Chapter Six.
Anders stood rooted to the ground, unable to run, unable to think. He slid one foot backwards and realized with a rush that the floor beneath him was stone flags rather than soil, the shadows of trees replaced by stone-carved pillars, the moon with a tantalising glimpse of the same dark city he had seen from the windows of the Fade's great hall.
It should have made him feel better. It didn't. Dreams had power, and the dreams of mages had more, and all that this current dream was saying to him was that he was truly and comprehensibly fucked.
The abomination reached out and gripped Anders' jaw. Its palm writhed like worms against his throat. He clawed at its arm with his fingers, tearing bloodless chunks of flesh away like soft bark, but the creature did not loosen its hold.
He looked into its single bloodshot eye and saw his own future staring back. Anders could think of few things worse than being trapped in a loathsome, decaying body, while a malevolent and nameless entity moved him like a puppet.
He screamed again, and went on screaming. It wasn't until somebody kicked him in the ribs that he realised he was dreaming.
"What in Andraste's name?"Somebody cursed.
"Shut him up!" A different voice: female and exasperated. Ser Jessamyn was apparently not a morning person.
Anders raised one hand to shade his eyes against the glint of dawn sunlight off armour. The three Templars crowded around him. Ser Percival and Ser Lewis both had their swords drawn. Ser Jessamyn didn't, but she looked a hair's breadth away from strangling Anders with her bare hands.
"The demons!" Anders choked.
"Where? Here?" Ser Jessamyn drew her blade in an instant. She looked around as if she expected demons to materialise in the clearing at any moment.
Anders shook his head. "A dream. It was just a dream."
"You're a mage," Ser Lewis said dismissively. "That's practically to be expected."
"Not like this." Anders protested.
Ser Jessamyn narrowed her eyes and glared at him. "Bloody mages," she said at last, and turned away.
Ser Percival edged closer. "What is it?" he asked nervously. "What did you see?"
Anders had no intention of telling him the truth. Mages couldn't be possessed without touching the Fade, and that was theoretically impossible while wearing the sort of sorcerous manacles Ser Jessamyn had chained him with. But the Templars didn't look as if they were in a mood to hear about abominations. "Blood and fire," he said instead.
Ser Percival gulped. Ser Lewis cuffed Anders and frowned. "Stop frightening the lad." He turned to Ser Percival. "Mages lie-and this one more than most. Don't take any notice. Go pack up the camp."
Anders slumped against the tree while the Templars buried the glowing embers of the fire with handfuls of earth and rolled up their bedding into neat little packs. He felt like a particularly cumbersome piece of baggage himself. It hadn't exactly been his plan.
Anders' plan had been simple. He'd betray Irion to the Templars, watch as they cut the blood mage down, and slip away into the night before they had gotten too close to the Tower at Calenhad. Instead Irion was still on the loose, and Anders was a helpless prisoner with no way of escape.
He sighed and watched the Templars strike the camp. When the only sign the campsite had ever been there was a small patch of flattened dirt Ser Jessamyn came over and unchained Anders from the tree with a small iron key. "Don't even think about escaping," she said. "The way I see it, you're a hairs-breath away from becoming an abomination yourself. If you run it won't go well."
Anders rubbed his wrists. "I appreciate the warning," he said.
She gave him a hard look."You'd better."
"You don't like me, do you?"
"It's not my job to like or dislike you. It's my job to return you to the Circle."
"That's a shame. I think we really have something here. It's a long walk to the tower. You casting me smouldering glances, me in manacles-" he gestured. "All sorts of things could happen."
"Go on-" She was watching him with an odd mixture of fascination and amusement. Possibly none of her captives had tried to flirt with her before.
"It's your eyes. The cold steel really brings them out-"
"Pleasant though your compliments are, I think that you should stop right there." Ser Jessamyn said. That look on her face, the one that said Anders was dredging the very limits of her patience, was back again. "We have to go. There's a long walk ahead of us."
The day's walk was exactly as tough as Anders had expected but to his relief no worse. He followed the Templars back towards the high road. They spent the rest of the day walking north through increasingly rolling countryside. Lake Calenhad was four or five days' hard march away, and Ser Jessamyn set a hard pace. Anders lost even the little freedoms he had enjoyed in the Circle tower. He walked where the Templars led, rested when they let him and ate whatever they gave him. It was almost a relief.
"In my next life I won't be a mage," he said after a while, more to himself than to any of the Templars. "I'll be a noble, or a knight."
Ser Percival looked around. "Do you really think that everyone apart from mages has the ability to choose their future?"
"Well, yes." Anders said.
"How much control do you think the son of a farmer has over whether he'll become a ploughman like his dad? It's the Chantry or the Templars, and even the Templars have to provide their own armour. That limits us to well born bastards and nobles' second sons." Ser Percival sighed. "I could tell you stories. But you probably wouldn't listen."
"Folk can change their fates," Anders said stubbornly. "I've seen it."
"That's the exception, not the rule," Ser Percival said.
"Then it's only slaves and mages who have no choice at all." Anders retorted.
"Mages are not slaves." Ser Jessamyn snapped. She had returned to the party near-silently while they argued, splashed with blood that wasn't hers and more than a little annoyed.
"To debate with an apostate is to invite corruption." Ser Lewis said to Ser Percival. "You'll learn."
"I hope not," said Anders.
"Sers, please be silent." ordered Ser Jessamyn. "Mage, hold your tongue. Neither of you are about to change each other's opinions, and I have better things to do than listen to both of you argue."
"What things?" asked Anders. The comment earned him a smack around the ear and put paid to conversation for the day.
They camped at sunset in a stand of birch trees atop a small hill just out of sight of the road. This time Anders knew enough of the Templars' routine to know what to expect. Packs unpacked, fire lit, renegade mage chained to a tree-it was all in a day's work.
"How far to Calenhad?" he asked Ser Percival, when the young Templar came close enough.
Ser Percival looked startled. "How far? Three, four days, maybe, if the weather holds and if we're lucky."
Anders wondered exactly how far Irion would bother to chase him before the blood mage finally gave up. "No reason."
Of course, he thought, maybe the bastard's given up already and decided to bleed half Easthill dry instead. Three days to the Circle, three days back, and that's if they send men out right away. It could be weeks.
That's far too long...
"Can't we speed up?" he asked the Templars.
Ser Percival looked even more surprised. "Why?"
"Maybe I'm feeling homesick," Anders said.
Ser Percival shook his head. "I find that hard to believe."
"Stop fraternising with the mage," Ser Lewis called from the opposite side of the clearing. Ser Percival edged away from Anders as if he was a snake rather than a bedraggled and inexperienced apostate. Of course, Templar doctrine taught that it was only a matter of time before Anders became a horrible demon, if he wasn't one already, as some of the Templars who had been the subject of some of Anders' more inventive pranks over the years had muttered behind First Enchanter Irving's back.
Anders sighed. He turned from the Templars and reached out for the Veil for the innumerable time since his capture. The magical shackles he wore prevented him breaking the Veil or drawing power through it. He couldn't use magic, and he had no intention of entering the Fade, but the mental exercises were reassuringly familiar. He thought that the Templars, with their lyrium augmented senses, might sense him despite the ensorcelled chains. But either they were distracted making camp or the lyrium they drank didn't work that way, because nobody stopped Anders as he cupped his hands and concentrated.
To his surprise, the Veil here was thin, fragile as a soap bubble. The Fade pressed closely to the waking world. Anders had not expected as such. The Veil was thinnest in places of magical power; certain cities, certain buildings, ancient sites where years of spells or worship had weakened the barrier between the two worlds sufficiently enough for mages to draw their magic more easily.
He tried to cast a simple fireball, but all that happened was that his head began to ache. The chains weighed heavily on his wrists. Anders drew back from the Fade, wincing, and as he did so he caught a collection of impressions; faint as figures pressed the other side of a pane of window-glass.
He smelt the stink of dripping gore and stood in the shadow of abominations whose skin writhed and pulsed beneath the weight of tortured and possessed tissue. The apparitions' wrenched open jaws long locked by strands of mutant flesh and spoke to Anders in voices like the closing of black iron gates.
I AM HERE, they said. I AM COMING.
Anders yelped. "Shit!" He wrenched himself free of the Fade, grateful for the first time for his magical shackles. The Templars' heads snapped around. Anders saw each knight reach for their sword.
"You have to go!" he shouted across to them. "We have to leave! Right now! He's coming! He's really coming!"
Ser Jessamyn got to her feet with a crash of armour and crossed the clearing towards Anders. "Something the matter, mage?" she said, frowning as Anders scrambled to his feet and held out the lock that chained him to the particularly sturdy oak tree that the Templars had chosen for the night.
Anders nodded. His headache intensified. He massaged his temples futilely with the fingers of his right hand as he spoke. "The blood mage Irion is coming. He'll find me and kill you all. We've got to go."
She looked cynical. "No. We're staying right here."
Anders moaned. "I thought you'd say that."
Ser Jessamyn tapped her sword-flat rhythmically against her greaves with a tinny chime. "How'd you know?"
Anders was about to say a demon told me, but realised just in time that that really wasn't a good idea. He shook his head. "It doesn't matter how I know. What matters is it's true."
Ser Jessamyn looked around at the empty wilderness that surrounded them. "Where would you suggest we run to? The Circle is still several days' march away. This is a defensible position, and hard to find from the road. Even if what you say is true-which, by the way, I highly doubt-we are not going anywhere."
"You don't understand!" Anders thrust the chains at her again, shaking his head as she drew back from him and made to rejoin her fellows around the campfire. "He has my phylactery."
She halted, eyes narrowing. "That's not possible."
"He made another one!" Anders said.
Ser Lewis had come to join them. "That's impossible," he repeated.
Ser Jessamyn shook her head. "How?"
"Same way it's always done." Anders was not about to waste time. "He took my blood and told me he could use it to find out where I am. And if he's coming for me, then he's going to find you, too. And he's coming. Trust me, he's coming."
"Then let him come," said Ser Jessamyn.
Ser Lewis gave Anders a hard look. "How do you know?"
"I can sense it," Anders said. He held up his chained hands. "Mage, remember?"
Ser Lewis scowled. "Templar," he said, "and I can't feel a thing."
There was a startled yelp from the clearing. Mage and Templars spun as Ser Percival leapt back from the campfire. The blaze flared up three feet in a fountain of blue flame and guttered out. A sudden wind caught the Templars' fringed sashes and blew the clouds from the setting sun. The light gleamed blood scarlet and gave the Templars' faces an ugly cast. The birch trees cast long shadows over the clearing; their bark stained a faint pink by the fading sunlight.
"What is happening?" Ser Jessamyn asked Anders through her teeth.
Ser Lewis spat. "Isn't it obvious? He's working with them."
Anders held out his shackled hands. "Andraste's arse! I'm chained, remember. I can't work magic. If I had something to do with this, then why am I so damn scared?" He looked from one face to another, cringing slightly at the Templars' set faces and bared swords, but he was so obviously terrified that even Ser Lewis turned away.
"Sers," Ser Jessamyn said. "I think the apostate is right. I smell blood magic. The bastard's here."
Ser Lewis spat. "Bloody mages. Bloody blood mages, damn their eyes."
Ser Jessamyn drew her sword and tossed the scabbard away, proving to Anders at least that she had the same finely developed sense of drama as the blood mage they were hunting. The rising wind caught the leather and carried the scabbard into the trees and out of sight. "We can deal with this monster."
Anders did not envy the Templars their fight, but he wished he had their confidence. Or, failing that, their armour. He rattled his manacles. "Andraste's arse, I'm helpless here." His voice rose helplessly as the Templars went over to join Ser Percival by the fire. "Let me go!"
Ser Jessamyn scowled as she turned back. "Not a chance."
"You can't leave me here!"
"We can and we will. Now shut up. We've got a battle to fight."
"At least give me a sword!" Anders protested.
Ser Jessamyn pulled her visor down. "Stay here," she snapped, voice muffled by the metal.
Anders held up his hands. "Did you forget about the chains?
The Templar captain sniffed. "Ser Lewis, guard him-"
There was a piercing scream.
Both Templars' heads snapped around towards Ser Percival. There was no sign of the young Templar. The campfire flames had died down to a sullen crimson glow. The wind whispered in the trees as Ser Percival screamed again.
"Leave the mage." Ser Lewis raised his sword. "Let's go and get the boy." He broke into a ponderous jog and vanished into the shadows as another howl came from the trees.
Ser Jessamyn cursed. "Stay here," she snapped again to Anders, and followed Ser Lewis into the darkness.
Anders shrank back into the scanty shelter of the trees. He rotated the manacles around his wrists, but they were far too tight for him to slip out and far too strong for him to break. Ser Jessamyn had been right. He wasn't going anywhere.
He winced as another scream came from the clearing. He knew from his previous experience with Irion that the blood mage enjoyed his work. He'd take his time dismantling the Templars, piece by piece, and limb from limb. And then he'd come for Anders.
Anders had no intention of being around when Irion arrived. He pulled his arms close to his chest and tugged on the chains. They slid around the tree bark and bit into his wrists painfully, but the oak Ser Jessamyn had chosen was far too stout. Anders glanced up into the branches to see if he could somehow work the chains up over the trunk, but the tree was as high as a house. There would be no escaping that way, and even if he did, he'd still be shackled.
Anders looked around for a rock to force the lock open. He found nothing but tree roots and sandy soil. He found a branch, which snapped as soon as he tried it. As he searched for another he realised that his hands were shaking. The air smelt of fear and blood.
A whispered groan came from the darkness. Anders' head snapped up like a hound's. "Who's there?" he asked the night.
Ser Percival shuffled out of the darkness. His head was bare, his eyes were wide and black and his skin was paper-white. His breastplate was horribly dented, scarred with impossible forces that had crumpled steel like paper. Anders could only imagine what damage had been done to the flesh inside.
"Ser Percival?" he asked tentatively.
The Templar coughed and dropped his sword. Blood trickled from the joints in his armour. He fell to his knees in a clash of mail, took one last gasping breath, and toppled onto his face.
Anders moved towards the fallen man instinctively. His chains brought him up short. Percival had fallen just too far away. He shuffled forwards on his arse and stretched out his leg as far as he could. The tip of his boot nudged the Templar's hand. Ser Percival did not move. His hand flopped like a dead fish.
Anders took a closer look at Ser Percival's face and decided that the man was probably dead. He drew back, wondering what to do, and his ankle knocked painfully against the hilt of Percival's sword. Anders reached out with his foot. He hooked his heel behind the cross-piece on the hilt on the sword and pulled it towards him, trying not to lose the sword among the underbrush or slash his leg open with the blade. To his surprise his plan worked. He felt a little better once he held a weapon in his hands. The sword was standard Templar issue, a heavy double-handed blade with a cloth-wrapped hilt. Anders had no idea how to use it. He slid down against the tree with his hands on the blood-soaked hilt. The blade rested uneasily against his thighs as he stared at Ser Percival's body.
Ser Percival, who –Anders realised- still had his lock-pick.
Anders felt a sudden surge of hope. True, he had no idea how to use a sword, but he understood escaping just fine. He'd watched Percival slip the pick into his pouch. The Templar probably still had it. All Anders had to do was reach him.
Anders laid the Templar's cross-hilted sword down carefully beside him and began to wriggle out of his shirt. When he had shrugged the worn cotton over his head and worked it as far as he could over his hands, he reversed the sword and gripped its blade gingerly through the thin pad of his shirt. He extended the sword as far as he could and snagged Percival's sash on the second try. He worked the hilt between the layers of cloth, gripped the blade and pulled.
Ser Percival did not move.
Anders cursed. He slid down the tree, using the curved roots as a lever, and tried again. This time the Templar inched forwards, towards Anders. His fingers stung as the keen blade slit the cloth. Anders tugged, and the dead man's foot slid within reach.
Anders dropped the blade and caught Ser Percival's shoe. He pulled again, yanking the body towards him inch by agonising inch. When the Templar was close enough Anders braced himself against the tree and rolled the body towards him with one hand on the man's shoulder and one on his hip. He pressed bleeding fingers to Ser Percival's throat and found no pulse. The young Templar's mouth was half-open, his eyes rolled back and slitted white.
Anders closed the dead man's eyelids before rifling his pockets. He found a small pouch of coin, a knife and a few flasks of lyrium. The lock pick was right at the bottom of the pouch, wrapped in a small twist of paper. Anders set the pick aside. He pulled his shredded shirt back on and examined his hands. The damage wasn't as bad as he had expected. There was a shallow slash that ran horizontally across his palm, and another, smaller cut that crossed the first joint of all four of his fingers. He could still move all his fingers. It could, he thought, have been much worse.
He staunched the blood on his shirt-tail and went to work on the locks. A few rakes and a twist later and Anders was free.
He crouched with his back to the tree, rubbed his wrists and considered the options open to him. There were only two roads he could see. He could take the lyrium and the money, his lock pick and the knife and see how far he could get before the blood mage or the Templars found him. He had a suspicion it wouldn't be far. Both factions could find Anders quickly if they wanted to, and the only way he could see to stop them was by spilling his own blood before they could use it to find him. Dying had never been Anders' plan.
So he could run, or he could join the Templars and fight the blood mage himself.
Of course, Anders thought wryly, that went so well the first time.
He hadn't planned it like this. He'd hoped that the Templars would slaughter Irion offhand. Only from the state of Percival's body, it didn't look like that would be happening any time soon. He supposed that there was a chance that the Templars had wounded Irion badly enough that he'd die easily, but it was a small hope, and faint.
So could run and die, or fight and die. It wasn't much of a choice.
Anders whispered a prayer to a god that he didn't believe in and who he was almost certain didn't believe in him. He put the lyrium and the coins back into Ser Percival's pouch and tied it to his own belt, next to the knife. He tucked the lock pick back into his hair, left the sword by Ser Percival's side and picked up a short length of ensorcelled chain.
Freedom was a fine thing, and it made all sorts of choices possible.
Anders took a deep breath, and chose to fight.