Many thanks to all those of you reading and enjoying this story, especially those who have put the story on Favorites or Alerts and those who have taken the time to leave a review. Each comment is a much appreciated gift, and fits right in the budget, too! This is of necessity a pretty dark chapter, but if you know A Christmas Carol, you know it pays off. (Final chapter will be posted next Wednesday.) In the meantime, whether you're familiar with A Christmas Carol or have never gotten around to reading it, this is a great time to do so. Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate it, and a good weekend to all those who do not!
The shadow stretched forth a dark hand, a finger beckoning to Loghain. He walked toward it, feeling an unmanly tremble in his knees. "Shadow," he whispered huskily, "as your fellows have shown me the past and the present, is it true that you are here to show me the future?"
The shadow's head dipped slightly in what Loghain took to be assent.
"I have learned much already," Loghain said, surprised to find that it was the truth. Many things seemed clearer now than they had been when Maric's dripping ghost arrived this evening. "Take me to what you want to show me."
The spirit expanded, the blackness growing until it enveloped him. Loghain struggled against an overwhelming sense of suffocation.
There was a field of mud spread out before him, the ever-present rain falling into the puddles. As Loghain moved forward, he couldn't at first see what the spirit wanted to show him. And then he saw it, the two mounded graves and the woman who knelt at their side. When he came up next to her, he saw that she was red-haired and pretty. And that she was crying as she laid a single rose on the muddy grave before her.
He recognized the blond elf who came up behind her. It was the Crow he had hired to kill the Grey Wardens. What was he doing here?
"Leliana," the Crow said. "We have to go. Isabela is waiting for us, but she is anxious to get under way. The horde is coming."
"How can I leave him?" The red-head had an Orlesian accent, Loghain noticed. Where had she come from? And whose were these graves?
"Alistair is gone, Leliana," the Crow said, his voice gentle but his hands firm as he tugged her to her feet. "And Donal with him. There is nothing left for you here."
"Didn't Loghain know that by killing the Grey Wardens, he almost certainly doomed us all?"
"Remember that we did not know that until Riordan told us," the Crow answered. "Now, please, Leliana, let him rest. He would not want you to die here, mourning him." The Crow's eyes sought the other grave, apparently the Cousland's, and rested on it for a moment. Then he walked off with the Orlesian red-head leaning against him.
"'Doomed us all'?" Loghain echoed. "What could that mean?" The spirit didn't respond—it just stood there in all its empty blackness. Loghain snorted. "Typical Antivan dramatics," he said scornfully. But deep down, he didn't believe it. Something told him that he wouldn't have been shown this scene if there hadn't been a lesson to take away from it. He looked at the two sad graves, all alone in the rain and mud, forgotten. Was this really what he contemplated doing with these two young men? Executing them? To whose benefit? He didn't seem to know anymore, he who had been so sure.
Turning toward the spirit, he started to tell it he was ready to go, but the blackness met him before he could speak. Loghain felt as if he were swallowing the darkness, choking on it, and he fought to breathe within it.
At first, he couldn't tell that the shadow had receded. The darkness didn't lift as he had expected it to, and he blinked hard, trying to clear his vision. But it didn't clear, and he looked up into lowering dark grey skies. He was standing in the Alienage, but no one was there. It was completely deserted. The buildings leaned at crazy angles, there was evidence of recent fires, and even the usual mass of stray dogs and orphaned children was missing.
Wind whipped between the buildings, chilling Loghain even though he wasn't really standing there. "Where is everyone?" he asked the shadow spirit, but it didn't—couldn't?—speak. And he didn't need it to; he knew the answer. No one was here because he had sold them to the Tevinters. The elves were gone from Denerim—and he was the one who had sent them away.
As he stood looking around, shoulders hunched against the cold he couldn't feel, he heard voices. When the owners of the voices came closer, he recognized them—sycophants who hung on every word of those more powerful than they. A pinched-faced woman with black hair that hadn't been that color naturally in years and a balding, heavyset man. The woman was Bann Esmerelle of Amaranthine, but the fat man's name escaped him.
"Is it safe?" the man asked, looking around him nervously. "What if there are still darkspawn here?"
"They've come and gone," Esmerelle said. "What remains is fair game for those of us who are left alive." She walked a few more steps, curling her lip in disgust at the debris under her boots. "I always did say that what was needed in these Alienages was to get rid of everyone, burn it down, and start over. Look how those low creatures lived."
"No matter what you can say about King Loghain the Last," the balding man said, "at least he rid Denerim of those pesky elves."
"Yes." Esmerelle looked appraisingly around. "Once the Orlesians finally end this dreadful Blight, we can rebuild here. I believe it would make a lovely estate. And after that … we can clear out all the other Alienages and perhaps see about removing those Dalish, as well."
"An excellent idea!" The balding man looked at her eagerly, awaiting her approval of his approval. It didn't come. Esmerelle didn't bother to acknowledge him. She moved on through what was left of the Alienage, the balding man's head bobbing with his enthusiasm for everything she said.
"The Orlesians!" Loghain exploded, staring after them. "Why in the name of Andraste is a Fereldan noble looking to the Orlesians to end the Blight?" He looked indignantly at the spirit, which didn't respond, unless what Loghain took to be a deepening of its darkness was some kind of answer. "I suppose you'll say somehow that was my fault," he muttered, feeling like a chastened child. Was that what the red-headed woman had meant when she said Loghain had doomed them all? Were the Grey Wardens somehow necessary to end the Blight? Would killing the Grey Wardens open the door for the Orlesians to retake a Blight- and civil war-ravaged Ferelden? He groaned, his head pounding with unanswered questions.
The spirit's head continued to face him—or, at least, he thought it did; the absence of features made it hard to tell for sure—and it looked disapproving. Or was that his imagination?
Loghain sighed heavily, searching for the anger that always sustained him, but the only anger he could find within himself was directed toward … himself. "Take me to the next place," he muttered sullenly. "It has to be better than this."
He had an even harder time not striking out at the enveloping blackness than he had before. More than anything, he wanted his corporeal form back, wanted to find something—someone—to hit. Here, Loghain thought despairingly, was where everything had gone wrong. He was a soldier, a man who wanted only to be pointed toward an enemy he could fight. And instead he had spent his life trying to understand politics, to run a country. No wonder he had bollocksed things up so royally.
The darkness receded partially—a dim light pierced through, along with the thin wail of a baby. He moved through the dimness to see a scrawny little infant lying in a drawer on the floor, shrieking feebly. Even to Loghain's inexperienced eye, it was clear the child was ill. But where was its mother?
He looked around the room, and he saw a woman sprawled on the bed. She had blonde hair wildly tangled, and on the parts of her body exposed, he could see blackened flesh. The woman was far gone with darkspawn taint. She stirred under the insistent cry of the baby, turning her head on the pillow, and Loghain cried out in horror, tripping over his own feet in his attempt to back up and somehow flee this room.
The woman in the bed was his daughter, barely recognizable under the black splotches that nearly covered her face. "No," Loghain whispered, going down on his knees next to the bed. "No, no, no. Spirit!" he said desperately, looking at the shadow as it hovered in the corner of the room. "Please, no." He turned to look at the child, his grandson, as its wails began to subside. Now that he looked closer, Loghain could see under the edge of the filthy grey blanket a black splotch on the baby's delicate chest, and he found himself weeping as he tried to reach out to touch the child and couldn't.
As he knelt there, watching as the baby's breathing began to slow, the door rattled, and a heavy-set woman came in, followed by a skinny little man with greasy black hair.
The woman looked around the room, clucking her tongue. "I'll never get the smell out. And we'll have to burn all the bedding. We shouldn't have taken her in in the first place."
"She was carrying a rather large amount of gold," the little man said.
"Good thing gold doesn't carry taint," the woman said, a smug smile crossing her face. She looked dispassionately down at the infant, now still in its makeshift bed. "Neither of these'll be needing that gold any longer."
"You think she was really the Queen?" the man said.
"Poor lass, if she was," said the woman. "Her father sure didn't help her none."
"They say he's still out there somewhere, thinkin' he can stop the Blight."
The woman snorted. "Too late for that now. Not enough of Ferelden left to be worth saving."
Loghain watched, horrified and grief-stricken, as the two left the room, only to return with three big, burly men who bundled the two bodies in sheets and carried them out. Two of those men showed black splotches of taint on their skin, as well, he noted, and he wasn't sorry to see it.
He almost welcomed the black shadow as it spread over him this time. Part of him wished it would swallow him completely, take him to the Fade where he could relieve his frustrations by punching Maric out once and for all. Because if all this was anyone's fault, it was clearly Maric's. Damn Maric, he thought, angrily wiping a tear away.
When the shadow receded, he found himself on a battlefield. The most horrific battlefield he'd ever seen, which was saying something. The sights and smells were enough to turn his stomach—and he was glad for it. Nausea was easier to bear than grief.
It was immediately clear that the darkspawn weren't winning this battle—they had already won. A small, pathetic remnant of an army stood against the horde, but anyone could have seen that they were already defeated. He and the spirit stood, looking down at the battle, watching as man after man was overpowered and taken down. It was obvious to Loghain that these men were sacrificing themselves, clearing the thinnest of paths so that one man, a man in heavy silverite armor, could battle his way to the Archdemon as it shrieked and screamed.
He got there with a few men still remaining to support his attack on the Archdemon. By the time Loghain saw himself astride the dragon's neck, all the other men were gone, sucked down into the great mass of the darkspawn. Loghain on the field raised his sword, driving it straight into the brain of the Archdemon. It screamed, falling over, Loghain's sword still embedded into its skull. The watching Loghain felt his chest expand. There was hope, then. The Blight could be ended; he could end it for his people.
And then he watched as the dragon's body shriveled away until it was nothing more than a dead genlock on the field, and a nearby hurlock rose into the air, a blue mist swirling around it. The hurlock grew, expanding bit by bit until it was no longer a hurlock, but a dragon. And Loghain knew utter defeat as he watched himself, kneeling on the field in exhaustion, caught up in those massive jaws. He saw his own neck snap as the Archdemon shook him in midair.
His heart pounded, and for a moment he couldn't breathe. Would this be his end? To die like Cailan on a tainted battlefield, leaving his country to rot under the darkspawn's feet? He turned to the spirit, falling to his knees, babbling out his desperate prayer. "Please tell me this isn't inevitable. Tell me these scenes can be changed, that I can change. Spirit, break your silence and tell me that this fate, this blackness, does not have to be. Please, spirit!"
The darkness seemed to move, rippling slightly as though the spirit wept. Loghain grasped at this small possibility eagerly.
"Why should you show me all this if there is no way to repair it?" Loghain said, as much to himself as to the spirit. "I have to be able to change this future, to save my country and my grandchild. And Maric's son. Tell me I can do this!" he shouted at the spirit.
The darkness rippled further, nearly shaking.
"I see now that I have been a blind, obsessed fool," Loghain said. "My decisions have brought us to the brink of doom. But I can do better. If I only have the chance, I promise to do better." He looked up at the spirit beseechingly, only to find that the darkness was thinning, receding, until he could see the fire in his bedroom through the dim barrier of what was left of the spirit.
Finally, the spirit was gone, and Loghain was alone.
