Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: T

Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age II as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.

A/N: This is an idea I've toyed with a lot, for various reasons depending on the fic I was writing. This time it just seems to me to be a good way to introduce yet another element of tension. If it seems like my tale includes a startling amount of lazy coincidence, all I can say is that it is deliberate. There is a Whisper in the Shadows…


Chapter Thirty: Between Orlais and an Elven Ass

The Dalish hunters took him quite a distance, several miles at least, to an encampment where he was paraded like a prisoner on the way to the gallows past lines of hard, suspicious tattooed faces with glittering night-eyes. They took him to an aravel set in the middle of the camp, before which stood a rather tall elven male dressed in fine robes, his silver hair streaked with vague memories of the brown it had once been. He looked somewhat familiar, and Loghain racked his memory to place the face.

"Aneth ara, human," this man said, with a slight inclination of his head. "My apologies for waylaying you, but I was tasked with delivering to you a message - and a gift."

"I know you," Loghain said slowly. "You were the one that took Maric and me to the old marsh witch, ages ago."

The elf inclined his head again, a bit further this time. "I am surprised you remembered me. I am Verrithal. At the time of our first meeting I was Keeper of the small scouting party that found you and your friend, First to the Keeper of the larger clan. Now I am myself its Keeper." He gestured to a campfire set about with low bench seats. "Please, sit."

Loghain crossed his arms over his chest and made a point of towering tall. "Thank you, I prefer to stand."

The Keeper seemed amused rather than offended. "Very well. I will not delay you more than necessary. The message I am to give you is from the Woman of Many Years, and it is not wise to act against her wishes. I am to offer you her congratulations on discovering a way to defeat the corruption of the land, and to convey to you the information that the Wilds are cleansed clear to the fortress of Ostagar and beyond. You need not travel any further south. She also wanted you to know that the township of Gwaren has had a particularly prosperous year, and are planning a grand Harvestmere celebration - which you and your companions will be in time to partake of if you leave for the east in the morning's first light."

Loghain was incredulous. "The Woman of Many Years? The same Woman of Many Years you handed me to before? I killed her, more than a decade ago."

The Keeper smiled, rather sadly. "Such as she is may very well never die. Sometimes I think her true name is that of the Dread Wolf himself, Fen'Harel, but that is something the likes of me shall never know - I know only that like that Lord of Tricksters, she treads the Beyond and whispers her words from the shadows. Suffice to say that her tricks and magics are doubtless great enough even to overcome death itself - if it is so that she was ever truly dead at all."

He held out his hand. Upon his palm rested a ring intricately carved of shining white wood from an ancient sylvan. "She bade me give you this, and warn you to wear it always. Your enemy, she says, has set more of her pets to track you. This will keep them from finding you no matter what arts they employ, but she also said that you must be careful and continue to use your templar talents and your mage friend's litany to keep them from regaining some control of your mind. You know what to watch for - that sensation in your brain as of a hive of angry wasps."

Loghain shuddered, involuntarily. He'd felt that quite often in the past days, faintly, and drove it off with Cleanse or for a longer respite when Seanna read from the Litany of Adralla. He didn't want anything to do with the old marsh witch, alive or dead, but given this choice between possibly placing himself under the control of an agent whose motives were unclear, or leaving himself at the mercy of an agent whose motives were only too clear, he supposed it was a case of damned if you don't, damned if you do. He took the ring.

"Thank you for the warning," he said. His mouth felt a bit dry.

"Asha belannar also wished for me to convey to you her regrets that she could not, at this time, speak with you personally," the Keeper continued. "Urgent business in Orlais has delayed her return to Ferelden. But she wanted me to tell you that she will seek audience with you soon. It seems she has further business with you that must be handled personally."

"Wonderful," Loghain said, voice dripping sarcasm. "I look forward to that."

The Keeper actually chuckled slightly, with another of those slight bows. "She seems to favor you in some way, though that of course is difficult for me to say with certainty. I cannot say that you are not justified to be wisely suspicious of anything she has to offer you, but in the spirit of frankness I would recommend you do whatever you can not to arouse her ire. Asha belannar is friend to no one, but it does not necessarily follow that she must be enemy to all."

The Keeper spread his hands. "That is all the business I have with you, human, and I will not detain you longer. Dareth shiral - safe travels."

"Wait, Keeper." An elderly woman stepped into the light of the campfire, white hair pulled back in a tight bun, face lined with age and sternness beneath her vallaslin. "I would speak to the shemlen myself. Privately, if I may."

The Keeper's eyebrows registered a certain degree of surprise, but he made the aged woman a deeper and more formal bow than he had given Loghain and said, "If it is your wish, Hahren." He then retired behind the aravel and out of sight.

Loghain, for his part, gazed at the elven woman with a heartsick dread. The face he saw was cruelly twisted by age and by hate, but recognizable all the same. He knew before ever she spoke that he had no wish to hear anything she had to say, but he was helpless to forestall the ways fate had of laughing at him.

"Yours is a face I recognize," the woman said, her voice scornful. "Many years ago this clan passed through this part of Ferelden, and sent our hunters out to find food. They found instead a shemlen of enormous size, badly wounded from some great battle his kind waged against themselves. He was torn and bleeding dry, but still he carried upon his back two of his fellows, more gravely wounded still. Our hunters admired his strength and his dedication to the lives of his friends, and they foolishly brought all three to our Keeper for healing. Despite her best efforts, the two humans he'd tried to save perished of their wounds."

She shook her head, as if her denial could negate the past. "The giant did not die, more's the pity. With time and care and the Keeper's magic, his wounds healed. Many in the clan were suspicious and afraid, and the da'len - children, before the marking of the vallaslin, such as I was myself - were kept well away. But others were fascinated by the shemlen, who lied to them with false gratitude and words of fellowship. One of those taken in by his lies was my elder sister, Nerissia."

Dimly, Loghain heard a commotion at the edge of the encampment, the loud barking of a dog and a woman's angry words. Elilia and Champion, he surmised, come to rescue him. But the old woman's story held him captive in a dreadful fascination, and he could not bestir himself. This was a story he'd known existed but which he himself had never heard.

The old woman, too, seemed unable to stop herself, decades of hate and anger that had poisoned her life spilled forth as though at the bursting of a dam.

"Nerissia was a young hunter, with the marks of Mythal drawn upon her pretty face but newly. She wanted to know more about the shemlen, she believed that the Dalish could come to some sort of understanding with them. She saw the giant as a means to begin bartering some sort of peace." She scoffed bitterly and continued. "He plied her with smiles and pretty words, and she fell under his spell. When at last he was mended the clan made him return from whence he came, but the damage was already done. He did not leave alone, you see. My sister went with him, forsaking her clan, her family, her people, everything she once held dear, to be with the cunning trickster who'd deceived her."

She eyed him with undisguised distaste. "Nerissia's name was never to be spoken again, nor the name of the foul shemlen who took her from us, but as Hahren it is given to me to say the hard words when they must be remembered. The shemlen's name was Gareth Mac Tir, may the Dread Wolf take him."

Loghain's own voice came to his ears as if from elsewhere, perhaps the Fade. "My father, though I suppose you already knew that. And Nerissia was my mother. Would it pain you to learn that she was murdered?"

"My fool of a sister has been dead to me since she left us. Any fate she met with after that was no more than her due."

A white-hot rage surged up in his heart at those words. He struggled against it, recognizing in some small piece of his brain that much of this woman's coldness was inspired by the pain of her own loss, a coldness he understood as he had embraced it for much of his life. He heard behind him the steady, reasoning voice of the Keeper, attempting to calm the ire of Elilia and the still-snarling Champion, and the sound of another snarling dog which was no doubt Haakon. They sounded much closer than before, either because he was hearing them better or because they were bashing their way into the Dalish camp. That wouldn't go over well, he supposed.

"Please, good woman - your man is unharmed," he heard the Keeper saying. "He would have been returned to you before now, except our venerable Hahren wished to speak to him herself, in private. I am sure their palaver will be concluded soon, and then you may all return to your people. There is no need for violence."

"So you keep saying," Elilia said, "but I won't know that until I see Loghain for myself."

Loghain knew he had to say something to this old woman, the aunt who resented his very existence, and he knew he needed to speak quickly before Elilia pushed her way into the conversation. He tried to school his temper, to speak dispassionately, but it was impossible. The subject was one that had lost none of its power to tear at his very soul.

"My mother sacrificed everything for her family," he began, and the elf burst out angrily.

"She betrayed her family."

"She sacrificed one family for sake of the other," Loghain corrected. "Not by her preference, I'm certain, but simply by the way the world - the 'shemlen' world and the Dalish world - forced her to choose. She gave up every shred of her former identity and remade herself into wife and mother. Everything she said, everything she did, everything she was reinforced how important that identity was to her. She loved my father, even though the world made that so very difficult for her, and she loved me. She did everything she could to protect me from the way the world would look upon me as a half-blood. And the people who killed her - who raped her and slit her throat, before my very eyes? They killed her not because she was an elf or because she was a Dalish, but just because she was the wife of a peasant who had the audacity to stand up to them. And my father - who never uttered a false word to anyone in his life, who was a gentle man who strove to live in peace when he could - hunted the bastards down and slew them all. Because he loved her, better than he loved anyone else on this earth - better even than he loved me. And all the rest of his days he mourned her, and hated himself for his inability to protect her. And in the end he gave his life to save a half-baked royal outcast because Maric was Ferelden's last hope of casting out the bastards whose arrogance and sense of entitlement made them feel they were justified in what they did when they murdered my beautiful Dalish mother, and he essentially sold me into service to ensure that Maric succeeded."

He sensed rather than saw Elilia at his back, and knew she must have heard most of his words. Oh well, too late to stop himself now, and he couldn't even if he wanted to.

"You say that my mother was dead to you from the moment she chose my father over her clan. You clearly find my very existence an affront to everything you hold dear in this world. So be it. But I'll tell you now, my unworthy shemlen self is all that remains of your sister, for my own daughter knows nothing of her antecedents and never shall - not because I am ashamed of my mother, but to carry on her own work of keeping my child safe from the world that would hate her for something beyond her control. But if there were some way that I could bring my mother back from wherever she has gone, just for a moment, so that she could meet her granddaughter and her great-grandchildren face-to-face one time, I would trade you and every other bigoted bitch or bastard the world over, human or elf or dwarf or bloody qunari, for that chance."

The old woman's face registered some shock at his tirade, but then slid into an expression of derision. "You have your mother's temper, I see," she said.

"So I've been told," Loghain said with some force, "by no less an authority than my father. I wouldn't know for myself, for she never showed it to me. But it's a temper that has helped one King overthrow the very tyranny that took my mother's life, and it's a temper that helped this woman behind me slay an Archdemon and defeat a Blight. It is also a temper that is helping another King beat back the wolves who seek to reclaim our homeland for their own nefarious uses today. If more Dalish had my mother's temper, and but a fraction of her courage, perhaps you'd have your own homeland now."

He spun quickly on his heels then, turning to a very startled-looking Elilia and a pair of somewhat bewildered mabari. "Come, my love - let us leave this place. Champion, to heel." On the way out of the camp at a very fast stride he spared a moment's notice for the shell-shocked Keeper. "You seem a decent man, Varrithal, though your habit of setting out ambushes instead of invitations is wearing to say the least. Safe travels to you."


Over the following days Elilia's attitude toward Loghain was…different. Distant. Almost dismissive. When camp was made they still shared the single large tent to sleep, but she left space between their bodies she'd never allowed before. Funny, but he'd never considered for a moment that his blood status would bother her, of all people. But she was born to the nobility, and as egalitarian as she seemed, perhaps a few old prejudices remained. Or perhaps she was angry with him for not disclosing that information to her.

It seemed obvious now that whatever it was she'd seen in the Gauntlet of Trials, it hadn't been his mother. He wondered mightily what she had seen, but couldn't quite bring himself to ask. He grieved the loss of her camaraderie as much as the loss of her affections, and he was a quiet man indeed on the long walk to Gwaren, for whether the witch's message was true or not, he could no longer bring himself to venture further into the Wilds when his company no longer seemed to Elilia's taste.

Champion plodded close on his heels the whole way, ears and stumpy tail a-droop. She sensed that her master and his mate were growing apart, though she could not for the life of her understand why. Evidently there was something badly wrong with Haakon's mistress, for Champion's master, of course, was perfect in every way, though Haakon didn't seem to agree and it created a schism between the siblings. It was regrettable, but if it was necessary then she would take it upon herself to find the Master a more satisfactory female. She would choose her Master over her brother any day.

Their other companions were eerily silent on the three-day hike, as well, sensing the discord, but even though no one said a word to anyone about the sudden tension in the air clear loyalties were being drawn. Standing alongside Elilia and Haakon were the dog Paragon and the women Laz and Seanna, the dwarf was evidently positive that whenever anything bad happened in a relationship it was obviously the man's fault, and Seanna looked unsure of anything except her status as Elilia's best friend and supporter, and Paragon simply followed her mistress' lead. Varric seemed to take Loghain's side, perhaps not because he believed that he was not to blame for the thoughtful frown on Elilia's face but rather because no one else would stand with him except his dog.

They found the road leading into the town on the third night, and camped alongside it. They ate a quiet dinner of rabbit stew, of which they were all growing rather tired, and sat around the campfire with nothing to say. It was an uncomfortable evening, like the two evenings before it.

Finally Elilia spoke, for the first time since the Dalish camp. "Loghain, we need to talk…about what you said."

He sighed. "I knew this was coming eventually, but I was rather beginning to think you'd leave me gasping 'til we reached Gwaren. Speak."

"Did you…" She trailed off, her expression one of uncertainty, and started over. "Did you…mean it? Or were you just upset and lashing out?"

This was very much not in the realm of things he had expected her to say, and for the life of him he couldn't figure out what she must be referring to. Was she angry with him for saying that he would trade his aunt for a moment again with his mother?

"I…think I may require clarification," he said carefully. "I'm not sure which part of the things I said is what you mean."

"I'm talking about…what you called me."

He had called her something? He racked his brain. Was she really upset because he'd called her…?

"I called you 'my love,' didn't I?" he asked, in some confusion.

She blushed brilliantly and studied the heels of her boots for a minute before she spoke again, in a shy, quiet voice that was very unlike her. "Yes. Did you mean it?"

He briefly considered lying, not wanting to hurt her any more than he already had, but finally said, "You are my love, Elilia. Even if I am not yours."

He would not have thought her cheeks could grow any redder, but she proved him wrong. "I never…I never thought you would…or that you would ever actually say it."

Varric let out a noisy breath. "Ancestors' asses, that's what this long gathering storm is all about? A love confession? I would have guessed by the noises you two make at night that you were both pretty well apprised of your feelings for each other by this point."

"Sex and love don't always go together," Elilia shot back, with some of her old self in her voice. She looked at Loghain, with something of an apology in her eyes. "I thought…well, I knew we were friends, and I guess I knew you found me attractive enough, but I figured that this whole business of you and I marrying…well, I supposed that was just a means to an end."

"The end being that I would get my Teyrnir back?" Loghain said, with a slight twist to his lips that might have been the beginnings of a smile or a scowl. He shook his head and the forelock of his hair fell in front of his eyes. "Maker's breath, Elilia, if you want Gwaren you can damned well keep it. I never wanted it in the first place."

"I don't want it," Elilia said. "Not alone, at any rate. You're familiar with the way the teyrnir works, and I'm not. The idea, in my mind at any rate, was to share the work."

Loghain looked at her, brow furrowed, blue eyes piercing. "How much of my argument with the Dalish Hahren did you overhear, Elilia?"

She blushed again, and looked away. "Enough. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone what I heard."

"Did you know before?"

She laughed, a brief sound without a great deal of humor in it. "Not an inkling. It's not like you look the part or anything."

"Now that you do know, do you still want to share anything with me?"

Finally she met his eyes again, the blue of hers nearly identical in intensity. "I want to share everything."

He held her gaze for a long moment, scrutinizing her expression, the pitch of her voice, the shallow, rapid rate of her breathing. She was flushed, her lips slightly parted. His own mouth curved up in a slow smile and he rose to his feet and crossed to her side of the campfire. He held out a hand to her and when she placed her own within it he pulled her up and into his arms, whereupon he kissed her. Champion picked her head up off her paws and panted happily, tail wagging, and Haakon immediately rose and crossed to where she lay, sniffed noses with her in conciliatory fashion, and flopped down to sleep beside her with his muzzle resting on her shoulder.

"By the stone, I'll never understand love," Laz said. "Three days she spends giving the man the silent treatment so bad I'm just looking for an excuse to cut the big guy's balls off, and it was all just womanly megrims. I am never tying my chassis to any man permanent-like. Ain't worth it, not if it turns tough women into twitter-pated idiots."

"Love makes fools of us all, Spunky. Some seem to think it's worth it." Varric's tone suggested he didn't quite agree.

"I bet she's up the spout," Laz said knowledgeably. "Hormonal. What do you think, Seanna? You mages can tell that kind of stuff, right?"

Seanna protested weakly. "Laz…"

The lovers, of course, noticed none of this. Loghain broke the kiss at last and drew away from Elilia slightly, his fingers still resting lightly on the upturned line of her jaw. "Autumn is short and typically rather cold and damp and miserable in these parts," he said, in a low voice. "Our luck has held so far, but it's been quite chilly this past couple of nights."

"I think we'll be warm enough tonight," Elilia said, her own voice husky and a trifle vague, as if she wasn't paying the slightest attention to the words of her own mouth. She left no space between their bodies that night, no space at all.