Chapter Nine : Fruit (Solona)


AUTUMN

Solona and Malika walked slowly behind the druffalo-pulled cart, staring at their boots as they picked their way over the refuse-flooded streets of Crestwood. The latter kept her hood pulled up over her head, covering the prominent Carta tattoo on her cheekbone. The air stank of garbage and rot; it was places like these which reminded Solona why Elissa Cousland always carried a nosegay. Ferelden was a foul place. Although she had spent her adult years in one of its Circles, Solona Amell still felt like a visitor in a foreign land. Disgusted, confused. Why did they throw their waste into the streets? In the Free Marches there were sewers beneath the cities to carry it away. Women did not have to go about their lives with their hems— not to mention their children— caked in excrement.

The houses in Crestwood were elevated like in Redcliffe, but on stone foundations rather than on wooden piers. The roads, if you could call them that, snaked around each stone island, with tall braziers dotted about for evening illumination. The largest of these was the home of the village mayor, Gregory Dedrick, but all these constructions seemed small in the shadow of the great dam.

The mage pressed a handkerchief against her nose and lips. A wave of nausea passed over her in a noxious tide. When she felt more herself again, Solona pointed upward to the dam. "Why build it?" she asked, a little in awe of the scale of such a project.

"Dwarves with plans," Malika Cadash scoffed. "There are Deep Roads right below the surface all over these lands. Half the caves in Crestwood poke down into the dark. The Carta makes use of them where we can. That bolthole you found was one in a dozen. Some king tried to connect Thaig Aeducan with the lost kingdom of Gundaar. It wasn't lost back then, if you know what I mean. Anyway, this king tried to build a great hall right under this here lake and flooded the shit out of his glorious pet project. So what does a king do?"

"Build a dam to hold back the waters?"

"Exactly! Crazy fucker. Those builders would have been clutching onto their boots, afraid they were going to fall up into the sky. But a king said so."

"And the village? Is it dwarven, too?"

"Nah. Lot of ores were exposed when the water were redirected. The Rusted Horn used to be miners' barracks before it was an inn. And there were farmers, to feed the miners. But no village— at least in name— until Caer Bronach was built."

"You know quite a bit."

"I'm not a local, if that's what you're asking. I'm a Marcher like yourself." She inclined her head. "But I ask around. People were more chatty before the caer was abandoned."

"The soldiers are gone?"

"The Bann of the Waking Sea got spooked by the business on Lake Calenhad. Pulled her soldiers, templars, knights, what-have-you, back to Jainen. People with common sense went with them. Only the stubborn ones are left in Crestwood. Maybe they'll get lucky and Howe will pass them by."

"You think Howe will come here?"

"No doubt in my mind that his army are on the way." The dwarf sniffed, and lowered her voice so that Solona had to strain to hear it. "Everyone knows by now that Bann Alfstanna and her cousin hosted the Warden and the Rebel Prince."

Solona thought quickly to the terse missive she had received from Caer Oswin.

How secret are m families kept? Interested parties inquire. Red Jenny?

Solona had no answer to Elissa's strange questions. But they were bound for Jainen, too. If the gossip was true and the bann had a fresh fear of mages, great enough to pull her men from every garrison, how much danger were they heading for? Alistair had been so certain that Alfstanna Eremon could get the mage children to Kirkwall. But what if this was no longer the case?

Was Elissa asking if they had maintained their cover? Or did Alfstanna need their names to let them pass into her city? Who were the interested parties she referenced? And who in the Maker's name was Red Jenny?

The cart came to a halt outside the ramshackle flour mill. The druffalo driver shouted a greeting and the door opened. Out came Cullen, flanked by two other young men— Patrick, the miller's son, and Robert the wheelwright. All three were strapping in their work clothes, and Solona found herself staring as they descended the staircase and set to retrieving the wagonload of Redcliffe grain.

Cullen pulled a heavy sack, which was easily half her size, from the top of the stack. With a heave he slung it over his left shoulder, muscles rippling. Solona softly hissed in a breath. He made it look far easier than it should have been. She waited for him to say something to her. He only offered a bland, disinterested gaze in her direction.

The words came bubbling out unbidden. "I came to help."

"No." There was a flicker in the muscle in his cheek.

She ground her heel into the cobblestone. "If you are afraid it will taint the grain—"

"No." It was said just as calmly. As hard as he slipped his mask back on, she was sure there was something there. Her stomach rose in her chest. Anger was better than disinterest. She could never bear to be invisible to him.

Cullen turned away from her, and began to climb back up the stairs to the mill. A sweaty feeling prickled on her palms, and queasiness churned in her throat that had nothing to do with the stink of Crestwood. Why was she doing this? She had a very present need to keep him at arm's length. But she desired…

Impulsively she lifted her fist, and a sack of grain levitated out of the cart, startling the miller's son. To the void with them. She could be like Morrigan! But despite all her bluster, force magic was new to her. She had never used it but on accident, and that was just the once. The control it took to send the sack flying up the staircase without a staff in her hands felt like straining an already injured muscle. It knocked the wind right out of her. Solona grimaced as the sack splattered into the ground just beyond the threshold of the mill. It burst down the seam like an overripe gourd, sending raw kernels spilling across the floor.

Cullen whipped around at the top of the stairs. "That is what you call helping ?" he said in disbelief.

Solona gripped the edge of the cart, steadying her trembling hands. "Yes."

His eyes were as big as two saucers. "Did you mean to aim it at my head?"

Solona wanted to laugh. "Yes," she choked out. "I missed."


E,

I had never heard of a 'Red Jenny.' They are neither a mage fraternity nor templar brotherhood. Alistair could have told you that. But I believe I have found you an answer nevertheless. Have you been poking around in closets? Under beds? Red Jenny is a boogeyman— a entity which exists to scare misbehaving nobles. Spoils the wine, or ruins your party. A trickster demon and a thief.

At least, that is what they tell me. Could not say what that might have to do with mages, but I find the notion unsettling.

We met a Carta dwarf who calls herself Cadash. The name stirred up a most unsettling response from Wynne's golem friend. Normally it is rather broody, is it not? But upon hearing 'Cadash', Shale began to bellow and to stomp about, which frightened the children. Malika Cadash then proceeded to laugh, evidently finding the exchange delightful. I wondered aloud if all the golems are so erratic. She could not tell me. Shale is her first encounter with such a construct.

I'm digressing. The families are kept very secret, but they are scrutinized by their local templars until all the children reach the age of maturity. Magic runs in the blood. Sometimes it seems to pop up spontaneously, but it is presumed there was an apostate secreted away in the family tree. The Tevinter have studied that topic ad nauseum, but they would not let us read that sort of literature.

S.


S—

Message from Cadash?

E.E.C.


E,

"Bhelen or Pyral for Orzammar."

The princess was 'returned to the stone', as they say, this morning.

S.


After a time, the soft childish patters of footfalls upon the dirt road became not unlike the sound of slippered feet on stone floors. If Solona closed her eyes when the wind grew still, she could swear that the tower walls had sprung up around her once more. That the low, moss-covered walls of rough rock, or the tall hedges which divided the farmers' brown and trampled fields from the king's highway could metamorphose into Kinloch at any moment.

She hardly trusted her freedom. It was a bitter taste upon her tongue.

Solona studied the women who shepherded the mage children northward. Some had an air of false confidence. Those were the hedge mages. They had learned to act in a certain manner, in their earliest days, to escape detection by the Chantry. Others kept their cloaks drawn close around their bodies, and never slept more than one night in the same place. They were the runaways. And the last category were the mothers. They had pinched, sallow cheeks, hungry bellies, frightened mouths. Always with a pocket full of bread and wild greens, though they rarely ate. They took one look at Solona's burgeoning belly and embraced her as one of their own, which left her feeling left-footed and embarrassed. How was she meant to behave around these women?

She could only read pity in their gentle smiles. An ordinary woman who had lived an ordinary sort of life might have been comforted. But such was not to be a mage's life.

If she strained, she could remember a brief flash of her own mother. Something of her perfume, left behind on an abandoned pillow— oranges and smoke. Black hairs left in a hairbrush. Solona knew what Revka looked like from the painting looming in the hall in their Kirkwall estate. Fair skin, almond shaped eyes, a heavy gown of blue taffeta. A faint look of disapproval beneath winged eyebrows. Katarina had taken her handsome looks. Solona took after her Papa. She tried to imagine Revka in the flesh, wearing the pinched look of one of these women. But when she pressed herself she could remember only the feel of brown paper under her fingertips, on the day the servants packed Mama's portrait away.

The children were always hungry. They had learned that Malika still had coin in her purse and they swarmed about her at mealtimes, trading crowns of fern fronds and pine cones for pennies. Two coppers bought a sausage with not too much green on it; three bought a nicer one and a crust of bread. Crestwood's tavern reeked of damp. The hand painted sign hanging on the wall boasted of the days when food was cheap and plentiful— cold ale, mutton pie, Antivan brandy, wyvern steak, chicken.

Only a few farmers had come to sell their harvest this year. Cullen muttered something dark about ergot poisoning and only let the children eat bread baked from their own supply. The village ovens roared with hot coals once more, and in the midweek the women baked round, squat loaves of dark bread with only a little burn on the bottom of the crust. Solona learned to knead dough, and when her fingers were swollen stiff with the effort, she practiced doing it with magic.

The mothers of mages were strangely grateful to see her use magic in the mundane. When Wynne and Shale left to rejoin the Warden, Solona and Evelina took over teaching the children simple spells— warming, drying, purifying water. None of the young ones had any formal training. That is to say, Circle training, for she had come to understand that the apostates knew more practical magic than she did. She knew nothing of poisonous plants, precious little of brewing potions, nothing that could help her soothe a rabid animal or halt a giant spider. She knew how to destroy. She knew how to kill. Fire was as natural as drawing breath. She knew clearly, for the first time in her life, that she was nothing but the Chantry's weapon. No wonder the templars were afraid.

After the incident with the grain, Solona and Cullen were on wobbly footing. Nearly friends, she thought. The ache in her midsection when he was near her had lessened to a soft twinge. One morning, six weeks into their stay in Crestwood, Cullen came back to the tavern with a sharp crease in the corners of his mouth and a stormcloud in his eyes.

"We need to leave," he announced, swinging one leg over to straddle the bench she sat upon. "What's that you're eating?"

Solona gave a reluctant half-glance downward into the bowl of lumpy gray… stuff. "Sausage gravy, I think. Salty. Better not to look at it."

"Better not to eat it."

"I never pass up a hot breakfast."

"You never keep down a hot breakfast. What happened to the wild peaches I found you?"

"They were tart. I gave them away to the children."

"I climbed to the top of a tree for that fruit."

"You shouldn't have."

"I fell on my— ahem— for you."

"You really shouldn't have. Cullen, is it Mayor Dedrick?"

"Yes."

"Damn." She placed her head in her hands. "All of us?"

"Yes. He threatened to turn you in to the Regent's men or to the Chantry, whoever would come first."

"But we paid! That grain should have bought us safe harbor until the spring."

"I argued that very point. Best as I can tell, he's changed his mind."

She snapped to her feet, nostrils flaring: "I could kill him!" Her back twinged violently, and she hissed, cupping her hips with her hands.

Cullen's hand slipped to the small of her back. His eyes were hooded. "If I thought it would help, I would have done it myself."

She pushed him away, but reluctantly. "The children cannot walk in the deep snow!"

"All the more reason to strike for the coast before it gets much colder. We may have to borrow some shoes from the mayor."

"Promise me we'll never return them?"

The corner of his mouth turned up into a feral smile. "I promise." His hand settled on her shoulder. This time she leaned into the touch. "I cannot see why we would ever give a damn about Crestwood ever again."


E,

Fuck Crestwood.

S.