A/N Oh my, an update at long last! My poor story has suffered long enough at the hands of theses defenses and work and writer's block. But I'm back now! And I swear the next update won't take so long. Thanks for being patient, everyone, Kara's back in action!
Eyes shut in concentration, she moved through the familiar motions of the dance, her mother's blades a familiar weight in her hands. The steps were meant to be quicker - she had not practiced these forms so slowly almost since she learned them years before, but despite Flemeth's most recent application of her healing magics early this morning muscles were still stiff and protesting use.
She danced as though against an imaginary opponent, blades moving to block unseen blows or strike against her foe. In the past, it might have been Tamlen who faced her. It had always been their pet theory that Keeper Marethari had passed on her predecessor's writings, invaluable as they were, as an attempt to keep them out of trouble by giving them something else to do, a distraction for Tamlen's boundless mischief, knowing that he would follow her lead.
Today, she ended the dance alone, offering a courteous salute to her nonexistent partner before opening her eyes to return the daggers to their place in her boots. Kara turned to where she had left Anari, only to find Alistair crouched there by the mabari, watching her.
"Ah, good morning," he said, starting a little as though guilty he had been caught spying. "That was amazing. Where did you learn to fight like that? Or are all the Dalish taught that?"
She shook her head as she walked towards them. "Not all of us. The sword forms were lost like most of our culture when my people were enslaved. Masters of the art are rare now, but there are bits and pieces of the forms scattered throughout the clans. My father was gathering those pieces together again. I learned from him."
His eyes looked distant as she said the last, something equal parts regret and hardness shading the hazel. "That must have been nice. My father wasn't a part of my life – he never taught me anything."
"Nor was mine," she replied sympathetically. "He died before I was born, my mother shortly after."
"You too?" he said, surprised. "But I thought you said…"
"That my father taught me?" she finished. Kara knelt in front of Anari to remove the leatherbound volume from beneath his paws. She hesitated a brief moment – the elders would not think kindly of sharing Dalish secrets with a shem – but this man was clan of sorts now, and they would be traveling in close proximity for the foreseeable future, if not the rest of their lives. It made no sense to hide such things from him.
"These are his notes," she said, laying them out before him. His eyes took in the careful drawings and diagrams, and the precise script of her father's hand, lines and curves so familiar to her. "The hawk swoops down from above, and its prey never sees the blow. Be like the hawk – strike like lightening, with speed and precision, and your foe will fall before you," she recited, tracing the words with a finger.
Alistair's eyes followed the motion, then looked up at her with confusion. "I thought you said you couldn't read?"
She shook her head. "I spent the last Arlathvhen, when the clans gathered together, trying to find the masters that my father had located. Some of them were kind enough to read his notes out for me."
"And you remember every word?" he said incredulously, staring at the goodly-sized volume before them.
"What I have heard," she said with a little shrug. "Pieces here and there. The entire history of my people is oral, this is but a little more."
"Still, that's remarkable…" He trailed off and the two sat in awkward silence for a time, neither quite knowing what to say. They had gone from potential comrades to the only two remaining members of their order in such a short period of time. It hadn't seemed so hard when friendship had been just a potential outcome, but now that it seemed a foregone conclusion, neither knew how to approach the other. They were so different from each other, where could they even begin?
Finally Alistair cleared his throat and spoke again. "If we're going to face the Blight, maybe we could spend some time sparring? I mean, if you're okay with that. We'll be fighting together and all that."
"That sounds like a good idea," Kara agreed. At least they had that in common. That and the taint polluting their blood.
Alistair stood and made his way back towards Flemeth's ramshackle hut. "I suppose you'll need your weapons back then, hmm? Can't go fighting the darkspawn barehanded and all." Kara watched him curiously. Her weapons? Had he managed to recover something from the tower then? Her eyes grew wide with amazement when he pulled forth her blades, resheathed, and her hunting dagger. Her quiver and her father's bow. Pieces of her heritage, her past life, thought lost to her and returned by her unlikely comrade.
She took the weapons from him with hands trembling slightly with gratitude. "Alistair, thank you. You have no idea how much this means…" And indeed, he looked a little surprised at her reaction, more earnest perhaps than he had expected. "The sword and dagger, 'dar'misu' and 'dar'misaan' we call them, are just weapons but this…this was my father's," she explained, cradling the bow carefully in her hands.
"He was not a hunter for long before he became Keeper of the clan, but he kept his father's bow for the day that he would have a child of his own to pass it to. After he died, Keeper Marethari passed it on to me, when I left for my first hunt." She traced one finger down the fine inlay shaping the ivy that curved its way across the bow.
"Can I ask you a question?" Alistair ventured when she paused, settling himself on the ground again. At her nod, he continued. "Back there, with the ogre. How in the Maker's name did you do that?"
"Do what, kill it?" His head bobbed in assent. "The sword forms were created in the days of Arlathan, when the elves were eternal and could spend millennia at a single task. The masters watched the animals and studied them, so that they could become one with them. Those who knew the old magic were able to trade their forms for that of the animals. Those who did not applied what they learned in other ways." She paused for a moment before continuing. "Tamlen and I, we used to watch the wild cats kill like that, by severing the spine."
"But how did you get up there?" her brother Warden asked.
She smiled, remembering another time, a different kind of hunt. "One of the elder hunters accompanied me on my first hunt, along with Tamlen because he would not let me go alone. That year was lean, the winter had been very harsh. We were on the hunt for many days but caught nothing, and it seemed as though we would go home empty handed. We were returning to camp when Tamlen found something."
"I'm guessing not a deer," Alistair ventured.
Kara shook her head in reply. "A mother bear, hungry and desperate to feed her cubs. It was not right to kill her, but there was nothing about us other than the tall trees. So we used our arrows to form a ladder, and climbed into the trees."
"Clever," he commented. "I assume it worked?"
She smiled ruefully. "For Tamlen and I, but we were young and light. Our teacher was halfway up when the arrows broke under his weight, and he fell back to the ground, and the bear."
Alistair winced in response. "So what happened?"
Kara shrugged. "It was either let Master Kellen die, or kill the bear. So Tamlen and I came down from the tree, and we killed the bear."
"You killed the bear, just like that?" Alistair looked at her dubiously.
She shook her head again. "It was not an easy fight, by any means. Normally, we could have tried to scare her away, but she was starving and desperate. She nearly killed us all before we finally brought her down." She reached up to touch the string of wooden beads and claws about her neck. "Master Kellen gave us the bear claws to remember the day that we became full hunters in our own right, the youngest the clan had seen." And Tamlen had strung the claws onto the necklet she had inherited from her father, and presented it as his promise to wed her, children though they might have been.
"You two must have been quite the heroes then," Alistair commented, though he couldn't have been farther from the truth.
"No, the other elders chided us for our recklessness and said we were not ready for such responsibility." Always overprotective, the clan, fearful to lose the legacy their beloved Keeper had left them. And in the end it had not been bears or illness or shems which had stolen her away from them but the unstoppable, unbeatable force of the Blight. A force that now the two of them were to conquer. A sobering thought.
"In any case," she continued, "it was hardly a victory. After slaying the mother, we had to kill the cubs as well."
"What, why?" Alistair asked, startled.
"Without their mother, they would have starved to death," she explained. "It was either a quick, merciful death at our hands or dying slowly of starvation. Vir Assan, we call it, the Way of the Arrow. 'Let not your prey suffer.'"
"A touching sentiment," a sultry voice commented dryly from behind, startling them both. Morrigan stood in the open doorway of the hut, a worn and patched pack resting across one shoulder. "Shall we continue to chat while the Blight overruns us, or you ready to depart?"
The two Wardens traded glances with each other before rising. Now was as good a time to leave as any. "Do you have any suggestions on where we should go, Morrigan?" Kara turned to better see the human witch. "We will need supplies. Arrows especially, if we are to fight the darkspawn." She glanced down to the nearly empty quiver in her hand.
Morrigan considered her for a long moment, perhaps surprised that she would be consulted especially given the ill-concealed distaste in Alistair's eyes. Finally she appeared to make up her mind. "I suggest a village north of the Wilds. 'Tis not far and you will find much you need there."
Kara looked to Alistair, who shrugged though there was more than a little doubt remaining in his eyes. She nodded their acquiescence then to Morrigan who acknowledged with her own curt head motion. As the Dalish woman moved to gather her meager belongings together, Alistair fell into step.
"Are you sure about this? Do you really want to take her along, just because her mother says so?" Alistair muttered as they walked. Kara wondered whether his reservations were due to Morrigan's admittedly disagreeable personality, or if it had more to do with her being what he called an apostate mage. The idea of fearing a person simply for possessing magic was so foreign to her – the Keepers were men and women to look up to, the ones to turn to when all else seemed dark. But this was a reminder, yet again, that this was no longer the world that she knew.
"I think that Flemeth is right. We need her help, Alistair, if we are going to defeat the Blight." It wasn't really the answer that he wanted to hear, but from the way that he sighed, he knew that she was right no matter how much he wanted to disagree.
"I suppose the Wardens have always taken allies where they could find them," he agreed reluctantly. "I just…I'm not sure we can trust her."
"The tales of the asha'belannar are not many amongst my people, but all tell of her cunning and machinations." Kara met her companion's eyes directly. "We may need Morrigan's help, but that does not mean we must trust her entirely."
Alistair brightened considerably at that. "Good, that's good. And very sensible of you. I'm glad that we're agreed on that." He stooped down to pick up his pack, the only one they had left between the two of them. "I guess we'd better get to it then. The sooner we defeat the Blight the sooner she can go."
-~0~-
They spent the day traveling in awkward silence, since anything Alistair said was usually followed with a snipe from Morrigan. Kara contented herself with observing – her human companions as much as the land about them, Anari trotting along at her side. She kept her eyes open especially for signs of darkspawn, though Morrigan had promised that some trick of Flemeth's would keep the darkspawn away. Alistair too said that he felt none of the beasts nearby, but there was no sense in not being cautious. Careless hunters usually became dead hunters.
Morrigan left them only once in the day, to search for a suitable place to spend the night, she had said. She had turned into a hawk, there before their eyes, and flown off, leaving Alistair spluttering. Kara only watched with interest – such magic was known in the old days of Arlathan and still used by some of the Keepers of the clans today, though it was rare. While Alistair likely fretted over the illegal use of magic, Kara wondered how much Morrigan knew of the origins of her abilities, and what she might be able to share with the clans, were Morrigan ever of a mind to do such a thing.
Eventually she returned to them, in human guise this time, and led them to spot, nothing more than a dry patch amidst the surrounding swampland where they set up a meager camp for the night. Kara excused herself to see what she might find them for dinner. She had intended to take Anari with her, but found Morrigan by her side instead.
"Allow me, if you will," the witch said. "I am, after all, accustomed to providing for myself in these lands." Kara nodded her acquiescence, and the two headed deeper into the swamp together. They had not traveled for long when the human woman stopped. "Be you ready, Warden. Your target will make itself known soon." With that, Morrigan disappeared and a rangy wolf appeared in her place. The lupine form loped away, in search of prey.
The Dalish elf fitted one precious arrow to her bow – every shot would have to count until they could purchase more, or better still find the materials to make her own. One could not trust the humans to properly understand the makings of fine arrows, not when defeating the Blight hung in the balance. The chance for further contemplation was lost when a flurry of wings signaled Morrigan's successful flush, and the arrow was in flight a thought later. She did not see where her quarry had fallen, but Morrigan soon found her again, slain fowl in hand.
"A fine shot. It seems the stories of Dalish prowess with the bow were not exaggerated." The witch scrutinized the slighter woman for a few moments. "Are the stories of the wild magic true as well, I wonder?"
"Magic like your own, you mean?" Kara asked carefully as she hooked her bow over her shoulder. The bowstring was becoming ever so slack, another thing she would need to replace soon.
"Indeed. I have heard tale of such things amongst the Dalish,"the other woman replied as they began to walk back to the makeshift camp where they had left Alistair and Anari.
"There are some amongst the Keepers who use similar magic, yes," Kara answered finally, after some hesitation. She was giving away much information on her people today, it seemed, but Morrigan's knowledge might be a connection to their own history. Perhaps it was worth the risk. Morrigan had similar thoughts, it seemed.
"Interesting. I wonder if I was to ask one of your keepers of the origins of their magics if there would be any relation to what Flemeth taught me?" she mused.
"We know little about our origins," Kara replied. "But I am afraid that the Keepers would be unwilling to share even what small amount they know with an outsider."
"Ah, true." Morrigan nodded thoughtfully to herself. "Though I suspect that I have more in common with your people than my own kind, but such is how it must be."
"We are very alike, you and I," Morrigan continued. "More similar to the animals than to what people like Alistair would consider civilized. The wilds call to us both." The witch pronounced her brother Warden's name like it left a foul taste in her mouth, but Kara could not disagree with the general truth of her statement. The wider human world was likely to be just as different to Morrigan as to herself. She and Alistair might have more in common in matters of personality, but in other ways she was much the same as Morrigan.
"What you say has merit," Kara agreed finally.
"I am pleased that you agree. You are more sensible than that silly fool of a man that you travel with. The Dalish are far more practical." Though they were approaching their camp, Morrigan did not lower her voice. She cared little, it seemed, for Alistair's opinion of her. She paused, just before entering circle of firelight about the camp. "You will appreciate this more than he would, I am sure."
The witch removed a satchel from over her shoulder and pressed it into the Dalish woman's hands. Kara opened it to find a bundle of wooden rods, seasoned and dried already, perfect for new arrows. A bundle of shaped arrowheads, barbed, the kind used for war, and sinew for binding and bowstrings. "Where did you get these?" she asked.
"Something I acquired while scouting earlier. Does it matter?" Morrigan replied, challenge in her voice. "We require them more than their previous owner, do we not?"
Her conscience pricked at her, but Morrigan was right. If ending the Blight was up to them and them alone, then the arrows were better in her hands than in their nameless former owner's. It was the cold, practical reality, but that didn't mean she had to like the idea. She accepted the offering wordlessly, flipping the satchel closed and looping the strap over her own head. Morrigan nodded in approval and headed into the camp proper. Kara followed close behind.
After their dinner, an awkward affair with little speech, Kara occupied her time with her arrows, fletching them with the feathers from the goose they had caught. Her hands moved with practiced ease over the task, allowing her mind to wander over the past few days, and the days to come in the company of these humans, so different from each other, and from her, in so many ways. And yet they were so alike in others.
Morrigan's voice interrupted her contemplations. "Shall we split the watch? Or had you planned to staying awake all of tonight as well? Do the Dalish not require sleep?"
"We sleep like any other," Kara replied. "First watch, then. I would finish my task here."
The other woman nodded curtly. "Allow me to be second then. I take my leave of you for now, Wardens." With that, Morrigan slipped into the darkness.
Alistair moved as though to make ready for bed himself, but paused before fully rising. He turned towards his elven companion. "You didn't sleep last night? Is everything okay?"
She waved away his concerns. "It was…" More information on her people. "A Dalish rite, for the dead."
"Oh." He sounded surprised. "Oh I see. For your friend, Tamlen, was his name?"
She was surprised in return, that he would remember Tamlen's name, and that he would sound so interested in the practices of her people. "Yes, but not only for him. For Duncan, and the king, and all the rest as well."
He was silent for a moment, recalling Duncan, most likely. "The Dalish don't practice cremation, do they? How do you honor the dead?"
"When we have the body," she paused, remembering that they did not, not for Tamlen or for Duncan or any of the others. "When there is a body, we bury it and plant a sapling above."
"That…sounds very beautiful. Life springing from death." And he sounded like he really meant it. She had been so ready to be ridiculed, to be considered a barbarian by the humans. Yet this one was respectful and kind and genuinely fascinated by her culture. "And when there is no body to bury?"
"We sing for them anyways, to call down the Creators to lead them home," she replied. "And keep vigil through the night so that the dead might not lose their way, or be led astray by Fen'Harel, the Dread Wolf who roams the Beyond."
Alistair was quiet again for a few moments. "I wish I would have known. I would have liked to stay up with you, for Duncan. There's nothing else I can do for him…"
Kara watched him with pity in her eyes. He knew what it was to mourn for a lost clan, a lost family, perhaps as much as she did. Hahren Paivel's words flitted across her memory. "One of the elders told me a poem, after Tamlen…he said it was traditionally said at funerals. 'Swiftly do stars burn a path across the sky, hast'ning to place one last kiss upon your eye,'" she recited softly, translating. "'Tenderly land enfolds you in slumber, softening the rolling thunder. Dagger now sheathed, bow no longer tense. During this, your last hour, only silence.'"
Silence reigned in the camp for a time as they remembered the Warden-Commander who had saved them both. Finally, Alistair rose, rather abruptly. "I…I should really get some sleep, before my watch." He backed away, though not before Kara caught the glimmer of unshed tears in his eyes. "But I…thank you, Kara. For remembering him." And then he had set himself across their little camp, busying himself with sleeping, or at least pretending to sleep.
Kara again kept vigil, hands busy with fletching arrows, but mind once more with all those they had lost.
-~0~-
She was in a land she recognized, yet it still seemed so unfamiliar. Perhaps it was the fog that covered all, obscuring the lay of the land and bases of the trees. Still she knew this place. And she knew the figure who sat at the water's edge, back turned to her.
"The singing…I cannot stop it."
"Tamlen?" she called softly. Kara knew his voice, though it was broken and ravaged by pain. The figure did not turn.
"Can you not hear it? The song?"
"Tamlen? Lethallin, is it you?" The figure turned, but it was not her Tamlen that faced her. His skin was grey and his eyes feverish, opaque.
The thing moved to a crouch. "You…" it whispered. Kara took a step closer, but it hissed at her. "You! You left me to die!"
"No." Kara denied the accusation in a quiet, pained voice. "No, I never wanted to leave you."
"The master told me. He says that you ran, to save yourself." The not-Tamlen stood and raised a finger accusingly. "The master commands your death." The woods behind him burst into flame, the fog suddenly burned away and silhouetted in the flickering light, Kara saw the dragon, the archdemon. It hissed in her brain, not so much a voice but a knowledge. Hate, darkness, and a focused malevolence that tried to overcome the very core of her being. Twisted, vile amusement that it could take that which was most dear to her and turn it against her.
"You left me there to die, and now I'm going to kill you!" The twisted form of Tamlen launched himself at her, the dragon laughing all the while.
-~0~-
She woke screaming, shooting out of her makeshift bed and into a pair of arms that she was too shaken and anguished to question. They surrounded her while she trembled, the dream still so real and too near and far too close to home. She had abandoned him to his fate, stopped looking when she should never, never have stopped until she had found him. It was all her fault that he was gone, and her fault that she would never see him again. Nothing she did would ever change that.
Eventually she became aware of the arms about her, the warmth wrapped around her and she pulled back to see Alistair there. Her brother Warden backed away slightly, enough to give her a little room.
"Bad dreams, huh?" he asked sympathetically, though he spoke as if he already knew the answer.
Kara wrapped her arms about herself. "It seemed so real…"
"You dreamed of the archdemon?" he asked. She nodded in reply. "Well, it is real, sort of." He paused, considering his words. "Part of being a Grey Warden is being able to hear the darkspawn. That's what your dream was, hearing them. It starts some time after the Joining. It's supposed to be worse who Join during a Blight, I'm sorry to say. I know it took longer for my nightmares to really start." Kara digested that for a moment.
"It takes a bit, but eventually most Wardens learn to block the dreams out," Alistair continued. "Some of the older Grey Wardens say they can understand the archdemon a bit, but I sure can't."
"I could…feel it," Kara said slowly. "Not an understanding in words, but all the same…"
Alistair nodded. "Anyways, when I heard you thrashing around, I thought I should tell you. It was scary for me at first too."
Kara exhaled slowly, willing the last vestiges of dream (that's all that it was, she reminded herself, a dream and nothing more) to dissipate. "Thank you, Alistair. I appreciate it."
Alistair smiled as he rose to return to his seat by the fire. "That's what I'm here for. To deliver unpleasant news and witty one-liners."
When he had settled himself again, Kara laid back and willed herself to shut her eyes. She could ill afford to lose any sleep, not with the darkspawn about. Still she found herself reluctant to sleep again, knowing what dreams might await her on the other side of the Veil. She attempted instead to wrap herself in the happy memories, hoping that they might have the power to chase away the archdemon's darkness, knowing it was the only weapon she had now that Tamlen was gone.
-~0~-
Merrill shut the book in her lap, much to the children's groans of dismay.
"I told you only one story, did I not?" she said, trying to put a stern tone on her words.
"But Keeper!" the outcry came, as the children begged for more.
"No 'but Keeper's," Merrill chided. She turned her head as one of the elven women approached. "Ah, come to gather the children to their beds, lethallan?"
"Yes Keeper," she replied. Turning to the children, she said, "Your parents are searching for you, da'len. You can ask for more stories tomorrow night."
"Can we, Keeper? Have more stories tomorrow?" one small girl asked.
"Of course, da'len," Merrill replied. With that, they shooed the children off to their respective camps for the night.
The woman smiled. "I hope the children weren't too much bother, Keeper," she said.
"Not at all," Merrill replied, returning the smile. "It is always a joy to have them here, and so eager to hear tales of their hero."
"We will bid you good night then, Keeper," she said, gathering her own children to leave.
"Good night, Amethyne dear," Merrill said fondly as she rose to head to bed herself.
