I have a cold and I'm whiny. But look, a chapter. I'm planning to do Nanowrimo this year, and even though there's basically no chance of me hitting 50k words in the time I have available, I am quietly hoping to finish this fic, or at least get very close. Cross your fingers for me.

Healing Lessons

It took two trips, but we managed to bring the remains of Celene's forces to our camp and rig enough shelter for all of them. Jehan, it turned out, had been keeping herself on far less than starvation rations - according to her lieutenant, she hadn't eaten in at least two days. She was certainly the worst of the bunch, but there were several whom Eugenie wasn't optimistic about.

Solas and I stayed up most of the night helping our single trained healer tend everyone, and I began getting my first advanced lessons in healing, not because of planning, but from necessity. Besides the universal malnourishment of the soldiers we had rescued, there were an alarming number of wounds that had festered without proper supplies or a healer to tend them. They had, after all, been fighting undead.

When we had finished with triage, Eugenie sent all of us to bed for a few hours of rest.

Harding had returned by the time I woke in the morning, which was a profound relief. With her there to organize the camp, I could focus all my efforts on healing. She gave me a quick update on our progress clearing the passage to the fens while I inhaled an even quicker breakfast, and then she told me not to work too hard and left - likely to ignore her own advice and spend the rest of the day working.

Once she was gone, Solas took a moment to squeeze my hand and drop a kiss on top of my head before we went to find Eugenie. "Are you well?"

I shrugged. I was tired and concerned for our patients. "Are you?" I asked in reply.

He paused thoughtfully and then tilted his head, eyes narrowed, as he answered. "I am exhausted, of course, but aware that we are likely to lose some of those we're trying to help."

"So what you're really asking is whether I'm emotionally prepared to be a healer," I translated dryly. His smile was somewhat apologetic, but he still waited expectantly for my reply. I sighed. "I don't think Jehan is going to make it, and I regret it, because she seems a good commander who cares for those serving under her. But Solas - I don't think you grasp how near the edge of disaster a Dalish clan walks. I helped bury my first patient when I was five years old, which was already a year or two into my training as a mage. Eilhan. He was caught by raiders away from the clan. He was always kind to us - the children, I mean. His mother was devastated - she changed clans at the next Arlathvhen . We lost at least one every two or three years, and even if I wasn't especially close to any of them, all of them were my kin."

Solas closed his eyes, his face a mask of pain, and both despair and self-loathing trickled across our bond. "Ir'el abelas, lethallan. Sul'numan nar'laimasha. You're right - for all that you've told me, and all of us, of your clan's difficulties in surviving, I had not thought to ascribe specifics to those difficulties.

I supposed it must be hard for him - if he truly was one of the Elvhen - to see the descendents of his people fallen so low, though I wasn't quite certain why he seemed to feel so responsible. Perhaps because he had slept while my ancestors were enslaved and stripped of their culture and history? "I…think perhaps I don't know how to talk about it in front of our human allies - many of whom are my friends - without sounding somehow accusatory, so I don't dwell on specifics."

"Ir abelas," he said again, briefly pressing his forehead to mine.

Eugenie was already with our patients when we found her, checking dressings and pressing healing energies into those whose bodies were faltering. Several amputations were needed, but all the soldiers were still so weak that we didn't dare make any attempts yet. "Solas, we need more elfroot potions," she told him without preamble as we gathered together in a little group. "Dorian is busy with the poultices to draw out poisoned blood."

That was odd. "Shouldn't I make the potions?" I asked. Solas was the more skilled healer - mundane tasks like making up potions ought to fall to me.

She sighed and shoved graying hair from her face with her arm, so accustomed to avoiding touching anything with her carefully-cleaned hands that she did it even now, in between patients, even though she would be washing them again in a moment. "Ideally, yes," she said quietly, "but they're asking for you - begging, really. The rumor is spreading that your touch brings the peace of Andraste's blessing."

For a moment I stared at her, uncomprehending - or perhaps unwilling to comprehend. "Oh for - !" I threw my hands up but broke off and switched to my own language: "Fenedhis lasa'din! Can't you just tell them…?" The end of my question trailed away as she looked down at me, her face heavy with sorrow and regret.

"They wouldn't believe me if I tried," she said.

Solas touched my arm. "Peace is a subjective state, vhenan. If they find peace in your ministrations and believe it to flow from Andraste, does that make it her peace? Their own? Yours? Does the distinction matter?"

"It matters to me," I growled at him.

He tilted his head again. "Why?"

For a moment I struggled, trying to find words to fit to my feelings. "If nothing else," I said at last, "it devalues the work you and Eugenie are doing. Their wounds aren't knitting together because of Andraste, or even because of my special skill. They are healing because the two of you are skilled. It's magic, practiced by mages - not religion practiced by - by priests and prophets!"

Solas clasped his hands behind his back, face still thoughtful. "You may make a fair point."

I glanced at Eugenie and found her smiling faintly. "I'll make the potions," I said, and then paused. "I'll…I'll also sit with the dying, when it's time, if you don't need me for other, urgent matters. In fact, if you see Cassandra, send her my way. I should learn a few verses from the Chant of Light."

When I glanced at Solas, he was frowning. "And is that any different from providing healing? They will say the same things."

"No one should have to die alone," I replied, "and sitting with them should be my job anyway since I'm the least skilled. Besides, it is different. I don't want them to die thinking they didn't matter, that the world won't remember or mourn their passing. I have real power that has nothing to do with all this religious nonsense. I'll mourn and I'll remember, and so on some level they have left a mark on the world, if only by leaving one on me. And as for the Chant of Light - I hope that a human would sing one of my people the songs of Falon'Din if they were able, regardless of their own beliefs. That's just…common decency."

"That isn't how they'll interpret it," he pointed out.

I raised my chin. "I can't manage their interpretations, but I can do the right thing. This is the right thing."

He sighed, but his lips were curled in a fond - if slightly wry - smile. "Allow me to send someone to fetch Cassandra for you."

The Seeker was, of course, prompt in her arrival at the alchemy bench where I was working. "I appreciate this, Inquisitor," she told me as she approached, and I looked up from my work in mild confusion.

"Why?" I asked. "And which part?"

She stopped at the end of the bench - a little too far away for me to see her face clearly, no doubt in deference to the work I was doing - but I thought she might have smiled, though it might have been a grimace. "Most of these soldiers are young and far from home. Your compassion for the dying is…" she trailed off, perhaps shaking her head, though I couldn't tell if she was actually moving or if my own wavering sight only gave me that impression. "It's appreciated," she finished at last, "and it will comfort all of them to have someone sing the Chant. Will you be able to memorize several verses within a short period of time?"

I nodded, refocusing on the potions in front of me. "The lineages of the noble houses of the Dales are all sung," I told her. "It takes two hours to sing through them. We record a lot of things in song, actually - it helps since most of our people can't read our language. I can learn a piece of music quickly, and the words attached to it, too."

"I never knew you were a musician," Cassandra said.

"Oh no," I told her quickly. "Nothing like that, at least no more than any of my people. Everyone sings, of course, but my voice is nothing out of the ordinary - good enough for carrying a tune and little else."

"I see. Well - I apologize if mine isn't even good for that. Music is not a subject I can say I've studied," she replied.

It was probably inevitable, after that sort of disclaimer, that her voice was utterly beautiful - the timbre like warm velvet. She obviously hadn't studied as her pitch occasionally wandered, but her voice was lovely. I spent a surprisingly enjoyable hour with her, learning verses from the Chant traditionally used to comfort the sick and dying, while my hands went on making potions without the need for my conscious input. At some point Harding drifted over, distracted from whatever she had been working on, to listen and then join in. At the end of the hour, when I had made enough potions to get us through the next couple of days, she invited Cassandra to join her Sing-quisition. "Just need to train your ear - you could be a soloist!" Harding assured her.

I could practically hear Cassandra blushing. "No, no - I don't think - that is to say, I doubt I have the time."

"Oh," Harding said, a little crestfallen. "Well, if you ever change your mind, you can talk to me or to Josephine!"

"I will…keep it in mind," Cassandra replied in a tone that said she would try to forget as quickly as possible. "Thank you."

I bent my head over the vials I was packing away, hiding the smile that even lack of sleep and a camp full of seriously ill soldiers couldn't entirely stifle.

I spent the afternoon helping Solas and Eugenie whenever I was needed, and sitting among the dying soldiers in between. I didn't know enough of the Chant of Light to sing it continuously, so when I ran out of verses, I circled around to Dalish lullabies and even a few songs to Falon'Din - more to settle my own mind and feelings than because I expected one of the Creators to take any notice of my prayers, or to be able to act on them if he did.

Loranil joined me when I started singing Dalish songs, and his voice was lovely, so I let him carry the melodies while I settled into poignant harmonies that captured some of the melancholy I felt when I thought about this pointless war and the lives it had wasted.

Eventually, it was Loranil's turn for a guard rotation, and Eugenie called me to help her change poultices and dressings, and then ordered me to eat something. When I returned, I started on the Chant of Light again, and this time it was Cole who sat with me, letting me know which verses the still-conscious soldiers found particularly comforting so that I could return to them often. I wasn't sure where he had been all day, but my guess was he had been doing the same sorts of things he did at Skyhold - offering water, words of comfort, and other small, odd gestures that only their recipients could possibly understand.

Jehan was the first to die, late in the evening. We hadn't had much chance to speak again - she had been delirious or unconscious most of the time. I helped Eugenie clean and wrap her body, and we set her on one of the pyres others in the camp had already constructed. It had been clear more or less from the first that we would need them and that we didn't dare let any dead linger in a place where the Veil was so thin as to be nearly nonexistent. Cassandra said the necessary prayers, and I lit the pyre, watching solemnly as the flames I saw only as a blur of light reduced everything to ash.

"Go to sleep," Eugenie ordered afterward, speaking to me. "I know you want to be here for any rites that need to be performed, but you must sleep."

"I know," I said quietly. Solas had retired - at her urging - hours ago.

"Harding and I - as well as several other scouts who have volunteered - will take turns singing the Chant to the dying," Cassandra promised.

"Ma serannas," I said. "Cole can no doubt tell you which verses they like the best. You'll wake me if any other rites are necessary?"

"We will," Eugenie said this time, "but I think the rest of them will last the night. Tomorrow," she sighed, "tomorrow there will be a great deal to do, but it will keep for a few hours. Sleep well, Inquisitor."

"Eras son, Eugenie."

I turned and stumbled toward my tent.

Ir'el abelas, lethallan. Sul'numan nar'laimasha: I'm so sorry, clanmate/kinswoman. I weep for your loss.

Fenedhis lasa'din: In context, "choke on a wolf cock and die."

Eras son: Dream well