"In ancient times, the People were ageless and eternal, and instead of dying would enter the uthenera—the long sleep—and walk the shifting paths beyond the Veil with Falon'Din and his brother Dirthamen. Those elders would learn the secrets of dreams, and some returned to the People with newfound knowledge.
But we quickened and became mortal. Those of the People who passed walked with Falon'Din into the Beyond and never returned. If they took counsel with Dirthamen on their passage, his wisdom was lost, for it went with them into the Beyond also, and never came to the People.
Then Fen'Harel caused the gods to be shut away from us, and those who passed no longer had Falon'Din to guide them. And so we learned to lay our loved ones to rest with an oaken staff, to keep them from faltering along the paths, and a cedar branch, to scatter the ravens named Fear and Deceit who were once servants of Dirthamen, now without a master.
—as told by Gisharel, keeper of the Ralaferin clan of the Dalish
Chapter 12
Líadan
"Right," Líadan said, glaring at the door that Malcolm had quickly shut behind him. Though, as annoyed as she was that he'd walked—no, run—away from the confrontation, she had to admit she felt relief that he'd done so. Even alone it was an awkward conversation and an even more awkward situation. He was probably still in love with Morrigan, or at least the idea what what she had been, that much seemed obvious. And she, on the other hand, wasn't even sure how she truly felt. He was a human, after all, and the man who'd killed her best friend. Admittedly, to save her life, but the fact remained. But there was something there, she supposed, or they wouldn't be acting all strange like this. Part of her wanted to go back to the way it was during the Blight, when they constantly annoyed and teased by each other and that was it. When none of this subtle whatever else that'd formed between them had been present, everything had made more sense then. She cursed under her breath, and then turned to look at Fiona.
As Líadan had stared at the closed door and ranted through her thoughts, Fiona had stepped up to the altar and opened the Joining box and started mixing components. "What do you need me to do?" Líadan asked the other mage.
"Stop brooding, for one," Fiona said without looking up from her task.
"I'm not brooding," Líadan instantly replied. "I'm... something, but it's not brooding."
Still, Fiona didn't look up. "If he's anything like his father, you'll have to confront him directly about it. Nothing else will make the conversation happen. You should probably seal off every exit before you speak with him, too, if he's anything like me. And you'd be well off making sure that you truly feel whatever it is you feel about him before you take any step either of you might regret. The consequences of following your feelings could be dire."
"Do you regret it?" The question came out before Líadan even knew she'd thought of it.
Fiona's hands stopped in mid-air, still holding the second, smaller box where the archdemon blood vial rested. They shook, if briefly, at a jolt of memory. Then, "No, I don't."
"Don't you wish it could have been different, though? Maric was a king and you're an elf and a mage," Líadan said, her own concerns bursting forth in her questions, seeking answers to her own doubts, ones she'd barely thought, let alone voiced. Malcolm is a prince and I am a Dalish elf, she thought, even as she tried not to think it. I'm a mage and he's probably still in love with a different mage. And I don't even know how I really feel about him anyway. Do I? Or am I just telling myself that? She was going to give herself a headache, that much was certain.
"It was what it was," Fiona answered, fingers nimbly opening the box and adding a drop of the archdemon blood to the tincture. "It existed. It wasn't for us to question. Did we? Of course. It's our nature to question, as living beings."
"What about Morrigan?" And so easily, Líadan shifted from past to present.
"I suspect that even if Morrigan ever truly loved him, what she must do takes precedence over whatever she might want with him. How she went to Zevran after Malcolm refused her is proof of that, I believe. Wherever it came from, she believes she has a duty far beyond anything she might feel for any mortal, including Malcolm. I fear her plans and her destiny do not involve him any longer. Perhaps his future involves you, but that remains for you and him to decide." Fiona picked up the chalice and swirled the liquid around, and then set it down and said a short incantation over it. A purple aura formed around it for a few seconds then faded. She pursed her lips and studied the potion before pronouncing, "It's done."
Without the task of preparing the Joining potion as an intermediary, Líadan felt too uneasy about the topic they'd been discussing to continue. So she changed the subject. "I don't like those templars being here."
"I think Anders likes them being here even less than you do. After all, it's him they're after, not us." Fiona tilted her head to the side. "You don't even have a history with templars, do you?"
Líadan took a seat in one of the pews, surprised at how one sensitive topic had quickly turned into another. "It's how my parents died." Her fingers reached out and traced the patterns in the grain of the wood of the pew in front of her. The feeling of the smooth wood was nearly the same as her mother's ironbark bow had been. She'd handed it to her as her father had armed himself with his spear and buckler, both of them readying to fight the group of five templars walking along the Brecilian Passage. "I'd been made a full Dalish hunter only a week before. And only a few days after that, I discovered I was a mage. I'd been out with a hunting party, near the Brecilian Passage, when one of the boys in the party made one crack too many about me being a girl. Before I even realized I was that annoyed, I'd hit him with a bolt of lightning and sent him flying." Líadan smiled crookedly for a moment. "I guess that's kind of my thing, considering I've done that to Malcolm more than once." Then the smile faded. "When I did it, we'd been too close to the Passage, and some templars who were hunting an apostate of theirs sensed the magic. That's why they headed for my village. The other hunters tracked them for two days and my parents decided that they would have to be stopped before they reached the rest of the clan. They... they should have gone with other hunters from my clan instead of by themselves. The templars were stopped, but at the cost of their lives as well." Her vision blurred at the appearance of tears begging to be shed—as they hadn't been even since the day her parents had died.
"I'm sorry," Fiona said softly.
"There's no need for you to be. What happened wasn't your fault." No, Líadan knew it had been her own fault. If she had been more responsible for her actions, more aware of what powers she possessed, she wouldn't have lost her temper, and wouldn't have recklessly hit that annoying boy with lightning. Or even if she had, she should have paid attention to exactly how close to the Passage she and her party had been. Even had templars not been on the path, there could have been a group of humans, and she could have caught even their attention. Her actions had brought danger to her clan, and in a way, she'd been lucky enough to only cause the death of her parents and not even more people.
The chapel's door opened again, admitting Malcolm with Anders and Mhairi behind him, along with a man Líadan guessed must be Nathaniel Howe. Now there was brooding. The man's grey eyes took in the layout of the room and the two mages present, but then he retreated within himself before anyone could engage him. She tried to remember what the man's father had looked like, but couldn't bring up much. During the Landsmeet, she'd paid much more attention to Malcolm and Alistair, making sure that the former behaved and the latter wasn't in any danger. Rendon Howe didn't register much for deserving of memory, other than being an outrageous arse of a man. She wondered if Nathaniel reminded Malcolm strongly of him and what his family had truly suffered at Rendon Howe's hands. And why had he conscripted the man, anyway, if he'd conspired to kill him? Not a normal choice when dealing with someone who wanted you dead, that much was true. If this Nathaniel lived through the Joining, she wouldn't allow him a chance to kill Malcolm, she decided.
Malcolm assiduously avoided looking in her direction as much as he could, and she felt like rolling her eyes. For a man who faced down ogres and even archdemons, he could be remarkably skittish. At times, he reminded her of a young halla. After confirming with Fiona that the Joining potion was indeed ready, he launched right into the Joining without preamble, heading straight into the speech that had been said for her small Joining ceremony. To her surprise, he called on her to recite the Grey Warden oath, and to her even greater surprise, she remembered it perfectly. Once she'd finished, Malcolm removed the chalice from the altar and started with Nathaniel, proffering the cup and saying, "From this moment forth, Nathaniel, you are a Grey Warden." And still, he betrayed nothing of exactly why he'd conscripted Howe.
Nathaniel eyed the cup for a moment and said, "The moment of truth." Then he drank from the cup and Líadan had to hold back a grimace as she remembered the horrible taste. He gasped almost immediately and Malcolm snatched the chalice from his hands as he threw them out and fell backwards.
Fiona was there almost instantly, kneeling at the man's side and checking to see if his heart still beat. "He lives."
Malcolm nodded and moved to the apostate, the chalice's concoction representing the true freedom from the Chantry the mage had sought. "From this moment forth, Anders, you are a Grey Warden."
The mage glanced over to where Nathaniel lay unmoving on the floor, and then back to the chalice and its contents. A flicker of understanding moved through his eyes. "So we need to drink darkspawn blood? That's it?"
"There's also a drop of archdemon blood and some lyrium," Malcolm said, a look crossing his face that Líadan recognized as him refraining from rolling his eyes. "But that's pretty much it, yes."
With a shrug, Anders took the chalice. "Well, all right, but if I wake up in two weeks on a ship bound for Rivain in nothing but my smallclothes and a tattoo on my forehead, I'm blaming you." He drank, and in the moment before the taint hit, Malcolm took the chalice back. Much the same as Nathaniel, Anders' eyes turned all white and he fell backward onto the stone floor.
Being the closest, Líadan moved forward this time to check on him, pressing her fingers to his warm neck. "He lives," she said, and then stood.
Malcolm glanced at her and nodded, looking her in the eye for only the briefest of moments. Gritting her teeth, she decided she'd speak to him that night, if she could. Even if they didn't sort things out between the two of them in regards to whatever it was they felt, they could at least go back to acting normal around each other. They were going to have new Grey Wardens, they had these other Orlesian Wardens to meet at Vigil's Keep, and they had a whole lot to sort out regarding these talking darkspawn and the whole problem with Morrigan. They couldn't afford to be acting oddly around each other.
Finally, Malcolm stepped in front of the overeager Mhairi and offered her the chalice. "From this moment forth, Mhairi, you are a Grey Warden."
The knight grabbed the chalice enthusiastically, looking as if she relished the distinctively nasty smell as she brought it to her lips. "I have awaited this moment," she said happily, and Líadan had to work to keep her jaw from dropping at the amount of cheer in the knight's tone. Mhairi's eyes went white and she pitched to the ground and all three of the conscious Wardens exchanged shocked looks when they realized that Mhairi still breathed.
"Certainly didn't expect her to live," said Malcolm, bringing the chalice over to where the box was and setting to constructing three Joining amulets.
"Why's that?" asked Fiona.
"Mhairi reminded me of a knight who was at my Joining. All he could talk about was how glorious and honorable it was to become a Grey Warden. Then when we were hunting darkspawn, he kept whining that we shouldn't be out in the dangerous Korcari Wilds. And then when we got back, he whined about more tests, and then whined that Duncan and the Wardens expected too much. When the Joining came around, it didn't go well. He didn't even make it to drinking the blood. He drew his sword and tried to escape. Duncan had to kill him. To this day, I wonder if the man would even have lived if he'd drank the stuff." Malcolm shrugged. "I'll never know, of course. And the other recruit at my Joining didn't fare well, either, but he was made of much better stuff than that knight, that's for sure. At least Mhairi had the guts to drink. I just think she's got a lot to realize about what it means to be a Warden. It isn't all righteous rainbows and glorious griffons, as she seems to think."
Líadan said, "I've yet to see a single rainbow, come to think of it. You know, I could deal with seeing a lot more rainbows if I can't have any griffons." Then she looked over to the three unconscious bodies. "How long will it take them to wake up?"
"Took Zevran an hour. Took you all of thirty minutes, if that," Malcolm replied. "And I've no idea how it all works in terms of how someone lives and how long it takes for them to wake up." He looked over at Fiona.
She shrugged. "No one knows, not even at Weisshaupt. Took me two hours, so it has nothing to do with body size and weight."
Líadan wanted to make a comment about how in all of Thedas Fiona had given birth to two sons who'd turned out to be as tall and broad as Malcolm and Alistair with her being so tiny. But, she held back, knowing that the topic was a highly dangerous one in Ferelden, and was really only a safe topic in a few places at Weisshaupt. If the three new Wardens hadn't been in the room, and they'd still warded the chapel to silence, it would be safe to speak of. But only then. Instead, she said, "I asked because I just don't like the idea of Anders being unconscious with the templars around." She glanced over at the closed doors. "I half-expected them to come running in when you made the finishing touch on the potion."
"Fergus said he posted guards at the only exit from the wing he put the templars in for the night," said Malcolm as he set aside the last pendant. He hands moved swiftly and confidently as he wiped out the chalice, packed it into the box, and snapped it shut. "So I think he's safe. At any rate, even if they do manage to get in here, I've no intention of them taking him. Fergus will make sure they're on their way back to the Circle or wherever it is they need to go in the morning."
"How long will we be staying?" Líadan asked.
"Through tomorrow, I think. They'll need some time to recover. I can at least give them that," he replied, inclining his head toward the three new Wardens, and then a half-smile flitting across his lips. "Even though I only had a few hours after my Joining before I got thrown into battle. And within hours after that, Alistair and I were the only Grey Wardens left in the country. I guess that makes these guys pretty lucky. Now our numbers of actual Fereldans is at its highest, I believe. Well, if you consider yourself Fereldan, Líadan." He looked at her, meeting her eyes again, and for the first time in a while, not looking away.
"I..." Her immediate inclination was to answer in the negative, but she found she couldn't say the words. Was she Dalish? Or Fereldan? Or maybe she was both, if that were possible. Being Fereldan wasn't just a human thing, was it? The Dalish clan she'd been a member of had always stayed within the borders of Ferelden, and had a clan from Antiva or Nevarra asked, she'd have told them her clan was from Ferelden. "I suppose I do," she finally said. "And Dalish."
"Hard to forget that with those tattoos." He motioned toward her face to illustrate.
"Other elves have tattoos. Zevran did."
"Those were Antivan Crow tattoos. And he certainly didn't worship the gods of the elven pantheon," Malcolm replied, and then screwed up his face in thought. "At least, I don't think he did. Though when we were in that cave where you found that Tevinter mirror, he did recognize one of the statues as being an elven god. Then he told me his mother was Dalish."
"Yes," Líadan said, remembering the conversation she'd had with their friend once. "He told me that his mother was a Dalish elf who fell in love with an elven woodcutter and left her clan for him, accompanying him back to the city. But the woodcutter died and she was forced to become a whore, and then she died giving birth to Zevran. So he was raised in the whorehouse until the Antivan Crows bought him."
"Sounds like this fellow led an interesting life," said Fiona.
"You could say that," Malcolm said, hopping up into the high stool behind the lectern after returning the Chant of Light volume to its customary spot. "I think he hit on everything that breathed."
Líadan smiled. "I think he did as well. I think he even told me about his mother because he was hitting on me. Never worked, though, much to his chagrin."
Malcolm raised an eyebrow. "Really? Alistair was convinced it had."
"Alistair isn't always the most observant of men," said Líadan.
"True."
And neither is his brother, she didn't say. Then she narrowed her eyes at Malcolm. "You thought so, too, didn't you?"
"Of course not."
She continued looking at him, knowing very well that he was lying. Malcolm was good at many things, but lying wasn't one of them. Alistair had the same problem, and from what Líadan had heard about Cailan and Maric, the inability to lie effectively or well seemed to be a trait that ran strong within the Theirin line.
At first Malcolm remained entirely still in the stool, but as the seconds changed to a minute and more, he started to squirm, and then blush. "Okay, I had suspicions." Then as quickly as he'd been slightly amused, his mood turned dark. "Anyway, in the end, it worked on Morrigan I suppose."
Líadan scowled. Of course he'd think of Morrigan again. Always Morrigan, the woman who had betrayed him. Even now, when she was Creators knew where, she had hold over him, fouling up whatever future he could have. Well, if this Old God child became the problem everyone thought it would be, she was fouling up the future of all of Thedas. "Oh, sod Morrigan," she said under her breath.
"What was that?" Malcolm asked.
"Nothing. I'm just surprised that you still..." she trailed off and shrugged. "No, nothing."
This time, he narrowed his eyes. "Why do you care so much?"
"Why do you always ask me that?" she shot back, annoyed that he'd started in on that line of questioning with Fiona standing right there, and three unconscious new Wardens nearby who could wake up at any time. Meaning, of course, if she could come up with an acceptable answer, she couldn't say it. And if she did say it, despite the audience of Fiona, the ensuing conversation would be interrupted by waking Wardens. Those possibilities also precluded her being able to come up with an answer, which she couldn't. If she could, she figured that would make things,whatever they were, much easier.
"I'd stop asking if you'd answer for once," he replied, sliding off the stool.
Líadan folded her arms over her chest. "I guess you'll just have to keep asking."
"I guess you'll have to stop getting so annoyed that I ask," Malcolm said, crossing his own arms as a mirror to her.
"Maker's mercy," Fiona muttered to herself, and then walked over toward the new Wardens, continuing to mumble under her breath. Líadan thought she heard Fiona say something about them being worse than she and Maric had been, but she couldn't be sure, even with her elven hearing. She was at least certain that Malcolm didn't catch a word of it, as scratched his head and watched in bewilderment as Fiona walked away. Before either of the young people present could continue their conversation, Fiona said, loud enough for both of them to hear this time, "Mhairi is waking up."
The former knight was followed quickly by Anders, and soon after that was Nathaniel. Malcolm gave them a short welcoming speech, which Líadan thought was much better than the one she'd gotten. Actually, she wasn't even sure if she'd gotten one at all in the first place. Then again, her Joining had been more of a cure from immediate death rather than a 'welcome to this really old order that fights the nastiest beings you've ever seen' initiation. After the speech and handing them their pendants, Malcolm had servants bring the new Wardens to their rooms to sleep off the exhaustion often left to Wardens after the Joining.
"Part of me wants to post a guard outside Anders' room," Malcolm said as he watched the doors close after the last servant and new Warden left the chapel.
Fiona's brow furrowed. "Do you think he'll run? Is that why?"
"No, I don't think he'll run. He doesn't seem the type." At dubious looks from both Fiona and Líadan, he explained, "Not withstanding his seven escape attempts from the Circle, which I still think is epic in terms of determination and genius. Though, obviously, his ability to evade capture needs a lot of work. What I meant is that he wanted to escape the Chantry's control and the prison he sees the tower as, I think. The Wardens will give him a freedom he's wanted, at least at first. Maybe later he'll see being in the Order as a prison as much as the Circle, but not yet. And he seems the kind of guy who'd at least tell me before he left." Malcolm shrugged. "He might even ask permission to go." Then he glanced over at Fiona. "Can people do that? Leave the Wardens?"
"Sort of," Fiona replied. "In terms of being a Warden meaning taking an oath that cannot be forsworn, I believe they mean the taint. You can't escape that. Eventually, if you don't die from other causes such as a barfight or bad luck, you'll either find yourself in the Deep Roads or the darkspawn will find you. I've seen the end result of letting the taint run its course in its entirety. You..." she trailed off and sighed, and then quickly moved to lock the remaining door to the chapel and double check the wards of silence. "You become a darkspawn. A ghoul, really, but a very different kind than the ones you see during Blights or from a small dose of the taint, such as from a bite. You hear the Call of the Old Gods, too, even if it isn't a Blight. The same Call the darkspawn hear that makes them dig and search. That's what drives you to the Deep Roads if you don't go there before the taint goes too far. You're as compelled to search for the Old Gods as the darkspawn. It's... disconcerting."
"Could you hear the archdemon Calling during the Blight?" Malcolm asked.
"No, I couldn't," Fiona replied. "I believe the Calling I heard when I was in the Deep Roads those many years ago will be the only Old Gods I ever hear, corrupted or not."
"I wonder if you would've heard it when we fought it face-to-face," said Líadan. "I mean, since you can still sense darkspawn, I bet you would have. It was very odd, having it basically singing to you in this strange, yet beautiful unintelligible language while you were trying to stab it to death."
"Well, I'm happy the Anders mages at Weisshaupt didn't get an idea for an experiment, and then try to have you guys hold off that final battle with the archdemon, all just to see if I'd hear it if I met it," Fiona said, half-smiling.
"The archdemon was a pretty nasty piece of work, I'll give it that." Malcolm got to his feet and started roaming about the room, poking at some of the bookshelves as he talked. "Seeing it really gives you a good image of what corruption really means. When we were in the Frostbacks, trying to find those Sacred Ashes, we happened to see a real high dragon. It was at once terrifying and beautiful. Actually, the same thing could be said about Flemeth, when she shapeshifted into one. High dragons are a thing of beauty. Archdemons are most certainly not." He shuddered. "I'd rather face a hundred shapeshifted Flemeths rather than another archdemon."
"Flemeth," Fiona repeated. "She was Morrigan's mother, correct?"
Malcolm removed a book from a shelf, read the title, and then replaced it. "Yes."
Then the name clicked with Líadan. Always, Morrigan's mother's name had sounded familiar, but not until now did she recall why. "Asha'belannar," Líadan said out loud.
"What?" said Malcolm, turning around to face the Dalish elf.
"The Woman of Many Years," Fiona translated. At Líadan's curious look, she said, "At Weisshaupt, I had plenty of time to read." She gestured to her pointed ears. "Naturally, elven history was one of my interests."
Líadan certainly couldn't fault her for that. While many of her clan members had looked down on their city-dwelling brethren, and even Líadan had done so for a while, her time spent traveling as a Grey Warden had changed her outlook. City elves, by and large, were trapped in their situations, in what life had given them. They did what they could with what they had, and it wasn't her place to judge their best efforts. Many who had moved beyond a mere city existence had horrible stories that had brought them out. Líadan felt for certain Fiona had one of those stories, but she wouldn't press her for it.
"So the elves know about Flemeth, too," said Malcolm. His fingers traced a line of dusty books on another shelf. He removed another one and opened it. Then he removed a scrap of paper from it, looked at it briefly, and a ghost of a smile tweaked his mouth. "I wonder if the Dalish stories are anything like the human stories. And if the dwarves have any stories of her, too. It's possible, if she's as old as legend lets on." He closed the book and returned it to the shelf, and then pocketed the paper he'd gotten from it without any explanation to the other two people in the room.
"You said that you and the others killed her before you found me." Líadan watched Malcolm's movements about the small chapel closely, wondering what drove him to wander. It could be the subject matter, as it was something closely related, in more ways than one, to Morrigan. But he'd started his wandering before Flemeth had come up. It had to be something else.
"I'd thought we had. But now I'm really starting to doubt it. I did some reading while I was at Weisshaupt, and there were stories there that spoke of Flemeth... and then there was a disturbing story that had to do with a woman whose name was Morrigan, but spelled a bit differently. An Avvar spelling, I think." His eyes returned to the books. "I wonder if the story is here, too. And if there's more stories."
"Why did you kill Flemeth, again?" Fiona asked.
He turned and faced them. "Morrigan asked me to."
Fiona raised an eyebrow.
Malcolm sighed, clearly showing his reluctance to talk of the matter, yet knowing that he must. "After we got one of Flemeth's grimoires from the Circle Tower—which, by the way, Alistair will tell you that I stole, which I did not—Morrigan read it and found out how Flemeth lives for so long. Basically, she has daughters, and then once the daughters are powerful enough in their magic, she takes their bodies for her own. Morrigan, not wanting to be forcibly removed from her body by her mother, asked that Flemeth be killed for her safety. We thought it wise to do so. Morrigan was a known entity, as much as she could be known, while Flemeth was not. I'm still not sure if it was a mistake or not. I mean, Morrigan..." he frowned, trailing off, as if struck by another thought and trying to give word to it. "I always said if you want something done, do it yourself, or hear about it for a decade or two afterwards," he finally said, and then blinked, coming out of his introspection. "That's something Flemeth said before we left her hut with Morrigan after Ostagar. Flemeth said a lot of strange things, most of which didn't make sense. But, looking back... it was probably a lot more significant than we gave it credit for."
"Do you think Morrigan was already Flemeth by then?" Fiona asked.
Malcolm made a disgusted face. "Maker, I hope not. For a whole host of different reasons." Then, despite himself, he smiled a bit at the inadvertent pun. "Ha. Host. Host body."
Líadan rolled her eyes. "That's nearly as bad as Oghren. Just give it a tawdry implication and that'd be exactly something he'd say and how he'd react to it."
"I could probably figure out a way to make it tawdry," said Malcolm.
"Please don't," Fiona immediately said. "And before you do anyway, I'm excusing myself to bed. It's been a long day and a long time on the road before that." The older mage stepped quietly out of the room.
"She did it again," said Malcolm. "I wonder if that's a sneaky talent that comes with being a Grey Warden for a long time, or if it's something inherent to a person before they become a Warden." After a moment of staring after the closed door, he went back to wandering along the bookshelves.
"Why do you keep doing that?" Líadan asked, finally unable to tamp down her curiosity.
"I... I was just thinking. Realizing, actually," Malcolm answered after a short silence. "Howe and his soldiers, they never touched this room. They never burned it like they did and tried to do with the rest of the castle. All these books were here before. That volume of the Chant of Light on the lectern? Same one that's been here since I was small. These books, too. They're more dusty than they would be if they were different ones." He dug the paper he'd gotten earlier out of his pocket and held it up. "And this was in one of the books. I drew it when I was six or seven years old. Somewhere in there."
Wanting another glimpse into Malcolm's mind, Líadan took the paper and looked at it. There was a roughly-drawn figure of a little girl—at least, she assumed it was, given the dress—but with a mustache and angry eyes scribbled onto it. "Delilah Howe is a snooty pighead," Líadan read, and then looked up at Malcolm. "Pighead?"
He shrugged. "I was little! It was the best I could do."
"Any relation to the Nathaniel Howe we just inducted into the order?"
"His sister. She never liked me. Insisted I was a horrid barbarian, among other things."
"I can't imagine why." Líadan handed the paper back to Malcolm. "Wasn't she the one who you spattered mud onto while in her new dress?"
He raised an eyebrow. "How'd you know that?"
"Someone else told me the story." She very well couldn't say that Morrigan had told her, even though it had been Morrigan that'd relayed the story, with great amusement. It had been one of the many stories that Morrigan had told her in the days when Líadan had been convinced Malcolm was an awful man. Horrid, like the young Delilah Howe had thought, though certainly not for the same reasons. Morrigan, through her stories, and even how she interacted with Malcolm, had showed Líadan that Malcolm wasn't the man she'd assumed he was. Odd, how it turned out that Morrigan hadn't been the woman she'd thought she was, either. A powerful mage, yes. A woman with an understanding of the darker side of human nature, yes. But a traitorous bitch? She hadn't quite seen that one coming. None of them had.
"It was Morrigan, wasn't it?" Malcolm asked, tucking the paper away again.
"I—yes." She sighed. "Sorry, didn't mean to bring her up."
He shrugged. "We spent a lot of time with her. And even now, she's got us all chasing after her and trying to figure out what she's done to doom us all. Pretty hard for her not to come up in conversation all the time."
Líadan had no wish to continue talking about Morrigan. Not after the conversation they'd almost had earlier. Nor did she want to continue that conversation, not until she sorted herself out, forget what she'd decided earlier. "So... Nathaniel Howe. Why'd you conscript him?"
"I thought I already told you. He'd have been executed otherwise. I mean, I suppose Alistair could've granted him clemency, but I'm not sure it would've been a wise move politically. Hard to tell. Anyway, that doesn't matter now. He lived through the Joining. He's a Grey Warden. End of story."
She leaned against the side of one of the pews and crossed her arms. "Did you want him to live?"
"Yes," he answered without hesitation. But she noticed something else lurking behind his eyes, a doubt of some kind.
The story of Malcolm's conscription came to mind. The attack had happened in this very castle, so it hadn't been far from her thoughts in the first place. It was hard not to think of it. "Did you... did you force Nathaniel to become a Warden because you were forced to become one because of what his father did?" When he didn't deny it right away, she stood up straight. "Did you conscript him out of revenge?"
He met her angry stare for a moment, and then looked away. "I don't know."
"You don't know?" Líadan threw at him.
Malcolm caught the anger and accepted it. "No, I don't."
"This is a person's life we're talking about," she continued, starting to pace. "Granted, from what you say, he probably would've been put to death otherwise, but it still doesn't make it right if you didn't conscript him to avoid his life being wasted." She turned to him again. "Did he want to be conscripted?"
"Not at first."
"Not at first?" she repeated. "So, what, you conscripted him and he automatically had a change of heart?"
"Not exactly."
"Right, so he didn't want to be a Grey Warden, even though he was going to be executed. But you conscripted him anyway and you can't deny that it wasn't for revenge and nothing else? It wasn't about saving a life. It wasn't about being a pragmatic Warden and gaining another skilled recruit. It was about Malcolm Theirin's need for revenge, to curse this man to thirty years living with the taint slowly poisoning him instead of letting him have a clean death. What is wrong with you? It's as bad as what his father did to you and your family!"
He visibly flinched and rage tinged his words. "I am nothing like Rendon Howe!"
"You are if you can't decide if you conscripted the man's son out of duty or revenge. If it's duty you settle on then you're the man I know. If it's revenge... you aren't who I thought you were and I've misjudged you as badly as I misjudged Morrigan."
He opened his mouth, and then closed it.
Líadan looked away. "Let me know when you figure it out," she said softly, and then left the chapel.
She didn't look back.
