
The scraping noises and the Elf’s chatter moved away. Alpha came to her now, nuzzling at her arm and trying to lick her face. Groaning, the Mage rolled partway onto her side. The warhound bathed her cheeks and chin in greeting, then sniffed the wound on her abdomen. He whined softly.
“Alpha,” whispered the Mage. “My pack… “
The Mabari gave a gentle woof and padded away, returning presently with the Warden’s pack in his teeth. Still delaying the affliction of sight for as long as possible, she located a health potion by feel and downed it with her eyes shut. She remained with her head down, feeling a part of her strength return. A clatter sounded from the far corner of the room as Loghain dropped his end of Gaxkang and came back to crouch by her feet again. She knew he was looking at her, waiting for her to acknowledge him; but she could not, not yet. It was still too much, too close in that room without her armor. Instead, she wrapped an arm around Alpha’s neck and clung to him close, lifting her head at last, seeing only the warhound’s solemn brown face and worried eyes.
“Good boy, Alpha,” she said to him. “Stay just a minute and help me, please.”
She braced her arm against his shoulders and felt behind her for her staff. When she found it, she pulled back just enough to cast her gaze across the slice that the Revenant’s blade had made in her middle. The movement caused a fresh outpouring of blood from the wound. She heard the hiss of Loghain’s breath and a brief reactive jerk of his armor. Once more she shut her eyes, and pointed her staff at the wound. It was deep, but she could sense that the cut traversed only skin and muscle. She saw the broken flesh in her mind; focusing her energy, she first visualized and then felt it knitting together. The Mage drew one deep breath, and another.
Slowly she rotated to a squatting position. Loghain was opposite her; she could see the toes of his boots and his gloved hands dangling off his knees. Again she gripped her staff, bracing it against the floor; in her vision’s periphery she saw the gloves twitch and lie still. With a determined shove, she hoisted herself to her feet. Loghain, caught by surprise, abruptly rose with her. The Mage swayed for a moment, eyes still on the ground, making sure that she would stay upright. At last, she allowed herself to look up.
A broad swath of armor; not as bulky as the chevalier plate, but filling her immediate field of vision as her gaze travelled slowly upward. Bloody streaks and spatters flushed deeply in the firelight. Loghain was very still before her. A proud neck, graceful and strong as a charger’s, gleaming with sweat. The knot in his throat worked tautly under the skin. The jaw, set and bristling after battle, the nose a high arch over which heavy-lidded eyes regarded her, the dark brows above like spread wings. A smell of sweat, ashes, death. The Mage swallowed, trying not to look as if her knees were threatening to give out.
“Thank you,” she said, sturdy and businesslike. “That was well done.”
“Huh,” he said, his breath making a small breeze between them.
She coughed. “Sorry I yelled at you earlier. I was out of order.”
A slight twitch at one corner of his mouth. “Pray don’t mention it.”
She sighed, hefted her staff. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I should—”
“We have healed ourselves, thank you. Alpha, too.” Dimly in the background, she could hear the warhound polishing off a rejuvenating piece of Mabari Crunch.
Everyone was well; everyone would be healed. The Mage let out a heavy, trembling breath. Her fist clenched fiercely at her side.
“He nearly had us all just now,” she said harshly. “And for what? Because I had to solve a riddle.”
“As it turned out, you were right,” said Loghain, “again. Had I known what lurked in this hovel, I would have been through here with a troop of soldiers years ago.”
The Warden shook her head sharply, causing her to lose her balance. She swayed for a moment on her feet. Loghain eyed her closely, but made no move to help her. The Mage blinked several times to clear her head, and passed her hand weakly over her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is rather embarrassing. I’ve never –he just came at me so fast –I—”
“Hush,” said Loghain. “Even the best of us fall, at one time or another, Grey Warden.”
“Mm, now this should fetch us a pretty price in the Market,” piped in Zevran. “Once we get the blood off of it, of course.”
The Mage peered over Loghain’s shoulder. The Elf held the Revenant’s sword by its pommel. One edge was coated with the Warden’s blood; she could feel her own taint calling her. The blood –she could feel it—was slowly freezing on the blade.
She stumbled out of the hovel and stood leaning over the doorstep, praying to Andraste that she would not be sick. Loghain appeared in the doorway, looked at the Mage and then around at the alley, and went back inside. He returned with an old cloak from inside the hovel and threw it to his commander. “Here,” he said. “You’ll scare the locals to death, looking like that.”
She nodded and began to pull the cloak on over her torn and bloody robes. Suddenly she stopped. “Oh, Maker,” she winced, putting a hand to her eyes.
“What is it?” asked Loghain.
“Leliana,” said the Mage. “She’s going to have kittens when she sees this, isn’t she?”
He smirked and allowed himself a chuckle. “Most likely,” he agreed.
The two Wardens sat on what used to be Vilhm Madon’s front doorstep and looked around them. The back alley had returned to life with the death of the Pride Demon. The Mage could see no one in the neighboring tenements, but she could hear and smell them. Someone sang in an upstairs apartment as they washed their linens; downstairs, someone yelled at a cat, who yelled back and scrambled for safety. Across the way, someone lit a wood stove and put a kettle on; someone else opened an oven and took out freshly baked bread. The Grey Warden smiled.
She also noted the man sitting next to her. He still smelled of sweat and blood, but she now detected a dim, leathery undertone as of old books, and a sharp herbal smell that she guessed was the leaf he chewed. He watched her recover, a small frown making his eyebrows lean towards each other. His eyes, she thought, were a truly shattering shade of blue. Even when she examined the stains of Gaxkang’s blood on her boots, she could still feel their gaze like a burning-glass against her cheek. When she felt better enough, she stood up, raised her staff, and called the Rock Armor back around her. The air just above her skin seemed to thicken and harden, pushing away the sharp edges of the cold and sheathing her in a layer of numbness. Next came the Arcane Shield; the barrier went up before her eyes and the world was once again filtered from her vision, acquiring a slight blur to which her eyes would need a few minutes to adjust. Loghain watched this performance curiously. When it was over, he lifted his chin and made a wry face.
“Ah,” he said.
The Mage smiled and opened the cloak briefly to one side, exposing the slashed tunic. “You didn’t think this was my only armor, did you?”
Zevran and Alpha joined them, along with everything of value they could carry. In addition to Gaxkang’s warlike accoutrements, they had also found a significant amount of coin and several large and valuable jewels. It was not quite the king’s ransom that the stories had promised, but it was enough to make the Warden consider the afternoon not entirely wasted.
“Boss,” said Zevran, holding up the wolf’s-head shield for her inspection. “Could I ask you to attend your magical eye to this? It is enchanted in some way, I’m sure, but I cannot tell exactly how, or to what degree.”
The Mage examined the shield and whistled. “It is indeed enchanted, and quite heavily,” she agreed. “The enchantments are various, but they all aim at increasing the user’s defense, whether against physical or magical attacks. It is meant to feel like a wall between its owner and the enemy.”
“I believe it,” said Zevran. “My arms feel as if I had just been pounding on such a wall for hours.”
“You should keep it, then,” said Loghain to his commander.
The Mage shook her head. “No,” she said. “My natural resistance to magical attacks is higher than that of almost any Warrior. And I do not plan to start flinging myself into battle with sword and shield after only a few lessons.”
“Indeed you shall not,” rumbled her instructor.
The two Wardens looked at each other for a long moment. Loghain’s lower jaw worked against the upper as he considered. At last he sighed, slung the Gwaren shield over his shoulder and held out his hand.
“Why not,” he said, accepting the shield and hefting it on his arm. “Pretty silly of me to still be carrying the old one, now that I think of it. Look, Alpha,” he added, showing the wolf’s head to the Mabari. “My new crest. What do you think?” Alpha barked his approval.
Zevran and Loghain divided the rest of the spoils between them, and the four companions struck up an easy pace back to the market. As they walked, the Mage rolled up the rather too-long sleeves of the cloak and used her staff to address the gash in her left arm. Loghain, watching it disappear, frowned.
“That’s a knife wound,” he said. “The Elf didn’t stick you by accident, did he?”
“No,” said the Mage. “I did that myself.” She sighed. “It’s a trick I learned from old Avernus –my one Blood Magic Trick. Don’t look at me like that,” she added as Loghain’s eyebrows delivered a sharp note of censure. “I didn’t commission Avernus’s research,” she said, “but the fruits of it were gathering dust in that laboratory of his when I paid my visit to the tower at Soldier’s Peak. I figured at the very least, I could make sure the poor bastards who died for that knowledge did not suffer for nothing.” She shook her head.
“I’d never actually performed that spell before, though,” she said. “I’ve never had to. But I’d do it again, under the same circumstances.” She looked at him steadily. “Those few seconds it bought us saved our lives.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in using a person unwillingly for one’s own gain,” said Loghain. “Isn’t that what blood magic does?”
“This particular trick can only be done with blood from the caster’s own body,” she answered. “So, no –not all blood magic uses the blood of others. But it too often leads to that, even if the Mage begins with good intentions. Each drop of blood gives more power to the caster, you see. And cutting oneself is so tedious, and there’s so much of it available elsewhere.” She cast a questing eye at the pulse in Loghain’s neck. He snorted.
“If you’re trying to frighten me, Warden, you’re wasting your breath,” he said. “You have no need to look outside yourself for a source of power. But,” he added after a moment, “if an average Mage is made powerful by the use of blood, how much more powerful would a Mage like you become?” He gestured at the pommel of the Starfang that stuck up between his shoulder blades. “Wasn’t that your philosophy when you bullied me into taking this sword?” he asked. “Are you saying that you have never been tempted, or wondered what you might do with just a little more—?”
“I have not,” said the Mage abruptly. “I will use my own resources and abilities in my magic, no one else’s.”
“Not even to advance one of your noble causes?” prodded Mac Tir.
“No!” She twisted her lips and looked away. “—no. I wouldn’t,” she said.
“Aha,” said Loghain. “You didn’t, you mean. What happened?”
The Warden sighed. “At Redcliffe,” she began, “when the Arl was poisoned—”
“When the blood mage that I hired poisoned him, you mean, yes, I think I’ve heard this story.”
“No, it was after,” said the Mage. “Eamon’s son, Connor, he –he wanted to try to cure his father, so he snuck into Jowan’s room and stole a book of magic spells that Jowan had forbidden him to read. I don’t know what he thought he was going to find in there, or why he thought that he would be able to cure the Arl when no one else could… “ She shrugged. “Anyway, all he managed to do was attract a rather powerful demon. With no training –just a boy—Connor had no chance. The demon possessed him, and started to ravage the castle and the village below.”
“I’d heard about the trouble they had there,” mused Loghain. “Walking corpses, night terrors and all kinds of nasty things. So Connor was the source of it? What did you do?”
“We fought our way up to the castle and found Connor in –in that state, with the whole household under his –under its—thumb. Jowan had been thrown in the dungeon for poisoning the Arl, but he was brought up under guard to help us get rid of the demon that his influence had helped to bring over. He said –” she exhaled through clenched teeth—”he said that he could send one Mage into the Fade to fight the demon and destroy it in its own world, without hurting the boy. But for the power that he required to do it, he needed blood. Someone else’s blood, and all of it. Otherwise we would have to fight the demon in this world, and Connor would die.”
“I see,” said Loghain. “So to save the boy’s life, someone else would have to sacrifice theirs. Were there any volunteers?”
“His mother, of course. She offered herself up right away. But the final decision was left up to me.”
Loghain lifted an eyebrow. “Isolde still lives, I know that.”
“I couldn’t decide,” said the Warden heavily. “I thought that with more information, a sign, a clue, I might know what to do. I—” She stopped, looking suddenly weary and old. “I went looking. I poked and dug around all inside the castle –in Jowan’s room, in Connor’s. I tried to solve the puzzle, just as I did today. I tried to pretend that there was a puzzle. But I knew all along. The boy, if he lived, would be a somewhat untrustworthy Mage who would bear the responsibility for his mother’s death and the deaths of half the villagers under his father’s patronage. If Isolde lived, however, she would have grief, and anger, and some measure of guilt –but also freedom from worry, and at least some chance to help her family rebuild. And there would be no need for Jowan’s blood magic.”
The Grey Warden sighed. Mac Tir said nothing.
“We were able to –entice the demon outside of its host, into its true form,” she continued at length. “We hoped that if it manifested as a separate entity, our killing it would sever the connection and send the demon back to the Fade.” She shook her head. “But the bond it had forged with Connor was too strong. When the battle was over, his body was broken beyond repair. There was nothing left to do but end his suffering.”
“I see,” said Loghain very quietly, and the Warden believed that he did.
“What would you have done?” It was not a defense, but a sincere question. Loghain blinked.
“Well, I would have been sorely tempted to take the little Orlesian twit up on her offer,” he answered drily. “But in all seriousness, between the two of them it was the boy who was the abomination, while –in this particular case—the only thing of which Isolde was guilty was being an overprotective parent.” He chuckled. “Which, mercifully for parents everywhere, has not yet been declared a capital offense,” he said.
“Clearly,” said the Mage with a smile.
Zevran had remained silent throughout this discussion, but the Mage noticed a darkness in his countenance that was unlike what she had come to expect from him.
“From your face, it would seem that you disagree, Zev,” she said curiously. “Would you truly have chosen the beautiful woman to die instead of Connor?”
The Elf looked up from his intense study of the street paving. He seemed caught out for a moment, but quickly resumed his usual smile. “I had not, of course, yet entered your service when these events took place, my lady,” he said with a bow. “I was informed of them by that other Warden whom we shall not name. But based on what he told me, yes. I would have let the woman die. She was his mother. She was responsible.”
The Mage blinked in genuine surprise. “You think she should have sent Connor to the Circle?” she asked. “She should die for the crime of wanting to keep her son?”
“The other Warden asked the same question,” said Zevran. “He had been abandoned by two fathers: the one who gave him life, and the one who had raised him. He saw nothing but virtue in the idea of a woman unwilling to cast off her child. But I will tell you this.” He cocked his sharp assassin’s eye up at his commander. “I was raised by whores, and the pimps who owned them, from the time I was born until I was sold off to the Crows. I had several mothers and fathers, by that reckoning. A big, happy family, all together, yes?” The smile was lighthearted and expansive; it was the smile Zevran always displayed when telling outlandish stories of his past. Then it was gone, and the Mage saw that darkness pass across the Elf’s face again, leaving a shadow there. He shook his head.
“But I was abandoned,” he said. “Not when I was sold to the Crows, no. I was abandoned right there in that whorehouse. How? Because though they did not cast me off, no one took responsibility for me.”
The two Wardens regarded their companion silently. Alpha pushed his wet muzzle into the Rogue’s open palm and made a comforting noise. Zevran patted the warhound’s head absently, but the bitter expression on his face remained.
“And so it was with this woman,” he continued. “She had a son who was a Mage, which is a problem in your country, and she acted out of cowardice. She kept him at the castle, why? For his sake? No, or she would have taken charge of him, of his life. She did nothing –not even after he began to go astray. She thought only of her own feelings, her own fears. The boy, cursed from his birth by circumstance, was left to fend for himself, and used whatever means he found to hand. It so happened that he became a maleficar and caused destruction among his family and his people. But his mother was responsible.” He folded his arms and resumed looking at the street in front of him. “If it had been up to me, she would have been made to feel that responsibility,” he said.
“You don’t think she feels it now?” asked the Mage.
He shrugged. “It is possible, I suppose. I have not known many people who would feel guilt over causing the death of another. Who knows, she may be such a creature.” His mouth twisted as he considered. “But, she did love him, so perhaps… “
He looked up suddenly at the Warden. “Even if she does feel it,” he said, “you have just argued that guilt may fade over time, and be replaced by hope. Does it?”
“I would like to think so,” she answered. “Do you not believe that it could?”
The Elf gave a small, sad smile. “I could not say, my lady,” he said.
“You reek of blood,” said Morrigan as the Mage approached her in the Wonders of Thedas. “And what on earth are you wearing?”
“Later,” said the Mage, shushing her. “But it’s because of this, and because I reek, that I can’t go into the tavern to fetch Leliana and Sten. Could you go with Zevran, please, and meet me at the armorsmith’s?”
“Oh, what fun,” answered Morrigan, rolling her eyes. “Perhaps I can get there before the Bard finishes serenading a room full of tipsy snobs with the tale of Princess Rainbow and the Star Knight.”
She nodded to Zevran and the two of them sidled out, heading for the Gnawed Noble. The Mage found Loghain staring at one of the walls of the shop, on which hung an old and well-travelled map, preserved behind glass. He was frowning –not in scorn, but in concentration.
“Tell me,” he said to the Tranquil proprietor. “What purpose does something like this have in a magic shop?”
“In addition to magical items and artifacts,” answered the Tranquil smoothly, “we also carry a variety of antiquities. That is a map—”
“—of the ancient Tevinter Imperium, yes, I can see that,” said Mac Tir. “But how ancient? I had such a map in my estate here in Denerim, which is dated to about the ninth century; but the borders on this one are different –unless the wine staining the corner there had also caused the cartographer’s hand to wander.”
“It is correct, for what has been judged to be the fourth century of the Imperium,” intoned the proprietor. “You have a good eye, ser. Would you like to—”
“But that makes it even more curious how such a thing came to be here.”
“Mages of all nations owe much to the Tevinter,” said the Tranquil. “They are responsible for much of how we live, what we learn—”
“Like blood magic, for instance,” said Loghain, “the misuse and fear of which I’m sure is at least partly responsible for your present condition.” He nodded. “Yes, you have a lot to be grateful to them for –if you were allowed.”
“The Mages of Tevinter are respected even today,” said the Tranquil, as the Mage silently thanked the Maker that he was incapable of taking offense. “I understand that you yourself brought some to the Alienage, when our own healers could do nothing to cure that terrible plague that was afflicting the Elves. Did you not?”
Loghain, of course, had no such handicap. “You may also have heard,” he answered harshly, “that they failed in their mission.”
“I find myself in need of a couple of strong lyrium potions,” said the Mage. “Would you be so good—?”
“I shall see what we have in stock, my lady,” said the proprietor. “Most of the stronger potions we had were sent to Redcliffe, of course… A moment, if you please.” He moved away to a back room of the shop. The Mage returned to stand by her fellow Warden, who was still staring intently at the wall.
“The interesting thing about maps,” he explained to her as she drew up alongside him, “or one of them anyway, is not only how the borders on them change over time, but how they provide clues about the people who made them.” He spared her a glance. “Someone once said that we are all called what we are,” he said wryly. “I would amend that slightly to say that we are called what the people who name us think we are. Well, the same is true with the territories and landmarks on a map.” He turned his attention back to the wall, pointing to the various features behind the glass.
“You can tell much about the nature of the time in which this map was written by noting what the things on it are called,” he said. “At one time, or to one group of people, a city like Denerim could be called the center of commerce, the heart of Ferelden’s culture, or the seat of her royal family. To others, however, it is the stronghold of the enemy and a primary target.” He smiled grimly. The Mage peered with new interest at the faded lines and ancient nomenclature.
“Also,” continued Loghain, “this map contains several marginal notes, which are often quite illuminating. These are additional data that the cartographer thought either of personal import, or else possibly of interest to the public. Notes such as these will tell you as much about the man who wrote them –his knowledge, his opinions, his beliefs—as they will about anything he describes.”
The Mage bit back a grin. I’ll bet he has no idea how much he sounds like Dagna right now, she thought.
Loghain made a small noise of frustration behind his teeth. “If I had my own Tevinter map with me for comparison, I could show you better,” he said.
“You said it’s at your estate, here in Denerim?”
“Yes; well, it was at any rate when I left, along with several others. I had this one in my quarters at the Palace, so it came with me.” He nodded towards the pouch at his side. “Maker only knows what has happened to the rest of them. Or to anything else there, for that matter.”
“Why would they not still be there? It is your estate, after all.”
“It is the Teyrn of Gwaren’s estate,” corrected Loghain. “As I no longer hold that title, my personal possessions have no business being there. Legally, the people have every right to chuck them all in the harbor.”
“But surely Anora—”
“—has better things to do as Queen in a time of Blight than to take thought for her disgraced old father’s maps.”
“There is time yet left in the day,” said the Mage. “We could stop by and check, if anyone is there to let us in.”
“And then what?” he scoffed. “I thank you for the sentiment, Warden, but even if we should find every possession in my study untouched, I would not be able to carry them all away on my back. They will either be there when this is over, or they will not. If they are not, I would rather not know when or how they disappeared.”
The Tranquil returned with a couple of fresh lyrium potions. “Will there be anything else, my lady?” he asked.
The Mage thought swiftly. “You know, I may just have a quick look around,” she said. Turning to Loghain, she addressed him as artlessly as she could. “There’s no need for you to hang about here,” she said. “Why don’t you take Alpha and head on over to Wade’s, make sure he’s on schedule with that armor of yours?”
To her surprise, Loghain made no inquiries or objections. “Right,” he said, and called Alpha to heel with a whistle.
“While I’m there, I’ll see how much he can give me for this blasted thing,” he added, taking Gaxkang’s sword from behind his back as though it was a burr. “It’s been making a whine in my ears the whole way over here. Or a high-pitched moan, more like, if there is such a noise.”
“Keening,” said the Tranquil suddenly. Both Wardens turned to him. He was staring at the Revenant’s blade with a look in his eyes that approached a faint echo of desire.
“Keening, that’s it,” said Loghain, pointing the sword at him. “Exactly. Maker, it’s annoying. I’d rather not have to hear that all the way back to camp, if you don’t mind,” he told the Mage; but she was looking at the Tranquil, whose hands were opening and closing as though following some primal impulse to grab.
“The first of the Mages,” he said hoarsely, “the first to truly study their craft, that is: it is said that once they had learned to cast their conscious beings into the Fade, they set out to explore its terrain, learn its secrets, and if possible, conquer its inhabitants. Much as their earthly counterparts did in the physical world,” he added, gesturing at the map on the wall. “They did not conquer, of course, but they learned much; and they met spirits of greater and lesser power just as Mages do today. But there were four who were especially powerful, and especially dangerous to all who encountered them.” He licked his lips. “One, it is said, wielded a sword that froze the bones of its adversaries with a powerful sting of cold, and froze their hearts with a song of hopelessness and death. The ancient Mages named it the Keening Blade, and the demon who wielded it was known as the Unbound.”
“That’s the one,” said Loghain.
“Impossible,” protested the Tranquil.
“Called himself Gaxkang, did he, and spouted a lot of nonsense about beacons and the Black City? We met him this afternoon,” said the Warrior, “though I confess he didn’t look quite as old as all that. Anyway, here’s his sword, and the sooner I’m shut of it the happier I’ll be. So if you’re quite through ogling it, I’ll be off.” He moved towards the door, Alpha padding along behind.
“Wait,” said the Tranquil. Loghain stopped in the doorway and turned, eying him with a growing impatience.
“Perhaps I could take it off of your hands now,” said the proprietor coolly.
Loghain frowned. “Are you serious?” he asked. “I could easily get enough gold for this from any weapons merchant to buy half a dozen good, serviceable swords for our soldiers in Redcliffe. Are you saying that you’d offer as much –for an antiquity?”
“Well,” said the Tranquil, “we would have to verify its origin, of course, but—”
The Mage, seeing her fellow Warden beginning to bristle, stepped between them with her hands raised. “Perhaps I should handle this,” she said to Loghain. “Go on to Wade’s and see to your armor, and leave the sword here with me. If this gentleman and I cannot reach an agreement, I shall bring it along when I go to meet you.”
He stuck out his chin and glared at her, but reversed the blade and presented her with it hilt first. “As you command,” he said, and stalked out.
The Mage laid the sword on the counter. “You heard him,” she said to the Tranquil. “Half a dozen serviceable swords: that’s somewhere between six and eight sovereigns, depending on the material and the merchant. That means I need at least as much from you, if you wish to keep this antiquity for the Wonders of Thedas.”
“My lady,” he protested, “with all due respect: if this is not genuine, then it is worthless to us. We need to verify—”
“—and verification takes time,” said the Mage, “which I don’t have. Pay me what a weapons merchant would offer; then if your verification fails, you can sell it to a weapons merchant and get your money back. But the sword is genuine. At least,” she added, “if the person we encountered today was not Gaxkang, I would hate to meet the real one.”
The Tranquil looked at the counter and scrunched his lips together, considering. “You say it is worth six to eight sovereigns as a sword,” he said, “but I am no weapons merchant. I have no way of knowing—”
“I say it is worth that much because Warden Mac Tir says so; and he should know if anyone does,” said the Mage. “Or do you doubt his veracity, or his judgment? Shall I fetch back the man who may well have slain Gaxkang the Unbound, and tell him that you don’t believe him?”
They stared each other down.
“Six,” said the Tranquil.
“You must be joking,” huffed the Warden. “Wade will give me more than that, without question.”
“Six and a half.”
The Mage folded her arms.
The proprietor sighed deeply and closed his eyes. “Seven,” he whispered.
“And the map,” said the Mage.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The map,” she repeated, pointing at the wall. “It’s for sale along with everything else, isn’t it?”
Now it was the proprietor’s turn to fold his arms. “That was not,” he said, “part of the bargain.”
The Mage cocked her head and thought for a moment. Then, signaling to him to wait, she unslung her pack and dug around in the bottom for a couple of dragon scales that Wade had rejected as being broken, flawed, or of an unusable size. These defects, she knew, would not matter to the Tranquil, because the scales could be ground into powder and added to some highly saleable potions. She located two of a decent size and held them up.
“High Dragon,” she said. “Not an easy ingredient to acquire. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Would you like your map inside its protective casing,” said the proprietor, “or out?”
“Out, please,” answered the Warden pleasantly. “We’re travelling.”
Morrigan and Oghren were standing outside the door to the armorsmith’s shop. The Witch studied the people in the marketplace from one of the building’s shadows, while Oghren displayed his new outfit to all and sundry.
“Check this out, Warden,” he called out as she approached. “Badass red. Supple as a nug’s undercarriage. And absolutely pisses on fire spells. Go on,” he challenged her, tucking his beard inside the chestpiece and then spreading all four limbs wide. “Blast me. Give it all you got.”
Smiling, the Mage indulged him with a short burst of flame to the midsection. The spell evaporated off the new armor like a mist, leaving the Dwarf beaming with his fists in the air.
“Nothin’!” he shouted. “Not a singe, not a blister. Everything’s as cool as Branka’s brassiere. Archdemon, here comes Oghren!”
The Warden laughed. The door to the shop opened and Loghain emerged, clad once again in the full chevalier plate with the borrowed armor slung over his arm. “Everything’s finished,” he said. “He’s just waiting for you to pay him. And there’s a place inside where you can change.”
“See if he will burn that repulsive thing for you afterwards,” said Morrigan, nodding at Gaxkang’s old cloak.
“Change?”
“Look,” said Leliana, who had followed Loghain. She held up a piece of body armor. It was made of reinforced leather, the same weight as both Rogues wore. It had a high collar and a low sash around the waist, and had clearly been designed for a lady.
“Much better for you than those robes,” said the Bard contentedly. “And I think it should fit you without having to get it adjusted, no?”
Bemused, the Mage took the armor from her and held it at shoulder level. It did seem as if it would fit.
Loghain coughed. “It was the best I could get for –in the trade,” he said. “Some knight had it commissioned for his bride-to-be, apparently, who was learning to be a swordfighter; only they fell out and he called it off before the set was finished, I don’t know. I stopped listening, to be honest,” he said wearily. “Anyhow, all Wade had was this piece; but that’s really what you needed, after all.”
“You said you traded for it,” she said, still puzzled. “What—”
And then she saw it: the Gwaren shield was missing.
The Mage bit her lip and looked hard at the armor in her hands, her brow knit fiercely against the lump that rose in her throat.
Damn him, she thought.
“What’s the matter?” asked Loghain sharply. “You can turn it white later, can’t you?”
That evening, in camp, the Wardens sat side by side in front of the fire. This had become an unspoken habit between them ever since the Deep Roads –to sit, sometimes in conversation, often in silence, in the space between the end of supper and the beginning of the first official watch. They had not sat together in this way since the day they had sparred, and the Mage had feared that something she could scarcely name was broken between them. On this night, however, after the Wardens had sent Eamon’s emissary galloping back to Redcliffe Castle with a purse full of gold and jewels, they had each walked back to the fire and sat down in their accustomed spots without thinking. They stared solemnly into the fire for several minutes without speaking or looking at one another. Then Alpha came over and flopped on the ground at their feet, exposing his belly to the Mage and his chin to the Warrior with a grunt and a wriggle. They laughed, and obediently scratched; and eventually the Mage was able to smile and Loghain to relax and stretch his shoulders and neck a bit.
“I take back what I said at Soldier’s Peak,” he said suddenly, after Alpha had wandered off to mark something on the edge of the campsite.
“There was a lot of talk at Soldier’s Peak, if I recall.”
“Yes, but there was one thing in particular… “
“Go on, then.”
He cleared his throat. “I suggested that you were operating on some childish set of fanciful morals,” he said. “That you were as yet untried in the real world, and that you would be incapable of making the necessary hard choices if and when they should be presented to you.”
“Ah, that.”
“You, of course, knew at the time that I was wrong; you do not need me to tell you that. However, I would like you to know that I know it now, as well.”
“Thank you,” said the Warden.
“It’s quite enviable, actually,” continued Mac Tir. “You still manage to hold fast to your ideals and principles, and hold your head up high as you’re forced to break them. It’s not hypocrisy, either; you seem fully aware of the depth your sins, and yet would still commit them if given a second chance.” He shook his head ruefully. “I was not able to do the same,” he said.
“Hang on a minute,” said the Mage, “There isn’t a man in Ferelden who holds more tightly to a principle than you, and you know it.”
“That’s my point,” he answered her. “I knew it so well that I forgot that my principles were things I was supposed to serve. I got so used to being the last man to stand for his principles that I started to think it made me superior in some way to everyone else. I actually thought that I was the best person available to unite this country against the Blight –the only person capable of doing so.”
The Mage gave a short laugh. “Well, I don’t know about the only person,” she said scratching at her temple, “but you probably were the best, all things considered. I mean, who would you want leading your country to war? An experienced General and war hero, or an unsocialized, untried girl-thing, only recently let out of her cage?”
He chuckled. “And yet we were both wrong: for here you are, commander of armies; and here I am, your humble servant.”
She sighed. “It’s rather a shame, isn’t it? I mean, it was kind of impossible, since you kept calling me a traitor and trying to have me killed; but if we’d ever had a chance to just meet and talk, we probably would have joined forces long ago, and have a smashingly equipped army by now.”
“And that’s just it,” said Loghain sadly. “I couldn’t imagine that anyone else shared my will and my determination. I had to do everything myself, and would have destroyed you without ever knowing what you truly were.” He shook his head. “You, in my place, would have talked to me first. You try to talk to everyone first, to give them a chance. Maker’s breath, you even tried to recruit that lunatic Kolgrim and his bunch.”
“I like to present everyone with a choice, yes, and the opportunity to take it freely, or not.”
“Hmm,” he answered with a grimace. “One of the drawbacks of having principles, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, is how often you must expect to be disappointed.”
“I’m rarely disappointed, actually, no matter how they choose. Mostly I’m just –curious. To see how each one reacts.”
“Ah yes –the scholar, of course. Detached, studying us all. You don’t ever really get angry, do you? I don’t mean momentarily annoyed, but really furious?”
“Rage is not a healthy emotion to have in the Circle,” she said drily.
“You have a point there,” he answered, nodding. “I suppose it wouldn’t be.”
“But even in the Circle,” sighed the Mage, “it’s true that I was always considered something of a cold fish.”
Loghain thought for a moment. “Owl,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Not a fish; an owl. I used to see them all the time when I was a boy.” He propped his forearms on his knees and spread his hands in the firelight. “They nested in the barns and sheds of the farms round our way,” he said. “At night, you could sometimes watch them hunting, if you were quiet enough.” He nodded. “Quite fascinating, owls. At rest, they look like somewhat comical, moon-faced lumps of fluff; but see them in action, especially when they’re hunting, and you realize they’re quite—” he blinked, nodded a second time—”impressive. Powerful. Nearly silent, until they strike. And they know precisely how and where to target their prey, even in the dark.” One hand rose and rocked, splayed flat just above his head; the other dipped low to the ground, the heedless victim. “They just watch, and listen, hovering, until they’re ready; and then—” The splayed hand became a fist and struck the palm of the other with a Pow! sound. “That’s you,” he said, pointing at the Warden. “Not a fish.”
“An owl.”
The company took the road southwest out of Denerim for a little over a day and a half. Around noon on the second day they passed South Reach; after stopping for lunch they left the road, striking more directly south across the bare western slopes of the Southron Hills.
The Mage’s lessons with Leliana continued. Sten had also begun his instruction of Oghren in the Reaver’s technique, so their campsites were lively, and noisy, in the mornings. Morrigan and Shale both complained, with predictable results.
They passed through the former Dalish campsite and were hailed by the Werewolves and the Lady of the Forest, who assured them of their fealty to the Grey Wardens and their determination to fight the Blight at the Commander’s side. As they left the Drakon River behind them, Loghain allowed Leliana and Zevran to take turns relating the story of Zathrian’s curse and the fate of the Brecilian Elves. The Warden said nothing.
The next morning, the Mage got ready to turn the company south-southwest again. Loghain looked at the sky and sighed.
“We’re actually going back there, aren’t we?” he asked her. “To Ostagar.”
“If we can,” said the Warden, “I think we should. Don’t you?”
“I must do as I am told, no matter what I think,” griped Mac Tir.
“So we’re going, then,” said the Mage, and cocked a biting eye at him. “But first, we’ve got another errand to run –one that will no doubt serve to cement our reputations as a lot of cold-blooded bastards.”
“Oh? And what is that?”
“We’re going to go kill Morrigan’s mother.”
Characters: F!Amell/Loghain Mac Tir
Rating: T
Summary: Another ancient legend falls to the Grey Wardens, and another priceless artifact is bartered for the war effort. Everyone is apparently too busy talking to notice.
Edit: Now with pictures by ShiningMoon!
Click on the pic to be taken to the original page on deviantArt.com and leave cookies and squee for my wonderful illustrator. Link to the chapter is still below.
As always, I must thank my betas Josie Lange and ShiningMoon for kicking my perspective and my style into shape, and ShiningMoon for providing art which you can see by clicking the link to her gallery on DeviantArt. A couple reviewers of my last chapter must also be given credit (or blame, as the case may be ;P), as the Keening Blade would not have received nearly as much stage time in this chapter if they had not expressed an interest in it. See, reviews do make a difference!
And of course, credit must be given to BioWare for creating the Dragon Age universe, including Gaxkang... damn them.
In many respects, the dwelling place of Vilhm Madon was exactly what anyone would expect to find in that part of town: a single living space with no inner doors, the front room separated from the back by an enormous stone fireplace set into the wall that left only a narrow opening into what was presumably the resident’s sleeping quarters. But the Warden did not need to feel Alpha tense and bristle at her side to know that something about the place felt –not wrong, exactly, but off, as if the room itself was ever so slightly out of focus. “Hmm,” said Loghain, and that about summed it up.
A man had emerged from the shadows of the back room and stood regarding them in the firelight. “Hmm,” echoed Zevran, looking at him. Alpha began to growl softly. At first, the Mage could not decide what felt off about him, either. He stood upright, proud, with no sign of old age’s debilitation or decay. His hair, however, was nearly white, and lines normally associated with age adorned his face, though the skin itself was smooth and full as a young man’s. The lines themselves seemed –perfunctory somehow, she thought. Suddenly, the Warden realized what it was that bothered her. Vilhm Madon looked like a bad painting –a rendition of an old man by an artist who had never actually seen one in his life.
The man, whoever he was, did not seem frightened or angry at suddenly having armed and suspicious guests in his front room. He did not even look surprised. If anything, he looked relaxed, even amused: arms crossed unconcernedly behind his back, eyes brightly flickering over the faces of his visitors as if he was actually quite tickled to see them.
“Grey Warden, is it?” he asked pleasantly. “Strange, that I should rate such a visit in a time of Blight,” He rocked forward and then back on his toes, like a small boy with a secret. “And the Regent, as well? I am honored.”
“You are also mistaken,” said Loghain. “I am no longer Regent. Your information is outdated, Madon.”
“Ah,” said the man. His face made a bald mockery of disappointment. “Yes, circumstances are certainly –fluid, these days,” he said. “It is difficult to keep up. But what can you expect from a poor old shut-in such as myself?”
His eyes danced, inviting them in on the joke, and the Mage understood that Vilhm Madon’s pretensions were not meant to fool anyone at all –unless a visitor came seeking to be fooled, of course. Loghain looked him skeptically up and down.
“I think you insult our intelligence, ser,” he said, “or else you sadly overestimate your powers of disguise.”
“On the contrary,” answered Madon. “I would have insulted your intelligence by attempting any disguise at all. Even your rather splendid hound knows why you are here.” He shook his head knowingly at Alpha, who bared one large tooth.
“What is the Unbound?” asked the Mage.
The man seemed pleased to be asked, and to indulge the Warden’s curiosity. “I had heard that you were a scholar,” he said. He rocked up on his toes and back again.
“The Unbound is exactly what it says,” he declaimed. “It is freedom. Freedom from death, from life; freedom from pain and want and worry. Gaxkang is bound to nothing, and so Gaxkang has everything –everything and anything.” He opened his hands to them and smiled. “It is this freedom that they seek, the ones who follow the stories,” he said. “They seek what the Unbound has to offer, which is whatever they wish: whatever they think they need to become Unbound themselves.”
“It sounds a bit like the Fade,” said the Mage.
His neck bent once in what might have been a nod or a bow. “A fair analogy, Warden,” he answered. “Mages in the Fade take on some of the nature of the Unbound; all creatures but the Dwarves do also, when they dream; most of all, when they die.”
“I have met some madmen in my time who also fall into that category,” said Zevran.
The eyes glittered in the firelight; Madon’s small, tight-lipped laugh sounded again. “If lunatics, dreamers, and the dead are the Fade,” he said, “then Gaxkang is the Black City: always in sight but never in reach; promising the secret and the forbidden; home to the divine and the cursed each in their turn.”
“And you consider yourself the mouthpiece of Gaxkang in this world, I take it?” asked Loghain. “Are you his representative, or his slave?” He waved a derisive hand at their surroundings. “What would that make this place, then –the Black Hovel of Denerim? Huh,” he scoffed. “In my opinion, Madon, you have been swindled just as badly as the unfortunates you’ve lured here.”
The Mage raised a hand to interject, like a student signaling for attention in class. “You say that the Unbound offers the freedom of each heart’s desire; but the stories we followed here promised treasure only,” she said. “Surely, Gaxkang does not mean to say that great wealth spells freedom for every person alive?” She shook her head. “That sounds a little –banal, really, for one with such mystical opinions of himself.”
“Nor would it be true,” said Zevran, “though I say it as one who knows what it is to own nothing. In some ways, a state of absolute poverty can be very liberating.”
“The stories are set deliberately to entice a certain kind of seeker,” said Madon smugly. He cocked a finger and a knowing look at the Mage.
“You wonder how it is that the string of disappearances has gone for so long unchecked, Warden,” he said; she nodded. “It is because Gaxkang knows better than to meddle with those who might be missed. He targets the small-minded, the greedy, the desperate. These are adequate for his purposes. Those who know such people will not be surprised when they do not come back, and will not seek to discover what became of them. These stories, which you find so banal –to the right kind of seeker, they glow like beacons in the dark, promising safe harbors of ease and idleness. The adequate ones find the beacons, and –I find them.”
“We are not the first non-treasure-hunters to visit you, Madon,” said Loghain. “I happen to know that Howe sent some of his men round here shortly after the Alienage uprising, looking for traitors and subversives.”
“Those men met an old, deaf, filthy recluse,” said Madon, “as do all those who come here without an invitation.”
“Then why have we met you?” asked Loghain, gesturing at the figure before him. “You knew the Warden Commander on sight. So does everyone else in Ferelden. And though I am no longer Regent, there are those who might still look for me, if I were suddenly to vanish from the earth.”
“Indeed,” agreed Madon. “Eyes are on both of you from a very high vantage, Grey Wardens. But even if I were to appear to you old and feeble, would you let it rest? Once your great quest was finished, would you not seek the answer to the riddle?”
The Mage nodded solemnly. “I would,” she said.
Vilhm Madon shook his head. “And then I would become nothing more in this world than a minor aside in the tale of the great Grey Warden and the Blight of Dragon Age. No,” he said, and his voice grew suddenly cold, stern, implacable. “I cannot hide in your wake. But I will not be a footnote! Witness Gaxkang!”
“I –what?” said the Warden, and then she felt that shifting again. It was more than just a noise or motion; she felt the fabric of energy that connected her to the Fade twist, and knew that the part of her that always walked there was being moved. The Mage gasped, her mind choked by the toxic atmosphere of her enemy’s domain. She recognized the taste of it. It felt like the time she had fallen on her back during a training exercise in the Tower. She had sustained a deep knot in the middle of her spine where she could not reach, and the thick, grating ache of it inside her was maddening. Its affliction was a sickness that no purge could cure, a shortness of breath that tightened with each inhale, a weakness in the limbs that engendered a hopeless fury. The healers in the Tower had mended it as soon as they could, but not before she had threatened to blast out the knot herself with all the spells at her command. All of that had happened years ago, but she had been reminded of that feeling for the first time just a few months before, at Redcliffe Castle, when she had encountered the corpse of a man possessed by a Pride Demon.
“Revenant!” she called out.
“Braska!” cursed Zevran. “I hate these things!”
Everyone in the company had learned or been told what to do when “Revenant” was called. Those wearing lighter armor knew the importance of keeping away from the heavy, slashing strokes of the Warrior’s blade. Zevran would apply the assassin’s Mark of Death to draw his comrades’ attention to the enemy’s vulnerable spots, and then keep his knives well coated with poison and aimed at the Revenant’s back. The Mage would serve up paralyzing and healing spells as needed, as often as possible. Above all, everyone would stay in motion and surround the Revenant so that it could neither fix on a single target, nor strike everyone in the party all at once. It was not a perfect strategy, by any means, but it was the one least likely to require injury kits when the battle was over.
However, it appeared that Gaxkang –and how long ago, wondered the Mage briefly, had the real Vilhm Madon died and surrendered his body to the demon known as the Unbound?—was familiar with this strategy and had anticipated something of the sort. As his enemies fumbled for their weapons, he positioned himself in the gap in the wall by the fireplace, filling the narrow space so that he could not be surrounded. The Mage saw him draw a long, cold sword; it rang with the dull, deadly tones of iron in winter, or of the darkest corners of the Fade: high and lost and desperate. He drove the point of the sword into the floor of the hovel and the Mage felt her body being pulled by Gaxkang as her spirit had been moments before. Like four beasts tethered to the same stake, she and her companions were dragged against their wills into the shadow of the Revenant.
Alpha howled; the Mage, as soon as she could wield her staff again, sent a Paralyzing spell directly into the demon’s face. Gaxkang halted with his sword in midair; Zevran slipped under the frozen blade, applied the Mark of Death, and darted away. All too soon, however, the Revenant began to stir. Loghain raised his shield and drove the edge of it with short punishing bursts into the demon’s solar plexus. Gaxkang appeared not to defend himself at first, though the Mage could see a shield of his own resting against his back. Instead of reaching for it, he spread his arms wide. A wave of entropic energy burst from his outstretched hands and over the four of them. The Mage felt suddenly that she could barely lift her staff; Loghain cried out as his shield faltered on the last stroke and nearly pulled him over with its weight.
“Steady, everyone!” shouted the Warden. Leaning heavily on her staff, she flung a spell of disorientation at Gaxkang, which missed, and then another paralyzing spell, which held the Revenant just long enough for everyone to back up a pace or two and shake off the aura of weakness that had enveloped them. Regaining his feet, the Mabari growled and advanced on his enemy; on the Mage’s right, Loghain did the same. Zevran’s blades danced in the firelight, gleaming with Crow poison. The Starfang clashed with bright singing fury against the hollow knell of the Revenant’s blade; the Assassin’s knives darted behind his enemy’s knees, slashing and retreating. Alpha’s jaws clamped down on Gaxkang’s free hand that reached for his shield.
Then the Fade shifted again, the form of the Revenant twisted, and the Mage found herself looking at the Pride Demon’s other incarnation: the obscene mitre and grinning half-skull of the Arcane Horror.
“Look, Warden!” shouted Loghain over his shoulder. “A Warrior that turns into a Mage! What will they think of next?”
“Shut up!” she yelled.
All at once the Warriors and the Rogue found their strokes going wide of the mark. Loghain roared in frustration as the Starfang waved ineffectually just shy of his enemy’s robes. The Arcane Horror rose and called forth a cascade of ice over Loghain’s head and shoulders. The Mage, hearing Alpha’s strident barks, turned and healed her frozen Champion, who shook himself and aimed the Gwaren shield with murderous rage at the demon’s midsection. The shield, just like the weapons, missed. Zevran cursed again, picked up a chair and flung it at Gaxkang. It struck the demon in the face, causing no damage; the Mage noted, however, that thrown objects did not seem to be subject to the misdirection hex that Gaxkang had cast on them.
“Zev!” she called out. “Bombs!”
“Ahead of you, boss!” came the Elf’s answer, followed by a blast of electricity.
He was not fond of them, preferring the more elegant silence of poison and backstabs, but Zevran did possess the skill to make grenades that carried a certain amount of elemental damage on top of their concussive force. As the company regularly inured itself against the Mage’s lightning spells, he kept a stock of electrically charged grenades at his belt so that he could throw them at need into a crowd without fear of damaging his comrades. He began now to toss these at Gaxkang, giving himself and the others time to recover and wait out the effects of the misdirection hex. The demon seemed discomfited by the unexpected attack, and Zevran laughed. The Rogue’s bombs earned a cheer from Loghain as well, while Alpha barked fiercely and sprang forward, teeth and claws bared.
Just before he reached his mark, the Mabari dropped suddenly in a heap on the floor. The others gaped at him, but could not move a muscle as Gaxkang stunned them all with a blast of magic that made their ears ring. When the Mage cleared her head, the Revenant stood once more before them. It held its shield before it now, broad and square, emblazoned with a snarling wolf’s head. The Warden glanced at her companions. They were not as quick as she to shake off the stunning spell, and lay or stood motionless as the great cold blade swung down. Fortunately, however, they had managed to split up just enough before being immobilized so that the blow could fall on only one target. The Revenant’s sword bit into the joints of the armor at Loghain’s sword arm; as he jolted awake he cried out in pain. The Mage, wincing, healed him. Zevran and the Mabari stood, regaining their bearings, only to be dragged forward once more with the others by Gaxkang, who towered over them all, seemingly untouched by any of their efforts.
“I am really getting tired of this,” remarked Mac Tir as the Pride Demon shifted and became the Arcane Horror once again.
The Champion squared his shoulders and drove forward with a flurry of blows and shield bashes before the next misdirection hex could hit him. When it did, Zevran stepped forward and resumed his barrage of shock bombs. All the while, Alpha barked and howled and did his best to knock the demon over, or at least throw it off its balance by yanking at its limbs or robes with his teeth. The Mage alternated lightning spells with arcane bolts, watching her companions carefully as Gaxkang froze, stunned or hexed them, healing each of them as needed.
After only a few minutes –though it seemed an age since she had opened the door to Vilhm Madon’s hovel and walked inside—the Mage was more exhausted than she could remember being. Her mana was almost completely depleted, and she had cast more healing spells in a short time than she ever had in her life. Gaxkang gave her companions no time to heal themselves with poultices. The others were also showing fatigue, falling back into defensive postures now more often than not, striking out only when they could gather enough strength. Zevran threw his last grenade and gave his Commander a sad, shaky smile as it burst, jolting the demon but failing to bring it down. Then the Arcane Horror stunned them all again.
The Mage came to a few seconds later to see the Revenant with its back to her; the others, less resistant to magic than she, faced Gaxkang in a quiescent row. Alpha lay once again crumpled on the floor. Loghain and Zevran stood side by side, slumped forward, helpless. The backs of both of their necks showed palely in the firelight. Their heads were close enough that one stroke of a longsword would part them both together from their shoulders.
The Mage, bent with weariness, gathered the last of her mana and sent forth a Paralyzing spell. It struck the Revenant’s helm and bounced harmlessly away.
The Pride Demon’s blade whistled mournfully as it rose. Gaxkang gathered his strength.
Gritting her teeth, the Mage reached for a short knife that she kept at her side, a knife that she had used in the past only for skinning and cleaning game, or for cutting the bonds of prisoners in the Arl of Denerim’s estate. Now she grasped the handle and plunged it into the flesh of her left arm, just above the elbow. At the same time she reached into the Fade and her memory, finding strength in the blood that poured from her. Her lips formed words she had heard months before in an old man’s voice, trapped in the tower at Soldier’s Peak.
Blood burst from the suddenly gaping wound, driving the Mage to her knees, but a surge of spirit energy went with it, driving into the heart of Gaxkang. The Revenant’s arm wavered as it strove to keep its balance, and the finishing stroke never fell. Loghain, Zevran and Alpha woke, shook themselves, and fanned out, resuming the attack from as many angles as they could reach. The Mage, still on her knees, fumbled with shaking fingers in her pack until she found a lyrium potion. She rose even as she downed it, feeling strength and clarity flooding back through her. Planting her feet, she shot a lightning bolt squarely between the demon’s shoulder blades.
Whereas before he had treated them as challenging but still ordinary adversaries, opponents with which to toy as a cat would with a mouse, now for the first time Gaxkang seemed truly enraged. With a gesture of contempt, he cast an aura of weakness over her three companions. Then, in a whirlwind of Fade shifts that left the Mage dizzy, he froze them in place as the Arcane Horror and changed swiftly back to the Revenant, leaving his place in the chokepoint between the two rooms of the hovel to bear down on the Warden and the Warden alone. Though she knew it was pointless, the sight of him caused the Mage to step back, pursued by the snarling wolf’s head, until she ran out of room before the great fireplace. Gaxkang’s sword rose and fell; the Mage’s defensive spells blunted the force of the attack, but they would only hold out for so long, and she could feel them weakening. She twisted and ducked, sending out blasts of lightning and arcane bolts when she could focus, but she was tired, and Gaxkang was as fast with the blade as Loghain, or faster, and the blows raining down on her would not let her focus for long. Her spells were weak; but still she lost mana, and still the blade sang its hollow song as it struck at her.
The demon took its damage as well, however, and yet did not transform back into the Arcane Horror. The Mage wondered why –it would seem the sensible thing for Gaxkang to do, as its arcane form would naturally have a higher resistance to magic—until her store of mana began once again to reach its ebb. The Fade, she noticed, was dead on both sides in this room. Could Gaxkang finally have reached the limit of his magical reserve, and be unable to cast? She felt a faint lift of hope: she may yet, she thought, lead everyone out of this unharmed. If she could just hold out a little longer—
The Revenant struck; the Mage heard a tearing sound and felt a blast of air on her middle. Had he cut through her robes? She looked, and saw a crease in her abdomen that had not been there before. Blood was gushing from it. She staggered, and the blow that was meant for her neck missed, but the pommel of the great sword collided sharply with the back of her head. As she fell, she heard a bellow of rage, followed by an Antivan battle cry and a volley of deep-throated barks. Her last vision before the blackness descended was the wyvern of Gwaren rising up behind her enemy and crashing down between his shoulder blades, along with a furious lash of blue fire.
The first sense to return was her hearing, and the first voice she heard was Zevran’s.
“That, as a man I once knew used to say, is a lot of blood,” it said.
The voice came from quite nearby. From the sound, he must be hovering over her somewhere close. From the pull she felt in the taint, Loghain was, too. Alpha she could hear padding and panting back and forth across the floor of the hovel. Everyone was all right, then. That was good. If everyone was all right, she would be able to stay where she was, prone on the floor with her face buried in the crook of her arm. When she had lost consciousness, she had also lost the ability to sustain the Rock Armor and Arcane Shield spells that protected her. Since the night that their camp was attacked by Darkspawn a few months ago, she had kept the spells cast around her even as she slept. They gave her far better defense against both physical and magical damage than her robes would indicate, but the spells had a tendency to dull her senses somewhat. Now she felt as though large hands had been cupped to her ears, turning every whisper into a shout. The little room reeked of sweat, of blood, and of Mabari; Alpha had evidently expressed his opinion of Gaxkang by marking something close by. The idea of opening her eyes on top of everything else made her nauseous.
“I can’t see where it all comes from, can you?” said Loghain. “Perhaps we should shift her?”
A scrape of light boots on the floor as Zevran took a step back. “Perhaps we should first move this—” here the Elf said something uncomplimentary in Antivan—”that has fallen on her. At least some of the blood we see here is his, I believe.”
As he spoke, the Mage did indeed feel something loathsome draped over her lower legs. She clenched her teeth against an even stronger urge to be sick, relaxing only when the two men grasped the cloak and rapidly decaying form of Vilhm Madon and began to heave it off her.
Zevran chuckled amidst his grunts of effort. “Truly, my friend,” he said to Loghain, “your vengeance is swift and brutal. I am surprised that this Gaxkang even had time to turn around before he became suddenly Unbound all over his parlor floor.” He chuckled again. “Normally I would envy any man who I found lying on top of our brave Commander, but this time, no… “
The scraping noises and the Elf’s chatter moved away. Alpha came to her now, nuzzling at her arm and trying to lick her face. Groaning, the Mage rolled partway onto her side. The warhound bathed her cheeks and chin in greeting, then sniffed the wound on her abdomen. He whined softly.
“Alpha,” whispered the Mage. “My pack… “
The Mabari gave a gentle woof and padded away, returning presently with the Warden’s pack in his teeth. Still delaying the affliction of sight for as long as possible, she located a health potion by feel and downed it with her eyes shut. She remained with her head down, feeling a part of her strength return. A clatter sounded from the far corner of the room as Loghain dropped his end of Gaxkang and came back to crouch by her feet again. She knew he was looking at her, waiting for her to acknowledge him; but she could not, not yet. It was still too much, too close in that room without her armor. Instead, she wrapped an arm around Alpha’s neck and clung to him close, lifting her head at last, seeing only the warhound’s solemn brown face and worried eyes.
“Good boy, Alpha,” she said to him. “Stay just a minute and help me, please.”
She braced her arm against his shoulders and felt behind her for her staff. When she found it, she pulled back just enough to cast her gaze across the slice that the Revenant’s blade had made in her middle. The movement caused a fresh outpouring of blood from the wound. She heard the hiss of Loghain’s breath and a brief reactive jerk of his armor. Once more she shut her eyes, and pointed her staff at the wound. It was deep, but she could sense that the cut traversed only skin and muscle. She saw the broken flesh in her mind; focusing her energy, she first visualized and then felt it knitting together. The Mage drew one deep breath, and another.
Slowly she rotated to a squatting position. Loghain was opposite her; she could see the toes of his boots and his gloved hands dangling off his knees. Again she gripped her staff, bracing it against the floor; in her vision’s periphery she saw the gloves twitch and lie still. With a determined shove, she hoisted herself to her feet. Loghain, caught by surprise, abruptly rose with her. The Mage swayed for a moment, eyes still on the ground, making sure that she would stay upright. At last, she allowed herself to look up.
A broad swath of armor; not as bulky as the chevalier plate, but filling her immediate field of vision as her gaze travelled slowly upward. Bloody streaks and spatters flushed deeply in the firelight. Loghain was very still before her. A proud neck, graceful and strong as a charger’s, gleaming with sweat. The knot in his throat worked tautly under the skin. The jaw, set and bristling after battle, the nose a high arch over which heavy-lidded eyes regarded her, the dark brows above like spread wings. A smell of sweat, ashes, death. The Mage swallowed, trying not to look as if her knees were threatening to give out.
“Thank you,” she said, sturdy and businesslike. “That was well done.”
“Huh,” he said, his breath making a small breeze between them.
She coughed. “Sorry I yelled at you earlier. I was out of order.”
A slight twitch at one corner of his mouth. “Pray don’t mention it.”
She sighed, hefted her staff. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I should—”
“We have healed ourselves, thank you. Alpha, too.” Dimly in the background, she could hear the warhound polishing off a rejuvenating piece of Mabari Crunch.
Everyone was well; everyone would be healed. The Mage let out a heavy, trembling breath. Her fist clenched fiercely at her side.
“He nearly had us all just now,” she said harshly. “And for what? Because I had to solve a riddle.”
“As it turned out, you were right,” said Loghain, “again. Had I known what lurked in this hovel, I would have been through here with a troop of soldiers years ago.”
The Warden shook her head sharply, causing her to lose her balance. She swayed for a moment on her feet. Loghain eyed her closely, but made no move to help her. The Mage blinked several times to clear her head, and passed her hand weakly over her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is rather embarrassing. I’ve never –he just came at me so fast –I—”
“Hush,” said Loghain. “Even the best of us fall, at one time or another, Grey Warden.”
“Mm, now this should fetch us a pretty price in the Market,” piped in Zevran. “Once we get the blood off of it, of course.”
The Mage peered over Loghain’s shoulder. The Elf held the Revenant’s sword by its pommel. One edge was coated with the Warden’s blood; she could feel her own taint calling her. The blood –she could feel it—was slowly freezing on the blade.
She stumbled out of the hovel and stood leaning over the doorstep, praying to Andraste that she would not be sick. Loghain appeared in the doorway, looked at the Mage and then around at the alley, and went back inside. He returned with an old cloak from inside the hovel and threw it to his commander. “Here,” he said. “You’ll scare the locals to death, looking like that.”
She nodded and began to pull the cloak on over her torn and bloody robes. Suddenly she stopped. “Oh, Maker,” she winced, putting a hand to her eyes.
“What is it?” asked Loghain.
“Leliana,” said the Mage. “She’s going to have kittens when she sees this, isn’t she?”
He smirked and allowed himself a chuckle. “Most likely,” he agreed.
The two Wardens sat on what used to be Vilhm Madon’s front doorstep and looked around them. The back alley had returned to life with the death of the Pride Demon. The Mage could see no one in the neighboring tenements, but she could hear and smell them. Someone sang in an upstairs apartment as they washed their linens; downstairs, someone yelled at a cat, who yelled back and scrambled for safety. Across the way, someone lit a wood stove and put a kettle on; someone else opened an oven and took out freshly baked bread. The Grey Warden smiled.
She also noted the man sitting next to her. He still smelled of sweat and blood, but she now detected a dim, leathery undertone as of old books, and a sharp herbal smell that she guessed was the leaf he chewed. He watched her recover, a small frown making his eyebrows lean towards each other. His eyes, she thought, were a truly shattering shade of blue. Even when she examined the stains of Gaxkang’s blood on her boots, she could still feel their gaze like a burning-glass against her cheek. When she felt better enough, she stood up, raised her staff, and called the Rock Armor back around her. The air just above her skin seemed to thicken and harden, pushing away the sharp edges of the cold and sheathing her in a layer of numbness. Next came the Arcane Shield; the barrier went up before her eyes and the world was once again filtered from her vision, acquiring a slight blur to which her eyes would need a few minutes to adjust. Loghain watched this performance curiously. When it was over, he lifted his chin and made a wry face.
“Ah,” he said.
The Mage smiled and opened the cloak briefly to one side, exposing the slashed tunic. “You didn’t think this was my only armor, did you?”
Zevran and Alpha joined them, along with everything of value they could carry. In addition to Gaxkang’s warlike accoutrements, they had also found a significant amount of coin and several large and valuable jewels. It was not quite the king’s ransom that the stories had promised, but it was enough to make the Warden consider the afternoon not entirely wasted.
“Boss,” said Zevran, holding up the wolf’s-head shield for her inspection. “Could I ask you to attend your magical eye to this? It is enchanted in some way, I’m sure, but I cannot tell exactly how, or to what degree.”
The Mage examined the shield and whistled. “It is indeed enchanted, and quite heavily,” she agreed. “The enchantments are various, but they all aim at increasing the user’s defense, whether against physical or magical attacks. It is meant to feel like a wall between its owner and the enemy.”
“I believe it,” said Zevran. “My arms feel as if I had just been pounding on such a wall for hours.”
“You should keep it, then,” said Loghain to his commander.
The Mage shook her head. “No,” she said. “My natural resistance to magical attacks is higher than that of almost any Warrior. And I do not plan to start flinging myself into battle with sword and shield after only a few lessons.”
“Indeed you shall not,” rumbled her instructor.
The two Wardens looked at each other for a long moment. Loghain’s lower jaw worked against the upper as he considered. At last he sighed, slung the Gwaren shield over his shoulder and held out his hand.
“Why not,” he said, accepting the shield and hefting it on his arm. “Pretty silly of me to still be carrying the old one, now that I think of it. Look, Alpha,” he added, showing the wolf’s head to the Mabari. “My new crest. What do you think?” Alpha barked his approval.
Zevran and Loghain divided the rest of the spoils between them, and the four companions struck up an easy pace back to the market. As they walked, the Mage rolled up the rather too-long sleeves of the cloak and used her staff to address the gash in her left arm. Loghain, watching it disappear, frowned.
“That’s a knife wound,” he said. “The Elf didn’t stick you by accident, did he?”
“No,” said the Mage. “I did that myself.” She sighed. “It’s a trick I learned from old Avernus –my one Blood Magic Trick. Don’t look at me like that,” she added as Loghain’s eyebrows delivered a sharp note of censure. “I didn’t commission Avernus’s research,” she said, “but the fruits of it were gathering dust in that laboratory of his when I paid my visit to the tower at Soldier’s Peak. I figured at the very least, I could make sure the poor bastards who died for that knowledge did not suffer for nothing.” She shook her head.
“I’d never actually performed that spell before, though,” she said. “I’ve never had to. But I’d do it again, under the same circumstances.” She looked at him steadily. “Those few seconds it bought us saved our lives.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in using a person unwillingly for one’s own gain,” said Loghain. “Isn’t that what blood magic does?”
“This particular trick can only be done with blood from the caster’s own body,” she answered. “So, no –not all blood magic uses the blood of others. But it too often leads to that, even if the Mage begins with good intentions. Each drop of blood gives more power to the caster, you see. And cutting oneself is so tedious, and there’s so much of it available elsewhere.” She cast a questing eye at the pulse in Loghain’s neck. He snorted.
“If you’re trying to frighten me, Warden, you’re wasting your breath,” he said. “You have no need to look outside yourself for a source of power. But,” he added after a moment, “if an average Mage is made powerful by the use of blood, how much more powerful would a Mage like you become?” He gestured at the pommel of the Starfang that stuck up between his shoulder blades. “Wasn’t that your philosophy when you bullied me into taking this sword?” he asked. “Are you saying that you have never been tempted, or wondered what you might do with just a little more—?”
“I have not,” said the Mage abruptly. “I will use my own resources and abilities in my magic, no one else’s.”
“Not even to advance one of your noble causes?” prodded Mac Tir.
“No!” She twisted her lips and looked away. “—no. I wouldn’t,” she said.
“Aha,” said Loghain. “You didn’t, you mean. What happened?”
The Warden sighed. “At Redcliffe,” she began, “when the Arl was poisoned—”
“When the blood mage that I hired poisoned him, you mean, yes, I think I’ve heard this story.”
“No, it was after,” said the Mage. “Eamon’s son, Connor, he –he wanted to try to cure his father, so he snuck into Jowan’s room and stole a book of magic spells that Jowan had forbidden him to read. I don’t know what he thought he was going to find in there, or why he thought that he would be able to cure the Arl when no one else could… “ She shrugged. “Anyway, all he managed to do was attract a rather powerful demon. With no training –just a boy—Connor had no chance. The demon possessed him, and started to ravage the castle and the village below.”
“I’d heard about the trouble they had there,” mused Loghain. “Walking corpses, night terrors and all kinds of nasty things. So Connor was the source of it? What did you do?”
“We fought our way up to the castle and found Connor in –in that state, with the whole household under his –under its—thumb. Jowan had been thrown in the dungeon for poisoning the Arl, but he was brought up under guard to help us get rid of the demon that his influence had helped to bring over. He said –” she exhaled through clenched teeth—”he said that he could send one Mage into the Fade to fight the demon and destroy it in its own world, without hurting the boy. But for the power that he required to do it, he needed blood. Someone else’s blood, and all of it. Otherwise we would have to fight the demon in this world, and Connor would die.”
“I see,” said Loghain. “So to save the boy’s life, someone else would have to sacrifice theirs. Were there any volunteers?”
“His mother, of course. She offered herself up right away. But the final decision was left up to me.”
Loghain lifted an eyebrow. “Isolde still lives, I know that.”
“I couldn’t decide,” said the Warden heavily. “I thought that with more information, a sign, a clue, I might know what to do. I—” She stopped, looking suddenly weary and old. “I went looking. I poked and dug around all inside the castle –in Jowan’s room, in Connor’s. I tried to solve the puzzle, just as I did today. I tried to pretend that there was a puzzle. But I knew all along. The boy, if he lived, would be a somewhat untrustworthy Mage who would bear the responsibility for his mother’s death and the deaths of half the villagers under his father’s patronage. If Isolde lived, however, she would have grief, and anger, and some measure of guilt –but also freedom from worry, and at least some chance to help her family rebuild. And there would be no need for Jowan’s blood magic.”
The Grey Warden sighed. Mac Tir said nothing.
“We were able to –entice the demon outside of its host, into its true form,” she continued at length. “We hoped that if it manifested as a separate entity, our killing it would sever the connection and send the demon back to the Fade.” She shook her head. “But the bond it had forged with Connor was too strong. When the battle was over, his body was broken beyond repair. There was nothing left to do but end his suffering.”
“I see,” said Loghain very quietly, and the Warden believed that he did.
“What would you have done?” It was not a defense, but a sincere question. Loghain blinked.
“Well, I would have been sorely tempted to take the little Orlesian twit up on her offer,” he answered drily. “But in all seriousness, between the two of them it was the boy who was the abomination, while –in this particular case—the only thing of which Isolde was guilty was being an overprotective parent.” He chuckled. “Which, mercifully for parents everywhere, has not yet been declared a capital offense,” he said.
“Clearly,” said the Mage with a smile.
Zevran had remained silent throughout this discussion, but the Mage noticed a darkness in his countenance that was unlike what she had come to expect from him.
“From your face, it would seem that you disagree, Zev,” she said curiously. “Would you truly have chosen the beautiful woman to die instead of Connor?”
The Elf looked up from his intense study of the street paving. He seemed caught out for a moment, but quickly resumed his usual smile. “I had not, of course, yet entered your service when these events took place, my lady,” he said with a bow. “I was informed of them by that other Warden whom we shall not name. But based on what he told me, yes. I would have let the woman die. She was his mother. She was responsible.”
The Mage blinked in genuine surprise. “You think she should have sent Connor to the Circle?” she asked. “She should die for the crime of wanting to keep her son?”
“The other Warden asked the same question,” said Zevran. “He had been abandoned by two fathers: the one who gave him life, and the one who had raised him. He saw nothing but virtue in the idea of a woman unwilling to cast off her child. But I will tell you this.” He cocked his sharp assassin’s eye up at his commander. “I was raised by whores, and the pimps who owned them, from the time I was born until I was sold off to the Crows. I had several mothers and fathers, by that reckoning. A big, happy family, all together, yes?” The smile was lighthearted and expansive; it was the smile Zevran always displayed when telling outlandish stories of his past. Then it was gone, and the Mage saw that darkness pass across the Elf’s face again, leaving a shadow there. He shook his head.
“But I was abandoned,” he said. “Not when I was sold to the Crows, no. I was abandoned right there in that whorehouse. How? Because though they did not cast me off, no one took responsibility for me.”
The two Wardens regarded their companion silently. Alpha pushed his wet muzzle into the Rogue’s open palm and made a comforting noise. Zevran patted the warhound’s head absently, but the bitter expression on his face remained.
“And so it was with this woman,” he continued. “She had a son who was a Mage, which is a problem in your country, and she acted out of cowardice. She kept him at the castle, why? For his sake? No, or she would have taken charge of him, of his life. She did nothing –not even after he began to go astray. She thought only of her own feelings, her own fears. The boy, cursed from his birth by circumstance, was left to fend for himself, and used whatever means he found to hand. It so happened that he became a maleficar and caused destruction among his family and his people. But his mother was responsible.” He folded his arms and resumed looking at the street in front of him. “If it had been up to me, she would have been made to feel that responsibility,” he said.
“You don’t think she feels it now?” asked the Mage.
He shrugged. “It is possible, I suppose. I have not known many people who would feel guilt over causing the death of another. Who knows, she may be such a creature.” His mouth twisted as he considered. “But, she did love him, so perhaps… “
He looked up suddenly at the Warden. “Even if she does feel it,” he said, “you have just argued that guilt may fade over time, and be replaced by hope. Does it?”
“I would like to think so,” she answered. “Do you not believe that it could?”
The Elf gave a small, sad smile. “I could not say, my lady,” he said.
“You reek of blood,” said Morrigan as the Mage approached her in the Wonders of Thedas. “And what on earth are you wearing?”
“Later,” said the Mage, shushing her. “But it’s because of this, and because I reek, that I can’t go into the tavern to fetch Leliana and Sten. Could you go with Zevran, please, and meet me at the armorsmith’s?”
“Oh, what fun,” answered Morrigan, rolling her eyes. “Perhaps I can get there before the Bard finishes serenading a room full of tipsy snobs with the tale of Princess Rainbow and the Star Knight.”
She nodded to Zevran and the two of them sidled out, heading for the Gnawed Noble. The Mage found Loghain staring at one of the walls of the shop, on which hung an old and well-travelled map, preserved behind glass. He was frowning –not in scorn, but in concentration.
“Tell me,” he said to the Tranquil proprietor. “What purpose does something like this have in a magic shop?”
“In addition to magical items and artifacts,” answered the Tranquil smoothly, “we also carry a variety of antiquities. That is a map—”
“—of the ancient Tevinter Imperium, yes, I can see that,” said Mac Tir. “But how ancient? I had such a map in my estate here in Denerim, which is dated to about the ninth century; but the borders on this one are different –unless the wine staining the corner there had also caused the cartographer’s hand to wander.”
“It is correct, for what has been judged to be the fourth century of the Imperium,” intoned the proprietor. “You have a good eye, ser. Would you like to—”
“But that makes it even more curious how such a thing came to be here.”
“Mages of all nations owe much to the Tevinter,” said the Tranquil. “They are responsible for much of how we live, what we learn—”
“Like blood magic, for instance,” said Loghain, “the misuse and fear of which I’m sure is at least partly responsible for your present condition.” He nodded. “Yes, you have a lot to be grateful to them for –if you were allowed.”
“The Mages of Tevinter are respected even today,” said the Tranquil, as the Mage silently thanked the Maker that he was incapable of taking offense. “I understand that you yourself brought some to the Alienage, when our own healers could do nothing to cure that terrible plague that was afflicting the Elves. Did you not?”
Loghain, of course, had no such handicap. “You may also have heard,” he answered harshly, “that they failed in their mission.”
“I find myself in need of a couple of strong lyrium potions,” said the Mage. “Would you be so good—?”
“I shall see what we have in stock, my lady,” said the proprietor. “Most of the stronger potions we had were sent to Redcliffe, of course… A moment, if you please.” He moved away to a back room of the shop. The Mage returned to stand by her fellow Warden, who was still staring intently at the wall.
“The interesting thing about maps,” he explained to her as she drew up alongside him, “or one of them anyway, is not only how the borders on them change over time, but how they provide clues about the people who made them.” He spared her a glance. “Someone once said that we are all called what we are,” he said wryly. “I would amend that slightly to say that we are called what the people who name us think we are. Well, the same is true with the territories and landmarks on a map.” He turned his attention back to the wall, pointing to the various features behind the glass.
“You can tell much about the nature of the time in which this map was written by noting what the things on it are called,” he said. “At one time, or to one group of people, a city like Denerim could be called the center of commerce, the heart of Ferelden’s culture, or the seat of her royal family. To others, however, it is the stronghold of the enemy and a primary target.” He smiled grimly. The Mage peered with new interest at the faded lines and ancient nomenclature.
“Also,” continued Loghain, “this map contains several marginal notes, which are often quite illuminating. These are additional data that the cartographer thought either of personal import, or else possibly of interest to the public. Notes such as these will tell you as much about the man who wrote them –his knowledge, his opinions, his beliefs—as they will about anything he describes.”
The Mage bit back a grin. I’ll bet he has no idea how much he sounds like Dagna right now, she thought.
Loghain made a small noise of frustration behind his teeth. “If I had my own Tevinter map with me for comparison, I could show you better,” he said.
“You said it’s at your estate, here in Denerim?”
“Yes; well, it was at any rate when I left, along with several others. I had this one in my quarters at the Palace, so it came with me.” He nodded towards the pouch at his side. “Maker only knows what has happened to the rest of them. Or to anything else there, for that matter.”
“Why would they not still be there? It is your estate, after all.”
“It is the Teyrn of Gwaren’s estate,” corrected Loghain. “As I no longer hold that title, my personal possessions have no business being there. Legally, the people have every right to chuck them all in the harbor.”
“But surely Anora—”
“—has better things to do as Queen in a time of Blight than to take thought for her disgraced old father’s maps.”
“There is time yet left in the day,” said the Mage. “We could stop by and check, if anyone is there to let us in.”
“And then what?” he scoffed. “I thank you for the sentiment, Warden, but even if we should find every possession in my study untouched, I would not be able to carry them all away on my back. They will either be there when this is over, or they will not. If they are not, I would rather not know when or how they disappeared.”
The Tranquil returned with a couple of fresh lyrium potions. “Will there be anything else, my lady?” he asked.
The Mage thought swiftly. “You know, I may just have a quick look around,” she said. Turning to Loghain, she addressed him as artlessly as she could. “There’s no need for you to hang about here,” she said. “Why don’t you take Alpha and head on over to Wade’s, make sure he’s on schedule with that armor of yours?”
To her surprise, Loghain made no inquiries or objections. “Right,” he said, and called Alpha to heel with a whistle.
“While I’m there, I’ll see how much he can give me for this blasted thing,” he added, taking Gaxkang’s sword from behind his back as though it was a burr. “It’s been making a whine in my ears the whole way over here. Or a high-pitched moan, more like, if there is such a noise.”
“Keening,” said the Tranquil suddenly. Both Wardens turned to him. He was staring at the Revenant’s blade with a look in his eyes that approached a faint echo of desire.
“Keening, that’s it,” said Loghain, pointing the sword at him. “Exactly. Maker, it’s annoying. I’d rather not have to hear that all the way back to camp, if you don’t mind,” he told the Mage; but she was looking at the Tranquil, whose hands were opening and closing as though following some primal impulse to grab.
“The first of the Mages,” he said hoarsely, “the first to truly study their craft, that is: it is said that once they had learned to cast their conscious beings into the Fade, they set out to explore its terrain, learn its secrets, and if possible, conquer its inhabitants. Much as their earthly counterparts did in the physical world,” he added, gesturing at the map on the wall. “They did not conquer, of course, but they learned much; and they met spirits of greater and lesser power just as Mages do today. But there were four who were especially powerful, and especially dangerous to all who encountered them.” He licked his lips. “One, it is said, wielded a sword that froze the bones of its adversaries with a powerful sting of cold, and froze their hearts with a song of hopelessness and death. The ancient Mages named it the Keening Blade, and the demon who wielded it was known as the Unbound.”
“That’s the one,” said Loghain.
“Impossible,” protested the Tranquil.
“Called himself Gaxkang, did he, and spouted a lot of nonsense about beacons and the Black City? We met him this afternoon,” said the Warrior, “though I confess he didn’t look quite as old as all that. Anyway, here’s his sword, and the sooner I’m shut of it the happier I’ll be. So if you’re quite through ogling it, I’ll be off.” He moved towards the door, Alpha padding along behind.
“Wait,” said the Tranquil. Loghain stopped in the doorway and turned, eying him with a growing impatience.
“Perhaps I could take it off of your hands now,” said the proprietor coolly.
Loghain frowned. “Are you serious?” he asked. “I could easily get enough gold for this from any weapons merchant to buy half a dozen good, serviceable swords for our soldiers in Redcliffe. Are you saying that you’d offer as much –for an antiquity?”
“Well,” said the Tranquil, “we would have to verify its origin, of course, but—”
The Mage, seeing her fellow Warden beginning to bristle, stepped between them with her hands raised. “Perhaps I should handle this,” she said to Loghain. “Go on to Wade’s and see to your armor, and leave the sword here with me. If this gentleman and I cannot reach an agreement, I shall bring it along when I go to meet you.”
He stuck out his chin and glared at her, but reversed the blade and presented her with it hilt first. “As you command,” he said, and stalked out.
The Mage laid the sword on the counter. “You heard him,” she said to the Tranquil. “Half a dozen serviceable swords: that’s somewhere between six and eight sovereigns, depending on the material and the merchant. That means I need at least as much from you, if you wish to keep this antiquity for the Wonders of Thedas.”
“My lady,” he protested, “with all due respect: if this is not genuine, then it is worthless to us. We need to verify—”
“—and verification takes time,” said the Mage, “which I don’t have. Pay me what a weapons merchant would offer; then if your verification fails, you can sell it to a weapons merchant and get your money back. But the sword is genuine. At least,” she added, “if the person we encountered today was not Gaxkang, I would hate to meet the real one.”
The Tranquil looked at the counter and scrunched his lips together, considering. “You say it is worth six to eight sovereigns as a sword,” he said, “but I am no weapons merchant. I have no way of knowing—”
“I say it is worth that much because Warden Mac Tir says so; and he should know if anyone does,” said the Mage. “Or do you doubt his veracity, or his judgment? Shall I fetch back the man who may well have slain Gaxkang the Unbound, and tell him that you don’t believe him?”
They stared each other down.
“Six,” said the Tranquil.
“You must be joking,” huffed the Warden. “Wade will give me more than that, without question.”
“Six and a half.”
The Mage folded her arms.
The proprietor sighed deeply and closed his eyes. “Seven,” he whispered.
“And the map,” said the Mage.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The map,” she repeated, pointing at the wall. “It’s for sale along with everything else, isn’t it?”
Now it was the proprietor’s turn to fold his arms. “That was not,” he said, “part of the bargain.”
The Mage cocked her head and thought for a moment. Then, signaling to him to wait, she unslung her pack and dug around in the bottom for a couple of dragon scales that Wade had rejected as being broken, flawed, or of an unusable size. These defects, she knew, would not matter to the Tranquil, because the scales could be ground into powder and added to some highly saleable potions. She located two of a decent size and held them up.
“High Dragon,” she said. “Not an easy ingredient to acquire. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Would you like your map inside its protective casing,” said the proprietor, “or out?”
“Out, please,” answered the Warden pleasantly. “We’re travelling.”
Morrigan and Oghren were standing outside the door to the armorsmith’s shop. The Witch studied the people in the marketplace from one of the building’s shadows, while Oghren displayed his new outfit to all and sundry.
“Check this out, Warden,” he called out as she approached. “Badass red. Supple as a nug’s undercarriage. And absolutely pisses on fire spells. Go on,” he challenged her, tucking his beard inside the chestpiece and then spreading all four limbs wide. “Blast me. Give it all you got.”
Smiling, the Mage indulged him with a short burst of flame to the midsection. The spell evaporated off the new armor like a mist, leaving the Dwarf beaming with his fists in the air.
“Nothin’!” he shouted. “Not a singe, not a blister. Everything’s as cool as Branka’s brassiere. Archdemon, here comes Oghren!”
The Warden laughed. The door to the shop opened and Loghain emerged, clad once again in the full chevalier plate with the borrowed armor slung over his arm. “Everything’s finished,” he said. “He’s just waiting for you to pay him. And there’s a place inside where you can change.”
“See if he will burn that repulsive thing for you afterwards,” said Morrigan, nodding at Gaxkang’s old cloak.
“Change?”
“Look,” said Leliana, who had followed Loghain. She held up a piece of body armor. It was made of reinforced leather, the same weight as both Rogues wore. It had a high collar and a low sash around the waist, and had clearly been designed for a lady.
“Much better for you than those robes,” said the Bard contentedly. “And I think it should fit you without having to get it adjusted, no?”
Bemused, the Mage took the armor from her and held it at shoulder level. It did seem as if it would fit.
Loghain coughed. “It was the best I could get for –in the trade,” he said. “Some knight had it commissioned for his bride-to-be, apparently, who was learning to be a swordfighter; only they fell out and he called it off before the set was finished, I don’t know. I stopped listening, to be honest,” he said wearily. “Anyhow, all Wade had was this piece; but that’s really what you needed, after all.”
“You said you traded for it,” she said, still puzzled. “What—”
And then she saw it: the Gwaren shield was missing.
The Mage bit her lip and looked hard at the armor in her hands, her brow knit fiercely against the lump that rose in her throat.
Damn him, she thought.
“What’s the matter?” asked Loghain sharply. “You can turn it white later, can’t you?”
That evening, in camp, the Wardens sat side by side in front of the fire. This had become an unspoken habit between them ever since the Deep Roads –to sit, sometimes in conversation, often in silence, in the space between the end of supper and the beginning of the first official watch. They had not sat together in this way since the day they had sparred, and the Mage had feared that something she could scarcely name was broken between them. On this night, however, after the Wardens had sent Eamon’s emissary galloping back to Redcliffe Castle with a purse full of gold and jewels, they had each walked back to the fire and sat down in their accustomed spots without thinking. They stared solemnly into the fire for several minutes without speaking or looking at one another. Then Alpha came over and flopped on the ground at their feet, exposing his belly to the Mage and his chin to the Warrior with a grunt and a wriggle. They laughed, and obediently scratched; and eventually the Mage was able to smile and Loghain to relax and stretch his shoulders and neck a bit.
“I take back what I said at Soldier’s Peak,” he said suddenly, after Alpha had wandered off to mark something on the edge of the campsite.
“There was a lot of talk at Soldier’s Peak, if I recall.”
“Yes, but there was one thing in particular… “
“Go on, then.”
He cleared his throat. “I suggested that you were operating on some childish set of fanciful morals,” he said. “That you were as yet untried in the real world, and that you would be incapable of making the necessary hard choices if and when they should be presented to you.”
“Ah, that.”
“You, of course, knew at the time that I was wrong; you do not need me to tell you that. However, I would like you to know that I know it now, as well.”
“Thank you,” said the Warden.
“It’s quite enviable, actually,” continued Mac Tir. “You still manage to hold fast to your ideals and principles, and hold your head up high as you’re forced to break them. It’s not hypocrisy, either; you seem fully aware of the depth your sins, and yet would still commit them if given a second chance.” He shook his head ruefully. “I was not able to do the same,” he said.
“Hang on a minute,” said the Mage, “There isn’t a man in Ferelden who holds more tightly to a principle than you, and you know it.”
“That’s my point,” he answered her. “I knew it so well that I forgot that my principles were things I was supposed to serve. I got so used to being the last man to stand for his principles that I started to think it made me superior in some way to everyone else. I actually thought that I was the best person available to unite this country against the Blight –the only person capable of doing so.”
The Mage gave a short laugh. “Well, I don’t know about the only person,” she said scratching at her temple, “but you probably were the best, all things considered. I mean, who would you want leading your country to war? An experienced General and war hero, or an unsocialized, untried girl-thing, only recently let out of her cage?”
He chuckled. “And yet we were both wrong: for here you are, commander of armies; and here I am, your humble servant.”
She sighed. “It’s rather a shame, isn’t it? I mean, it was kind of impossible, since you kept calling me a traitor and trying to have me killed; but if we’d ever had a chance to just meet and talk, we probably would have joined forces long ago, and have a smashingly equipped army by now.”
“And that’s just it,” said Loghain sadly. “I couldn’t imagine that anyone else shared my will and my determination. I had to do everything myself, and would have destroyed you without ever knowing what you truly were.” He shook his head. “You, in my place, would have talked to me first. You try to talk to everyone first, to give them a chance. Maker’s breath, you even tried to recruit that lunatic Kolgrim and his bunch.”
“I like to present everyone with a choice, yes, and the opportunity to take it freely, or not.”
“Hmm,” he answered with a grimace. “One of the drawbacks of having principles, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, is how often you must expect to be disappointed.”
“I’m rarely disappointed, actually, no matter how they choose. Mostly I’m just –curious. To see how each one reacts.”
“Ah yes –the scholar, of course. Detached, studying us all. You don’t ever really get angry, do you? I don’t mean momentarily annoyed, but really furious?”
“Rage is not a healthy emotion to have in the Circle,” she said drily.
“You have a point there,” he answered, nodding. “I suppose it wouldn’t be.”
“But even in the Circle,” sighed the Mage, “it’s true that I was always considered something of a cold fish.”
Loghain thought for a moment. “Owl,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Not a fish; an owl. I used to see them all the time when I was a boy.” He propped his forearms on his knees and spread his hands in the firelight. “They nested in the barns and sheds of the farms round our way,” he said. “At night, you could sometimes watch them hunting, if you were quiet enough.” He nodded. “Quite fascinating, owls. At rest, they look like somewhat comical, moon-faced lumps of fluff; but see them in action, especially when they’re hunting, and you realize they’re quite—” he blinked, nodded a second time—”impressive. Powerful. Nearly silent, until they strike. And they know precisely how and where to target their prey, even in the dark.” One hand rose and rocked, splayed flat just above his head; the other dipped low to the ground, the heedless victim. “They just watch, and listen, hovering, until they’re ready; and then—” The splayed hand became a fist and struck the palm of the other with a Pow! sound. “That’s you,” he said, pointing at the Warden. “Not a fish.”
“An owl.”
The company took the road southwest out of Denerim for a little over a day and a half. Around noon on the second day they passed South Reach; after stopping for lunch they left the road, striking more directly south across the bare western slopes of the Southron Hills.
The Mage’s lessons with Leliana continued. Sten had also begun his instruction of Oghren in the Reaver’s technique, so their campsites were lively, and noisy, in the mornings. Morrigan and Shale both complained, with predictable results.
They passed through the former Dalish campsite and were hailed by the Werewolves and the Lady of the Forest, who assured them of their fealty to the Grey Wardens and their determination to fight the Blight at the Commander’s side. As they left the Drakon River behind them, Loghain allowed Leliana and Zevran to take turns relating the story of Zathrian’s curse and the fate of the Brecilian Elves. The Warden said nothing.
The next morning, the Mage got ready to turn the company south-southwest again. Loghain looked at the sky and sighed.
“We’re actually going back there, aren’t we?” he asked her. “To Ostagar.”
“If we can,” said the Warden, “I think we should. Don’t you?”
“I must do as I am told, no matter what I think,” griped Mac Tir.
“So we’re going, then,” said the Mage, and cocked a biting eye at him. “But first, we’ve got another errand to run –one that will no doubt serve to cement our reputations as a lot of cold-blooded bastards.”
“Oh? And what is that?”
“We’re going to go kill Morrigan’s mother.”
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I really like what you have Zevran say about parental responsibility, and the reasons he gives for why he would have chosen to sacrifice Isolde rather than kililng Conner (and Alistair's reasons, by proxy).
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That bit with Zev came practically out of nowhere. I had pretty much written the whole dialogue months ago as a private conversation between the Mage and Loghain; but when it came time to add it to the story, there was Zevran, and I couldn't just ignore him. All I wanted was to make sure that his voice was heard in the discussion, but when I mentally turned to him and said "What do *you* think, Zev?" all of a sudden RAWR, all this stuff came out of his mouth. And it was too good to lose. :)
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Bravo! My favorite chapter yet!
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I think that the conversation with Zevran startled the Mage and gave her pause, though it remains to be seen whether or not she learns to take him more seriously overall. It's not that she dislikes him at all --they just don't speak the same language, if you get what I mean. Whereas she and Loghain have a deeper understanding of one another than the Mage has with most of her other companions, despite having traveled with them longer. It is a fault of hers that she doesn't see the value in getting to know people just for their own sake --kind of the same way that she never learns a person's name unless she sees some kind of practical need for it. Maybe she'll learn. . . :)