Chapter Twenty-Four: I Am Become Death
The clinic was busy, as always. Time brought Anders two of Madame Lusine's girls arguing about who was more deserving of treatment – one with the pox and the other pregnant – a child with a broken collarbone and an old man with dementia. He finished treating one of Varric's smugglers (he treated both Varric's and Athenril's people as well as the Coterie – on the streets they were mortal enemies but the clinic was politically neutral) then held the old man's hand as he asked for the wife who had died six years ago.
The lantern at the entrance cast a dim yellowish glow over the scene, bathing everything in a heavy, soup-like haze. Anders smelled piss, blood, boiled elfroot, and his own sour breath. He carefully hoarded a tin of dentifrice, a treasure in a place such as this. He stretched, feeling himself coming apart at the seams, and gazed to where Ser Pounce-a-Lot was playing with Incognito – the two of them thought they were apex predators but were really two balls of fur that gave him life.
Watching Incognito made him think of Lambert. Lambert was smaller and slighter than him and smelled of almonds and spices. His eyes were soft as shadows, full of dreams as the Fade, and they looked as though there was more behind them than another person could ever know. Anders was thirty-three - thirteen years older than Lambert – and sometimes felt like his teacher; the two often working side-by-side on the bench, cutting up herbs in companionable silence. Ironic, really, given how he'd hated his own teachers at the Circle – Senior Enchanters who'd long ago lost who they were beneath the suffocating walls of conformity, trying to imprison the next generation. He'd taught Lambert other things as well – repeating the lessons Karl had taught him...
...You love Karl, yet now you lust for Lambert...
Anders sighed. Justice was incapable of understanding. The spirit was changeless, ageless, deathless – every moment was present to him – life a continuous expansion of now. To Justice Anders' feelings for Lambert were a betrayal of Karl.
"It's complicated, alright?"
Still, Anders knew he had been selfish – knew it was wrong to enjoy a relationship with Lambert when he would only hurt him. The age difference wasn't a problem – in many ways they were equals: Anders had come to the Circle age twelve and for the next twenty years had tasted life only in desperate snatches – a pretty girl, a decent meal, standing in the rain – the escapes that were bright jewels in a sea of emptiness. The dead weight of long years trapped in the Tower – not allowed to go outside or cook or choose his own clothes – had made him very young; yet, at the same time, very old. Sometimes, as he listened to Lambert's tales of his family - their travels, their adventures - he was torn between happiness and stark, blazing jealousy.
...It is an injustice. Every mage should have what Lambert had...
Yes, the cause. That was why he had been unfair to begin a relationship with Lambert. You mean more to me than life but the cause matters more than either of us...
Thinking of the cause made Anders feel guilty. There was one thing he had been asked to give that he had shrunk from...
...The Lowtown warehouse in which the Underground Railroad had met last night smelled only a little better than Darktown. It was a vast, desolate place, in a state of what looked like decomposition. To get there, Anders had passed through a cumulous of steam rising from a grate in the lightless road. The air inside seemed wetter, darker, the building somehow haunted. There were boards over windows as if eyes were covered. Groups of people – some apostates, some sympathizers – had huddled in pools of candlelight as though on islands surrounded by black water.
The Libertarian faction believed in mage freedom but advocated peaceful means. They thought it should be won by convincing non-mages they were no threat, by making a good impression. They fluttered their papers in a crescendo of rustling and glided like chess pieces in the black or white robes of Senior Enchanters, echoing the fraternities within the Circle, where most had come from. And, when nothing changed, they complained in dark corners and thought letters and candlelit meetings and showing the world they were good little mages would achieve something. It never had.
"We can write to the new Divine asking for the Gallows to be made more like Haven in Ferelden. I've heard the new Knight Commander even lets mage couples keep their children."
"Rylock?" Anders had snorted disbelievingly, "Don't you believe it! Anyway, the time for talk is over. Templars are raping mages. There's no debate to be had while that is going on. It's like discussing whether to add ice to the drinks while watching someone pour in poison."
...The human rights of a minority do not depend on convincing the majority we are good citizens. A right that depends on the goodwill of others is no right. Mage freedom is an inalienable right, therefore attempts to deny us are unlawful and any means of resistance legitimate...
Anders had been furious when the Resistance had voted against mounting raids inside the Gallows to free the prisoners rotting in cells, to save those being tortured for Alrik's amusement:
"It is too dangerous. Even if we make it out of there, these mages all have phylacteries – the Templars will pursue them and find us. None of our escape routes – to the Free Marches or Orlais or Ferelden – will be any good to them; they cannot settle anywhere in Andrastian lands. Our only hope is to focus our aid on helping those born free avoid the Circles. In time, when there are enough of us, we will change the face of Thedas."
"So we abandon those who need us most – just because they have faced horrors you never will and cannot begin to imagine!"
The Resolutionists were a tiny minority within a minority but they saw it his way and had helped Circle mages before. They had an agreement with a Magister Gereon Alexius to take a quota of Circle mages to be his apprentices. Phylacteries were not a problem: Andrastian Templars would not dare follow them to Tevinter. Anders had heard Alexius treated talented mages well. Less was said about the fate of those not deemed talented enough, but this spectre had never stopped anyone. When a man was dying at the bottom of a cold, dark well it was impossible to make him fear the heat and thirst of the sun. The last mages Anders had freed had bent to kiss the ground through the sewage. But Alexius would not help them break into the Gallows dungeon - he was an ally but not a revolutionary.
Then a man named Decimus had approached him. Decimus and his lover, Grace, had escaped the Starkhaven Circle after the Tower burned down (Anders was quite certain Decimus had had something to do with that). Decimus' apprentice, Alain, had turned himself in and then been tortured into revealing details of Decimus' mentor.
"It is too late for Corinus," Decimus had told him with a hard, intense stare, the candlelight gilding his cheekbones, "If he is lucky, his heart will have given out already. But he taught me to think in terms of the big picture. It is not enough to save one mage, five mages... It is no longer about individuals. The only thing that will teach the Andrastian Chantry to respect us is if we show them how flimsy their security measures are. To break out en masse. To that end, I offer you a patron – one who will provide the manpower and magic to make your revolution a reality. And his price is very reasonable: one Elven soporati for countless mages, present and future."
"This patron is a Magister, I take it?" Anders had asked, his skin crawling, "and the life is...someone I know, or you would not be asking me."
The elegant, epicene hands – pale as a bleached insect - had reached into a fold of his robes and produced an amulet with a blue sigil. Anders had learned to read Tevene, after a fashion, and knew enough to recognize the sigil of House Danarius.
He had shuddered, knowing the deal Decimus wanted him to make was dirtier than anything he had done for the Mage's Collective in Ferelden. Many said they had ties with the Tevinter slavers who preyed on Denerim's Alienage, but it had never been proven, and Anders had never known any of the Elves who might or might not have been taken on the galleons.
"I am sorry," he had said, "How can I fight against mage slavery if I am happy to sell another person into slavery and call him collateral damage?"
… Fenris tried to murder me – tried to make both Lambert and Feynriel Tranquil. He is an enemy. Ethics do not apply to enemies ...
"Even enemies do not deserve to be raped and tortured and worked to death."
"And here I thought you fought for mages' rights – whatever side that puts you on," Decimus had replied smoothly, "Keep the amulet. If you change your mind, let mana flow into the sigil – I will receive your message and we can make the exchange" ...
Anders' parents – middle-class merchants from the Anderfels – had opposed slavery on principle: they were Andrastians, and slavery was illegal in Andrastian lands. But they had also taught him (not in so many words) that there was human misery and there was Elven misery. The latter was so extreme and so all-encompassing it was just the way of the world, like gravity or stars or rain. It couldn't be borne by them so must be being borne by people who weren't quite like them.
In the Circles Anders had thought Elves should agree with the mage resistance – once mages were freed they could surely get around to freeing the Elves – but the Elven mages had been so relieved, so grateful to be out of the Alienages they had done whatever the Chantry wanted. When Anders had tried to convince them mages and Elves had common ground they had simply looked at him with those glittering alien eyes – eyes that were beautiful but impenetrable – and he had had no idea what they were thinking.
...The difference is not between mages and Elves it is between mages and non-mages. Non-mages do not see us in the Fade – their dreams are the mere replay of the day's events, their minds unspooling like the minds of animals...
A dwarven merchant burst into the clinic and interrupted his soliloquy. Anders blinked - it took him a moment to recognize Varric. Varric Tethras looked more disheveled than Anders had ever seen him – and since when had the dwarf ever visited him in the clinic? People came to see Varric holding court in The Hanged Man and not the other way round.
"What's wrong?"
"They've taken Sparky!"
An icy chill crawled down Anders' back. He motioned for his assistant – a young mage girl he had saved from the Templars in Lowtown. Templars had come to arrest her and take her phylactery – he had ended them and disposed of the bodies. She would be here only until he could arrange passage to the Marches.
She approached him, soft green eyes wide and fearful. Anders had never let her deal with patients on her own before.
"You can do this, Jessa," he told her, not pleadingly but calmly, with granite certainty. He felt as if he could lend her his strength – she was pulling it out of him, demanding it. He gave it gladly - all the strength he had in him, and then some - and watched her walk into her trial by fire.
He disappeared into the back with Varric – his own quarters were merely a crate with blankets and a pile of slushy romance novels – at another time Varric would have grinned to see Swords and Shields taking pride of place. Today he had thoughts for only one person.
"Who has taken Lambert – the Templars? How do you know?"
"I've got a man inside."
Of course he did – probably more than one. Athenril was not the only smuggler who supplied Templars with extra lyrium.
"Sparky wrote to his cousin in the Ferelden Circle asking how to free a possessed mage – I warned him not to do it!"
… He is a traitor! An enemy who wants to mutilate you and kill me! If his treachery has resulted in his arrest and torture, that is justice ...
"If Lambert cracks he will reveal the location of the clinic – countless mages will be put at risk. We have to free him – for the cause."
Anders had meant the reply for Justice but saw Varric looking at him as though he had never seen him before – stricken, slightly sick.
Flatly, Varric said, "I don't care what your motivations are, Blondie – I am going to save him because he is my little brother. Come with me or don't - it's your choice."
"Lambert is going to need healing – I will come."
...No. I will not permit it. If you rescue Lambert – one mage who has already betrayed us – then Meredith will tighten security so that other prisoners more worthy will never be freed. And they will face reprisals. As you refused Decimus' offer we will have no way of fighting back. The only option is for us to move the clinic again – we were wise not to trust Lambert with any important information...
Horrified, Anders felt the spirit enmesh him like an insect in amber – felt his own reflexes, muscles, mind, will, writhe in prison. He – who hated bonds – now a prisoner inside his own flesh. Justice would not permit him to help Lambert – he could rage but he could not fight. He had already given too much of himself – there was not enough Anders left.
"Please, Justice," he begged, in the silence of his heart – cerebrally, as a voiceless man must speak - "Lambert did not mean harm – does not realise we are one and the same. He thinks he met and fell in love with Anders – means to free Anders from what he sees as slavery."
He felt Justice writhe from that interpretation – the pain of the spirit at being seen as a slaver who had hijacked the body of his host.
"He is wrong – of course – and he only needs me to convince him. He loves you – fell in love with our idealism, our dedication – and these qualities did not come from Anders. After what the Templars have done to him he will see the rightness of our cause."
Anders felt Justice waver, like ripples in a tower of ice.
... Yes, he could be convinced. But it is still wrong to save Lambert and leave those innocents behind to face reprisals. Every prisoner is as real, as valuable as Lambert – it is only your flesh-and-blood parochialism that insists Lambert is worth more."
"Then let me make the deal with Decimus! We will rescue Lambert and Alain and Corinus – anyone else we can – and this raid will be the first step. We will return in force – with Danarius' backing – and we will have every last Templar for these abuses! The Gallows will burn. We will rise up and set the world on fire..."
Anders could see the idea – the images he sent – fall upon Justice like kindling lit with the spark. The rescue of Lambert and the deal with Danarius formed a synecdoche of a greater, wondrous whole. He was offering Fenris for Lambert – and he had found Justice's price...
Anders blinked. Whose price? He was the child of whom Anders and Justice had been the parents and it made no sense to be arguing with himself. First sign of madness, he thought, trying for a flippant tone – but somehow he could not bring himself to laugh.
Varric had already left the clinic - heading for the old smugglers' run. It led underneath Darktown, underneath the bay, underneath the Gallows itself. The mage resistance had used it too, before freeing prisoners had become too dangerous. He calculated the chances of just him and Varric being able to succeed – minute odds. But they would win – they had to. Lambert's freedom, he told himself, like a prayer. The price – one broody Elf with a chip on his shoulder – was tragic – but it was a sacrifice Anders was willing to make. The ends justified the means.
He would fight for mage rights by any means necessary.
Anders saw four figures waiting for them in the oily darkness before the old smugglers' run. Two human and two Elven men. One human was Guard Captain Donnic: grim and determined in leather armour rather than steel with Kirkwall's sigil. It was clear he was doing this unofficially. The other was a man Varric had taken an instant and one-sided dislike to, calling Brother Sebastian 'His Royal Shininess' and needling him constantly (Anders disliked him too but only on principle, as a representative of the Chantry).
One of the Elves was six-foot tall and his sinewy strength and rippling hard muscles were those of a swordsman. His taut limbs, crisscrossed with both scars and the lyrium brands, seemed more than armaments of some lethal machine than anything mortal. He wielded the greatsword Lethandralis without effort, so lithe he almost seemed to drift into each new position, but his real weapons were his hands – his ability to reach inside a man and tear out his heart. Fenris' skin was dark and his hard green eyes reflective as a cat's. His shock of white hair – the result of the lyrium rather than nature - was cropped short.
The other Elf was smaller but no less deadly. Anders had fought beside the assassin and remembered amber eyes – as flat and cool as a bird of prey's - and a sardonic smile on the face of danger. His leather armour concealed innumerable weapons – the Crow daggers belted at his waist were only the most obvious. Zevran's skin was golden-brown and revealed his Antivan heritage. Sold to the Crows from a brothel at age seven and trained to kill – contracted to end the life of Rillian Tabris – Zevran had fallen in love with her instead and would now spend the rest of his life with a price on his head.
"We must stop meeting like this," Zevran murmured with a licentious smile. He and Anders had never been lovers, but only because there had not been time during the brief but spectacular liaison that had seen Anders, Zevran and Nathaniel Howe save Ferelden's army with blackpowder and a lot of nerve. Anders had never minded him bedding Lambert.
"Are the four of you here for Lambert?"
Sebastian said, "I know where they are tormenting him. I spoke with him. I begged him to turn you in and spare himself agony but he refused. I came to the only people I know who can help: the Guard Captain, the man who can walk through walls and the man soon to be named Champion of Kirkwall. Nathaniel Howe told me he could not help directly but..."
"...he sent me," Zevran finished for him. "Shall we pay Alrik a visit?"
...Oh, Lambert. Oh, love...
A heavy metal cover sat over the entrance to the tunnel. A set of marks were painted onto the metal: both Athenril's and the Carta's (the Coterie were now too big and lazy to bother with such minor operations). They moved it aside without too much effort. A rove block-and-tackle system had been set up to move illicit hauls quickly and quietly. Zevran had brought rope and grappling hook and let himself down, lightly as a cat. Anders followed him. He was soon ankle deep in brackish, slimy mud and managed a smile at the memories it evoked: too many times escaping Circles like this.
"We'll take this tunnel east until we hit the old dock wall. Then south – the tunnels go right under the bay and come up below the Gallows dungeon. When we get to the Pit I'll follow Lambert's mana," (Anders refused to consider the possibility that Lambert was dead), "and we'll find the cells. It's a labyrinth, so we'll need to stick together."
Zevran deferred to Anders' judgement. The Antivan knew Kirkwall's secrets as well as any killer but Anders was part of the Mage Underground and had freed prisoners before.
It was cool in the tunnels and pitch black. Anders sent a small orb of pale light spinning above their heads. It sent shadows fleeing from themselves down the tunnels that were like the throat of some vast, sleek marine creature. Some were carved by dwarven lyrium smugglers but the sewer system was hewn by magic and finished by the labour of Tevinter slaves - the spiderwork was centuries older than the Chantry.
The air was almost still but not quite. Their movements scuffled the rubbish that lay in low drifts along the edges. They had to step over the bodies of rats and mice that had been trapped here - or else crawled in here to die. Stray cats wandered in the winding tunnels ahead, their fur matted and wet. The blackened scars of chokedamp were coated in the mantle of life. The green of time came at first through mildew and mould, a misting of mustard-green, the colour of decay.
The walls were marbled with grime and misted in deep mould-green. Deep pools of bottle-green water had gathered in hollows, picked out in acid-green from phosphorescent lichen. Verdant mosses and algae laid over the stone like a picnic basket. In the damp clefts, seed rain caught purchase, the dust-like spores drifted in and took root. Anders had always found it wonderful that life could survive anywhere. Like himself: a strange new compound formed inexplicably inside a crucible of destruction.
The wet echoes of their footsteps were the only sound as they sloshed through miles and miles of filth. Anders glanced at Donnic. The Guard Captain was a good man: he regretted never having taken him into his confidence. Once Donnic saw the depravities inflicted on mages, he would surely become an ally in the war that was coming. Sebastian...Anders had always seen him as Elthina's lapdog (stupidly loyal to an old woman who couldn't find her arse with both hands and a map) but today's events had made him reconsider. Varric had never cared about causes - would tease Anders until he subsided into sullen silence – but now that it was someone he loved the dwarf had chosen his side.
The air was damp and clogged with spores; their breathing laboured. The skeletal outline of the abandoned cells - the deepest level of the Pit where, if the Templars imprisoned you, they would never find you again – was a hodgepodge of corrupted stone, oozed with the remains of abominations where mages had succumbed to despair. Everything was crumbling into the ocean. It conveyed a sense of drowning, of submersion, of being overcome by the slow decay of time. The tunnels gave off a thick stink of brine and decomposition.
"Well," muttered Donnic shakily, to none of them in particular, "This just couldn't get any better, could it?"
Sebastian managed a pained grunt, and only Varric managed to say something in response. Of course, Anders realized: Varric, Lambert and Fenris had been on the Deep Roads expedition. Varric was used to finding humour in bleak places.
"It will make a wonderful chapter for Hard in Hightown II."
"Do you have a title yet?" Anders murmured. As a secret fan of Varric's lurid blend of slushy romance and graphic prurience his copy of the first book was worn thin with repeat reading. He was aching to find out what had become of the licentious Chantry sisters and the Templar Knight Captain (so obviously based on Cullen it was a wonder Varric hadn't been sued) who was pleasuring them so enthusiastically.
"Siege Harder," Varric told him with a smirk.
"Unbelievable!"
Down in the darkness, in the ruins, with thousands of tonnes of gray-green ocean above their heads, all they could do was laugh shakily. If the rock ever gave way they would all drown in a mass grave. But the people who lived down here – and there were people desperate enough, people for whom not even Darktown was safe – had nowhere else. They crossed paths with a resident of the ruins: a woman, who may or may not have been a mage. Anders snaked out a tendril of mana to check. Mage: an escapee. She looked pretty unkempt but he had seen worse in Darktown: beggars who were literally dying on their feet. He opened his mouth to speak – tell her she was one of the people for whom he was fighting – but she glared at him so venomously (so obviously displeased by the intrusion of an armed party of men) that he said nothing. She headed back to one of the tarpaulined shacks and drew a board across the entrance, to block his view.
The people of the night – strangers even in Kirkwall – were mages who had escaped the dungeons but had nowhere else to go. If they had tried to reach the city they would have been hunted by Templars who still had their phylacteries. Their only chance was here, where not even Templars would dare go. They passed echoes of this strange half-life: a ruined outhouse, over which a tattered tarpaulin had been flung to form a crude tent – a dusty pink blanket obscuring the entrance to a lair built inside a ruined cupboard. Anders skirted the makeshift camp before looking through another doorway – then hastily withdrew at the stench of decay.
Anders led them into the dark heart of the place: a huge turbine hall where enormous metal poles had swung inward to rest upon the shoulders of a row of girders. They were the skeletal remains of the Tevinter Empire upon which the Gallows had been built. Anders had the feeling of being inside the immense ribcage of an animal breathing its last: a mass of disused pipework made up its empty veins. A trellis of rusted pipes that once were arteries, pumping lyrium through the old Tevinter mine. The ruins of the Temple was a place of blood sacrifices and ancient fear; the carvings along the vast canvases of the cavern walls grew increasingly hallucinatory. A statue of a giant elf-eared skull opened its mouth to reveal a doorway, through which a room that had served as a storage area was waist-high in unspeakable detritus.
They stepped warily into the dark internal enclosure. The ceiling was black and shining as a beetle's carapace. V-shaped pillars supported a ruined statue. The smooth outer surface came away in waterlogged plates, baring the yellowed stone inside. The floor was flooded with stagnant water, milky with dust and reflective, shimmering with the eerie colours of Tevinter mosaics.
Amid the crumbling Tevinter ruins, the blackened hallways, the skeletal remains of an empire where magic had been seen as a gift, not a curse, Anders felt a flickering, a stirring of the soul, a shadow of the sublime. He thought the Tevinter Imperium and the Andrastian Chantry preached two different kinds of freedom: freedom to and freedom from. The Andrastian Chantry celebrated freedom from: ordinary citizens being protected from the worst excesses of magic. The Tevinter Chantry preached freedom to: the sheer anarchic liberty of being able to use your Maker-given powers as you saw fit. The sense of possibility was so strong as to be dizzying.
Seen through this prism, Anders felt his deal with Danarius was painful but right.
"I don't know what the ancient Tevinters used this place for but I bet it wasn't 'making people feel at home'" Varric muttered.
Anders led them up a vast rubble heap – planks, bricks, slabs – onto an upper platform. They began to climb but the going was difficult. The stone had solidified into a dense conglomerate to form granite in some places, in others scree. The outermost layer was glassy and crumpled, like laundry, or a corpse where the skin had slipped down to reveal a mechanism of steel and ore. In places the crags had chipped away to reveal fresher stone with the smooth, greasy look of chipped flint, olive-tinged and not yet discoloured with oxidation. The bones of the Gallows, strangely beautiful in their slow decay, offered hiding places for hibernating moths, whose chrysalides and cocoons hung on dank, dark walls. Albino stalactites six inches long hung dripping.
"I am getting truly sick of looking at stalagmites. Or is it stalactites? Shit, I don't know!"
Really, Varric was about as much a dwarf as Lambert was a mage, Anders thought – then berated himself for it.
Varric was talking just to shore up his courage – and Anders quite understood. As they approached the deepest layer of cells – the Box (so-called because they would be your coffin) - he found himself awash in memories. The slow choking terror of having been trapped below Kinloch Hold, for months and months, alone.
Lambert, he told himself like an incantation, to keep going.
The cells themselves were faded and dark with mould, and took on an aesthetic all their own: rough-chiselled like sculpture half-way through carving; or else acid-splashed, dissolved, semi-liquid. The tunnels were soaked with green and collapsing, the doors faded and bleached. Anders smelled wet stone, decay, the smell of the crypt. In the cavernous middle Zevran jemmied open a trap door at the top of a rickety ladder, and they emerged into a disused service corridor. Two floors up, Anders took in the view of the whole decaying monolith stretched out before them, almost overwhelming in its scale.
The Gallows dungeon loomed tenebrous and forbidding. Anders touched his fingers to the wall, felt his way around. Each stone corridor rose along a sharp ridge from the same point on the ground, fanning outwards in geometric simplicity. The squares within squares were patrolled by Templar crossbowmen with a shoot-to-kill policy.
Above them were the levels where Templar armour was crafted: rivers of lyrium appeared an eerie, artificial cyan. Beyond these rose the dark dystopian shape of the forge – clanking chains and pulleys, gas flares burning, vats of molten metal, piles of coal like crumpled despair demons. Before them were the cells.
It made Anders uneasy to step into those dark, diseased cells, as if the baleful influence of the Templars – the puddles of stale urine on the floor – would infect him. I've been in worse places, and this is for Lambert.
The first cells were empty. There was an undertone of something organic, of soil. There was a terminal look, a sense of sagging; of rising damp, encroaching decay. The pallor of the undead. This place, where mages were left to rot, ankle-deep in their own shit and piss – watched by Templars who might or might not feed them or might play games such as Alrik liked - was a punch to the gut, filled Anders with white-hot rage.
An anguished scream rent the darkness, so raw with pain it sounded bloody.
Lambert.
Lambert. Anders was sure. He met the horrified gazes of Varric, Sebastian and Donnic – the lethal promise of Zevran's eyes - the steel stare of Fenris. As one single organism, they ran towards the sound. Varric's fingers danced lightly over Bianca's stock, supporting the crossbow's weight while attaching one of the vials of blackpowder at his belt.
The cells that surrounded the edges of the Gallows' square footprint encircled the chambers at the centre. This was the place Alrik had made his own. The wide dim space – the pale grey walls that appeared to crumble into dust; the guttering candles in iron holders – was full of Templars. They appeared to be playing with strips of flesh and blood. A series of wooden tables hung at angles, nearly upright, and three prisoners were held. A mutilated old man and two teenagers. Grooves were cut into the floor beneath them to channel the rivers of blood. And there were chairs, as if for an audience. Anders smelled the iron and chocolate of new and old blood, the electrical tang of lyrium, the rankness of piss and shit, sweat and sex. The whole place was so steeped in wrongness, the Veil so thin, that Justice was present; the eyes of Anders watched as if from behind a screen. The Templars – Alrik – turned, dropped the lump of flesh they had been playing with, and charged him.
Suddenly, like a thing that leapt towards him across infinite distances with the speed of light, desire had him by the throat. Salt, black, ravenous, unanswerable desire. The desire for vengeance, the desire to have every last Templar for these abuses. Mages were born but Templars were made, and so could be unmade. Vengeance would unmake them all – obliterate them...
...Now I am become death...
His arm lashed out in a trail of fire, burning Alrik's armour into his chest, scorching the flesh from his face, leaving bone so hot it writhed. Alrik's sword had passed through his chest but it was only steel and could not hurt him. Behind him, Varric opened up with firepower that ripped the Templars apart, Sebastian's arrows were a rain of fire, Fenris and Zevran vanished and reappeared behind their enemies, who were dead before they hit the ground. One of the prisoners – the old man – began to melt and crawl and change like a misshapen candle; a mage shedding his larval form. The abomination broke its bonds and fell upon the Templar reinforcements, who had been drawn by the sounds of battle. They brought it down, but not before most had died screaming. The survivors got off a few Cleanses, but Vengeance absorbed the pain and regenerated like an ocean of electricity. One Templar threw down his Sword of Mercy and put his hands up – Fenris ripped out his heart before Vengeance could slay him.
And then there were none. Vengeance looked around for enemies to challenge, splattered with blood and baying for retribution.
"They will die! I will have every last Templar for these abuses!" The voice was eerie, hollow, seemed to come from the ground itself. Vengeance was bottling up something too large to be contained. Slaking itself with the torn bodies of enemies, its hunger grew by feeding.
"It's over, Blondie. They're all dead." The dwarf was making a valiant effort not to sound shaky. Behind him, the Guard Captain was saying to the Chantry brother,
"Shit! We got the monster out – now how do we put it back in its box?"
"IT IS NEVER OVER! Every one of them will feel Justice's burn!"
His glide took him to where the human female mage was still tied, helpless.
"Get away from me, demon!"
"I am no demon! Are you one of them, that you would call me such!"
"Blondie - that girl is a mage – she's one of the people you are fighting for! We just saved her..." But he ignored the dwarf's words – in his timeless existence, he hadn't known the dwarf long enough to remember him.
"She is theirs! I can feel their hold on her!"
Suddenly, another figure got between him and the human female. This Elf he knew as an enemy – the one who had tried to destroy him. It was trying now – but not with steel. It was chanting – a chant that crawled along Vengeance's spine like a million ants charged with electricity. The chant brought Vengeance's world crashing down around him because – it enmeshed him. The Litany of Adralla worked on demons and nothing else. It showed him the truth of himself, like a dark mirror. He felt the world yawn open beneath him.
"NO!" The words came in jets as if from a dying fountain.
Justice fled down the corridors of Anders' mind, and Anders did not know what was worse: that Lambert had taught Fenris something that could be used against him or that Lambert had not trusted him.
"Sparky!" Anders almost did not recognize the heartbroken voice as Varric's. Nor – and he hated himself for this - did he recognize the bloody wreck the Templars had dropped as Lambert. The face was unrecognizable; every bone in the body was shattered. He smelled of filth and death. But, somehow, Varric had known.
"I've got you, lad. I'm here. You're safe."
"Lay him down," Fenris told the dwarf, "He'll die if we try to move him." Fenris knelt beside Lambert and Varric and gently took hold of one of the destroyed hands. He placed it on the lyrium brand over his heart.
"Use the lyrium to regenerate mana and heal yourself."
But the slits of black that were the eyes did not recognize him. They were dark pits from which the intelligence had been burned out. Blankness spilled from them like a void overflowing.
Anders told Fenris, "I can heal him."
Fenris nodded. "The offer applies to you, too," he said stonily, "Take what you need from me."
"Only if I have to – I don't want to cause you pain." Anders was going to sell Fenris back to Danarius – to a fate worse than death – to receive the necessary support to free mages, but while healing he did not want to cause a dram of unnecessary suffering. The different parts of himself – the healer and the revolutionary – seldom came into exact alignment.
Zevran moved soundlessly to stand beside Fenris and Varric. Sebastian and Donnic moved to untie the two teenage mages. The girl was sobbing "Oh thank you, messere! Thank you. I only wanted to see my mother! No one even told her where they were taking me... and she's been so ill... What was that thing?" She nodded jerkily towards Anders.
"He's not a thing," Sebastian told her gently. "He's... uh... a very troubled man."
Donnic said, "As Guard Captain of Kirkwall I will let neither mages nor Templars harm you."
The girl wept in relief but the boy did not look as though he heard. His eyes were glassy, faraway, strange.
Anders, kneeling beside Lambert's broken body, knew despair. Out of his love and need and fear for Lambert – in the silence of his heart - he prayed; he did not know to whom, or what. A Spirit Healer drew his power from the Fade but it had been so long since he had walked the land of dreams. When he dreamed at all, the person who walked in his skin was Justice - Anders was a mere spectator in his own flesh. He had always known that, one day, it would not be Anders who woke.
Anders reminded himself that he had been a Spirit Healer long before he had bonded with Justice, that he had power, that the spirits of the Fade knew him. But would any answer his call now that another spirit – demon – had already claimed him? Only a rare spirit who did not wish to possess anyone - did not yearn for life beyond the Veil – was purely unselfish. Only a miracle.
Anders closed his eyes, falling deep within himself, following the shining strand that was his link to Lambert's mana – to the flickering sparks of silvered rain that would not go out until Lambert himself went out. He felt that shimmering curtain open in his mind and an alien presence flowing through, cool lambent water from a spring.
The voice that answered him was soft and clean as starlight. He felt the hair standing upright on his arms and legs, the prickle of awe becoming a wave of sheer joy: it was so beautiful!
The voice was his link to... a lone young man who looked like - but wasn't - Lambert. Anders could see him beyond the Veil, sitting on a rock in the Fade, by an emerald river. The Spirit of Compassion who came to comfort mages in dark places told him plaintively,
"I suffered with him but he wouldn't let me help him. His father warned him to never take anything we offer. I don't know what to do."
Anders said gently, "You can't help him but I can: lend me your power."
The Spirit of Compassion answered joyfully, pouring everything he had – everything he was - into Anders. Wave after wave flowed through Anders without form and void until he shaped it, the healer directing the power through what he knew of how the human body should work.
Suddenly he was awash in alien sensations and more intimately aware of another person's body than he had ever been. It wasn't sexual – though he and Lambert were lovers – it was as though he were Lambert, his mind beneath Lambert's skin. There was a pounding like the pounding of a drum, growing louder and louder as though some alien creature were stalking him through the Fade. The sound grew until it filled his senses, throbbed through his veins. Lambert's heartbeat. Then the pain hit him: a searing, impossible agony continuous as fire. He could not contain it within himself. Instinctively, he cringed and started to withdraw – but caught himself. He knew he must not. He must take it all in and transform it for Lambert.
He lowered shields of mind and will, drew in the pain that flooded him. He could not draw breath, could only conduct the notes Compassion gave him. They had strange shapes, as though music were sculpted to symbols not meant for human ears. He was balancing himself on that storm of silver flame, directing its power.
The internal injuries were sickening – they had used Lambert before they had broken him – but Anders could heal that. His education on how the human body worked on the inside had been fast, thorough, and frequently smelled bad – but it came to his aid now. He poured the Spirit's power in – like water made into light – and rebuilt Lambert from the inside out.
He picked him up from the floor and into his own arms. "Careful of broken bones," he told himself – but he wanted to carry Lambert away from the smell and sight of death: the blasted skulls, Alrik's body turned inside out – just a slop of blood and shit and entrails – the limbless bodies.
He started on the face, easing cuts and splits together, almost remoulding it to its familiar shape. That done, he could think about the body. He healed broken ribs and hands. Finger by finger, they regained their natural shape. The bruises...even the tip of a hipbone protruded from the skin. Anders was well down the thighs, starting on shattered kneecaps, when Lambert spoke. In a voice made hoarse and ragged by howls, he said,
"Get away from me, demon. I won't take anything you offer."
...I am no demon! Who is Lambert, that he would call me such...
"Oh, shut up," Anders told Justice in weary resignation. "He isn't seeing us; he thinks he's in the Fade, going through another Harrowing. Alrik put demons inside him – again and again – and tortured him every time he defeated them."
...I will not stand for these abuses! Every last one of them will feel...
"Yes, yes. Justice's burn. I know. But not right now."
Justice subsided into sullen silence. If a spirit could sulk, this was it. Anders did not know why it was suddenly so easy to ignore him: whether it was his love for Lambert, the Litany of Adralla, or the Spirit of Compassion. Whatever - it was good to put his passenger in its place, remind Justice that he – Anders – was here first.
In the end, Anders smiled with exhausted satisfaction and sat back. Thanks to the Spirit of Compassion, he had worked a miracle. Lambert would always have the scars – looking at his body was like looking through a pane of glass that had been shattered into tiny fragments and glued together – but he had been completely rebuilt. The Fade was ebbing away from Anders like sand through an hourglass, his mana spent, but he sought the last echoes of the spirit who had helped.
Compassion stared at him across the great divide that separated spirits from mortals.
"I will not see you again, Anders. You are a good person – but you should not have said 'yes' to him."
Which 'him' did the spirit mean, Anders wondered: Lambert – Justice – or Danarius?
He sought to pin Lambert with his gaze – to hold him here – but Lambert lived inside a walled citadel. For just a moment he glimpsed the true person who lived inside the safe fortress of the skull, where Alrik could get at him only rarely and with immense effort. Then, in an instant, Lambert's gaze travelled from this world to his own private sanctuary.
Anders whispered "No," but he didn't know if Lambert heard him.
Lambert looked at him as though at a half-glimpsed memory – or a shaft of sunlight – something hauntingly beautiful that he yearned for but couldn't quite detect. He gave a soft little sigh – as if reminding himself of his father's teachings, "The more real they appear – the more you want them to be real – the more dangerous they are. Never believe them – never acknowledge their existence – never take anything they offer."
The violet eyes went opaque once more.
Anders turned to Fenris - kneeling beside him – and said despairingly, "I can't convince him I am not a Fade spirit."
Fenris said dryly, "Mages in glass houses shouldn't throw fireballs."
The warrior met Lambert's eyes with a curious expression: support, understanding, a searing rage devoid of pity, the respect of a straight answer: "As this is not the Fade we don't require your permission. You won't be taking anything we offer."
Fenris wrapped Lambert in a cloak from one of the dead Templars (Justice's work had turned them into slops of flesh but Fenris had killed cleanly, dispassionately, with minimum mess). Then picked Lambert up in a fireman's carry and rose smoothly to his feet. It appeared effortless – as though Lambert's body were frail as bird bones. He couldn't wield Lethandralis but the grip allowed him to wield his right arm – which was a deadlier weapon anyway.
"Let's go."
Varric was scrabbling about amid the bodies, searching for anything they could use as proof of Alrik's abuses. He found a sheaf of bloodstained papers and said to Sebastian,
"I'm going to blow this filth wide open."
"I'm with you," Sebastian agreed.
Anders sighed. It was touching, really, that somebody so schooled in the underworld as Varric could be so terribly naïve. What did he think was going to happen? After a possessed mage and his accomplices had broken into the Gallows and murdered Ser Alrik, who was going to believe a word they said? It would all be seen as an attempt to prove themselves justified - an accusation against a man they had ensured could no longer answer back. Did Varric think - if he wrote this in a pamphlet called 'The Naughty Templars' or something - Kirkwallian nobles would do anything other than giggle behind their hands in guilty titillation? Gone to study in Orlais – that was the term in polite society for a child who had been found to have... ahem!...magical ability. Even if the nobles loved and missed their children they would never dare advertise the fact, due to the fear evidence of a magical bloodline would cheapen the value of their other children on the marriage market. No, the time for talk – for voting in Conclaves and appealing to society – was over. The war had begun and this was only the first strike.
That thought sustained Anders as they fled – retracing their steps even as they heard the cries of pain behind them. The Templars had discovered the break-in – were pouring in and making trapped and innocent mages pay the price. The injustice cleaved him in two. If it wasn't for his deal with Danarius he could not have borne leaving them. Justice would have taken over, turned him back, and sold his life dearly. He would have made every Gallows Templar pay for these abuses.
"Soon," he promised the spirit.
Lambert came round as they reached Darktown. He gripped Fenris' shoulder and said hoarsely, "You can let me down, Fen. The Fade doesn't smell this bad – and they never get the details quite right. This is...real."
"I'll let you down once inside Anders' clinic."
"Whoa! I'm not a heroine in one of Varric's stories..." Lambert's voice was still shaky but tried admirably for insouciance.
Without missing a beat, Fenris replied, "No, but even heroes should accept aid when they are injured."
"Like you do, you mean?" The voice held a note of familiar banter, worn down to comfort.
"Do as I say not as I do."
Lambert chuckled weakly. "You, Fen? Rescuing mages?" he asked in a tone of husky, bemused wonder.
"So it would seem," Fenris said dryly, "You lead me to strange places, Hawke."
It was several hours before dawn, and Darktown was coated in its usual stink of effluvia and slow death. But something was different, and the difference raised the hairs on the back of Anders' neck. Normally, there were always eyes watching from the shadows - the people of the night whose survival moment to moment was a tenuous uncertainty. Now the place was lifeless as a mass grave; shrouded in complete and colluding silence. That meant ripples of what had happened in the Gallows were already spreading, the Templars out in force.
The dim yellowish light of the clinic floated above the darkness and filth, the luminescence of chokedamp and the vomit-stained air. Inside, Jessa was waiting up for them. Guiltily, Anders promised her Mistress Selby would be along to relieve her in the morning.
Fenris set Lambert down on a thin bunk that had been stripped – its occupant having died last night. The two mage teenagers sat beside him as if seeking warmth, forming a little island amid the bustle around them.
Anders was exhausted to the bone, his head swirling with the memories of his own imprisonment, the wonder at having saved Lambert, the guilt over the deal he had made to do it, and the burning need to save those still trapped in that hell.
Sebastian was suggesting to Donnic they approach the Viscount with details of what they had seen. Anders already knew that would do no good. The Viscount was a feeble old man wrapped around Meredith's little finger. Donnic's salt-of the-earth pragmatism was a necessary foil for the idealism of the Chantry brother:
"If you give details you're admitting we broke in and killed twenty-odd Templars. Meredith will have you where she had Lambert: the Grand Cleric won't intervene..."
Varric – awfully but pragmatically - was stripping the clothes off a patient who had died last night. He handed them to Lambert with an oddly paternal gentleness. Lambert took them wonderingly, flexing and waggling his fingers and studying his own hands as though he had never seen them before. He looked down at his own body – not very well-covered by the Templar's red cloak. He looked questioningly at Anders.
"It feels as if I must have dreamed the whole thing," he murmured. His eyes were haunted, deep as an uncharted ocean.
"No, it was real," Anders told him, "Everything you remember – it all happened to you..."
"Blondie!" Varric snapped, but Anders ignored him. Lambert needed the truth.
"A Spirit of Compassion helped me put you back together. We rebuilt your body, inside and out."
Lambert's eyes widened in sudden fear. He went very still, as if trying to listen for something inside his own head.
Anders guessed the source of the unease and said quickly, "You don't need to worry about possession. You didn't take anything the spirit offered – I did – and there's nothing like being possessed to keep a man on the straight and narrow. The spirit helped you because he is good, not because he wanted a host. It's rare, but it's possible."
An eager mewl brightened Lambert's face and Anders turned to see Incognito running towards him. Lambert reached down and scooped up his cat, burying his face in her fur and murmuring as if to a child. He didn't let go and Incognito seemed to understand he needed her. She raised her head like a languid sleepy flower and then curled into a ball on his lap. Ser Pounce-a-Lot ran in circles around Anders' feet but every time Anders tried to pet him he darted away, glowering and smouldering like a sulky little candle. The ginger tom would stand on his dignity until it was time to be fed.
Lambert looked up at Anders. "You saved me – healed me – went inside the Gallows for me, even after..." His voice broke, and Anders knew he was referring to Anders' own year in solitary, buried beneath Kinloch Hold, fed by Templars who lowered the trays down chutes so they would not have to breathe the rotten air. Seeing Anders hesitate he said urgently, "Love - I never betrayed you – you can read the bollocks I fed them in my 'confession'! I swear to you: I wrote to Thomas only to ask if reversing possession were possible. Only if you wanted it and asked me to. I'd never have done anything without your consent!"
"I know, lover," Anders said softly, "You don't have to tell me that." He closed his mouth on the rest. Lambert had written to his cousin because he believed he had met and fallen in love with Anders. But Lambert had never even met Anders – only seen him from a distance fighting darkspawn at the second battle of Ostagar. The person who loved Lambert was...the child of whom Anders and Justice had been the parents. That means I killed them, he thought, wrestling with it, but they chose to make the sacrifice and some choices have permanent consequences. I have a right to exist...to be in the world...have saved many lives in the clinic...
Perhaps the man who had met and loved him in Kirkwall would come to see him as a mistake, a thing that should never have happened, might truly wish for a spiritual surgery that would kill him while returning Anders to the world and Justice to the Fade.
But Lambert – suddenly realizing all this - said softly, "Oh love – I'm so sorry...I understand now. I love you – you – and I'll never try the ritual. Never seek to change you. Anders and Karl belonged together and you and I belong together. That will never change. I'll love you till always."
A brief spark of happiness flared like a torch, like bottled lightening, fierce and ephemeral. Anders felt a transient, aching joy. But he remembered his deal with Danarius – knew how Lambert would react to the betrayal of one of his friends - and realized that words like "always" and "never" were frighteningly fragile conceits. He wished time would stop and hold him in this moment forever: did not want to face the future. In an ancient Alamari legend, a woman looked back to her past and was turned into a pillar of salt. For Anders, the fatal thing would be to risk a forward look.
Lambert looked at the group who had risked more than their lives to save him: Anders, Fenris, Varric, Sebastian, Donnic and Zevran. He studied them with such burning intensity it was as if he might never see them again.
"I... I don't know what to say..."
"Oh, stop it, mi amor," Zevran drawled in his musical Antivan accent, "You are breaking my heart."
Lambert giggled and then his eyes widened in startlement at the sound.
Donnic told him, "As captain of the city guard it is my duty to protect Kirkwall's citizens from tyranny."
"Few people would regard mages as citizens," Lambert said softly.
"But you are. You need the protection of the law as much as anyone." Donnic gave Anders an uncomfortably piercing stare. "You did kill Ser Rolan and his men – but as they had come to kill you it was not murder."
Sebastian added, "You are possessed, but we saw you regain control – something the Chantry teaches is not possible – and we saw you heal an innocent man in a way that must be the Maker's grace. That is more important than a label we put to things we don't understand."
Anders knew he had not regained control of Justice. Justice would have murdered Ella if Fenris had not cast the Litany of Adralla. He had been able to heal Lambert because the Spirit of Compassion had helped him and because his deal with Danarius had assured Justice he would have vengeance, that they would return in force.
"Do not make me regret this," Donnic warned him. Anders – who already knew Kirkwall would be collateral damage for the cause – said nothing.
Lambert turned round, noticing his fellow escapees for the first time. When he saw Alain he tried to hold him with his gaze but the boy did not focus on him – on anyone. He was quite likely the worst casualty of all, with no scars to prove it. Karras had enjoyed him, and then he had betrayed Corinus to Alrik. The poor old man had held out through worse than what Lambert had suffered – refused to become an abomination as Alrik demanded. He had done that only at the last – when rescue was in sight – and he had done it so he could rear up and aid them. Not because he cared about the fate of individuals, but because he trusted Anders to bring Decimus' revolution to term. Anders would not let his sacrifice be in vain.
Ella looked at Lambert and her bottom lip wobbled. "You saved me, messere," she said damply, "Everything they did to you they were going to do to me – once you surrendered. But you didn't. I think the Maker put you in that room tonight."
Privately, Anders thought if that were true it was yet another thing he had against the old bastard. Lambert said, "Thank you, Ella. I shall remember that. You were worth saving. You are going to become a great enchanter. I'll teach the both of you what my father taught me and then I'll get you apprenticed to someone worthy."
A smile broke over Ella's face like the sun: shining, totally delighted, shyly responsive.
"I'll look after Alain, messere," she promised.
To Anders the candlelight in the clinic that muted everything to a soft glow seemed deceitful and cruel: promising safety when there was no sanctuary here. Lambert's phylactery was in the Gallows – as were Ella's and Alain's - which meant any Templar could track them. They were in danger anywhere in Andrastian lands. Anyone who housed them was in danger - mage or non-mage - because Templars did not distinguish between those they were hunting and those who got in their way.
"The three mages and I will have to leave Kirkwall. Now," Anders said bleakly, "They don't have my phylactery but my face is on wanted posters all over the city." Lambert gave him a look of anguished apology. It was his own letter to Thomas that had caused Rylock to send Ser Rolan; he had not named Anders, but she had put two and two together. "We'll take the tunnels and rat-runs to Mistress Selby's safehouse, at the docks, and from there we'll need a ship..."
"I've got one," Zevran interjected smoothly, "Captain Isabella was planning to set sail for Llomerryn – I persuaded her to bring her departure forward a few hours and have paid passage for Lambert and friends. Her ship is riding at anchor a little way out – if you take a pinnace you'll catch up to her."
Anders' eyes widened, unable to believe his luck. Llomerryn was the one place outside Tevinter – other than within Grey Warden ranks – that was safe for Circle runaways. A free island, it stood proudly outside the jurisdiction of the Chantry, the Qun, and Tevinter. It was home to the quick and the dead. Anders had a feeling this piece of good fortune had more to do with a scheme of Zevran's patron – Nathaniel Howe – than with the Maker watching over them, but he wasn't picky.
Lambert got to his feet – and the sensory memory of flame and knife and hammer suddenly hit him. He pitched forward. In the same thought-instant, Fenris was suddenly there. He had known what to expect. He caught Lambert until the moment passed.
Lambert blinked. "Feels like it did when me and Carv tried whisky for the first time," he muttered, embarrassed. "I haven't got my legs yet."
Anders told him, "That's because you've been destroyed and rebuilt. It will take a while to regain control – but you will."
Lambert determinedly tried again. With the intense ineptitude of a drunk, he moved away from them and changed into his new outfit: large boots and trousers and a stained shirt. Then he hefted a backpack in which he placed Incognito. Her head peeked out, delighted with this new perspective. Lambert grinned at them all. His mana felt like sparks of lightning, like seed rain seeking light and warmth and friendship to take root and grow. Anders caught a glimpse of the true measure of his resilient spirit. Lambert could survive on agape love the way certain plants fed on air.
Anders decided to do the same with Ser Pounce-a-Lot. Perhaps it was a bad idea - they would certainly look like mages with familiars to anyone fearful and superstitious – but neither wanted to leave their cats.
"Mistress Selby will have baths waiting for the three of you," Anders reassured them, "The Underground Railroad is used to taking runaways at short notice." Neither acknowledged him – Alain still did not look quite right and Ella flinched when he looked at her.
Varric was leafing through Alrik's notes. He had come to Lambert's 'confession': "Really, Sparky!" he said, caught between laughter and tears, "I could make a fortune out of this: 'Sinnes of an apostate: the confessions of a Ferelden mage' - but I'd rather blow this filth wide open..."
"Don't do it!" Lambert begged him, real fear in his eyes, "Meredith won't take that lying down – the Chantry Seekers will find you..."
"Oh, Sparky – credit me with some sense," Varric tutted, "By the time the thing's published I'll be visiting my cousin in Qarinus...speaking of which: Broody, would you like me to find your sister?"
"Yes," Fenris said, surprising them all, "But tell her I will be in Llomerryn. I don't know why I stayed in Kirkwall as long as I did."
I do. Anders glanced toward the man they both loved. He considered how this would affect his plan and realized it would make no difference. He could just as easily arrange Danarius' reunion with Fenris in Llomerryn.
"This is the sign I have been looking for," Sebastian said thoughtfully, "I thought the Maker wished me to remain a Chantry brother – but I can do more to challenge such cruelty as the Prince of Starkhaven...may I count on you both, when the time comes?" He was looking at both Fenris and Donnic, who shook his hand on it.
"If you need a healer I'd be honoured to repay you," Lambert said quietly.
"Thank you."
Varric and Lambert hugged tightly. "I see my business will require many trips to Llomerryn," the dwarf assured him.
"I'm to take your business to the sea?" Lambert asked, halfway between a laugh and a sob, "Become a trader – maybe a pirate?" He attempted to waggle his eyebrows. Then a thoughtful shadow crossed his mercurial face. "Maybe later I'll join Rillian Tabris – become a Grey Warden like my brother."
"They'll make you give up your cat," Anders told him.
"Never! I've got no problem drinking darkspawn blood but Cog is my baby... The sea it is, then. Shake on it, Scribbles?"
Varric grinned, accepting his new nickname. "Send a bird as soon as you know where you're staying. I'll transfer your funds. Thankfully you didn't put everything into the estate."
"Yes, but make sure my Uncle and Charade have enough to keep them safe. The estate is theirs but there's rough days ahead – and Uncle has never been good at..."
"He'll gamble it away in the space of a year," Varric said, "But...I'll see what I can do. Leave it with me, Sparky."
Varric, Donnic and Sebastian left together. Varric was saying, "Kirkwall feels like it's in the spotlight tonight...that's a good title: Spotlight!"
Anders led Lambert, Fenris and the two teenagers out into the cold, water-loud night. He and Lambert had to lean on each other for support like drunks. Anders' healing had left him completely empty. His muscles were slippery voids of uselessness and his legs felt like spaghetti. Ella was guiding Alain and the only one able to fight was Fenris, who was ready to defend them. There was about an hour till dawn and the rat-runs of Darktown were a shade of indigo rather than pitch-black. Anders guided them through the winding tunnels to Lowtown. There were shouts, voices, guardsmen with torches bursting from tunnels. The light seemed to erupt from the overall glow created within the depths. Surely this couldn't all be down to them?
As Lowtown crumbled into the docks he got his first inkling something else may be going on. The walled Qunari compound at the centre of the Docks was a hive of activity. The chaos spooled outward like tendrils. Menacing figures loomed against lurid flames that flickered and swayed. The Qunari guards had lit torches in a surrealistic glow: a series of signals that made no sense to Anders but that had Fenris' staring.
"I know certain signals. Never expected to see that one."
They entered Selby's place through the backdoor that abutted a nameless warehouse. She was waiting up to receive them - with mugs of tea sweetened with honey. Ella, Alain and Lambert took them gratefully.
Selby's gimlet eyes narrowed in suspicion when she saw Fenris. It was the first time Anders had brought a non-mage to their safe house. He wanted to reassure her it was okay – for Fenris this was going to be a one-way trip - but he couldn't. His plan to sell Fenris back to Danarius was a shameful secret Anders must hide from all others as he would have hidden syphilis or a cancerous tumour.
Selby poured hot water from an earthen jug into a large copper bowl and hung a cloth around the tub to shield it. Ella entered first, making little squeals of pleasure. Lambert and Alain waited their turn.
Anders was filthy himself – his feathered pauldrons sticking to his shoulders with the matted grime of the sewers – and she tutted over him.
"I'm sorry but you will need to replace me in the clinic for a few weeks – I'll need to lie low."
"Was it worth it?" Selby asked him, her thin mouth pinched in disapproval. He understood her opprobrium. Every member of the underground was expected to put the cause above personal feelings. Anders had rescued his lover and in doing so killed Alrik and sent a wave of retribution out to the Gallows mages. Then Selby's needle-sharp blue eyes went to where the mage teenagers took turns getting clean and softened marginally.
The five of them headed to the docks furthest away from the Gallows. The tower jutted from the bay like a black warning. The first curve of the rising sun bloodied the new day. Anders stepped onto the foreshore and his boots immediately sunk into a layer of mud that sucked at them. He disturbed a flight of gulls that lifted and skimmed away over the surface of the water.
The boiler houses and foundries and slaughterhouses of Kirkwall all produced waste, and all used the same method of disposal: pipes designed to empty into the Waking Sea. The water was a slew of human effluent and industrial chemicals. The flood of filth turned the water into an inky fluid in which oleaginous waste bound together to form a thick film on the surface. Legend had it the long-ago Qun attack on Kirkwall had set the ocean ablaze. Anders believed it.
Tanneries used sulphuric acid to strip hides, arsenic to preserve them, lead acetate to bleach them and chromium to tan them. Hat-makers used mercury nitrates to turn fur into felt. The dye houses heated their solutions in vats before dipping the skeins of silk to be stained; these vats emptied through pipes leading directly to the ocean. All these mixed in bizarre compounds with the spell components thrown away by Gallows alchemists, luminescent and eerie. You could tell the day of the week by the colour of the water.
Fenris cut the ropes binding the pinnace that waited exactly where Zevran had said it would be. They threw equipment aboard – careful with the two mewling cats – and pushed and pulled to raise the sail halyard. Fenris raised the mast. The cloth lifted rapidly, bellied, pulled eagerly at the small vessel. Anders and Lambert helped the two teenagers inside and Fenris dropped down lightly. He cut the grappling lines and the mast swayed back and forth like a reed in the wind. Fenris picked up the oars. He rowed without comment, smooth and remorseless as an iron golem. If it annoyed him to be the only one working, ferrying four mages – who shifted delicately to avoid getting their feet wet – he did not say so. The boat heeled in desperate tack, reaching for every inch of speed. Fenris barked orders,
"Everyone to the back; I want this bow high." In moments the sail was up and they were spearing through the chop.
The bay waters were a thick, fecund breath. The smell reminded Anders of the pungent amniotic fluid when he delivered babies: there was the same contradictory mix of unpleasant stink and scent of life and renewal.
When the bay widened out into the larger ocean, the smell became the sea's mouth-cleansing, copper-bright taste.
Anders glanced back. Behind them, the docks surrounding the Qunari compound flamed. The glow was a red, shifting wall scrawled with smears of thick, greasy smoke and meteoric flits of burning debris.
Ahead, a hundred or so ships rose from the delicately shifting waters. In the roseate glow of dawn they appeared rust-red: spectral, massed corpses emerging haggard from the night. The sea was a blurred mirror of the sky, breached by a thatch of spire-like masts. Through the spires, he saw as if through lace a sleek three-masted schooner glide towards them with a smooth and alien momentum.
Fenris drew the sail as taut as he could, put the balance bar into a sizzling tack that sent spray spinning off into the wind. He said, "Everyone down. Flat."
Anders saw no more, his face pressed into the stinking, gritty wooden hull. Fenris steered the boat beside Isabella's ship. Sitting up gingerly, Anders found himself staring at neat planks of seasoned wood, caulked with wool and tar. The sailors on the larger vessel began to help their passengers aboard. Anders looked up into the copper eyes and grinning, dark features of Captain Isabella. She blazed in bright green trousers, shining black boots, and a poncho of blue and green. Her headgear was a wide, floppy beret that matched the trousers. She pointed at the torn rope and snapped sails dropping behind the pinnace. "Great entrance."
"I try," came Fenris' baritone rumble, and Lambert burst into startled laughter. Ella giggled, and even Alain managed a wan smile. Isabella's smile widened. She looked at Fenris in appreciation and at Lambert with a tenderness that would never reveal itself in the light of day.
Isabella's first mate, Casavir, appeared beside her. "We have to go. Come aboard." He ordered lines cast off, oars readied to pole the craft free. The deck thundered with running feet.
Fenris and Lambert helped the teenagers aboard, then Anders followed Lambert. Fenris climbed nimbly over the larger ship's rail. The open cargo well yawned in front of them, only a couple of steps removed from the narrow walkway that paralleled the gunnels. The rowing boats were neatly stowed against the hull, restricting passage as little as possible.
When Anders turned back, Isabella was already seated at the tiller. She winked at Lambert and shoved the balance bar away from the larger hull. Paisley Pete stood by, coiling a braided leather halyard. Fenris followed Isabella's instructions and soon all hands were busy.
The sky colour-shifted from rose to lilac to primrose to forget-me-not.
Anders made his way to the side of the ship. His feathered pauldrons sparkled with minute droplets of condensing mist. Leaning over, he watched the swirling, shining surface of the water roll and tumble in infinite pattern. The myriad colours of dawn broke the water into coloured drops. Isabella's ship made a fine spray that struck the water; each impression unique, each too brief to distinguish. Here one second and gone the next, they made the mind distrust the eye.
Anders wondered how Isabella could have been ready with both ship and crew if Zevran had only asked her to bring her trip forward a few hours ago?
What of Nathaniel Howe - who had been more responsible than anyone for persuading Anders to merge with Justice? Nathaniel had destroyed Anders' phylactery in Amaranthine and helped him find shelter in Kirkwall. Was the phylactery destroyed? How did Nathaniel always know when and where to find him?
Nathanial Howe was the only bas to have won the respect of the Arishok yet he had said he believed war to be inevitable. Just what would Nathaniel be prepared to do – or have someone else do – to make sure the war happened at a time of his choosing, when he could best capitalize on it?
What was Isabella carrying away from Kirkwall?
The City of Chains receded slowly and grudgingly from view. In the harbour, three separate fires sent pillars of flame into the sky. As Anders watched, another leapt to life.
AN: 'Freedom to versus freedom from' is from Handmaid's Tale. 'I am become death' is from the Bhagavad Gita. 'Spotlight' is a real book by the investigative staff of the Boston Globe.
The Spirit of Compassion – who to Anders looks like Lambert – will later take the form and memories of Cole. I am not sure of the date of the real Cole's death in the dungeons below the White Spire so have used creative license.
My version of the mage resistance, the Dissent questline and the Underground Railroad owes a lot to Justice in Surrender by analect. Much of that, and of her Anders-Karl fic, Ephemera, is my headcanon now.