CHAPTER TWO: NOMADS


"This is the land where the sylvans sigh, where the wind sings, where the Elvhen roam.
Do not stray here, for you are not welcome.
You are not of the People, and you are forbidden."


Helene

All was quiet within the south of the forest. The occasional ebb and flow of a slight breeze tousled the branches of the Brecilian trees and whipped at the outcroppings of stone in the hillside. The birds did not twitter nor crow, sing nor warble, and the Halla remained solemn in their silence as though they, too, had foreseen what lay ahead.
Sat with her legs folded beneath her, a pair of milk-white, point-tipped ears knifing through her hair, was a young Dalish by the name of Helene. Here she rested, calmly, a longbow curved elegantly in her lap while she waxed the bowstring precisely and efficiently, lost in her focus.
A few yards away, nestled amongst decaying foliage and the withering outreach of a single elfroot, was her pack, which happened to currently be filled with miscellaneous herbs and some bread tucked into a cloth for a light meal later on in the day. At that moment, however, her companion was making headway towards the rough leather rucksack on the ground with a grin tugging at the corners of his lips, distorting the sepia tattoo that framed them.
"Tamlen," Helene broke the silence, not even raising her head. She felt more so than spotted her friend closing in on her goods. "I'm afraid you'll have to be much stealthier next time, lethallin,"
"Creators, do you have eyes in the back of your head?"
Helene quirked a smile but didn't answer, simply finished caring for her weapon before holstering it tenderly, reaching over her shoulder to check how seamlessly she could withdraw an arrow from her quiver. Once satisfied, she glanced to her companion, who was brushing his mop of shaggy blond hair out of his eyes.
They were out hunting, which in itself encompassed many activities. Hunting for game, scouting for any signs of shemlen or Templars, reconfirming their territory. They were to assess whether or not remaining here would be a threat to the clan, though Helene had already heard rumours that their Keeper wished to move on. Something about unrest to the south and some disturbances in the north-west… about darkspawn….
"Let us be off, Tamlen," Helene said shortly, straightening to her feet and making her way out of the clearing, brushing back a fern that was almost the same size as she. She didn't wish to think about threats to the clan, not on such a nice day as this.
Tamlen, who'd collected her pack on her behalf, suddenly grew serious despite his previous playfulness, his blue-grey eyes turning almost silver in focus. "Ma nuvenin, lethallan," He said, lightly placing his hand in a patting gesture between her shoulder blades before overtaking her and scouting on ahead.
Helene watched him go, exasperated. Tamlen was all fun and games as soon as they called for a break, but the 'Last of the Elvhen' façade won out when he was in hunt-mode. She knew what he was hoping for. He wanted a human to initiate an attack, demanded a fight with a trespasser. On days like these he almost sought them out, and as much as Helene cared for Tamlen it embittered her feelings towards him. He did not have to prove to her his love of the clan by returning with the head of an innocent. Shemlen or not, they were individuals as much as they were. No, unlike the others, Helene did not agree with targeting humans. Merrill was the only one who shared her view, which was almost unexpected. Helene forged on through the foliage behind Tamlen, reflecting. Merrill, their Keeper's First, despite all her desires to reclaim their lost culture and history, did not bear a keen prejudice against humans. The three of them had grown up together, as they all had in the clan, and Merrill provided the appropriate balance to Tamlen's brooding hate.
Helene was snapped from her thoughts when, without warning, Tamlen started running.
She glanced up quickly, lips parted in shock. She knew better than to question his actions, however. Whatever quarry he was tracking should not be startled. She followed him, light and agile on her feet. The two of them barely made any noise as they dashed on, back onto the path that wound like a vein through the body of the forest.
Tamlen withdrew his bow, and Helene followed suit, though she did not like how tense with adrenaline he seemed. Her actions were hollow, copycat. It didn't appear he was tracking wildlife, that was for certain.
When her friend stopped up ahead of her, Helene did too, he storming out into the open and she hidden by the brush. Her bow was held low and unthreatening – she wanted to assess the situation first from a few feet back before charging in.
She heard the pound of feet on the forest floor, gasping, and then caught sight of a figure sliding then tumbling into view. Tamlen had run right into a desperate, winded human male, whose flame red hair was mussed atop his head, eyes wild. "It's a Dalish!" The man cried back to the two men that came to a slow halt behind him, gesturing, frustrated, at the elven male before them.
Tamlen narrowed his eyes. "And you three are somewhere you shouldn't be," He formulated his words with conviction, cold and void of mercy. He'd armed his bow, arrow pulled back ready to fire, shot aimed at the floored man.
"Let us pass, elf, you have no right to stop us," The elder of the shemlen trio barked as his companion helped the cowering man to his feet.
Tamlen positively glowered, holding his bow more threateningly. "No? We will see about that, won't we?" His tone was mock casual, but threatening. He stared the trespassers down, making them step back with just a glance.
Helene sighed, flexed her arms and rubbed an ache in the juncture between her neck and shoulder. Tamlen… the situations you get me into. She took up an offensive stance to match her partner, albeit a badly duplicated one. An empty threat. She stepped up behind him before sidestepping into the fray.
Tamlen glanced at her quickly out of the corner of his eye, faltered, then composed himself and turned back. Helene could practically see him swell with some unknown emotion, perhaps pride. No doubt testosterone and adrenaline had kicked in, and he thought to show off. "You're just in time, I found these humans lurking in the bushes. Bandits, no doubt," He pulled the arrow and bowstring back, ready to fire.
The humans recoiled, horror plain on their rugged faces. "We aren't bandits, I swear!" One said, cowering. "Please don't hurt us," They seemed to stumble back in unison, one trembling so much so that Helene believed he was about to wet his breeches.
Tamlen began to advance on them, forcing them back along the trodden route, and Helene, with a heavy heart, followed him. She maintained a poker face, but her eyes were soft and yielding.
"You shemlen are pathetic." Tamlen spat. "It's hard to believe you ever drove us from our homeland."
"W-W-We've never done nothing to you Dalish!" The dark-haired male at the back objected, a quiver in his voice. "We didn't even know this forest was yours!"
It isn't… Helene thought almost sadly, just as Tamlen let out a sound that was supposed to be a laugh. It didn't sound friendly. "This forest isn't 'ours', you fool. You stumbled too close to our camp. You shems are like vermin, we can't trust you not to make mischief." He shifted position, glanced quickly over his shoulder at Helene. His eyes lightened but their intensity remained. He was still Tamlen, still her childhood friend, no longer a distant hunter that was unreachable. He was not deaf to reason. "What do you say, lethallan? What should we do with them?"
Helene's dark eyes were imploring. "Let them go, Tamlen." She said. "You judge humans too harshly,"
"Wh-?" His brows had furrowed, but now rose in surprise. "Lethallan?"
Helene's face was steely with moral righteousness, and she lowered her bow to prove a point. "These humans are not our enemies," She looked to them, then, and raised her chin in a sharp gesture. A 'speak now' prompt. "What is your business here?"
The men relaxed somewhat, but not fully. "L-Look, we didn't come here to be trouble, we just found a cave." The redhead gibbered, making surrendering gestures with his hands, palms out.
The older, stockier one to his left agreed, nodding vigorously. "– Yes, a cave, with ruins like I've never seen! We thought there might be, uh…" He trailed off, suddenly uncomfortable.
"Treasure?" Tamlen prompted. "So you're more akin to thieves than actual bandits," He still had not lowered his bow.
Helene narrowed her eyes somewhat, but not cruelly. "We know this forest…" she said in what she hoped was certainty, but it came out as though she doubted that that were really true. "There are no caves… no ruins…" Are they lying?
"But—ahh, I have proof!" The man opposite her proclaimed. "Here, we found this just inside the entrance," He pulled an object – too big to be a pebble, too small to be a tablet – out of his pocket. Instead of handing it to Helene, he handed it to Tamlen, who tetchily sheathed his arrow and let his bow fall to his side, clutching onto it so tightly with one hand that his knuckles turned white. The human knew whom he was struggling to convince, at least.
Tamlen frowned, his tattoos seeming to curve with the lines of his cheek, as he examined it. "This stone has carvings…" He commented, before blinking fervently. "Is this- elvish? Written elvish?"
"There's- There's more in the ruins. We didn't get very far in, though…"
Helene glanced at the strange artefact curiously. "How do you know that that's elvish, Tamlen?" She asked. Their language was broken, and no longer fluent. A few salvaged words or phrases here and there, but always spoken, never written. It was just another thing lost to them now, like Arlathan.
"I'm not sure… but it has to be," Tamlen said, fingering the grooves of the glyphs and accented letters. "It looks similar to passages in Merrill's and the Keeper's books…" He glanced up then, as if suddenly registering something the trio had said. "Wait. Why could you go no further in?"
The men's hands shook at their sides, balled up into fists. One looked away, one looked at the ground, and the other- he faced Tamlen squarely, pale. "There was a demon! It was huge, with black eyes! Thank the Maker we were able to outrun it."
Tamlen sniffed in dismissal, and chuckled. "A demon. Where is this cave?" His tone was flat, incredulous.
"Just off to the west, I think. There's a cave in the rockface and a huge hole just inside."
Helene's dark eyebrows rose. A 'huge' hole? How did we not see this before? Fenarel and the others did not mention anything from their previous scouts…
Tamlen bit the inside of his lip in wonder, tossing the artefact into the air before catching it distractedly with one hand. "Well, do you trust them?" He asked. "Should we let them go?"
Helene looked to the humans, brushed some stray strands of pale-blonde hair out of her eyes, and nodded once. "You've frightened them enough. They won't bother us now," She said surely, slinging her bow onto her back, affectively disarming herself.
Tamlen seemed to sag with the weight of—disappointment, Helene suspected, but nevertheless he gestured with his head towards the path. "Run along then, shems, and don't come back until we Dalish have moved on."
To say they left quickly would have been an understatement. "Of course! Thank you! Thank you!" They gasped as they sprinted off, occasionally glancing back to check the two elves were not primed to shoot. They vanished quickly within the trees, which grew close together here.
Tamlen, too, sheathed his bow but kept his grip on the artefact. He watched his prey go almost sadly.
"Well, shall we see if there's any truth to this story?" He asked Helene finally, who was now busy plucking an elfroot from the ground. She glanced back at him.
He shrugged. "These carvings make me curious,"
Helene extended a prompting hand, and Tamlen understood that she wanted her pack back. He shrugged it off of his shoulder and handed it to her, whereby she proceeded to store the elfroot away ready to grind it into a poultice later. At first she showed no signs of acknowledging him, but then after a moment she replied: "What about Merrill?"
"What about her?"
She flashed him a look. "Would she not want to see this? And shouldn't we inform the Keeper?"
Tamlen smiled infectiously, tightening the buckles on his greaves. "We can… check it out first." He spoke tentatively. "Then if we find anything, we can let the Keeper know. We can always bring Merrill back later,"
Helene shook her head and straightened, ducking beneath the low branches of a nearby oak and pressing on ahead, as though returning to camp. "I would rather have Merrill's magic with us, if there really is a 'demon',"
She didn't catch the look Tamlen gave her then, an almost sympathetic, exasperated look. "You don't really believe those shems,do you?"
"They were running, Tamlen. Running into you, not away from you. Running from something,"
"Right, well then, if there is a demon then we kill it, and we save the clan. Imagine the look on Fenarel's face!" He exclaimed eagerly, moving to catch her arm. "Please, lethallan? Let's have a little bit of an adventure,"
Helene stopped, feeling a turning in the pit of her stomach. This went against all her better judgement. Tamlen had a terrible habit of getting them both into situations; he had done so ever since they were children. Once, when they could not have been more than six or seven, he'd almost run Merrill directly into the path of a Templar, forcing the camp to move on.
She didn't agree with this, even if a part of her was desperately curious. Cautiousness meant survival, and that instinct always quashed her wonder. But… if she didn't go with him, she knew he'd go alone, and she couldn't chance that.
"Then…. let us be off," She said heavily.
Tamlen grinned and set off ahead of her, not looking back to check she was following. He knew she would. Helene shook her head once more with disappointment, and took off after him. She could not explain the dread that coursed through her, could not describe why gravity had seemed to put more pressure on her body.
They walked in silence for a long time, clambering down a steep hill expertly, navigating the off-path trek to the west. Sunlight spotted the vast, green woodland around them, trickling through breaks in the canopy above. Some of these trees were no doubt millennia old, towering up into the heavens, some with such a wide girth that it would take at least five elves, linking hands, to wrap around them. Somewhere a cricket chirped, elsewhere an adder hissed in the nettles.
They eventually encountered a winding route, studded with slanted columns and arches that spiralled around a pitfall, one that must have been near thirty feet deep. Halfway down the fissure, water trickled into a pool at the base, a minute waterfall that spurted and bubbled. In the distance, below the line of the horizon, a giant willow partially shrouded a cliff-face. Helene did not recall this area from any time before. She'd heard stories of becoming addled in the woods, of forest spirits fooling mortals into walking in circles, or forcing them to outright miss areas that the forest did not want to reveal, but she had never heard of such trickery being extended to the elven.
The path was uneven, made up of natural 'steps' of earthen mounds. Awkward to navigate, and dangerous if you lost your footing. Clambering down from one mound to another, Helene moved ahead of Tamlen. She was defter than he was, and she wanted to judge the terrain.
Tamlen stepped back, watching her go. As she moved lithely, she tipped her head in the direction of the path they'd come, surveying the beauty of the forest, her high ponytail bobbing as she moved. For one moment she dispelled her sense of apprehension, and her face softened at the scenic view. For one moment, her pride at being Dalish knew no bounds. Places such as these were where they belonged, allied with nature.
Her alabaster skin flushed with colour, pronouncing her high, sweeping cheekbones. Her jet-dark eyes sparkled with an inner light that blackness should not possess, warm despite their colour. Eyes that you could fall in, be swallowed in. Her platinum blonde hair caught the sunlight, and shone – one moment silver, the next moment gold. In that instant, she had never looked more beautiful to Tamlen, and he felt his swollen heart throb in his chest. "Helene…"
She turned. "Yes?"
Tamlen hesitated, toed the ground he stood on, before he judged the drop down to the next mound. He slipped down next to her, careful. Much as he wanted to admit he'd been watching her, wanted to tell her how much she meant to him, he couldn't. Now was not the time for such fanciful talk. Instead, he asked the question that had been bothering him since they'd let the three shemlen escape. "I… didn't take you for a human-sympathiser,"
He half-expected her to tense up defensively, but he should have known she was not the type. Her eyebrows rose slightly. "Why not?"
"They're not of the People," He said dismissively, unable to look her in the eye. Her mercy was humbling, and he didn't feel worthy.
Helene couldn't shrug if she tried. She had an upright, dignified posture and an air of such serenity that when she made the gesture with her shoulders it managed to be graceful. "They're not our enemies,"
Tamlen pressed a palm to the rising cliff-face to their right, stopping himself from looking down into the pit to their left. "But they're not our friends either,"
"Tamlen, the Keeper understands," Helene pressed, letting out a breath that was nearly, nearly a sigh.
"The Keeper wouldn't understand if they brought harm to our clan,"
At this Helene simply turned, no longer wanting to argue, and carried on descending. Eventually, after a minute or so of the two of them continuing onwards and downwards, she said, changing the conversation: "We will be moving on soon,"
"And what a trek that will be…" Tamlen groaned, picking up a stick and thwacking it against the rock-face. "Are you— looking forward to the Free Marches? To Sundermount?"
Helene looked around as if to find her answer amongst their surroundings, then glanced up at the sky as though it were not the same sky she would see from Sundermount. "I'll… miss Ferelden," she admitted.
Tamlen nodded. "I as well. But the Keeper seems sure we'll be settled there for a few years, at least. The graves of our ancestors are there. It will be good to pay respect,"
"Yes," Helene said, only half-listening. Something had drawn her attention. A wolf howled, not so far away. It was clear Tamlen did not hear it, or if he did, he didn't acknowledge it.
Helene tensed, hand itching to clasp her bow.
"Lethallan… everything's fine. You'll see,"
They reached the bottom of the path, dead leaves rustling in the breeze that struck as if from nowhere. Helene bristled. Breath of the creators… she thought internally, for there should be no wind in this depression. It was then that the wolves appeared, leaping from the ferns and clumps of nettles and deathroot. Two of them, and Helene could make out two or three more behind them. Their eyes were wild, yellow teeth bared, salivating as they growled at the two elves.
Helene withdrew her bow, took a few tentative steps back and tensed, assessing the path her first shot should take. "You spoke too soon, friend," She warned, before the first wolf pounced.