Getting near the end and I am increasingly dissatisfied with some chapters - probably because I just finished them a week or so ago and haven't had time to consider all the things I should have done better. Editing is a bit slow.
Still no translations.
Fiona in the Fade
It had been more than a day since I had last made an attempt to find Nehnadahlen, and so that was the destination I oriented myself toward, intending to spend the whole of what remained of my night searching. I didn't need to scrape together the desire to return this time. Something about attending the ball and the conversation that followed, particularly about Duke Sandral's son, made me long to see the faces of my own people, living in their own city, ruling their own civilization.
However unjustly they had done it.
Though - to be honest, I don't think I was expecting to succeed.
It was the scent that alerted me first - nothing smelled like nehnadahl - and so I followed the scent straight into the memory. The trees rose up about me like an embrace. The voices of my people fell on my ears. And, above me, the city shone with all its pristine grace and beauty. I spent several moments spinning, trying to take it all in, and laughing with the triumph of what I had done.
Then I forced myself to be sensible, left the memory behind, and went to find Fiona.
The Fade wasn't that simple, of course - nothing ever was here - but I knew how to find Enleal's garden, and it had a number of other spirits under its protection. They liked me, or seemed to, so I went to the garden, waited for a handful of them to gather, and then asked them if they would help me find Fiona. It was roughly dawn in the waking world, and, by necessity, the Grand Enchanter had been awake as late as I had been the night before, so I expected she was still dreaming somewhere in the Fade.
After that, I had only to wait for the spirits to either bring me Fiona or word of her. I occupied myself wandering the garden, exchanging greetings with spirits I met. Enleal didn't make an appearance - presumably it was off observing or thinking or exploring, or whatever well-defined spirits spent their time on.
It wasn't long before one of the spirits I had requested help from came back to find me, followed closely by a second - Fiona was following, but grudgingly, distrustful of their motives. I let them lead me to her, more spirits joining us - and then sometimes returning to Fiona, running back and forth between us like excited children - as I skimmed my way across the Fade. I was learning to travel as Solas did, though it was admittedly easier while I was surrounded by friendly spirits. The Fade bent readily to our collective will, delivering us where we wanted to go in short order.
Perhaps, had I been even more practiced, I wouldn't even have needed the spirits to find Fiona first. I might have simply called on the Fade itself to take me to her. For the moment, though, I still needed assistance.
We met in a place I hadn't been before, but that somehow reflected Fiona's touch - this was a piece of the Fade where she came, at least occasionally, to dream. "So, it is you," she greeted me, and then gave me a hard look. "You are - remarkably present. More so than many mages I have met."
"I know. I've been told it's an effect of having spent time physically within the Fade," I replied.
"And these spirits - why are they helping you? You didn't bind them. You couldn't have."
"I asked," I told her.
"You...asked," she repeated.
"Nicely?" I shrugged. "I like the spirits I've encountered, and they seem to return the favor." I smiled around at the ones who had helped me, still crowded close, listening to my conversation with Fiona.
"Fenes'saota," they murmured. "Silealan da'len."
"I fear my Elven is not what it should be," Fiona said. "What do they say?"
"Spirits refer to me as wolf's mate," I explained. "These also call me child of wisdom. They live in an area controlled by a powerful wisdom spirit - it calls itself Enleal - and that is one of its names for me."
"A play on your name," she said, making the connection.
"And...other things," I replied, uncertain how she would respond to learning that Enleal was mentoring me. Not as badly as Vivienne would, certainly, but Fiona still had a clear distrust of spirits. "They wish to be shaped - the spirits, I mean. They want to be something, and contact with mortals helps. I don't think angry or fearful things at them, driving them away and threatening to corrupt them, and so, in return, they are happy to do me small favors."
"I suppose Fen'Harel gains his allies much the same way," Fiona said grudgingly.
"No, Solas is on an entirely different level," I said, shaking my head. "But this is no doubt how he began, and I am content following his example in the Fade. Anyway," I continued, "I didn't find you to speak of spirits. I've found it - Nehnadahlen. I believe I can take you there now."
Fiona's eyes widened. "Then by all means, Inquisitor, show me your memory of a city."
It was harder going back with someone, but I wanted fiercely to share the city with another person, to not be the only one in my acquaintance who had seen and felt its wonder, and so I had desire to spend, and more to spare. Several of the spirits from Enleal's garden also came along, seemingly fascinated by Fiona, perhaps in part because some of her wariness toward them had eased. Their presence and desire to give us both what we wanted helped. I ached for them, even though I had only begun to understand how little contact they had with mortals. Each new individual who even so much as tolerated them must be precious.
Even so, I couldn't skim through the Fade as I had started being able to do. We had to walk, step by step, down the path I had taken - which meant taking Fiona through Enleal's garden. She looked around her with fascination as we followed the paths I was now familiar with. "I knew powerful spirits shaped their domains - I have found myself on the edges of such domains before - but I have never simply wandered through. There is - so much creativity here, and yet it is still...so precise."
"You've never wandered through a spirit's domain?" I asked, struck by the admission.
"In the Circles, we were taught that such places are dangerous. A powerful spirit makes a powerful demon," she replied.
"Or a powerful ally against demons," I retorted. "Outside of Solas's stronghold, Enleal's garden is the place I have felt the safest within the Fade."
"I am pleased to hear it, vherain," Enleal's voice said, and I turned to find the spirit had appeared at my elbow. It bowed to Fiona. "I am pleased to welcome you to my realm, Grand Enchanter, former Grey Warden, mother of-" Its eyebrows went up and it paused. "But I see you would prefer not to speak of that. My apologies."
Though curious, I let the matter pass without comment. "Fiona, this is, as I'm sure you have guessed, the spirit Enleal."
"One of Fen'Harel's allies?" she asked, glancing between us.
"No," the spirit answered at the same time I did. It smiled, amused, and went on: "I fear Pride has little space to heed the voice of Wisdom, and a voice sweeter to the Dread Wolf's ear than my own has tried to say many of the words I would speak." The spirit nodded graciously in my direction. "I did not intend to distract you from your goal, I merely wished to introduce myself and invite you to return to my domain any time you please, Grand Enchanter. Too few mortals come here, but I think you, in particular, might find within my garden companions to refresh your mind and restore your spirit. There is much that weighs heavy on you. Some of these things it would do you good to say aloud to a sympathetic ear."
"I...confess myself intrigued, and will consider the offer," Fiona replied. "You have my thanks...Enleal."
The spirit inclined its head and continued down the path away from us, leaving us to our goal. "That, I think, is an extraordinarily powerful spirit," Fiona murmured.
"And very old," I agreed. "Our acquaintance is fairly new, but I hope I will still be able to find my way here when I leave Cumberland. I would like, one day, to count Enleal among my friends."
I glanced at Fiona and found her watching me closely. "Dorian was right, wasn't he? You view the Fade very much as Fen'Harel does."
Time was passing in the waking world, and so I started walking again as I tried to frame my answer. "I suppose...the rest of you see Solas as fundamentally bad, but I only see him as flawed. Flawed and - backed into an impossible position only partly of his own making. He didn't just fail to lie about many, many things - especially things he was passionate about - there's a great deal to admire about his approach in all sorts of situations and subjects, perhaps most especially the Fade. Taking his advice or emulating him in one way doesn't compel me to mirror everything he does and thinks. Thankfully. He's brilliant in some ways and an utter fool in others."
"That wasn't necessarily a criticism, simply an observation," Fiona replied, keeping pace beside me. "I think there is a wisdom in neither loving nor hating blindly. You might have done either when you learned of Fen'Harel's deception, and it is to our benefit - all of us, who would not see the world burn in chaos - that you did not."
"Can I ask you something?" I waited for her nod before I went on. "Why do you call him Fen'Harel? You knew him as Solas, too."
She was silent for a long moment. "I suppose...because I cannot picture the man I knew - the quiet, reclusive scholar, brimming with wisdom - as the man who now threatens the world. I must remind myself that I never really knew him at all."
"Maybe you just didn't speak to him on the right subjects," I said with a little laugh, fixing my eyes on the path before us. "There was always a rashness - a rush to judge - certain circumstances and people, which he often regretted after." I paused. "I admired his willingness to admit he was wrong. I still do, even though sometimes the recognition comes too late to be of practical value."
"One thing I do wonder about," Fiona admitted, "is his animosity toward the Grey Wardens. He, of all people, should understand doing what is necessary - even making profound mistakes - when saving the world requires immediate action."
"I have, on occasion, wondered about it, too," I replied, nodding toward the path we needed to take as we reached a crossroad. "There is a subtle difference between Solas's anger over something he finds contemptible, and his anger over something he finds frightening. If I am any judge, the Grey Wardens frighten him. There must be something about the Blight, or the Old Gods, that he knows and we don't - something the methods used by the Wardens touch upon." I hesitated, words Solas had once volunteered ringing in my memory. "He once implied that the Old Gods were unconnected to the Evanuris, and yet, in retrospect…"
"What?" Fiona prompted as I struggled to remember his precise phrasing.
"I can't remember the exact words he used for all of it, except for this: nothing in any lore connects the elven gods to the Old Gods," I told her, and repeated it for emphasis. "Nothing in any lore. Does that sound evasive to you?"
"Yes," Fiona replied slowly. We were coming to the edge of Enleal's garden, and I wanted to finish this conversation before we entered less hospitable regions of the Fade, and so I stopped walking. My companion - and the spirits still trailing behind us - stopped along with me. "But, then again, what was he to say? 'As one of your pantheon, I can tell you with certainty that we are unrelated to the Old Gods of Tevinter'?"
I laughed. "I know - and yet, it was information volunteered, and Leliana is right to note that his lies of omission can be very effective if one isn't looking for them. He isn't a good enough liar to say something like that in order to sow doubt and send us chasing down an incorrect path - he lies badly, and it doesn't occur to him to feign lies of omission. Either he simply meant it, or he was lying - but I can't think of why he would volunteer such information if it were the truth. There is too much defensiveness implied."
"Even if there is a connection," Fiona pointed out, "he is correct in saying that no known lore reflects on it. Without such lore, where would we even begin searching for the relationship?"
"That, I can't say," I admitted. "History - or myth that might illuminate history - isn't my area of study. I prefer fields that have some hope of a concrete resolution - like a proof, or a death - at the end of a task."
Fiona laughed at that. "Well, I am glad to know there is a common foundation in the interests that might, to the casual viewer, make you appear a polymath."
Sensing that the dangerous part of the conversation was past, I resumed walking. "Me? No. In the first place, I don't think killing things counts as a real field of study. In the second, even if it did, I doubt I am expert enough in any other field for it to elevate me to such a status. At best, I dabble on the edges of the real work. Most of my significant contributions to the world are confined to killing one darkspawn magister, a lot of high dragons, and enough Qunari to prevent an invasion - though Solas arranged that last, so I don't know if I can actually claim credit for it."
"You did the killing, did you not?" Fiona asked.
"The soldiers, certainly," I allowed, "but Solas killed the Viddasala leading them, which was the surest way to put an end to the plan. He used me to drive her to confront him, so - I played my part admirably, I suppose, but I can't claim I knew what I was doing."
We fell silent for a few moments, until the smell of nehnadahl began to tickle my senses. I stopped Fiona. "Do you smell that?" I asked.
"I...do smell something," she said, "though I cannot quite place what it is."
I felt myself smiling broadly. "Come on. We're getting close."
When we finally stepped into the forest of great trees, I found myself watching Fiona closely and wondered if Solas had watched me the same way, and if he had felt the same amusement and delight I felt now as Fiona looked around in mounting wonder. Her gaze followed the trees up, up - and when she saw the city above her jaw fell open. I left her to take it in for a moment, remembering how I had felt when I finally saw the crystal domes and marble towers floating high above.
At length I said her name to get her attention.
"The spells," she breathed in response. "The spells."
"I can't see them," I reminded her, feeling a pang of envy.
"They are cast in - I can't - the harmonies, the - the grace of form and movement-" She shook her head, dragging her eyes away and finally looking at me. "I fear I cannot explain. Oh, I wish I could - that you could see it as a mage does."
"So do I," I agreed in a low voice.
"Show me all of it," she demanded.
There wasn't time for that, of course - not in what remained of a single night, even sleeping well into the morning. I showed her the ghilalvenaan and told her of the ven'ter they were made from, though of course she could see the spells woven into the crystal herself. Then we ventured into the city proper, clothing ourselves like the residents so that we could interact with some of the spirits who played their parts. I discovered something that should have been obvious once Solas had showed me the slaves deemed defective: my missing arm was treated with disgust and horror any time it was noticed. Eventually I lengthened the sleeves of my robe until they fell over my hands, to make the missing one harder to spot.
I'm not even certain Fiona noticed the way I was treated. She was too busy looking around in wonder or stopping to study objects that, to me, looked entirely mundane. She tried to explain what interested her when I asked, but generally ran out of words long before I could make any sense of what she was saying. We found a market and wandered through, looking at produce both familiar and not, and admiring pieces of art and the fruits of a myriad of different crafts. There were also stalls selling art pieces made entirely of magic, which Fiona naturally found especially engaging. "But what do the spells do?" I wondered after she reluctantly pulled herself away from a display of magical art.
"They...simply are," she said, her brow furrowing. "They give impressions of music - or perfume - or...unimagined vistas. Or the spellwork twists in on itself until it is...a flame dancing a quadrille with itself." I glanced at her, one eyebrow raised, and she laughed helplessly. "I don't know how to explain to you what it is or how it feels. Forgive me if I reach for ever more desperate metaphors."
I didn't show her the slaves - not this first time. Whether she knew enough about vallaslin to recognize those who moved with us through the city streets, I couldn't say. Perhaps not. Perhaps she didn't care, not when she was surrounded by so much magic.
We finished our time in a public garden, built in three dimensions, with gently bobbing planters full of exotic trees and flowers, and trickles of falling water creating an ever-changing music. There were tables and benches, and the citizens of Nehnadahlen took advantage of them, bringing meals or books, meeting friends, taking their children out for strolls. We claimed a free bench and sat together, listening as the speech of our ancestors drifted by us, pitched in careful harmonies.
"Do you understand what they say?" Fiona asked me.
"I do," I replied. "Solas said there was a vowel shift when the language was reconstructed in the Dales, but I have never had trouble understanding a spirit speaking Elven - no matter how old it is. It must be some property either of the Fade or of spirits themselves. Do you understand any of it?"
"Very little," she replied. "I know almost none of the language. When a spirit speaks to me, I hear it in the common speech - so you are likely right about properties of the Fade or the spirits. Have you observed, though, how much more they notice you than me?"
"That's just my missing arm, I think," I told her. "Such defects are unwelcome in this city."
She frowned. "No. You are more visible to these spirits than I am - I can feel their attention sliding past me as though I do not exist, even when I am trying to participate in this re-creation. On you - they find purchase."
"Perhaps because I have been in the Fade physically?" I suggested.
"Not this part of the Fade," she reminded me. "And there was no difference in our perceptibility to the spirits in your wisdom friend's garden. No - I think it is because…" She hesitated. "Do you ever feel your - your elven-ness as an integral part of your identity - of your physical self - rather than just and incidental detail about you?"
"Of course," I replied, not understanding what she was getting at. "It is an integral part of me. Not incidental at all."
"Ah." Fiona studied her hands for a moment. "I have never felt that way. Or - rather, I have never wanted to feel that way. I wanted elf to be as meaningless as the color of my hair, eyes, or skin - I wanted others to look at me and see me. Not as an elf, merely as a person. But being an elf is not that simple, I think, even when one is placed in a setting as apparently egalitarian as a Circle. Even with shared status, shared culture, shared religion - being an elf is still nearly as different from being a human as either are from being a dwarf."
She looked up to find me watching her with mild surprise. "Of course it is. I haven't spent much of my life with humans, but - I have always known that. It underlies everything the Dalish say about humans - we see it as a matter of pride, almost."
"Well - and this, I think, is why these spirits see you more readily than they see me," she explained. "You have always embraced, rather than trying to erase, your connection to our shared ancestry. Somehow - that attitude is reflected here. It matters to the spirits who remember this city."
"Are you going to do something about it, then?" I asked. "You will be coming back."
"I am not - certain," Fiona answered. "There is something that calls to me, in all this. Something I cannot name. Perhaps, after all, the disregard for my own history was human indoctrination." She let out a long breath. "This city is magnificent, unmatched by anything humans have ever done with magic or art. And this is only one of our cities, one insignificant enough to be utterly forgotten by time." She paused. "We elves who live in human cities - we see the Dalish as looking down on us."
"Some do," I admitted. "Many do - and most aren't especially diplomatic about it."
"I begin to see why. Not the lack of tact," she added quickly. "That is still reprehensible - our ancestors chose for all of us long ago, and we cannot all return to the fields and forests without beginning another war. But you have a connection - an integrity or wholeness - I lack. I believe...I need to explore the idea further. Reflect. Meditate. Perhaps explore the reasons in a dream. It may take some days, but I will want to return when I am finished, if you are willing to show the way again."
"You know I am," I replied. "I think, perhaps - I am glad you are the one I am bringing here. For your sake, but I also wonder - would Dorian or Vivienne see all this as we do? Or would it be like the Crossroads all over again?"
"That is - I cannot say," Fiona replied, clearly surprised by the thought. "Magic is magic, and yet - are the Crossroads evidence that isn't true? I wish I could see them for myself."
"As do I. Perhaps Leliana will be successful in acquiring an eluvian."
"I hope so," Fiona agreed.
"I will see you at the evening meal, if not before," I promised. She nodded in response, and, with a twist of my mind, I freed myself from the dream.