Chapter Nine: The Sleeper Must Awaken
Rillian whispered, "Now, Merrill."
Merrill whispered, "For the People!" And loosed the chains that sought to bind, not kill, an opponent.
Blood magic, heavy as oil or treacle, began to solidify around them; even breathing was hard at first. Corypheus hissed the commands that would free him from the spell but had not prepared for Zevran's blade. Like the fang of a snake, it struck. Corypheus' shield was dissipated by Ser Otto's Dispel, the roiling blue fire cleansing the air.
From the sides, the arrows of Cale and Shianni fell like metallic rain.
Rillian and Lambert sang the Litany of Adralla together, a musical duo testing each other – finding, in delight, that working together made them stronger. A torrent of bright music - countertenor and contralto – an onslaught of the commands and edicts that stopped blood mages and demons in their tracks. The first time Rillian had cast it had been in the Circle Tower – after Uldred had injured Leliana and she had been forced to take over. Not knowing the language of Tevinter, Rillian had been forced to add her own lyrics to the notes - an impromptu ballad she had not known would work…
I woke up and he was screaming.
I'd left him dreaming.
I roll over and hold him tightly,
and whisper, "If they want you,
oh, they're gonna have to fight me,
oh, fight me…"
The demons at Kinloch Hold were caught and held, proving the magic was in the music, not the words.
The second and last time Rillian had used the Litany was against Urthemiel. It was only now that her borrowed understanding of Ancient Tevene allowed her to sing the lyrics as Adralla had intended. She had taught Lambert the original version, and he, with a bard's gift for learning languages, had mastered it.
As their commands began to 'take' the air went taut with the unseen weaving of law. No-one could move; they were all as immured in the singers' swiftly-solidifying matrix as insects in amber. Corypheus' milky eyes were enraged as a trapped spider, devouring and disinterested as glass. But he could not move.
Zevran's blade, tipped with magebane, ensured he no longer had the mana to cast even normal spells.
Rillian allowed Lambert to continue the music while she reached in her pack for syringe, vials, and lyrium.
One drop was all she needed.
Afterwards, she shook her head, briefly, when Zevran would have ended the magister.
"We can't kill him until all Wardens have left the prison."
Rillian could not know whether Corypheus might rise through a Warden as Urthemiel could rise through a darkspawn, but she was taking no chances. As her friends obeyed, she hissed, "You too, Larius."
The former Warden – as far gone into the cycle of corruption as Duncan had been the last time she saw him – shook his head.
"Where would I go?" he asked softly. He drew a silverite dagger that burned his skin as it burned the skin of darkspawn. Teeth gritted against the agony, he whispered, "In death, sacrifice." He cut his own throat, and fell without sound, collapsing inward like an empty wineskin.
Quietly, Ser Otto murmured the Templar prayer for the dead, as he and Jowan left the chamber. Taking over from Lambert, Rillian gestured that he should follow them.
The four Elves remained. When Rillian asked them, with her eyes, to leave, Shianni scoffed, "We're not Wardens – and we're not leaving you alone with that thing."
Rillian murmured, "I see an opportunity to answer some outstanding questions about the darkspawn biological system. I…don't wish to be observed."
Zevran shrugged. "You wish to play with him before you kill him? So be it: none of us are squeamish."
Rillian considered. Cale – that was true enough. The Dalish hunter hated darkspawn as much as she did, for what had been done to Tamlen. Merrill seemed sweet and innocent – but she was a Blood Mage who had looked into the eyes of a demon and bargained with it. But Shianni – she was afraid to do this in front of the cousin who had known her so well in another incarnation. Seeing this, Shianni whispered,
"When you told me what you did to Vaughan, I rejoiced. You'll always be Rillian to me. Now get on with it."
Rillian nodded, swallowed hard, and turned back to the imprisoned magister. Yes, she was indeed about to do this. She raised Stillicide, the silverite dagger traced with lyrium runes, sank its point beneath the chin and began a long, gently-sawing incision that opened Corypheus from throat to groin.
Corypheus tensed as though shot through with pain but made no sound. She felt the hatred - the hatred of a Lord for a slave performing an unforgiveable insult – and proceeded to the internal exam with a vague eagerness for the darkspawn's fragmentation.
Her hands were fleet, exact; intricately testing the darkspawn's biology as her fingers had once explored a keyboard for its latent melodies. The creature's heart should have been all but hidden between its lungs. Instead, it was fully exposed, the lungs merely wrinkled lumps less than a third of their natural bulk. The taint had stopped Corypheus needing to rely on air – which explained how the creature had been kept alive in this airless prison for millennia.
Rillian's face ran with sweat. Her work was done with surreal speed, the laminae of flesh and bone recoiling smoothly beneath the metal that was toxic to tainted creatures and her own unerring hands. She already knew what the stomach would show. In the Deep Roads, darkspawn did not eat; sustained by taint just as the magisters had been sustained by lyrium as they walked bodily in the Fade.
Rillian hesitated, unwilling to complete the examination. She remembered what she had done to Vaughan, remembered looking into Mother Boann's eyes as she gave her peace. Then she looked again at the knife in her hand. Her hand felt empty of all technique. Its one impulse was to slash, cleave, obliterate this monster. She must do this, or flee. There was no middle ground.
"I will examine him," she said – forgetting even to chant the Litany. The darkspawn bucked, twisted, as it felt the wavering of its prison.
"Now, Ril!"
Shianni's shout broke through her daze. Corypheus was about to free himself – her Warden friends were far enough away. Her hand was a snake - the glittering knife opened his throat.
Black blood fountained, drenching her from head to toe as if in full baptism. Around her waist, the vial containing her sample glowed with momentarily incandescent meaning.
The five Elves left Corypheus' prison and retraced their steps, catching up with Jowan, Ser Otto and Lambert. Ser Otto – thank the Maker – could not see her, but Jowan and Lambert stared wide-eyed. Lambert was young enough to believe her story that the blood had been spilled in battle, but Jowan was older, sadder, wiser. Rillian remembered Vaughan's death: a person doesn't get that covered in blood just by fighting... Thankfully, Jowan kept the knowledge to himself. The first thing she did upon reaching their campsite was find the plant known as "repanda" - an evergreen shrub whose large, sage-green leaves had a white, hairy underside – and frantically try to blot up the black blood. She remembered how, after The Architect's assault in the ruins of Ostagar, she had dreamed of bathtubs. In weird places. A recurring one about climbing to the top of the Vhenadal and finding a white room with a giant old bathtub glimmering under the stars. She had filled it with rainwater and submerged. It had not been enough. Now, even the seas would not be enough. There wasn't enough water in Thedas.
It took them the rest of the day to reach the place where Clans Sabrae and Lavellan had camped. It was night, studded with stars and firelight. The Dalish had set up their aravels in concentric circles that called to mind a small village. The aravel sails were made of thin, pliant leather dyed in bold colours, muted in the darkness, and were treated with a compound of beeswax and plant extracts that made them waterproof. Master Varathorn's wagon held double-curved bows and fletcher's tools. Weapon racks were obscure, hulking blacknesses bristling with sharp edges. In the centre, an array of carved logs and spread blankets circled a blazing fire. The hunters were cooking the fish they had caught today. Rillian's mouth watered. A canopy kept out the light rain.
She swallowed hard, ignoring the yearning to join them: she needed to wash off the rest of the tainted blood. Beside her, Merrill said softly, "Come with me – I have something to show you." Rillian met Merrill's eyes. They had not really gotten to know each other – in the Dalish camp in the Brecilian forest, she had been too focused on recruiting the Clan, and, outside Ostagar, Merrill had spent time with Wynne while Rillian and Rylock had shared a tent. Rillian had never understood the Dalish and their obsession with the past, but now she looked into the enormous green eyes flecked with gold – ships of gold adrift on a verdant sea - and saw the love of a place that revealed its beautiful heart only to those bold enough to accept its terms. While Keeper Marethari made the rest of her companions welcome, Rillian followed Merrill deeper into the darkness.
Merrill's tent was curiously separate from the others, and Rillian's attention was at once focussed on the far corner – to a drape patterned with flowers and vines, hung over what she assumed to be a portrait. Merrill pulled back the drape to reveal...not a portrait, but a dark mirror. Warped and fragmented shadows writhed across the chill surface. Sometimes - Rillian thought it must be a trick of the candlelight – the wavering images seemed to take on lives of their own. She imagined the waters of the Fade rippling against the glass and tumbling to ruin in ghostly pale chaos.
"It's an Eluvian," Merrill explained softly, "a piece of the past. Cale and Tamlen found it among the ruins of the Elvhen temple in the Brecilian forest. The mirror was tainted - and Tamlen died like our soldiers did after the battle. But it is not tainted now. I used Blood Magic to cleanse the mirror – and I can do it for your armour."
Rillian gaped at her. How? She wanted to say, How can something as foul as Blood Magic cleanse anything? That's like...like washing with mud. But the part of her that had been born in the Deep Roads - the part that was Urthemiel and The Architect, who had learned from First Enchanter Remille – answered that if Blood Magic and taint came from the same roots then it was no surprise one could affect the other. After Arl Howe's dungeon, she would not have thought she could bear to say this, but she told Merrill:
"Show me."
Merrill raised her thin white forearm and grasped a Dalish – ironbark – knife in her other hand. Rillian cried, "Stop!" and when Merrill blinked, she said, "Since you're doing this for me you can use mine. I'm not going to have you spill your own blood just so I can get clean."
"It's alright – I'm used to it. I've never used another person's blood and I never will."
Rillian hadn't known Blood Magic had a smell. A visceral, animal part of her recognized it. She found out that blood had a power as fierce and mercurial as lightning. It was stardust and the sea – iron and salt water. She recalled an old story – maybe Dalish, maybe Orlesian – Adaia had told her as a child. After she had begged and begged for the delicious horror. Afterwards, she hadn't been able to sleep for a week. The story was about a creature with the body of a woman and the hair of snakes. The veins on her left side contained blood that was lethal, while the right side gave life.
As Merrill began to chant, the darkness around Rillian – in the air, and in the taint on her armour – moved. It started to gather, to circle, to form a vortex round her, and then...funnelling down her own body, flowing like water...
And, in Rillian's mind, a light went on.
There was a moment, just before the eruption of nausea, when emotion and normal consciousness dropped away like two giant scales, and she had the licence to receive pure, disinterested information.
Once more, she heard Marethari tell her listeners a myth about the origins of taint. Merrill had scoffed, muttering the Keeper was telling her the story as a warning – but Rillian thought that, like all the best myths, it contained a fabulous, intricate reference to something that could not be grasped, could only be alluded to:
"Long ago, in the time of Arlathan, the world and stars were held within the branches of a tree of silver: the Tree of Life."
Rillian remembered the mountain outside Haven, that housed the Temple of Sacred Ashes; how the veins of lyrium had run like streams of silver through the rock, like the branches of a tree.
"And the Creators made Elves their first-born: never-dying, never-changing. But with the creation of the second-born - the younger, hungrier race of men - time and death bled into the world that had been ageless."
"There were those among the People who said that this was simply the way of things: that there was a time to be born and to die, to remember the past and adapt to the future. That nothing was forever: that lives rose and fell like trees, like...like wheat, even brief as that is. That the end of immortality is the beginning of life. But others would not listen. They would not admit their immortality failed - that their children might not have all they had been given. So they hatched a plan to bind their lives to the life of the Tree itself...using their own blood."
"But such a half-life brings a curse, and a price. Those who had done this lived forever - but as watchers from the other side of the Veil: gazing down upon the life they envied, but could not touch. All they could do was tempt mankind to make the same mistake - and spread their taint to the living world."
Touching the memories of Urthemiel had confirmed the magisters who sought to enter the Golden City were not the sinners who had cursed the world, as the Chantry said. They were merely biological machines used by creatures much older. The true source of the taint had been the demons who had once been Elves. Rillian had to wonder whether her hard-earned sample – her drop of Corypheus' blood – would show anything at all.
The Old Gods had been seduced by the worship of the Tevinter magisters. Better to reign over flesh than serve as spirit. They had helped create the first forms of Blood Magic, the Reaver powers of the dragon cults... The demons who had once been Elves had refined and enhanced the original blood magic - offered it to the magisters as a poisoned chalice, to draw them to ruination and possession as they had ruined and possessed Arlathan. But beyond even their will, the will of the taint itself had moved with the blind instinct of disease to spread and multiply, carried by Corypheus and his descendants.
Rillian recalled the words of The Architect – seared into her brain after the obscenity at Ostagar:
Do you know how my kind were conceived? A plot by long-ago soldiers from the Anderfels who struggled to find a way to resist the Tevinter Blood Magic. They found a creature who had once been a man - a magister named Corypheus - tainted and infected by the demons of the Black City. They spread his infection - created the first Broodmothers - trying to fight back against the Empire. And they nearly succeeded. Without them, your prophet would never have been able to bring them to their knees.
It was Elves who had created the taint and Wardens who had begun the Blights. Could I, an Elven Warden – end both? Or am I like the other poor fools – Branka, Zathrien, Avernus - who wanted good things and committed atrocities, believing the ends justified the means? What will they call me, when all this is over?
When Merrill's chant was over, Rillian felt...not clean, not the way she would after bathing, but free of taint. She looked at Merrill with awe.
"You've found the cure."
The young woman – Merrill was not even five feet and only came up to Rillian's chin – shook her head, black hair swaying like leaves.
"I can only remove taint from inanimate objects. The mirror, your armour... I cannot cure anything living. Tamlen...all our warriors after the battle - Keeper Marethari had to perform the same duty you did."
"But...it's a start..."
"I want to help you. If I can. But, for me, it is the start of something else. The Eluvian – I want to awaken this piece of our past. For all Elvhen."
A spark of anger shot up Rillian's spine like electricity. At the Dalish: who could hold in their hands the beginning of the cure for the ultimate disease and think only of using it to restore the glories of some mythical past. But the newer parts of her – the memories of Urthemiel and The Architect - counselled wisdom. Don't make an enemy here – if the taint was caused by the demons who were once Elves – if its true source lies somewhere in the Black City - then you might need an intact Eluvian. How else could you – a non-mage – hope to retrace the steps of Corypheus and walk bodily in the Fade?
Rillian composed a smile, and from Merrill's answering smile - a pleasure that lit the darkness of the tent like morning - it appeared the bardic training of Leliana had not entirely been wasted.
Rillian seated herself, her knees against the glass, her face so near she risked raising a veil of mist between herself and her reflection. As she stared, she thought she could discern the edges of her face blurring out of reality. There was...something behind her...
She shuddered, turned around, saw only Merrill. She said,
"How do you know the mirror doesn't work?"
"Well - look at it! Do you think it's supposed to just sit there and show nothing at all? I can feel the power in it, but it's...like it's asleep. I can't seem to wake it."
"What did the demon ask you in exchange for its help?"
"The spirit – Audacity – told me, once I succeeded in restoring the Eluvian, that would be his reward."
Because it was Elvhen, and seeks to use the mirror to escape the Black City...
"I think I need to go back there – to his statue on Sundermount. He knows about the mirror – I don't know how much. He wouldn't tell me everything, and it's dangerous to trust. He told me he witnessed its forging. He told me how to cleanse it of its corruption. He must know how to make it work."
"Summoning the demon can't possibly be the only way to fix the mirror. Someone else must know something."
"The only creatures who would know anything about it are in the Fade."
"Or in the ruins of Arlathan. Come with me – with my Wardens – and we will find our answers."
By the time Rillian returned to her tent – next to the one Jowan shared with Ser Otto, in the shadow of Master Varathorn's aravel – dawn was perhaps five minutes away. The sky was bruise-blue and flesh-pink. The first curve of the rising sun bloodied the Dalish camp. Inside, she peeled off the armour like unshelling a lobster and sighed, sinking down beside The Luggage – a black boulder in the dim light. Here was where she had packed the rows of vials and syringes and samples. Moved by an instinct she could not name, she carefully unpacked the petri dish that held the single droplet of blood taken from Corypheus. The inky droplet glowed with an oily, phosphorescent sheen. Already - within a few hours - the tainted blood had spread colour into the icy lyrium that surrounded it, so that the circular dish gradated towards an ultramarine purple. Black, purple and blue shifted like the spicules in ice. Rillian thought of an egg - where all life began - and of an eye, staring straight at her with the blind, soulless, malevolent blank stare of a demon.
Rillian knew the darkspawn were biological machines, driven by the blind instinct of taint to reproduce in the only way they could; by hijacking the flesh of others to be warped into shapes of horror. Old, eroded, decaying creatures who could breed only by perverting life, never by creating it. Did this sample - suspended in lyrium like a droplet of space in a strange, cold, wet-looking mirror - hold the key to ending the taint?
A mind floated in the void. No sound, no light, no movement. But it lived, it would grow. The Conductor was relieved to be free of the shell of putrescence where it had been trapped for so long. Sleeping. The frozen droplet of blood contained infinite space, infinite worlds. Was vast and microscopic; had seen civilisations evolve and decay. Was alive, awake. The blood was always the key.
Within the petri dish, Corypheus watched without eyes; the demon in the machine.
AN: Rillian's version of the Litany of Adralla is Night Terror by Laura Marling.
The idea of the Elves of Arlathan becoming the original demons of the Fade was – so far as I know – unique to Death and the Maiden when I wrote it 10 years ago, but now goes rather well with what Solas tells us about the Evanuris in Trespasser. I don't use "Evanuris" because Rillian hasn't met the Dread Wolf (yet) and I am not sure how much Urthemiel would have known.
The idea that it was Weisshaupt who captured and bred Corypheus as a means to resist Tevinter Blood Magic – and unwittingly started the First Blight – is from Shakepira's brilliant "Dark Stewards" theory in The Lion's Den. Its been canon for me ever since.