The Chant of Light has nine canticles – more if you count the dissonant verses. Niall remembered sitting on the rug at this mother's feet - she would recite verses from the chant and he would repeat them. They had done that almost every night when he was small, before his magic had manifested and she had proudly handed him over to the Templars.
He missed his mother a lot in those first few years he spent in the Circle. So, every night before bed, he would read and recite part of the Chant. By the age of ten he knew every single line of it by heart. The Revered Mother who delivered the Circle's chantry services had always liked him because of it. She would smile at him as he filed into the benches with the rest of the apprentices. As she spoke, he would mouth the words along with her. There was something calming in the repetition, the ritual of it all. Then he'd gotten older, and he'd started to understand those words, and calm became the furthest thing from what they made him feel.
But old habits die hard and as the Revered Mother began to speak the words of the Canticle of Threnodies, Niall found himself mouthing along. The words were so familiar that they felt empty – a semantically void string of syllables. He wondered how many people around him were listening to the words being said and how many were just waiting until the Revered Mother finished so they could go for breakfast. It's hard to focus on the fall of all mankind when you're yet to have your morning coffee – at least, it was for Niall.
It had been years since he'd made it to a morning service, or been awake early enough to even consider attending. But his conversation with Uldred the day before had unnerved him somewhat. The Chantry used to inspire awe in him – terror and reverence all at once. The idea of being apathetic towards it didn't sit right with him. After all, whatever his feelings towards the Chantry itself were, he still believed in the Maker.
"Finally, as always, we conclude," croaked the Revered Mother when she reached the end of the day's chosen canticle, "with a recitation of that most important of verses by which those of you in this room are pledged to live."
She began to speak it and with each syllable more mistimed voices from the congregation chimed in - and that disharmonious chorus sang,
"Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him.
Foul and corrupt are they
Who have taken His gift
And turned it against His children.
They shall be named Maleficar, accursed ones.
They shall find no rest in this world
Or beyond."
It may only be priests, Niall, and the odd zealot who could sing the whole chant but there was not a mage alive in any tower across Thedas who didn't feel as though that particular verse was etching into their skin and running through their veins like blood.
The Revered Mother dismissed them with the usual benediction, "Walk in the Maker's light."
The congregation filed out of the benches as the choir began singing the recessional hymn. They were gathered at the back of the chapel and Niall had almost forgotten they were even there. The choir was an unlikely alliance, made up of mages, templars, and chantry personnel. And above all of those voices, a familiar baritone echoed over the chapel.
Niall turned and saw Torrin heartily belting out the hymn. Niall smiled to himself slightly – whatever Torrin lacked in musicality he made up for with enthusiasm. A less enthusiastic choirboy though was, to Niall's surprise, Jowan. He was standing on the row behind Torrin and unconvincingly miming the lyrics.
Niall briefly considered that Uldred was attempting to convert the Circle's most pious to his cause by planting a spy in the choir. Then, he noticed Jowan was standing a little closer than necessary to a very pretty Chantry initiate. That –yes, that made more sense.
Mages were forbidden from fraternising with the initiates. But in the Circle, so much was forbidden that it ceased to mean much to any of them. They were probably in for a bit of heartbreak, Niall thought, but they were young, it was their right to play out an epic romance. He certainly had.
He lingered until most people had left, hoping to catch Torrin. They still hadn't spoken since their disastrous research session.
"Senior Enchanter." Niall beckoned.
"Morning." he said cordially but gave no impression that he wanted to continue the conversation. Niall wasn't having that.
"Are you free? We should talk-,"
"I have a meeting – you are not my only mentee, Niall."
That threw him. He thought the man was feeling awkward about what happened – perhaps a bit guilty too because Maker knows Torrin could find something to feel guilty about in any situation. He hadn't expected outright hostility.
"I know that – but we should-,"
"I am very busy." Torrin softened slightly when he saw the look of hurt Niall's face, "I can meet you this evening."
"In your quarters?" Niall was confused.
"Yes."
"Presumably not for -,"
Torrin's eyes bulged as he shushed frantically, "Maker's breath, Niall, no."
"Alight, alright, message received. I'll come after dark. Strictly for professional reasons."
Torrin rolled his eyes.
-o0o-
Wynne's curriculum for Intermediate Spirit Magic was – thorough. Dauntingly thorough. And apparently next week's lesson was a practical. The apprentices were supposed to brew their own greater spirit balms. There was a slight problem with that.
"You must think I'm an idiot." Niall groaned but Anders looked sympathetic, "I'm just – I've never been much of an alchemist."
He'd been rooting through an old storage box in the caverns, desperately looking for some ingredient called 'foxite' when Anders had wandered by and offered to help. Niall had had to admit he wasn't even sure what foxite was.
"An idiot – of course not – the Circle would never let an idiot teach." Anders teased as he pulled a jar labelled 'Foxite' from a nearby shelf.
"We studied all the lesser recipes when I was an apprentice but I never did much beyond those. All these Greater Balms and fancy salves - I've never needed them. Have you?"
"I've found they come in handy from time to time."
Niall was too preoccupied to wonder precisely what he meant by that.
"Could you teach me how to make this then?" he thrust Wynne's recipe at Anders. "Please. I'd rather not end up in Aeonar for exploding a dozen apprentices."
Anders glanced over the page then nodded, "Sure. I'll meet you in the potions room once you've got the ingredients?"
Niall looked sheepish, "Ah – could we do it here? I'd rather not risk any of the apprentices clocking the fact their tutor is only one lesson ahead of them."
-o0o-
"Leorah!" Niall called. He was carrying his barely-used cauldron filled with the ingredients he'd spent the last two hours hunting down.
She beamed when she saw him, "Hello there, Enchanter."
He did his best to look happy about the new title she was still so pleased she'd helped him get. "I have a favour to ask…"
Niall explained his situation, " … so, I was hoping, since you're in charge of the caverns, could you keep them locked while we're in there? Just to preserve my stellar reputation?"
"I'm not sure-,"
"Just for an hour or two." he added.
"Alright. I'm working in here anyway – I'll tell anyone who comes by they're closed for stock taking all afternoon."
"You are wonderful." she blushed and Niall pulled her in for a one-armed hug before heading into the cavern to wait for Anders.
He wasn't waiting long before the other came around the corner, his own rusty-looking cauldron under his arm.
"I really can't thank you enough for this." Niall said and really meant it. As he watched him potter about setting the equipment up on the straightest patch of uneven stone floor - the things Uldred had said last night repeated in his mind. Anders had been through the unimaginable and yet he seemed so breezy, lining up spirit shards as though didn't have a single worry. It had to be a front but it was certainly a convincing one.
Anders reached behind his head and pulled his long hair into a loose bun. Niall noted that it framed his face quite flatteringly. Anders may be a lanky blond mess of skin and bone but he was hansom in his own way. He shook himself out of that train of thought very quickly and refocused on the task at hand.
They set to work brewing. Niall fixed his cauldron over its stand and Anders set a small fire beneath it. Everything went smoothly until Niall added a faulty distillation agent and sent purple sparks flying into the air.
Anders laughed at the look a pure shock on Niall's face, "The power wasn't dried properly." he took the rest of it from Niall and demonstrated what needed to be done.
"You're good at this."
"I'm average at this – you're terrible. Thank the Maker you're pretty, at least."
Niall laughed.
"How did you end up having to teach this, anyway?"
"You know how it goes – Irving decreed it and around here that's means the Maker himself may well have ordered it." he was still bitter.
"I don't think the Maker has to answer to the Knight-Commander though."
"Ha – the way Greagoir struts around, I'm not so sure."
Anders snickered and turned his attention back to the cauldron.
Half an hour and a few more spoiled attempts later and Niall had managed to produce a viable balm.
"It just needs to simmer long enough to thicken and you're done."
Niall couldn't help but feel a flicker of pride as he watched the violet coloured concoction calmly bubbling away.
"How long does that take?"
"Can be up to an hour."
"You don't have to wait with me."
"Actually," Anders glanced around, "Do you mind if I do – this might be the longest I've gone in years without a templar's beady eye on me."
Niall understood what he meant. "I suppose it is peaceful in here, the cave has a cold-and-damp kind of charm to it."
Anders moved off to the side and sat down on the closest thing the cave had to a seat – a heap of hessian sacks piled up in the corner. He patted the space next to him and Niall took the invitation to sit down.
"They get everywhere, the Templars. I half expect one to leap out from one of those storage crates." Anders paused, "I still can't believe how many were at Uldred's little soirée."
Niall had wondered about that too. It made sense to have a few Templars on side – of course Uldred would have some of them in his pocket. He was an influential man, bribing the occasional guard would be nothing to him. But to actually invite them in, to drink with them, mix with them as though they were all mundanes – it was odd, more than odd.
"That took me by surprise too." Niall confessed.
"Uldred has a way of gaining people's loyalty. He claims he recruits people to the Libertarians but he operates like he's raising his own private army."
That was the longest Anders had even spoken without cracking a joke, "I didn't expect you to be embroiled in Circle politics."
"Oh, I'm not." he didn't quite meet Niall's eye, "I had – a friend – he was involved in all that. He was a Libertarian but he fought constantly with Uldred. Then he got sent to Kirkwall. I sometimes wonder if that was Uldred's doing."
"Well – shit." then Niall thought, "But only Greagoir can make transfers – surely Uldred couldn't have been involved?"
"I don't know. I just know I wouldn't put it past him."
Niall thought back to how appalled Uldred had sounded last night when he'd described what the templars had put Anders through. It had been so genuine – Niall doubted Uldred would have had any mage sent away - even if he did have that power – especially somewhere with a reputation like Kirkwall's. Still, he knew nothing about the details, he was just speculating, so he kept his opinions to himself.
"If you don't trust him – what were you doing at his party?" it wasn't an accusation, just curiosity.
"I don't trust him not to flay me alive. I do trust him to provide quality alcohol and a place with a bit more privacy than the back wall of the library."
"From what I remember overhearing, you made excellent use of that privacy." Niall joked.
"That I did." his voice dropped slightly as he ran his eyes over Niall. Then he added, "You know, it's pretty private here too – would be a shame to waste that."
Niall took the hint. He leant closer and met Anders in a kiss. He didn't waste any energy wondering if this was a good idea. With the mood Torrin had been in earlier, this could be his only opportunity in the near future to relieve some tension.
Anders ran his hands underneath Niall's robe, hitching it up and exposing his skin to the rough cloth they were sat on. They moved frantically against each other, neither of them interested in drawing thing out, both just taking what they needed, focused entirely on their own release.
Afterwards, they lay quietly for a while.
"I wonder why they never have templars patrolling that library back wall?" Anders mused, breaking their companionable silence, "They have to know what goes on there."
Niall smirked, "I actually have a theory about that."
He'd regaled Torrin with this particular theory before but he hadn't been amused. But Anders looked intrigued.
"I think the Templars are actually instructed to leave us to it. I think if they went around breaking us up – well, that kind of pent-up frustration is a pretty strong emotion. And what do strong emotions attract?"
Anders let out a burst of laughter,
"I can see it now," he affected an exaggerated professor voice, "The Brahm's Scale has been the accepted standard of demonic classification since the Towers age. However, a recent proposal by Enchanter Niall of the Ferelden Circle of Magi posits a hereto unknown class of demon – the Horniness Demon."
"It does make sense though, doesn't it?" he teased.
"I don't know," Anders brought his hand to his chin and pretended to be deep in thought, "I think the Templars are probably just perverts who'd rather watch than break it up."
They stayed there a little while longer, making each other laugh until the sound of bubbling from the cauldron welled up enough it became impossible to ignore. They moved to pack up – pouring the balm into a vial and sweeping away the soot left by the flames.
"If Leorah's willing to guard the door again – we could do this again?" Niall suggested as they were leaving.
"Ah -," Anders sounded apologetic, "I try to stick to a one-time-only rule."
Niall laughed, "That's fine. Actually, I meant more – well, there's something called a Swift Salve on Wynne's lesson plan in a few weeks and I'm not even sure what that is."
Anders' face was unreadable as he said, "Yeah – maybe." he smiled but it seemed forced, "Swift Salve is quite nice actually, smells like peppermint."
-o0o-
Niall felt somewhat vindicated that he'd been right - becoming an Enchanter had started eating into his research time already. It was almost dusk before he manged to get to the library which only gave him a few minutes to grab some books before Uldred was strolling over to his desk.
"Evening, Niall."
"Uldred, right on time." he noted as a few of the mages around them began to leave for the evening service.
Uldred pulled a chair over from another desk and immediately began looking over what Niall had out on his desk. He caught on very quickly, Niall barely needed to talk him through any of it, even the technical details he barely understood himself. He didn't hesitate to take his own quill to Niall's work, adding notes in his almost illegible scrawl that solved issues Niall wasn't even aware the project had. If this was an area Uldred considered his knowledge to be lacking in, Niall was terrified to see what the man thought expertise looked like.
Uldred shifted in his seat and there was a loud metallic clanging sound. He reached down to where he'd accidentally kicked Niall's cauldron.
He lifted it onto the desk and began rooting through it with such confidence it barely crossed Niall's mind that that was actually quite intrusive.
"A Spirit Balm?"
"Oh yeah, that's a long story – it's Wynne's fault – nothing to do with this research though."
Uldred went quiet for a moment, fiddling with the vial in his hand. Then he took a blank piece of parchment and began to sketch a diagram.
He drew a tiny vial then beneath it a cowl, a staff, and gauntlets. Niall marvelled that a man with such atrocious handwriting could draw so well.
"See," Uldred began explaining, "resistance effects are not strictly cumulative in a simple sense," he drew some lines between his sketches, "brewing two balms and coating your staff twice doesn't double the effects – there's a point of diminishing returns…"
Niall had never seen Uldred so animated as he continued thinking out loud, explaining his ideas like a talking textbook that Niall wasn't entirely following. There was an urgency to his speech as he mind worked to weave together different threads of magical theory. " – but resistance effects across different objects also aren't commutative. That means that -,"
Uldred continued talking and scribbling and gradually Niall began to understand what he was getting at. It was – brilliant. Completely brilliant. Part of Niall had been suspicious about Uldred's interest in his project, he thought the man had some other agenda, but after this – there was no denying that Uldred was genuinely fascinated by the work.
Niall found himself matching Uldred's enthusiasm. As the night drew in they spread across three different desks, hopped up on coffee and hopping from book to book.
"Evening, Senior Enchanter." Uldred's voice broke Niall out his trance. He looked up to find Torrin standing over them.
"Hey." Niall grinned, "come see what we're working on."
Torrin ran his eyes over the desks until his eyes fixed on a single book in a stack. Manual: Blood Mage by Anonymous. He picked it up.
"I think it's clear what you're working on."
"Don't be ridiculous." Niall snapped. He had enough trouble with the Templars accusing him of being a blood mage, he wasn't going to take that from his own mentor. He couldn't even remember whether it was him or Uldred who had taken that book off the shelve.
"Torrin," Uldred's voice was very calm, "this is a library. We are scholars, not Maleficarum."
"Come on – let me show you want we've found."
Torrin shook his head, "I wouldn't want to intrude. Niall – I expect you to keep our appointment tonight. I will see you in my room shortly."
Torrin skulked away and if Niall wasn't so annoyed, he would have laughed. For all the man's paranoia over people finding out they were sleeping together, he really was oblivious to how suspect his parting words sounded.
"Sorry about him."
"I should be the one apologising," offered Uldred, "he's made no secret to me that he's unhappy about us working together."
"Well he never mentioned anything to me."
"Curious. Still – this evening has been productive. Perhaps we should call it a night – it seems you are needed elsewhere."
They re-shelved their books and cleared a few patches of spilt ink they hadn't noticed while they were working.
"All this Maleficarum paranoia – the constant suspicion drives me crazy – my pet project isn't about to bring doom upon all the world."
Uldred raised an eyebrow.
"Sorry," Niall said again, "I went to the chantry service this morning. It was your fault actually – what you said last night about apathy."
"My ramblings pushing someone towards the Chantry – perish the thought."
Niall snickered, "Well it did me good. Reminded me why I stopped going in the first place."
"There's nothing quite as refreshing as starting the day being told your very soul is tainted."
"Quite – although, your apprentice seemed to find something to enjoy about it."
"Jowan?"
"Yeah – he looked very friendly with one of the initiates."
Uldred just gave a grunt in response and Niall got the feeling he'd said something he shouldn't have.
-o0o-
He was tempted just to go to bed, but in the end Niall went to Torrin's room anyway. Not going would just have felt petty and he wasn't the one being petty here. He endured an icy stare from his mentor as they began to talk through Uldred's notes. The stare started to thaw slightly as Torrin got caught up in the fact the new suggestions were ingenious and forgot to care who they had come from.
By the time they had finished they'd slipped back into their familiar, comfortable rhythm. As Niall started to leave Torrin said,
"I apologise for earlier."
Niall knew him well enough to know apologising did not come naturally to Torrin, a man chronically convinced he was correct about everything. He appreciated the effort even if his words had come out in a reluctant monotone.
"You don't need to worry about me, you know - I'm far too old to be lead astray." he smiled reassuringly, then pressed a light kiss against Torrin's cheek as he left.
Niall made his way down the familiar winding corridor but stopped outside Uldred's door. He could hear voices – arguing.
"I can't protect you if you're reckless." Niall heard Uldred say. Usually Uldred's voice was calm. Even when he was angry, giving speeches about the templars, injustice, he always sounded controlled, bordering on rehearsed. This was different – he sounded emotional.
Niall couldn't make out the mumbled response. Then Uldred spoke again,
"Then why was it so blindly obvious to him?"
"I don't know," the second voice was louder now, "but I won't leave her!"
That was Jowan's voice.
Niall made the snap decision that whatever this was about, it was none of his business and scurried away down the corridor.
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A/N - I think I've actually figured out how to leave author's notes now! So – Hi!
Hope this one wasn't too long - I thought about splitting it in two but there's a lot of plot left to get through in the next few chapters
Also I accidentally thought up a whole Kanders backstory while I was writing this soooo that may get written sometime in the future...