No chapter next week, real life calls. I'll see you guys the Tuesday after next.
The next morning, Marian's woken by an unfamiliar voice talking with Alistair and Wynne outside of her tent. She dresses and ties up her hair in a hurry, fingers made clumsy by the early hour, and cautiously pokes her head out the flaps of her tent.
Alistair is tending breakfast, and she winces. No matter how much she likes him, she can't always stomach the things he cooks when it's his turn in camp rota. A stranger sits near them, speaking with animation and using his hands to punctuate his words.
Wynne notices Marian first, waves her over and introduces her to Levi Dryden.
He tells her a story, of Duncan, of promises, and of a place the Grey Wardens could call home. The immediate advantages of such a place don't escape her – they'll need a base that can be secured against the rest of the world, and a fortress that nearly withstood a siege sounds like a great place to start. But Marian's not blind, either, and she notices Alistair hanging on Dryden's every word after he brings up Duncan.
She's already made up her mind that they should fulfill Duncan's promise, but she keeps Dryden talking about history and about Sophia while part of her mind mulls over an idea she's just had, and whether it's a fantastic idea or one she'll kick herself over later.
The rest of her attention lies with Dryden, and she listens with unfeigned interest to his stories of Sophia Dryden and the tyrant king Arland, stories which have been handed down in his family for two hundred years while the official histories were lost or revised. They're fascinating, offering a glimpse of the past she's never seen before. The historian's fervor that she feels is an old and delightful friend.
But eventually Dryden runs out of stories, and he looks at her expectantly, waiting for a decision.
"If you'll excuse me," Marian says with a smile. "I have to consult my fellow Grey Warden." Alistair's head comes up at that, and he goes willingly when she pulls him out of earshot of the camp.
"I want to go," she says immediately.
"But what about Arl Eamon? He needs help, and we have no idea how long this could take," Alistair argues, though it's reluctant. He's obviously torn. "There's no reason we have to help Dryden now. Soldier's Peak has been there for centuries, it'll keep for a few more."
She knows he's worried, and for that matter, so is she. But she has no reason to believe that anything's happened to change the odd magical stasis that the arl is in, and every reason to have faith in Irving's abilities. If anyone can keep Eamon alive, it's him.
"It's not that far out of our way. We may not be in this part of the country again for months," she says, brow furrowing as she calculates distances. "It probably won't take more than a day. We'll look in, make sure the tunnels are safe for Dryden, and be on our way."
Alistair laughs. "Wasn't it you who said our luck is never that good?" Marian glares at him, and he just grins back at her, unreasonably cheerful for such an early hour of the morning.
Well, and he's not the only one. Her dreams had been delightful, some frankly pornographic, others so soft and romantic that even she's embarrassed, and the rose tucked away safe and secure in one of her potion ingredient boxes has been at the top of her mind since she woke.
"Good morning," she says, smiling up into his eyes.
"It certainly is," Alistair says with a lopsided, affectionate grin. She wants to touch him, and so she does, taking his hand and sliding her fingers between his.
They've done this much before, and while it had been sensual for her, it hadn't been this fraught with meaning. This is touching with intent. Is he all right with that? Would he tell her if he wasn't?
Instead he grips her hand tight in his, looking at her like she's something precious and beautiful. That's a good enough answer, she decides, and goes with it.
Between them, they argue it out; eventually Alistair admits that he wants to go as much as she does, and as far as Marian's concerned, that's the end of the matter. Irving and Eamon can hold on an extra day.
Marian changes into her Warden uniform as soon as they get back to camp, leaving Alistair to deliver the good news. Then he disappears into his tent to change himself, and Marian seizes the opportunity.
"There's a price for our help," Marian tells Dryden, watching him closely. "Tell Alistair everything you know about Duncan. All your stories. He'd appreciate it."
Dryden gives her a startled look, but agrees with no reservations, and Marian offers him breakfast with a smile.
Soldier's Peak is far to the north, almost on the coast of the Waking Sea, and while Dryden says he knows a way through the maze of abandoned underground mines, they get turned around at least three times. Marian would give almost anything for a map right now.
When they finally emerge above ground, Marian's not the only one taking deep breaths of air that doesn't smell like damp and rot.
"There it is," Alistair says, impressed. "That's something, all right."
It's not a true fortress, but more of a fortified manor, with obvious alterations to windows and doors to withstand archers and ballistae. Above all, it's huge, stretching high into the sky. It broods against the sky, grey stone and dull windows, waiting long years to fulfill its purpose.
This will do quite nicely, Marian thinks, looking around with a smile. Cú is ten feet ahead of them, poking his nose into the wild grass that's been left to grow tall, while Alistair and Dryden talk in low voices.
She hopes that Dryden's doing as he agreed, talking to Alistair about the man he so admires. She hopes it helps.
That's when Cú starts to growl in a way that's distinctly not playing, and Marian snaps her head around –
"Fucking undead," she snarls as she snatches her staff and sets the skeleton hassling Cú on fire. She's the one who'd said this would be safe, isn't she? She'll have to eat crow, and she hates that.
But the undead aren't the only surprise. The ghosts are completely new to her. She's never heard of this actually happening in real life; she'd thought things like these pure fantasy, something the younger apprentices whisper to each other after lights-out. This isn't supposed to happen in the real world. At least the visions of past events are something she's experienced before, but even those are jarring, whisking her out of herself to watch fighting and blood and death. These are all of the things that tear the Veil the most, and they're all the things that the sentient species seem to enjoy above all else.
The Veil is so thin. Something is very wrong here.
Dryden is useless in a fight, but at least he knows enough to hang well back from the fracas, and while Marian might wish for Wynne's soothing magics and Leliana's arrows, she easily falls back into the supportive role she'd employed before Wynne had joined them. It's up to the three of them to clear the fort of all sorts of demons and undead, and while it's hard work, they finally penetrate to the inner keep, where they come face-to-face with a dead woman.
In life, Sophia Dryden was harshly compelling, vivid, inspirational enough to subvert an entire chapter of Grey Wardens from their sworn duty. This spirit infecting her withered, blighted body is the merest echo, twisted into domineering pride.
Marian enjoys the look on its face when they defeat it, probably more than she should.
Levi takes the news better than she would have, though he seems to hold out hope for something to redeem the family name. She doesn't have the heart to disabuse him of that hope just yet. Soldier's Peak will probably do that for her.
In the next vision, Sophia Dryden gives the order, and a Warden mage draws demon after demon from the Fade with only a little magic and a few words that Marian can't help but memorize. She shivers. She shouldn't know this. Some things are too dangerous to be kept whole in the mind. Just because she hasn't met her will's equal yet doesn't mean that she's immune to temptation.
It's still fascinating, though. She's never seen anyone summon a demon before.
The inner keep is infested with skeletons, and Marian fully embraces her support role, which keeps her far in the back and away from the undead. They make her skin crawl.
Avernus surprises her, though. It's been nearly two hundred years – the idea that anyone could still be alive is ludicrous. There he is, though, standing tall and proud, as if he hadn't betrayed every Warden in his unit. Their corpses are still locked in his cages. He looks at them every day, the way he does now, as if they're furniture or art on the walls.
And he's the one who tore open the Veil. He's the one who has to fix it, and she's the one who has to persuade him to do it.
Someday her silver tongue will abandon her, and then she doesn't know what she'll do.
Today she manages to bring him around, though she's no idea what actually did the job in her lecture; Avernus offers Levi what he can, and swears to her that he'll do everything he can, if she and her companions can keep the demons from eating him.
It's a long, hard, grueling fight with just the three of them, and Marian thinks longingly of the might she has assembled, the powerful people that she just left back at camp. She's been criminally stupid in bringing only the three of them. She can't make this mistake again.
They go through nearly every potion Marian has on her, and it's still not over; Avernus is straining with all his might to knit the ragged edges of the Veil, but something is pushing against him from the other side, something powerful. Marian doesn't dare add her magic to his own, for fear of unbalancing him entirely, so all she can do is watch as a desire demon crawls out of the Fade and reaches for them with hungry eyes and a wicked smile.
"Fuck," Marian swears, reaching deep for the last vestiges of her power. She closes the fist of her magic around the desire demon and squeezes hard until it starts to scream. While it's otherwise distracted, Alistair and Cú attack it with a will.
It breaks away from her spell with an obvious effort and turns on her, snarling. They're separated by the room, but Marian's got nothing left, not without drawing on the Fade in a way that leaves her open for all sorts of passengers. It's an awful idea.
Thank the Maker she's been training for things like this. Marian switches her staff to her left hand and draws her dagger, waiting for the attack.
It doesn't come.
The demon smirks at her and then flicks its fingers, and just that easily plunges her into horror beyond end.
She screams, long and loud and endless, but it doesn't help, nothing will ever help this terror. There are little flickering things just beyond her vision, and she knows that if she turns to look at them, they'll kill her, but she can't stay where she is, because something that's been stalking her for her whole life has finally caught up to her. She can't – she can't –
Cú nudges her hand with his nose, whining low in his throat; just like that, the pure, unreasonable terror drains out of her like water, leaving her so shaky and full of adrenaline that she can't breathe. The desire demon must have donw something to her, something she couldn't defend against, and she will swallow that bitter pill later, when she has time to think about it.
Now she needs to return the favor, in spades.
Alistair has been keeping the fucking thing busy while she shakes like a child, and she can tell with a glance that he's reaching the ends of his reserves.
"It's nearly there," Avernus says; his strained voice and trembling fingers tell Marian that he's running out, just as she is, and they have to do this now or they'll be overrun.
"Alistair!"
At her cry, Alistair tosses a quick look over his shoulder and then knocks the demon flat on its ass with his shield, burying his sword in its skull when it's down. Its corpse shimmers, fading away and back to the place from which it came, and Avernus seals the Veil with a word.
She can feel the Veil sliding down around her, the way it settles, like water calming after a storm. It soothes the ragged, aching place in her mind where she's overextended her magic. This is better. It's still thin, but it's better.
"Are you all right?" Alistair asks her, and she opens her eyes to smile at him. It's a tired smile, but she's tired, and so is he, from the looks of it. He's gotten away without too much damage, just a cut over his eyebrow and a sort of stiffness to the way he holds his shield arm, as though he strained something. She'll have Wynne check him over back at camp, just to be sure.
"I'm well enough," is all she says, kneeling down to check Cú. He hasn't escaped unscathed either, but he licks her face when she gets close. Marian decides that means he's all right.
Alistair helps her to her feet and she glances at Dryden, who has neatly avoided all of the demons so far. It's an interesting talent, one that's serving him well. He's unharmed, and Avernus is merely tired, he says.
When he asks for her judgement, her mind just stops. Marian hadn't expected anything like this. She doesn't have anything prepared. She doesn't know what to do.
She'd be within her rights to kill him out of hand, and she knows it, but –
Marian knows that he's dangerous, unprincipled, and driven to find the kinds of answers that have killed so many people in the past, but despite all of that, she can't help feeling a sense of kindred with Avernus. There's so much she wants to know, so many things that they don't have the answers for. She'd pored over the Circle's libraries until her eyes were like to fall out of her head, and debated questions and theories with her fellow apprentices until all hours of the night. There's no end to the things she wants to learn. She wouldn't summon demons to do it, but who's to say that she'll never be tempted?
In her darkest times, sometimes she wonders if the templars aren't right in what they do.
In the end, she extracts an oath from him, to research the right way, with ethics. She'll have to be satisfied with that. She asks Dryden to stay on, and gives her enthusiastic permission for his family to use the Peak as a merchant base. How they'll turn a profit when they're so far removed from the major trading centers she's no idea, but if he says they can do it – well, she's no merchant. Who is she to say otherwise?
She draws Levi away from Avernus and in low tones, she asks him to write her if Avernus ever shows signs of slipping. It's the best she can do for now. After the Blight... When it's over, things should be different. She'll make a new decision then.
It takes Marian and Alistair putting their heads together to get back through the abandoned mines, and even then they might not have done it if Cú hadn't been able to track their earlier trail. When they break through and finally come out into the late spring sunlight, Marian heaves a sigh of relief.
"You were right," Marian admits ruefully. "We have the worst luck."
"Ah, but just think – a demonic invasion thwarted, a Warden base safely rescued. We do good work." Alistair gives her an easy smile and moves a bit closer, bumping the back of her hand against his as they walk.
"And used up all of my potions doing it." Marian checks the place where her magic lives in her mind, and is relieved to see that it's filling quickly. It seems as if the more she uses it, the more there is for her to use. Perhaps it's like a muscle, which needs to be exercised? She puts that thought aside for later and surreptitiously casts a light healing spell on Alistair and on Cú.
Alistair raises his eyebrow at her. Okay, so casting sneaky spells on the former templar isn't going to work. At least she fooled her mabari. "What?" she says to Alistair, daring him to comment. "Maybe I like your face the way it is."
"Then maybe I should stop smashing it into every darkspawn and demon we come across," he says with a laugh, though he's a little flushed in a way Marian's coming to find deeply adorable.
"Maybe you should," she agrees.
The rest of the walk back to camp is quiet, but it's a companionable silence that Marian enjoys very much. She bumps Alistair with her shoulder once, just because he's there, and he smiles down at her and bumps her back.
Leliana jumps up the moment they come back into camp and fusses over them until Marian convinces her that they're all right.
Marian gets what she deserves there, though, because Leliana makes her go through her knife-fighting lessons anyway. "To teach you a lesson about leaving us behind," Leliana says, glaring. Evil woman, Marian fumes, stretching muscles that scream in protest.
In revenge, Marian brings up something she'd remembered last night as she drifted into sleep, something she'd read in one of the histories. "Is it true that Orlesian minstrels are usually spies?"
Leliana turns startled eyes on her. "Where did you hear that?"
"I read it somewhere," Marian says, her voice tight and strained from bending right over at the waist to put her hands on her ankles. "You can usually assume that I've read things somewhere, it'll save you some time."
Leliana unfolds herself and laughs. "And did you not think that this could be historical fact, and no longer true?"
As usual, Leliana makes even the stretching look effortless, beautiful, like music in motion. Marian feels like a statue trying to walk in comparison. She comes up for breath and takes up one dagger of a pair that's been carefully dulled, tossing the other to Leliana.
"That's not an answer," Marian points out, assuming the rest position: knife point-first, low by her waist, with her off hand raised and at the ready.
"No," Leliana says, sinking into the same position, though on her it looks natural. "Not all minstrels are spies, most are just singers and storytellers. But some of them are... are what we call bards."
She comes at Marian then, two quick steps accompanied by two quick slashes. Marian ducks around them and risks a single slash at Leliana's soft stomach, which Leliana slaps away with her free hand. They circle each other, Marian looking for openings as Leliana's taught her.
There never are any, of course, and Marian's not sure she'd recognize one if she saw it. But at least she's looking.
"What's the difference?" Marian asks.
"Many use the two words 'minstrel' and 'bard' interchangeably, but to do so in Orlais would cause misunderstanding. Bards are minstrels, and more. Spies, as you say."
Leliana is far away, in another time, lost in memories. Is this an opening? If Marian were a good person, she'd let the opportunity slip by. Instead she steps forward, hard, and uses the momentum built to drive her knife past Leliana's guard and into her side, just under the curve of her left breast.
Well, it would have gone into her side, if Leliana hadn't woken up at the last moment and somehow, impossibly, twisted away, laughing breathlessly. "Well done!" she says. Marian has to scuttle backward quickly to avoid Leliana's retaliatory strike.
It's better than she's done before. She'll make it work.
"Some say there is a bard order, but I don't think this is true," Leliana says. "Many bards work alone, or in small groups, doing the bidding of a patron who pays for their services. If there is an organization behind it all, no one knows who they are."
"What does a bard do?" Marian asks, curiosity getting the better of her. She's not aware of her knife hand slowly drooping downward until Leliana smacks it, hard. "Ow!"
"Pay attention!" Leliana says, glaring. "That's how you get killed in a knife fight."
"Sorry," Marian says, wishing she could rub her hand. It stings like anything. But she gets back into position anyway, watching Leliana like a hawk.
Leliana circles her. "Isn't it obvious? They infiltrate, steal... sometimes assassinate. It depends on the bard." She slashes at Marian, but Marian's been thinking, and this time she's ready for it; she catches Leliana's dagger on her own, then slaps her arm hard, forcing Leliana's knife down and away. Marian stabs at Leliana's neck quick as lightning, but as fast as she moves, Leliana is even faster; she somehow bends her entire upper body to the right to avoid Marian's blade.
Marian is ready for this, too. It requires only a quick twist of her wrist to stick her knife into Leliana's shoulder in a strike that would have crippled her if the blades weren't blunted.
The applause from the fire behind her shouldn't surprise her, but it does; she aims a glare at Zevran over her shoulder, but that means she can see Alistair too; he's lounging back on his elbows, watching them from across the fire. Watching her, rather, and watching her closely. Very closely. She blushes, again. She likes the way he's smiling at her, though, proud and pleased and fond. She smiles back at him before she turns back to check on Leliana.
"Well executed," Leliana congratulates her with a smile. "But you should know I'm going to be even harder on you now."
Marian's groan is long and heart-felt, and makes Leliana laugh.
But she still has questions, about bards and about Orlais, and she thinks somewhere in there might be an answer to a question that's been bothering her and Leliana both recently. She wants to clear the air. She thinks there might be a true friendship hidden somewhere under all the secrets.
Marian starts to strip off her armor, and Leliana joins her.
"Bards are Orlesian spies, then?" Marian asks.
Leliana nods. "In Orlais there is much rivalry amongst the high-born. They fight over land, influence and the favor of the empress. But they cannot do this openly, because it is impolite." Leliana rolls her eyes, and her opinion is so clear on her face that Marian has to laugh. "In public they wear smiling faces and pretend to be civil. In secret they plot and scheme to destroy each other. It is a Game completely meaningless to anyone but its players."
Politics. It's always the same, isn't it? Some people just have too much time on their hands.
"You seem to know an awful lot about bards," Marian says, raising her eyebrows.
Leliana sighs. "And I should, shouldn't I, after having spent most of my adult life as one. You've guessed as much, I'm sure."
Ah. It's comforting to know that Marian hasn't totally missed the mark. Leliana had been hiding something, though she'd never dreamed of anything like this. Curiously, Marian's not angry. As she said to Alistair, none of them have known each other very long, and the habit of secrecy is hard to break.
She is fascinated, though.
"But does it really matter what I was? What's past is past," Leliana says with an uncomfortable shrug.
"Of course it matters," Marian says, stung. "The truth always matters."
The straight line of Leliana's shoulders bows, as if under some impossible weight. Marian almost regrets asking. Almost. "I... found myself in Ferelden and sheltered from bad weather in the Chantry. And when the storm passed I just... did not want to leave." But then she smiles, true and brilliant, like the sun coming out. "I like to say the Maker brought me here."
"Come here," Marian orders, and drags Leliana in for a hug. Oh, it is nice to touch people again. She's always been handsy with her friends, and she's missed the little intimacies that give her life flavor and joy. "I know there's more to it," she whispers straight into Leliana's ear. Leliana tries to pull away, startled and stiff in every line of her body, but Marian drags her back. "It doesn't matter," she says fiercely. "You've a perfect right to your secrets."
"Marian – "
"No, I'm serious," Marian says, drawing away so she can look Leliana full in the face. "Just know that you can talk to me when you're ready."
"I – " Leliana composes herself with an effort, but all traces of that beautiful smile are gone from her face, and Marian's the one who did it. It's hard not to feel guilty about that. "Thank you."
