Four: Of the Dead, Unquiet

Because like all true believers

I am truly skeptical of all that I have said.

—The World Can Wait, Over the Rhine

Kathil:

"So what you're telling me is that there's no way you can put the memory block back into place."

The First Enchanter stood on the other side of his desk from her, shaking his head. "Not without renewing his addiction to lyrium. And even then, I'm not sure it would work. I would think that Cullen will be more useful as a Grey Warden without the addiction."

She fought not to grind her teeth. She did indulge in a bit of pacing, though if she had been attempting to intimidate Irving she would have forced herself to remain still. "I did mention that he reports directly to me, didn't I? He can't do his job if he hates mages, Irving. A Tower Templar can. A Grey Warden cannot. Not in Ferelden, anyway." She remembered Montclair hissing maleficar in her ear as he ran her through. Her chest still hurt, some mornings.

Irving raised one steel-colored eyebrow. "It seems to me that one's personal feelings about mages have little influence on how well one kills darkspawn. I originally put the memory block on him because we were short on Templars. Greagoir was convinced that Cullen was going to do something...rash, if we did nothing, and the memory block was kinder than imprisoning him. Now he is under your watchful eye, not ours."

"I need him," she said. "And I need him sane." She stopped pacing, turned to face Irving, folded her hands behind her back with her shoulders straight and her head high. (And that was something Leliana had schooled her on for weeks—how to assume that posture and look like an adult restraining her power rather than a child with her hand caught in the cookie jar.) "You tell me how that's going to be accomplished without that memory block."

"The memory spells are not simple. We can do one block of time, no more, and it will not work if there is too much to remind the subject of the memories we have buried." He was watching her, very still indeed. "The spell was probably coming loose even before Cullen went into withdrawal. From what the young man said, you are...intimately connected with what the demons did to him."

"So the answer is no." She eyed the oddly-shaped glass ornament on Irving's desk that was currently holding down a batch of loose parchment. That would make a very satisfying crash against the wall if she threw it. Her fingers curled against each other behind her back, twining together painfully. "So, we just let him suffer?"

Irving shoved his chair back, the wooden legs screeching on the stone, and stood. "Once the lyrium withdrawal is complete, if he lives, he will simply have to do what thousands of others do. Learn to live with it. It is possible, or so I hear."

Kathil reined in her temper, hard. She let the silence lengthen as she breathed. The Veil was starting to feel just slightly shredded, and the two Templars on the door were not Cullen. They would hit her with the cleansing hard and then try to kill her, if they thought she had lost control. "I apologize, First Enchanter," she said, letting the formal term of address put distance between them. "Cullen is a friend, and his talents have been very useful. I mislike the idea of him being in pain that we could alleviate."

"A friend, is he?" Cold electricity ran down her spine. Do not underestimate this man. Irving had not become First Enchanter by being stupid. "Templars. If I could have a word alone with the Grey Warden?" Kathil heard creaks and the sound of metal brushing against metal; she imagined that the two Templars were looking at each other. "You can stay right outside the door, if you feel the need."

The Templars didn't argue, instead clattering out the door and closing it behind them. Irving crossed his arms. "I know you, Kathil," he said, and there was something flinty about his tone. "You would not be so insistent if Cullen were merely a friend. We do keep an eye on attachments forming between mages and Templars."

"We are Grey Wardens, and both of our personal lives are our own." She could not help the edge that had come into her voice. "He is my Templar, Irving. He stands watch over me as much as the Templars here do for the Circle—not just to kill me if I become an abomination, but to prevent me from losing control in the first place. We've worked together for almost half a year, and we've gotten to the point where I trust his judgment. He is not replaceable, and I have to be able to rely on him."

Irving shook his head. "You may not have a choice. I would replace the memory block if I could, Kathil, but maybe it's better that I cannot. Let him be a whole person, Grey Warden. Let him have his whole life."

And there was everything that the Circle never spoke of hanging in the air between them. How there were too many people in this Tower who'd had pieces of their lives excised; childhoods, powers, potentials, souls. How it went beyond mercy into self-mutilation. We cut our hearts out of our chests before anyone else can do so.

She only wished that the part of Cullen's life that had been given back to him was not one that would likely end up making him hate her.

Well, she would work on Irving about Cullen later. For now, she made herself relax. "So, Irving, talk to me about why I'm going to find a bunch of mages and Templars who want to be Grey Wardens at Amaranthine. Not that the Wardens can't use the extra firepower, but whatever possessed the Templars to leave as well?"

Now Irving's countenance went just a little blank, a little wary. "They had their reasons, I believe. It made it easier to convince Greagoir to let those depart who wished to go. The Grey Wardens have done much for us in recent days. It seemed only fair to let the Circle repay the Wardens as best we can."

"But why them? Petra, I know why—too many stories from Wynne. But Kinnon? Hobart? Maker, Kelli? I would never have thought that anything could have pried Kelli out of the Tower! And Cullen told me that both Guaire and Bran went from the Templars. Of all the people—"

"They are gone. Never mind the reasons." Irving sat down again, evidently expecting that the subject was closed. "You can speak to them when you get to Amaranthine."

She spread her hands. "Irving, what is going on? I've been here two days and nobody will talk to me. There are all of ten full enchanters in the Tower at the moment, including me. We're outnumbered by the apprentices three to one. Half a year ago, there were twenty-two mages left. What's happened to everyone?"

He shook his head. "Nothing you can do anything about. If that is all, Grey Warden?"

I'm going to give myself a headache if I keep beating my head against this wall. "It is," she said, trying not to show her frustration. "I will speak with you later." She walked out of his office, nodding to the Templars when she opened the door. She lengthened her stride as she walked down the curved hallway. Irving was making it very clear that she was no longer a mage of the Circle, merely a guest in the Tower. Simply a Grey Warden.

Just the person who saved the Maker-forgotten Circle. She thought, sometimes, that she should have just let Greagoir invoke the Right of Annulment. But then she would never have traveled with Wynne, and Connor would have died. There were days that she wondered if it would have been better just to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. So many had died or been turned, and the whole place felt as though it were dying by inches. The few mages who were left rattled around in the Tower like a child trying to wear her father's armor.

There was movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned and saw a figure disappearing into one of the side entrances to the upper library. That made no sense—she should have passed whoever it was, and she was not so far absorbed in her thoughts as to miss one of the few people left in the Tower. Frowning, she turned and followed the figure.

The library was empty at the moment; it must be shift change, since the two Templar posts in here were vacant. Kathil cocked her head, listening. There—the scrape of a slippered foot against stone. She headed in the direction of the noise. "Hello?" she called. "Is someone there?"

She came around the end of a row of bookcases and stopped dead. The woman who stood with her back to Kathil was tall and slim, wearing the robes of an apprentice mage. Her dark hair fell in a curly mass to her waist. Kathil didn't remember any apprentices with that hair—and most of the current ones were under twelve years old. This was a woman grown, probably old enough to take her Harrowing—

The woman turned.

Kathil's heart seized.

Andraste's knickers—

She was dark of skin and bright of eye, with a long nose and a thoughtfully pursed mouth. She had one hand resting on her chest. And she was familiar, painfully so.

Sati.

"Strange where you find yourself, isn't it?" Sati said, almost cheerfully. "Never thought I would see this place again."

"You—you're dead," Kathil managed, her voice strangled. "You took your Harrowing, and you failed."

"I suppose that's right," she said, almost carelessly. Sati dropped the hand that had been on her chest, revealing a great hole over her heart, the edges bloody and ragged. "I asked you for help, and you refused. Why help your precious little snot-nosed friend, and not me? If I could have escaped, you could have joined me later. I loved you."

"I helped Jowan because I didn't help you, and you died." Kathil's heart was hammering against her ribs. "I couldn't stand to have more blood on my hands—"

"And just look at you now, chouette." Sati's smile held neither affection nor mirth. It was a blade that was like to slit Kathil's throat. "Your hands positively drip. How many people have you killed? Do you even remember?" She toyed with a beaded necklace that wrapped around her throat, running her fingers over the green glass.

"No. I don't." She swallowed. I am going mad. "What are you doing here, Sati? You're dead. I know you're dead, you know you're dead. So why are you talking to me like you're alive?"

Sati shifted where she stood, putting a hand on her hip, and Kathil felt her throat close. That motion was so familiar, so beloved. She had died a little when she'd lost Sati, back in the days before she had started losing so many other things. "Did you know that when I took my Harrowing, the demon that tempted me pretended to be you? You'd changed your mind, you said. You'd done some research. There was a way out. We went to find the door together. I knew it wasn't you, that it couldn't be you, but I wanted to believe. I loved you far too well, Kathil. And now that I've found you..."

Booted footsteps approached. Kathil turned and saw a Templar round the corner. The helmed man stopped. "I thought I heard you talking," he said. She recognized the voice echoing in the helm; it was Carroll. "Was there someone else here?"

She glanced at where Sati had stood. Nobody was there. "Just talking to myself," she said. "Tell me, Carroll. What happened to Keir and Moira? Did they fail their Harrowings?" The two apprentices had been almost ready for their Harrowings when Kathil had left in the spring. Now, nobody would speak their names. "And there are a few younger apprentices missing, too. There was that adorable little elven girl—Ife, I think her name was. I know there was an exodus a month or two ago, but I didn't think they would let apprentices go with those who left."

The Templar's armor creaked as he stiffened. "I...we're forbidden to talk about it, Warden." His voice sounded pained. "Please. Don't ask."

"Who gave that order? Greagoir, or Irving?"

"The Knight-Commander. We're not supposed to talk to you about anything, really."

Kathil folded her arms. "And me without Shale behind me to threaten to crush things you aren't using anyway. Your Highness." She grinned savagely. "By the way, the Antivans don't even have a queen. But put on a dress and we can take you there and see if we can get you in line for the throne. Evidently, being a pretender to the throne is the Antivan national sport."

"That is low, Warden." The Templar removed his helmet and tucked it under his arm. "You fight dirty, you know."

"And I'm alive because of it. Spill, Carroll. I promise I won't tell anyone who told me."

He lowered his voice, glancing over his shoulder. "Honestly, I don't know that much. I mostly get assigned to the docks. I do know what happened to Moira, I was standing at her Harrowing. She used the lyrium font and collapsed, like everyone does—only she just stopped breathing. I think she was dead from the moment she touched the lyrium."

"That's not normal. What did Greagoir say about it, or Irving?"

Carroll shook his head. "Irving didn't say anything, just looked sick and left. Greagoir told the Templars there not to say anything. It was just a failure. Never mind that I don't think she had time to contact a demon in the Fade, and when an apprentice fails the demon always takes their body. She was the second to die in a month, and from the whispers I think Keir had the same thing happen to him. All I really know is that Irving mentioned that it was almost a blessing, the hole Uldred carved through the mages. We don't have any who will be ready for their Harrowings for another year, at least."

"What about the ones who left?" she asked. "I never thought anything could get Guaire out of the Tower."

The Templar grimaced, rubbing the side of his head. "Petra happened. I don't know exactly what went on between those two, Petra's not the type to tease the Templars—" Unlike you, said his sidelong glance at her— "But Petra announced she was leaving and it was like something changed, like a storm blowing over the lake. I mean, looking back, he never said anything about her or any of the mages, but he stood at her Harrowing, and he always seemed to be posted near her."

Stood at her Harrowing. There was a pattern forming there, one that Kathil wasn't sure how well she liked. "And you don't know anything about the missing apprentices, the young ones?"

"All I know is that they died. I helped bury them. We were ordered to say nothing to anyone about them." Carroll shifted, obviously uncomfortable. "They were just kids. I don't remember any of the really young ones dying before, except that boy who fell down the stairs in front of everyone a few years ago. And the ones that died when—well, you know. Uldred." He ran a mailed hand over his hair.

It occurred to Kathil that she never saw any of the apprentices alone, now; they always went around in threes and fours. In fact, nobody in the Tower seemed to want to be alone, ever. Was it possible that she wasn't the only one receiving visits from the dead? She had thought it was the silence of the Tower that had them scared, but...

She shook her head. Carroll was looking a little concerned. "I think I should talk to the Knight-Commander." At Carroll's alarmed look, she added, "Later. And I promise your name won't come into it. I should head back to my room. I take it you're to accompany me?"

"I am." He fell in at her shoulder as she stepped past him towards the hallway. It was so familiar that she almost winced. That was Cullen's place. "Greagoir is going to find out," the Templar muttered. "And then he is going to kill me, have Irving bring me back from the dead, and kill me again."

"If it helps, I'm pretty sure Irving won't learn the necromantic spells. Principle of the thing," she told him. "So he'll only kill you the once."

Carroll chuckled weakly and put his helmet back on. They walked back to the guard quarters in silence, Kathil's mind working. She'd never heard of visitations like she'd received today outside of tall tales. The dead went to the Fade, and then to the Maker's side. They didn't come back.

So there must be another explanation. But what?

*****

Lorn:

He patrols his tall stone territory, stopping to investigate corners and niches, his nose to the ground. This will not be his territory for much longer, his human says, but while he is here it is his, and even though he has been showing the other warhounds all of its secrets, there are some things that he has kept to himself.

Like this garden, which is hidden away in one of what his human always calls the spur towers, where few go. The garden is protected by sheets of glass from the lake storms, and it is always warm even during the darkest of winter days. It is not a garden as he has usually encountered; here most things are grown in boxes on stands, tall enough for the lower parts of the plants to be at his eye level. It makes for very unsatisfying digging, to have to rear up on his hind legs and work the soil from that awkward position.

The garden has grown tangled from neglect, since he was last here. There's a heavy, sharp smell in the air; some of the trees, the ones whose fruits make him sneeze when he tries to bite them, are blooming. Other things are rotting; a whole section of the garden has gone dry and brown and dusty.

But it's still a garden, and it's still got some dirt to dig in. He rears up and plants his front paws on the edge of one of the boxes, snuffling at the soil. Perhaps he can find something to bring back to Fiann, who leaves the dust-knight's side only reluctantly and who is missing out on all the best things about this tall stone place, like the kitchen and the library that has all sorts of old books to sample. (His human has told him that he is only to chew the corners of the books, and put them back when he is done. He believes this is a reasonable restriction.)

Lorn pauses, and raises his head. Underneath the smell of the garden is another scent, a familiar one. He cocks his head and gives an interrogative whine, then gets down from the box and turns, tasting the air.

There.

By a skinny excuse for a tree, a figure—

He is on the battlefield, trotting alongside his human. The darkspawn have retreated for the moment, beaten back by the blades and teeth of their allies. They are patrolling the edges of the field, stepping over bones with shreds of black flesh still clinging to them. The scent of darkspawn blood is everywhere.

He is happy to be here, fighting alongside his human. This was his first real battle, and his human reaches down to ruffle Lorn's ears. "Good boy," his human says, his voice low and gruff. Lorn dances in place, tongue lolling. His human is a knight who guards the pack leader, and sometimes he smells a bit sour, like sadness. His human has a mate and pups back at his den, and he misses them. Lorn approves of the mate and pups. He especially likes the smallest, the girl, who smells a little like fire sometimes. She slips him bits of her dinners, despite being admonished not to feed him.

It is a good day.

Then—

No longer.

The darkspawn rise up around them, and his human draws his blade, and they are fighting, and fighting. Ambush, sings the word in Lorn's blood. His human slips in the mud and goes to one knee, and two of the darkspawn fall on him, and though Lorn is ripping and tearing the darkspawn keep coming.

When the darkspawn are all dead, Lorn goes to nudge his human. Get up.

But his human does not move. Get up.

Lorn knows enough to know that his human is dead, not sleeping. But it is still baffling. He paces around his human, whining. Get up, get up.

His human stays still, and there are ravens landing nearby, croaking derisively to each other. Lorn does not feel well; there is something like burning in his stomach, spreading out to his skin. He vomits, but it does not help.

He lies down next to his human, keeping an eye on the ravens, and waits.

The scent is familiar, the figure familiar, but the last time he smelled this was on the battlefield, and the ravens were hopping closer. "Good dog," says the figure, and Lorn wags his tail, unsure. In his experience, once people die, they mostly do not get up again. And if they do, they are mad, hungry things suitable only for biting and tearing. They do not stand and look and say good dog.

His former human approaches. "Such a good dog, such a brave dog." Step; step again. "I've been looking for you for so long, dog."

But beneath the smell of human is another smell. Rot and lyrium and demon.

Lorn howls and springs forward, fastening his great jaws on the human's throat, or he would if the human was there and not shredding like smoke, like paper, and Lorn crashes into a garden box as the figure wails and vanishes. The box collapses and dumps dirt on Lorn and all over the floor. He kicks his way out from beneath the box and gets to his feet, shaking his head. He spits something small and hard out of his mouth—a little round thing, like the shiny things that the demon wore on its wrist.

The demon is gone as if it never existed, and Lorn is covered in dirt. He sniffs his flank and swipes a mournful tongue over it. He knows what this means.

A bath.

But! There are demons in the Tower, and he will hunt them down and shred them all, every last one. The thought cheers him up immensely. Lorn trots out of the garden, heading towards the stairs and the main part of the Tower. His human needs to know about the demons, and maybe the bath can be put off until after they finish their hunt.

Then maybe he can find and bite whatever is bothering the dust-knight. He whuffs, excited, and breaks into a run.

*****

Zevran:

His Grey Warden was keeping a secret.

Not that this was unusual, so to speak, but it was unlike her not to at least tell him what was going on. He was almost sure it had something to do with Jowan, who was keeping out of sight somewhere in the Tower. But when he tried to pry (gently; Kathil did not take well to being interrogated) she deflected him, telling him that they would need to talk once they left the Tower.

He had no idea what had happened during those five days they had been separated, and it was driving him ever so slightly mad, not knowing. He thought he would suggest a trip to the Spoiled Princess in the evening; Cullen had to stay under the care of the mages, but they did not, and getting out of the Circle Tower might prove a balm to both of their souls. There had been too much friction between them since she had arrived at the Tower, and not the pleasant friction of bedsport.

Thinking of this, he dug through the wardrobe that they had both unpacked their clothing into, looking for the blue shirt that Kathil liked so well. There was a soft sound behind him, and he paused. Again, the sound.

He was not alone.

Zevran straightened and turned slowly. There was a woman crouched on the bed, looking at him. Straight, dark hair in many thin braids framed her lovely face, tilted green eyes and lush lips. She wore a low-cut shirt and trousers that fit her like a second skin, and there was a twist of amusement on that perfect mouth.

Across her neck, a wound gaped like a bloody grin.

She straightened, catching a bedpost in her hand. There were other wounds on her, cuts on the outsides of her forearms, a long slash along her side. None bled. "Afternoon, lover," she said in Antivan, and her voice was a low purr. She shouldn't have been able to speak with that wound in her neck, but that was the least of what was not making sense right now. "Miss me?"

"Rinna." There was a long dagger in his hand, a blade he did not remember drawing. "This must be some foul magic."

"Must it?" She swung around the bedpost, then dropped smoothly to the floor. Ah, she was grace itself; he had almost forgotten. Everything she was depended on that grace. The beads fastened to the ends of her braids clicked together as she moved. "Perhaps I just got bored and came for a visit."

She took a step towards him; her feet were bare, just the same as they had been when he and Talisein had killed her. She is dead. This must be some trick. "You are dead, so either you are a demon or someone has put something genuinely horrific in the water of the Tower," he said, not moving, watching her.

Rinna smiled. "A demon, in a Tower full of Templars? Perhaps a few years ago, when there were still mages foolish enough to invite them. Not today. Perhaps I am merely your conscience, come for a visit. Perhaps we should catch up, lover." She spun in place, her braids flying out and settling with an avalanche of little clicks. She could move entirely silently when she wished; she had spent almost a decade with bells instead of beads in her hair, and she was beaten every time one of her teachers heard a single peal. Every motion she made was deliberate, every sound. "I heard you have a new girl now. Is she as pretty as me, Zevran? Does she taste as sweet as I did?"

"None of that is your business." It was becoming harder to remember that what stood in front of him was a thing, an illusion. It moved like Rinna, spoke like Rinna. "What do you want?"

"Not as pretty as me, then. Pity." Rinna laughed. Click, click, click. "I want nothing. I know things, lover. I know your new girl keeps secrets from you. What sort of thing could she be hiding? Perhaps she is going to leave you. Perhaps she is going to make up with that adorably broody blood mage of hers and go see how well his power works on a King. Or a Queen."

"She would not."

"Wouldn't she? You don't know her as well as you think you do." She bared her teeth at him briefly. "Still. You have not changed, Zevran. Still the same as you were the day that you killed me. Still the elf who corrupts everything he touches. And what you cannot taint, you kill. So, which is she? Is her will to resist what she is becoming crumbling away? Or is she a target?"

Zevran narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean, what she is becoming?"

Rinna touched her fingers to the edge of the wound across her throat. "You know what I mean. You have seen it. You have seen her change, slowly, becoming colder." Her bright eyes held a look of triumph. "You are hers as you were once mine, Zevran. And for both of us, you are the blade that turns in the hand of the wielder."

He moved before he realized he had made the decision to attack her. Rinna spun away from his blade, drawing two knives of her own. "It's time to play, is it?" Her beads clicked, settling in place. "Going to try to kill me again? Poor little Zevran, trapped inside the dying Tower."

Zevran did not reply, only set himself for an attack again. They danced forward and back. Her blades reflected the light strangely; they had on them a slick of what he assumed was poisoned oil. As he lunged, she leaped back onto the bed. "Time was when we would have ended a bout like this in bed, no?"

"Time was." He could not find it within himself to regret those days, even now. She dove off the bed to the side, rolling as she hit the floor and coming to her feet. He did not follow, despite the opening she left him. Instead, he stepped to the side, falling back just a little.

Rinna chuckled and exploded into motion, taking three steps towards him. Zevran dodged and brought his knife up; Rinna shifted her weight and flew past him without touching him. The end of one of her braids hit his blade, and he felt just the slightest resistance as the sharp edge sheared through it. The braid fell to the floor with a tick almost lost in the sound of their feet and their breathing.

There was a rap at the door. Startled, Zevran looked at the door, and as it opened glanced at where Rinna had just been. She was gone, and the opening door revealed Kathil, looking a bit nonplused. "What are you doing, Zev?"

"Shadow sparring." The lie came too easily to his lips. Attempting to kill what is long dead just didn't have the same ring to it. He sheathed his blade. "Tell me, how did your conversation with the First Enchanter go?"

Kathil groaned and closed the door behind her. "I thought Irving would be reasonable. I mean, he likes me, I know he likes Cullen. But nothing I say to him works. I might as well be speaking Orlesian, for all the good talking to him does me." She dropped down into a chair and put her head in her hands. "He won't even give me any details on what's going on here. I think coming back to the Tower may have been a mistake. There's something happening, but I can't see it to fix it—if it's even fixable."

He went to her, put a hand on her shoulder. "The First Enchanter is a man with a core of steel," he said, thinking. "Pleasant enough on the outside, but once he has made up his mind about something there is no dissuading him. You may have more luck with the Knight Commander, yes?"

"Greagoir?" She shook her head. "The man dislikes mages in general and me in particular. He's worse than Irving."

"He may surprise you," Zevran said. He combed his fingers through Kathil's hair, and she sighed and leaned towards him, putting her head against his hip. "Irving and Greagoir seem to be the same man, inside-out. The First Enchanter covers his great intelligence and determination with kindness. He must be like a father to all the mages, and they must confide in him. The Knight Commander is a hard man, and stubborn as stone, but I have seen him work with his men. His care for them is genuine. Get beneath his armor, so to speak, and you may find him more helpful, no?"

"You would want to get beneath his armor, Zev." She straightened, glancing up at him. "You really think he'd talk to me?"

Zevran motioned toward the weapon rack where their various blades were stored. At the top, in pride of place, was Spellweaver. The mage blade's lightning was quiescent at the moment, without a hand to hold it. "You speak his language," he said. "Politics here are rather direct, are they not?"

Kathil's mouth twisted in a small, sharp smile. "I do think some exercise would do me good. The Templars should be sparring at this hour, shouldn't they? I'm going to have to change, though." She got up and headed for the wardrobe, and Zevran remembered his idea about going to the Spoiled Princess that evening.

He opened his mouth to make the suggestion and then closed it as he saw something he had not before—a glint of light on the floor, near where Rinna had last stood. Kathil was shucking her robe, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye as he bent to look at the glittering thing on the floor. (Those legs. Mage robes were very nearly a hanging crime on her. Though he appreciated the fact that she often did not feel obligated to wear a single stitch under them.)

He picked up the object, rolling it between his fingers. It was a bead made of blue glass—not quite like Rinna used to wear in her hair, but close. There was no evidence of the rest of the braid he had cut off of her.

Just the bead, and a thousand questions that he could not answer.

But before he could ask any of them, there was a familiar thump and the door banged open, through it barging a large and excessively filthy Mabari, barking about demons, demons in the Tower, demons that shredded at a bite—

The bead went into his pocket as they followed Lorn to where he had seen a demon. He did not forget about it, so much as just...set it aside.

Too many questions, and he was like enough to not enjoy the answers.

*****

Jowan:

The space he sat in was just long enough for him to stretch out full-length on the floor, narrow enough that he could not fully extend his arms out when lying down. It felt like a coffin, this small hidden space created by an accident of architecture in the Tower. Sometime in the last century, one of the First Enchanters had ordered several of the rounded rooms of the Tower squared off. The new walls had dead space behind them, and over the years some of the mortar between the stones had crumbled. This one had a mouse-sized hole near the bottom of the wall, just large enough for him to squeeze through in his other form. Once inside, he was safe, and hidden.

So he'd thought.

He was trying to work, with Vermiul's Mastery open in front of him and a page of hastily scribbled notes in his hand. He had a solution for Kathil's problem, but it was going to be tricky to implement. And sometimes, when he looked up, Lily was there.

Like now.

She never said anything, just stood or crouched, the blackened tips of her fingers scrabbling against the stone, the bracelet around her wrist made of beads that were cracked and crazed, colors obscured by soot. She looked at him, baffled, not blaming. She was not angry. Just confused.

So was he, and his heart was breaking over and over again, in this tiny space between the walls.

His vision blurred. He was trapped here in the Tower until Kathil decided to leave. He could abandon this spot, find another hiding place, but he suspected that Lily would just find him again. Jowan had tried to talk to her. She never answered. Just the silent staring, and her abrupt appearances and departures.

Worse than the cell in the basement of Redcliffe Castle. Worse than all of the indignities of learning to live outside the Tower. Worse than returning to the woman who had once been his best friend and finding her nearly unrecognizable. Worse than all of it.

Lily was gone again, and he rested his head against the stone wall that was cold despite the fact that it was still late summer. Lily's absence was almost worse than her presence. She could come back at any moment, and often did. He had woken last night to see her standing over him, her eyes shining faintly in the dim light from the lantern he kept shuttered but still burning.

Jowan had never been afraid of darkness. He was now.

*****

Cullen:

It was a lie.

Tall as the trees, deep as the sea.

Was it so terrible, to want this to be the truth? To wish for an ordinary life, ordinary comforts? Sin, whispered the voices. Heresy.

Cullen was pulled back over and over again to the infirmary, to the mages who looked at him with faces either fearful or pitying, to this Maker-forgotten thing named duty. And each waking was a fresh heartbreak, losing a life and a family over and over again.

He was awake now, fresh from the dreams that did not fade as they usually did, dreams that clung to his skin and mind in terrifyingly exact detail: the smell of his daughter's hair, the gritty feeling of dirt on his hands. He had to fight, he knew. It was lyrium withdrawal. Confusion, disorientation to time and place, persistent delusions, hallucinations that rapidly escalate into violence. Madness, in other words. Fiann was snuggled into his side, a warm presence that was perhaps the only good thing in the world right now.

This was different from the weeks that he had spent tormented by the desire demons. The desire demons had offered him love, all the pleasures of the flesh, all the things the Templars thought about in the darkness and silence of the barracks. All of the things one might think as the mages walked past them, whispering to each other. Things that were so easily obtainable, that one's will had to be made of iron to resist.

This time, the visions were showing him what might have been, had his mother not been a mage. Or if he had stayed in Woodson as a scribe rather than join the Templars. The visions were of things that he could never have. It was not a matter of resisting these things. It was a matter of surfacing from the madness into cold and bitter sanity, the emptiness of acknowledging that, yes, some part of him wanted those things, had always wanted them.

Cullen rolled onto his side, curling up like a child around a still-sleeping Fiann; at least they had done him the favor of not tying him to the bed. Something small and hard dug into his hip. "What now?" he muttered, shifting to dislodge whatever it was.

Whatever was a bead, a red glass one, half the size of his thumbnail. There were two more of its close kin in the bed, he found, one by his knee and one nestled by his pillow. Some mage's fancy, he supposed. They had been in and out of here at all hours of the day, poking and prodding him, making him drink things. Irritated, he threw the beads across the empty infirmary. They made a clatter against the far wall. If he were very lucky, one of them might find its way under a mage's foot.

He comforted himself with the idea of Irving falling on that pompous ass of his, and closed his eyes. Fiann woke briefly and yawned. She wriggled so that her head was tucked under his chin. Sleep, said her tiny sigh. Sleep. She would watch.

Cullen fell asleep, and did not dream.

Author's Note:

Let the guessing about what's going on in the Tower commence. :)

Some of you may be on to me at this point. There are a couple more crucial clues that have yet to be uncovered, but the general outline of what's happening is in here. And no, everything's not going to be all angstbunnies much longer; the explosions are soon to commence. Or dismemberments. (Ritual dismemberments are on Tuesdays, yes?)

The Tower garden/greenhouse is borrowed, with many thanks, from callalili. We'll see more of it in the next story, and learn why it's fallen into decay.