For as long as she could remember, Eilahnen had been proud of being Dalish; living a nomadic lifestyle, dutifully learning their lore and history. Revering the gods of her people, and keeping their secrets from the shemlen, however small a part she'd yet played.
And when she was a young child, nobody had better embodied her idea of what it meant to be Dalish than her parents—oh, how she loved them, and loved to listen to other members of their clan extol their virtues, whenever they came up. The entire clan was fond of the romantic love story that had come to encircle their leading warrior and craftswoman, and she'd heard the details many times, from many mouths. Eilahnen had lived to soak it all in, and idolized her parents with the passion that can only come with youth. On top of this, they had doted on her, always.
Her father, Athras, tall and smiling and strong, had used to take her by the hand and lead her to the fringes of their camps. He'd endeavored to teach her how to know which plants were safe to forage, and which to leave alone. 'For when you're older, and can start to do your part,' he would say. They would pick berries from nearby bushes together, and then find some secret corner to share them in, giggling all the while.
And at night, when the stars glittered overhead and the air was filled with the calls of nature, her mother, beautiful Brierdahla, would tell her stories. Her favorite had always been of Ghilan'nain, halla mother—the young elven woman whose devotion to Andruil had gotten her captured and left for dead by a cursed and angry hunter. Rapt and wide-eyed, she would listen as her mother told her of Ghilan'nain's plea to Andruil for help, and of how Andruil had favored her; freeing her of her bonds, and of her mortal ties. Turning her into the first snowy-white halla, pure of heart and mind, free to roam the beloved wilds forever, in danger of no beast or man.
Eilahnen had always asked her mother the same question, when the story was over.
'Why did Andruil turn Ghilan'nain into a halla? Why not leave her as a person?'
Brierdahla had always had the same answer. Smiling, she would lean in to smooth Eilahnen's hair from her face, kiss her on the forehead. 'Because,' she'd reply, 'as a halla, Ghilan'nain was free to accomplish more for those she loved than she ever could as an elven woman. As a halla, she could commune with the animals she so loved, looking after them as her own. And as a halla, she could come to us, her elven people, and show us the way of the aravels, such an important part of our lives. As a halla, she became the goddess of navigation—whenever we lose our way, Ghilan'nain will be there, guiding us back to the path, ensuring we're never lost.'
This had always been Eilahnen's favorite part. She would reach out her arms, inviting her mother to collect her.
'Does Ghilan'nain watch over everyone, mama? Does she even look after me?' Being just a child, she'd always pause here, suddenly anxious, despite knowing well the steps of their little ritual.
'What if I ever get lost?' Even then, she'd been a nervous child.
And her mother's response would forever be the same. Gathering Eilahnen into her arms, her eyes were tender when she looked at her, and when she answered, it was a whisper in her ear.
'Ma lath,' she'd say, 'so long as there is breath in me, it is more than Ghilan'nain who protects you. With me, you will never be lost.'
And as time passed, her mother's words had proven true. Eilahnen had grown, cleaving to the Dalish way of life, supported by those who loved her. When she was six, she'd learned to assemble her own pack, and could carry it on her back. At eight, she'd ridden her first halla—and although the Herdmaster had scolded her, she could tell he'd been too amused to really be mad. When she was twelve, despite Brierdahla's dark mutterings, her father had started teaching her how to defend herself with a blade, and she'd taken those lessons seriously, too. As she'd matured, she'd learnt the ins and outs of living a nomadic life, and grew up devoted to the gods in the Keeper and Hahren's teachings. She especially loved Ghilan'nain and Andruil, and until far more recently than she'd ever be comfortable admitting, she'd used to daydream about joining them in the Beyond, a beautiful goddess herself, to watch over her people, all powerful, and explore the endless realm.
But it hadn't all been knife-fighting, halla rides and silly daydreams: from a young age, her mother had persisted in teaching her about the different types of craft, and Eilahnen had shown her mother promise and potential. At three years of age, she was playing cat's cradle. When she tied down her pack at six years old, it was with complex knots that her mother had taught her. Soon after that, she was weaving fronds into silly little cups, and her mother saw little difference between that and the fundamentals of basket weaving. For a long time, it was Eilahnen's favorite pastime to sit and do crafts with her mother; despite her age, she'd had little desire to be with other children, and her mother saw no reason not to let her stay on with her, learning.
And so, she had come to excel at all basic and intermediate forms of craft under her mother's instruction, and the two had formed a very close bond. Her mother was eager to teach her, and she had been happy to learn, taking her lessons seriously like all of the others; how should she have known that her mother would decide that crafting lessons should mean more than the rest?
When she was sixteen years old, her mother had asked her how she would feel about following in her footstep—becoming a crafter, and then eventually a Weavewoman. 'This could be how you contribute to our family,' Brierdahla had said, and Eilahnen still remembered the happy smile on her mother's face when she'd said it.
Eilahnen had been honored. She revered her mother above all others in the clan, admired her grace and poise, and the way she created beauty and practicality both with nothing but her hands and her skill. Secretly, she thought herself incapable of ever matching her mother's talent, but she'd longed for such a miracle to come and pass. She loved her clan, and had felt secure in her knowledge of what it meant to be Dalish. She'd felt like she'd been lucky enough to 'find her place' like the elders in the clan had said all children would, but at an earlier age than most.
She'd been happy, and she'd told her mother 'yes'. Yes, of course. Yes, I'd love to.
It was shortly after her decision was made that the trouble had started.
At the time, the Lavellan clan had been camping far away from their current home in Wycome Valley. They had settled near Kirkwall, all the way at the other end of the Wounded Coast; there were several farming villages clustered into a community some distance away from the city of chains, and the Lavellan clan had deigned to make camp a mere throwing distance from the outermost village.
Trade with the shemlen had been peaceable there; the villagers were a quiet bunch, polite enough and slow to anger, and the two groups did a moderate but mutually beneficial business between them—furs, rope, and baskets from the elves, crops, meat and preservatives from the villagers. For a time, all was well.
And then the wind had shifted; things had started to change. Multiple members of the clan had complained to Keeper Melhanon, warning him that they had stayed too long, reminding him that it had been proven endlessly that the elvhen and the shemlen could never truly live side by side. The Keeper was a good man, with clan Lavellan's best interests at heart, but his fault really did lie in his patience—the man had far too much of it. And it was this over-abundance that kept them hunkered in place even when the days started to sour.
Discord started out slowly, and over petty things. In this region of the Marches, the best sources of fresh water were the glacial run-offs from the Vimmark mountains; winding rivers of varying widths, most not very deep and in no particular rush, cutting swaths through the plains on their way down into the sea. One such river ran parallel to the western side of the village, and it was where the residents—and now the Lavellan clan as well—did their washing and got their drinking water.
Some of the women in the village started complaining that, due to where the Dalish had set up their camp, they'd lost their favorite place along the riverbank; a section upstream from the village, with wide flat rocks ideal for beating laundry, and little draping shelves of rock that cut the river's current and made small pools ideal for bathing. Before to the elves' arrival, the women had frequently made a habit of carrying their laundry the very short distance from their homesteads to do their washing there instead. After several months of deprivation, they were grousing over the loss, and looking to have their workspace back.
When the Dalish caught wind of these complaints, they were puzzled and annoyed; camping upstream of the village had been a practical move that avoided the troublesome process of fording the river some fifty feet with the aravels to settle on the other side. And the shemlen had posed no quarrel with the notion when they first came to terms. There was nothing wrong with the stretch of riverbank touching the village proper, and therefore most of the clan were of the opinion that the shemlen had nothing to complain about. They were careful not to sully the water; the issue should have been null.
Next came the hunting. After several months of living largely off of the farmer's trade, the Lavellan tired of the traditional shemlen fare. And so they'd ventured instead into the Planascene forest, half a day's journey to the west, to hunt some game they were more accustomed to. Subsequently, when the farmers saw the Dalish hunters dragging hulking stags and racks of rabbit back to camp, they were affronted, offended.
The Dalish had been accepting chickens, fish, and salted cuts of pork and beef from the farmers as part of their trade since they'd arrived, in exchange for elven crafts that the farmers gladly bartered for. Suddenly, they looked to the forest instead. Obviously, this would substantially hurt their trade.
'Is there something wrong with our stock?' they'd grumbled. 'Th'halla riders suddenly too good for us, now?'
When the hunters heard these complaints reported back in the camp, they could only shake their heads.
'We've eaten this way since the Fall,' they'd said. 'The shemlen know that, don't they? They can't be that stupid.'
But Eilahnen had worried nonetheless, and soon, it seemed she worried with good reason. A streak of bad luck and bad timing was falling swiftly over the clan, like a cloak they couldn't shrug off.
Not three weeks after the lull in trade with the farmers, a group of circle mages escaped from the Gallows, in Kirkwall. This was hardly ever done, and away in the village, neither the elves or the humans were aware of the escape—why would they be? Melhanon had learned, much later, that the mages had taken a secret underground passageway out of the Gallows in the dead of night and traversed the Undercity, emerging through an enormous storm drain beyond the massive city walls.
By the time the sun shattered the darkness, the templars were in hot pursuit.
The mages had run for a full day, barely stopping to rest, not risking a meal. While decently rocky, the plains didn't offer much cover at all from a chase, and they must have known it, because they sought none on their frenzied path. They simply flew, like arrows shot from a bow...but the young mages were no match for the wrath of templars, holding phylacteries.
They'd caught up to the mages just as dusk was falling again on the plains; unbeknownst to any party, the scuffle took place just a mile upriver from the Lavellan encampment, and the shemlen's village. If the elves had known what was happening so close to their camp, many would have jumped to the mage's defense. But there'd been a sharp wind blowing down from the Vimmarks that night; nobody, elven or human, heard the screams.
And oh, there were screams that night. As the moon rose, so did the cruelty of men. After subduing all of the mages, hog-tying them and leaving them in a pile, the templars made camp at the river bed. A roaring fire was built, its light blocked from the camp by the curve of the river, and bottles were uncorked. At some point, all sense of duty, however misguided, must have given way to whatever darkness was inside them. Because the templars stopped seeing the escaped mages as wayward things to be returned. And in their drunkenness, their power craze, they did unspeakable things.
The templars must have spooked afterwards at what they'd done, because they'd fled the same night. They'd taken the bodies, mangled and violated, away from the scene, and disposed of them somewhere else. They put out their fire, and tried to kick all evidence of their visit into the river. Then they had fled—back to their city of chains, and the masters who held them.
It was the scream of a Dalish woman that roused the sleeping settlement that next morning. In next to no time, elves and humans alike were gathered, chores and differences discarded, staring at the riverbed in horror.
The water, that precious commodity, had obviously seen a heinous crime the night before, and the evidence of that crime was smeared everywhere. The rocks and algae were all stained with blood; the water at the river's edge was foamy with a thick sludge it, mixed with ash, and the silt there reeked of copper-tang and booze. Charred logs from the fire were caught in the rocks, along with a single empty whiskey jug.
It was horrifying—but worse still was how quickly the villagers had turned.
They'd been convinced straightaway that the elves had had some sort of party, after they'd all turned in for the night, and the results of that party had soiled the water downriver. They reckoned that the blood was animal—the result of the Dalish doing some sloppy butchering in the stream, after throwing back too many drinks. 'Afterall, you do 'ave to deal wit' your own meat, now that you've started back up wit' your precious hunting,' one man had sneered. And many had clamored in agreement behind him.
The hunters were the first to protest, angrily rejecting the accusations, and pointing out that the damage to the water started far up-stream of where they were camped.
The same man had leered back at them. 'So you moved upriver to do it. Don't make no diff'rence here, do it?'
Fury swelled and spread like a rash among the Dalish. The tension had been awful, and Eilahnen had been more than relieved when Keeper Melhanon had spoken up.
'Your accusation is unreasonable and short-sighted,' he'd stated calmly to the farmer. 'It isn't fair,' he firmly asserted over the billow of noise that was several angry villagers, 'to assume that we dirtied the water just because it happened closer to our encampment than to your village.'
He'd walked through the crowd of elves to the front, until he was standing directly in front of the beefy hulk of a man that had started the confrontation.
'We will track the riverbed to the origin site, and determine what actually happened there.' Signalling with one slender, wrinkled hand, he'd sent several hunters huffing away to gather their things, snarling under their breath. The meaty shemlen looked like he'd wanted to argue, but he kept his mouth shut. Melhanon, seeing no resistance, continued.
'And we will clean the river and undo the damage.'
A sharp sound of protest had gone rippling through the elves, and many stared at their Keeper with eyes that were openly incredulous, indignant, resentful. 'We will clean the river,' he had firmly repeated, 'since we are the ones being accused of this mess. We know how to tend to the water.'
He'd looked the large farmer squarely in the eye. 'And we know how to take care of our own.'
There was a threat in those words, in those brown eyes, so subtly menacing that it demanded respect. With a sullen grunt, the meaty farmer had backed down. He had turned his back to the elves and started walking away, and at a rough jerk of his head, most of the villagers had followed.
The confrontation was over. But Eilahnen had felt like it couldn't possibly stay that way.
Immediately, the clan had set to work on the river. Anybody who hadn't gone off to search downstream had waded into the compromised water. The thick, bloody ash had to be encouraged into the current and swept away. The silt had to be churned, cast off, packed down again.
And the rocks had to be scrubbed. The algae, so helpful to the fish of the river, was a loss. Eilahnen had perched on a boulder in the middle of the river, wearing little, surrounded by rushing water as she scrubbed for all she was worth and tried not to vomit—at both the smell and the unknown. Brierdahla had worked near to her, also scrubbing, wearing a frown that chilled her and spoke of troubles ahead.
On the rare occasion that she'd stopped to look up at the bank, there were always villagers there watching them work, glaring as they muttered darkly to each other. Seeing it made her stomach clench.
'Ignore them, da'len,' her mother had called over the rush of the water. 'They're being small-minded and suspicious. When your father and the others come back and tell us what actually happened, they'll be forced to see reason.'
But that cavalry never arrived.
The hunters had returned to camp just after noon, damp and cursing. Melhanon had immediately crowded them into the tent beside his aravel, away from the prying eyes of the shemlen, and Eilahnen and her mother had joined them, slipping into the tent to be with Athras.
The trip, they explained, had been in vain. They'd traveled just a mile upriver and had found the site of the incident readily enough. But after that, nothing was clear.
Eilahnen's suspicions were confirmed and the dread in her stomach doubled when her father announced that there had been no evidence of an animal's butchering—no entrails, no bones, no fat. There had been no large impressions on the ground, where an animal might have lain. Most telling, the only prints left in the silt had all been human, and there were obvious signs of a struggle.
Brierdahla had clutched her daughter's arms until her nails bit into the flesh, but Eilahnen hadn't even felt the pain.
Melhanon, grave as death, took in Athras' information and then announced what everyone in the tent was thinking.
'Then we're dealing with murder.'
'More than murder,' Athras had replied, his voice low and rough as he worriedly eyed his wife and child. 'It looks like there was a gods damned slaughter, a bare mile from our camp.'
'And worse,' another of the hunters continued, his voice weary. 'We found the scene of a clear crime, but nothing helpful. No bodies. No crests. No service colors. Nothing to—'
'To clear our clan's name,' Melhanon had finished, looking grim.
'Nothing to make them believe it wasn't us!' Brierdahla had cried.
Eilahnen had been struggling to take full breaths. 'If the villagers go down the river...if they see what's left there..then...'
'It won't come to that, da'len, I promise you.' Her father had moved to them, pulled her into his chest, and then her mother.
There was fear, palpable and stiff, everywhere in the tent as he'd looked over their heads and met Melhanon's eyes.
'Keeper, what do we do?'
'Yes, Melhanon, what do we do with this? The shems are outside, at the edge of our camp, waiting to hear—'
'What they want to hear,' he'd interrupted the panicked questions of his charges. 'Obviously, we can't come clean with what we found. It would be madness. So we spin a lie.'
His tone had been steady and decisive, his eyes steeled. 'The villagers were right all along—a group of our younglings snuck off last night with some spirits and a fresh buck, and had themselves a little party. We apologize, assure them the culprits will be properly disciplined. We've already cleaned up the river. When the villagers' attention is otherwise occupied, a couple of our fastest will sneak back up to the crime scene, and get rid of everything still there.'
Eilahnen's eyes had met with her mother's, and she knew they'd both been thinking the same thing: what about the victims? Where was their justice?
But both remained silent. The Keeper was by no means a callous man. He was only trying to avoid more bloodshed.
Melhanon continued. 'The pair we send will stay upriver until night fall, and then sneak back under cover of darkness. In the meantime...we begin to pack up—quietly, but we pack. The timing doesn't do us any favors, and I don't want the farmers to grow violent when they see us lighting out right after a bloody incident. They already distrust us.' His voice had turned hard, and as he spoke, several of the men and women in the tent nodded their heads in steady agreement.
'But my interest lies, as always, with our people. We've discovered violent murder practically on our threshold, and the culprit is still free to roam. As soon as we're able, we away from here.'
Despite her relief at the Keeper's words, Eilahnen had been quivering with dread. Violent murder, practically on our threshold.
Two of the swiftest in the clan had readily volunteered to sneak upriver, and with the plan set into motion, the elves had collected themselves and emerged from the tent, to spin their tale for the shemlen villagers.
Surprisingly, the story had been met with no suspicion. But there'd been more than enough anger and ridicule. As soon as the farmers had stopped yelling and hurling insults, they'd slipped into a smugness that was somehow even worse.
'Knew it, I did,' came the gleeful jibe of the enormous man who couldn't seem to ever stop talking.
'Dimwits, these Dalish are, and don't know 'ow to control their own young. Set up amidst unsuspectin' folk with their slick talk an' fancy baubles, and then let the young bucks go roarin' free an' makin' a mess of evr'thing.'
Eilahnen didn't understand how, but the Keeper remained calm, even serene, throughout the farmer's diatribe. Perhaps it'd helped him to keep his composure, knowing as he did that the two volunteers had slipped away unseen while the farmer had the entire village's audience.
Eventually the detestable farmer ran out of steam, and the bitter scene had faded out. Proud of the punishment he'd doled out, the enormous man walked down to what served as the village pub, and most of the others had followed behind. Finally, blessedly alone, the elves had set about trying their best to look inconspicuous, while actually doing what had to be done so they could leave.
It was, of course, slow-going, and when night fell, bringing with it the return of the tired but triumphant volunteers, very little headway had been made. Bursts of sloppy, boisterous laughter kept erupting from the open windows of the pub as the now very intoxicated farmers celebrated what they'd considered a triumph of their own. Every time she'd heard them, Eilahnen couldn't help but shudder.
The following two days had passed with a sense of quiet urgency pervading the camp. The Dalish kept to themselves, having next to no contact with the villagers beside them, and of course vigilantly watching their borders every night for any hint of a threat, shemlen or otherwise. Thanks to their steady efforts, they'd had most of their equipment and belongings packed and ready to go. Only the tents and the laundry lines remained intact—even the halla had been readied.
Despite the bareness of their camp, and the periodic leering in their direction, the villagers had noticed nothing, and on the third morning, Eilahnen had breathed her first sigh of cautious relief. Despite the nightly patrols and the security of her loft, she'd barely slept, and what little rest she did get was plagued by nightmares of angry farmers, and shadows ripping people apart.
On that morning, she'd been sitting in her family's tent. Her father had been with her, close to the door hatch, watching her work as he'd broken his fast. Her mother had risen early, and was part-way across the camp; Elora, their family friend, had needed help getting her family's things in order under such short notice, and Brierdahla had gone to pitch in.
From their place towards the back of the camp, it had been blissfully quiet, and Eilahnen was nearly relaxed as she went through her pack a final time.
They were leaving that night under cover of nightfall, and not a second too soon, in her opinion.
As if he could hear her thoughts, Athras had spoken to her around his meal.
'I'll be happy to see the tail-end of this village, da'len. And I doubt the Keeper will be in a hurry to see us return.'
She'd snorted, glancing up at him as she started forcefully replacing her things into her pack.
'Those villagers turned out to be completely foul. And they call us savages. Delav'in.'
He'd grimaced. 'If experience has taught me anything, it's to never get on a shemlen's bad side.'
'Have you noticed the size of their ring leader? He has so many sides, I don't know which might be the bad one.' Satisfied with the job she'd done, she'd yanked down on the drawstrings of her pack and fastened it securely with a square knot in the bight.
Her father's laughter rang through the tent. 'Very clever, my girl. Although I'd dare to say the bad sides outnumber the good, with that one.' Finished with his food, he'd stood and strode over to her, offered her a hand. Hauling her up, he'd shaken his head, face still cracked in a wide smile. 'Come on, let's go join the final effort. I want everything ready in plenty of time for tonight.'
It was then that they'd first heard the shouting, and Eilahnen's easy reply went cold on her lips.
The tension had finally boiled over.
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