Chapter Twenty-Five: Recalled to Life
"Dead," Fergus announced.
His voice reverberated through the massive cave as he rose from his knees to stand over the body of a dark-haired and bearded man, shining silverite armor speckled with scarlet blood. An impressive silver ax engraved with shimmering embellishments of a hunting party rested upon the stone ground beside him, some inches from the dead man's fingertips. Men in furs chased stags around the edge of the dual blades but if one turned the weapon over onto its other side, the deer on one face seemed to pursue the hunters etched into the opposite. Predators and prey, all chasing each other…
"Dead," Leliana echoed, closing the eyes of another cultist soldier with soft fingertips against the deceased's eyelids.
"Dying," said Niall, bent beside yet another crumpled puddle of crumpled chainmail. Quickly, with the instincts of a healer rather than a soldier, the mage dropped to his knees and tilted the cultist's chin back to help him breathe as Leliana and Fergus moved swiftly to join him at the miserable excuse for a deathbed.
Not that Fergus thought this unnamed zealot to be particularly deserving of a pyre with all pomp and circumstance. Whatever of his fellows that had somehow avoided death at the advance party of Mordred, Morrigan, and Zevran's hands had mustered themselves just in time to attack the secondary party of Fergus, Leliana, and Niall.
Blood trickled from the corners of the downed presumed enemy's lips, bubbling up like a spring. Fergus guessed the source to be some irreparable internal injury or another, but he wasn't the healer amongst them. Regardless, he that was the healer was making no move to actually do any healing, so the irreparable part seemed spot on.
"It is as Father Kolgrim said," the fatally wounded warrior spat out, his words of disdain and disgust more audible than whatever Niall had murmured to provoke such a response. "Andraste will smell the death of us and her children upon you and your fellow infidels and take her vengeance through fire and blood."
"There are a lot of people wanting vengeance hanging about," Fergus remarked dryly. "We can't all have what we want, especially not when your people getting vengeance on mine means I can't get my own."
"Hush," Leliana admonished. "It is cruel to mock one so near death."
"I'd vouch that it'd be cruel to stop me."
The dying man's eyes were glazed over yet seemed to blaze a brilliant yellow-green –with fervor or fever, Fergus couldn't say. "My only hope," he said weakly, as though deaf to their exchange or playing at it "is that the mage goes through with Kolgrim's intent, even as he turned on our holy leader in his time of defenselessness. I saw the look in his eyes as he took the dragon's blood from Kolgrim's… from Kolgrim's body; I can only hope he carries it through."
"And I thoroughly intend to see it through that he does not," Fergus muttered, wagering a guess that whatever matter Mordred's and these cultists' intentions fell together in was not one he should support.
The man seemed to miraculously regain his hearing just in time to pick up on that. "Maker spit on you," he gargled out a final curse with his dying breaths.
Fergus shrugged, impassively watching the man heave his last. "It's not the first time I've been told that," he remarked. "I doubt it will be the last. Come on." He got to his feet. "Let's move double. I'm sick of playing catch-up."
"You think you will, but you won't!" the man called hoarsely after them. "You won't ever catch up, in this or anything else. You will never get there in time to act or even understand. It is the will of the Prophet and Her curse goes with you!"
The urge to cover his ears against those last words, the seeming last behest of the bitter and the dying, prophetic or not, was strong but Fergus did his best to abstain. As the antechamber closed into a smaller winding passage and the winter winds whistled forward through it to meet their approach, he said to Leliana, "What, no mournful words of heavenly providence for the poor fellow?"
The former bard, former chantry sister shook her head back and forth. "He would have accepted no such alms from me," she replied, "and there are more important things –and more important people –to save at hand."
He marked this change in attitude but did nothing more; the more important people in need of saving weren't going to wait for them. The passage opened up again ahead, but it was a curse disguised as a blessing: the path was as narrow as ever, but a chasm yawned up before their eyes and, more disturbingly, their toes. Turning sideways, the party of three inched along the edge, all weapons sheathed and their arms stretched against the wall at their backs. Niall audibly gulped. Fergus's gloved fingertips brushed against Leliana's: the last bit of warmth before the far side of the cavern gave way to the mountainside and the winter winds greeted them with a blast to the face.
It was with a relief unrivaled by any in recent memory that he finally stepped onto solid, flat ground, stumbling forward a few steps in the snowbank at his eagerness for stable footing. Leliana and Niall soon joined them, the latter panting slightly in appreciation that the ordeal had concluded. "Never again," said the mage between breaths. "Never again will I complain about the templars keeping the windows and overlook doors on the constantly shut in the Tower. Does the air feel thinner up here to you?"
"It wouldn't be unheard of," Fergus replied, scanning the ground ahead until what he saw what he was looking for and was sure it wasn't just a projection of his own desperate hopes. "Look sharp, both of you."
There they were, deep in the snowy ravine that separated one peak from its twin, and Fergus was sure that, even if Mordred or his insidious passenger espied them at this distance, he, Leliana, and Niall had the upper hand. The downhill advantage was theirs; it would be all uphill should their counterparts attempt to flee. And, whether it was due to having no desire to do so, knowing that doing so would be near impossible, or simply not looking behind themselves at their pursuing companions, they did not.
They turned at their approach nonetheless, faces overshadowed by hoods pulled low over faces colored pale and pink by the cold. The two mages and an elven assassin watched as the trio of humans untalented in the arcane arts approached but said nothing in welcome, seemingly waiting for their chasers to make the first move.
And Fergus did. With a disarmingly wide smile, he said by way of greeting, "You didn't really think that a little swim would keep me from our noble quest, did you?"
Mordred's staff lowered some; had it been raised in a preparation for defense? Fergus couldn't tell. It was too difficult to discern how much the warden-commander relied on the practical use of his weapon as a walking stick. Of course, Fergus had also too often heard of walking sticks being turned into arms to raise dissent in riots and in rebellion, against men and beasts, especially in a time when a man had to constantly look over his shoulder for the monster approaching from behind, to never walk with his back to the south.
Not that any such precautions had saved his parents, even they whom the Occupation had taught to bear arms against oceans of monsters shaped like men.
"You should be careful," Mordred remarked in response. "It would seem that a high dragon may chance to stand in the way of our 'noble quest.' You should have stayed in the village until we returned and you were well."
The mage pointed up toward the mountain reaches above and Fergus turned cautiously, following the angle of Mordred's arm to see the curled mass of alternately dull and glistening scales perched upon the cliff above. He felt his breath catch at the implication, but turned back, refusing to be fazed. "And you won't be well without the more people to watch your back," Fergus rejoined, "and if we burn, at least this way we'll be in good company."
The corners of Mordred's mouth twitched; it was good to see that the mage could still appreciate a joke in his strange half-amused, half-irritated manner. Morrigan rolled back her shoulders in an elegant shrug; it was also good to note that the witch had, for once, dressed for the weather in a fur-lined shawl –a rather lame excuse for a cloak in truth. "Let them be," she replied in a bored tone. "If they're so eager to possibly burn, let them. We might as well all burn together."
"It will be an incredible bonding experience for our little merry band," Zevran added with what Fergus took as misplaced enthusiasm.
In fact, it all struck Fergus as rather peculiar and, from the glance he exchanged with Niall and his raised eyebrows, he was reassured that he was not the only one to see it as such. Why were Zevran and Morrigan, never real fans of Leliana, Niall, or himself, so eager to have their company? Perhaps it was concern over the dragon, perhaps it was revelation of a deeper, just as recently realized apprehension. Either way, it struck Fergus as genuine.
"Well," he said briskly and with an enthusiasm he himself didn't truly feel, "let's get on with it."
The wind kicked up as they marched onward, somber if not outright apprehensive in reunion, all too aware of the massive external and internal threats that haunted their passage. As he kept an eye on Mordred walking ahead, Fergus felt himself duck his head deeper into the cowl of his cloak, as though the minute precaution actually would do anything to keep his scent from the dragon's perception. He caught himself remembering Eliante and the way their parents had scoffed at the fabled tale of the dragon in the larder, but it was small comfort. At this very moment, caught in the cold between dragon and demon, he envied her, wherever she now walked.
Zevran was chattering to Leliana as usual but their words were stolen by the wind. Regardless, this time it seemed the elf's penchant for conversation seemed to betray anxiety. Idly, Fergus wondered what it felt like to be in debt to a demon, but then remembered that he was the same and had been so ever since the encounter in the Wilds. He supposed in reflection that it wasn't all that different from being in debt to a dangerous man and there were countless such borrowers, prisons and unmarked graves top full of them.
But while the wind smothered some voices, it carried others, words floating like feathers carried by a storm. Ahead, two dark figures against the spotless snow, Morrigan and Mordred had turned to face one another and were at a distance caught in disagreement as they had been that night at camp, like a tableau of dissent and counter-dissent, neither seeming to detect the odd presence of an elaborate gong beside them.
Hood cast backward and hair torn free from its bone pins by the flurries, the witch was a portrait of misery distilled with anger. "If you do not fear this dragon," she was shouting, biting words like the frost on the peaks, "why not another? Why not the one that threatens that which you claim to—"
"I claimed nothing!" Mordred was railing back. "I still claim nothing because Maker knows that you would never let me! Besides, he doesn't give a damn about your—"
"Maker knows we don't have time to deal with lovers' spats," Fergus said quickly to Leliana, Zevran, and Niall, trying to drown out whatever compromising statement Mordred was about to make. "Stay back a bit. I'll deal with this."
"Maker knows," Leliana cut him off, "that we don't have time to have one person trying to solve a problem all by himself. It isn't just your responsibility, Fergus. It's not your responsibility at all."
The gravity of her words caught him off-guard, and Zevran spoke up before he could respond. "I don't claim to know what the Maker knows," said the assassin wryly, "but I agree that we cannot linger here. Come: we'll all go together."
But their moment's delay appeared to have catastrophic consequences. A violent gust of wind stole away whatever Mordred shouted at Morrigan next, but the witch clearly did not take it well. Storming forward, she drew back and slapped him across the face as they approached, and he, due to uneasy footing in the deceptive snowbank, stumbled backward, clattering into the gong.
Or that's how it might have appeared to an innocent onlooker. As Fergus watched, Mordred's footing seemed slightly toodeliberate, his stumble backward somehow too perfect. And in the split second they had between "accident" and catastrophe regardless of intentional cause, he thought he saw the warden-commander look for the dragon before the roar shook the twin peaks and the ravine between them.
It didn't seem fair, Fergus wanted to protest, that such a small little thing should trigger such a loud, dooming clang. It wasn't right, he wanted to turn to Leliana and swear up and down as a roar deafened the gong and all else, that the Maker should turn His gaze away at this crucial moment in their quest to preserve His bride's mortal remains. It didn't make sense, he wanted to assert, that a being that is all-knowing, all-powerful, and totally good would allow a dragon to swoop down upon them when they had already suffered so much.
Hearing wings beating like booming heartbeats against the sky, Fergus shouted –there was no reason for subtlety at this point –"Inside! Now!"
Fallen into the snowbank and standing above, Mordred and Morrigan froze and looked up to the skies, but the rest of them didn't have to be told twice. Moving as though the flames were already at their backs even as the dragon still circled above, their feet pounded imprints in the deep snow as they raced past the recently feuding mages and across the ravine to the second peak and the massive door to the second citadel and whatever it held for them.
One step ahead of him, Niall stumbled, catching himself on his hands and knees in the snow as the dragon's roar deafened them. Moving fast despite his heavy armor, Fergus grabbed the mage under the arms and hoisted him to his feet. To his left, Leliana was turning and notching an arrow to her bow, as though readying to provide covering fire, eyes darting to fix upon the beast, the pretender Andraste as the former lay sister no doubt saw the dragon. Swiftly, Fergus shook his head. "There's no time—"
Too late; the dragon's jaws gaped wide and fire rushed out to meet them like the waves of the Waking Sea along the northern coastlines. There was nothing creeping or insidious about these flames as they sometimes were when conjured by Mordred or Morrigan; they were simply an unrelenting force, an inferno rushing forward to consume them.
Caught behind the rest of the group, Morrigan grabbed Mordred by the back of the robes and dragged him down face first into the snowbank while the others ducked behind a craggy series of rocks not far from the citadel's entrance, Fergus's hand still around Niall's upper arm. Not far and yet not close enough; there was a good fifty feet of ground between them and the archway without cover, leaving them all completely exposed if they were to hazard a run for it. And yet what choice did they have?
The flames subsided; it seemed that for all of the cultists' claims, the dragon was as mortal as them all and could only exhaust so much air in one breath, flames or no. His heartbeat keeping time to the sound of its wings, the beast took to flight once more, no doubt searching from the skies for sign of their hiding place. Fergus inched to the edge of the rock he was hidden behind, scanning the snow for sign of Mordred and Morrigan, all too aware that it was their own folly that had gotten them into this mess and consequently they were the ones in need of rescue. All the same, his own words to Teagan about needing a relatively intelligent Grey Warden in Ferelden rang in his ears at any stray thought of leaving them behind.
He saw their hoods peeking out of the snow like pepper scattered in salt on a dinner table besieged by Highever castle's resident mouse and heaved a sigh of relief just before the dragon crashed down to earth too close to the mages' hiding place.
Ducking back down, Fergus pushed the shield of one of Redcliffe's fallen knights into Leliana's hands. "Zevran and I will draw the dragon's attention away," he said to her quickly but not without gravity. "While we're playing bait, you and Niall go and get them. The mage can bring up a storm to cover for you and if that fails… the shield's as good as any rock for a time. Just don't drop it, even if it's hot. With any luck, we'll meet you at the door. Without, well, you know well enough what has to be done."
That last bit wasn't all true; he knew well enough the inevitability that no one would ever understand what he meant as well as he did. But it was true enough and it would have to do if all went awry.
She nodded, blue eyes hard, and Fergus was struck for the first time at what a strange band of soldiers he seemed to command in these times. It seemed an entire age since the days of camping in the Wilds with Samuel and Mikael, of the strange comfort of knowing that they were all in the same boat on some level, in that they had left behind wives and children, fathers alternately in their dotages or in their graves. Since his rescue from the muck of the swamp, he had traveled in the company of those who had instead abandoned imprisonment for their own good, thriving careers alternately as assassins, bards, chantry sisters, templars, and qunari scouts, all strangers in a strange land in their own ways. And yet there was some strange common ground between them all.
Was this sentimental reflection the sort of thing people thought of when they believed themselves to be approaching their deaths? And yet how many times in the last months had he believed himself about to die and yet had not?
The dragon's roar –no doubt of complaint that its prey had seemingly vanished –shook him from the brief reverie and Fergus tossed a smaller wooden shield to Zevran. "This shield will go up like tinder," he told him, "so try not to get burned."
"Likewise," replied the assassin with a grin, brazen as ever in the face of deadly odds.
Niall and Leliana darted right while Zevran and Fergus heaved themselves over the bulk of the rocks and started shouting taunts, waving their blades and shields to attract the dragon's attention and draw it away from their endangered companions. Jogging to the left, Zevran shouted over the wind, "Ha! Is this really Ferelden's excuse for a dragon? A lousy lizard? No wonder you're hiding here instead of Nevarra, vaca grande!"
Fergus knew enough Antivan from Oriana to grasp that one. "You're calling it a big cow?" he shouted over the wind as the dragon's tapering neck whipped in their direction.
"And why not?" Zevran rejoined. "The cultists were most certainly breeding it like livestock. It is certainly a most fearsome beast that allows itself to be adored and petted like some fat farmer's cherished mare."
He didn't know if the dragon knew the common tongue or could even define the syllables above the howling wind, but the gleam of sun and snow against the bright metal of swords, shields, and armor had grasped the beast's attention. With steps that shook the mountain, the dragon turned from his landing position and advanced on them, mouth smoking between sharp teeth. Out of the corner of his eye, Fergus saw Niall and Leliana creep up behind the beast as Mordred and Morrigan struggled out of the snowpack as the dragon's neck swayed before them, golden eyes flickering from Fergus to Zevran.
Both human and elf took a few unsteady steps backward until they saw the beast's neck convulse and flame spewed forth from its throat. As the flames charged forward, the pair of fighters split right and left. Fergus darted around to the dragon's flank as Zevran simply charged forward, ducking beneath its belly crouched low to the snow, bringing one glittering dagger up to carve at the monster's tender underside.
The dragon roared its outrage –more offended at the attempt than actually in pain, Fergus thought –and the nobleman looked backward, having already cleared the beast's flank by several yards, barely outstripped by the rest of his company save Zevran who were already at the citadel's entrance. The elven assassin was laughing as he sprinted away from the dragon, like a child who had successfully pulled off a prank. His back being thus to the beast, he didn't see the spiked tail come crashing down in a fell swoop.
Blood splattered onto snow as the unrelenting scales whipped against Zevran's chest, tearing through the armor and carrying shreds of leather with it as it continued its arc through the air as though the elf had been a feather it had happened to brush against. Zevran was shot backward through the air like a ragdoll, hitting the icy earth beneath the snowpack with a sickening thud as Leliana cried out, "No!" from somewhere behind Fergus.
As if inspired into action by her voice, Fergus lunged forward, pawing at the powder with gloved hands until he found Zevran buried beneath. With effort, he heaved the assassin's motionless body up onto his shoulders as Leliana cried out again, this time his name: a warning. He looked up to see that the dragon had taken to the skies once more and was turning in flight to swoop down upon them with fire once more.
"Go!" he shouted in reply and pushed his foot against a rock to give himself momentum in the race to the citadel's doors, shoving off like a boatman against a mooring. His chest felt as though it was on fire with the constant exertion of the fight and flight, as though he was the dragon himself ready to spit out flames.
Ahead, Niall held the doors ajar as Morrigan, Mordred, and Leliana rushed through to presumable safety. He called for Fergus as well, joining his voice to Leliana's, and Fergus obligingly picked up the pace, drawing strength from reserves he had previously been unaware of possessing. Forward he went and forward past that and forward again, picking out landmarks as he went –if only he could get to that rock, it would be enough, and then that bit of rubble and then another rock and so on –until he had cleared the doorway and Niall slammed the doors shut with whatever strength the mage had.
Outside, the dragon thundered its outrage at denial and dust scattered from the ceiling. Fergus set Zevran down onto the floor and then collapsed onto the cold stone himself, breathing heavily, listening to the consistent series of thuds against the walls and roof, strangely not caring much about whether or not the ceiling caved in.
Morrigan and Niall, having had more time to catch their breath, quickly examined the crumpled elf in wordless communication, jointly attempting to determine whether it was safe to adjust his position without injuring him further. When it was determined that they could, they both lay down a tarp and gently lifted Zevran onto it before Niall opened up his bag of supplies and began to sort through its tumbled contents.
Silently, Leliana sat down beside Fergus and drew one knee up to her chest, watching Morrigan and Niall work, as Mordred settled down to the floor as well, crossing his legs beneath his robes and pulling his hood back over his eyes. Fergus continued to stare up at the shaking ceiling, until dust nearly fell into his eyes and he shut them tight until gradually the dragon's efforts to bring the place down subsided and he finally felt himself release the tension built up to breaking point by the encounter.
Eventually though, he opened his eyes again and sat up. Seeing that they wouldn't be going anywhere for a while, he began to habitually unbuckle his borrowed armor –borrowed from a dead man, so he didn't quite understand the use of the phrase.
"I cannot believe," said Leliana, her soft voice loud in the silence, "that anyone would think such a monstrous creature could be the lady Andraste, let alone all of those people. How many? A hundred? Thousands over the years perhaps?"
"The dragon is a fearsome creature, and they must have seen her as an alternative to the absent Maker and His silent Andraste," said an eerily calm voice from the shadows behind them. His armor dropped to the ground, leaving him in his shirt and breeches, Fergus turned to see what Leliana gaped at. A tale man in silverite armor stepped forward from the other side of the citadel's first chamber. "A true believer would not require such audacious displays of power."
"Again with the constant telling everyone what and who to believe," Morrigan still managed to complain even as she mashed herbs together against a crumbling lifestone she had procured from her pack. "Doesn't it get exhausting after a while?"
"I cannot speak for all," replied the damnably ethereal man, "but I for one cannot abandon by post until the Tevinter Imperium has fallen to the Chant."
"The Tevinter Imperium isn't all that it was anymore," Niall muttered as his hands glowed against Zevran's chest. "It's really just, well, Tevinter now."
"Is that so?" asked the man, almost in wonder. "Then perhaps the end is near…"
Fergus didn't much like being told that the end might be near, especially when there was a Blight in the south, civil war looming, a possessed warden-commander next to him, and a dragon outside. Gruffly, he said, "People always assume that the age that they're in is the last. It just strikes me as funny that those people don't seem to have any hopes for their children's future."
He ignored the twist in his gut at the thought of a child's future –it had crept up on him as it had not for days and days it felt like –as the unknown man replied, "But we are all the Maker's children before anything else and it is His hopes for us that allow us to push on further through time. And besides, an end is not always a bad thing if it is the right end."
"There are ends all of the time," Fergus countered, "especially right before the beginning of a new age."
"And I have lived long and seen these ages come and go," replied the infuriating man. "I have a feeling that this one might be different, should it be upon us."
"Pardon," said Leliana in earnest, getting to her feet, "but is it true?"
"Is what true, child?"
"That Andraste's really buried here, in this structure," she replied. "Is it true?"
The man laughed softly. "I bore the remains of our prophet here myself, me and my kinsmen. I reside here as Guardian and I assure you: her ashes do truly reside here, as they have for many ages and may continue to until the end. And you are all permitted, as pilgrims, to take a small pinch of the ashes should the Gauntlet prove you worthy of doing so."
Leliana was practically glowing with the elixir of merely being there; Fergus was less impressed. Mordred was much less impressed and Morrigan… well, no one could outdo Morrigan when it came to being unmoved by religious drivel. "So you have finally found your magical dead woman," the apostate mage sniffed. "Well done."
"We could use a bit of miracle dead woman right now," Niall observed tensely as he bound up an unconscious Zevran's wounds.
"He doesn't look to be in bad shape," Fergus said, looking down at the injured elf.
"He isn't," was the terse reply, "or rather he wouldn't be if we were back at Redcliffe or even at the Tower. For climbing back down a mountain, he's not in good shape at all. And if you go on ahead into this 'Gauntlet,' I'd better stay behind with him to make sure he doesn't take a turn for the worse."
Fergus nodded before getting to his feet; it was a fair enough assessment. Turning to the others, his back to the Guardian and the door forward, he said, "Then if there are no objections, the rest of us will go ahead and come back with the ashes to see if they'll do any good."
Mordred's face darkened at the tone of authority in Fergus's voice, but it was the Guardian who raised his voice in opposition. "Before you go, there is something I must ask."
"Out with it," Fergus said briskly without turning around.
"There is suffering in your past; your suffering and the suffering of others," said the spirit, the disciple, whatever he was, and Fergus felt every muscle, every joint, every nerve in his body coil up like a spring. "You rode south to Ostagar without any misgivings whatsoever about leaving your family undefended in the company of men who would murder them," said the Guardian in his calm, unjudging manner, "and when you learned of your sister's fate, you chose not to pursue her yourself but to send instead the son of your and her greatest enemy. Do you wonder, often, if you failed them, if you continue to fail them by coming here in pursuit of the salvation of one you owe nothing?"
Ignoring the nagging question of who exactly was "the one" to whom Fergus owed nothing, he felt a brisk, easy, expected answer bubble in his throat: "Every moment of every day." It was the understandable answer, the answer that deserved sympathy galore. But what came out hurt even more and yet was more truthful, too truthful, and perhaps the answer of the pilgrim he was not:
"Not enough," he replied. "Never enough. But what am I supposed to do?"
"You are required to do nothing," was the response, "but you doubt everything except for that you believe you have failed."
"Again," Fergus said testily, "what am I supposed to do?"
The Guardian didn't seem to be one for answering questions in return. Instead, he looked past Fergus, to Leliana. "And you, Leliana," he said and she looked up to him, once shining face suddenly apprehensive, "are above all else a creature of metamorphosis, changing from one aspect to another. You changed many times during your elaborate games with the bards of Orlais. How do you know that this last change is true one and not simply one more step in an elaborate dance?"
Fergus was careful not to look behind himself, but he could almost feel her shaking with anger. "I came to Ferelden and the Chantry because I was being hunted," she said, her voice trembling. "I walked where the Maker led me and He has rewarded me for my faith."
"You may have gone to Lothering because you were being hunted," replied the Guardian, "but did you truly flee to Ferelden and the Chantry? Or were you rescued from your own folly?"
"It can be said that the Maker rescues us all," she shot back.
"It can," the Guardian conceded, "and it is not for me to judge. I was merely curious."
"You want to know our secrets," Leliana said scathingly, "to strip us bare before Andraste and the Maker, which I suppose is your prerogative. But do you really want to know a secret? The moment you ask after is the moment I keep to myself, because, even now, I don't know if I made the right choice. I don't know what ending serves my tale best. But being able to choose, that is the truth of this story and it is the truth of choice that the Maker gave His children. And so I choose to keep mum."
"But there is a moment when you must speak, when you must inevitably make a choice," the Guardian replied, "even if it is spoken silently and is kept between you and the Maker. But it is not for me to judge. But what of you?"
The Guardian had turned to Mordred and Fergus turned as well, unable to help his curiosity. Mordred had gotten to his feet as the being had questioned Leliana and Fergus and now looked somewhat perplexed. "I'm surprised you're even deigning to speak to me," he commented wryly, but Fergus didn't think it was funny.
"I speak to all, if they will listen," was the answer, "as does the Maker. But choice is a question of a curious nature in your past. You have told yourself often that there was no choice in the matter, but yet you know there was and that there were always choices from that moment forward. You could have spoken out."
"Who would have believed me?" was the bitter reply.
"Perhaps more than you would let yourself believe would."
Mordred turned away. "Kirkwall is top full of apostates," he said with that same resentment. "No one pays attention to a leak in the kitchen when there's a dam about to burst."
"It is not for me to change your mind," the Guardian allowed, "but the Gauntlet is a place of reflection and understanding. You would do well to consider that before entering. Inner conflict is even more difficult to face in the outside world."
He turned to Morrigan and the witch spoke up so quickly that Fergus was certain that she had been waiting for the exact moment that the Guardian looked to her. "I will not play your games," she asserted. "Keep your prying questions to yourself."
"I will respect your choice," said the Guardian. "The way is open. Good luck and may you find what you seek."
"A poison of the soul," said the ghostly figure in the armor of the Avvars, "a passion's cruel counterpart; from love she grows, till love lies slain. Of what do I speak?"
Fergus stood silent, thinking long and hard, his mind already taxed by the many other riddles that had been posed unto the "pilgrims." But he did not speak, for he knew the right answer had not come to him, and they all knew the price of answering incorrectly, as a pile of ashes behind them attested.
The figure smiled at him from beneath his beard. "You are fortunate in your ignorance."
"Fortune favors none of Ferelden," Mordred spoke quietly from behind Fergus, "and certainly none standing here. Jealousy; there is your answer: the word that has driven demons to loose their grasping talons upon the mortal world since the dawn of time."
The image Rendon Howe's face, the bastard's lips curled back into a sneer, blurred Fergus's vision, but the spirit nodded approval. "Yes, jealousy drove me to betrayal," he replied. "I was the greatest general of the Alamarri... but beside her, I was nothing. Hundreds fell before her on bended knee; they loved her, as did the Maker... I loved Her too, but what man can compare with a god?"
Leliana's lips parted in wonder, as they had for the last five spirits that had confronted them with such riddles. But Morrigan instead seemed eager to move on and already beckoned them across the chamber to another figure: a woman who seemed to wear a mirror of the apostate witch's own smirk.
"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," the woman, her chin lifted proudly recited. "The debt of blood must be paid in full. Of what do I speak?"
"Vengeance," answered Leliana at the very moment Fergus said, "Justice." The two of them looked at each other in surprise and perhaps annoyance, hands already reaching for weapons, but there was no swirl of smoke, no howl of a wraith.
The ghostly woman smiled down upon them. "My husband Hessarian would have chosen a quick death for Andraste," she declared with the same pride that characterized her posture. "I made him swear that she would die, publicly with Her war leaders, that all would know the Imperium's strength."
She looked between them once more and it seemed she locked eyes with Fergus. "I am justice," she agreed. "I am vengeance. Blood can only be repaid in blood."
The shade melted into nothingness before their eyes, apparently satisfied, and they stood there in silence for a moment, Fergus's eyes locked upon the place the ghost had formerly been. Finally, Morrigan once again bade them forward, clearing her throat and announcing, "It would not surprise me if the assassin's lifeblood was being drained out onto the floor while we dally here."
"To the next, then," Mordred agreed and they turned to the final figure that blocked their progress.
"She wields the broken sword," spoke the last unnamed specter to their assembled congregation, "and separates true kings from tyrants. Of what do I speak?"
"Mercy," Leliana murmured, her fingers raised to her throat and the pendant of a silver sword that rested between her delicate collarbones. Once again, Fergus felt the uncomfortable sensation of her blue eyes boring into the back of his head.
"Yes," the spectral figure breathed, the words a regretful sigh, "mercy. I could not bear the sight of Andraste's suffering and mercy bade me end Her life. I am the penitent sinner that shows compassion in hope that compassion will be shown to him."
With those words, the ghostly figure was dispelled and from the far end of the chamber, a groan of rusty hinges was heard. Fergus broke the silence with a snort of derision. "The sinner that shows compassion in hopes that it will be shown to him," he repeated scathingly. "Compassion for the sake of your own long-term benefit is just cheating."
Surprisingly, no one spoke up to contend his point. Perhaps even Leliana was finally too exhausted to oppose his cynicism. He felt almost disappointed as they all wordlessly turned toward the newly unlocked passage forward, probably all pleading with the Maker for no more riddles. Fergus certainly was; at this point, he would almost rather another go with the dragon outside… but he reminded himself that such a cavalier whim was in bad taste, considering that currently Zevran…
He wasn't able to finish that thought because they had passed through the open archway and Fergus thought he was looking at his father.
"No, this can't be," he breathed, hackles rising, the memory of his "nightmare" at the Circle of Magi far too green for him to take anything of a similar breed at face value. Quickly, he looked about for Leliana and the others, but they seemed to have melted away into a thick fog that welled and clung to the corners of the narrow second chamber of the so-called Gauntlet. He could neither see nor hear them, any of them, and was for all intents and purposes alone… with his father.
Bryce Cousland appeared as he had in life, as he had on the last day Fergus had seen him in the family's solar at Highever: hair that had been as auburn as Fergus's in youth but had turned silver under the weight of the world, weary blue-grey eyes that held kindness still, face carved with lines that were as like to crease in laughter and joy as they were to furrow in frustration, anger, or exasperation. Fergus looked and then looked again and then looked some more, wishing with all his heart that the shadows would next condense into his mother and his wife and son, surround him with the illusion of a family reunited, of a circle unbroken. But it seemed that that would not be so.
"A place of reflection and understanding, I see," Fergus remarked finally. "Huh."
"If that is what you take away from this, yes," agreed the vision of Bryce. "The Guardian spoke truly. You carry a great deal of suffering on your shoulders, and anger. You blame yourself, too much despite what you said before. I wish it was not so."
"Wishing doesn't count for much," he replied grimly. "Like wishing you were alive, that Oriana and Oren had escaped, that I had never left in the first place."
"Those are all things you cannot change, my son," said the shade of Bryce Cousland. "You cannot allow them to dog your steps for the rest of your mortal life."
"And what about things I can change?" he countered swiftly. "What about Eliante and Highever? What about the fact that the bastard who killed you, who killed all of you, continues to breathe while I still live? What of that?"
"Your sister will make her own way," was the calm answer, "as she has always done. And before you denounce yourself for not retaking Highever at first opportunity, remember that there will be no Highever to reclaim if the Blight is allowed to run its course unhindered. You must look at the larger picture; it has always been one of your talents. Exercise it."
"And Howe?" asked Fergus when he found his voice again.
Bryce Cousland smiled darkly. "He will get his due in time," the shade answered. "The balance of vengeance and justice always runs its due course, seen or unseen. But we Couslands do our duty, to Highever and to Ferelden. We do what must be done."
Fergus nodded, appeased. Bryce's smile turned to something less feral and more sad. "You will do what has to be done, Fergus," he said. "You were always one to see the needs of the many before everything else, despite what you claim to yourself and to those around you. And they are not as blind to your sacrifices as you would pretend. A man is made by the quality of his enemies, Maric would often say to anyone who would listen. That is also true of the quality of his friends. Think better of them."
"Like you thought better of Rendon Howe?"
His father's face hardened. "I wonder sometimes," he said quietly, "whether I thought too much of him or not enough. But there is a difference between thinking highly of someone and trusting them."
"Is there?" Fergus disputed. "You would think that the highest level of respect would be trust."
"Trust no one," was the immediate reply.
"A man who trusts no one is not likely to be someone anyone trusts," Fergus countered once again.
"These are dark times, Fergus," responded the shade who looked like his father. "I would not see my son die with a blade in his back."
"Then should that fate befall me, I will at least be prepared for your disappointment when we meet shortly afterward," he rejoined with strange cheerfulness. The stony expression on Bryce's face did not change. Fergus sighed. "Somewhere in Howe's twisted little mind," he said, "he probably has it all worked out that he killed you for the good of Ferelden. He must; I don't know how else he could live with himself. He didn't trust you and he didn't trust Mother and that all started somewhere. I don't want this 'trust no one' to be the start for me."
The corners of Bryce Cousland's mouth curled upwards into a smile. "You never were one to let your parents do your thinking for you, from the time you were small," he remarked, "and I wouldn't have my son be any other way. I am so proud of you."
"And of Eliante?" he couldn't resist asking, still wondering what she had done, where she had walked.
It seemed that disappointment flashed briefly across his father's face before Bryce composed his features back into a determined smile. "Your sister is very different from you, as she has always been," he answered. "She was never meant to be the heir to Highever that you were, so we never groomed her to be such. But she will find her own path and she will walk it, wherever it leads, and you cannot always save her. You cannot save everyone, Fergus, and you must remember it."
"Who would know that better than I?" Fergus remarked bitterly but the shade of his father was already fading away as the fog began to clear. He closed his eyes, still wishing despite himself and despite all that was said that he could awaken back in his bed at Highever the morning of the march south and chose differently this time.
His eyes opened to his own reflection in a mirrored chamber, the glassy surfaces somehow previously concealed at first entrance from his vision, and the reflections of Leliana, Mordred, and Morrigan, each of their faces disturbed by their own personal reckoning. Fergus's gaze found Mordred's own haunted eyes in the mirror and for the first time saw the private agony in them and knew that some of it was reflected in his own and in those of Morrigan and Leliana. Some demons were just more literal than others.
No one was eager to share their separate experiences in the hall of mirrors and Fergus hardly objected. It was mostly in silence that they continued forward into one chamber and then the next, the sequential rooms eerily silent despite the knowledge of the howling wind beyond their stone walls.
Well, all room but one. The chamber just beyond those of the riddles and the reflections was seemingly a test of combat, spurring them to draw their weapons and fight for their lives against four deadly figures, as ethereal as those in the rooms before, whose identities could hardly be discerned by sight alone. But Fergus silently swore that there was something to the composition of the enemy party, the balance of mages and straight-up fighters, and he swore that there was something in the glint of a female rogue's smile, something in the cackle of a femininely formed mage, something in the way the male warrior balanced sword and shield. And by the disturbed looks of his companions, he was certain he was not the only one to notice such subtleties.
But the tangible uneasiness was not enough to stimulate discussion, so rattled were they all, it seemed. Nor was a tedious puzzle to create some sort of bridge of faith over a chasm sufficient to inspire anything beyond the most simple of suggestions and commands in the interests in solving it. No, it was not until they had entered the fourth and final chamber and read the inscription carved into a marker stone placed before a wall of flames that a true opinion was revealed:
"You have got to be kidding me," Fergus muttered as he discerned the message, as no doubt did the others as well.
"'Cloak yourself in the goodness of spirit,'" Morrigan read aloud and sniffed. "'King and slave, lord and beggar, be born anew in the Maker's sight,' I thought we had left the riddle room ages ago."
"This is ridiculous," Fergus muttered, eyeing the fire with exasperation and then apprehension; the flames seemed just as hot as any conjured forth from the dragon's mouth outside. Strangely thankful that he had left the majority of his armor at the entrance to the Gauntlet, he swallowed his dignity, lifted his left foot, and began tugging at one of his boots.
Leliana read the inscription over again, a small frown on her lips. "They cannot mean everything."
Wrestling with his other boot, Fergus jerked his head toward the fire once more. "You want to find out?"
With a sigh, she shook her head –whether in assent or exasperation to match his–and dropped her bow and quiver to the floor, fingers setting to work undoing the front laces of her hardened and padded leather jerkin. For her part, Morrigan merely flashed a shrug at Mordred and dropped her staff to the ground in preparation to disrobe, while Mordred himself barely glanced back at her, firelight reflected in his bright green eyes as he looked past the flames to the altar barely discernable beyond.
Each doing their best not to look at the others as the last garments fluttered to the floor, they stepped close to the barrier of flames and Fergus took a deep breath, the warmth of the fire surprisingly comforting in contrast to the chill that had seemed ever constant ever since they had set up the mountainside in pursuit of the ashes: the ashes that were, in fact, just on the other side of this one last obstacle. He had hiked up to impossible heights, faced down a qunari swordsman in a duel on the cliff's edge, sunk to the bottom of a frozen lake, and played the distraction for a high dragon, not to mention countless riddles and an unasked for revelation from the too-soon past. He would be damned if this one last test sent him packing.
So, after spending an afternoon in desperation to avoid being burned to a crisp by a dragon, he stepped willingly into the flames.
With a gasp, Leliana quickly stepped after him and, not to be outdone, Mordred and Morrigan followed. Each of them thus tried by fire, the flames winked out and the way was cleared. A small, unassuming jar stood upon a series of steps at the far end of the room, now fully revealed, as though it had been patiently awaiting their arrival all along.
But there was no race to the urn, no laughing outcries of joy or sighs of satisfaction or relief. The reactions of each individual judged a worthy pilgrim was too dark and too private for such simple, happy, open reactions. Like thieves who had not yet learned how to smile and shrug off guilt, to set it aside like a mildly disliked Satinalia gift received from a giver whose good opinion they still needed, they gathered up their clothing and weapons and dressed with strange, misplaced meticulousness, still avoiding each other's gazes.
Fergus threaded the strap through the buckle of his sword's belt with mechanical efficiency and only then did he look to Leliana. Already dressed, she sheathed her dagger, bent forward to retrieve her bow, and then straightened up, looking at him. She gave him the tiniest of nods and then turned to the steps up to the urn, once again unable to conceal her awe.
Mordred was already moving forward while Morrigan still negotiated the wrappings of her wrist's gauntlet. Moving faster, Fergus took two strides forward and wrapped his hand around the staff Mordred was using to launch himself up the last steps, wounds still obviously paining him after all the day's exertion. The warden-commander looked up at the taller man, stubborn question in his eyes yet no demonic crystalline fire. Yet.
"I thought we were all going together," said Fergus with false cheerfulness. "Remember?"
He shrugged, but his eyes did not dart away. "Shame Alistair and Sten had to stay behind," he remarked.
"Same with Niall and Zevran," Fergus returned. "Terrible accident, that gong waking up the dragon. I'm guessing Kolgrim told you about it?" Mordred didn't answer. "Just like how he told you about the dragon's blood he had on him before he conveniently died?"
"The thin air has gone to your head," Mordred rebuked crossly. "You're seeing shadows where there are none. Not every man is Rendon Howe, waiting to stab you in the back."
"I'm sure. But you and I both know that it's not just a man I'm looking at right now. Your extra passenger isn't that good at hiding under pressure. We're not templars who like to pretend everything is all roses in their perfect little slice of the world, you know. You might have even asked us for help—"
Fergus knew immediately that he had gone too far. Mordred's grey-green eyes burned emerald and the bottom of his staff slammed down into the stone with an echoing thud. Fergus was thrown backward away from the steps with a wave of kinetic energy that toppled both Leliana and Morrigan with the strength of its force. Hitting the ground painfully hard, Fergus craned his beck back upward just in time to see Mordred hurry up the first few steps to the ashes, hobbling as his wounds no doubt reopened with the added exertion and without Morrigan's constant healing skills, meager as they might be. Heaving himself to his feet, Fergus charged up the steps after him, thinking where breath failed him: Oh, no you don't.
He lunged into Mordred, sending the mage forward onto the steps, staff clattering as it rolled down to the chamber floor below. He grabbed Mordred's leg, yanking him backward, but his hand burned with agony at the touch, even through the leather of the boots. Shouting swears at the pain, he jerked his fingers back and shook them violently as Mordred scrambled back forward. Brawling at the feet of the Prophet Herself; what Leliana must have thought at the sight…
And arrow whizzed past, embedding its point in the stone steps and catching the sleeve of Mordred's tunic between the barb and the floor in a flawlessly executed pinning shot. Leliana notched another arrow and it soon joined its mate in Mordred's sleeve but there was the violent sound of ripping cloth and Mordred was racing forward once again, inhuman tenant granting its host speed beyond otherwise normal capacity.
He couldn't get a hold on Mordred. Leliana couldn't seem to successfully pin him down. Even when the former bard charged forward up the stairs herself, hands like talons with the intention of ripping Mordred away from Andraste's remains, she had screamed with the pain of contact and had been thrown aside with otherworldly strength to crumple against the wall. Maker only knew what Morrigan was doing, where her stake in this lay. There was no choice in it. Fergus would simply have to get there first.
Like Mordred, he had trained all of his life but where the mage's talents lay in the arcane, Fergus's skills were firmly rooted in the physical. Unlike Mordred, he knew how to run in full armor, how to storm a staircase with a battalion at his back.
Also unlike Mordred, he wasn't currently injured.
He darted up the stairs and used the brief moments he could take of the unknowable pain to jerk Mordred's shoulder around so that the other man faced him directly. With savage yet necessary cruelty, he quickly drove his fist against the warden-commander's chest and then a second punch into Mordred's abdomen, exactly where he knew the ever unhealed souvenir wounds from the Circle were located.
As Mordred howled in response, Fergus took the advantage: racing forward to the stairs' summit, his hand finally reaching out to grasp the lid of the urn. He wanted to laugh; he wanted to die. He wanted it to be over, now that they had finally reached the climax of this madcap quest. He knocked the lid from the urn, pinched the ashes between his fingertips, and turned around, wanting to brag, wanting to boast, and saw lightning crackling in Mordred's eyes and hands.
Mordred was standing on the step just below him. Mordred was going to kill him, regardless of whether it was the demon's or the mage's intention. Fergus was so exhausted that he almost didn't give a damn. He threw up both hands in his own defense, as though flesh and bone alone would protect him from anything, unintentionally scattering the dust of a dead woman in the mage's face. Mordred coughed and sputtered, but his intent and aim remained steady and the lightning seemed charged… before it was suddenly all over.
A pillar of golden light sheathed a motionless Mordred and a furious Morrigan stormed up the stairs, casting a bloody silverite helmet at Fergus's feet, her wounded hand painting a streak across her forehead as she rubbed the sweat from her brow. "Didn't anyone else notice," she demanded, "that the sanctimonious prig of a shade turned on all of us the moment he saw the three of you wrestling like a couple of drunk villagers over the last sack of mead?"
Sorry about the week's delay, but I figured that everyone was preoccupied with the holiday season anyway as I was. Chapter title purloined from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, I confess, as the last one was from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Feedback appreciated as always; I know I have a lot of reading to catch up on myself. Happy New Year!