Author's note: Thank you for the reviews and the favorites! Wow, I'm so happy you guys liked it. Here's a new chapter and it comes with a twist! =^_^=
The halls of Redcliffe castle were dim and dreary, lit only by a handful of low-burning torches in metal brackets lining the walls. Amerana's mood was as dismal as the hallway. Riordan's words burned darkly in her mind.
A Grey Warden would have to die.
It would be her, Amerana knew. She would be the one to take the final blow, to spend her young life in the effort and sacrifice herself for the good of all of Ferelden.
Riordan himself was an experienced Grey Warden with many years left to him, and no matter what she personally thought of the man, he was needed, too important to die unless there was no other way.
Loghain, for all he was a newly minted Grey Warden, with the darkspawn draught still burning through his veins like tar, had been King Maric's friend and Ferelden's finest general. His life was precious for all the experience he carried in the dark reaches of his mind, despite the recent developments.
No, it would have to be her. Especially with Alistair's refusal to have anything more to do with the Grey Wardens despite all his earlier promises.
She was the youngest Warden in Ferelden, and though she had the most years left to her she had neither experience nor might nor special magic beyond the standard spells she had learned at the Circle. There was, in fact, nothing to her young being other than the accident of her high birth, and even that had been the cause of ridicule among the other apprentices.
Amerana knew her own worth well. It didn't add up to much.
The loss of her family had changed her from a loved but disinherited mage daughter into just another mage, just another Grey Warden with no special talents. And her brief spell of a life was coming to an end.
If only she had Alistair to talk to... but no. He'd made his feeling about her quite clear after she'd spared Loghain's life. His words still burned in her ears. Alistair would have understood, but her Alistair, not this foreign stranger betrothed to the queen and half a country away. She would have to depend on herself to see her duty done.
A hot tea splashed on her hand, and another. She had not meant to cry! Yet the tears came like an unstoppable river over a broken dam, roaring in her heart and mind and spilling over her pale cheeks. She had never dreamed her life would end like this. It had all seemed so much simpler when Duncan had taken her to Ostagar. Her objective had been clear, then: kill the darkspawn, and try not to die. But now the second of her objectives was as moot as a tranquil mage. She would die soon, she must die soon, because her duty demanded it. There was no other way.
Her mouth felt like old paper, dry and dusty, her tongue a parchment, and unsaid words written upon it. She walked the remainder of the corridor in a dreadful haze, her arms around herself tightly, feeling her throat closing up around the tight knot of misery lodged there.
In the doorway of her room she merely stood for a moment, blinking, uncomprehending. The firelight crackled gold and bloody red, casting deep moving shadows into every part of the bitterly cold room, and motionless in the flicker and sway of the fire was a figure, voluptuous in stillness and dark against the light.
"Morrigan," Amerana said weakly, clutching the door frame for support. "Why are you-"
"In your room?" Morrigan purred, slinking upward from the edge of the bed and standing with languid grace. "I might have a solution to your problem," she said diffidently, examining the tabletop as though the idea of tables was a foreign one. "The loop to your hole, as it were."
"My problem?" Amerana asked. How could Morrigan know about Riordan? Had she shapeshifted, clinging to the shadows as a spider in her web? Had she listened at the door? Or, Amerana thought with a frisson of uncertainty, had she talked to Loghain?
"Do not be obtuse, Warden," Morrigan snapped impatiently. "And 'tis at your own peril if you are playing coy with me. This may be your only chance!"
"I do not understand you," Amerana uttered, confusion and a haze of misery clinging to her mind like spider silk. "What are you referring to? Do not toy with me, Morrigan," she pleaded. "I just want to be alone tonight."
"Foolish girl," the witch hissed. "Let me speak plainly, then. I know what happens when the archdemon dies. I know a Grey Warden must be sacrificed, and that sacrifice could be you."
Amerana's lips trembled and her heart clenched. "Yes," she whispered, not daring to look up. "You know it is my duty as a Grey Warden."
"Fool!" Morrigan's voice was sharp as a whip, it sliced the air and shattered it into stinging sparks. "I have come to tell you this does not need to be, unless you let this chance pass you and die of your stupidity."
"How dare you!" Amerana took a step back, her cheeks flaming. "Have you ever understood what it means? In war, victory. In peace, vigilance. In death..!"
"There need be no sacrifice!" Morrigan near-shouted, her voice ringing through the cold space like a slap. "Do you truly not see what I am offering you?"
Amerana hesitated.
"A way out!" Morrigan rebuked, throwing her hands up in exasperation. "Think you that Flemeth sent me with you for nothing!"
It had to be a trick, Amerana thought. Surely Riordan would have known if a way to survive existed. But then, Flemeth was older than legends, older than the Circle, and who knew what strange secrets were closely guarded in that small hut? Unless...
"If you mean shirking-" she began, but Morrigan interrupted with a sharp gesture that cut the air.
"'tis is the great gift of choice that I bring you. Normally your choices would be to either flee as a coward or face the possibility that you may die. I offer another alternative."
"I will not flee!" Amerana said hotly.
"Then listen! I offer a way out. A way out for all the Grey Wardens, that there need be no sacrifice."
"How?" Amerana inquired cautiously. Morrigan was an apostate and an apostate's daughter, little better than a maleficar. She was afraid of the possibilities that dark family could offer her.
"A ritual...performed on the eve of battle, in the dark of night," Morrigan continued. At Amerana's frown she tossed her head impatiently, looking graceful and strong like a jungle cat from one of the books Amerana had so loved in the library. "It is old magic, from a time before the Circle of Magi was created."
Wary, Amerana took a step back and let the cold stone of the wall embrace her. "Blood magic?" she whispered?
"Some would call it blood magic," Morrigan waved a hand dismissively, "but that is but a name. There is far more to fear in this world than names."
This was true, Amerana thought, remembering with a shudder the horrors of the past months. The tentacles of the broodmother slithered through her memory. "Go on."
"What I propose is this," Morrigan said with deceptive mildness. "Convince Loghain to lie with me. Here, tonight. And from this ritual a child shall be conceived within me."
Amerana reeled back as if struck. "You want to... to bear Loghain's child?" she asked, not believing her own ears. She hadn't considered Loghain in such a light before, but now that the idea had been brought up...
"I want him to take part in the ritual," Morrigan corrected, keeping her face as cool and smooth as pink marble. If she felt anything at all, now, she made no sign of it. "To preserve the spirit of the Old God. And to spare you both from the death that - otherwise - faces you."
Thoughts wheeled through Amerana's mind. She felt an instant's squeezing hurt at the resurgence of the idea of death, no matter how necessary. Or...? "What will you do then?" she ventured, a small quaver in her voice. "After...?"
"You will not see me again," Morrigan reassured her, her mouth as pink as the rest of her face. When Amerana was silent for long moments, Morrigan moved, still half-silhouetted against the firelight. "Speak with Loghain," she suggested quietly. "And return to me with an answer. Night is slipping away from us even now, and time grows short."
Some twenty minutes later, a single hot tear rolled its way down Amerana's cheek as she huddled in the library of Redcliffe Castle. How could she have thought Loghain would listen to her? She was just a foolish girl to him, a foolish girl with foolish concerns that meant nothing to him at all. It had taken all of her courage to stand outside his room and knock upon the wood of his door, had taken more courage than she knew she possessed when his deep, gruff voice called upon her to enter. And then to be denied! So sharply, and after so little conversation! She'd not even managed half of her explanation of Morrigan's offer when he'd ejected her from his room in a towering fury, roaring his outrage as it burned in her ears. And now nothing! For all her effort, for all she had done, to be denied so cruelly now...
She could weep.
She did weep.
She buried her face in her hands and sobbed freely, unconcerned with who might hear. To have given so much and to get nothing but a snarl of dismissal and a door nearly slammed on the tip of her nose for her trouble!
"To lie with..." Loghain's nostrils flared and he didn't so much as finish the sentence. "Get out."
"But..."
"Out, Warden!" he shouted, standing so suddenly that Amerana took a step back.
And now she would die in the battle, her soul consumed by the Archdemon. There wouldn't even be anything of her left to wander the Fade, nothing to pass on to the Maker's side. Less than a wraith, less than a drifting spirit...
Amerana gulped, shuddering with the force of her sobs.
o+o+o
Loghain glared at the closed door of his room savagely. The cheek of that girl! To imagine he would want to have a sordid interlude with her, when she was young enough to be his daughter, younger than Anora, even. She had stuttered and stumbled over her words and the hem of her silken emerald robes, her lips trembling and her eyes shining wetly in the lamplight. There was even something vaguely appealing about that picture, had she not been so damn young! The utter ridiculousness of her idea and the timing of it stroked his annoyance to new heights, however.
The way she had all but run out of his chambers still nagged at him as he lay twisting and turning on his hard bed. Sleep would not claim him tonight. He yearned for its touch but it eluded him again and again, like it so often did these days.
He had never slept well on his own, and after Celia's death insomnia had become a frequent guest at night. Images and memories passed before his inner eye, demanding his attention and rousing emotions he was helpless to control when in the grip of fatigue and worry.
Riordan's words caused him no apprehension. A death did not trouble him. He had expected it for years now, and although he would not shirk his last duty, some treacherous part of him was almost looking forward to being with Celia and Maric again.
And answer to the Maker for his many crimes.
A new tug of annoyed guilt tore at his guts. He shouldn't have let the girl go like that without an explanation. She had seemed distraught, and they all needed to be at their best on the day of the battle.
With a sigh and a muttered curse he slipped out of bed, shivering as his feet hit the freezing stones of the floor and dressed as quickly as his cold-numb fingers would allow him. Where would the chit go? She was the quiet, bookish sort, and her Circle Tower upbringing would likely cause her to take shelter in the most familiar room of the Redcliffe castle.
The library it was, then.
Outside his chamber the hallways were dim and freezing cold, and utterly uninviting. If he were to get turned about in this maze of a castle, he knew, there could well be knives in the darkness awaiting him. He had few enough allies, he realized with a pang of distant remorse. And now, perhaps, he had alienated the one who had been kindest to him when she needn't have been, against her own inclination and against her own best interests. She had sacrificed her budding love with Alistair to save him.
Loghain, having given up love once, knew how deeply it could sting, how long the pain could sit in one's soul like a stone, forcing all the softer human emotions to make way for its implacable presence.
The soft, gentle sounds of a soul distraught pierced the gloom. Loghain followed on feet light as a cat's, heading in the direction of the noise. Perhaps he could right this small wrong, then. Perhaps he wasn't so far gone as he had begun to believe.
He found Amerana doubled over by a meager fire, face hidden by her hands and her fingers glimmering with tears. She seemed so fragile, then, so small and unassuming. Could this really have been the woman who had caused him such grief and strain over the last months?
His knee cracked as he approached; her head snapped up and he saw that her great green orbs were red with tears, the tracks of them streaming down her white face and over the smooth swoop of her pale cheeks. "L-Loghain," she gasped, surprised and not a little mortified. She wiped delicately at her tears, stiffening her posture. She was a soldier through and through, he thought, admiring. She would not admit to her own feminine weaknesses, even though it must cause her considerable pain.
Such a paradox, he thought, intrigued. Capable of such steel, and such silk. She was a mystery.
He wanted to solve her.
"It has occurred to me," he began carefully, "that our previous conversation may have been..." Abrupt. Curt. Terrible. "Less than pleasant," he said, settling for the path of least blame.
"You shouted at me," she said, wounded.
Loghain felt a pang. "You surprised me," he said, hoping it sounded conciliatory enough. "I was unprepared for your forwardness. I had no idea you felt that way about me," he admitted ruefully. Why he'd behaved in such an incendiary manner to a simple offer of a night's company... Maker knew it had been a long time, but surely he wasn't such a beast that it would be out of the question?
"Y-You?" she stuttered, her face flushing to a deep crimson. "But, no!"
Loghain frowned, taken aback. "I beg your pardon?"
"Oh," she all but moaned, hiding her blushing face in her hands and gasping through her sobs. "I'm sorry, I... you didn't... Oh, Maker, I'm so sorry!"
Thoroughly confused, Loghain stepped closer to the fireplace and what little warmth it offered. "You needn't apologize," he said with a sigh and leaned against the wall, tiredness weighing down his limbs.
"I... it... it wasn't you. I mean, it wasn't me," Cousland stuttered without looking up.
"Well, that explains it all, then," Loghain muttered and raised his voice in a somewhat plaintive "would you care to elaborate, Warden?"
"There was. Morrigan," Cousland said hesitantly. "She. There was. She knows of a ritual. She says it will save us all when we fight the archdemon." Her voice came with more assurance as she progressed in her explanation. She had even begun sneaking glances at him. "She says the ritual involves..." and there she lost her forward momentum again, turning her face from him.
"Just spit it out," Loghain said in exasperation. How bad could it be?
"It involves you lying with her and siring a child," she said in a rush.
Oh. That bad.
Speechless, Loghain drew a hand over his face, but her words failed to rearrange themselves into a more convenient memory. "You are not joking, are you?" he asked but one look at her blushing, miserable expression told him that she was serious.
"I've never heard of such a ritual," he said and sank heavily into a chair. "Could she have lied to you? What magic is that? What is she hoping to accomplish?"
"She wants to," her face screwed up in a visible attempt to remember, "to preserve the spirit of an Old God."
"An Old God," Loghain repeated, his tongue feeling numb in his mouth. It was, perhaps, the last thing he would have expected. Under normal circumstances he would have dismissed the Cousland girl a second time, but these were far from normal circumstances. An Old God, he repeated to himself, and pushed up from the chair, which creaked. "I believe," he began, feeling very tired already, "that we should go speak with the witch. I would hear this from her myself."