Chapter Twenty-Two: Love Remains
'...I loved you first when young and fair, but now I love you most;
The fairest flesh at last is filth on which the worm will feast;
This poor rib-grated dungeon of the holy human ghost,
This house with all its hateful needs no cleaner than the beast,
This coarse diseaseful creature which in Eden was divine,
This Satan-haunted ruin, this little city of sewers,
This wall of solid flesh that comes between your soul and mine,
Will vanish and give place to the beauty that endures...'
from 'Happy' by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
'After the first death, there is no other.'
from 'A refusal to mourn' by Dylan Thomas.
The loud knocking on the door startled Fenris and Lambert. Fenris was surprised to find himself so popular – two lots of people voluntarily seeking his company in one evening? There was Varric, with Bodahn (who had taken up residence in the Amell estate) and – yes – Anders (the abomination angry that his lover was spending time here?) and Sebastian and Donnic, even though it was not the day for their weekly card game. As if Brother Sebastian were not enough to represent the Chantry, the Templar Ser Emeric was here too! What in the Void? Had Lambert fallen foul of the Templars? Would Fenris have to fight them, to buy his friend time to escape?
"I'm sorry I missed you, love – I came as soon as I heard."
"Serah, I am most worried about the Lady Leandra..."
"Fenris, I hope you don't mind us calling on you at this hour?"
Seeing Ser Emeric, Lambert asked the Templar, "Is this about Ninette's killer, ser?" The bored and lonely noblewoman had been a client of Lambert's at one time. She had gone missing and Lambert had been worried, wondering if her uncaring husband had found out about their liaison and done something to punish her. Ghyslain de Carrac had not loved his wife but an Orlesian nobleman had his pride. Ser Emeric – an elderly knight who had served the Order for thirty years and sought comfort at the Blooming Rose from time to time - had promised Lambert he would investigate. Fenris did not know whether Ser Emeric had also been Lambert's client, but Lambert had once described him as "a good man – too good for Knight Commander Meredith's version of the Order." Ser Emeric had joined forces with Guard Captain Donnic, and Donnic had asked Fenris to accompany them, and together the three had cornered a Blood Mage named Gascard DuPuis in his Hightown mansion and rescued his terrified victim, Alessa. Gascard DuPuis had been executed by the Templars, and everyone had believed the infamous killer – who sent lilies to women before kidnapping and murdering them – had been ended.
"I had a friend who disappeared, once. Turns out he was under my bed, drunk." Everyone looked at Varric as though he had suddenly grown two heads. "What?"
"Why are you worried about my mother, Bodahn?" Lambert asked tautly, "She was with my Uncle and their guardsmen shopping in the merchants' quarter."
"Afterwards, your Uncle wanted to bring the last of his things from your old house in Lowtown. Leandra accompanied him – they were protected by guards – but then your Uncle left her to see a man about a dog..."
"Gambling again?" Lambert asked furiously, "Well, our guards are loyal – mother would still have had protection and should be back soon..."
Bodhan's next words made them feel cold as though dipped in an ice-crusted river:
"I thought so, too, ser but...these lilies arrived for her this morning."
"We will head to Lowtown. Now." Lord Amell did not check to see whether his orders were obeyed – simply strode off expecting the others to follow. They did.
In Hightown the mansions were five, six stories high, so tightly pressed you could not see the stars. The air at ground level formed damp canals where the odours of nobility congealed: water and horses and leather, soap and bread, sage and ale, tears and sweat, grease and straw and perfume. Pressed silk and brocade embroidered with silver thread, the smell of a cork from a vintage Tevinter wine. After dark the streets were blanched of the noise and colour and life they held during the day, but something in the monochrome air still echoed with the scents of cloth and spices and boots.
The group headed past the merchant's quarter – which still rang with the smells of vegetables and eggs, potatoes and flour – and down the winding road that led to the poorer areas. The streets of Lowtown stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells of mouldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired buildings stank of stale dust, greasy sheets and onions; the tanneries stank of sulphur and caustic lye and old blood. Lowtown licked the docks like a huge tongue. Here lay the ships, moored to posts and smelling of coal and grain and hay and damp ropes.
Robbers who might have tried their luck gave the armed group a wide berth, but a teenage youth was there talking to Gamlen.
"Wait, wait – you say you saw Leandra?"
"I did. What of it?"
"Blue dress, grey hair. Her cloak was brown, I think. She holds it closed with a round brooch, silver with...with garnets."
"I told you already. I saw her!"
"Did you see where she went?"
"What do I get for telling you?"
Fenris thought him remarkably brave – or remarkably foolish - to say that in front of an armed group, and all at once a memory brushed his mind lightly as the wings of a moth. That had been him, once, before the markings...but he squashed the thought. His stolen memories were precious as gold dust to him, but he put them aside for Lambert.
Lambert – of course - was generous with his coin; the boy looked at the handful in wonder and said, "That's real gold that is! I'm your man, through and through. Tell you everything I know!"
"That lady was here – with her guards and a servant. Looked like she was going to take the bridge to Hightown."
Lowtown's hovels were on one side and the viaduct on the other. The metal was broken and rusted; the bridge itself fissured with deep cracks. Below, the bridge loomed over tumbling dark water that wound like a ribbon into the sea. Lambert was studying it, his pale skin slightly iridescent in the wan mist. Perhaps wondering if his mother had slipped and fallen. But the boy continued:
"But then a man came up to her. He stumbled and fell over, right at her feet, like he was dead. His hands were all bloody, like he'd been in a fight. The lady shook him, and I think he said, "Help." She got him to his feet, and he was wobbly – it was funny. Anyway, they left, and she told her guards to follow. That's it...that's all I saw."
"What did the man look like?"
"He was a man. He had hair and... a nose. And nice clothes, but they were all stained from the blood."
"I never thought I'd curse my sister's kind-heartedness," Gamlen muttered, but Lambert was looking puzzled. Fenris knew why – Leandra Amell had been desperate to leave her life in Lowtown behind, to the point of looking down her nose at people who were in the same position she herself had been only a year before. She would hardly have been the type to offer a filthy stranger charity. One of Danarius' sayings came back to him, unbidden: the blood is always the key. He sniffed the air, scanning the roads for the faint scent of blood. There – on the dusty stone, near the scuffmarks of the guards' boots. He took a sample on his finger and as soon as he put it to his nose he recognized the scent of blood magic: molasses tinged with decay.
Gamlen and Lambert were talking pointlessly, "You could be wrong about all this. Maybe the lilies don't mean anything."
Ser Emeric joined Fenris. "Did someone teach you the Templar techniques?"
"How to track mages using phylacteries?" Fenris asked drily, "No, but this is similar. I was my master's wolf. He used me to sniff out his prey. I can tell you this man was a blood mage – probably how he "convinced" Leandra to follow him – and I can follow his trail."
Saying it was humiliating – the memories a sickness of soul that could be felt throughout the body – but Lambert was more important. His friend followed him in a passion of gratitude. Fenris was gratified to see Anders frown - wondering what would happen if Fenris ever used this technique against him – and smiled coldly. In this dark and naked world, making abominations uneasy was sometimes the only satisfaction you got.
"I'm going to go home in case Leandra shows up," Gamlen muttered – guilt and defeat in every corner of his stooped posture.
"Good idea, serrah," said Bodahn, following with relief. Lambert ignored them.
Tenebrous clouds gathered as rain moved into the area. Lambert looked at him anxiously – afraid the blood trail would be washed off – but Fenris shook his head. Once he had the mage's scent, he would not let go. There was not a blood mage he had tracked that he did not know by smell; that he could not recognize again. Unwinding and spinning out these threads gave him the satisfaction of a predator. The silver rain was like steel parting wet black wool; bright sparks in an otherwise dirty and flocculent sky.
"There! The foundry! They must've gone inside."
Fenris, Ser Emeric and Donnic traded glances. This was where the trail of Mharen's phylactery had ended two years ago – this was where they had found Ninette's missing hand.
"Why didn't you post guardsmen or Templars?" Fenris hissed furiously.
"We didn't have the manpower," Donnic said bitterly, "Besides - the Viscount was sure the killings would stop after Gascard DuPuis was executed. An accomplice – or a copycat?"
"Knight Commander Meredith is more interested in watching the mages already inside the Gallows," Ser Emeric admitted.
Lambert ignored them and pushed the iron doors open, striding into the darkness as if he had lost all fear. His skin was starkly white, almost luminous. Donnic raised his lantern, and he became radiant, not luminous. His violet eyes burned with an incandescence, as if he were standing alone at the edges of the world, and there was a graceful, almost feline quality to his movements. Something intolerably big, something hideous, was approaching, was almost in the room. Fenris saw Lambert as a cat lost in this abandoned warehouse, dwarfed by planes and shadows. It filled him with dread. He moved in front of him, protective.
The little pool of stagnant yellow light caught on the stained stone floor, leaving the group adrift in an ocean of light and dark. The plaster had mostly rotted away, leaving the wood beneath bare as bones. The abandoned foundry was a huge space full of massive constructions covered with dust and filled with a specific smell of metal. The decaying site smelled old, of long-lost hopes, of blood. Rust bled about the bleak white concrete from the reinforcing steel. The pocked footings of an old pipeline encircled the foundry floor. Inside was a horrible concentration of nebulous, amorphous, nauseating odours – and yet unmistakably human.
The corpses of the Amell guardsmen were strewn about the industrialized smithy: gashed and swollen faces; wide, gaping mouths which had opened to utter death-screams and were now fixed in rigid agony. Magic had melted them into every shape into which the human face could be flattened, slashed, puffed or putrefied. Around these were demons gazing with thirsty greediness, their skeletal arms floating like drowners in water. The captain of the Amell force had died hard, his skull yawning in ghastly redness and eyes staring unflinchingly at the hideous throng.
Lambert was already singing the Litany of Adralla as Varric and Sebastian began to loose bolts and arrows. Emeric, Fenris and Donnic got in close, while Anders was casting. At the sight, both Emeric and Sebastian looked alarmed: they had not known either Anders or Lambert were mages. They traded a glance, then, in unspoken agreement, decided they had bigger problems. Anders got off a fireball and the great wings of steel that had been blasted into the ground around the pipe hissed with heat. Steam rose and spat. Fenris turned from killing two demons, confused as to why his chest was slick with blood until he realized it was his own. But it was superficial. A demon floated past his guard; headed for Lambert. Fenris would not have been in time; suddenly, Emeric was there, taking the gash meant for Lambert. He crumpled forward, and Lambert was there.
"Lie still, ser, I'm a mage too. Let me heal you..."
"No time but...thank you..." Emeric's breath expired in a bubbling sigh. He did not take another.
Donnic finished off his demon with workmanlike determination, and suddenly the fight was over. Lambert leaned over Emeric's body, closing his eyes gently. Brother Sebastian put a hand on his shoulder, and Lambert went silent as he spoke the Chant:
"...Here lies the abyss, the well of all souls; from whose emerald waters doth life begin anew. Come to me, child, and I shall embrace you. In my arms lies eternity..."
"He saved me," Lambert said, struggling against tears.
"Don't waste it," said Fenris, and moved to scan the factory floor for exits. Varric joined him, and a short while later said, "Aha! This wasn't there before..." The dwarf knelt and his fingers worked in amazing circles round the hidden trapdoor. "Not sure that...hang on...got it!"
He and Fenris struggled to get the heavy iron door open - it lurched aside with a protesting screech. Before either could stop him, Lambert had suddenly dropped down the hole.
"Sparky!"
"Festis bei umo canavarum," Fenris muttered in resignation and dropped down after him. A moment later, Anders and the others followed.
The darkness was alive with the sickly-sweet odour of death. Fenris recognized butyric acid, intoxicating amounts of phenol, and acetone. There was also formalin, which warned him to expect something like the horrors they had seen in Hadriana's lair. The notes found in the sad remnant of a library - the notes Fenris could read thanks to Lambert's teachings - confirmed this:
...used quicklime to preserve her feet. Unsure whether texture of the skin is to my liking. Will try other methods...
"Maker's breath – that smell..."
...Mharen...it's a pretty name. I saw her hands. Long, slender fingers. Fair skin – the hands of a life-long scholar. Oh, to lock my own clumsy fingers in hers again...
"I know this locket." Lambert's voice as he picked the jewel from the uncaring stone was heart-breaking. "It was mother's favourite."
Anders was poring over a letter as though about to be sick. "It has the seal of the Circle – and that's the First Enchanter's handwriting..."
...My dear friend,
I have obtained the books that you requested. I'll leave them at our usual hiding spot. Please collect them as soon as possible. I would hate to see them in the wrong hands!
Your last letter was fascinating! You have proven me wrong, once again, by doing the impossible. I shouldn't have doubted your resolve, and I hope you will keep me apprised of further progress.
Your friend and colleague,
O...
Fenris decided to refrain from commenting that it appeared Knight Commander Meredith had reason to distrust First Enchanter Orsino. Anders could have disposed of the letter before he saw it, after all. Lambert was the priority.
With sickening normalcy, an old armchair was placed by a table that bore an ink-pot and a letter.
...Today is our anniversary. I had hoped to complete my work before now, but one piece is missing. I'm so sorry, love. Please wait a little longer. I haven't forgotten my promise.
When I see it, I'll know. I would know your face anywhere...
Even before they came to the shrine – the portrait that caused Lambert to breathe, "The woman in the painting...she almost looks like mother" Fenris knew what they would find. He had seen it done. Like all magisters, Danarius had been skilled in necromancy. Fenris had hunted Danarius' enemies – a wolf bringing the bodies back to his master – and Danarius had summoned spirits and forced them to reanimate the corpses. Because if they were fresh – and he had taught Fenris how to preserve them – the spirits could read the last febrile thoughts etched upon the rotting brains. Danarius had done it to learn his enemies' secrets. This mage – both devoted and insane - had done it to regain his dead wife. The pathos being that it would not be his dead wife's thoughts he regained, but Leandra's.
"Anders - Varric," Fenris said – his tone so commanding they stared at him in astonishment, "We need to get Lambert out now or he'll lose his reason. Maybe for good."
Anders did not question him. "By force, then? He won't come else."
"It must be all of us," agreed Varric, "It's no time to be singled out."
But Lambert had already escaped them like a dream on waking. He was round the corner from them, staring with horror at the dead body of a woman in a fine dress.
"M...mother?" He turned her over, his pale, slender hand shaking.
"Alessa!" Fenris recognized the woman he, Donnic and Emeric had rescued from Gascard DuPuis.
"Poor thing," Donnic said quietly, "She must've thought she was safe – only to have this madman complete Gascard's work."
At the far end of the cavern the mage stood with his back to them. He was wearing robes of gleaming, purest white. He was surrounded by a circle of silver glyphs etched into the stone. He turned, and his eyes fastened first on Lambert. Slowly, the bright, glittering points – pale as rain – seemed to change, melting into grey pools that welled with grief. Corpse-white and somehow desiccated, his pale hair and robes gave him the look of a bleached insect. A too-still form sat beside him. The light of a lantern shone above her, a paling of the wedding dress she wore. The lace lay in shadows in the stone floor, and all over the form of the woman, shadows of lace on the shawl over her shoulders and head.
"I was wondering when you'd show up. Leandra was so sure you'd come for her."
"Where is she!"
"I have done the impossible. I have touched the face of the Maker and lived."
"Come with me, love," Anders grasped Lambert's shoulder. "Please."
"Do you know what the strongest force in the universe is?"
"Come with me, Lambert. I'd die for you any time. I love you."
"Love. I pieced her together from memory. I found her eyes, her skin, her delicate fingers. And, at last, her face...oh, this beautiful face."
An elegant, epicene movement of the mage's hand accompanied his words; he beckoned, and the woman rose like a puppet on a string. Her back was to them still.
"I've searched far and wide to find you again, beloved, and no force on this earth will part us."
The dead woman turned, and from the corpse came a whistling groan, the decayed fragment of a human voice:
"I knew you would come. My little boy has become so strong."
Lambert could not speak. The thing confronting him, with each least movement that it made, destroyed the very frame of sanity in which words might have meaning. When he laughed or sang, his winelike eyes were sparkling as amethysts; now they were darker, fractured – the pitch-black pupils swallowed colour. The deep hollow eyes were sunk in a face more drawn than the corpse's. He looked like an ivory mask; but tears ran from his eyes in silence, like blood from an open wound.
Fenris knew the same thing Lambert now knew; how magic revealed the emptiness beneath the waking world, how books like the ones the murderer had studied were dipped in a slow poison that kills the spirit. How necromancy and blood magic reduced the world to a waste of dark and silence; a starlit ruin where already, everywhere, the alien and unimaginable was awakening to its new dominion.
Unable to help Lambert, he did the only thing he could: he phased and moved within the necromancer's glittering sphere of protective magics. The killer was protected from all normal weapons, from all intrusion – but the blue wraith came for him and ripped out his heart. He died with a strange smile on his face, as if death were a revelation - had startled him with everything he needed to know.
With the necromancer dead, the corpse staggered and fell; a marionette with its strings cut. Lambert was right against it then, supporting the thing as its legs failed it. Grasping the body with both fists, lying across it, his mouth pressed to its forehead. He lifted his head and gave a cry of grief that raised the hair on the back of Fenris' neck.
"Shhh. Don't fret, darling." The corpse might have been Lambert's mother, rocking the boy to sleep after a nightmare. "That man would have kept me trapped in here. But now...I'm free. I get to see Bethany again...and your father... I love you. You've always made me so proud."
The corpse did not move again, and Lambert buried his face in the dead hair.
After a while, Varric, awkward with embarrassment and pity, said, "Sparky..."
Lambert's gaze passed over him, empty. The corpse moved, shaken with his sobbing.
Fenris did not know what to do. He had only just learned how to act the part of a free man, a citizen of Kirkwall, but the veneer was paper-thin. He would have died for Lambert, but did not know what to say, and he felt, once again, his own shame. Fortunately, Anders did.
"Love, I am going to burn this chamber of horrors, and everything in it."
Lambert pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until Fenris feared he'd harm them. He did not know what Lambert saw in that sparkling darkness. Coming out of it, he said, "Yes. Yes. Yes. So it must be – we can't leave any flesh, any blood behind for necromancers to use. I don't care that his body will burn with them – anything, so long as mother is safe."
Anders turned to the others, commanding. "Leave the room through the trapdoor, all of you. You will need to leave the Foundry before I begin."
"No," said Lambert; a strange, dark light in his eyes. Fenris shuddered, thinking of the cultures where it was customary for a wife to be burned on her husband's funeral pyre. Was this suicide? He looked to Anders for help. Anders said to him,
"Don't worry, Fenris – I can protect one other person from the fire. You should get out, though."
Fenris smiled through blade-thin lips. "No need." Thanks to Danarius and these filthy markings, he could exist as a ghost, half-living in the Fade.
Anders ignored him. His profile was hawk-like as he whispered the spidery words of magic; a strange, fiercely eager expression on his sweat-gleaming skin. His eyes closed. Lifting his face to the cracked ceiling, he raised his arms, palms outwards. As his chanting continued, Fenris felt the same mixture of awe and disgust he had known in the presence of Danarius. He had the distinct impression that both he and Lambert were being drawn irresistibly towards Anders; though, when he checked, neither had moved.
Brother Sebastian had left, along with Varric and Donnic, so it was left to Lambert to whisper the words of the Chant as an eerie counterpoint to Anders' magic:
"...The Light shall lead her safely
Through the paths of this world and into the next.
For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water.
As the moth sees light and goes towards flame.
She should see fire and go towards light.
The Veil holds no uncertainty for her,
And she shall know no fear of death, for the Maker
Shall be her beacon and her shield, her foundation and her sword..."
He repeated the words Sister Leliana had taught him like a mechanical toy – gently, absently, as though reciting by rote but not believing it. He looked, once, at Anders – as though at a half-glimpsed memory; something hauntingly beautiful but impossible – and then his violet eyes went opaque once more.
The air around Anders rippled and shifted as though the mage stood at the eye of a hurricane. The Veil fluttered, and pain stabbed the brands. A second later, Fenris had phased, watching the storm as if at one layer removed. The world was an amorphous, shifting haze, with no continuity, no certainty. Fiery fingers of flame spread from Anders, dancing on the vast, spoked wheels and iron cabinets as though oil had been poured over them, lighting the darkness with pellucid clarity. Green, gold, blue, purple, red – the magical fire was lit like a lunar rainbow. Sparks showered around Anders like seeds of lightning, like white birds pecking, until it seemed he, too, must dissolve in flames. But nothing touched him. He and Lambert stood safely in the centre of the blaze.
The white-shrouded bodies – Leandra, Alessa and even the blood mage – were illuminated by a nimbus of light, ignited like stars. The death-shrouds shrivelled like moths under a merciless candle, leaving only pallid bones; then these collapsed to dust. The library, too – its books and workstations – was consumed by the blaze, the iron supports burning like a rage demon with misshapen fingers clawing the air, then fading into nothingness. Anders' face glistened with sweat; his lyrium eyes reflected the flames like blue suns, his breath came fast and shallow. His face was cracked like marble, and Justice peered out. There was a look of ecstasy on the spirit's face – of exultation – of triumph.
Then it was over, and the Foundry was a charred hulk. Anders and Lambert stood within the ruins, and strength seemed to seep from them like blood from a wound. Fenris put an arm around them both and led them away. Anders stared at him without recognition. In his eyes was the look of one who has been permitted to entire a realm of lambent, perilous beauty, only to find himself, once more, cast down into the grey, rainswept world. Lambert was unresponsive as a mechanical toy and gave no help as Fenris tried to get him through the trapdoor but that did not matter. The lyrium brands had made Fenris very strong – strong enough to get up there himself and simply pull Lambert after him. Anders stood below, staring up as his lover disappeared, then followed.
Upstairs Brother Sebastian and Donnic had carried Emeric's body from the Foundry. He would be returned to the Order and given the rituals appropriate to a man who had devoted his life to fighting the worst magic could do. The fact he had died for a mage would not be mentioned among his list of deeds, but Fenris would not forget.
Varric was waiting for them. "You know, Broody," he said softly, "I think the four of us have earned a drink."
Normally this was where Lambert would have looked at them, with that smile that pulled them all together, and agreed. Now he came and went in snatches, as though flickering from waking to dreaming. It was left to Varric to invite Fenris and Anders to Lambert's house – which he did, without any trace of embarrassment.
The rainy night had become an ashen dawn with argentine clouds, faintly lucent. The fire had not spread beyond the steel setting of the Foundry – just as well, Fenris thought drily, because he was certain Anders had spared no thought to the citizens who might be harmed by his flames. The buildings of Lowtown were like black molars in a mouth that stank of sewage; over the bridge, these became the pallid monoliths of Hightown, like chess pieces in a game which the rich invariably won against the poor.
Gamlen and Bodahn were waiting for them inside the Amell estate.
"Did you find her?" they asked – although one look at Lambert's face ought to have told them.
"I'm sorry, Uncle," Lambert said in a shockingly normal voice, "She is in the Golden City, with Father and Bethany."
"You were right...about the flowers and everything...I...I can't believe it," Gamlen's face crumpled and he swallowed a sob.
"I was too late."
"So you're to blame! If you'd been quicker or stronger you could've...she could be..."
"Perhaps if you had not chosen to gamble tonight..." Fenris began furiously, but Varric shushed him. In truth, Fenris knew if he hadn't then Gamlen, too, would have died along with the guards.
Gamlen began to cry. "Why her? Why Leandra?"
"Because the Maker is evil," Lambert stated flatly.
As Bodahn lit candles Lambert peered at them blankly from deep hollow eyes, like an owl revealed in daylight. He looked a little mad already. I was too late as well... Fenris realized.
"Where is the one who did this to her?" Gamlen growled, "Did you find the person who killed Leandra?"
"Oh, yes," Lambert answered with a hollow smile, "We found him. You won't have to live in the same universe – breathe the same air – as that filth."
"It won't bring Leandra back but I'll take comfort in knowing that." Gamlen turned away, stopped at the door, "Carver needs to be told. I'll send a message to the Grey Wardens of Ferelden. Take care, my boy."
Varric – who knew where all the drinks were kept – busied himself pouring wine for them all. Anders approached his lover while Fenris stood, uncomfortable and unnoticed, wondering if he should leave.
"I know nothing I say will change it...I'm just...I'm sorry." Fenris had never seen the smooth-tongued Anders lost for words before. "You were lucky to have her as long as you did. When the pain fades, that's what will matter."
"Magic did this to her."
"He was a madman! That's what made him do this, not magic. I know you're looking for someone to be angry at. If it helps, go ahead and take it out on me."
"Of course I don't blame you, Anders, or myself, or any mage. None of us asked for this curse. That's not what I meant. I meant that if magic has the power to do this – to tear a soul from the Maker's side and imprison it inside its own rotting corpse – then magic should not exist. The Maker is evil, and Thedas is just an ocean of horror."
This was something Fenris could answer. This was how he could help. "Lambert," he said gently, "You are under a misapprehension."
Lambert looked at him thoughtfully, in a grey calm, as if he stood on the threshold of a door he had been going out of and could not be sure it was worth his while to turn back.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean the thing that animated your mother's corpse – that spoke with her voice – was a Fade spirit summoned by the necromancer, not your mother's soul."
Lambert looked at him hauntingly, with sunken eyes. "How do you know that – when I don't? How can you be certain?"
"Because I have seen it done." It was, though Lambert did not know it, Fenris' confession, drawn like an arrow from a wound, wet with his blood. He expected disgust but, no matter, it was worth it to put Lambert's mind at rest. "Danarius would order me to hunt down his enemies – which I did, tracking their blood as you saw tonight – and instructed me in how to preserve the bodies, so the brains were fresh. Fresh enough that, when he summoned spirits to inhabit them, the spirits could read the last thoughts etched in the folds – the last secrets they hid. Sometimes, if the dead were preserved well enough – if the summoned spirit was powerful enough – it would even assume it was the person. But no magic can raise the dead. And we know – from that madman's journals – your mother did not suffer. The poison was painless and instant. He was insane, not a sadist. Everything else he did to her was after death, not before. While you talked with the spirit, Leandra's soul was already with your father and sister."
Lambert's eyes had been fixed on a light-point on his silver cup. He raised them. Silently, Fenris caught his breath. He had been in time.
"Think about it," he finished calmly, "If the necromancer could truly summon the dead then the man would have summoned his dead wife not your mother. The spirit read Leandra's last thoughts – spoke with her voice – because he had preserved her brain. But the thoughts were only an echo – the mind behind them was already gone."
"I still think," Lambert said shakily, like a child, "That necromancy should not exist. That poor spirit – maybe Faith or Compassion or something else – was just minding its own business, in the Fade, when it was summoned against its will and forced to inhabit a dead body. The poor thing even thought it was my mother – that it would see our family again... I wonder, do spirits go to the Golden City when they die?"
"Justice thought not," Anders said quietly, "That's why he was so terrified – why I saved him. But now I think – maybe – once I am gone, Justice will go to the Golden City like any other soul. As himself, not this thing I have made of him..."
"I'm sorry," Lambert said remorsefully – clearly back to the person who thought of others before himself - "I didn't mean to make you think of that." Fenris began to relax. Lambert had come in from the threshold; the door to life had shut behind him. "But you are right, though: I think spirits are people. I mean, the Chantry says they are not, because they do not have free will, but as far as I'm concerned if something has sentience and emotion and can suffer then it is a person and will go to the Golden City."
"Well," said Varric, vastly relieved, "Here are some drinks for you philosopher-kings."
It was, thought Fenris, surely not the custom in Kirkwall to give the dead a wake that involved drinking and playing cards, but that is how their day ended. When Donnic and Brother Sebastian returned Lambert invited them as well. He told them stories of his parents, his brother and sister, their lives on the run and in Lothering, and asked Brother Sebastian for stories of Emeric. The six of them had come into a strange alignment. It was as if words formed stitching around the fabric of their lives, mending tears.