Marian and Leliana set their shoulders into the secret door and reluctantly, it swings open, grinding against the stone floor. When there's enough room, Marian slips through the opening to find herself in a cool, dim library, with three or four candles in a stand lighting one corner of the room. With her little light spell, Marian checks the shadowy places for more villagers, but no one is waiting in this room to spring at them when their backs are turned.
There's a man lying in the light of the candles, and she approaches him cautiously, her staff in hand.
"Who's there?" The man coughs, lifting himself up on his elbow to peer into what must be darkness to him. She moves into the edge of the candle's light so he can see her, but she stops out of arm's reach. This still might be a trap. "Who are you? They... they've sent you to finish it?"
Or maybe not. "Please tell me you're Brother Genitivi," Marian says warily.
"You're not one of them," he says, sighing in relief. "Thank the Maker." Suddenly he sounds unutterably weary, as if the promise of help at last has sapped his strength. Pain draws his face into harsh lines.
Marian closes the distance, kneeling by him. "Are you hurt?" she asks, alarmed.
"What do you think?" Genitivi snaps, sarcasm thick in his voice. Marian pulls back sharply; she'd been on the verge of casting a healing spell, but she won't use her magic where magic isn't wanted. "Weeks of scant food and water, the torture... oh, I've never felt better!"
"I'll take that as a yes, shall I?" Marian says, raising her eyebrows.
So far, Brother Genitivi isn't exactly what she expected.
"I apologize. I shouldn't be rude. You're here to help." He sighs. "The leg's not doing so well and... and I can't feel my foot." They both look down at his leg. It's swollen with bruises and cuts, but if his foot is numb... This is beyond Marian's capacity to heal. "Cú, fetch Wynne," she orders.
Cú races away to find Wynne. She knows she shouldn't move him, but there is one thing she can do. Marian puts one hand on Genitivi's knee and one by his ankle and spreads her magic over his wounds in a gentle, soothing wash. Something in his face relaxes, just a little bit.
"That's better," he says. "Thank you."
"We shouldn't stay here," Alistair says, kneeling on Genitivi's other side. "There are too many ways in and out of this building."
"We can't camp out there, either," Marian points out. She looks up, into Alistair's worried eyes, and shakes her head. I'm fine, she thinks fiercely. Don't look at me like that. But she also thinks that telling Alistair not to worry is like asking the sun not to shine. Lately Alistair has started to show signs of being quite remarkably stubborn when he wants to be.
"We can go into the temple," Genitivi says, interrupting her train of thought. "It's old, and the door is sturdy. If we lock it behind us, we should be safe enough. There is only one key. Eirik wore it around his neck."
Alistair gets up and goes out, and after a minute he returns with the most hideously large bronze coin strung on a thick chain. "Is that your key?" Marian asks, nodding at the thing in Alistair's hand.
"Yes," Genitivi says. He pauses, taking a deep breath. "The medallion. I've seen what he did with it, to open the door. We just have to get up the mountain."
Wynne comes in, shepherded by her mabari, and takes the situation in with one sharp glance. Marian lifts her hands, closing them to halt the flow of magic that had been keeping Genitivi comfortable, and discovers that it had been doing the same to her. Now that she's stopped, she's abruptly aware of the places that hurt: the part of her mind that's attached to the Fade, her blistered feet, her staff hand. She sends Cú to gather the rest of her companions.
She watches Wynne frowning as she examines Genitivi. "Your leg is quite badly broken," Wynne says. "I can set it, and make you more comfortable, but I'm afraid magic is quite out of the question. Your system cannot handle it."
As it turns out, he also has two broken ribs and a concussion and half a million bruises and cuts, and those are going to have to heal themselves, too. Marian will be making elfroot salves all night, it seems. Wynne sets his leg with heartless efficiency and gentle hands, and then Alistair is there to take Genitivi's arm over his shoulders.
There's a path leading from the back of the Chantry up into the mountain, and Genitivi directs them up it, but it's such slow going with an invalid. Her companions catch up, one by one. Leliana takes Genitivi's other arm, and that helps, but their ponderous, limping pace makes Marian grit her teeth. Every moment she's imagining something jumping out at them from behind the trees, or that rock... or the place in her mind where her magic lives. Her nerves are shot by the time that they get to the top of the mountain path and the door.
It's set into the mountain face, and made from the same pale stone. There's no handles or locks or hinges, only a smooth expanse of stone with a keyhole in the middle. Marian has no idea how the medallion's supposed to open that lock.
"Here we are," Genitivi says, studying the door. "Give me the medallion, and let's see if I remember..."
He holds out his hand for the medallion; when Alistair gives it over, Genitivi has to let go of Alistair's shoulder in order to take the medallion in both hands. Alistair grabs him just before he topples over. Genitivi thanks him in an abstracted sort of fashion as he studies the medallion in his hands.
"Yes..." Genitivi holds the thing in his hands, peering at it closely. "You see, it can be manipulated, just like this."
Fascinated, Marian edges closer so she can watch his hands. He twists it lengthways and the medallion separates in his hands, splitting into two pieces. Or, no – it's still joined in the very center by a round bit, like two fans joined at the pins. He twists and turns the medallion's pieces, separating them further into smaller subdivisions until he's holding a mess of metal parts that look like a child's jumble sticks.
But Genitivi's not done. He bends a group of pieces into line and suddenly, out of nowhere, he has a handle. He manipulates it further and bends parts until the opposite end actually looks like a huge, heavy sort of key.
"And there," Genitivi says. "A key to open the way." He sounds weary, but there's an unmistakable note of pride in his voice, something Marian has to respect. She's not sure she could have done what he just did, and her memory is remarkable. His must be nothing short of amazing.
He gives her the key when she holds out her hand for it. She turns it over in her hand, looking at the cunning joins, the intricate system of pieces, feeling the weight of it in her palm. What kind of convoluted mind must one have to think up this kind of device?
The key slides smoothly into the lock, and it turns with a minimum of effort. The door swings on a central bar; it turns easily and quickly when Marian pushes it. Someone is keeping the mechanisms oiled. This door is used often, and it's been used recently.
"All in," Marian orders, standing aside so Alistair and Genitivi can maneuver themselves through the opening. "Quickly."
Once they're all through, Marian swings the door flush again and watches with curiosity as it falls into place, nearly seamless. The locks fall into place with harsh thunking noises, and just like that, they're safe. Whoever made this place, they hadn't lacked for craftsmanship.
When she turns, they're at the end of a long, long hallway that leads into the mountain and up, with small flights of stairs at irregular intervals down the hall. It's getting on toward night, and Genitivi needs to rest. So does she, for that matter. "Camp here?" Marian asks of no one in particular, and she's not surprised when no one answers; apparently, no one has anything to say to that. Instead the others lay down their loads and start to unpack the necessaries.
They'll need to set watches against that long expanse of hallway, so Marian organizes that, and sends Leliana down the hall to check for traps. Then she helps Wynne with Brother Genitivi's leg. She doesn't know how he keeps so calm – if it were her, with a leg that badly broken, she'd be screaming.
She has so many questions she wants to ask him, things she's always wanted to know, but now that she has the opportunity, Marian finds herself tongue-tied, for the first time in her life. There's not much light here beside what they carry themselves, but Zevran is laying a fire; in the meantime, all three mages have produced the small glowing lights, one of the few spells that everyone knows. She can only see a little ways down the hall, but there's a soft, diffuse light coming from the archway at the end; maybe she should go investigate. It's better to know what they're dealing with, isn't it? Maybe there's a door they can lock.
Marian tells Alistair her plans, but he plucks the key neatly out of her grasp and raises his eyebrows at her irritated hiss. "Have you talked to Wynne yet?" he asks, though he knows full well that she hasn't. All she can do is glare as he walks off – using her escape route.
Oh, he's going to pay for that.
Reluctantly, Marian goes back to Wynne's section of hallway and flops down next to Wynne. "I need to talk to you," Marian says.
"I heard," Wynne says with a slight smile that makes Marian panic. Wynne continues to wrap Genitivi's ribs while Marian's heart tries to climb up her throat and strangle her. Had Wynne heard her talking to Alistair? What had she heard? What had they said? She can't remember. What if –
Marian calms herself with a heroic effort. She hadn't said anything to Alistair that she's not going to tell Wynne. It's only that... she knows Alistair is on her side. She trusts him in this way. Wynne has been her teacher in the past, but Marian can't forget the way she withheld vital information until they met after her Harrowing, or the way she holds herself slightly aloof – from the rest of their companions, from the ordinary hum-drum of everyday life.
Oh, who is she fooling? She's afraid that she'll be judged weak. If Wynne is as rules-abiding as she seems, as devout and as Loyalist, she could have a very narrow interpretation of religious law. They're so far from the Circle, but if Wynne takes this badly, when they get back to civilization Marian could be turned into the templars and earmarked for the Rite of Tranquility. Her Grey Warden status wouldn't save her, not after Ostagar.
She has to stop. The more she thinks about this, the worse her nerves will be. So she carefully blanks her mind, using the slight humming of the Fade as background noise to put herself into a semi-meditative state.
"Now, then," Wynne says, sitting back on her heels and eyeing Genitivi with satisfaction, like a project that's done, and done well. "Rest."
"Madam Enchanter, if you think I have any intention of lying on my arse when the Temple of Sacred Ashes is within my grasp – " Genitivi says, struggling up onto his elbows, which makes him groan.
Wynne stops him with a hand on his chest. "Absolutely not," she says, raising her eyebrows, daring Genitivi to speak again. He sighs and lays back down, obviously deciding that silence is the better part of valor. "And now, Marian. Would you care to walk with me?"
"To where?" Marian asks, laughing a little, incredulous.
Wynne pins her with a look that she remembers well from her student days. "Is it your wish for everyone to hear what you have to say?"
Chastened, Marian follows her down the hall out of earshot of the others. They meet Alistair on the way. He gives her a slight smile, deeper around the eyes like he's proud of her, and when he passes the key back to her, the brush of their hands lingers longer than it needs to.
Wynne waits for him to pass out of hearing before she says, "I hope you know what you're doing."
"What?" Marian asks, panicking again. She's not ready to talk about them, Maker, not to Wynne.
Wynne shakes her head. "No, never mind. What can I help you with?"
Marian tells the whole story from start to finish, leaving nothing out, not a single word or errant thought. She is no more able to tell Wynne what had disturbed her so about the dead knight than she was Alistair. Even now, the thought of him saddens her more than it should. They'll never be able to find out his name. His family will never know what happened to him.
Oh.
That's not something she can explain to Wynne, though, so she moves on, to the demon. It had caught her at just the right place, at just the right time, to send her thoughts into a spiral of hate and destruction and rage. In the abstract, she can admire its craft. In the real world, she'd quite like to set it on fire and watch it burn.
But Wynne probably wouldn't appreciate that sort of black humor, so Marian finishes her story and takes a deep breath. Alistair had been right, damn him. She feels better.
Wynne looks at her for a long moment, searching her face for... something. Marian waits, biting her lip. She can be patient. She can.
"Have you been doing your meditation exercises?" Wynne asks, quite suddenly.
Marian opens her mouth and then closes it again. Marian already knows that the real answer – there hasn't been time – isn't what Wynne wants to hear. And in truth, Marian knows better than to neglect them the way she has. But she'd hardly had time at Ostagar, and in the days since –
"You know better than that!" Wynne says angrily. "I'm disappointed in you, Marian. You were a good student, but that means very little in the real world if you're not willing to – "
"You're right," Marian says, not caring in the least that she's interrupting. "It was unforgivably foolish of me." She's counting – Has it really been five weeks since Ostagar? Had she meditated at all after Duncan recruited her? She remembers it crossing her mind, but it was always at the worst of possible times, when she absolutely had to do something else, and... well, she's had a lot on her mind, from the fate of the world to intimate personal concerns.
She's been reckless, and foolish, and criminally stupid, and everything in between. She can't be so careless. That's the beginning and the end of it. If there hadn't been time, she should have made time. And there must have been time, somewhere, if she's had time to flirt with Alistair and play at knife-fighting and –
"You're an adult, in every way that matters." Wynne sounds placated by Marian's honest and prompt acknowledgement of her wrongdoing. It's not why Marian did it, but it's nice nevertheless. She's kicking herself quite enough over this already. She truly doesn't need the lecture.
"I have responsibilities," Marian says, numb. She's not really looking at Wynne; her eyes have drifted as she thinks. She's talking to herself, too. Just because she hadn't chosen to take on the desperate quest that they're on doesn't mean that she can neglect the day to day responsibilities that are hers simply because of what she is. And she has. Oh, she has. Now that she looks, she can see it. Her mind is a morass of emotions and memories and feelings that she's papered over and tried to forget. She thought she'd been doing so well lately; the grief of her father's death hasn't been quite at the top of her mind, coloring every waking thought. But she's been lying to herself. She's been pushing things aside so she doesn't have to think about them.
Marian takes a deep breath. She can fix this. Nothing has yet happened that she can't make right. "May I join you in your meditations tonight?"
Wynne gives her an approving smile and agrees. "Just before bed," she tells Marian, and they head back to Genitivi. He's sleeping, though how he can manage it in this cold and hard place she can't imagine, and that leaves Marian nothing to do except think.
Well, perhaps not, she thinks as she notices that Sten is likewise unoccupied. She drops down next to him and winces at the cold on her privates.
"Warden," he greets her. She can't tell if he's colder toward her than before, or whether it's in her mind.
Marian plunges straight into the quagmire. "I'm not sure of you," she says, watching his face intently. She therefore notices the tiny expressions he can't control, narrowing eyes, the wrinkles in his forehead creasing deeper in confusion. "I don't..." She gives up. "I don't understand you," she says with a sigh.
"Then that is your failing," he says, losing interest in her entirely, turning back to his sword.
"I know." That brings his head back up. He stares at her. "I know," she repeats, willing him to understand. "I have failings. I'm only human."
Sten snorts in agreement, and after a moment, Marian laughs, too.
"But I'm working on it," she says. It's a promise. She hopes he takes it that way.
There's silence for a while, and Marian takes a rare opportunity to sit with someone who doesn't feel the need to talk to her so she can just watch the people she's collected just living their lives. She likes most of them, but Maker, they do go on sometimes.
Zevran and Leliana are going through a pile of daggers, debating their relative merits. Marian's not sure where they came from, only that their previous owners are probably dead; Zevran is enjoying himself far too much for anything else to be the case. Leliana isn't fond of his flirting, Marian knows, but she's allowed herself to be drawn to the pile of daggers by Zevran making sarcastic little comments about each one. Before long, they've started bickering about the hilt on this one, or the quality of the metal on that one, or whether the thin, wicked stiletto is suited to the fighting style that Zevran prefers. Marian, who has never needed to think about choosing a weapon before, listens with interest until they start to drift off the subject and onto Zevran's favorite topic: innuendo. Marian's not interested, nor worried for Leliana; she can keep up and more if she wants to.
Morrigan stands with her hands on her hips, surveying the crowded hallway with disgust. She tends to set her tent apart from the rest when they camp at night. This must be her worst nightmare. But it's not wise to stray too far from the rest of the pack in these circumstances, and Morrigan must know that, too. Marian draws her knees up to her chest and loops her arms around her legs, watching with interest to see what she'll do. Eventually Morrigan drops her bedroll against the wall, still in its tight roll, and strides off to the furthest reach of the firelight, where she settles down on crossed legs and takes out a book. From here, it's hard to see, but Marian thinks it's Flemeth's grimoire. She keeps meaning to ask Morrigan what else is in it, but it's slipped her mind; now's not the time, she decides.
Cú pads over and gently plants his gigantic arse on her feet, panting at Sten like he's the one with the mabari crunch hidden in his bag. Then he and Sten have... Marian doesn't even know how to describe it. They growl and bark and roar at each other until something breaks in the air – a kind of tension Marian doesn't understand – and Cú sits back on his heels, panting at Sten, his tongue lolling.
"A true warrior," Sten says approvingly.
Well, at least he respects her dog.
"So what happens now?" Marian asks him, and when he turns on her with the kind of confused look she's beginning to associate with him, she keeps going. "You don't agree with this little detour, never mind that I don't either – what now? Are you going home when we get back to Ferelden?"
She's more anxious for the answer than she realized. She's grown attached to him, despite his standoffish nature, and she hopes to learn more about him in days to come.
"You weren't lying earlier," is his blunt reply. "You don't understand me." Sten looks at her, that's all, but it makes her feel small and foolish like she's done something wrong and needs to apologize. "I swore to follow you into battle until I found my atonement."
He goes back to his gear like there's nothing more to be said. Perhaps he's right. Marian talks too much anyway. Maybe she should try silence for a change.
She lasts for all of ten minutes before she has to get up, to move around and find something to do. Wynne snags her sleeve as she passes and she helps change the poultices on Genitivi's leg. It uses up the last of their prepared potions. Marian hadn't thought to bring her distillation equipment and has to go borrow Morrigan's instead.
When she returns, Genitivi's woken up. He looks up when she approaches, her hands full of elfroot and heavy equipment. "My apologies," he says, and manages a grin. "I'd get up, but..."
Marian smiles at him. "I think Wynne might hurt you if you tried."
"Indeed," Genitivi says. "I don't believe I caught your name."
Marian's still nervy, and she once talked their way out of trouble when Senior Enchanter Torrin caught Jowan, Lissette, and her out of bounds in the middle of the night. She can talk to anyone, so she can do this. Right?
She puts down her load and sits cross-legged next to him. "I'm Marian Amell, ser," she says, drawing what composure she can find around herself.
"None of that." Genitivi sighs, shifting a little. "I'm just a brother of the Chantry. Call me Genitivi."
She can't possibly do that, but she can't say no, either. Marian instantly decides to avoid his name altogether. "A pleasure to meet you," she says, smiling. "At least, as much as it can be under the circumstances."
"Indeed," Genitivi says, dry as dust. "You don't know how glad I was to see someone who isn't from this village."
"You don't know how glad I was to see you!" Marian says at once. "I was sure you were dead, or you'd moved on somewhere else, and I was going to have to hunt you all over Ferelden."
"You're here for me?" Genitivi asks. He sounds confused, and Marian can't blame him – has she really neglected to tell him why she's here? Apparently so.
"Arl Eamon is sick with a magical illness that has no cure," Marian says. She stacks elfroot leaves in the mortar and starts to grind them down into paste. "Arlessa Isolde sent many people looking for you."
Genitivi sighs. "I know," he says. "Eirik told me about the Redcliffe knights. Some were ambushed, some killed, a few brought back to Haven to be questioned by the villagers. He was so self-righteous about it, so smug. He seemed pleased that he had tortured and murdered these men."
The anger rises again, stronger and sweeter and oh so tempting, but instead she pounds it out with the pestle, matching the short, sharp blows to the beat of her heart. "I've fought with knights of Redcliffe," Marian says when she has her temper under control. "They're good men. They didn't deserve that. No one deserves that."
She'd been wrong about Eirik. How could she have misread him so badly?
"No," Genitivi agrees sadly. "There's nothing we can do but pray those men have found peace."
Marian isn't really interested in the Maker right now, but it seems rude and possibly blasphemous to say what she's thinking. She switches from striking to grinding, carefully watching the paste that starts to form.
Genitivi watches her work for a while before asking, "Is that for me?"
"Indirectly, I suppose," Marian says, looking up with a slight smile. "We were running short in any case, and Wynne used the last of the poultices on your leg. You'll need more on the way down the mountain."
Genitivi struggles up onto his elbows, alarm written all over his face. "You're not planning on leaving already, are you?"
"Of course," Marian says, frowning. "Brother Genitivi, you're badly hurt. And the arlessa wants to speak to you, and I have important business of my own to attend to – "
"But I tell you that I have found the final resting place of Andraste Herself," Genitivi says. His eyes are huge and insistent, fever-bright with reflected firelight. "You need only enter the Temple to see if the legend is true. Why not see for yourself?"