The Ferelden circle in Kinloch Hold is impressive, certainly Leliana thinks so, though not as beautiful as White Spire in Val Royeaux. She suspects too that the mages in the Spire have more freedom, as she has to steal a boat to row across to the tower.
There was a bridge once now just ruin and wreckage, not enough for anyone to manage anymore. Leliana wonders if it's destruction is neglectful or wilful.
She wonders if she should be concentrating more on her mission.
She can't help it though, she's always been curious about the mages, about magic, the fade. She knows many stories but few mages. She has freedom but they do not. Not from their magic, not from the fade, not from the circles.
She wonders if they are luckier than she.
It doesn't matter though, she's happy enough. She had Marjolaine now, and a new life as a bard and her first solo mission. A new bow too, a present from her mentor though the trust the older woman has placed in her to do this means so much more to her.
She crashes into a rock at the little island, jumping out and pulling the little row boat ashore to examine it. It looked okay, no cracks or holes, but she wasn't sure. She wasn't really much of a sailor. More of a runner. A climber. It would have to do, if she had to she could swim back.
She rested for a moment – she had strong arms from using a bow but rowing across a lake was still using different muscles and using them hard. She stretched her arms out, feeling out the kinks, looking over the lake.
It was very pretty, she supposed, but the mages were still...trapped.
Her mission was simple enough – to break into the grand enchanters office and steal some specific paperwork. She had a list documents that were required but she didn't know anything else. She rarely did. Marjolaine knew the details, knew the benefactor, knew the motivation. The end game. Leliana was merely a pawn in this as usual but she didn't mind so much. She enjoyed her life as a bard and Marjolaine always made it worth her while.
One way or another.
She smiled to herself and stood, taking a quick drink of water from a flask she kept with her.
Time to scale the tower.
Which turned out to to be easier than she expected, despite Marjolaine telling her it wouldn't be hard. Circle towers were made to keep mages in, not out and she shouldn't have any trouble. Her bow settled firmly on her back, and her daggers at her side. She climbed up the tower, finding hand holes easily enough in the broken brick of the ancient tower. She wondered if this was one of the first circles – built in Andraste's home – and decided to look it up when she returned to Val Royeaux.
She came to a window and peered inside. It was a dormitory, rows and rows of beds in the low light of the moon, full of apprentice mages, most no older than herself. She wondered where the younger children slept – deciding they probably had a dorm of their own before moving on.
She knew the Grand Enchanters office was near the top of the tower but it was impractical to climb up that far, impossible too. Even as she climbed to the second window above her bits of ancient brick and stone were falling away and crashing to the rocks below her.
Through the next window was the library, lit up by a lantern but seemingly empty. She settled on the sill for a minute, listening and watching carefully for any sign of life. She could hear someone moving around but couldn't see them and in the end had to take the risk, climbing in the window and dropping to the floor slow and silent. She crept around the stacks silently, the room was large and airy with few shadows, fewer places to hide. She heard someone close a book and ducked behind a desk.
"Who's there?" Owain?"
A young mage came out from behind a bookshelf, as Leliana decided to make a break for another bookshelf.
"Who are you?!" the mage cried and Leliana moved, lightening fast to the young woman's side, pressing a dagger to her throat.
"I'm no one, you have not seen me," she hissed into the game's ear. She didn't respond, stock still against Leliana's hold. "You're not supposed to be here are you?" She guessed.
The mage went to shake her head, whimpering when the dagger cut into the thin skin of her neck. Leliana relaxed her hold a little, letting the mage move away from her.
"Are you here to break someone out?" she asked, turning around to face the bard.
"No, does that happen?"
"People try – they usually come for their children when they're first brought here."
Leliana nodded, looking around the room. The mage was no longer frightening, merely curious and she assumed they didn't have many visitors. She didn't look much older than Leliana, nor did she look particularly Ferelden either with her dark hair and ruddy skin tone.
"Then why are you here?" she asked, smiling now and Leliana found herself smiling back.
"To steal something."
"Like a phylactery. Or a book? No one has any money."
"Correspondence."
"You're not Ferelden are you?" the girl asked, picking the books she dropped back up and placing it on the desk ."You don't sound it.
"You don't look it," Leliana shot back and the mage;s already dark cheeks darkened further.
"I'm, I'm not," she said, that cute hitch in her voice back despite her proud tone.
"Neither am I," Leliana said. "But my mother was Ferelden."
The mage nodded.
"Where are you from? Val Royeaux? Is it as pretty as the books say?"
Leliana wanted to tell her all abut it for a moment, the girl clearly curious and very pretty but she had been side tracked long enough and Marjolaine would be angry if she were caught, angrier if she discovered she'd left a witness alive but Leliana didn't have it in her heart to kill the young mage. Not when she'd already agreed to keep silent.
"I have to go," she told her, looking away when the mage frowned.
Leliana headed towards the steps to a grand door, leading higher up the tower, wondering how silently she could run when the mage spoke again.
"If you're going up the tower you should use the secret passage."
Leliana whirled around the see the age grinning at her, waving her back over. "The Templars patrol the corridors at night."
"Secret passage – that wasn't on any plans."
The mage chuckled.
Wouldn't be much of a secret if it as," she said, and Leliana couldn't argue with that. The mage lead her over to an empty fire place and pressed a stone tile bearing a symbol of an eye inside a sun. Not something Leliana was familiar with but she didn't dwell on it, distracted as the brick wall at the back of the fire swung back and opened up into darkness.
"Goes all the way to the top," the mage said. Leliana ducked down and crawled into the black shadows. "Might need this," she added with a twist of her hands, a ball of light appearing in the air. She waved her hand and the little blue light settled at the bard's shoulder.
"Thank you," she said. She looked up at the tunnel and then back at the pretty mage. "What's you name?" she asked.
"Solona," she said.
Leliana nodded, filing away the information.
"Take care Solona, and thank you."
She disappeared into the tunnel, the ball of light following her and lighting up a small circle around her, enough to see a few steps in front of her at least.
"Wait!" Solona cried, "you didn't tell me your name."
"No I didn't," Leliana said with a smirk though she wasn't sure Solona could even see her anymore. She turned a corner and could hear the mage huffing as the entrance to the tunnel clicked shut.
She didn't give Solona another thought as she ran through the tunnels, footsteps echoing through until she lightened her step. The ball of light kept up with her as she climbed the tower, the tunnel spiralling around, passing entrances as she went higher, counting the floors as she reached them. She slowed on her floor, coming to a lever and hesitating. She felt a little lost in the tunnel, but decided she had to risk opening the entrance. Part of the wall swung towards her and she jumped away to avoid it, glad it missed her.
The room was lit up, and she was hesitant to stick her head out and look around. She listened for a long while, too long, trying to silence the sound of her own breathing as she took in the sounds of the room.
Except there were none.
No creaking floorboards or shuffling papers. No pages being turned, no treads of feet.
After another long moment, another deep breath, she looked out of the tunnel and into the room.
An empty office was before her, a large one and she couldn't have been lucky enough to have come out in the very room she wanted, surely?
Seeing no one she climbed through the entrance and glanced around again. Definitely empty. She dashed straight to the desk, thumbing though the papers there and confirming that it was indeed the Grand Enchanter's office.
She was very lucky and Solona was very helpful.
It took too long to find the correspondence she needed though, the Grand Enchanter was not an organised man but seemingly a friendly one, given the amount of letters on his desk. She sifted through them as quickly as she could, trying to find the relevant letters, the ones she needed, the ones Marjolaine had asked her to steal. The ones their patron needed for reasons that she was not privy too.
She went through all of his desks draws, picked the lock on a couple of chests, searched through the books. It took too long, and by time she had everything tucked away in her leathers she could see the moon starting to dip lower than she would've liked. She climbed back through the entrance that was in the room's fireplace the same as in the library.
Back in the tunnels the ball of light that was hovering at her shoulder was dimming slowly. She tried to run faster, but her footsteps sounded louder every time she broke into a run, echoing up and down the tunnel and she was convinced she could hear the Templars patrolling on the other side of the wall.
And that they could hear her.
The light went out.
She stopped.
Everything was black, even as her eyes adjusted there was no light filtering from anywhere and she had to feel her way through, hands on the cold stone as she made her way down. She walked into the lever. She let out a huff of air, rubbing her stomach, before creeping out of the entrance.
She stopped.
She wasn't in the library.
Leliana wasn't sure where she was for a moment, a little disorientated and panicked she tried to remember the floor plans she'd studied of the tower. The floor plans she memorised, she told herself, looking around quickly and diving behind a chest of draws. She was in the dorm room she'd seen earlier, young mages asleep in lines of bunks. A couple snored, one murmured something, if she had paused to listen she would've heard it all and instead she was surrounded by mages who could wake at any minute and catch her.
She could not be caught.
It had been Marjolaine's only rule. No advice, no good lucks. Just don't get caught Leliana.
Merde.
The dorm was mostly dark, a a couple of torches lit up the corners of the room their flames low and dull and from somewhere came a familiar blue hue..
Trying not to make a sound on her tip toes, feeling every rustle of the paper in her leathers and the scrape of the her boots on the floor echo through her mind she followed the light. She had come out of another fireplace, and the young mage's bunk was not far and thankfully, the lower of the three.
She was tempted to whisper her name, just to be sure but couldn't take anymore risks. The ball of light was hovering beneath a blanket, only the back of Solona's head could be seen but Leliana recognised the black hair, the rusty hue of her skin. She didn't quite know what to do, how to get her attention, she was so close and Solona turned another page in her book and kept reading under the blanket.
A squeak at the door made both girls jump.
Leliana saw a Templar walk in a gasped, diving down to the floor. Solona closed her book, leaning over to drop it to the floor and gasped when she saw the bard hiding there. She waved her hand and the ball of light disappeared, and she looked across at the Templar in full plate metal, moving their way.
"Under that bed, quick!" she hissed, and Leliana looked behind her at the other bunk, and Solona nodded, eyes wide and wild. She did as the mage said, rolling and crawling beneath the bunk, lying on her front and watching Solona carefully as she murmured something and shook her hands towards Leliana and then herself. Leliana felt the magic, even though she couldn't see it, felt the light tingle of it down her spine.
"Amell!" The Templar grumbled as he came up to her bunk. Leliana's view of Solona was blocked and she wriggled down slightly to get a better look. Solona was sitting up straighter now, hands in front of her, fists clenched.
"Yes Sir?" she asked.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"I can feel the magic Amell, what are you doing?"
"Nothing,"
The Templar stepped closer and Solona backed up against the head of the bunk.
"It's a glamour spell," he spat out, and Leliana held her breath, slowly wriggling backwards, trying to crawl into the darkness. "What are you hiding?"
"Nothing."
"Amell, I'm warning you."
Solona didn't say anything and the Templar shifted his stance holding a hand out, and Leliana felt it, another darker tingle down her spine and around her head.
She'd never seen a Templar use his powers before and she wasn't sure exactly what he was doing, some sort of spell purge perhaps. Or silence. Either way Solona gasped, then whined, clutching her chest as she tried to get air into her lungs before falling back over the other side of the bed.
Leliana nearly cried out after her but then Solona looked at her from under the bunk, eyes wide again, a finger on her lips. Leliana nodded and watched the Templar pulled up the mage's blanket.
"A book?" The Templar asked. "You've been in library again?"
"Yes," Solona hissed. "I'm sorry, I couldn't-" she couldn't finish, her breath merely harsh pants.
The Templar walked around the side of the bed and Solona mouthed to Leliana.
Go.
Then she was pulled up roughly by her nightdress and forced out of the dorm. Leliana watched them, tempted to go after them, to explain, to help, to do something but she needed to go.
Other mages had woken up now, were whispering to one another about Solona. It wasn't the first time, Leliana gathered, wouldn't be the last time unless they turned her tranquil this time and Leliana felt sick with the thought. But then the whispers and murmurs died down, the snoring and soft breathing started back up and she was able to make her way back to the fire place.
She was lucky the Templar had been so fixated on Solona, the entrance into the tunnel was still wide open and she crawled back in, pushing the lever back up so it closed this time. Quickly, carefully, silently she made her way back up the tunnel, feeling the wall as she went until she came to another lever.
To the library.
And with that she was away, out of the window and down the tower. She felt the guilt settle in her stomach, harder and heavier with each stroke she made as she rowed across the lake but tried to think about Marjolaine instead. How pleased her mentor would be when she returned, successful and how she would be rewarded.
She wouldn't mention Solona.
Not to Marjolaine.
Not to anyone.
