MEMORIES: THE DARK FOREST

The next day was the beginning of the Midsummer Festival and Sybille's household had planned a picnic by the merchant fairgrounds for our mid-day meal. The picnic was more elaborate than I had visualized, but having seen the way that the nobility behaved in Orlais, I should have expected nothing less. Leliana had insisted that Alistair and I dress in our fine silk clothes again. Sybille's guards found a choice spot in the shade of an enormous oak and pushed aside the crowds to make a place for us. A large cloth sheet was spread out upon the ground, and polished silver plates and goblets were laid upon it. Freshly baked bread, and a sort of cold tomato soup—a specialty from Rivain I was told—were served as we waited for the roast suckling pig. Sybille's cook must have been out here preparing since before dawn.

Despite the festive occasion, the women looked tired and troubled. Recalling their discussion of the previous evening, I asked Leliana if something was wrong.

"An old friend of Sybille's passed away unexpectedly last night. We will be going away for two days tomorrow to attend the funeral at her son's estate," she replied.

"But please make yourselves at home at the Palais while we are away," put in Sybille. You should not have any trouble with the servants."

As he spread a soft, creamy cheese on the bread, Rogier commented "Aunt Leli says she got her fighting boots and gloves from the Dalish Elves."

"And so she did," I said with a smile.

"But I thought the Dalish hated us."

"Well, they certainly resent humans—and if you've had some history, you'll know why." He nodded. "But the Blight is a threat to all peoples, so the Grey Wardens are welcome among even the Dalish, who otherwise shun outsiders."

"And they actually fought alongside you in Ferelden?"

I nodded. "But like many other things that year, it did not come easily. We went there after bringing the pinches of ash to Redcliffe to heal the Arl. I must admit that even after everything I had seen at the Shrine, I was still not sure it would work, but Eamon awakened almost immediately. Much had transpired in the months he had lain in bed and needed to be explained to him.

When the situation was made clear, he asserted that we must call a Landsmeet to bring all the nobles of Ferelden together to choose a new king and force Loghain to step down. We could not allow the civil war to continue, but Eamon was convinced that we needed someone with a strong claim on the throne—and that meant Alistair."

"Alistair?" asked the boy in surprise.

"I was the old king's half-brother, though born outside of wedlock to a serving girl, and kept secret. But Arl Eamon thought he could get the nobles to rally in my name. I thought—hoped—that he would make a play for the throne himself. He certainly understood far more about ruling a kingdom than I did, but…"

"Why didn't you want to be king?" asked Rogier. "I think it would be great to be a king."

Alistair shook his head. "When you're older, you'll see that being a King—or your Empress—is not easy. There is a lot of responsibility, a lot of pressure, making decisions that affect millions of people."

"But did you not have great responsibility when you fought the Blight?" inquired Sybille.

"Well, yes, but I stuck to fighting and left the decision-making to Aedan. I'm good at fighting."

"I still think you could have made a fine king, but…well, to get back to the story: we agreed to Eamon's plan, and while he organized the Landsmeet, we had other business to attend to. I had managed to secure the aid of the Circle of Mage and the Dwarves, but I still had one ancient treaty to call upon: that of the Dalish Elves.

We journeyed into the Brecilian Woods in the east of Ferelden to seek them out. It was not long before we found their camp. They were suspicious and distrustful at first, as is their wont, but they brought me to their Keeper, Zathrian. He was aware of the old treaty, but—surprise, surprise—he said they could not fulfill their obligations. Once again, I had to solve all their problems before they would help me with mine.

Well, yes, I suppose it does sound bitter, but after having had to crown a king for the dwarves, clear a tower of abominations for the Templars, and find a legend to heal an Arl, I was getting tired of running errands while the Blight advanced over Ferelden. The problem the elves faced was that they had been attacked by werewolves, and a number of their hunters had been bitten and were succumbing to the werewolf's disease. If they could not somehow be cured, they would either die or be transformed into beasts themselves. Zathrian believed that if I could bring him the heart of Witherfang, the great white wolf, that perhaps he could find a cure for the curse.

Easier said than done, of course, and from the start, there were some things that bothered me about Zathrian's story. For one, though he insisted the werewolves were mindless beasts, I spoke to the hunters who had fought them and they said they were sure an ambush had been carefully laid. They sensed intelligence and purpose, not mere animal cunning, behind their actions."

"For all your complaining about doing tasks for everyone, I thought it was really sweet of you to bring those two young Dalish together…what were their names?"

I chuckled. "Well, perhaps it was because I was in the throes of young love myself at the time…"

"Remember that book he gave you—the Tale of Iloren? It's a beautiful story. I set it to song a few years ago. I'll sing it for you tonight if you like."

"Why not now?—ah, I see you did not bring your lute. Still, I would like to hear it." I returned to my story. "So off we went into the forest seeking a great wolf. It was not long before we learned that Zathrian was wrong—the wolves were not mindless. One of them spoke to us…she had been an elf of the clan who had been—transformed. She begged for death, which…we provided. But we learned from her that the wolves had 'overcome the curse', as she put it.

The forest was a strange place. The story teller had said that perhaps because there had been so many dead there during an ancient battle, the veil that separates our world from the Fade had torn and the forest was infested with spirits. We did face other wolves that seemed more like normal animals, along with vicious bears, a few darkspawn-Ferelden was crawling with them everywhere by that itme it seemed-and even a number of trees that beat at us with their branches and tried to entangle us in their roots. No, I'm quite sure we were not imagining it.

But it was not long before I faced a wolf who called himself Swiftrunner. He clearly hated the Dalish but would tell me little, other than to leave. When I threatened him, telling him I needed to get to Witherfang, he fled, and said the forest would protect them from us. And it seemed for a time that it would…when we went into the densest, darkest part of the forest, we kept getting lost in a strange mist and could not find our way.

We went back to the Dalish camp for advice. Zathrian refused to believe me when I said that the werewolves had spoken to me, but he did have a helpful piece of advice: there was a tree he called the Grand Oak that might be able to help. It was a tree-spirit, similar in kind to the ones that had attacked us but a stronger spirit and one that was not filled with murderous rage. We found the tree and in return for getting its acorn back from a mad hermit, it agreed to give us a branch that would allow us to pass to the ruins in the heart of the forest where the werewolves had their lair. It took bit of wrangling with the lunatic,-I was tempted to slay him in frustration, before Wynne warned me that he was a powerful mage-but I eventually managed to swap something we had found in the forest for the acorn.

With the oak's branch in hand, we made our way to the ancient elven ruins in the heart of the forest. The ruins were haunted by ghosts, infested with giant spiders and even—as you mentioned the other day—with a dragon, although a small one. Still, we fought our way down and found our way to the werewolf's lair.

Once there, Swiftrunner asked us if we would parley, saying that 'The Lady' who led the werewolves wished to speak to me. I was hesitant, fearing an ambush, but I already mistrusted Zathrian, so I decided to see what she had to say.

The Lady proved to be a beautiful spirit, not a wolf at all. She told us that she was the Spirit of the Forest and that the werewolves had once been mindless, vicious animals, but that she had helped them find their humanity. For they had once been human, or rather their ancestors had. Hundreds of years before, a human tribe and the Dalish clan still led by Zathrian had lived in this forest and their had been…tension between them. Zathrian's daughter had been raped by the humans, his son tortured and killed. In revenge, he had used the spirit of the forest itself to forge a terrible curse—the Great Wolf Witherfang had killed or infected the human tribe and they had become savage beasts. The werewolves today were their descendants or the descendants of other people unfortunate enough to have been attacked by the werewolves and cursed.

The Lady—who, as you may have guessed was also Witherfang—sought to end the curse. The attack on the Dalish had been an attempt to force Zathrian to deal with them.

I was furious. Zathrian had put us to a task, through grave danger, when he could have ended the curse himself. Storming back toward the Dalish camp, we encountered Zathrian before we even left the ruins. He did not want to talk, asking only if I had Witherfang's heart, but I told him he would speak to the Lady, even if I had to drag him there.

Even faced with his own creations speaking to him, Zathrian refused to aid them. He wanted to end the curse only for his people; he still held the werewolves responsible for crimes committed by their ancestors long ago. We were actually forced to fight him—and his magic was formidable indeed—before he gave up and undertook the ritual that would end the curse, and end both his life, and that of the Lady. We returned to the Dalish camp where the infected elven hunters were recovering, and they promised to aid us against the blight. We had gathered the armies we could and it was time to return to Redcliffe and see if Eamon was ready for the Landsmeet.

If there's one thing I learned from the year we spent fighting the Blight, it was that those who are the most respected, most admired people in their society, and have the best of intentions can commit monstrous crimes. Loghain, the hero of the River Dane thought he was protecting Ferelden against another invasion and nearly destroyed it. Zathrian, the Keeper of his clan, sought to protect them from a threatening human tribe and created a great evil that nearly swallowed his own clan in the end. Branka, a dwarven paragon hoped to save her race from the Darkspawn with the Anvil wiped out her own clan. Even Uldred was a respected senior enchanter who longed to give the mages freedom from the chantry…and that put him on the path to abomination and the Circle's ruin. Evil can come from the most unexpected sources: great people with good aims who are misled or too sure of themselves." I had learned that lesson, surely. I was not falling, would never fall, into the trap that they had…would I?