21: Setheneran
"Some things have to be believed to be seen."
― Madeleine L'Engle
Before the Blight, years ago, when Maura was still a child, she began to have the dreams. They were wondrous and filled her with amazement and some confusion, for if in her sleep her feet slapped over the cool marble floors of long-forgotten corridors, in waking she lived in a dim and cramped tenement in Denerim's alienage with her mother, father, two brothers and three sisters. It was only when she was older, at seventeen, and told her mother she had seen the face of their deceased Hahren, Garavan, that her mother had taken pause and appeared truly frightened. She had told her mother how the man had appeared to her uttering the words he had so often given them all to sustain their spirits. But he was no longer feeble, nor weak, nor the hollow shell he'd been when the winter illness lodged in his chest and stole his breath. In the dream he was fierce, a lion of fire, his mane of flames blazing.
"I'd rather miss you than mourn you," her mother had told her with a heavy heart when they stopped before the rundown doorway of the matchmaker's house.
Her father had been quite eager to send her off to the Circle.
"How much worse can it be than this?" he'd wondered, indicating the small, stuffy space they all had to share.
Her mother, however, hadn't been convinced that it would be a better solution. She had taken Maura to one of the Dalish keepers when she heard of their caravan stationed on the outskirts of the city, and offered the woman all the coin she was able to scratch up.
Maura had found the caravan a bit suspect— they were a small clan offering to perform ordinary tasks for modest fees. The so-called Keeper was blind in one eye and reeked of drink.
"They're Dalish; they are more connected to the old ways," her mother had assured her, urging her onto the woman's aravel.
The aravel was packed with heaps of old clothes and randomly amassed objects of dubious usefulness. It was all treasure jealously kept by one who believed they might someday be of use. The aravel smelled stale and grimy.
But when the woman had touched her forehead, a burst of light had engulfed her field of vision, and she had felt a surge of energy tingle through her.
"Not a mage," the woman had told her mother afterwards. "Not exactly, anyway. Whatever power she has, it only offers her glimpses. She has a connection to the Fade...We all do, you know. Mages more than ordinary folk. But she is somewhere in between: neither ordinary… nor magic."
"Is she in any danger?" her mother had asked cautiously.
The old woman snorted.
"I did what you asked and verified whether or not she had magic in her. If you'd like a proper reading of her future, that will cost you extra."
Later on her mother had told her, "There are only two things worse than being an elf: an elf with magic ...and an elf with beauty. You, my darling, are enough of both that misfortune will claim you."
Her mother was painfully aware of the lascivious looks Maura would garner wandering the market. Shem vendors talked to her a bit too freely, their eyes leering.
Her mother and father decided that Maura would have to be married, and paid the matchmaker to find her a husband, preferably an elf living outside an alienage, far from Denerim. They wanted one of homesteaders, young men who claimed unruly, untamed patches of deserted, desolate land to call their own. They fought off bandits and the occasional Darkspawn scouts, but that was preferable to life among the Shem. At least the homesteaders had a fighting chance against highwaymen and Darkspawn.
Ushel was eight years older than she and had a farm in some Maker-forsaken corner of the Hinterlands. He was in a rush to return to his farm with a wife before winter arrived to the mountainous region. When the matchmaker told him about her, the only thing he'd wanted to know was if she was healthy and accustomed to hard work. He'd wanted to waive their pre-arranged introduction, agreeing to wed her the following morning. He'd appeared surprised when the matchmaker insisted on the meeting.
"Perhaps," the matchmaker had scolded him, "your bride-to-be might want to have a say in the matter?
When Maura first laid eyes on him, her heart sank. He was nothing like the dashing young men in the alienage. They wore their hair long and sported tiny golden hoops pierced through their ears. Ushel kept his hair trimmed short and wore a wide brimmed straw hat.
Taciturn, rather quiet, and not one bit enticing, she found.
He was decidedly unromantic, she concluded, giving the matchmaker a discreet signal to indicate her decision and the end of the introduction.
Her mother had said nothing of her refusal, nor had she responded to any of Maura's peeved ranting all the way back to their tenement. It was only later, when her father heard about the meeting, that she realized what she had done. By rejecting her suitor, she would forfeit the hefty matchmaker's fee; if she wanted another chance at a different suitor, she would have to pay a new fee. Her father had expressed far less patience towards her, yelling as her mother cried and her siblings cowered in a corner.
"Do you think we live in luxury here?" he'd accused, incensed. "Selfish girl!" he shouted. "You think yourself too good for an honest, hardworking elf? You think you are better off here? Let me give you the choices you are faced with: a life locked away in the Circle, living in darkness, in fear of demons and abominations, or living as the mistress of one of these wretched Shems who prey on our people with impunity. Once you are no longer found charming or amusing, once you are replaced by the younger version of yourself―and make no mistake, love, those are common and plentiful around here—you will have been properly degraded and broken in for the whorehouse!"
He pointed at her mother.
"Your mother can't protect you forever. Not when she is about to give me yet another mouth to feed."
Maura turned around in surprise. She could see how careworn she'd grown, how fatigued. It wasn't just the pregnancy, though―it was the worry. The constant, unrelenting worry.
"You speak as if it were all her doing! You are the one who should have kept your pants on—" she yelled back defiantly, without thinking.
A heavy fist swung out, striking her cheek, causing her to stumble backwards, wincing from the sudden blast of pain.
"Aye, I should have kept my pants on the night you came about, wretched lass!" he bellowed, tugging on his coat and stepping out of the room.
She gathered her few earthly belongings in a frenzy of anger, feeling her face pulse from the swelling beneath her eye. Her mother and siblings wept, her youngest brother's hands gripped and tugged at the hem of her shirt, but all she could think of was getting away from that man, that mean bastard. Anything was better than spending yet another evening in his presence.
"I'm going back to the matchmaker," she whispered reassuringly into her mother's ear, as she bent over to hug her farewell.
The wailing had grown unbearable and she had to leave immediately, before they all succeeded in weakening her resolve. She glanced upon her family and home for the last time before slamming the door behind her.
She moved swiftly through the familiar streets, dodging the occasional stroller and wanderer, moving with such determination and impelled by so much bitterness that people instinctively stepped out of her way. She realized she probably cut a mean figure too: her face settled in a scowl, the bruise a deep shade of red, and her dark, disheveled hair whipping behind her. She looked like enough of a raving madwoman that she was safe wandering through the streets of the alienage at that late hour.
When she pounded on the matchmaker's door, she did so with an urgent, heavy first, until the old woman appeared at the doorway, bewildered, only to curse her under the night sky.
"Where is he?" Maura demanded, unyielding.
She made her way to the modest inn he was lodged in and dashed past the innkeeper, barging up the stairs, pounding on each door, calling for Ushel.
He flung his bedroom door open with a bang, terribly embarrassed at the commotion, not able to imagine by whom or why he was being summoned. When he saw her standing there before him, all her belongings in two bundles in each hand, with a bruised cheek and the entire staff of the inn scurrying behind her, he fell into a stunned silence.
"Have you found another bride?" she asked him, fighting the disappointment that he was shorter than she was.
"No," he said curtly, crossing his arms.
"Then I will be your bride," she said with determination. "I will marry you and work on your farm. I will work hard," she promised. "Just take me away from here."
Her gaze did not waver from his and was almost defiant under his scrutiny. She felt a twinge of regret over her impulsiveness, suddenly wishing she had been more sanguine in her approach. But after a long moment, he merely stepped aside and let her enter his bedroom.
Ushel, she learned, was not a talkative man. Maybe he had grown used to living alone in that wilderness. He had little patience for her prattling and those early days were trying. After a long day of work he liked to smoke his pipe and read one of the few books they had in front of the fire. She grew annoyed and bored, but if she complained, he threatened to give her more work, for if she still had enough energy to be so lively and contentious after a long day, then she couldn't be working hard enough, he surmised.
When they first arrived on the hilltop where their modest house stood, her mouth had gone dry. It was small and dark. Back then he only had a few chickens, the goats, and the large plot of land to farm―no team of horses, no other livestock. Mornings began early and she found her eyelids heavy soon after the sun set. There was much to learn about her new life. He taught her not only how to perform her day-to-day tasks, he also taught her how to shoot a crossbow and never leave the farmhouse without it. He showed her the land, the various trails, where to find other sources of water, which direction to flee, should they find themselves under attack and separated.
One afternoon, as they cut through the forest back to the house, late in the fall already, they wandered past some ruins. At the center of a rocky clearing was the cracked stone statue of a great wolf. He sat regally, watchful. She half expected the stone to heave a breath and the wolf to burst forward in pursuit of whatever held its unwavering attention. She had never seen such a thing, but knew, from the writing, which she couldn't read, it was an old Elven statue.
"What is this?" she asked, fascinated.
Ushel had glanced at the statue with thinly veiled disdain. Instead of giving her a reply, he marched forward and spat contemptuously before the image of the wolf. She stared at him in confusion, not grasping what had just transpired.
"That was Fen'Harel," Ushel told her sullenly as they approached the farmhouse.
"Who?" she wondered.
"Don't you know?" he asked, genuinely surprised. "One of the Elven gods."
"Oh?" she said, suddenly nervous.
She felt uneasy anytime there was talk of the gods. It reminded her of her dreams, of what the old Dalish keeper had told her mother, of her connection to the Fade. She worried that talk of the gods would trigger her dreams— and she didn't want to dream those dreams anymore. She hadn't had any of those strange dreams in a while.
"The Dreadwolf," Ushel continued. "He betrayed our gods, he betrayed the Dalish," he said contemptuously. "He alone is responsible for the downfall of our people."
Maura had been raised without any faith. Her mother felt a sense of reverence for their past, for their history, and believed the Dalish to be wise and pure, but she hadn't encouraged any of her children to learn about the gods, to speak Elvish, to claim any stakes to their heritage. Besides, at the alienage, if one wished to fill a belly with warm soup, it was the Maker they had to curry favor with. The Chantry was irrevocably enmeshed in their lives. She knew more about the Maker and Andraste, whose holy festival days offered hope that they wouldn't go hungry that day.
Her husband was a man of faith, she knew. He lamented that much of what he knew of their heritage he had learned from books by Shems. Still, he kept the traditions he knew as best he could. When they had been married in Denerim, in a hasty ceremony presided by a record keeper at the civil registrar at the alienage, there had been nothing sacred about the proceedings. A small line formed behind them: a woman waited to register the birth of her child, an older elf wanted to lodge a complaint against his landlord, another was complaining about something or another. They'd hastily professed their wedding vows in the din of the registrar's office: squawking newborns, hacking coughs, and indignant complaints had been their witnesses. But as they left the city, in the cart with the team of horses he'd borrowed, he'd placed a garland of fresh flowers on her head and pulled out two golden rings from his pocket.
"I didn't dare take these while we were in there. Might have ended up in a ditch with my throat cut," he confided. "Do you know what they mean?" he asked, proudly.
"Wedding rings," she answered.
"Not just wedding rings," he said. "These are Lath Enansal. By exchanging these we promise to be together…always," he explained, looking ahead as he lead the horses over the dusty path, up the hill, the city fading away behind them in the distance. He looked again at her. "Do you wish to exchange rings with me?" he asked.
Maybe not so unromantic, she realized.
"Sure," she shrugged.
He slipped a golden ring on her finger and then handed her a second ring that she twirled onto his own finger. "I meant to exchange these with you…later on. But today is as good a time as any. These belonged to my parents. And to their parents before that…and before that…and before…"
The rings were solid gold, she realized, admiring hers. She'd never had anything so fine in her life.
"Always is a long time to be with someone. And how do you know you'll want to be with me that long? We've only just met," she wondered.
He remained silent and for a moment she thought she had offended him. She would come to learn that Ushel was one to ponder his words and choices lengthily, but once he had made up his mind, he was certain and stubborn. He replied minutes later,
"Well, now that we are married—in this world and in the next—we'll have time to find out—"
"—And regret it!" she snickered, amused.
"—And make it better," he completed, loudly, giving her a reprimanding look out of the corner of his eyes.
In those early days, she would often wander to the clearing to examine the great statue, to peer into its cold stone eyes. She tore down the overgrowth that engulfed the base of the statue, ripping at the tendrils of vines that wrapped themselves over the rock, ropey veins over the weathered, pitted surface. She cleared them out, stepping back to admire her handiwork.
"You are free to go, now!" she'd announced playfully. "Go run free! Fetch me a hare for dinner, if you remember," she'd laughed.
She didn't know why, but she liked to tend to the statue—keep it clear of weeds and sometimes leave flowers, or pine cones, and other whimsical things she'd chanced to encounter in her walks down before the great wolf's paws. Ushel did not understand in the least bit why she did such a thing.
"He's the Betrayer," he hissed one afternoon, watching her walk back from the clearing's trail.
Enough was enough.
He was just the statue of a wolf placed there by people much like herself many centuries ago. For all he was accused of doing, was he not paying the price as much as they? Like all of them, he looked a little worse for wear, his altar abandoned, his libations forgotten and praises unsung. Not a desirable fate for a god, she thought, even though she did not believe in such things.
"And didn't you yourself say that most of what you know about the old days comes straight from Shems?" she asked confrontationally.
Ushel had nodded, taken aback by her passionate arguing.
"And how many times have they born false witness against us?" she challenged him. "How many elves sit in cells in Denerim accused of things they did not do? You count your coin twice in any dealings with Shems, yet you would take their word unquestioningly?"
"How many elves sit in cells in Denerim accused of things they did do?" he asked her straightforwardly.
She hesitated.
"Well, yes…There are many of those, too…but they commit their crimes because they are left with little choice—"
"No," he argued. "There is always choice."
"Yes: which side of the street to die of hunger or illness on," she grumbled.
"Perhaps… But, again," Ushel pointed at the statue, "You can blame all that on him."
She snorted at him crossly.
"So like a Shem!" she stormed past him.
Maura remembered her mother's simple faith, accepting of things greater than herself and surrendering to their mystery. "You, like the Shems, believe yourself able to understand the reasons that compel the actions of gods?"
Ushel had no retort for that. He remained silent until they arrived at their farmhouse.
"He betrayed all the other gods," he weakly protested.
"Were you there to see it with your own eyes?" she asked him.
"Of course not!" he replied dismissively.
"I don't believe in any of this, but if I did, I would know better and give him the benefit of the doubt. I tend to judge people by how they act towards me, not what I've heard about them," she quipped angrily.
She didn't know why she was so angry—she just was.
He sighed heavily and tossed down his hat by the hearth, scratching his head in thought. She awaited his words, arms crossed, ready to take him on. Instead, a crooked grin spread over his lips.
"Ah…what have I done? An eternity of this, you mad woman."
She tried to maintain her cross expression, and even glanced away. Instead, she burst out laughing, her laughter mingling with his.
By the end of the long winter, she was heavy with their first son.
She dreamt. She never really stopped dreaming, but some dreams were different, and those were rarer, but always memorable. She dreamt of impossible things: palaces of singing stone, clouds that amassed together in the sky and rose up as smoky armies, the court of a sea queen where she could breathe among the sea life just as sure as she could wander among the trees on the farm, and voices that called to her in languages she couldn't speak, but understood as long as her eyes remained shut.
There were other, darker dreams, though. The ones she always feared. In those there were swaths of fire over the earth and thunder that rumbled.
The soil crusted like a mound of ashes.
The sky tore and bled. At first it resembled an eye, weeping, but the rip widened and out of it fell a darkness that consumed the world.
She would often dream of a breeze carrying a shimmering cloud that would envelop her.
What is that? she'd wonder, her eyes drawn to the cloud spiraling towards the sky; it was brilliant and alluring and she yearned to taste it, be immersed in it.
Lyrium.
They come.
She never knew who revealed such things to her, or if it was something she just knew like one knows things intrinsically in dreams. In the distance, between the long, unnatural trunks of the nightmare trees, she thought she could glimpse, if only she was very quiet, very still, the silent roaming shadow of a great wolf.
They'd survived many things. Harsh winters. Poor crops. The Blight. And now, the great rift in the sky. Thankfully their their sons were grown— her older one worked at the docks, loading and unloading the large merchant ships back in Denerim. He had a wife and a little one of his own, and as far as she could tell, from the fairly regular missives she received, was well. Her younger son had also traveled more recently to Lothering seeking work and perhaps more friends, even a wife. There was little for a young man like him on a farm. It had upset Maura to see him go, but Ushel was sure he would someday return.
"He'll find his path. It may take him longer: he is obstinate and opinionated…much like his mother," Ushel told her, half annoyed, half amused.
They had survived so many improbable things, had risked so much more, that when the conflict between the mages and the templars spilled into the Hinterlands, Ushel had reassured her that as long as they did not get involved, they would be fine.
And she believed him.
When a group of templars took shelter near Dwarfson's Pass, Ushel and a couple other homesteaders had gone to meet them. There was a tacit understanding that as long as they did not support the mages, the templars would give them a wide berth and offer them protection. They were big, burly men, well armed and supposedly devout Andrasteans. She didn't like their rough voices, their raucous laughter. To her they seemed to be careening, on the verge of unhinging. Once they had come to the farm to trade fish for some eggs and milk. Ushel had sullenly accepted the trade, and while he fetched them their share, they remained in the kitchen with her.
"Do you smell that?" one of them said.
They sniffed the air. She'd waited uneasily.
"Is it what I think it is?" one of them stated hopefully.
"It's very faint…"
"Lyrium…" another said reverently.
Her heart beat rapidly, so much so that her hands began to tremble despite her stern orders to calm herself.
"Do you have any caches of lyrium hidden here, perchance?" one of the templars asked, half jokingly, with a savage grin.
"No. Let us step outside," she ordered them. "My husband will meet you soon."
She recognized the symptoms easily. She had seen many like them: ragged faces, disheveled appearances, soldiers only in weaponry and bulk, any adherence to discipline abandoned long ago. Their red rimmed eyes darted nervously about, the sweaty clammy skin, the shaking, unsteady hands: they were lyrium addicts, she could tell. She had seen many like them stumbling through the streets of the alienage pleading with smugglers, looking to shake merchants down for coin, and in the absence of success in either endeavor, ready to erupt violently.
It is because of me, she thought uneasily.
Templars were bloodhounds when it came to tracking mages. And all mages gave off a subtle scent of lyrium. She wasn't a mage, she knew, but apparently she, too, generated just enough lyrium to garner their attention.
Ushel gave them their goods and they left. She noticed their roving eyes, though, as they still sought what she had told them did not exist.
It made her restless.
That night she pleaded with Ushel to leave the farm. She had a sinking feeling, the memory of the dream vivid, the billowing puffs of lyrium swirling like a swarm of deadly insects.
He'd thought about it carefully; she knew he did.
"We cannot go," he decided. "We cannot abandon the farm. What if it is all gone when we return? Everything we worked so hard to build?… It will be fine, Maura," he insisted. "And I hear the Inquisition and its forces have seized the Crossroads from the apostates," he said calmly. "This, too, shall pass."
Maura found him in the field, doubled forward, clutching his stomach where the blade of a sword had run him through. She had seen the templars out of her window, fleeing light footed as only cowards are, disappearing into the forest. Ushel grabbed at her wrist as she tried to stem the bleeding with her bare hands, despair in her eyes.
"No, no," he protested weakly. "It's no use," he told her.
She tried to convince him of her hope rather than the inevitable while the blood eked, thick and red, into the earth.
"Why did they do this?" she raged, the tears burning her eyes.
"They thought…" he said with difficulty, "I was an apostate mage. They approached me…about lyrium…" his voice became faint. "One of them panicked. Thought the wooden handle of my shovel was a mage's staff?…I don't…" he swallowed with difficulty.
Maura had a moment of clarity, where she realized that if she continued to fret, she would deny him a safe passage. She sank to her knees, right there on the dirt, and gingerly cradled his head in her arms. She brushed the fine black hair peppered with grey back from his forehead and caressed his sun parched face very tenderly.
"Sssh—" she told him, summoning a calm and presence deep within her. "Rest." She held him as carefully as she had her newborn sons. He appeared to surrender to her touch, the tension slipping from his limbs. She could hear his shallow breathing, occasionally a cough caused bloody foam to bubble on his lips. At one point he opened his eyes and the look he gave her was one of great peace; she looked upon him with all the love and gratitude she felt.
"Maura," he rasped. "I knew. I knew from the moment I laid eyes upon you, from the moment you stood outside my door at the inn all those years ago—"
"What was that?" she asked, emotion surfacing in her voice.
"That you were my One," he smiled.
He would wait until the last possible moment to become romantic. She smiled back at him warmly.
"They stole my ring," he coughed, suddenly agitated.
Her eyes sought out his hand and she felt a searing anger rise inside her.
"Don't you worry about that," she reassured him, settling him into a better position in her arms, "It'll be all right."
"Aaah…You were right," he said, mournfully.
"I usually am, you old goat," she said with affection between the tears.
He smiled, too.
"Ma sa'lath," he said in Elvish. "Take your time…Take your time…And when you cross through the Veil, on that distant day, I will be waiting for you."
"It won't be too long," she said. She shut her eyes against the tears. "I will miss you, every day, until then."
"I will miss you," he managed to echo, his eyes closing, his face as still as a resting child's.
One night and one morning.
She dug the grave by the tree he'd planted the first year after they were married. Dug until her hands cracked. Pain shot up her legs and back, but she did not stop. She would peer at where she had left him, covered in a thin shroud, half expecting to have to shoo away birds or other scavengers. But nothing touched him. It was as if the very ground they stood on were sacred. Not a leaf rustled. Not an insect buzzed. So she dug deeply, past the gnarled roots.
When she finally laid him to rest, she returned to the house, the door still open from when she'd rushed out the day before. She wanted nothing more than to collapse somewhere in peace, but remembered she had to at least feed the animals and milk the cow.
There was work to do and she was alone.
There was also that business of the ring.
Maura wanted it back.
She had tracked the templars down to their camp, wondering if she would be able to summon enough courage to sort through their packs for the stolen ring. From the bushes, at a safe distance, she could see that the encampment remained always guarded. It would be folly to barge in and demand the ring back. She hoped it hadn't been pawned off for a hit of lyrium. The remaining homesteaders demanded an explanation, but the templars had turned them out quickly, threateningly.
"We had to be safe," they lied. "The rebels are hidden everywhere. They attack us without warning."
One of the farmers had even inquired after her "confiscated" ring for her. At first they feigned ignorance. Finally, one of them made the final statement: It could be magic. It would not be returned.
The only magic he expects it to do is to disappear down some smuggler's pocket in exchange for some lyrium, she fumed.
On her way back to the farm one afternoon, she crossed the clearing and the old statue. She gazed upon it with weary, hardened eyes. She knew that back in Denerim people went to the Chantry to pray. From what she understood, praying was no different from prostrating one's self before a wealthy, powerful master and begging for favor. People usually asked for money. Or for the one they fancied to show them a sign of affection. For a cure to whatever disease was ravaging them or someone they loved.
It seemed like a foolish thing to her. She hated the thought that the Maker enjoyed such groveling. What kind of gods reveled in such a grim spectacle? Awarding some with favor and others with misery?
Perhaps, she thought angrily, if the old gods were so mercurial, they deserved to be betrayed.
She pat the side of the stone wolf with her rough hand.
Betrayal…or justice?
"Those templars deserve to die."
Three days later she watched a group of strangers reach the top of the path to the farmhouse and approach her.
"How are you faring out here?" a tall mage the others addressed as "Inquisitor" asked her, with concern.
She looked over each one of them with suspicion. The mage woman was accompanied by another woman, dressed in battle armor, wearing a tabard with an eye on it. She spoke with a heavy accent she did not recognize. Beside her was a ginger-haired dwarf. Curiously, the dwarf made her feel less tense. He had noticed that she, too, kept a crossbow close at hand.
"Nice," he winked, approvingly. "Bet no one comes to poach fruit from your orchard."
Among them was an elf. Another mage. This one lean and wiry, silent and watchful.
She had welcomed them properly and told them briefly what had happened to Ushel.
"'Ware the templars," she warned."They don't care who they kill anymore."
"You're saying the templars attacked your husband?" the Inquisitor asked.
"Aye," she said brusquely. "He was digging out a stump. The fools couldn't tell a shovel from a mage's staff." The scorn was evident in her tone. "Had to be safe, they said. Rebels everywhere attacking by surprise. Sick bastards."
She stared pointedly at the elf.
"They took the ring I gave him on our wedding day, in case it was magic."
The elf remained quiet, staring into his cup.
"They are nothing more than lyrium addicts," she continued bitterly. "They said they would keep the area free of apostates, but instead they are terrorizing the inhabitants of this region and murdering innocent people."
"Funny how that unoriginal, shitty story is the one that keeps getting told in some guise or another everywhere we go," the dwarf complained.
"If they are this desperate," the woman with the thick accent began, "these templars would be willing to make some very poor alliances…" she said to her group knowingly.
"Fresh recruits for the Red Team," the dwarf announced, shaking his head. "That would help explain some interesting encounters since we've arrived."
"We will keep a lookout for these templars," the Inquisitor said, "And when we find them, we will bring them to justice."
"Or Bianca," the dwarf pat his crossbow.
"Varric, I did not mean to imply—"
"Oh, come on. They're not going to surrender and come with us peacefully… and you know it," he said.
"Our camp is just down the hill on this side," the Inquisitor pointed out the door. "I will instruct our soldiers to include your farm in their patrol. I doubt you will be harassed any further by templars or mages," she said with concern. "Those who haven't turned themselves in are beating a hasty retreat."
Maura's eyes became as thin as slivers.
"Hahren," she addressed Solas.
He glanced up from his cup, his grey eyes clouded.
She didn't know why she was speaking to him thus, except that it felt like the right thing to do, even though she knew nothing of the man, even though he was younger than she and the title used only for revered elders. In her words, a plea, and all the weight of her years:
"Ma halani," she implored.
The makeshift camp consisted of nothing more than ragged bedrolls tossed around the remains of a campfire, an overturned cauldron tipped desolately farther away, a thin filament of liquid snaking its way past their feet.
"Four men, not counting the two we ran into at Dwarfson's Pass," Cassandra announced.
""They should have surrendered. Why toss away their lives for Samson, for Corypheus?" Evelyn lamented.
"They are deluded," Cassandra sighed.
"Any luck?" Varric called from another side of the camp. "I've found a few coins, plenty of pocket lint, and something brown, compact… and horrible." He paused. "I am going spend the next two days bathing. This is disgusting."
"Solas?" Evelyn called out.
Cassandra stretched her neck, trying to look over the stacked crates before them.
"Where did he go? I thought he was just here."
"Think he's in trouble? He was chasing one of the templars down that way," Varric stated, resting Bianca over his shoulder.
"Let's go," Evelyn said worriedly. It was unusual for the elf to break away from them.
Just as they were about to set off on a search, they noticed movement farther below. It was hard to see in the dusk, but the silhouette was unmistakably Solas'. He walked swiftly, his staff bobbing beside him. His clothes were streaked with a spray of blood.
"It's about time! Where did you wander off to? Did you go pick flowers?" Varric teased.
Solas said nothing. Instead, he raised his hand. Between his thumb and index finger glimmered a golden ring.
"Well done, Solas!" Cassandra cheered. "We've practically turned the camp upside down looking for it."
"I thought it was long gone by now," Evelyn said with relief.
"It's a damned miracle it wasn't," Varric stated. "Where did you find it, anyway?"
"Down that way," he pointed, indicating a general direction down the hill.
They were all exhausted and darkness would soon settle over them.
"Let's go back to the camp," Cassandra motioned towards the rocky path. "We can stop in on the widow before we leave in the morning.
"I'll go tonight," Solas offered. "The farm is just a quick walk up the hill from the camp. I think having this will bring her much needed comfort."
"Who finds running into Chuckles here in the dark comforting, raise their hands!" Varric joked.
He grabbed Cassandra's arm and hoisted it up, waving, over his head. She twisted her arm loose from his grasp and shooed him away with a little growl as if he were a pesky gnat.
They marched up the path trudging back to the camp. It was good they were distracted thus, Solas thought with relief, shooting a quick glance over his shoulder. He hadn't wanted to explain how he had ambushed the lyrium smuggler who'd been in possession of the ring several miles away from there. He'd have trouble explaining the distance, of course, but even more so the expression of twisted terror frozen on the dead man's face.
Maura saw the elf from her window. He approached the house respectfully, knocking on the door even though he'd seen she'd been watching him. She welcomed him, greeting him in Elvish, almost shyly.
"Forgive me for coming by so late. I wanted to return this to you as soon as possible," he told her, retrieving the ring from a pouch around his belt. Her eyes widened in disbelief and awe. At first her face remained still, her mouth slightly agape. Then she collapsed in a chair and wept. Solas pat her back.
"Ir abelas," he murmured again and again.
By the time the mage elf left, it was late. He had stayed with her, sharing several cups of drink, and talking. She thought that they had conversed, but the more she thought of it, the more she realized she'd done the talking and he'd only listened, asking questions here and there when warranted.
They'd gazed at the gold rings, side by side on the table.
"Lath Enansal…Love's Gift. These are very old," he said, admiringly. "I haven't seen the likes of these in…a very long time," he smiled kindly.
"And now they are together again—as they should be." Her tone was wistful.
"It's a tradition no one really remembers anymore. Lath Enansal are never given when two elves are newly wed," he explained.
"No?" she said curiously. "Ushel and I exchanged rings the day we were married."
"Is that so?" he raised his eyebrows at her. "That is rare. Elven wedding rings bind the wearers together for life…and beyond life, for once we were immortal… They are never offered lightly, for they can only be offered once. It is why a couple might wait a few years into their marriage to see if they truly wish to be bound to each other."
"Ah…" she said, dazed.
I meant to exchange these with you…later on. But today is as good a time as later, he'd said that day, in the cart. Ahead, the road led to their whole lives.
They had been so impossibly young.
Her eyes welled up again.
I knew, he'd said. My One.
She wiped her eyes bashfully. She hadn't meant to make her visitor uncomfortable.
"He was my One, too," she grinned, between the persistent tears. "On that, at least, we agreed." She remembered with a rush of warmth. She fingered the rings pensively, feeling the wide bands over her fingertips. "I will pass these on to my older son. He is moving here from Denerim with his family after winter.
She sipped from her cup.
"These meant so much to Ushel. I wished to honor that…honor him."
"But…you don't believe in the promise of the rings? That you will remain together even beyond the Veil?"
She chuckled.
"I believe in what the rings represent," she told him. "I believe in the love, in the friendship, in the life we built. I think these," she said, slipping both rings on her fingers, "Are a beautiful symbol—a reminder of our traditions, of our past…of our hopes…" she looked at the elf. "I believe we will remain together…at least in the memory of our sons, of our grandchildren…Yes. That'll be our immortality. But I have some difficulty believing in all that…otherworldly talk. The Chantry tells us to believe in one thing, the Dalish believe in another, there are all these cults and sects. They yell over each other, and I am not convinced the gods ever existed as they say they did. I know magic exists, but to me that is similar to the forces that govern the seasons…the tides. Gods are something different, separate," she explained. "Perhaps people thought of them as gods because they wielded much power once…but the idea of supreme beings ruling our fates, eavesdropping on us on a whim…I do not know if there is more. Perhaps it is just as well if this is all there is: Ushel and I were happy. And for that I am grateful. To hope for more would be greedy," she shook her head, uncertainty manifested on her face.
The elf had stayed until late, listening to her stories, to her memories, indulging her reminiscing until their eyes grew heavy.
"Farewell," he'd said, turning to her for the last time on the path back to the camp. "Sweet dreams."
In the dream he sat on a stone dais in the middle of a clearing, much as he had during all the time she'd known him, except he was made flesh and his pelt glistened silver in the the starry night, ruffled by the breeze.
You know me, he said without speaking.
I do, she agreed, for in the wolf's dark eyes she had recognized the black of night, the constellations of an ancient sky, the inky shadows of those primordial trees, shooting vertiginously up into the firmament, the canopy overhead the color of twilight. The moon sat to his left, the sun hovered to his right, shimmering circles of light.
Is this your true form? she asked.
Sometimes.
She smiled, for this she knew of Fen'Harel: he was wily and elusive; he would not be tamed. He slipped past the words and and titles they wished to affix to him.
He's majestically wild, she thought. Just as she'd imagined him, even when he was cast in stone.
The air crackled and swirled about him, as if his movements stirred the earth itself into motion. He said one more thing to her—it was in Elvish, but she understood, for in dreams in the Fade she lacked for nothing.
He spoke to her and her heart listened, full.
Glandival, the Dreadwolf said.
Believe.
A long chapter, but I very intentionally wanted the 21st story to be about the Dreadwolf, for 21 is a number ruled by Tricksters (Black Jack, anyone?), and to me that is what Solas is. I hope that Bioware doesn't mess up Solas' character in the future. I hope he doesn't become a full fledged hero or villain. I like him as he is: mysterious, ambiguous, beyond our reach of full comprehension…
Maura is the widow from the "Agrarian Apostate" quest, which consists of recovering her husband's stolen wedding ring. Some of the dialogue with the Inquisitor is straight from the game.