Nike passed him her small dagger as he asked for it, and spreading the vest out on the ground, she very carefully lay Morrigan upon it.
"You're going to have to take hold of that bolt," the mage said, pulling up the ragged sleeve of his robe and baring a dirty forearm. "Do not try and pull it out until the moment I say. When I do, you have to yank it out, hard as you can. Can you do that?"
Nike wasn't sure she could. She wasn't sure about any of this, but she nodded. Reaching down, she gently wrapped her hand around the protruding end of the bolt. She could feel it vibrating in her fingers, shivering with every beat of the raven's heart.
"Everything's going to be all right," she said, gently cradling the raven's neck with her other hand. The half-lidded yellow eyes fixed on her.
His forearm bare, the mage had started muttering to himself, whispering words that did not sound like any language that Nike was even passingly familiar with. He made a series of gestures over his skin with the blade of the knife. Small, dark red runes began to appear, following the tip of the blade.
Then he turned the blade to his wrist, sinking it into the flesh without the faintest flinch. A great ruby of red swelled up, then seemed to begin to run upwards, lifting into the air and joining the runes. They began to grow brighter, hotter, until they were the color of metal pulled from a roaring forge.
Setting the dagger aside, the mage reached his arm out of the bars. Nike's first instinct was to snatch Morrigan backward again, away from his touch, but she forced herself to remain still.
The runes began to ripple and wobble, before they bound together into a coil of hot light, spooling and spiraling down toward the bolt sticking out of Morrigan's side. As the runes touched her, she gave a sharp sound, her wings fluttering. Nike did flinch, barely keeping herself once again from pulling the raven back.
The coil seemed to be sinking into the wound around the bolt, and as it moved inside the flesh, Nike could see the bones of Morrigan's ribs and the dark shadows of her organs revealed in the brilliance. She could see the rapidly pulsing shape of the bird's heart.
"Now, pull it!" Jowan said, and gritting her teeth Nike ripped the bolt out of the bird's side.
Morrigan let out another cry, blood gouting dark and heavy. Nike dropped the bolt as if it were an adder, her first thought being to stop the bleeding. The gout lasted only a moment, however, and before she could press her hand to it to stem the tide, it had already trickled to a stop. She watched as the dark mouth of the wound began to glow, and then to knit itself.
The glow began to fade, and just before it went out altogether, the edges of the raven's torn skin had met, and there was no sign an injury had ever been there.
Immediately the yellow eyes looked brighter and far more keen. Nike pulled her hands back as the bird neatly flipped up onto its feet, gave an experimental flap of its wings, and then abruptly turned back into Morrigan, standing on Nike's vest.
Nike got to her feet, one hand fluttering a little as an intense urge to throw her arms around the mage came over her, and was successfully fought back.
"Well, now," Morrigan said, looking at Nike as if they had just finished a lengthy conversation and she'd realized the time had gotten away from her. "I suppose we had best continue on."
"What, that's it?" the mage looked flabbergasted. So, for that matter, did Nike.
"Wait, are you all right?"
"Fit as a fiddle," Morrigan said calmly. "One can certainly not begrudge blood magic when it comes to healing, though I personally find it quite fiddly, and more than a little draining to perform."
"You nearly died, Morrigan!" Nike said, unsure why she felt so awkward and flat-footed, except that she herself would probably not take being badly hurt and nearly dying so damned calmly. She certainly wouldn't take being healed by blood magic so calmly! "Are you sure you're all right?"
"Quite sure," Morrigan said, then seemed to realize she was still standing on Nike's vest. Stepping off it, she picked it up and gave it a quick little buss with her hand, before offering it back. "Absolutely none the worse for wear."
Nike took it almost automatically. The mage in the cell got to his feet.
"Wh-what about me? I kept up my end of the bargain! I healed you! You have to let me out!"
Morrigan looked at him with no small measure of disdain, though her voice remained airy. "That you did, however my companion also kept up her end of the bargain, and gave you water. There was no agreement made to release you from that cell."
"R-right," Nike said. Still feeling off balance, she tore her eyes away from Morrigan and looked instead to the mage. "I gave you water, you healed her as promised. I never said I would let you out, and I am certainly not going to do so if you're the reason there's a demon here and the dead keep attacking the village."
"But I'm not!" the mage protested vehemently. "I'm not the reason there's a demon here, nor am I behind the dead attacking the village! I-I admit, it's my fault Arl Eamon is ill but-but that's all I did! I swear it on the Maker's head!"
"You made Arl Eamon ill?" Nike asked with a frown.
"Yes! Yes, I admit that was me, it was my doing but- that's all!"
"And you expect us to believe you?" Nike asked. "If not you, then who brought a demon here? Who sent the dead out of Redcliffe?"
The man licked his lips nervously. "I-it was the boy," he said at last. "It was the boy, Connor. Eamon's son."
"You're blaming a child?" Nike asked. "Isn't Eamon's son only ten?"
"Yes, he is," the mage said quickly, then entreated Morrigan. "You know how it goes, how early someone can manifest! I myself was only eight!"
Morrigan actually looked like she was considering this. "And I was somewhat younger," she said vaguely, then looked at Nike. "It is possible, if the child is a mage-"
"He is! I swear it! H-his mother didn't want him to be taken away by the Circle, so when the boy manifested, she hid it. She had me brought here to tutor him, to help him be able to control himself-"
"If he summoned a demon and cursed the Castle it would seem he had a very poor tutor," Nike said acerbically.
"He was doing well, very well! F-for his age, I mean," the mage said again, then looked miserable. "I didn't do it but I'm the reason it happened. He was doing so well, but th-then…"
Morrigan's look was sharp. "But then his father fell ill, and when none could help him, the child became desperate."
The man's eyes fell in shame, and Morrigan looked disgusted, turning to Nike again. "Demons can be very seductive, and children are easily swayed. All it had to do was promise the boy to help his father. If the child is an abomination we shall have to kill him."
"No! No, no no no," the mage became frantic at these words. "He's not an abomination, I swear it to you. The demon has not possessed him, not yet. But it is using him, and even somewhat keeping its word. I mean, Eamon should have been dead days past, but the demon is keeping him alive, because it's the only thing that it can use to keep swaying Connor."
"If the child is not an abomination, then he is not so foolish as I had assumed," Morrigan said.
"Why did you hurt Eamon? What did you do to him, and why?" Nike demanded. When the mage shrank back a little, she bristled. "You had best tell me! I am deeply grateful to you for what you did to help Morrigan, but if you ever want to step out of that cell alive you will need me to vouchsafe you, and I will be far more reluctant to do so if you do not tell me what you did to Eamon, and how we can stop all this."
She didn't even know if they could stop it, but she did know this: If the demon was holding sway over the boy in exchange for his father's life, then the only way to break that sway would be to heal Eamon, and to do so quickly- before the demon did turn the boy into an abomination.
"It was akinosia," the man said glumly. The word meant nothing to Nike, however Morrigan seemed impressed.
"A difficult brew to make," she said. "And nasty, if somewhat slow."
"It took me three weeks to brew. I put it in his wine, at supper. Connor is too young for wine and Isolde does not like our 'bitter Ferelden swamp water' so she doesn't drink it unless it's from Orlais. He went to sleep that night and didn't wake up. Normally the brew will kill someone within a day or two- it looks like they just pass in their sleep. A sudden arrest of the heart or…or some other ailment like that. Edevas and even lyrium healings do nothing to help."
"Only he didn't die," Nike said, and the mage shook his head.
"I must have done something incorrect in brewing- I'm not all that familiar with potions and even less with poisonings, but he was still alive after two days. He wouldn't have been much longer- he could not swallow, so dehydration would have got him soon enough. His wife was trying everything; they even sent all the Knights to find the Urn of Sacred Ashes…"
"Then his son made a pact with a demon to save his father," Nike said angrily. "But you still haven't told us the why. Why did you poison Eamon in the first place?"
He did not seem to dare meet her eyes. "I was paid to," he said miserably.
"By whom?"
"By-"
The door of the cellar, the one that lead deeper into the keep, suddenly swung open with a bang. Nike, startled, dropped into a crouch to grab her bow, which still lay at her feet, and Morrigan looked over sharply. The prisoner startled the most out of the three, jumping so abruptly that he fell over into a sit, a bark of pain escaping him as his rear end hit the cold stones.
Alistair, sword in hand and face grimed with sweat, gaped at them. A pair of unfamiliar soldiers were just behind him.
"Oh, thank the bloody Maker," Alistair said with a gasp of relief. "You two just vanished, we didn't know what had happened to you!"
"We got over the wall and were looking for a way to open the front gates to let you in," Nike told him. Further details could be told later. "How did you get in?"
"When it was clear no more dead were coming out of Redcliffe, Teagan took us to the mill with Ser Perth. There was a passage there into the Keep, an escape route in case of siege."
It made sense. After all, Nike had used the same sort of passage to escape from Highever with Duncan.
"Is the Keep secure?" Nike asked, as Alistair nodded to the soldiers behind him and they stepped past, heading toward the other stairs and the guard room above.
"I'm not sure," he said. "We found quite a few soldiers trapped in the barracks in the other wing. They had little idea what was going on. Teagan went with a few to find Eamon and the family. Who's this?"
He was looking at the prisoner, who had curled up in the corner now, looking at them all fearfully. It was on the edge of Nike's tongue to tell Alistair what the man had just confessed to, but she decided then wasn't quite the time-there were more pressing matters.
"He doesn't matter at the moment. You say Teagan went up to find Eamon and his family? We need to go after him, right now. There's a demon in this Keep."
"A demon?" Alistair blanched, but Nike and Morrigan were already stepping past him, Nike with her bow in one hand and her wrinkled vest trailing its laces hanging from the other.
The demon may not be possessing Connor yet, but it was doubtlessly very close to him. Nike didn't know how it would react to see Teagan and rescue coming in, but she doubted it would be good.