It is a different kind of weeping to that which she normally hears from her charges.
She has heard all types of weeping, in her time at the circle. She was no stranger to it before, but in the Circle, she has been able to make a study of it.
There is the crying of the children. Small, sniffles and sobs in the dormitories from the newest arrivals. They weep for their parents, who may have tried to keep them, or may have been the ones to call the hunters — it's always difficult to predict and sometimes the children are too young to understand. Young children will cling to her, like a surrogate parent, not knowing or understanding that, unlike those who gave them life, she will not hesitate to end it, should the need arise. Children's tears are common, in the tower. Easy to deal with, usually. A stern word, a look, is enough for most to swallow their fear or their sadness. They learn control young.
The children who are old enough to understand, the children who don't weep — they are the first she learned to watch. Those who understand can learn to resent. Those who resent will look for ways out.
There is only one sure way out of the Tower. She has granted it to many mages in her time here. Some are grateful.
Some aren't.
Yet to be told they were that which needed to be feared most must be difficult — she feels sympathy for them, in those first few weeks, before they began to be a real danger, before they accept their fate and embrace the role the Maker has given them…
… or start to try and fight against it.
The weeping of children is easy enough to understand, and because it is easy to understand, it is easy to dismiss.
As they get older they weep for different reasons. The Knight Commander transfers a large contingent of mages to a different tower. It is a logical decision - that circle has a shortage of certain talents, and it is important that mages be taught to control all aspects of their power. Yet some of them cry. Softly, where they think they are not watched. Holding a token of a former comrade — even though they are not supposed to keep their own possessions. Writing letters that will not be delivered. One mage girl hurls insults at her in the library — asks why they are not simply tranquiled at birth, and she seriously wonders, not for the first time, why they are not.
Would not everyone be better off? She'd asked, once. When she'd first joined the order. It would make sense, to tranquil them as children, as soon as they came to the Tower. There would be no danger then….
"Magic exists to serve man, not to rule over him," the Knight Lieutenant had been quick to point out. Magic is useful, she supposes.
To her, it isn't useful enough to justify the risk these mages pose.
When they fail their harrowings, sometimes then they weep. It is a lie - the weeping. She's been trained to recognize the lie — the demon inside what had once been a mage, desperate not to be killed, to trick them into believing the mage had truly succeeded when her fellow Templars all knew they had failed. It would all too quickly change to rage, and power, and danger, and, inevitably, death. Death for the demon, usually. Although once… once it had meant death to one of them and the rage she had felt had nearly blinded her to her duty and it had been difficult… oh so difficult not to take it out on the mages that remained...
The ones left behind weep sometimes, when a mage dies. They form attachments amongst themselves. She knows it happens. She breaks them up when she finds them, patrols the nooks and crannies she knows, sometimes finds new ones. A mage fails their harrowing and she gets accusing looks from their friends, as though the mage's weakness should be blamed on her. She is not supposed to talk to them, but sometimes… sometimes she wants to. Sometimes she wants to show them exactly what it is like, to be face to face with a demon, something inherently evil that simply wants to feed. To destroy. This is what you are, she wants to say. This is what you become, if you are not vigilant.
This is why we are necessary.
Some of them believe her. Sometimes she finds one, weeping in the chantry, on their knees to Andraste, asking for forgiveness, begging to be something they are not and never can be. She observes these with some satisfaction - they have truly listened. They have come the closest to understanding their curse.
This weeping, though, now. Today. In a small room in the bottom of the tower, with only another healer mage and a small, terrified apprentice for his attendant, this is different.
She's been assigned here because she is one of the few female templars. She knows that. It is a duty she's managed to avoid before now, not because she wants to, but simply because of circumstance. It is a rarity, even here. She has heard in other circles it never happens at all. She believes that should be the case everywhere - allowing the mages to fraternize only leads to trouble.
This kind of trouble.
"Stand well back," the healer mage says. She ignores him, and stands where she can see the woman clearly. Her face is strained, pain and fear and something else - anticipation? writ plain across her features.
It is the same as a Harrowing, in many ways. The danger is just as present here as it is in the high chamber she has stood on countless occasions. The danger is always there.
It goes on for a long time. She is relieved once, then called again after she's slept. It is obvious the mage woman, writhing on the bed, has not.
By the time the babe is born, the mage is pale and shivering with effort and blood loss. She is still in danger; there is no doubt if a demon launches an attack now she will have no resources to fight it off. The healer busies himself with whatever it is healers do, then turns and hands a wrapped bundle to the apprentice.
"Wait…" the mage's voice is weak. "Let me see. Please I need to see…"
"It is not permitted," the healer says, sternly. "I'm sorry."
"Please." The voice cracks. "Please… I want to see my baby."
"You need to concentrate," the healer says, turning back to the woman. The apprentice slips out with the baby, she knows it will be to given to the waiting Chantry sister, taken to an orphanage, to be raised in the faith, in the hopethat it has escaped the curse that found its parents.
It is then that the weeping starts. She is amazed at how much energy there is still left in the thin body. Ugly, wracking sobs. Worse than anything she's ever heard before, worse than the sobs of the penitent in the chantry, worse than the pretend crying of the demons, worse than the wretched children or the distraught friends and lovers of those who have been lost to the Harrowing… "My baby. You can't take him. You can't. He's mine. Give him back."
She resists the urge to clamp her hands over her ears. This is the dangerous time, this is where the tides of rage and despair will open the mage to influences from the fade.
"Bring him back!"
The healer's face is pained as he continues his work. Afterbirth is pulled free, and she feels the tingle that means he is using magic to heal the wounds the child has left behind. But the sobbing - the crying continues.
"You have no right. He's mine. My baby. Maker damn you bring him back!"
There are struggles. The healer, whose eyes are wide, turns to her and there is pleading in that gaze and she understands what he wants. She can make it stop - the pain and the noise. With one gesture, one word, the woman can be silenced.
It would be up to her to decide whether that silence was permanent.
The healer, of course, doesn't understand why she should not.
The thrashing from the table continues and she feels the healer, frustrated with her silence, gather magic of his own. She puts out a hand and stops him from casting. "Do not," she says.
"She is in pain," the healer says. "I can put her to sleep. If she's not so tired it won't be as…"
"She must endure it," she replies. "If she cannot, she is not strong enough. My duty is clear."
"To the void with your duty!" The healer raises his hands again, shaking free of her touch, but she lunges forward, calling on her training, and drains his mana.
"If you interfere with the duty you will leave, mage."
The healer's nostrils flare and she sees a muscle twitch in his jaw. "Have you no compassion?"
"Compassion does not help me, mage," she says.
"She's a person. She just wants… she only needs…" the healer's chest works like a bellows and she watches him, from behind her helm, watches the play of emotion over his features as the woman on the bed continues to weep and beg. Frustration. Anger. Fear.
Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter, she thinks. Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just.
Finally, the healer's shoulders slump and the anger drains out of him. He cannot turn back time and stop what has happened. He can do nothing but tend to the mage-woman's physical hurts. His emotions have gained for him nothing.
Compassion is weakness, she thinks.
Compassion for something that can destroy so many lives at a whim serves no purpose.
The sobs continue for a time, before, weak with pain and effort, the woman succumbs to sleep. Even now, though, her duty is not done. She must stand watch over the mage's dreams. The healer seems reluctant to leave, but exhaustion eats at him as surely as it did at the woman he has been tending, and in the end, with a look towards her that shows how little he truly comprehends, he scurries out.
She wraps her hands around the pommel of her sword and waits.
It is only a matter of time.