Chapter 39: The Arl

By the time they catch sight of Redcliffe Castle, far in the distance, they're all cranky and sore and so, so travel-weary. Zevran and Leliana and Morrigan have been bickering amongst themselves non-stop for the last few hours. The castle looks like heaven, even if it is another hour's walk before they reach even the path that leads up to the gates. The sun is setting, painting the walls with faded gold that makes it look appealing, romantic, like someone's painting of home. Considering what had happened there the last time she was here, that's a strange thought to have in her mind.

It's lovely, though. She can't deny that.

There are guards posted at the end of the path; Marian slows her pace when she nears them, half-afraid that they're going to tell her that Connor has reverted or that the creatures are back, but they only bow as far as their armor will allow, the bow of true respect, and tell her that Bann Teagan has been asking after them.

Their path takes them over the bridge, from which Marian can see the village. The fishing boats are all docked for the evening, but the square has been cleared of barricades; they've got a huge bonfire burning in front of the Chantry. She can smell the wood smoke from here. She can just make out figures around it, probably villagers; she hopes they're celebrating. They deserve it.

Teagan and Isolde wait for her in the main hall. They must have been spotted coming down the Imperial highway, or someone ran ahead while they were on the path to warn of their coming. Teagan is so much thinner than she remembers him that Marian is instantly concerned. He looks drawn and tired, too; Eamon's illness and Eamon's responsibilities must be weighing heavy on his shoulders. Isolde's hands are folded before her, her fingers knotted together so tightly that her knuckles are white.

Marian immediately decides to skip the pleasantries. "I found the Urn," she says, untying the leather pouch from her belt. It doesn't look like much, she knows, but more and more she can feel the virtue in the Ashes permeating the soft leather and reaching out to her. It's been sitting on her belt for four days and she's never felt healthier. Her menses ran their course in record time. She doesn't know what's in the Ashes, or what they might be, but all she can do is hope that they'll heal Eamon. They need him quite desperately.

"You have?" Teagan stands straighter, his face suddenly more alive than it had been only a second ago. She can appreciate just how run-down he'd seemed before, now that he's got a bit of hope again. There's an unbearable excitement in Isolde's eyes. This had better work; she doesn't think she could bear disappointing them. "Wonderful! Let us go at once to Eamon's side and see if the Urn's healing powers live up to their reputation!"

Only Alistair and Wynne follow her up to Eamon's room; the rest peel off to the guest quarters. It's a huge room, dominated by the towering four-poster bed where Eamon lies so still that it's hard to tell whether he's actually breathing or not. Irving is there, and from the looks of him he hasn't slept more than a few hours a night since they left for Denerim all those weeks ago.

He nods to Wynne when they come in, and then he looks at Marian. "Child, I am glad to see you," he says, his voice as ancient and weary as he is. "I have done everything in my power – and you had better believe that as First Enchanter, that phrase is not meaningless – and there has not been the slightest change in his condition. I am beginning to believe that we will need a miracle."

Marian crosses the room in two long strides and holds out the pouch. "We found the Urn of Sacred Ashes," she says, when Irving seems more likely to stare at her hand in shock rather than do anything productive.

Irving traces the Maker's Circle on his chest. "How did you find it?" he breathes; he can't tear his eyes away from the pouch still in Marian's hand. She understands the impulse, but surely the debrief can wait – this isn't the time.

"Eamon first," Marian says impatiently, gesturing to Eamon's body, lying still as death under the sheets. Wynne is examining him, prying up his eyelids to look inside, and beyond her Alistair is watching him with distress in his eyes. Damn. She'd forgotten how much Alistair looks up to Eamon. He shouldn't see him like this. She shouldn't have brought him. Though... she thinks he would have come anyway. He's not the malleable boy she met at Ostagar anymore.

Irving takes the little pouch, cupping it hesitantly before bowing his head over his hands and closing his eyes. When his head comes up, his eyes are faintly puzzled. "These ashes are very powerfully magical," he says. "But I have no notion how to use them to best effect."

Marian doesn't, either, so she takes over from Wynne so they can confer. The examination is pointless, telling them nothing they didn't already know, but she finishes it anyway and then waits as patiently as she's able for them to make a decision.

The important thing seems to be to get it inside of his body as quickly and efficiently as possible, so they decide to mix a suspension liquid to carry the ashes into his stomach. Teagan sends out for the ingredients and for one of the mages to bring their distillation equipment, and then it's a case of hurry up and wait while Wynne carefully brews a thick, clear potion that smells like the inside of an ogre's stomach. Committing the recipe to memory is automatic.

Wynne stirs the ashes in bit by bit, carefully watching to make sure that the ashes distribute themselves evenly instead of clumping. Then comes the lengthy ordeal of forcing it down Eamon's throat a few drops at a time; it's too dangerous and too precious to just pour in his mouth and shut his jaw. He'll choke and the potion – and the Ashes – will go everywhere.

Wynne massages his throat, encouraging him to swallow the last few drops, and then stands back from the bed and sighs. "I've done everything I can," she says. "It's up to him now, and to the Maker."

Marian stands against the wall and waits along with the rest of them, but Maker, she's so tired...

Her head jerks itself up of its own volition. She's just fallen asleep on her feet, she realizes with a dim, distant horror. She looks over at Eamon's still body, now with Isolde holding his hand, but he's still just the same. The candles haven't burned down very much. She can't have been asleep for long.

She laces her hands behind her back and presses her shoulders into the wall. She's never been very good at patiently waiting for things to happen. She's so tired and the fire keeps the room warmer than she prefers... She fast grows sleepy again; too fast. She digs her nails into the soft, untried skin that covers the joints in her hands, unerringly going for the spots that cause the most pain. It wakes her for a moment, but she knows it's only a stopgap. It won't keep her awake for long.

No one seems to have noticed her problem. Wynne and Irving are talking on the other side of the room; they look calm, but they keep checking on Eamon far more often than Marian thinks warranted. The way that she understands it, there's no half-measures when it comes to the Ashes – either Eamon will be fully healed, or he'll stay exactly the same. Wynne's a worrier, though, and underneath his detachment, so is Irving – for the people he truly cares about, that is. Eamon is apparently one of them.

Alistair is still here, too, watching Eamon like a hawk. She slides over to him and presses her shoulder against his in a brief offer of support. She just wants him to know she's there. He doesn't look at her, but the concern lining his face eases a little. She'll take it.

"Don't think I didn't see you falling asleep over there," he says under his breath.

She closes her eyes and groans softly. "I was hoping I'd got away with it."

"Hard to do that when you snore."

Marian kicks him. "I do not!" And she knows that for a fact. Awful man. Alistair grins at her and then goes back to watching Eamon. The life and humor drains out of his face slowly, something that leaves an uneasy feeling in Marian's stomach. He's worried. To tell the truth, so is she. What if the Ashes aren't what they're claimed to be? This is already the solution of last resort. They can't afford the time required by a new idea. The Blight is coming. Lothering is gone. They don't have time for this. But at the same time, they need Eamon to rally the Landsmeet against Loghain. This has to work. It has to. There are no other options here, no one she can coax and cozen into helping.

And beside all of that... Alistair will be crushed if this doesn't work.

She watches Eamon anxiously, willing him to wake.

She's roused out of a doze by Isolde's voice, high and tight with excitement. "Eamon? Can you hear me?" Isolde is standing now, bent over Eamon's motionless body to stroke his face. Alistair's gone tense, his arm a hard pressure against hers. She leans into him to offer her wordless support.

With a brisk efficiency, Wynne takes over, shuffling Isolde to the side to watch. "Ah, he is waking," Wynne says, satisfaction in her voice. She puts her hand on Eamon's forehead and closes her eyes; Marian can feel Wynne's magic like a cool breeze against her mind as she checks his body. "He's as healthy as he was before he was poisoned."

It worked. Oh, thank the Maker, it worked. Marian's nearly boneless with relief and exhaustion; she leans as much of her weight on Alistair as she dares. She can feel him sigh and some of the tension goes out of his body.

Not that she doesn't notice Wynne's equivocation. As healthy as he was before could mean many things, but so long as Eamon isn't going to drop dead before they get Loghain off the throne, Marian figures Eamon's health is none of her business.

Eamon stirs before her eyes, his head turning on his pillow. He sighs, and then groans, the small noises of someone who doesn't want to wake up quite yet. It's strange to be watching him like this, actually; Eamon seems like a dignified man, and surely he wouldn't want people to see him vulnerable.

Eamon opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling. "Wh-" Eamon's voice is scratchy. He coughs to clear his throat and tries again. "Where am I?"

Teagan leans over the bed so Eamon can see him. The braid he wears in his hair slips out from behind his ear and dangles in front of his face. "Be calm, brother," he says, very gently. He's good in a sickroom. Some people are so prickly, or they can't sit still, but he knows how to calm the air around him and create a soothing place. "You have been deathly ill for a very long time. Do you remember nothing?"

Eamon turns his head a little and squints at Teagan. "Teagan? What are you doing here? Where is Isolde?" His voice gains in strength and worry at the same time.

Isolde leans over the bed next to Teagan, laying her hand on Eamon's cheek. Teagan leans back a bit to give them some space. "I am here, my husband," she says, close to tears. She's got a huge, relieved, shaky smile on her face. Eamon seizes her hand, bringing it to his mouth. Isolde kisses him on the forehead. Marian had thought it was some sort of arranged marriage, perhaps part of the peace after the rebellion, but... It looks like they really love each other. That's real relief, and joy, and the simple need to touch someone they love who's been denied to them.

Eamon looks up, into Isolde's face. He's growing more real every moment, filling out like he's only just now come home to his body. He's a more formidable man than Marian realized. He may have all the power in the Landsmeet that Teagan claims for him and more. "And Connor? Where is my boy? Where is our son?"

"He lives," she says immediately, the smile falling from her face. "Though many others are dead. There is much to tell you, husband." She sounds troubled at the reminder of what happened. Good, Marian thinks, completely uncharitable about this. She should be.

"Dead?" Eamon examines Isolde's face, then Teagan's, and then looks around the room for the first time. He nods to Irving and Wynne, but stops when he looks at Marian, arrested by her face. "Then... it was not a dream?" He struggles to lift himself up onto his elbows, but Teagan is there to help while Isolde fusses over pillows.

Teagan sighs. "Much has happened since you fell ill, Brother. Some of it will not be... easy for you to hear."

"Then tell me. I wish to hear all of it."

"But first the healers must have their day," Irving says, beckoning to Wynne.

Marian and Alistair hang back against the wall during the medical examination and the lengthy tale that follows. Teagan is thorough, leaving nothing out, and Eamon's face grows darker and darker as Loghain's treachery grows, as the extent of the damage is made clear. But he does not interrupt, even when his son is revealed to be a mage, the cause of all of Redcliffe's woes, and his wife makes foolish and destructive choices.

That reminds Marian that she should check on Connor. It's not likely that she'll find anything in him that the best minds of the Circle have missed, that Irving could have missed, but she feels responsible for him. She'll check anyway.

Eamon absorbs these blows with little more than grave eyes and a thin mouth. Redcliffe village is hurting. The undead killed many, mostly on the first night in the surprise of their first attack. They haven't had time to do much more than burn the bodies.

"I seem to remember your face from my dreams," Eamon says, his eyes lighting on Marian's face. "Have we met?"

Marian pushes herself away from the wall and bows formally, her arms crossed over her chest. "I'm a Grey Warden, my lord. We haven't met..." She hesitates. She's not sure how he'll take this – she wouldn't want anyone in her head but her, and she's not an arl who can scupper their chances at removing Loghain before the Blight swallows Ferelden whole. But Teagan's already alluded to her journey through Connor's Fade dreams, and she can't, in good conscience, keep it from Eamon.

But how interesting that he remembers Connor's dream...

"I'm the one who detached the demon from your son," she says. "There were... I think you were there in his dream, like a shade, trying to protect him."

"A fine job I did," Eamon says. He sounds weary already. Is this too much for him? He has just woken, after all – "What is your name?"

"I'm Marian." She looks around to find Alistair, takes his arm and pulls him closer to the bed. He trips a little over thin air. Oops. "And I think you know Alistair."

"Alistair?" That brings Eamon straight up as he scrutinizes every inch of Alistair's face. Alistair nods. There's relief on Eamon's face, and happiness, and... is that a hint of calculation she sees in the slightest narrowing of his eyes? Or is Marian imagining that? Eamon smiles. "It's good to see you, lad."

"You, too," Alistair says. Marian knows him well enough now to know that he's hiding deep emotion with the wry, subtle humor that's his trademark. "I'm glad you're all right."

"Yes, we're all glad to see you're back among the living, old friend," Irving says. "But I am old and weary. Perhaps we should adjourn for the night and reconvene in the morning?"

Oh, thank the Maker; Marian's so tired she could weep.

She manages to be the first out the door – Eamon caught Teagan with yet another question, and Alistair's lingering like he's not quite sure he can believe his eyes that Eamon's well again – and she gets as far as the first junction of two hallways before she hesitates, not sure which way to go. She's never been on this side of the castle before. All of the hallways look alike, grey stone hung with huge, old tapestries to keep the warmth in. The left-hand hall has a small side table, the right a long runner carpet, and there are portraits hung between the tapestries in the corridor ahead of her. Which way?

"Marian!"

She turns – it's Alistair, of course, coming up behind her. He smiles at her. "You left in quite a hurry."

"I was falling asleep on my feet," she says, making a face. "But now I'm lost. Do you remember which way it is to our rooms?"

He laughs and turns her to the left, the hall with the little table. "This way."

They turn a corner, and then another, leading them deeper into the castle. She can only hope that Alistair really does know where he's going.

"You must remember the castle well," Marian says, when Alistair turns another corner without pause.

He glances over at her. He looks as tired as she is, but well-pleased, too. The sight of him, the idea that he might look like that after sex, gives her a little thrill that strokes her nipples from the inside. "I was paying attention when Teagan brought us here, unlike some I could mention," he says with a teasing grin. "I've never been up here before. I slept in the stables when I lived here."

"Oh, shut up." She narrows her eyes, painting a frown on her face, but she can't hold it in the face of his relentless good humor. She laughs. Alistair's smirk broadens when she does, like he's won. She takes his hand again, wishing she could put her head on his shoulder and let him sleep-walk her to her room.

Her stomach grumbles resentfully. And loudly.

Alistair frowns. "Maker, did someone let a bear loose in the castle?"

She'd elbow him, but all she'd get is a bruise on both her elbow and her ego. "We didn't stop for dinner," Marian says with as much dignity as she can muster when her stomach sounds like something died in there, "and I'm starving – "

As if on cue, Alistair's stomach rumbles deeper than hers, like they've agreed on a harmony. Marian laughs, and when she sees the chagrin on his face, laughs harder.

"I suppose I deserve that," Alistair says ruefully.

"That is the least of what you deserve," Marian says. They've turned another corner, and she's almost sure she knows where she is now. Her room is just there.

But as tired as she is, she's not ready to go to bed yet.

She stops, pulling on Alistair's hand until he turns to her, confused. "We're both hungry, and we know where they hide the food," Marian points out.

Alistair grins. "I like the way you think."

Alistair eats an entire plate of cheese by himself. Marian wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it with her own two eyes. Of course, she's methodically making her way through a portion that could feed three people, so she's not going to say anything. She's just kind of shocked that anyone could like cheese that much. Their appetites are unbelievable. Is she feeding the blight in her blood, or the complex, magical equilibrium her body is fighting to maintain with a deadly disease? Part of it is that she's doing much more with her body than she ever did at the Circle, of course, but where does the rest go?

Alistair pushes his plate away, leans back in his chair, and laces his fingers over his stomach with a sigh of replete satisfaction. "All done?" Marian asks, hiding her smile behind an apple.

"I couldn't fit another bite," he says with faint regret. Marian makes a show of nudging her plate out of Alistair's reach and he laughs. "Territorial, I see," he says, looking at her with that fond, knowing amusement in his eyes. The last time they'd been here, she was so intent on denying her feelings that she hadn't registered his. Now she wonders how she could have missed them.

"I take lessons from my mabari." Marian crams another bite into her mouth and swallows, grinning at him, showing all her teeth.

Alistair laughs again. "Now I'm scared. He snapped at me once for getting between him and his food. I'm more careful now, believe me." He stretches out his legs, his foot coming to rest against hers, and tips his head back. "It's such a relief that the arl's awake," he says to the ceiling. "I was afraid..."

He trails off, apparently deeply interested in the patterns above him, and Marian takes another bite of her apple while she waits to see if he'll finish. When she's chewed and swallowed with nothing else forthcoming, she decides that he's not going to continue. "For the longest time, I thought we'd gone all that way for nothing." She winces. "Not that finding the Temple of Sacred Ashes and saving Brother Genitivi are nothing. That's not what I meant."

Alistair rolls his head around to look at her. "Don't worry. I know what you mean," he says, amused. "It's good we could help someone. There's been precious little of that lately."

"Loghain's next." Marian grins. "Somehow I feel much better about our chances of dealing with him."

"Me, too," Alistair says wryly. "I wonder why that might be."

They turn over their options for a little while, deciding where to go next; Orzammar wins, being the closest – not to mention that they have no idea where to start looking for the Dalish who are supposed to live in the Brecilian Forest.

Marian walks Alistair to his room and kisses him goodnight before retiring to hers. With the taste of Alistair – and cheese – on her mouth, and her relief about Eamon's recovery soothing her mind, it's remarkably easy to fall asleep.