Chapter Ten

Forgotten in the Fade

Aleix blinked for a long moment. His face contorted its way through apprehension to confusion to some strange and twisted amusement. It was his shoulders that began to shudder first, quaking with the silent chuckle that bubbled into roiling and boisterous laughter. He threw his head back in the apparent mirth, but Cyrano would not allow himself to be shaken. He stood fast, his expression frozen in stern expectation.

"Valdorio," the mage said at last, a finger appearing to wipe away a tear, "is a villain of the commedia-in several plays that you wrote, yourself, if I recall." He grew confident again at that, and that half smile returned. "Cyrano Rideri was the hapless hero of those productions, and it would seem to me, therefore, that you have been living not only a tragedy, signore, but a lie."

He had expected to feel shock or some level of disappointment that the revelation had been precisely the opposite of what he had hoped for, but in light of how everything else had gone to this point, Cyrano couldn't say he was surprised. It could even be said that he felt quite numb. For all his cleverness, he'd been naught but played for a fool. And by something of his own creation, no less, from the sound of it.

"Then who was it that killed Bianca? And why would the Crows-no. No, don't bother." He raked both hands through his hair. "What must be done to sodding end this?"

"If you would rather remain ignorant of your past, at least allow me to help you be rid of the demon." The mage reached out and tapped the part of Cyrano's breastplate that covered the malignant scar. "You have the taint all over you, and that is far more dangerous to our cause."

"Dangerous for any cause," the bard admitted grudgingly.

"A binding may be unraveled in the same way it was woven. And for that, I suggest your lovely companion lend me her assistance."

"For blood magic? Never!"

Aleix raised his hands placatingly. "Her help is imperative for me to not need to take that route. I haven't the life left in me to make the attempt on my own, and there are no Crows here to be an alternative. Her magic added to mine should be enough."

Alistair stepped up beside Cyrano to be part of the conversation again. His expression was still thoughtful and only showing a trifle amount of concern. "This is not unfamiliar territory even for me," he spoke up. "And, at the very least, you're not possessed. Any alternative is better than no solution at all."

"What will I need to do?" Solona's voice was soft but anything but hesitant. She spoke with a determination that forced the issue even as Cyrano was about to retort further. He stood before her in two strides, his hands clamped on her shoulders to get her to look at him.

"Are you mad?" he demanded through clenched teeth, a lump in his throat suddenly threatening to choke him. "A demon, Solona. A demon. I won't-" He couldn't finish. She was giving him a look that spoke more loudly than any words. She had made up her mind, and not even his pleas would sway her. "Why?" His voice broke.

"For the same reason you are so adamant that I don't."

"My lady, I will need whatever skill you might have," Aleix put plainly to answer her question. "The incantation is simple enough, but I will need more energy than my own. The Prince must sleep, and I must go into the Fade after him. Hopefully, it will not be too taxing."

"And if it is?" Solona's tone was steady even if her eyes glimmered with uncertainty.

"The lady will have nothing to worry about," Emilio piped up. "We have sworn our lives to serve the Prince. And if that means giving them up to magic to secure his freedom, it will be done."

Cyrano cringed. This was a massive mistake. It stank of folly and worse, but he quickly found himself left in the dust of preparations. Even Alistair was giving the Antivans pointers on things he knew from his templar training, on what to do if something came out of the Fade on its own...or inside of someone else. For his part, he was instructed to go to bed. Aleix was forceful on the subject, and the bard had no interest in making the temper of a blood mage rise. He mounted the stairs with weighty steps and found his way into the lone room on the second floor.

It was sparsely furnished and showed signs of the king's occupation of the space. A desk was covered in books and papers and lit by a candle that had since burned down low. The cot of a bed was untouched, and it was here that Cyrano sat himself down. He waited for several minutes in a general feeling of discomfort. He could hear the low murmur of voices downstairs but was unable to make out anything in particular.

At long last, there were footfalls on the creaking steps. Solona peeked into the room, first, followed up closely by Aleix. Alistair took up a post in the far corner while Emilio stayed just outside the doorway. Both of those men, warrior training both, were armed with swords and at least one dagger each.

"Drink this," Aleix bluntly commanded, handing Cyrano a small vial. "You must be in a deep sleep for us to accomplish anything."

"And if it kills me?"

The older man cocked an eyebrow. "The potion or the demon? The potion is harmless, I assure you...merely a concoction of embrium and deep mushroom. The demon we have yet to discover. Knowing the man you were, I would expect pride or rage, but Solona insists that your reactions were based more in a sort of desire. Everything centered on Bianca. That could be more dangerous."

"Demons of desire are particularly manipulative," Solona continued while Aleix made ready for the ritual. "They know your own heart and will use it against you. My father had encountered one in a dream, once, and his warnings to me gave me nightmares for months afterward." She sat down on the bed beside him and hesitantly reached over to squeeze his hand. It was meant to be comforting, but Cyrano could tell she felt none of the emotion she was trying to convey.

What came next was a blur of arcane activity, bad smells, and a tonic that burned of lyrium. His vision went when the potion took hold, and Cyrano collapsed back onto the pillow in what first passed for a drunken stupor but that quickly segued into total blackness. He felt nothing. He heard nothing. Not for what seemed like an interminable period.

When he came to, he was in a room he didn't recognize. Or did he? It looked to be some sort of sitting room, richly furnished with plush velvet furniture and gilded from floor to ceiling in gold leaf. Marble stonework ran along the walls and culminated in a massive fireplace that was set to roaring. A woman walked back and forth before it. She wore a morning dress of heavy white lace with sleeves that belled to her waist. A sleeveless robe of a pale lavender satin was over that, and it dragged lightly over the carpet behind her as she moved. She was reading a book, her lips moving slightly as her dark eyes scanned the pages.

Your wife.

Cyrano could hear Aleix's voice, though he could not see him. He spun in place, attention shooting from painted ceiling to floor with the sharp eyes of one long trained in shadows. There was nothing.

You married her for love, but you already knew this. Her father was a merchant of moderate means and her bloodline nothing to be impressed by. I needn't remind you how little that mattered. She loved your plays and your poetry, your songs and how nimble your fingers were over the lute strings. She inspired the character of Calabria. It was your love for her that brought you to this ruin.

"Sebastian?"

He snapped to at the voice, his body whipping about to stand fully before the woman who addressed him. She smiled warmly as if nothing were out of place. But there was, wasn't there? He allowed himself to move closer, and it was then he noticed that her robe helped to hide the swell of her abdomen. She was heavy with child...and her death would come not long after that baby was born.

"Sebastian, mi amor, you should be getting to the map room. You know the admirals were to arrive today." She laughed like his forgetting was normal or something silly. She reached up and gently stroked his cheek. "I'm not going anywhere."

She, more than anyone, was in favor of your support of Queen Salome, eldest daughter of the king. They had become good friends since your marriage-thick as thieves and close as sisters. The Armada was also in favor of Salome, she having a better sense for such things than her younger siblings. That alliance also cost you dearly. Despite the Armada, that was the unpopular faction, for the Crows were behind Esmeralda in force.

The scene shifted. It was the hall from an earlier vision he'd had, where he stood about a table with several men and women. They wore sashes and medals of rank, though some were dressed far more commonly. The admirals. They were not naval officers like in the regimental organization of Orlais. These were glorified pirates from all walks of life, and those that were wealthy had gotten there by not having the cleanest conscience.

But this was not an event subsequent to his meeting with Bianca. It couldn't have been. There was no real talk of civil war, nothing beyond working out that year's trade routes after the Prince of Antiva City had been murdered by his own Crows.

And this is why you never trusted Crows. They had murdered your father and raped your mother before they hung her from the cliffs of Rialto Bay. They would turn against even those that paid them if there were suddenly one that could pay them more. You never had been the most honest of men, but you had aimed for some sense of honor. Your parents had you educated in Orlais as a child. You knew the backstabbing ways of the nobility, but it was never so crude in the Empire as here. The Felicisima Armada at least faced you head on when they tried to kill you, so you dared to brave your chances with them. This, coupled with your freeing of slaves, was your greatest asset.

An argument was breaking out. Something about the land routes...roads that would be impossible to use without a new Prince for Antiva City in their employ. They knew it would be another Crow, a new Talon, and they bickered with themselves over what it meant. Cyrano felt his anger building, and he slammed his hands down on the table's surface to silence the lot of them. There was a tug at his arm, and the look he gave the one standing there was sharper than he'd intended.

It was a woman, young, perhaps twenty. Her hair was nearly black and pulled up away from her face. She was pretty but not incredibly so, with a square jaw and dark eyes that were a trifle too close together. Her gown was an emerald green and conservative with its ruffled collar high up under her chin.

Ines, Aleix's disembodied voice intoned, your betrothed. Your parents had intended you for one another since the day she was born as a way to expand your land holdings and get you one step higher in the royal line. The interests you two shared were few, but she was intensely dutiful to the arrangement-a contract signed in blood, I might add. It doesn't take a maleficar to know what that means.

Your marriage to Bianca drove her mad. Her mind had never been a strong one to begin with, and it shattered when you told her your decision. You burned the contract in front of her, the blood of your fathers binding you together, and that was the ultimate blasphemy.

The scene shifted again-several times in fact. Images of all sorts flashed before his eyes as he relived both joy and terror, the deepest love and the most horrifying loss. When it was over, Aleix stood before him in what appeared to be a library. The only light came through high windows long caked over with grime and dust. Where they were was anyone's guess.

"Ines learned dark magics from the demon in an attempt to win you back...but her inexperience caused it to backfire. She had wanted you to forget Bianca, forget all that happiness and return to what you once had, hoping your sense of duty would prevail. She had gotten more than she bargained for. You forgot everything save basic habits and the passions of your childhood. You had created Cyrano as a boy but never put him to the pen until you were much older. But his adventures? Oh, those you had long ago created right here in this library when you should have been paying attention to the lessons I had to teach you."

Cyrano breathed deeply, taking in the musty scent of thousands of aging tomes long ignored. He did, indeed, remember this place. He remembered a much younger Aleix rapping his knuckles with a rod when his mind wandered. Aleix had once been a Circle mage, but the Chantry was weak in Antiva. The Crows favored blood mages, and Cyrano's own father had insisted that Aleix take up the craft if for nothing more than to be able to better defend against it. The mage had been reluctant-exceptionally so-and spent the next several years learning what he could from ancient elven records rather than the popular studies into demonology that most of his fellows delved into.

"But the end of this trial is not here," Aleix went on, "and I can go no further. I have unraveled what I can of the demon's bindings, caught as it was in the web of your memory. You must do the rest."

He pounded his staff off the stone floor, and a ghostly portal appeared. It had the semblance of any other door in the palace despite its curious placement in the middle of nothing. The portal opened without a sound. The opening beyond was consumed by violet flame, and Cyrano knew with no small amount of certainty that this was the very hub of all his recent nightmare...and more besides. Aleix was no longer there when he chanced to look in hopes of one last bolstering to his confidence. Alone and a breath away from the heart of his torment, Cyrano had no choice but to step forward.

The flames consumed him in an instant. There was no burn, no true sensation of any kind. Instead, he was merely transported to a space of strange, soft ground of a nebulous nature. There was no true form to the place, no proper earth or sky, and the landscape was dotted with contorted things he vaguely recognized from life. Bookshelves stood in haphazard arrangement. Twisted musical instruments hung in midair. He spun in place to take it all in and only dizzied himself in the process. There was no sense to any of it. No rhyme. No reason. And when Bianca appeared in the center of it all, it was all he could do to keep from falling over.

"I have waited long for you, mi amor," she said with such a sweet smile.

"Is this what it means to die?" Cyrano croaked, his throat unbelievably dry. "Have I joined you at last?"

Bianca laughed, soft and musical, and her eyes glittered in her mirth. She began to step closer to him, and when she was but an arm's length away, he expected to catch a whiff of water lilies. Instead, there was the sharp tang of lyrium and ozone. Magic. Bianca had been no mage. When she touched him, the sensation carried with it a burning tingle that Cyrano could not make up his mind whether it was even pleasant. His emotions were at war with his sensibility. The whole ordeal made him nauseous.

"You would be wise to leave me be, temptress," he rasped lowly. "I no longer have patience for your games."

The demon pouted with Bianca's lips, but the frown lasted only a moment before a sinister smile peeled back to reveal gleaming teeth. "I see that your desires have changed." She backed away slowly and took only a few steps before violet flames erupted and her figure shifted. When the blinding light cleared away and Cyrano looked back, it was Solona standing before him. ...Or some creature that looked the part of Solona. Her hair hung long and loose, and the thin shift that covered her hugged her frame.

"It's this one you want," the demon crooned, bare arms snaking up around his neck. "How you've yearned to taste her lips, feel her body pressed against yours." She moved in closer in emphasis. "You want her more than the one you lost. Why is that, I wonder?"

A warmth washed over him as the creature was more aware of his suspicions. Her victory relied on his ignorance...and his survival pivoted upon the shred of self control he still had left. The torrents of memories hailing upon him as Aleix had worked his magic left him weary and ragged. And the demon, apparently having fresher thoughts to work with, had a much better grasp on Solona than he was comfortable with. She was soft and warm pressed up against him as she was, her lips tantalizingly close. He could smell the lyrium on her breath, but that was to be expected from a mage. Her perfume was faint and sweet.

He hesitated a moment. There was such a strong temptation to slide his hand about her waist and hold her close. She wanted it. It was obvious. Solona, stubborn as she was, finally coming to her senses...

Cyrano sucked in a breath as a rush of energy coursed through him. His whole body glowed with an intense emerald light as his heart pounded with new life. The spell-Solona's new spell. And from the dreamy expression on the face of the woman in his arms, her eyes closed in anticipation of a long-overdue kiss, he knew it was none of her doing.

Demon.

He still had one free hand. While he completed the action of holding the creature about the waist, he reached behind him for a dagger he desperately hoped he had. Fingers gripped about a solid hilt. It was hard to keep his breathing even between the anticipation and the force of the real Solona's spell.

"Amora," he whispered, letting his lips fall close enough to the demon's to let her think she'd won, "I have waited long for this."

"I know," she returned, her head tipping back in whatever anticipation she could feel.

The kiss never came. Instead, Cyrano slid the dagger between her ribs and thrust as hard and as deeply as he could. The false Solona's eyes bulged wide, flashing from silver to an unnatural violet. The rest of the glamor fell away. The demon shoved herself away and clutched at her side. She stared in horror at the blade Cyrano held as it dripped with her lyrium-rich blood.

"Mortal, you have betrayed me!"

"Only something with a heart can feel such a thing," Cyrano quipped boldly as he watched with some satisfaction while the demon lost her strength and fell to her knees. "It is to my luck that you have one."

"The female was right about you..."

He shrugged and stepped forward, grabbing the demon by the throat. "Next time you see Ines, tell her there are far worse things in this world than being betrayed." And he plunged the blade home once more. There was an unearthly scream, a shudder in the air itself, and the demon blew apart in a flash of violet flame and magnesium brightness.

Cyrano's eyes popped open to be greeted by darkness. The air was close and musty, and he found that he was laying down once more. The cot. The house in the slums. He sucked in a deep breath to ensure he was alive. All seemed to be well save for the resistant weight across his chest, but there was no way for him to see what it was. One of his hands was trapped in the clutches of slender fingers. The other he was able to raise to get some semblance of an idea as to what had him pinned down. He encountered smooth strands of long hair, the feminine lines of cheekbone and jaw, full and parted lips that funneled air between them uneasily as if from fear or sleep wracked with nightmare. He squeezed the hands that had him trapped. They squeezed back.

"I thought I'd lost you." Solona's voice was quiet and muffled against the fabric of his shirt. His armor had apparently been removed long before, and what he remained in was drenched in sweat. "I could smell the fade. Your scar burned."

"Your magic gave me new life," he replied just as softly, fingers trailing through her hair to comfort her. "And the demon is no more."

The mage snapped upright at that. There was a spark, a flicker, and a candle came to life near the bed. Both her hands came down on the collar of his shirt and yanked it open to expose his chest.

"Amora," he laughed, "there is plenty of time later for-"

"It's gone."

"What?"

"Your scar..."

Cyrano finally looked down, all the while thinking she had been referring to the demon. "Well, yes. So it is." His eyebrows came together over his nose. "Does that mean the whole ordeal proved a fruitful endeavor?"

Solona nodded, and her eyes flicked upward to meet his. Her lower lip caught between her teeth as she appeared to debate telling him something. "Aleix regretted that he couldn't obey your wish...to leave your memories alone. The demon was too caught up in them."

"He told me. I can't find that I hold it against him, either. Usually, ignorance is bliss, but what I know is far too valuable to leave lost. And I don't mean the politics of Antiva." He pushed himself upright and rubbed the tension out of his neck. However it was the poor of Denerim lived, it was certainly uncomfortable.

"So...then..." Solona pulled her hands into her lap and cast a glance off to the side. There was apparently something very interesting to be seen in the grain of the wooden floor. "What do I call you? Are you Sebastian Calabrese or Cyrano Rideri?"

The Antivan laughed as he caught the young woman's face up in his hands. "Amora, you may call me the blighted offspring of a giant spider if it so pleases you. I will answer just the same."

And he kissed her before she could even think of bothering to argue.