Chapter Thirty-Eight: This World Is Not My Home
Fenris' song is Disturbed: Warrior
Lambert's song is The Cult: Revolution
Solas' song is Disillusion: And The Mirror Cracked
Now Varric was based in Qarinus – away from vengeful Seekers – The Hanged Man was being run by Gerav. Gerav had connections with Varric, the Carta, and Nathaniel Howe – which made him a logical choice. Fenris grunted, darkly amused. He had once speculated the only way the place could sink lower than admitting the Abomination was when it started catering to Tevinters. Apparently that low bar had now descended. Many Tevinters drank here – including slavers and agents of Tractus Danarius. If Fenris had had time, hunting such filth would have been worthwhile. He did not have time: was here for only one thing.
Approaching the bar, he passed a tall, wraith-slender young killer with hair and eyes like quicksilver. Although human, she reminded him of himself. It had been some time since Fenris had been part of Kirkwall's underworld – it took him a moment to recognize Argent, an assassin serving Lady Cybile Maronn, sworn enemy of Divine Justinia. He filed the knowledge away.
In the furthest of the two large chairs in front of the fireplace, Anders waited. He was angled so he equally faced the door and the low glow of dying embers. He was unarmed – though of course no mage was ever truly unarmed.
Lethandralis was bared. Fenris said, "I see you expected me."
"Yes. I knew Nathaniel would be able to convince Sebastian but not you. You want revenge on me and on Justice. Too late. Justice is now beyond your reach. You'll have to settle for me, alone. Kill me. If it's vengeance you want, I'll accommodate you."
Fenris did not trust a single word coming from this mage's mouth. And who had ever heard of a possessed mage being separated except by the host's death?
Then, ashamed, he remembered himself accepting the offer of Wryme – purely to save his own skin. The skin he would now cheerfully give up for Lambert. Lambert – warrior angel – had saved him: after Fenris had already agreed to possession. Agreed for a much less noble reason than Anders - who had at least consented to possession because he was a sentimental idiot trying to help a spirit. He remembered Marethari's ritual – remembered hearing from Lambert how Jowan had been able to save Connor – remembered his own promise to save Lambert, though he did not believe for one second Lambert would ever fall to demons.
Yes – what Anders was claiming was possible. Still – demons were cunning enough to disguise their continued presence - even from their hosts. It was possible Anders only thought himself freed.
He did not look terribly happy about it. In fact, he looked like a bereaved parent. Fenris wondered if his apparent wish to die were genuine – and not just the trick of an abomination. Beyond Marethari's ritual, he had no way to know for sure.
Again, from the dark. "Did you ever think about killing yourself?"
Not even his husband would have asked Fenris such a personal question. How dared Anders! But the mage did not appear to be mocking him. Seemed to be asking because he badly needed the answer.
"I'm serious," Anders said quietly, "To get out of slavery, to escape Danarius...don't tell me you never thought about it."
"I did not."
"Why?"
"At the time, because I was an animal trying to survive. A rat will gnaw off a leg to escape a trap but will never deliberately kill itself. A wolf will starve to death without ever contemplating suicide. Now...I believe suicide a sin in the eyes of the Maker."
"You...believe that?"
"I try to. Some things must be worse than slavery."
"Some things are worse than death."
Lifting Lethandralis, Fenris aimed it at Anders. In the ruddy luminescence of coals, the moving steel took on a sliding, graceful life.
"Death might suit you – if your demon really is gone and you cannot live with the guilt. But... who will lead the mages at Andoral's Reach? Grand Enchanter Fiona, who called for the Conclave – I suspect – at the behest of Livius Erimond? I saw his influence at Weisshaupt. I do not believe the Grey Wardens would have simply let her return to the Circles." Dryly, Fenris added, "You clearly do not care about selling non-mages into slavery – but I'm sure you would not wish the mage children sold to a magister."
Sarcastically, Anders asked, "Do you actually care about the mage children, or are you simply trying to prevent Tevinter gaining another weapon? If your Prince Sebastian had ordered the Rite of Annulment, would you have obeyed him?"
"No."
"You hate mages and think they'll all grow up to be abominations or magisters but it's good to see you have some standards." Anders' voice was as dry as the whisper of Lethandralis. "The bar is pretty low, though."
Fenris found the mage's sarcasm less irritating than an apology would have been. He had long fantasized about this moment: himself coming upon Anders, holding a version of Bianca loaded with gaatlok...
...abominate that, motherfucker!...
… but the reality was going to be quite different.
Looking at the despairing figure in front of him, in tattered robes of indeterminate colour, Fenris knew he was not going to be able to do it. He still found himself angry at Anders, though – and it was not because he had tried to sell Fenris into slavery or even (shamefully) because he had just blown up the Chantry and killed the innocent along with the guilty. It was because Anders had been Lambert's first love.
Zevran and Isabella had been his first lovers but Anders had been his hero, his saviour, his idol. Anders had shared intense hours with Lambert in the clinic and knew things about him Fenris couldn't share. He felt his own shame for not being a mage: someone Lambert could confide in. For reacting with suppressed fear to such a deep part of Lambert while Anders had reacted with joy and recognition. Could he ever be enough? Did Lambert still think of Anders?
He had heard from Isabella Anders' electricity trick had been amazing – Lambert must have liked it too - when Fenris made love to Lambert he needed painkillers before he could even touch him. Needed to take Apostate's Friend – which Anders had helped Lambert invent! - to ensure he didn't hurt the man he would die for. Fenris felt jealous, insecure, and for a moment hated this man as he'd never hated anyone.
Anders was not inclined to make it easy for him. He said, petulantly, "I loved him. You can't imagine what that is. I had to promise Justice I'd make the deal with Danarius – he would not have let me save Lambert otherwise. You tried to make him Tranquil and he forgave you - I betrayed you to save him and he hates me for it."
"Bad luck," said Fenris, smirking, but he knew in his bones he would have sold Anders to save Lambert without hesitation. Knew he would sell himself if that were the only way he had to save his husband. What he had once done for his mother and sister he would certainly do for the man he loved. Still…Lambert would never forgive Anders, and that meant he'd never be with Anders again. He'd be with him. There was a purely masculine satisfaction in that - in seeing Anders lose - but he squashed it, guiltily. Lambert deserved better. He was himself, and Fenris needed nothing more than that.
Anders' self-pity grated but Fenris knew he had a point. His own actions with Wryme were the biggest regret of his life. Even worse than the shameful impulse he'd had when Lambert had offered sex in return for rescue… perhaps he really would be better off with Anders, now the mage was no longer an abomination…
Once, he had seen Lambert sat in their garden, cross-legged, and he was making little petals of light with his hands. Letting them go like butterflies where they dissolved into the air and rain. The look on his face: that shy, mysterious smile, had been the look of a child seeing beauty for the first time. And then he had seen Fenris watching him and froze, as if guilty. Had quickly evaporated the mana petals, rose in a lithe, swift motion and smiled welcome. Fenris had wondered what he had said or done to make Lambert feel ashamed of himself, of his magic - and his mind told back the tale to him and he flinched.
...You'd like to see the other mages locked up and Lambert alone, ashamed of his Maker-given gifts, living in a world that hates him. You'll guilt him into taking magebane – tell him mana hurts the brands – keep him barely above a soporati: helpless and dependent on you to protect him from Templars. You'll drop remarks about magic spoiling everything it touches like poison in his ear: make him feel bad for just existing. You'll take what Danarius did to you out on him and call it love...
Since Anders' words on The Siren's Call he had been careful never to do or say anything hurtful - but he had never had anything nice to say about magic either. It was hard, considering the stain magic had been on his life, but Lamberts's magic was beautiful because he was good and Fenris had never told him.
Fenris remembered what Lambert had told him about his father and how he wanted to be worthy of Fenris - of him! That was ridiculous, of course, but his words about Malcolm Hawke - a man who had turned down power in Tevinter to honour his non-mage wife and non- mage children - were not. Lambert had loved Carver as much as Bethany, his mother as much as his father. A would-be mage supremacist who had no problem making deals with magisters to save his fellow mages was not worthy of being that man's son-in-law.
Fenris wasn't either, of course, but decided it was better to focus on what he could learn from Anders than to agonize. For a start, now he took Lamberts's injection daily he could let him have fun with the electricity trick. It wouldn't hurt him. Ask him about the Fade - the glory as well as the danger. Encourage him to make sparks of light - enjoying his magic rather than fearing it. He would ask Lambert about his hopes, his fears, his waking dreams.
He supposed he should thank Anders - the man was a cunt but he had made some useful points and Fenris would learn from him.
Anders' self-pity quickly became truculence. "Alright, you win. Maker knows what he even sees in you. If you ever hurt him, I'll kill you."
"I won't and you couldn't," Fenris said shortly. Then added, "And you would be better off worrying about your mages in Andoral's Reach."
"So you don't think we can exist in Andoral's Reach - apart, not bothering anyone - just a community of mages together?"
Fenris shrugged. "People are people. Someone always demands to be the most equal. The most powerful mages among you - and mana does not correspond with goodness, or willpower, or intelligence; it is random - will end up ruling the least powerful. With any children you have who are non-mages being at the bottom of the pile."
"So what's the alternative? Places like Circles where it's the Templars who are given power - where filth like Alrik can rape children with impunity?"
"No," Fenris said, "If there is an alternative I would say: build your community. But teach everyone to wield crossbows that fire gaatlok. That way your non-mage children will have a chance. I'll teach you the Litany of Adralla too, before I leave. Make sure your soporati learn it - those children will need it to safeguard them. Telling yourself your 'good mages' will protect us from the 'bad mages' is naive. The only way to ensure the safety of children born like me is by giving us tools to defend ourselves. Adralla knew this. She was a magister who gave up power to give soporati a chance and paid the price. She was a better Andrastian than Andraste."
Anders, to Fenris' surprise, was looking more thoughtful than dismissive. He still believed mages were superior - phrases like 'Maker-given gifts' tripped off his tongue too easily - but he did care about these potential non-mage children.
Fenris remembered Anders had spent his power in the clinic to heal non-mages, over and over. He had assumed the Abomination had been trying to make himself indispensable to Kirkwall - less likely to be turned in - but, after seeing what the spell did to Lambert, he no longer thought so.
Anders was looking at Fenris strangely – as though what he had just said had triggered a wide range of ideas.
"Fenris: come with us. The mages are either institutionalized – afraid to take a piss without a Templar's permission – or they're like Emille de Launcet: brave, loyal, and likely to incinerate his own side by a badly-aimed fireball. Help us, or the Templars will butcher them."
Fenris rolled his eyes. 'You must think I'm really stupid. You've tried to sell me back to Danarius once - I'm sure Grand Enchanter Fiona is backed by Livius Erimond. If I go with you - believing you want me to fight with you - you'll sell me to Tractus Danarius like a trussed chicken."
Anders looked half-ashamed, half-defiant. "You've got no reason to trust us, I'll admit. But when the mages at Andoral's Reach lose - which they will, without you to defend them - who do you think the Lord Seeker will target next? Especially when Lambert was naive and stupid enough to put himself in their hands! How could you let him do it?! Do you think Prince Sebastian will be able to protect him? Sebastian is keeping quiet - he's not a complete monster - but he trusted Elthina and he'll trust the Divine. Do you trust the Chantry?"
Fenris sheathed Lethandralis; rubbed his jaw pensively.
"I've got no way to convince you to trust me; except, perhaps, this."
Anders scratched a formula on a piece of paper - handed the note to Fenris.
"Memorize and destroy this. It's gaatlok. Use it only against magisters. Hit fast and hard. Never let the Southern Chantry have it - you know what will happen to your husband if you do."
Fenris took the formula, wondering if he were being gulled. Not daring to hope. Anders was taking a big risk by showing him this.
"Take Tractus Danarius – Erimond if you can - you'll be back in time to get Lambert. Then help us. We - the rebel mages - are going to need you."
"I'm Captain of the Guard at Starkhaven. Do you think I can ask for that much time off work?"
Anders smiled thinly. "Tell Sebastian you'll be able to keep an eye on me - on all these 'dangerous mages' - he'll buy it."
Fenris flushed, glad his dark skin and the dark room wouldn't show it. His willingness to manipulate Sebastian was proving he was not the friend the Prince deserved. And yet… for Lambert… he would lie to him just as Nathaniel Howe was doing.
Fenris's gaze was level, steel-cold. "You're a born manipulator, aren't you? Devious as a bard."
Anders grinned crookedly. "Flatterer. You're with us, then?"
"Until we defeat van Reeves. After that? It depends on you."
Anders sighed. "I wish we'd met in different circumstances. I think we could have been friends."
Fenris was dry. "After van Reeves finishes with us, we'll have a long long time to get acquainted."
The two men rose, and – on a whim – Fenris added some more coal to the spent fire. Hungry flames rose swiftly. For a fleeting moment, their brightness added vibrant colour to the faded flags – Kirkwall and Amaranthine - festooning the wall. Then the ancient cloth withered, was devoured and there was only fire.
Anders asked, "Why?"
Fenris looked at him, as if the growing draft of the fire could suck him off the ground, consume him. He thought of the Dalish smith's furnace: how the light lured the mindless moths from darkness, inhaled them into consuming heat. In his mind, he saw himself: a single, hissing spark.
He said, "I must."
As the two joined Sebastian, Nathaniel and the Kirkwall mages he wondered which question he had just answered.
Silence spread across the Circle like a dark pool. It was as if the mages had lived all their lives at the mercy of a perilous and tireless ocean, and it had hushed and vanished in an instant, leaving stony chasms and abyssal emptiness. Meredith and Elthina were dead - the Conclave had voted for independence - the Viscount and Champion of Kirkwall was telling them to leave: telling men, women and children who had never even seen the sun to follow Anders to a place named Andoral's Reach.
And the Templars - Samson, Keran, Thrask, Ruvenna and Paxley - were letting this happen! Were bowing to the Champion who had just killed Meredith and indicating they should go. Not having any choice, and used to following orders, they followed Anders onto The Siren's Call away from Kirkwall.
For the first few weeks of his Seeker's training at the Hunterhorn mountains, Lambert was not happy. He missed his husband – went to sleep every night burning for him – his beautiful friends had all gone away. He was training with a handful of other students but each was alone. Lambert had only just come to terms with the fact he had magic - knew now he had been secretly denying it, repressing it, since the age of fifteen. The magebane had only been the physical manifestation of his deepest wish: that he could just be normal. Only at some moments had joy broken through – when training with Anders, when healing the sick – once when he had created mana petals (though he had quickly evaporated them as soon as he saw his husband coming, not wanting to make Fenris uncomfortable). The rest of the time he wished he didn't have this gift - wanted to be like everyone else and not have to fear going to sleep.
Sleep brought other nightmares – memories of the time in the Gallows he was not ready to face and was hoping would just disappear if he sparred enough, trained harder. He realized (guiltily) that his hope to escape his magic and his memories had been one of his motives for coming here.
He had magic, he carried those memories, and now he was slowly gaining other powers. Powers he had never asked for and did not want. He felt manipulated by both teachers and Fade spirits, stripped of his very being. The trainers were no help and the spirits used his energy and temperament to give the Fade pictures and colour, because without mages the place was without form and void. Lambert wondered at the purpose of having to endure these trances that were physically and psychologically draining. Having such a gift imposed on him didn't seem reasonable.
During the first months Lambert used to stare into space seeing, with a kind of bleak terror, a mushroom cloud on the horizon. He felt blurred around the edges, like a living watercolour. He became detached from himself, as used to happen during his aftershocks. The silver string that held on to the feeling of selfhood was cut and floated away like a magical wisp. He was not exactly above himself, but around and beside and everywhere all at once.
The pictures of never-ending dreams, locked inside him, he was being asked (by whom?) to set the rainbows free but didn't know how. He couldn't see what the images meant. He only wanted to save today – the man and the friends he loved – but that was like wishing in the wind. The revolution was coming.
All that meant to him was sorrow – to see his friends ebb away like waves. Aloneness - that sense of being 'not us' - a world without touching.
Then he thought more deeply about what the images meant and was ashamed. Joy or sorrow - what did revolution mean? That depended on who you were, and where you were: whether you were safe in a comfortable happy life or alone in a dungeon at the White Spire. Forgotten by everyone except the Spirit of Compassion who wanted to help you but couldn't.
The aftershocks were a strange thing: he had woken up with them this morning in fact - the dark wisps at the edges of his mind. But now he could look past them - not away, just letting it pass over him and through him, until only he remained.
Lambert did not know it, but his teachers were pleased with him – surprised a mage had made it this far. During the past nine months he had survived not only the Seeker philosophy but also the harsh trials that had taken him to those levels of consciousness beyond the reach of confusion, fear or pain. Emotion no longer clouded his mind. It was the ultimate triumph of human reason: like a telescope that sees the past not as the past but as it is actually happening. The Fade made it possible to see the future in the same way – a small spike beyond his time. In the Fade the past and future were happening simultaneously and it was possible to be in many places at once.
By the end of the year he no longer needed to sleep. There was a sense of being physically empty, of dissolving, of being a ghost who ran on electricity like the runes on his lute. He was the music.
Lambert saw now that all the imagery of the Fade - whether beautiful or grotesque - was merely the sediment left by dreamers. Mages could consciously use its power - non-mages could not - but all dreamers played their part. Dwarves did not dream, but theirs came through the earth and were just another path to the Absolute. The thing behind the Fade: the realer than real. Where a being could exist in many places at once but still be more solid than any phantom on Thedas or the Fade. The denizens of the Fade were sometimes former Elvhen and sometimes dreams themselves, come to life - not the wave but the wave's imprint on the sand. All said to him: I am only a reminder. What do I remind you of?
The Fade proclaimed: you want something other, something outside, not dreams or the Fade or any mental state. In deepest solitude Lambert found a road right out of the self; the naked Other - unknown, undefined, desired. He yearned for the waking from both the Fade and the world. Without words, almost without images, he became aware he was holding something at bay; shutting something out. Or perhaps wearing a mask, as he had done at Sebastian's wedding. He was presented with a choice: he could keep on the mask or take it off. He chose to take off the mask. The choice was unemotional, as matter-of-fact as his wedding vows to Fenris had been, and just as important.
The result was momentous. He was to be allowed to play at meditation no more. Total surrender – the absolute leap in the dark – was demanded. He faced the reality with which no deal can be made. The demand was not even 'all or nothing' (that ship had sailed once he chose to take off his mask). The demand was simply 'all'.
A mist came closer, curling like smoke, as if the Fade burned with cold black fire. Slowly it gathered until it seemed there was nothing left beneath him but pitch-black nothingness. The end of the world was only a step away and if he fell he would fall forever into a bottomless abyss. And the darkness rose to meet him. It was inescapable and useless to fight it. All he could do was surrender. It was a kind of death, a letting go of all he had ever wanted or felt, all his shame and fear and loneliness; what he was and had been and wanted to become.
He had collected his own memories and desires and ideas, woven them into a tapestry, believed he knew himself. He saw it all: a reflex movement in a cavernous space of darkness, He was detached from it. All his hopes and fears and desires and pains – the desire to live and the desire to die and even desire itself – he let them go like cut balloons.
And now he could face a spirit. Could interact with it without falling prey to it, because he saw things as they were and wanted nothing. He could still love – and, because he loved, he saw – but he did not need.
Reality unveiled itself like a rose, petal by petal. Then there was neither death nor darkness. He had gone beyond that into some other state, gold and glorious, where only life and light surrounded him. The space was light – it seemed to be all windows – and it was warm, and purple as his favourite cocktail (though perhaps that was only the impression his lingering memories gave it).
The Other appeared to be a boy, about twenty years old. The light seemed to be a reflection of him, or his shadow.
Of course he was not a boy – how could Lambert have thought so? The fresh skin of his forehead and cheeks, the floppy mop of pale hair, had suggested the idea, but no boy could have such ancient eyes. It came to Lambert, in a sudden burst of revelation, that he was no age at all. And were they even a 'he'? Lambert realized it wasn't his place to make assumptions: he must ask.
No mortal being could be so strong. Lambert realized the grip of those hands would be inescapable; that those arms and shoulders could support a whole world. He remembered who this was: the body he still existed in told back the tale to him. He remembered Alrik: the first sharp cut, the gush of blood, the slow, excruciating peeling away of skin on his forearm. The terrible incarceration within his own meat-sack, the rapes and the destruction of his flesh, piece by piece, the demons placed inside him; his body and mind stolen, sacked, emptied. Around the memories was now a dry space of light; the buoyancy of pure disinterest. He remembered past it – remembered Anders rebuilding him from the inside out – the mage healer directing the power of this Spirit of Compassion.
And the Spirit of Compassion had helped not only Lambert. In other dungeons – in the ruinous levels below the White Spire – there were other mages locked in darkness. Without a healer to direct their power, Compassion could do nothing but suffer with them. Pain came and went in their face; sudden jabs of sickening and burning agony. But as lighting illuminates darkness then is swallowed up and leaves no trace, so the tranquility of their state swallowed up each shock of torture.
What kind of creature was it who would do that for strangers, over and over. Not human, certainly. They were far finer than any human kind.
Lambert said, "Thank you seems such an inadequate word. What is your name?"
To Anders the Spirit of Compassion had looked like Lambert and now they bore echoes of a human mage named Cole but to Lambert – closer than he had ever been to seeing things as they were and not through a glass darkly – they did not look like either.
"I am a Spirit of Compassion and in the Fade we are as we do."
Softly, Lambert said, "You did more than take my pain – you gave me back my dignity. Our word for that is grace."
The spirit smiled. "I have always longed for a name and my own identity, separate from my role in the Fade. Thank you."
Until this moment, Lambert had not noticed Grace was tall as he was. Nor had he noticed the dark spots in their irises or their thick, determined brows. This was how they were; how they had always been. Emotions and expectations distorted appearances, and Lambert felt he should apologize for not truly seeing Grace until now. Whatever they were, whichever gender or species, they were also themselves: a being with their own private thoughts and a soul that had to be respected.
Grace touched his hand – which, in this place, was really his mind – petal-soft. They said, "You will never need to worry about beings like Dehn'Kharas or Wryme again. You will not need to worry about Blood Magic and you will not need to worry about taint. But, of course, you will worry - for all the others. You can save them, now, and someday a price will be demanded."
"I will pay."
"I know."
Suddenly, Grace stiffened, head up, alert. A moment later, Lambert sensed it too. Something intolerably powerful was approaching, was pressing on him, was almost here, He felt himself shrinking, suffocated, emptied of all power: even the power to Dispel magic he had so recently gained. He darted a glance at Grace that was really a cry for help – and the glance revealed Grace, like him, to be a very small being. The space they met in was only a tiny pocket of the Fade, and it seemed to be tilted by the unearthly power that approached.
"Quick!" said Grace "You must go. The awakening of the Dread Wolf has come. If I am needed, I will see you on the other side. You won't remember me, but that doesn't matter. What matters is I helped.
"I will remember you,' Lambert promised.
He was still looking at Grace's face – but he saw something beyond that terrified him. A new light came: an Elven archer preparing to shoot Time dead with golden arrows and put an end to all mortal beings.
He realized everything he was seeing on Thedas – the progression of moments following one another in which each mortal had the free will to choose differently – was only a lens. The Fade worked differently – past, present and future were all one, and a being could exist in many places at once. When the two worlds collided it would be the end of life as they knew it.
Somehow, Fade-space - where things could exist in many places at once and spirits had no free will because time was indeterminate – would exist side-by-side with solid reality. But it would be no place for him or for anyone else he knew.
And suddenly his view changed. He saw a great assembly of gigantic forms, all playing with puppets on a gaming table. They moved them here and there, did this or that, and revealed the nature of their souls. And the gaming table was just another way of looking at the Veil, and when it was upended time would stop and that was just another word for death.
In the universe of these giants – these immortal Elves – entropy did not exist. Without entropy there could be no life. The mixing of these states – entropic and anentropic – would not happen painlessly or easily. The process of dying would subjectively feel like ages. Lambert remembered his own torture; how death had become a pure and craved sacrament.
"The Veil!" he cried in terror, "He is going to sunder the Veil and I am half-human. I will be ripped apart – and so will everyone I love! Fenris, Rillian, Zevran...none of them are Elvhen enough for him..."
But an instant later he woke, and the light was only the morning on the faces of his teachers. And his fellow students – for the first time he recognized Cullen and was only mildly surprised. He knew Cullen had been sorry - had left the Templars - it made sense for him to have come here. He didn't worry about it.
It was as if he were seeing the world with one layer removed. The fresh air was violet; the shadows were never really black or grey, but coloured. Everything became sharper and sharper... then went past what he'd always seen; past ordinary, to colours that were brighter, everything edged in light. It was like being inside a kaleidoscope.
He could feel the sunlight burnishing his skin; it was heavier than usual, like a bright cloak on his shoulders.
He was glad for such fierce sensations and tempted to hide in them, to stay in this new layer of himself. But, of course, it was unimportant on its own – the importance lay in what he had to do.
He had passed his final Vigil – had gained a Seeker's powers – and that meant he would be going to the Conclave in Haven.
"And after that – home," he said softly.
Lambert. Fenris' husband,
Going home.
Midsummer 9:37
The Derecho storm over Arlathan first looked to Rillian like a giant archer's bow. Its echo was around 250 miles long and it turned the sky into an emerald wasteland. There was a central eye free of precipitation, but – where she was going - the downwards cluster forced her to pull her cowl over her head. She had come to check – once more – on the Eluvian. Merrill had disappeared - it had been years – but neither Deshanna nor Rillian would give up hope and her lover Ariane certainly would not.
Outside the Dalish camp – they camped around the ruins of the palace, not within it, and the Eluvian was a distance away – the rain fell heavily, hissing like hail, muffling the noise of any birds brave enough to fly. The storm pulled a fistful of cold, wet marbles from its pocket and flung them against her face. Dispirited by the grey air and the wet, she snuggled deeper inside her cloak like a bird within warm feathers. She had left her husband with Jowan and Ser Otto – the three Wardens ostensibly working on the cure for taint but really just chatting and shooting the shit. Her best scientists - Bianca and Lambert – were gone, and she had run out of options.
She still could not understand the books she had taken from Ath Velanis. Maybe Lambert had had better luck with 'Veins of Blue Lightning' - but as he had just finished a year of something called 'Seeker training' she doubted he'd have had much time.
Without warning, she seemed to hear a hunting horn. That was strange – there were no patrols in this downpour. It came from the direction of the mirror. She could not tell whether they were the horns of a hunter or a musician but she hastened towards the sound. It carried the command of the hunt and the appeal of music, so that she wanted to leap up inside herself and shout an answer.
When she faced the mirror, looked into its unreachable depths, she felt herself becoming physically less solid, as if she were slowly being dissolved by the pointlessness of the wait. Merrill was gone. Rain pounded on the outside of the mirror, seeming to dissolve the glass. Its glassy front in the rain looked like a spattered pool of dark water, reflecting nothing except the idea of death in its depths.
Her own reflection was rumpled and wan as usual. Her eyes looked especially large and vulnerable against the cold pallor of her skin and the faint blue of her lips. The dampness on her face made it look pallid as wax. She seated herself – cross-legged (the ground was wet but she hardly noticed) her knees against the glass, her face so near she raised a veil of mist between herself and her reflection.
Without warning, she saw two people in the mirror. One was an achingly familiar young woman with enormous celadon eyes and a river of hair black as night and soft as silk. The other was a mage too – he could not be anything else – hairless, lupine, with cerulean eyes that glittered like sparks of lightning and missed nothing. His dark, nondescript clothes seemed more a natural expression of his soul than cloth – he was dressed for functionality, not appearance – and he was of indeterminate age. Or – no age at all. His deathless eyes held an affinity with the infinite. She thought she recognized a curious mixture of hematite red cloth - used by the Nevarrans to swathe their dead - and amaranth: the everlasting blooms whose flowers never faded. Rillian recalled Deshanna's tales of Ancient Elves In Uthenera and wondered.
She looked behind her – of course – but, as she had expected, there was no-one with her. They weren't reflected in the mirror; they were in the mirror. Merrill – and whomever she had brought with her.
The Eluvian made no noise as they burst through it in a shower of silver, sparkling rain. At once, the surface reformed, smooth and placid as a still lake.
Merrill looked at her, her face foolish with surprise and hope. At once, her expression became contrite.
"I'm sorry. I hope I didn't frighten you."
Rillian laughed in a pleasure that lit the storm. That could only be Merrill! No one else could achieve the impossible yet still be worried she had somehow offended social norms.
"You have made my day a thousand times brighter. I can't believe you made it! I mean..." now it was Rillian's turn to stammer, "I always had faith in you of course."
Merrill's beaming smile was a sunrise that lit the clearing like morning. They were within in the eye of the Derecho storm, and it seemed not to touch them.
Then both Rillian and Merrill looked at her companion. For a moment, memories of spirits being called through the Veil – horror stories like the one about a shem nobleman and his portrait – made Rillian shiver.
"This," Merrill said shakily, "Is Fen'Harel - but don't be alarmed! He's not like the legends say."
At the name of the Dread Wolf who had betrayed the Elvhen gods Rillian nearly gave in to an impulse to grab dirt and throw it over her shoulder: the time-honoured Alienage method of banishing evil spirits. She caught herself just in time. She was a scientist – and those were childhood superstitions.
She remembered shocking her cousin by a play she had put on age fifteen, before her mother's death darkened the world and made her put away childish things. Like the Dalish, the Alienages had legends of how the treacherous Fen'Harel had betrayed the gods – claiming to broker peace between the evil gods of the Void and the good gods of the Golden City - but imprisoning both within the Fade. Until the sin of the Magisters Sidereal had turned the Golden City black with taint.
The Elves of Denerim Alienage were Andrastians but the tales still had the force of folklore and the Dalish really believed them. The teenage Rillian's version had portrayed Fen'Harel as a more complex figure – an antagonist against the brutal orthodoxy of Elga'nan, who had been (she now realized) an emblem of their human overlords. Shianni had warned her darkly against falling for the wrong man.
In the darkness beneath Fen'Harel's heavy brows a frost-spark of light glimmered in his eyes.
The word Hahren came to mind then slid away, strangely elusive. His gaze was curiously flat, as though she were some creature he was studying. His eyes did not make her a thing - as Vaughan's had – it was more she were a figment of his imagination; someone who only existed because of a choice he had made and might dissolve like a dream when he chose differently. He was looking beyond her at some set of possibilities she cast like a shadow, rather than at a person with a soul and worth.
The Rillian who possessed the memories of Urthemiel and had spoken with Corypheus understood the Golden City had already been tainted when the magisters arrived. Ever since meeting the Architect and destroying Urthemiel she had believed the demons had once been Ancient Elves: that they had whispered to the magisters in Fade dreams, drawing them to ruination and possession as they had ruined and possessed Arlathan. The Red lyrium Idol had made her think again – she wondered if Andruil, goddess of the hunt, had brought the taint when she had returned from the void. But that was all guesswork.
Whether this Ancient Elf was truly Fen'Harel or not, perhaps he could shed some light on it.
She bowed low – her mother had trained her to do that during her ill-fated visit to King Cailan's court – and said (in slow and careful Dalish) "Welcome to Arlathan Forest, Ancient One. I will fetch Keeper Deshanna Istimaethoriel Lavellan."
Fen'Harel stared across the vast ruins of Arlathan, once capital of all Elvhenan. Devastated miles of tumbled towers, twisted girders and the blackened remains of walls. It was nothing to do with the vengeance of the Evanuris – the immortal Elves who had called themselves gods were still locked behind the Veil, tempting mages as demons. This was the result of the Veil itself; of sundering the magic the Elves had depended on until only mortal skeletons remained.
This was his doing. He felt his soul shrivel with loss. The sight entered his heart like the blade of a dull knife. Intellectually, he had known what he would find here – he had dreamed during his centuries long slumber – had seen the ruins of towns and cities on the edge of the lifeless land. But somehow he had believed that, even if he could never return, Arlathan would always be there. But, no, he had destroyed even that. Here, where the wind mourned and sighed across a loneliness of bones and dust, had been a city full of people.
The Tower of Elgar'nan had once risen high above the other buildings. Sunlight reflecting off the golden surface had given the illusion of whirling movement. The inside had seemed immensely larger than the slender tower could possibly encompass. Built entirely of white marble, there had been no support beams – no columns. It had been supported by magic – as had the surrounding palaces that floated upon air currents, circling like satellites. The Council chamber had soared upwards hundreds of feet to where a mosaic portrayed the blue sky and sun on one side, the night studded with moon and stars on the other. The halves had been separated by a rainbow. Windows and mirrors had forced sunlight into the room, no matter where it was in the sky, and the streams of sunlight had converged in the centre of the chamber.
Now the degenerate descendants who called themselves 'Dalish' made primitive tents around the ruins. Amid the silence, the wash of waves along the shore and the desolation, the tents covered with animal fur seemed grotesque. He felt the anguish of his people's dying, heard the scream of unborn generations echoing through time. He leaned against the vitrified remains of a tower, nearly felled by horror and grief. He waited for his thoughts to become rational.
The race had survived.
When Fen'Harel saw the way the underling named Merrill – he assumed the girl who had woken him must be a servant, because her magic was barely above the level of an Elvhen child – conversed delightedly with the being who had greeted them he was puzzled. The red-haired creature had clearly been Elvhen, but genetically contaminated at some point. Her ears were shorter and rounder than normal proportions, her amber eyes non-reflective. It was clear there had been breeding with the newer, animal race of shemlen somewhere in her past.
Fen'Harel had never had direct contact with a shemlen. In – 5500 Ancient the woman Fen'Harel loved had viewed the Evanuris' lust for power and realized she could no longer broker peace. She had called on him to protect her – but in – 3100 they had murdered her and Fen'Harel had seen no option but to raise the Veil and imprison them on the other side. He had been trapped with them. His people – losing immortality and most of their magic – had paid the price. The younger, hungrier race of shemlen had risen from the ashes to conquer Thedas. He had seen it in his dreams but never met one in the flesh.
This, then, was a true daughter of the sundering: a part-shemlen mutant. Most troubling of all was her total absence of mana. Delicately, he reached out a tendril, but it met only silence; a blank wall. The uniquely Elvhen connection of body/mind/magic was gone. She must be one of the servants made Tranquil, he realized – because some of the Evanuris had preferred to brand their slaves on the forehead rather than with lyrium on their bodies, to enhance their prowess while making them biddable. The practice was one Fen'Harel had particularly loathed and fought against, as he had fought to free all slaves, but it appeared whoever ruled the 'Dalish' must have copied some of the old practices.
She did not act like a Tranquil – talking and laughing with Merrill – so it was strange. Stranger still when they brought him to the hodgepodge of coloured tents and he saw to his shock that nearly everyone was Tranquil! And they all wore misshapen Vallaslin in woad rather than lyrium, like children playing dress-up, pretending to serve what Merrill had told him were remembered as benevolent gods.
"Do you breed with shemlen?" he asked the red-haired Tranquil – and was surprised by the quick anger on her face.
"I am married to a human man, yes," she said primly. His world spun. He imagined these degenerate Elves like cats or foxes, mating with particularly large and brutish dogs. But clearly they could breed. Which meant that – sooner or later – what was left of his kind would face extinction.
Struggling to remember her manners, she brought him to...not the ruins of Arlathan palace but a particularly large and colourful tent.
"Keeper Deshanna?" she called softly, "Merrill has returned – along with an Ancient Elf who had been In Uthenera. He...he calls himself Fen'Harel..."
"It's alright...he's not a trickster like the legends say!" Merrill said quickly – and then all at once a young hunter was racing towards her, and the two embraced and clearly had no more interest in him.
The deformed woman who emerged from the tent eyed him warily. He had never seen an Elf with lines and sagging skin before and wondered if she were diseased. Elves were immortal, unchanging. But he had seen in his dreams that now Elves aged and died just as dwarves and shemlen did. He looked at the ruin time had made of her and shuddered. This one did have magic - of the sort an Elvhen child would have mastered by age five - but was clearly rotting and dying in front of him. He had assumed - when she had begged him to return with her – that Merrill was an underlying; but, no, she was the best of her kind.
Was that all that had survived of his quest to free Elvhen from enslavement by Evanuris? The Evanuris were remembered as benevolent gods while he had become a children's bedtime story!
These Dalish were children acting out stories misheard and repeated wrongly a thousand times. Children with plague in their flesh, who would wither and crumble like grass.
"Be welcome, Fen'Harel," the woman who dared to call herself Keeper (of what?) said to him, "Have you been In Uthenera?"
"No. I fell into slumber after I raised the Veil and have been watching for the right moment to return. When Merrill found me – through an Eluvian that can journey to the past as well as the future – I knew my time had come. Now I have proof of what the decision cost us – of you and Merrill and the young Tranquil – I can go back and choose differently this time."
The black eyes of the deformed Keeper and the amber eyes of the young Tranquil shared an unreadable look, and Fen'Harel had the district impression an instruction had been given. The younger woman left soon after and he hardly noticed – the movements of a Tranquil were meaningless to him.
Fen'Harel's eyes said what his voice could not, stared bitterly and fixedly across the ruins of Arlathan, once jewel of the Elvhen Empire. He could not accept his descendants. He would return to his own time, change his mind and the raising of the Veil would never happen. Elvhenan would rise from the ashes, and all Deshanna's kind would never exist.
"Irebela'saren," Deshanna told him. "If the Dalish have done you a disservice I would make that right. What course would you set for us that is better than what we know now?"
"You are right, of course," Fen'Harel admitted bleakly. "The fault is mine. For expecting what the Dalish could never truly accomplish. Ir'abelas, dalen."
His fault that all that had survived of the Evanuris – those power-hungry immortal mages – was that they were remembered as benevolent gods, their marks of slavery worn as marks of pride, daubed into their foreheads not by lyrium but by woad, as if they were play-acting. His fault that he had fought to free slaves – imprison their tormentors – in the only way he could: by creating the Veil. Not realizing it had sundered them from everything that made them more than the beasts of the field. They had lost their immortality: this woman was crumbling before his very eyes – aging and dying just as the grass and the trees.
Oh, they did have the dignity of language – their speech was degenerate but still understandable, after his dreams in the Fade. And Deshanna was showing him ancient texts that proved they still had writing.
But they couldn't do any of the things that really defined a person. They did not experience concurrence, or practopoiesis, they couldn't influence abiotic components, they did not communicate mind-to-mind. They never tried to communicate with Gaia; nor did these creatures seem to see any need for sial, or even sialin. Even their mages - who had not had their connection to the Fade entirely severed - still experienced it as a series of disjointed waking dreams. Any gestalts formed were by chance, not design.
The fate of the spirits trapped on the other side of the Veil broke his heart. They had been reduced to the level of photons, with no more free will than the lowest of the Source's creatures. They were sentient – capable of deeper feeling than those on this side of the Veil – yet completely at the whim of arrogant human summoners.
His choice. His guilt.
But perhaps...Fen'Harel looked back to the flat glass of the Eluvian. If he could ride the currents of time, go back to before he had made his fateful decision, the Arlathan he loved would rise from the ashes and all these lower life-forms would never exist. It would not be murder – Fen'Harel despised murder – it would merely be removing an unwanted possibility.
The deformed woman was speaking to him: quickly, insistently, "Before you leave, please take this priceless opportunity to educate my students. We will not keep you long."
Fen'Harel humoured her. He squatted on his heels on one of the ruined columns, watching the water swill against the ruined foundations: a slow, relentless erosion. The ebb tide left a line of green weed on the fallen dome and Dalish voices whispered around him: alien, curiously flat. He had been in their world for less than half an hour and already he had seen everything he wanted to see and was ready to go. The loneliness depressed him; the immense absence of everything he knew. The animal noises grated on his nerves. He had no reason to stay in this damned future any longer but Deshanna delayed him.
"This being a history lesson," the Keeper said, "We would like to take this unique opportunity to...Fen'Harel, would you mind?"
"What can I tell you?"
"What was it really like in – 7600 Ancient?"
He could not describe it. They could not even imagine the spires of crystal twinning though the branches of aspen trees. Palaces above the clouds. Beings who lived forever, for whom magic was natural as breathing. They had never smelled Mallorn, or touched faun's fur, or seen satyrs, pixies or sprites. All the things he took for granted were meaningless to them. It was like trying to describe colours to people born blind or spinning them fairytales. They had thought him a trickster - that he had imprisoned the Evanuris in the Fade and the Forgotten Ones in the Void out of malice or ambition.
It had not been easy to convince them he had not wanted to raise the Veil.
"If you didn't want to, how come it happened?"
"Maybe it won't. The Eluvian can take me to a time where I may still prevent it. Now I must go. It's been nice meeting you. You have made my final decision easier."
He would go back in time, unwrite his disastrous mistake, make sure the Veil was never created and find another way to defeat the Evanuris.
On an afterthought, he turned back – turned to Merrill. "Come with me." She was the only one in whom he could see even the glimmerings of personhood – the first faint shadows of understanding.
"I... I can't leave Ariane. I'm so sorry."
He turned away, having already forgotten this fragment of a future he would soon unwrite. Turned towards the doorway.
The Tranquil stood facing him. Tears glimmered in her amber eyes.
"Before you go – I must ask you one thing. When Andruil hunted in the Void – that was when she brought back the taint? Around 2000 years before you raised the Veil and 3000 years before humans were first seen on Thedas?"
"Yes. The taint is not the reason we Elves lost our immortality – nor are the shemlen. They merely took advantage of the fall of our Empire, like scavengers amid the ruins. The Quickening is my fault – my guilt. Yours is that you didn't leave the Red Lyrium Idol at the bottom of the Deep Roads."
The Tranquil gasped. As Tranquil did not dream, she probably didn't realize he had been following the Idol's progress for some time, behind the Veil.
"The taint is something as pathetic as a slave and exalted as the stars - dead and never dying - forever consigned to the abyssal vacuity of the immortal. But when you let Janeka have the droplet of blood you have ensured Corypheus will walk again. I saw that in my slumber. And Red Lyrium will contaminate the world."
Fen'Harel found it bitterly ironic that the only thing that had survived of Elvhen immortality was something beneath life. The perversion of it brought back by Andruil from the Void: the taint. And on the other side of the Veil were the spirits trapped within the Fade - yearning for the life they could see but never touch except through mages - the life that had once been theirs by right. Now they were only a shadow and a thought: existing in an indeterminate state in which no decision mattered and nothing could be relied on. A state that could be abruptly suspended at the whim of whichever shemlen mage decided to summon them.
It was only when the parts became the whole that both would heal. It would mean non-existence for all these lesser creatures - but that would not be murder. They would simply never have existed: one of the million possible futures that had never happened. It would cure taint too: the very cause this Tranquil Elvhen mutant was pursuing. She could never succeed, of course: but once he reversed his own disastrous mistake taint would be cured by default, because spirits were immune. Perhaps, somewhere, a version of her - the Elvhen maiden she might have been - would dream of it, and wonder.
"I didn't have a choice!" the red-haired woman shouted – more angry than a Tranquil could ever be - "I warned Janeka – Wardens are immune to taint and as a scientist she should be able to handle a blood sample. The Idol was no safer in the Deep Roads than it will be in my lead-lined box. I am working on a cure."
"You are only trying to preserve what remains of your mind's peace," Fen'Harel told her sternly, "You know you have done something very wrong – something that will have consequences. The taint is not something one smugly outsmarts."
He turned and left – wondering why he was even wasting his time. In undoing his own mistake he would also be undoing hers. The Elves would never Quicken and die – the Idol would remain buried. Even if it emerged, beings who were both immortal and spirit would be immune to its power.
"I'll wait for you, Fen'Harel," she said quietly.
He thought she was crazy. Even if an 'I' survived the changed future, no-one waited for four thousand years!
Fen'harel's expression was a mirror, and in it Rillian saw a reflection of herself as he saw her. She saw her own ignorance and youth. She saw how the years as a Warden had leached colour out of her an inch at a time, leaving her tough as the quartz trunks of petrified trees. She saw the fear of failure in hard, watching pupils. She saw the resignation in amber eyes - the dreams she had had trapped like insects in resin. She was a beach of gems where the tide of immortality had gone out, never to return. She was a pearly shell left by a long-dead creature.
She and Deshanna watched him go. She flinched, knowing what he would find. What Rillian had been doing while Deshanna made Fen'Harel talk to the Clan. The instructions in the Keeper's dark eyes had been legible.
"We didn't need to do it," Rillian said bitterly, "The Eluvian wouldn't have taken him back to the past, before the time he raised the Veil. We know that because we're here. The past cannot be changed."
"We had to make sure,' Deshanna answered. There was no mercy in her black eyes, no gentleness, no grace, no yielding.
Rillian nodded - but wondered uneasily just what Fen'Harel might do with the other Eluvians he found - this could not be the only one. What else he might do to destroy the Veil. She had marooned him here, in their time, and she had made a mortal enemy. Or…an immortal one.
Rillian let the droplets of rain trickle through her fingers: each one a miniature world, reflecting verdigris and celadon and umber: somehow huge and tiny at the same time. She saw a sungleam break through the charcoal clouds and burnish the crumbled heart of Arlathan, making it sacred. She had always accepted the legacy of lost immortality and diminishing forests, of living as second-class citizens in Alienages; dreamed of changing them by changing the future, not unwriting the past.
Fen'Harel hated everything he saw because all he saw was the terrible ruin of his own world. He did not see the beauty of Rillian's world: how good it was to be alive in the present time. She could see her family: her parents and cousins in her mind's eye, their faces all around the table like the petals of a single flower. He just wanted them gone, everything restored to what it was. He wanted to change the future and it did not occur to him that his future was the past of little Andruil, born to Shianni three years ago.
No one will change it.
For that baby the universe had formed and spread. For her Thedas revolved around the sun (Rillian's friends called this an outlandish notion but Urthemiel had known it to be true) and life evolved. For her the Ancients had lost their immortality and died over decades over terror and pain. For her the Evanuris – immortal mages with a lust for power that would put Tevinter to shame – had been imprisoned behind the Veil. The whole of history had happened that she might be born: a mortal Elf whose life would be that much more solid, real, meaningful. A woman who would grow up free from slavery by Evanuris or by humans, in a bright and promising world.
Their bodies would age and die and that was natural, nothing to fear.
Each moment free from fear makes an Elf immortal
Ravenous grinned at her, his tongue hanging out pink between the white spikes of his teeth. In the twilight, his fur gleamed like wet gold, his nose wriggled in the air and his flat head accepted her affection. And suddenly Rillian felt calmer. Happier and certain as a rock about what she had done. She ran her fingers through his fur, dust rising like a tiny brown storm.
The Arlathan ruins were a strange mix of once-cultivated land overgrown with forest. The floor was carpeted with ferns and bracken. In front of her stood the remains of long-abandoned fruit trees: an orchard that was now a feasting den for birds. A lone halla was startled and scampered away into the rain. In Midsummer the forest was ringing with the churring call of nightjars. A frond of green bracken surrounded a statue of Elgar'nan. Shuffles in the leaves and the smell of wet earth hinted at crepuscular life. The light appeared orange, from a descending sun surrounded by scattered blue and green light. As if in answer, smaller campfires; the flames and the children's laughter were like lanterns in the gloaming.
The shadows of space were interrupted by tiny stars and the moon glowed like a cream cake. She remembered her fourth birthday party – her father (head chef at Denerim palace) had 'found it' and she had never tasted anything so delicious. It was her earliest memory: her childhood like a string of beads following each other on a golden necklace.
No one will change it.
Nightjars were so protective of their young they would move their entire nest if disturbed, and Rillian knew Keeper Deshanna would do the same. They would not remain in Arlathan forest.
If Fen'Harel ever tried to sunder the Veil in this time the act would kill everyone Rillian loved and she would not permit it. Rillian hardened her mettle in the blaze of love for her family, her world.
After Harwen Raleigh had taken her mother's right arm and made a ruin of her beauty - leaving her just enough life to suffer long before dying - she had left Rillian a note, just before the end. A tortuous scrawl in her remaining left hand. Both Rillian and her mother were rarities in that they could read: Adaia had been taught by her bard master, Marjolaine, and Rillian by Mother Boann. The note - the only thing she had left to give Rillian, had been five words: you are nothing like me.
At the time Rillian had not understood. It had seemed a repudiation - which was strange because they had grown so close over the months Rillian had cared for her. Rillian had always believed her mother a victim: mistress to King Maric to feed her daughter (behind Cyrion's back) and falsely accused of theft from the King's chambers. It was only now - was it the influence of Urthemiel or just growing up? - she realized the accusation had been true and the theft had been worse than coin. Plans of King Maric's voyage, given to Marjolaine. The too-beautiful human woman had come for them and Rillian had handed them over, not - until now - realizing what she held. How Marjolaine had betrayed both Leliana and Adaia.
You are nothing like me.
The note made sense to her now. Adaia had wanted her daughter to know her life would not be as full of failures and deceits as her own had been. Had wanted her to know she could do anything she set her mind to. And why shouldn't she 'smugly outsmart' taint? Fen'Harel's mind was too ossified to see another way but the Maker had given her a brain and she would use it.
She had learned something valuable: both her theories had been right. It had been Andruil who had brought back taint and the Idol imprisoned beneath the earth. Immortality had been lost because Solas had raised the Veil. The shemlen had come after – a younger, hungrier race taking advantage of their weakness. But the Evanuris – the demons who had once been worshipped as gods – had been angry and tempted the Magisters Sidereal in revenge. They had found not the Golden City (perhaps it really did take death to find that?) but the Black City, which was another name for the Void. The Blights had begun.
Utterly incongruously, Rillian recalled a conversation she had shared with Wynne after they had encountered a sylvan: In my own world I was a docker. Only when uprooted did I become a slayer of dragons. That spirit might have been completely harmless in its own world. It might even have been an administrator of justice. She also remembered Wynne telling her - after Rillian had worried about taking her into the Deep Roads - that she could not become tainted because she was host to a spirit.
How had Andruil - an immortal Elvhen goddess - become tainted after visiting the Void? The answer coalesced slowly. Perhaps it had only become harmful to her when she returned to Thedas. The Evanuris had been immortal but no other creature lived forever: entropy existed. Was taint a perversion of immortality because it should not be in the mortal world?
But all that was ultimately irrelevant. She did not need 'Patient Zero'. She did not need to understand taint. From Avernus she had a mixture that was far safer than the original Joining and could preserve fertility. With further improvements – and injections to spread it to the masses – she could make people immune. Merrill could cleanse inanimate objects. Red Lyrium was only tainted lyrium – which meant her work and Lambert's ought to synergize.
Fen'Harel's roar of rage and despair raised the hair on the back of Rillian's neck. It was a cry of anguish that went on and on – a terrible sound. Rillian, her Wardens, Cale and the other warriors readied weapons, prepared to die defending the children – but he did not return. Despite her certainty, her heart broke for him...she knew what he had found. She had smashed Merrill's Eluvian.
He was trapped here forever; an immortal Elf on the edge of extinction, the only one of his kind.
AN: I have decided to end this story here, with all the pieces in place for Inquisition. It will happen a little earlier than in canon: my Haven Conclave will be in Kingsway 9:37 rather than winter 9:41 but the events will still unfold.
My next story (either She Should See Fire or Veins of Blue Lightning) will begin with 'The Centre Cannot Hold', which is Asunder from the POV of my Haven mages and the mages at Andoral's Reach. I still haven't decided who my Inquisitor will be: Rillian, Lambert or Rylock. They all have reason to be there, so I am hoping the scene will write itself!