Chapter 9

~Of Priests and Seekers~

The road to Val Royeaux was nothing like the road to the Hinterlands. The farther we got from the Breach, the more we saw of ordinary life-we were more likely to see merchant caravans and farmer's carts than refugees and Templars or mages looking to pick a fight. It was nearly enough to make me enjoy the sunshine and forget that my hand glows under the tight glove I've been using to hide it.

But as Cassandra, Varric, Solas, and I make our way towards the decorated gates of Val Royeaux's summer market, my gut twists with all the nervous energy of I've been repressing for days. For beyond the fanciful walls of the Orlesian capital, I'm fear there may be a city full of people itching to see me hang.

"So," Varric says. "You and Curly." He sidles closer to me on the cobbled street, and my back stiffens. I'm fairly certain he's trying to distract me with thoughts of something other than potentially imminent death, but he also couldn't have chosen a more fraught topic of conversation.

"If you're looking for some kind of epic love story for some book of yours, I'm afraid you'll be sorely disappointed."

"C'mon, Herald. We've all seen the intense eye contact, and he went on and on about how knew you when we all thought you were a mass murderer. There's some kind of story there, and we all know it."

"Maker, Varric. He was a Templar in Ferelden before he transferred to Kirkwall. I lived there my entire life. So yes. We knew each other. Apparently he didn't believe me the mass murdering type. Whatever saucy scandal you're picturing never happened."

"So I take it you stared longingly at every Templar in the entire Tower."

"Perhaps I did. Perhaps my eyeballs are right tarts."

Cassandra groans, but she smiles, too, and Solas laughs. Laughing is good-laughing means they're not thinking too hard about what I might actually feel for Cullen. Because I can't tell them that my silly soul seems to strike soft chords with his, that there's something grand and gorgeous between us when our eyes meet, but even when we were the most obviously lovelorn pair in Kinloch Hold, we were both far too invested in playing the roles of Templar and mage to act on it. I certainly can't tell them about what happened after. How Cullen was tortured with visions of a version of me he could never have. How I was raped and beaten and I barely remember how to feel. I'd so much rather be funny than sappy and morbid at once.

"You don't look at me like we're star-crossed lovers," Varric persists. "Perhaps you have something against dwarves?"

"I don't think you're exposing enough chest hair to catch her attention," Solas teases.

"Does Curly even have chest hair?"

"I honestly would not know," I reply.

"That's very boring honesty," Varric says. "C'mon. I can see it-you're the Tower's golden apprentice-mentored by the First Enchanter himself! He's the dutiful Templar boy, making sure you don't turn into an abomination during a morning stroll in the gardens. You trip on your delicate elven ankles, but he catches your elbow! And you shouldn't, you really shouldn't, but your eyes meet over a rose bush and your lips lock and-"

"I thought your romance serials sold like shit, Varric." I shoot back. "Maybe you should stick to crime dramas."

"Varric should write whatever he wishes-including Swor-including romance. If that's what he wishes." Cassandra blushes, and Solas lifts a thick brow in her direction.

"How unexpectedly supportive of you. Does this mean we're finally getting married? We could have a double wedding! You and me and Curly and the Herald."

"Tch." Cassandra sets her jaw and stares straight ahead. I let the three of them bicker and joke beside me as we pass through the gates. Stony likenesses of Andraste and her earthly companions loom above us, casting flat judgement across those who pass below. I wonder if Andraste can see me. I wonder if she approves of this visit to Orlais, or if she thinks I'm being terribly idiotic, risking the very life she so graciously handed back to me. Or maybe she thinks I'm a terrible blasphemer, claiming her name on my own mad quest for power, and she'll smile from on high as the Chantry relieves me of my head.

We pass through gilded gates into the main square, where a crowd swells around a wooden platform. A priest-one of Orlais's Grand Clerics-stand at center stage, shouting at the top of her lungs. People skitter away from me as I approach, like water fleeing in droplets from intruding oil. The shouting priest follows the new gap, and her eyes shine with anticipation as she meets my gaze.

"Good people of Val Royeaux, hear me! Together, we mourn our divine, her naive and beautiful heart, blinded by treachery."

She's not speaking to the good people of Val Royeaux, though. She's looking right at me, she speaking right to me. They're window dressing, mere witnesses to the accusations she wants to fling right at me. "You wonder what will become of her murderer. Well, wonder no more."

I don't flinch at her words. I've spent ten years wearing a neutral expression-it's not difficult to muster one now. And I know that I'm not Justinia's murderer. I know that some mysterious figure called her a 'sacrifice.' I know that same figure called me an 'intruder.' And if that's all I can remember, it's enough for me to know very well that this priest is a liar.

"Behold!" she calls, reaching a robed hand in my direction, all sweeping movements and booming voice. "The so-called 'Herald of Andraste,' claiming to rise where our beloved fell. We say this is a false prophet! The Maker would send no elf in our time of need!"

The Maker would send no elf. Solas stiffens beside me, and I can sense all the righteous indignation he keeps stored in his sometimes fiery eyes. I glance through the crowd, and I spot the elves on the fringes, near ivy-clad walls. They're dirtier than the humans of the market, poverty staining their gaunt cheeks and tight mouths.

I wish more of the humans looked sufficiently upset by the blatant racism. I wish fewer elves looked like they half believed it themselves.

The Maker would send no elf. Hadn't I thought the very same thing when I first heard the words 'Herald of Andraste?' I'd thought it a preposterous idea. I'm an elf and a mage and barely functional, barely whole. I am not the easy choice, if someone were really doing the picking.

And yet, here I am. Healed. Marked. Leading. And I can feel...something. It tingles at the edge of my being, a presence that doesn't quite belong to me. And for the first time in my life, I think it might be Andraste watching over me, or else some other deity who doesn't seem too terribly offended when I think of her as Andraste. It's there to say that even though I looked at those statues and wondered of Andraste's opinion of me, there's something in this tangle of a world that has placed me exactly where I am.

"I am not here to debate theology," I cry. "I am an elf, yes. And a mage. I was once Tranquil, and by the grace of Andraste, I am healed. All of these rumors you've heard are true." Murmurs rippled around me, and I take a deep breath, willing my voice to come in stronger. My instructors used to say that the whole Tower could hear me coming from three floors away when I wanted to be heard. My words would fill my lungs to the brim and spill forth with the conviction of a person who would sound like they mattered through sheer force of will.

I haven't been that girl for a long time, but I feel her strength spreading from some deep, hidden part of me, all the way to the surface, soaking through my blood and bones and breath.

"Another, far more sinister rumor is also true," I shout without, my voice full and unbroken. "To the east, in the Frostback Mountains, there is a Breach from this world into the Fade. Demons threaten our world. It must be closed. And I can close it." I lift my hand, letting the mark glow bright in the noontime sun.

A hush falls over the crowd, and pressing bodies form a perfect circle around me. The relative quiet rings in my ears, as though all the noise in the world were muffled by the empty air between me and them. A thousand eyes crawl over my person, from my mark to my brand to my pointed ears, to the staff on my back and the leathers on my shoulders.

I'm not just a lost apprentice and her strong voice standing in front of them. I'm the woman who has felt countless stares in these last months, the one who has closed rifts. The unbeliever who has felt the gentle stirrings of new faith. I'm the mage who has walked miles and miles further than I ever imagined, crossed borders and mountains and rivers and roads far beyond the confines of the walls that once held me. I'm the elf who has learned to love these pointed ears; I'm the Ferelden who has learned to trust a horse's hooves to carry me where my feet cannot.

I am also the Tranquil who knew, deep in my bones, that something inside me was missing, and it was leaving hollow spaces where other people were full. Who always had to be filling myself up with tasks, with copying books and enchanting runes and fixing benches and cleaning floors...with counting stones when the walls were the only thing left to stare at. I am the Tranquil who always knew that everyone else was connected in a way that I was not, and always knew that no matter how deep I dug into myself, I could never get that connection back, even if I had the capacity to want it.

Even as I stand here, feeling all the parts of me melt together under their fervent gazes, I am not delusional enough to believe that they can see them coalesce. But I know they can see slivers of slivers of pieces of me, the pieces that they have the context for. An elf. A mage. A woman. A Ferelden. A person who knows what it means to be broken.

Here, I am Tranquil and not, tumbling and still, separate from anyone and together with everyone. And even though many of the people who stare at me now will go back to hating me in a moment, I have faith that some elusive divinity put me before them, this fractured being still learning to be whole.

Cassandra steps forward beside me, and her presence buzzes in harmony with mine as her hand circles my wrist and her thick muscles support the glow that dances across my splayed fingers.

"This mark, this woman, can close the Breach!" she calls. "The Inquisition stands with her to stop this threat before it is too late."

The energy of the crowd swells, but the Grand Cleric steps closer to the edge of the platform, and she points toward a line of Templars moving in her direction.

"It is already too late," she says, and her face tightens in a sickly marriage of disgust and triumph. "The Templars have returned to the Chantry, and they will face this 'Inquisition,' and the people will be safe once more!"

I can almost taste Cassandra's fiery rebuttal in the air, but before she can voice it, one of the Templars marching onto that platform hurls a fist at the back of the Grand Cleric's head.

She crumples to the ground, fragile and floating as a bird struck by an arrow. One of the Templars, young and handsome, moves as if to help her. But another, their clear leader, moves toward him with a sneer as heavy as his armor.

"Still yourself," he says. "She is beneath us." The ugly truth in his words flashes painfully in the young Templar's eyes. She is already still. She is quite literally beneath them.

For a moment, my mind flits to Cullen, who was once a young, handsome Templar, who might have been that conflicted man on that platform, whose first instinct might have been to help a defenseless priest after one of his fellows knocked her down. The young Templar straightens his back and tightens his jaw, and I think Cullen might have done that, too. He might have fallen in line when his duty commanded it.

"Is this what the Templars are, now?" I ask, and this time I'm not talking to the crowd. I'm looking right at that pale, aging leader, so far above a woman with no means to defend herself. "Thugs who beat priests?"

He ignores me, and Cassandra pushes towards him. "Lord Seeker Lucius, it is imperative that speak with-"

"You will not address me."

"Lord Seeker?"

Lord Seeker. The words rattle in my mind, even as he brushes by Cassandra the same way he ignored me. He's the leader of Cassandra's order, the order she still clings to, even as most of the Inquisition have abandoned their titles and outside allegiances, as Cullen has abandoned the Templars.

If anyone should want to talk, it's a man who heads an order named the 'Seekers of the Truth.'

"Creating a heretical movement, raising up a puppet as Andraste's prophet. You should be ashamed." He briefly meets her eyes, and then passes his judgement to the crowd at large. "You should all be ashamed. The Templars failed no one when they left the Chantry to purge the mages! You are the ones who have failed, you who have leashed our righteous swords with doubt and fear!"

I could almost laugh, if I weren't afraid it would start a rather deadly riot in the grand markets of Val Royeaux. Failed no one, as if the mages they killed were no one, the Tranquil they abused were no one, the farmers whose homes they burned were no one.

"If you came to appeal to the Chantry, you are too late. The only destiny that commands respect here is mine."

I step forward. I force him to see me. I force him to look at the brand that failed me.

"The only heresy I see here is yours," I say. "Are you protecting the Maker's children by declaring his priests beneath you and burning his lands to slaughter his mages?"

"His mages? Am I supposed to believe that you're one of them? Andraste's Herald? You are an elf. You have nothing. No influence, no power, and certainly no holy purpose."

"But Lord Seeker," says the handsome Templar. He moves forward nervously and earnestly, eyes searching for guidance from a man he wants to desperately to trust. "What if she really was sent by the Maker? You saw the mark-" But another Templar pulls him back, and the Lord Seeker ignores him.

"I will make the Templar Order a power that stands alone against the Void. We deserve recognition, independence! You and your mark have shown me nothing, and the Inquisition less than nothing." The Lord Seeker's eyes slide over the crowd, and he takes his first steps back. "Templars! Val Royeaux is unworthy of our protection! We march!"

And with that, they file away, leaving Cassandra, Varric, and I in a rapidly emptying square. As the people of Val Royeaux scurry away, they steal glances in my direction, no doubt already composing stories for posterity. I was there when...

"Charming fellow, isn't he?" Varric says.

"Quite," Solas adds. "And our friend the Grand Cleric was positively sweet as well."

"Solas. Varric." I shake my head. Cassandra tracks the Lord Seeker's back, jaw stiff and back straight and eyes hard. "What do you know about him?"

"I know he's gone completely mad. Did you hear him? He sounded ridiculous." She quivers with rage and incredulity.

"Cassandra."

She takes a deep, steadying breath. "He took over the Seekers of Truth two years ago, after Lord Seeker Lambert's death. He was always a decent man, never given to ambition and grandstanding. This is...very bizarre."

"Not given to grandstanding?" Solas inquires, lifting one of those oh-so-expressive brows.

"Bizarre. As I said."

Behind us, the Grand Cleric groans.

I should be angry with her. The Maker would send no elf. But I move towards her on liquid legs, carried by a will only half my own.

Andraste, if you grant me anything today, let it be one last ounce of grace.

I vault onto the platform, and I settle beside her.

"Let me help you," I say, softly now. Just for us, for her and me. Not for the crowds or for the Lord Seeker or for public perception.

A nasty bruise is in its infancy on her cheek, and she glares at me even as I remain tranquil before her. Even if I am 'elf' to her in public. Even if, layered behind that 'elf,' is a private overtone of 'knife ears.'

"You must be very pleased," she says. "I have been attacked by my own Templars in front of half of Val Royeaux, and my fellow Clerics have scattered to the wind, along with their convictions."

"No. I am not pleased. I came to Val Royeaux only to speak with the Mothers."

"Do not pretend you had no part in forcing this confrontation. Calling yourself 'the Herald of Andraste.' You're an elf and a mage-a mage once deemed unfit in the eyes of the Maker to wield your magic at all."

"That is not what happened." You have been granted a mercy, Greagoir said, all those years ago. I wasn't unfit. I was strong a strong mage, a good mage. Harrowed.

No. I am strong, and I am so very harrowed. "I can offer you healing magic."

"Why would you wish to help me at all?" she spits, her good eye narrowing even as the other continues to swell. And yet, as I summon warm healing magic to my fingertips, she does not protest. I slide my fingers gently across her face, and her bruises float away, and with them, the last of my anger.

"You trusted the Templars-your friends-to join you today. They attacked you instead. I once trusted a friend when I should not have, and I suffered for it too." I touch my still glowing hand to my forehead, but the last ten years cannot be healed with my meager magic, visible brand or no. "Andraste healed my hurt, so I healed yours."

"You really do believe you are the Herald of Andraste, don't you?" The question starts as an accusation, but her own anger fades with every word, and now she studies me, tranquil as I ever was.

I study her back for a moment, her gray eyes soft in her aging face. She is round in a way that suggests a soft life to match them, though I lived in the Tower long enough to know that a full belly is not the same thing as an easy life.

I could tell her that I believe the last weeks of my life have been far too improbable to be the result of random happenstance. I could tell her that I truly believe in some kind of benevolent deity, that might be the Maker or Andraste or something else, for the first time in my life. I could tell her that I can close rifts and do magic and feel again, and all of that must be for a reason. It must be. That if I don't believe it's for a reason, I think I'll fly into a thousand pieces that can never be put back together.

All those things tumble through me, the same way as all those mundane tasks did when I was Tranquil. I could voice those feelings, now. I have the capacity, now. I could be messy and rolling and complicated.

Instead, I nod.

"Yes."

My whole body buzzes as I walk away from that platform to rejoin the others. Varric whistles low as we walk away.

"Andraste's tits, Herald. I think you almost believed yourself for a second."

I don't look at him as I settle back in my skin. "Let's eat some tiny cakes or something ridiculously Orlesian before we go back to Haven, shall we?"

"Are we really not going to talk about the fact that you just now looked like a real life prophet?"

I shrug, and my rapidly beating heart presses a smile onto my lips. The Orlesian sun heats my face, and the market air fills my lungs with the sweet essence of fancy food and expensive perfume and delicate flowers.

"It's about time I started acting the part, no?"

Varric barks an incredulous laugh, and Cassandra shares in my smile. Solas, though-his eyes narrow, and I can't quite tell what he's accusing me of. Grandstanding, perhaps? Except Solas approves of showy affectations.

What he doesn't approve of is believing your own bullshit. Tel'abelas, Solas. I'm not sorry. I can't be, because I need to live this faith as much as I need to breathe, or I won't have the strength to keep fighting.

(Note: Next chapter is going to have so much Cullen in it. Just. Yeah. Sit tight :D )