CHAPTER 31
Ellana grudgingly woke up right before dawn. Fenris was snoring, his back pressed against hers. Instead of lingering in the warmth of her bed, Ellana climbed out into the cold air of her apartment. It was the annual day trip to the Department of Art History to Halamshiral. Or as most Orleasians referred to it, the Winter Palace.
She did not want to go. Decisively so.
Her years as a runner had made Ellana an early riser. Usually, she was ready and out the door in a matter of minutes. Not today. She had budgeted time for her lack of enthusiasm, allowing the water to flow over her in the shower in an attempt to galvanize her spirits. It didn't help. Not even one of her favorite suits-a boucle jacket with a high waisted pencil skirt-made her feel optimistic about the long bus ride to and from the palace-turned-art-museum.
After pulling up a pair of opaque tights around her tanned legs, and sliding her feet into a pair of leather pumps, Ellana wearily hung her head in her hands, doing her best to mentally will herself forward and out the door. Why was she filled with so much dread?
"What time will you be home?" Fenris interrupted her in a groggy voice.
Home? Fenris' word choice threw Ellana off. She wasn't sure what the current state of their relationship was. It had oscillated between lover and friend over the last few weeks with no discernable pattern. Did he consider this home? She couldn't recall a time in their long history when it had been this easy between them-only something felt like it was missing-more than a few things if she was being crude.
"Late" She sighed, "don't wait for me to eat"
"I'll cook, just text," Fenris replied in his usual brusque manner, reaching out a hand to squeeze her arm, before turning over and falling back asleep.
At least I'll come home to a good meal, Ellana thought to herself, resigned to what was destined to be a long day, On the train to campus Ellana tried to remind herself how fantastic and engaged her students were-and how animated the chatter had been in class that week when she had gone over their assignment for the trip to sketch and map out the formal elements of a dozen works of their choice.
Visiting Halamshiral should be exciting. After all, Ellana had never been. It was one of the largest art collections in all of Thedas, all but a few wings converted into a museum, filled with treasures of the ancient and present world. There were several Elvhen artifacts she hoped to steal a glance at.
Ellana thought it inevitable that something would go wrong. Especially with that much exposure to the Department of Art History.
Since her stand-off with Rodderick whatever hope Ellana had to forge a good relationship with her colleagues evaporated. Before the incident, she had sensed some movement on that front, on several occasions in the department lounge, fellow professors would wave and acknowledge Ellana or talk with her about upcoming conferences. After Rodderick had accosted her, however, all she received were icy stares.
Wynne was the only one in the department that showed her kindness.
Ellana appreciated how the senior faculty member made efforts to include her in the everyday business of the department. Sometimes she would even stop by her office to let her know an all faculty event had been scheduled (as Ellana somehow never seemed to receive the invitations), or ask how her classes were going-patiently helping Ellana troubleshoot student issues and brainstorm assignments. Wynne, unfortunately, like Ellana was often excluded because she refused to play the passive-aggressive game that ruled the pecking order of the art history faculty.
Unlike Ellana, however, Wynne had tenure.
Judging by how much her fellow faculty appeared to loathe her, Ellana was skeptical she would achieve similar recognition. The bus ride to Halamshiral did little to alleviate her apprehension of future career success. She observed the other faculty move about the rented passenger bus to gossip about her in Orlesian (they still hadn't figured out she was fluent) on every topic ranging from her vallaslin to the exact nature of her relationship with Dorian.
Listening to the unpleasant whispers, Ellana felt her resolve wane even further. For the first time in her life, she was having a difficult time tackling each obstacle that stood in the way of her goals. It wasn't that she was unfailingly confident. On occasion, she struggled with feeling like she was an imposter; even more so that she had only received her accolades on account of being an elf and a woman. What haunted her on that bus ride was a different question: was winning the fight worth it?
She couldn't figure out if her department hated her for being Dalish, or if her scholarship made them irrelevant. Maybe she really did have an attitude?
Determined to ignore the background noise and enjoy some part of the day, Ellana slipped a romance novel by Varric Tethras between the covers of a very dry book on earlyTevinter frescos and allowed the raunchy prose to carry her away. She was enjoying a particularly rowdy scene where a chevalier was dueling with a swashbuckling pirate queen when the bus came to a stop outside the museum gates.
Stepping off the bus, Ellana was surprised to feel overwhelmed. She had seen photographs of the palace, in many publications. Gold turrets reached up almost as tall as a skyscraper. The walls of the castle, painted the same shade of blue as a robin's egg, wrapped around each other like a complicated layer cake. It was all too extravagant.
That, and she couldn't help but be reminded of the site's history. The elven capital that had stood there had been torn down, its inhabitants slaughtered in all manner of cruel ways. The perfectly manicured lawns with straight hedges, the gardens with delicate vines wrapping around wooden trellis-like green party favors, all if it obstructed the blood-soaked ground. The atrocities happened thousands of years ago, but still, Ellana couldn't help but feel slightly indignant thinking of the Orlesian crown having so much while ransacking the nearby town's alienage on a whim for hundreds of years on end as sport.
When she located her group of twenty or so advanced undergraduates, Ellana found some peace knowing that the class roster represented all of Thedas-human, dwarf, qunari and elven. If the past scholars had failed to diversify their academic work-perhaps the future generations would correct their errors.
Guiding her students through the hallways, she pointed out the special exhibition of the archeological digs on the palace grounds that had uncovered the artifacts of the elves that had once lived there. A couple of students asked if the group could go through, and she indulged them, taking a few questions on the iconography of a floor fresco of halla ornamented with blood lotuses. The students were able to watch preservationists working to reconstruct the mosaic pieces behind a wall of plexiglass windows.
After the exhibition, Ellana directed the group to examine early Tevinter statues. Rather than lecture, she asked her students to point out the terminology and concepts that had been covered in class.
The exercise was awkward at first, as many were shy, but a waifish human named Cole had offered his quiet, yet uncannily correct, interpretations of the artifacts' history and purpose. By the time the cohort reached the upstairs hallway of early icon paintings the discussion was animated, and Ellana only had to nudge for her students to be able to identify the Andrastian saints and modes of production.
"You've a gift for teaching," Wynne complimented her as the two met for lunch in the cafeteria.
"Thank you, from you that is a very meaningful compliment," Ellana replied earnestly. The rousing lecture the gray-haired professor had given to her graduate students had inspired her.
When the two scholars had finished their salads and sparkling waters and discarded the trays, they spent the next few hours wandering the halls guiding students writing frantic notes and making sketches of various skills. As the day was about to wrap up, Ellana felt relief that nothing terrible had happened. In a little less than an hour, she'd return on the faculty bus, and then make her way home.
Sera, her favorite problematic student, pulled Ellana away from Wynne, opening up her sketchbook to pages upon pages of tenderly rendered pencil drawings. The two talked for a bit, when Ellana suggested Sera go to one of the trophy rooms full of taxidermied animals in funny positions. The roguish artist had taken off at a gallop with a security guard calling out her to slow down. Ellana was about to chase after Sera to scold her when a sharp pain erupted in her head.
Ellana sat down with a soft huff on a nearby bench overlooking one of the palace gardens. The dream that had been troubling her sleep never stopped. For weeks she had been exhausted, mulling over its meaning. She had considered, at length, who she might reach out to for advice, but as far as she knew Professor Fen'Harel was the only one with any basic insight. Contacting him certainly was not an option.
Fenris had tried to help, but the subject frightened him. After his abuse by the rogue mage, magic, in his mind, had always been dangerous, even if Ellana barely used her mana. He had done his best to listen, but the expression of agony that flashed over his face made Ellana stop bringing up the subject entirely. She had taken up running again to discharge her mana in the evenings, mostly, because whatever was causing her dreams had made her have an excessive amount of energy. Exhausting himself for his comfort was an easy choice.
Whatever was going on, Ellana thought she was stubborn enough to persist. Spirits? She'd never give in to their supernatural whims.
The headache she had turned into a migraine. Her head throbbed. The corridor she found refuge in was filled with empty sets of armor on mannequins of knights and war stallions. For a moment, the room was humming, the statues shaking as if there was a minor earthquake.
Clenching her eyes shut, Ellana opened them to find the sensation to have stopped. Only now colors appeared on the edges of her vision, as if she were staring through a prism. A song began to play for her, a lullaby she never noticed before, playing in the background her entire life.
Standing, she began to walk towards the hum, out the hallway, it grew louder when she turned past the dusty plinths covered in old pottery. It was a crescendo when she walked through another room covered in chiaroscuro paintings of one of the Chantry's golden ages. The destination Ellana arrived at did not surprise her: the library. Or at least that is what one of the three other Elvhen art history scholars had argued it was.
She had read the article in the latter part of last year. Halamshiral was not only built on the foundation of the former capital of the Elvhen kingdom, As more parts of Thedas had been conquered, the Crown had co-opted entire rooms and hallways from archeological digs. The library was one such room. Dug up by the Chantry, from some distant part of Arlathan, it had been taken apart stone-by-stone and rebuilt in the palace, repurposed as a chapel for Chantry worship.
The author, a scholar in the Exalted Plains whom Ellana had never met, argued that when magic was strong, images would have flickered over the surface of the golden mosaics filling the room like faint mirages-but as magic waned, the metal was reduced to decorative material; a perfect backdrop for the kitsch of Andrastian worship. Its original purpose, however, had probably been to relay information, the walls functioning as a type of primitive screen for magic to project upon like a movie.
The Chantry rejected the paper, arguing that such an argument was heretical, the chapel dating back to the time of Andraste, one that she had used to pray to the Maker.
Walking forward through the center aisle of wooden prayer benches, Ellana could see the old gods flashing along the walls through the corners of the eyes. When she looked directly at them, they vanished. Behind the Chantry altar, there was only rough stone. A few rusty braziers made out of copper affixed to the wall. Her heart began to beat as voices swirled around in the atmosphere like a wind. Whatever song that had drawn her there was no longer noise, but a collection of voices. Some of the voices were intelligible, speaking in tongues that no longer existed. Others simply laughed, happy as if to welcome her to a forgotten corner of the world.
Was she possessed? Ellana was not sure she was entirely herself. She walked forward. One foot after another.
"Dr. Lavellan," a voice sneered at her, interrupting her thoughts. It was Rodderick. Turning for a moment, Ellana could see his ruddy, angry face.
Ellana ignored him as she reached out a hand towards the brazier placing her hand in the flame. It should have burned her. It did not. Around her, the gold paint wilted, bending into more defined things, like halla jumping, or winter foxes burrowing-all the earthly things that the old elves had loved.
"Stop touching it!" Rodderick demanded.
Ellana disobeyed. Her body shook as the neon green writing came to the surface of the stone. She could barely hear Rodderick's hysterics behind her as he fell to the ground in terror. His screams, while annoying, were helpful if only to confirm to Ellana what she was seeing was real.
"What is going on?" She heard the surprised voice of Wynne in the background. For a time she and Rodderick argued.
"Ellana?" Wynne called to her, she could feel a sharp twist of magic, the senior faculty's barrier spell, around her skin.
Why was Rodderick still shouting? All would be well. Was the last thing Ellana remembered hearing before touching the writing. A thousand words flashed through her mind simultaneously, before she was pulled away from the waking world into a pit of darkness.