THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

9:37 DRAGON

She could see the colors in the air and smell the coming of the cold dawn, hear the sound of silence and taste the forest in a chalice of water. She could sense a deer a mile off and a hurlock even further than that. She could put an arrow through a bull's-eye at three-hundred yards. She had bartered with lords and princes, adventured with assassins and witches. She had carved a bloody path through a darkspawn horde to slay an archdemon. She had lost her Dalish lover, only to fall in love with the future King of Ferelden. She had done more in less than a decade than most did in an entire lifetime.

Yet for all that Lyna Mahariel remained a young girl; wise, perhaps, beyond her years, yet still young. And like all young girls she was full of doubts, doubts that linger.

One day, Lyna organized a hasty lunch with Arlessa Isolde, hoping for some advice to allay her fears. The food was served in Lyna's bedroom, a spacious and splendorous chamber located on the highest floor of the royal palace. She shared her floor with Alistair and Anora, who had their room just down the hall. That was no coincidence. Lyna had no intention of losing Alistair to Anora like she had lost Tamlen to that blasted mirror; she wanted him close. That mirror had been full of hidden danger, as was Anora; both were not to be trusted.

Lyna and Isolde had their lunch in the middle of the afternoon. Autumn was in the air outside; there was a chill wind that channeled and flew through the narrow streets of the city with alarming fury. The sun overhead was a pale yellow, and its light filtered weakly through the bedchamber's windows. The light was small and timid, yet it filled the room with a golden glow, and for a short time Lyna felt at peace.

Lyna ate only sparingly, but Isolde wolfed down dish after dish as if she were eating for two . . . which she was.

"When are you due?" Lyna asked.

Isolde sat back in her chair. "Ah, not for six months, the healers say," she said in her thick Orlesian accent: six came out as seex.

"That's good. You'll have the baby in the spring or maybe the summer, depending on the weather. No one wants a winter birth."

Isolde smiled at that. "Connor was born in the winter."

"And nothing ever bad happened with him!" Lyna said, laughing. Sudden as a storm, her laughter was brought up short, for she had just remembered the reason she had asked Isolde to sup with her in the first place. Sighing, Lyna snatched one of the dates from the bowl and took a tentative bite. Then she began, "Isolde, we have been friends for a long time. May I trust you to keep a secret for me?"

"Of course."

Lyna began to tell her of all her doubts, of her fears and worries. Slowly she talked at first, but the more she spoke the faster the words seemed to come, until they spilled out of her like endless rain into a lake of doubt. At last she told Isolde of her greatest concern, the thought that had been forever in her mind these past few weeks, the fear - and hope - that maybe her life as a Grey Warden was not just to die, abandoned and forgotten, like so many before her.

Her eyes had been downcast as she spilled her mind, yet at the last they rose upwards to meet Isolde's. "So, will you help me?"

Isolde had remained silent throughout the whole tale. "Yes, I think so. First, though, we need to see if what you fear is correct. How long has it been since you and Alistair . . . ?"

"Two weeks, I think."

"And your sickness?"

"Only these past few days. I wake up every morning with a basin full of vomit by my window. My head aches and I find it hard to sleep. It may just be a fever, but I cannot help but wonder." And I cannot help but hope, she thought.

"A fever it may be, but that would not necessarily prove you wrong. Hmm." She rose and began to pace the room. "I am afraid that the only way for me to know for certain is to wait and see. A healer would know immediately, of course. You should tell Alistair."

"No!" Lyna said, perhaps too sharply, as Isolde stopped her pacing and stared at her with a bemused expression that read, Why do you not want your lover to know? Lyna's voice broke as she explained, "I do not want to involve some strange healer I've never met. Please, Isolde, I have too few true friends in this city. I need you to trust me. And Alistair . . ." She paused, trying to carefully discern her next words. "I do not wish to give him false hope. He has too many worries on his shoulders as it is."

"Then I will do as you ask," said Isolde, curtsying. "And Lyna, I cannot help but notice you said hope at the end there, where before you said fear." She smiled, and swept out the door without another word.

Yes, Lyna thought sadly, I noticed that too.

She waited two more weeks for Isolde to finally confirm or deny her suspicious. During that time life in the palace seemed to go on much as it had for the past seven years. Councils were called, meals were served, Anora regarded Lyna with the usual icy glares. The sun rose and set four and ten times. Lyna even met with Isolde twice or thrice, and spent every other night with Alistair's warm body beside her own. All seemed normal. Yet during those two weeks she felt a wash of change come over her. Not just reverberating through her body - though she found that her brief sickness had left her and in its place had risen a fierce hunger. No, it seemed, rather, that the world was changing, Thedas as a whole. She could feel it in her bones and in her heart of hearts, in the earth and in the water. She could smell it in the air: something had changed. At the last council before Isolde came to her, there had been whispers of an unnamed catastrophe somewhere in the Free Marches. Alistair had sent Bann Teagan to investigate.

But these whispers did not concern Lyna Mahariel. She was King Alistair's trusted advisor and his not-so-secret mistress, but in truth there was only one pressing matter on her mind.

And so it was that, on a rainy and cloudy and windy autumn day, as the fallen leaves licked up against her window, did Isolde come to her at last. She put a hand on Lyna's swollen belly, gasped, and said, "Lyna, you're pregnant."

"I know," Lyna Mahariel said, and she smiled.