2. History
She'd always had a weakness for shiny objects. That was what initially pulled Jael toward the merchant's wares; the gleam of beautifully matched silverite daggers, amethysts winking from their handles. The elf stared longingly at the weapons, knowing she could never afford them. Her fingers twitched as she eyed the daggers. I have to ask...
" 'Scuse me..." she called, waving slightly to get the merchant's attention.
"Yes?"
"How much are those?" She pointed at the daggers.
One of the man's eyebrows quirked as he took in the rough-clad figure, her sleeveless brown tunic and dark green cloak both powdered with dust and stained with use. "Three sovereigns. Each," he clarified.
"Thank you." Jael sighed wistfully. Alistair would kill her if she spent that much on something they didn't need. But amethysts... She traced a finger over the gems regretfully. Purple was her favorite color, and a rare one to see on a weapon, so everything in her wanted to snatch up the daggers. But even if she could technically afford it, she already had a perfectly servicable sword and dagger. As she turned away from the stand, however, the book caught her eye.
The tome was a good two and a half inches thick, its royal blue cover seeming to glimmer, almost, one of the few arcane symbols Jael recognized stamped or painted or whatever onto the front. She flipped through, scanning some of the pages. A lot of the words were big magic-y things that she didn't understand. Bet Jowan would... She fingered one of the silk ribbon bookmarks hanging out the bottom edge. "What about this?"
"Twenty five sovereigns," the merchant informed her brusquely, turning to deal with another customer, a woman in a dress fancier than anything Jael had ever seen.
"Damn it," the elf muttered under her breath. She really couldn't afford that. Money wasn't as tight now as it had been when they first started out with barely five silvers between them, but twenty five bloody sovereigns... No can do. Jael huffed in exasperation. From what little she'd been able to understand of the spellbook-words like fire and ice and kill-it would be greatly appreciated by the newest member of their merry band. And for some reason, that mattered to her, more than she could put into words. Her eyes darted between the occupied merchant and the book a few times. It had been ages since she stole anything...
Almost before she knew what she was doing, Jael's hands closed around the book and tucked it inside her cloak. The merchant didn't even notice until she was walking away from his table.
"Oi! Elf! Get back here!"
She ran.
xxx
By the time she made it back to camp, she was out of breath, grinning madly, and limping slightly, thanks to a skinned knee.
"There you are!" Alistair raised an eyebrow at her. "What took you so long? I was starting to think someone turned you in for the bounty or something."
"Pssh, you worry too much, Alistair," Jael laughed. "Aside from the fact I'd like to see someone try to turn me in, I just got distracted, that's all."
"Than why are you out of breath? And what happened to your knee?"
"Um... I may have had a... not exactly Grey Warden related run-in with the guards..." She shrugged. "But I got away. And we don't ever hafta go through that town again, so there's nothin' to worry about. Here-" she tossed him the supplies she'd been in town to purchase "-you and Leliana can started putting those away."
"Al... right..." Alistair looked at her suspiciously as he headed toward the bard.
"Alistair, just go," Jael chuckled, waiting until the warrior wasn't watching to head toward Jowan. "Hey, I have something for you," she informed the mage without preamble as she walked up behind him.
"Oh?" He turned toward her, looking surprised.
"Uh-huh. Here, look at this." She handed him the book, leaning over his shoulder as the tome fell open to one of marked pages, pointing at the page. "I thought you might find these useful."
Jowan read through a couple of the spells before turning to look at the elf hanging over his shoulder, trying to keep his mind on the book and not on what having her so close was doing to heart rate. "Where'd you find this, Jael? This is really advanced magic." And not the kind of thing you find just anywhere...
"Oh, I, um, bought it at the market, in the town I was just in. I figure if I can't understand most of the words in a book, it's probably about magic. But I can understand words like fire and ice. Oh, and kill. So I know it must be useful." She rested her chin on his shoulder and grinned at him.
Jowan laughed. "Useful? Jael, I'll be able to bring down a small house if I learn half of these spells. And you just bought it? Y'know what? Let's just say I believe you. Thank you."
"You're welcome," Jael mumbled, blushing a little. "I figure you need some way to keep from getting bored 'til we get to the Brecilian Forest."
"Oh, this'll definitely work," the mage replied wryly, thumbing the pages of the tome. "I'll probably still be reading this when I die."
"Well... um, good. I'm glad you like it." Jael chewed her bottom lip for a second. "I need to, um, talk to Wynne about something, so I'll let you start reading." She pushed away from his back, both of them immediately missing the contact.
xxx
Jowan spent every night of the trip to the Brecilian Forest with his nose buried in the book, stopping only whenever Jael brought over food and plunked down next to him. She'd gotten in the habit of eating with him every night she had the chance. Which was quickly turning into every night, period. He'd be lying if he denied it was the highlight of his day. They talked as they ate; about everything from dragons to their companions and back again. The one topic they never touched was the past. They both had things they didn't want to talk about, doors they wanted to keep closed. And so they stayed that way.
Until the night Jael bit her lip and asked him why he'd dabbled in blood magic, anyway. "I mean, growing up in the tower... you must have heard multiple times every days that it's bad, right? So I'm just curious why you still did it."
He groaned. "I knew you were going to bring this up eventually."
Jael raised an eyebrow and waited.
"Oh, fine," he sighed. "But you'll laugh at me."
"You never know." Jael took a bite out of her apple. "I might surprise you."
"Don't talk with your mouth full," he scolded with a half-smile. Jael wrinkled her nose at him. "As for why I dabbled in blood magic... well." He ran his hand through his hair. "I was jealous of another apprentice. My best friend, actually. One of those who everyone knew was destined to become a great mage. Because she was so talented, everyone loved her, looked up to her. Since I was so close to her, it was inevitable that I would be compared to her, or worse, overlooked entirely. I felt..." he hesitated, searching for the right word. "...inadequate, I guess. I knew I would never be as great a mage as she was, but I thought the blood magic would at least give me more control... more confidence." Even as he said it, it sounded like a weak and pathetic excuse to him, and he fully expected Jael-who had enough confidence to stare down a bar full of mercenaries and enough control to ignore a cry of 'knife ear'- to laugh at him. Or at least giggle. "It was so stupid," he muttered. Just like me.
"But if she was your friend, wouldn't she have helped you if you'd asked?" the elf pointed out.
Jowan nodded. "Yes, she probably would have. And the thing is, I knew it was wrong the minute I started. I swore never to use it again. Ever. And then I, um, met someone." He cleared his throat, feeling his face go red. "A girl, named Lily. She... loved me, and for a short time, I was happy with who I was." A very short while, his mind chimed in. "I left the blood magic behind me. And then I found out they were going to make me Tranquil... and that's when I... ran away. The rest, as they say, is history."
Jael was silent for a long moment before she said anything, finally leaning close and squeezing his hand as she murmured, "I'm sorry..."
He shrugged. "It's no one's fault but my own, I suppose. No one forced my hand." He let out a soft, self-deprecating chuckle. "So there you have it. I became a blood mage because my best friend was better than me at everything."
"Thank you for telling me," Jael said quietly, brushing back an escaping wisp of hair.
xxx
It took another three days for Jowan to work up the courage to ask a prying question of his own. "So, how'd you become a Grey Warden, anyway?"
Jael swallowed her mouthful of stew, wincing as the too-hot meat burned her tongue. "I suppose I do owe you a story, don't I?"
" 'S right," he teased. "My eyes are starting to cross from staring at that spellbook, anyway."
She chuckled at that. "Alright... how I became a Warden... Well, that story starts on what was supposed to be my wedding day. Until the arl's son-Vaughan-and his friends showed up, already drunk, early as it was in the day, to drag off as many elven women as they could for their-" she fought the urge to spit the word, "-pleasure. I gave him a piece of my mind, which earned me a nice backhand across the face." Jael rubbed her cheek, still remembering the sting of the blow. "When I came to, me an' a bunch of my friends were locked in a storage room of the arl's estate. The guards had taken all the others away when my cousin, Soris, showed up and helped me break out. We went after the others..." she swallowed hard; this part sticking harder than the rest. "And I saw my fiance cut down by the guards. Killed trying to save me." She swiped at the beginnings of a tear before it could escape her eye.
"Jae..." Jowan's voice trailed off.
"I dealt with the guards in a spectacular and bloody fashion, then kicked in the door to Vaughan's chambers and dealt with him." She smiled grimly. "That bastard-" this time she did spit "-tried to bargin with me; offered me gold to walk away and let him do what he pleased with the others. I killed him instead.
"Of course, it wasn't long after we'd gotten back to the Alienage that the arl's men appeared, demanding to know who was responsible. I'd probably be rotting in the dungeon if this Grey Warden hadn't been in the Alienage. He recruited me. Snatched me right away from the guards, which did not go over well with their captain, but he couldn't really do anything about it." She looked up at Jowan. "And there you have it. How an elf from Denerim managed to become one of a handful of people standing in the way of total annihilation of everything good and decent in this world."
"Wow." He really couldn't think of anything else to say. He'd heard stories about how hard life was for elves outside the tower, but coming face-to-face with it like this... "And I thought life dealt me a bad hand."
"Well, it's not all bad," Jael corrected him as she stood, collecting the empty dishes from their dinner.
He raised an eyebrow at her. "Oh?"
"If life hadn't dealt me such a piss-poor hand, I'd never've met you." She grinned at him-mostly to hide her racing pulse-before turning and walking away.
With her back was turned, she missed the goofy, lopsided grin that spread across the mage's face as she left.
