Two: What Distant Deeps Or Skies


Alistair:

The sound of steel ringing against steel drew him out of the camp. They were nearing where the North Road met with the Imperial Highway. After a couple of days on the Imperial, they would take a road everyone called the Lost River towards Seahold, one of the last castles before Orlais. Alistair had never been there. It was remote, on the other side of a mountain range from the entrance to Orzammar, and it was fiercely proud and independent.

He'd seen Kathil and Zevran heading off with their weapons for a bit of exercise. He'd assumed that the "exercise" was a euphemism, but it sounded as if he might have been mistaken. Curiosity nagged at him, and so he was ducking under low branches towards the sound of swords.

He came around a large tree and spied his quarry. He stopped, then leaned against the tree to watch.

If pressed to admit that he liked anything about Zevran, how he fought would probably be the first thing Alistair mentioned. The elf was grace itself, wielding two swords and even doing a little bit of tumbling in combat. And Kathil, against him…

He could see still where he'd had an influence on her fighting. How she placed her feet, the way she braced her shoulders when she blocked a blow, that was all him. She wielded a single sword—not the same sword she had used to kill the archdemon, but a plain steel longsword. Though he'd tried to convince her that she needed a shield, she'd always refused to learn. Too many things in my hands, she'd said. I have to be able to free my hands at a moment's notice, for spellcasting.

The two of them came together, parted, each of them absolutely focused on the other. It looked almost like an elaborate dance, and it probably was, a bit—sparring with someone who you knew well was often like that. Kathil ducked under Zevran's long blade and came up close to him, only to have her sword turned aside by his off-hand blade.

The elf was shirtless, and Kathil wore a shirt usually meant for being the first layer between flesh and armor. It was sleeveless and cut short, and revealed quite a bit of skin. And scar.

Sweet Andraste. What happened to the two of them?

Scar covered Kathil's left shoulder, spreading out over her chest and down to her side, deep furrows carved by claws with burn spreading outward from those furrows. The scar was knotted and raised, signs that the healing of it had been done less magically than naturally. There were other scars, as well, but his eyes kept on coming back to that shoulder. The deep furrow that marred the side of her face and twisted the corner of her mouth was almost mild, compared to this.

And the elf was not much better. It looked like someone had carved designs into his torso, front and back, like some cruel ornamentation. Alistair had seen Zevran without his shirt often enough—he tended to come to breakfast without anything but pants on—and those markings had not been there, before the Archdemon.

I have walked old roads, and learned old magic. Kathil's words from the first time he'd seen her after she'd left Denerim came back to him.

He would have to ask her later. For now, he watched.

The two of them clashed and parted, circling each other. Zevran came in fast towards her, and Kathil stepped aside. Too slow—the elf's sword was within an inch of her flesh and Alistair reminded herself she knows what she's doing, these two have sparred before—

Kathil muttered a word and vanished.

What fell magic is that?

Zevran stopped, nearly dropping to one knee as he got his center of balance beneath of him, using his legs to power a change in direction. And when Kathil reappeared in a place that had a moment before been behind him, he was there and facing her. He swept an arm forward and caught her on the midsection, eliciting an oof from her, and then placed his short sword against her throat.

"You become predictable, my Grey Warden," Zevran said, and there was a smug smile on his lips. "Plus, I believe it might be cheating. Did we not agree, no magic?"

"Bah. That won me, what, eight bouts? Obviously, I'm slipping." She smiled at him, and the elf let her go. "Very few people I fight will have the chance to see that more than once. And I said no offensive magic, Zev. Again? Ah—" Kathil turned sharply towards Alistair.

Alistair realized that he'd been spotted. "Don't stop on my account," he said, waving at them. "I was enjoying the show." He chuckled, a bit weakly, and his sense of disquiet only grew when he saw that Kathil was just standing there, staring at him, an unreadable expression on her face. "Er. I suppose I should go."

But the mage blew out an annoyed breath. "No, it's fine, there's nothing to see that you haven't already." She walked to a nearby stump and grabbed her shirt, and then pulled it on. "Was there something you wanted, my liege?"

He ignored the blades in her tone. "What happened to you?" he asked. "You did not have those scars after the Archdemon. Neither of you did."

"It's a long story," she told him. "I encountered something that was just about as tough as I was. I thought I'd killed it. Learned the hard way that it was smart enough to play dead. I was found by some Chasind a couple of days later. I was lucky not to lose the arm or the use of the shoulder. And Zev, here—" she gestured at the elf, and the smile that touched her lips was fond—"got to play bait in a trap set by a Crow master assassin…thing. Its weapons were made of something that caused the wounds to resist healing. Lorn brought it down—you might have seen his scars, too."

The kaddis Lorn wore hid much in light and shadow, but Alistair remembered, a little, seeing deep lines on the warhound that he didn't remember. Warhounds were always scarred, though, and it hadn't occurred to him to wonder.

But now he focused on Kathil's earlier words. "What was it you encountered that could get you so badly?"

She made a face. "I call them nightmares. They're…mmm…sort of like demons. Denizens of old places in the Fade. Only they don't need mortal vessels to push through the veil, especially on the old roads and in places where magic has been used a lot. They can straddle the Veil, even away from the old roads. It takes an arcane warrior to fight them."

"I've never heard of them," he said, a suspicion growing in him.

"Most people haven't." Kathil looked away from him. "They're lucky."

He'd traveled with this woman for over a year, had been involved with her for about half that time, and he still knew her. She didn't want to tell him something that he probably ought to know about. "Out with it, Kathil."

She breathed in. "I—it does not reflect well upon me. But. I mentioned a while back that I'd been walking old roads. If you're going to understand this, Alistair, you have to understand that I was not precisely in my right mind when I left Denerim. The Archdemon, Wynne, us…everyone leaving me. It was hard to bear. I remembered some research I'd done when I was apprenticed, on the old roads of the Fade. Things live there, things even more ancient than the old gods. I was strong enough in my magic to seek out those old roads, as only the magisters of the Imperium had before. I left looking for Morrigan, but I found so much more."

Alistair narrowed his eyes. "You were looking for your own death."

"That, too." She smiled wanly, and the scar at the corner of her mouth deepened. "My first contact with the old roads came only a season after I started looking for them. The first time I found one, I also found a nightmare. I killed it, but only with the help of the ancient being that lived at the crossroads I'd found myself at. It asked a reward for its help. I gave it what it desired. A drop of mage blood. In return, since I had not tried to get out of paying for its help, it gave me a gift. Knowledge. How to deal with the old roads. How to make bargains with what lives there. And how to fight the things which follow me back. About a year later, I ran into the nightmare that gave me the scar on my shoulder."

He was staring at her, and couldn't quite stop. "That doesn't sound like something the Circle would approve of."

Kathil shifted as if will alone were keeping her in place. "No. They wouldn't. But they're not going to find out. If I stay off the old roads, the attacks don't come more than once a season, when the nightmares find and follow my trail."

While Kathil was talking, Zevran had moved. He now stood at her shoulder, and though his weapons were sheathed, one of his hands was creeping towards the hilt of his longsword. Alistair realized that both of his hands had curled into fists. "This—" he said, then stopped and shook his head. "I have to think about this."

The mage's flinch as the meaning of his words hit her made his stomach twist. "Fine," she said. "But if you decide to tell the Chantry about it, would you do me the favor of warning me first? I am going to want to be very far away. Maybe Rivain. I've heard it's warm there."

"The least I can do for you," he said, and then turned and walked away.

*****

Zevran:

He had expected many things from this trip. Very few of them were coming to pass.

He'd had the most exquisite pleasure of seeing Alistair's face when he'd realized what had come to pass between himself and his Grey Warden, yes. But he had also expected Kathil and the King to…reconcile, as it were, very quickly indeed. She had been so very looking forward to this trip, even though she had not said as much.

Instead, first they had both been very polite at one another. And then, Alistair had caught them sparring, and wrung a confession out of Kathil with little more than a bit of well-wielded guilt.

It made his hands itch, because he misliked it when he made mistakes, especially when anticipating the behavior of those he should know very well. He had not survived this long by ignoring when he was mistaken.

And to bring into it the fact that he had not liked at all the look in their old companion's eyes when he'd seen the scars—as if those scars had any chance at all of diminishing his Grey Warden's beauty. As if she were somehow marred. If he ever said anything to her about it, he would…

And that was, as it were, a slight problem.

Killing Alistair was, unfortunately, right out. Not only would it upset the Fereldan government yet again, but Kathil would never forgive him. And even if he took pains to hide his involvement, she would know. She always did.

Politics. Bah.

He would guard her back, and do what he could to keep Alistair from breaking her heart yet again.

*****

Kathil:

Shesen lifted her high in the air and then set her down again. "Again, sweet pea? Remember, you hide, and I come looking for you—"

"Then AMBUSH!" she declared and threw her arms around her nurse's knees. "GOT you!"

"Your father is going to be the death of me," Shesen said, and rumpled Kathil's short-cropped hair. "First he lets you cut your own hair, and now this. If your lady mother were alive, she would give him such a lecture! Ah, well, all right, we'll play ambush. I'll count to fifty and you go hide."

Kathil giggled and ran off into the darkness of the hold's basement. "One…two…three…" There was a place she'd found when she'd last managed to slip free of the constant watchful guard over her and come down here by herself. It was a bunch of rotting boards over the entrance to a tunnel that led away into the darkness of stone. It would make an excellent hiding place for an ambush.

As she found the spot and wriggled through the gap between two boards, she repeated to herself Father's rules of ambush, as much as she remembered them. "Use the dark. Hide good. Don't hit anyone nice. And 'scape route."

The walls of the tunnel were a little damp and it smelled weird, sharp and musty. Kathil huddled down in the middle, watching through the gap in the boards. "Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven…"

Just about then, she realized that she wasn't alone in the tunnel.

Her only warning was a scratching sound directly behind her, and then a warm, furry weight smashed into her from behind, biting and clawing and knocking her into the boards. Blind in the darkness, she kicked at the thing attacking her, but it only sank what felt like teeth into her leg.

Only then did she scream.

She was trapped between the boards and the attacking thing, and in her panic she couldn't find the gap she had wiggled in through. "NO!" she shrieked, and the tunnel suddenly smelled like a thunderstorm and her short hair was standing on end and there was a flash brighter than anything in the world and a loud popping and crackling noise nearly deafened her.

Then Shesen was pulling away the boards from the tunnel's entrance, and Kathil tumbled out into her arms. "Oh sweet Andraste preserve us!" her nurse said as she scooped Kathil up. "What was…oh."

The lantern she carried and had set hastily down illuminated the scene in the narrow tunnel. A rat the size of a child lay dead, covered all over with scorch marks, blood flowing thick and dull from its mouth.

All Kathil knew right then was the way Shesen's arms tightened around her and the grieving note in her voice. "Oh, sweet pea. Oh, my darling girl."

Shesen carried her up the stairs, washed out and bandaged the bites on her leg, and then told Kathil to stay in bed for a bit.

That night, the men in armor came.

She was sitting up, breathing hard, and next to her Zevran was stirring. Lorn stuck his head into the tent and gave a quizzical whine. "Are you all right, my lo—my Warden?" Zev asked, blinking at her as he sat up.

"Just a dream," she said. "It's all right, Lorn, I'm fine." Lorn whuffed at her doubtfully and climbed inside the tent to lie down at Kathil's side. "You don't have to, Lorn."

Lorn looked up at her and cocked an ear at her, then laid his head down and, apparently, went right to sleep. Zevran asked, "Darkspawn again? We have not encountered such for a few days. Perhaps they draw near."

"No. Not darkspawn." She laydown again, and Zevran followed her suit. She wiggled a bit so she could put her head on his shoulder. There was a comfort in being pressed between Zevran and Lorn, a pair of warm, protective bodies. "It might have been a memory. I think it was the incident that revealed my power. Or perhaps just a dream about being a child. "

"Perhaps being close to Seahold has triggered some memories, yes?" he said. She could feel his voice resonate in his chest. "We are only, what, three days away?"

"Maybe. But I thought that what the Circle does to its apprentices was irreversible." She drew in a long breath, then let it out. "Go to sleep, Zev. We can talk about it in the morning."

And they did, though not before a thought floated into Kathil's sleep-fuzzed brain. If the destruction of the memories isn't irreversible—what about the rest of what they do to us?

*****

Cullen:

For a death sentence, being a Grey Warden wasn't actually half bad.

Cullen had been raised by the Chantry, and had never traveled farther than Redcliffe Village. It had been a certain shock to enter Amaranthine, with its crowds of people. But there had been familiar things, as well—the discipline of the militant order he'd been sent to join, the rhythm of a life spent half training and half learning about the history of the Grey Wardens and their place in the world. The Grey Wardens in Denerim had come all the way from the Weisshaupt to rebuild their Ferelden counterparts, and he liked and respected his new commanders.

He missed being a Templar, and missed his brethren who had shared his every waking breath since he had been accepted as a Templar candidate. But he was still doing needed work, even if there were a few awkward things that came with having been cloistered his entire life—

(He remembered his first and only trip to one of the dockside brothels. He'd only been half-aware that was where Mishkal and Pater were going when they asked him to join, and once they had gotten there all he'd wanted was to sink down into his boots and hope nobody noticed him. He'd ended up fleeing back to the barracks before half of an hour had passed.)

He was starting to get used to it. The Joining had been painful, but he had the discipline to get through it. He had been rather surprised to survive the experience. Montclair, the Warden-General, had even commented on it, right afterward. Nobody had asked what he had done to get kicked out of the Chantry. He assumed Ser Greagoir had told them.

And three weeks after he'd passed the Joining, he found himself on the road with Montclair and ten other Grey Wardens, heading east. He was the only native Ferelden in the bunch, and he still didn't quite know why they were traveling, or what they expected to find when they reached Seahold. "The King travels to Seahold," Montclair had said, in his quiet way of his. "We much reach it before he does. Your training as a Templar should stand us in good stead, while we're there."

So it had to do with a mage, he guessed. And from the dark looks Montclair occasionally shared with his commanders, whatever it was had to be important. They had traveled quickly, once abandoning the road for twenty miles of mountainous countryside in the name of avoiding some confrontation. They stopped in Highever to trade their exhausted horses for fresh ones, and kept pressing forward.

And now Seahold was in sight, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He'd never quite appreciated how good it was to stand still, to be a silent watcher whose rear end wasn't tender from days spent in the saddle. And Seahold was quite the sight. It was built on a cliff, seemingly carved from the stone of the land itself, occupying the highest point among a series of deep valleys filled with roaring rivers that tumbled down to the Waking Sea.

Amaranthine was located on the ocean, but the Waking Sea was a different creature entirely. Winds whipped in from the west, through the relatively narrow channel that the Sea created, and weather came in intensified by it. Too, there were storms that came from the north, howling gales that dropped rain on the coastline before, tamed by the mountain range, they went on to water Ferelden's great valleys.

They wound up the road leading to the outer keep. As they did, they passed a few travelers walking up the road, cloaked against the mist. As they passed by one group, a woman looked up at them.

She was red-haired, and in the shadow of her hood her eyes were bright blue. She had a considering look on her face, and she looked somehow familiar. As if he ought to know her from somewhere.

But they passed by and into the bailey, and in the ensuing flurry of work he forgot all about her. The King would be here three days from now, castle scuttlebutt went. They had to make ready.

*****

Leiliana:

Seahold. A hold, by the sea. Would it kill the Fereldens to allow a little poetry to enter their souls? For instance, the Circle Tower's other name was Kinhold. They might as well have called it "My Brother-In-Law's House" and have been done with it.

Back in Ferelden, and she was remembering some things she'd forgotten about the place. How it smelled, for instance. "Wet dog" was actually putting it kindly. And here, in one of the wilder parts of the country, where ancient forests drank the constant mist and rain and the trees grew large out of all proportion, it was also very, very muddy.

But Seahold held a little town within its walls, and welcomed visitors. She could probably turn a tune and a tale into a warm place to sleep and what passed for a good meal, both of which had been lacking on the road from Orlais. She had promised Kathil she would return, and now that her business in Orlais was settled, it was time to do so, perhaps for a year or two. Denerim was still weeks away, but she might be able to find a caravan going that way now that she was through the truly wild mountains that stood between her home country and the one she had helped save.

She stepped off the road as a group of armed men rode past on horses. Grey Wardens, from the shield on the one in front. Nobody else dared carry a shield emblazoned with griffons, especially not now. One of the ones in back looked over at her as he passed, and she felt a shock of recognition.

She never forgot a face. Even if the last time she had seen that face had been in the Circle Tower, almost four years ago now. Even if the armor was different.

Cullen? What are you doing here?

Curiouser and curiouser, as one of the old tales went. Perhaps she would end up staying for a few days. Long enough, at least, to find out why the Chantry had sent one of its own to the Grey Wardens. They had only let Alistair go when their hands had been forced. Had Cullen been conscripted? Or had the situation here changed far more than she thought?

I can stay a few days, just to see.