The Korcari Wilds, 9:28 Dragon
No one spoke. Casavir knelt by the tracker's corpse, and unhooked the cloak from the shoulder-guards. His knees protested; his arms too. He would be paying for that last tackle for some time.
Morrigan stood shivering, arms wrapped round herself, looking at the body of the man she had killed. For all her swagger and wild-roaming life, her silent shock suggested that this was new to her. She had taken a life, and done it to save him.
He folded the cloak around her shoulders. That she did not immediately complain confirmed his assessment of her state. Still unable to speak, he turned his back on the dead and the living, and walked to the highest point of the ridge.
Wind blew through his hair. Birds still darted over the darkening levels of heathland to the north. What a horror. What a wretched horror. He had intended to be a protector, and instead the girl to be protected was standing a few yards behind him with blood around her mouth. Yet he had to be honest with himself: a man could not speak truth if all he told himself was lies. He was glad that she had saved him. As the point of the knife was rushing towards his cheek, the fear of death had been on him. Perhaps even the love of life. Should he despise himself for that?
"I am sorry." Bryant. There was not enough space to stand abreast at this end of the ridge, so the surviving templar had stopped a few feet behind him. Casavir turned, and met Bryant's dark, serious eyes.
"I am too." Five dead men and women. There were supposed to be none. He looked at the remains of Fillan, then looked away. At least Morrigan was reviving. She was watching them now, and not the dead tracker. He was sure she would note every word they said.
"Yes," said Bryant. "But I meant – because of Heow. I did not see him until it was too late to warn you. I don't even know why he attacked." He shook his head in frustration. "He was not one of Fillan's close disciples."
"He may have feared for himself. For some people, attack is the only defence they know."
Bryant ran a hand through his hair, his exhaustion and sadness showing raw in the lines of his face. "That sounds plausible."
The elven mage Matty appeared at the base of the ridge, and began making his way towards them. His hands were red.
"That girl," said Bryant. "She is not Flemeth, is she?"
Unless he was badly misjudging him, Casavir thought that there was no danger of this particular templar trying to abduct Morrigan once he knew her true identity. That she was a shapeshifter had already been demonstrated.
"No. Her daughter. She was not supposed to be here." Rue and exasperation infiltrated his voice.
The close attention the girl was paying to the conversation was confirmed when she frowned…added a scowl to the frown…and marched up to them. To him rather, for she ignored Bryant completely. Her thin white hands were balled up into fists.
"Is that your idea of thanks? You are lucky that I was here. Next time, I will let you try to bounce a knife off your eyeball without interfering."
She gave him no opportunity to respond. Black wings beat the air, sounding angrier than should have been possible for assemblies of feather and hollow bone. But I am grateful. He wished the thought after her. It was better for the girl to be away from this place of death.
"Fierce," said Bryant.
"Very," he assented. "My sister was like her at that age."
"Really?" Bryant's lips twitched. "So were mine. Both of them."
Their eyes met. A connection had been made. From now on, the simple awareness that they were men with families and pasts remote from this scene would underpin their dealings with each other. Perhaps, he thought, he should have begun the parley by announcing that he had a family, parents, that there was an elf woman in his homeland who… But no. They mistreated their elves here. Fillan would only have attacked more precipitately.
Matty had paused to watch Morrigan's departure, his scarp of a forehead creasing with interest. His face was longer and harder than most of the elves Casavir had met. Despite the celestial looks, the floating blond hair and vivid blue eyes, there was something uncomfortable about him. It could be that it was the mage's own discomfort, radiating outwards. He was a man of wires pulled tight. Was that the character that life in the Circle imposed on its members, or only on him?
The mage stooped; when he straightened, he was holding the two pieces of broken shield. The fracture was a clean one that ran as straight as a ruled line down the middle.
"What is he doing now?" Bryant muttered, more to himself than Casavir.
Matty had set the edges of the shield together, so that it once more formed a perfect circle. He held it before him, gripped firmly in his bloody hands. Since Casavir could see the wooden back, it had to be the blind dragon that the mage was staring at.
Everything blurred. Only for a second. It was as if the flash of movement that was normally just glimpsed happenstance from the corner of an eye had moved into the dead centre of his vision. The world moved sideways. Then there was a click, his vision cleared, and the mage was striding up the remainder of the ridge. The shield, the dragon face now tilted towards them, was intact.
"Do I want to know how you did that?" Bryant asked, his tone imparting resigned disapproval.
"Faith, Sir Bryant," the mage replied blandly. "The purest faith."
Bryant's eyes narrowed, but he did not dispute the answer, even if Casavir's instincts told him that the two men were aware of something that he was not.
"Thank you," said Bryant. Matty nodded in acknowledgement.
"The time had come. I could make no other choice. I did not act to save your life, though I am glad that you are here, and not down among the dead. Fillan Landless has enough souls to walk with him through the Fade."
"Fillan was brave," said Bryant, his brow furrowing again in sorrow.
"He was single-minded," said the mage. "That is not the same as brave." He turned, shield held over his torso. A shiver ran up Casavir's back: it had seemed to him then, just for a breath, that Matty's blue eyes were the dragon's missing ones. But that was foolish. On basic practical grounds, the craftsman who created the design in glistening turquoise would have chosen another colour as contrast: green, or red, or yellow.
"Casavir. Casavir, the knight from another land. Sir Casavir." The mage intoned his name without mockery. It sounded as if he were tasting it, trying to decide if he approved of the flavour. "You fight like a true warrior, Casavir. Like a dream from a better age."
Casavir managed a stiff, sore bow. A long time ago, he had sworn to protect the weak. This strange blond elf had steeled him, primed him to hold his ground with his dark hint about the Tranquil. It should have been easy to look at him and see a victim, enslaved, exploited, yet the man's intensity would not allow for it.
"I am at your service. Without your intervention, I believe I would have lost that battle."
The elf tilted his head, smiling faintly. "I am not so sure of that, though Sir Bryant's abilities are considerable. But ability is nothing if the will to fight is absent. Don't you agree?" His gaze flicked back to the templar, who gave an uneven shrug.
"You're not wrong, Matty," said Bryant. "Though not completely right either. Tranquil have fought and won before." He stopped. Looked down. "Even if they do not care whether they win or lose…live or die."
"They care," said the mage. "I have seen it. Deep inside, they are still there. And, please," he said, addressing both of them now, "call me Mathendrian. That was my name before I was stolen from the Dalish as a child. Matty is what they called me in the Circle, in the hope I would forget."
As Casavir tried to recall what Morrigan had told him about the Dalish, Bryant hissed softly in surprise. "Six years I have known you. You are Dalish? I had no idea."
"I was Dalish," the mage – Mathendrian – replied. "As for what I am now, I do not know." The planes of his face sharpened. "But not Matty. Never again." The two men looked at each other. Once more, Casavir felt that they were both following the same path in their thoughts. To judge by their expressions, it was not a happy one.
"The Dalish – I was told that they are tribes of elves who wander the land. Is that true?" he asked.
The question made Bryant and Mathendrian exchange another glance.
"Yes," Mathendrian answered. "In this time. But my people once had their own kingdom. They were not always wanderers. They governed themselves, were prosperous, and created works of great beauty. Such as this. Your shield." The elf paused. With one finger, he traced the turquoise enamelling, the curves of the blind dragon. Casavir's own fingers twitched in sympathy; he had run his own hands over the surface many times while he was waiting for the templars, feeling as if he were trying to find the centre of a maze. "I wonder how you came by it?"
Mathendrian's stance appeared almost relaxed; he spoke as if he were making a casual enquiry about the weather. Yet there was an edge there too. How would he respond if Casavir said he had taken it from a ruin? From a tomb?
"Flemeth gave it to me," he said. "As well as the helmet and warhammer. I do not know where she acquired them."
Mathendrian took a step closer. His hair, as light as dandelion seeds, fluttered in the evening wind. Set against the bright blue of the shield, the tired, travel-worn state of his robe was more obvious.
"So, a gift from one apostate helped save another—"
"—Mathendrian…" Bryant began.
"Not now," the elf interrupted with a quick smile. "I promise you will have your chance to dissuade me later. But now—"
He offered the shield to Casavir. The black spaces where the eyes should be ate into him. He lifted his hands, and hesitated.
"Take it, Sir Casavir, and bear it well," Mathendrian said, his gaze for once perfectly level and calm. "Its crest is the hope of the downtrodden, and the dream of my people."
At last, Casavir accepted the shield. He knew that in his heart, he rejoiced to be reunited with it, intact and in his possession. Maybe it was unfitting for a paladin of Tyr to receive such an object, and yet he did, nevertheless.
"I will treasure it," he promised the elf. In reply, Mathendrian only bowed, though with much more elegance than Casavir had managed to bring to bear in his earlier attempt.
"And may She protect you in turn. Mythal. The great mother and fair arbiter."
"A goddess." One of the dead goddesses Morrigan had spoken of. The dragon woman in the book he had seen last night. He looked anew at the carnage on the ridge. Last night already felt long ago. An idea was forming in the depths of his mind, but to draw it out, he would need time and quiet.
"Yes. They still revere her in my tribe. The Boranehn of Ferelden await her return."
Abruptly, Bryant turned his back on them, and began walking down the slope past the bodies. "I will see how much oil we have brought with us," he called over his shoulder.
Mathendrian seemed unconcerned by the templar's abrupt departure. Casavir could guess why oil was needed, but the quiet man's headlong stride troubled him.
"Is he—?"
"Sir Bryant, I think, believes that the less he hears, the less he has to lie about." The elf unslung his staff, and leant on it. The wood was pale; the sides had been honed to sharp angles that complemented the looks of its owner. "Moreover, though he is an eccentric and a free-thinker by the standards of his order, he is still a templar. Talk of my people's gods is forbidden in their cloisters."
Casavir absorbed the information. There were cults whose worship was restricted or banned in Neverwinter, often because they encouraged their followers to burn the city down, or demanded human sacrifice. Mythal did not sound as if she had encouraged that sort of adherence. A mother and a fair arbiter. One might almost say a judge.
Reflexively, he reached for his amulet before recalling that he had left it with Morrigan.
"Will you return to your tribe?"
Without pausing to consider his answer, Mathendrian shook his head. "No."
"They must miss you. Worry for you."
"I know. But loss is nothing new to them. I was neither the first nor last child to be stolen." He pointed his staff towards the north-west. "Three weeks' travel, and I would find them. Some of my family must still be alive. But the Circle has my phylactery. I would be bringing disaster on their heads if I tried to roll back the lost years."
His eyes were dry, his voice collected. This was knowledge the man had lived with through all his youth and adulthood, spent in a world in which, as far as Casavir could tell, the nations connived with a dominant cult to steal children and break the souls of the defiant. On her better days, Neverwinter was a kind place and a refuge in comparison. On her worst… He redirected his focus.
"Then – if I may ask – where will you go?"
Mathendrian leant a cheek against his staff. Still looking towards the home of his tribe, he replied in an indifferent drawl. "I expect I will see Sir Bryant safe to Ostagar. Afterwards, south once more. Fillan's disaster may dampen the enthusiasm for apostate hunting in the Korcari Wilds for a few seasons. If I survive so long, I may travel to the Tirashan Forest, or seek out the Grey Wardens."
Casavir watched the elf. He wished there were a solution he could offer him. At the same time, he knew that, even if all the dangers and obstacles vanished with the morning dew, Mathendrian would still be left to face a tribe and family that he had been kept from for the most formative years of his life. What kind of reunion would that be? Would they recognise their lost child in the adult mage? He was sure Mathendrian had asked himself the same questions many times. Even with his every breath.
"And you, Sir Casavir? You seem to have discovered much more about me than I have of you. Will you return to Flemeth?"
"She has said that she can send me back to my homeland. Back to Neverwinter. I hope that she will soon do so." He did not wish to go into the details of their agreement. Its consequences were still roiling through his brain, and making him sick with doubt.
"You hope," said the elf with a wry curve of the mouth. "You are not sure." He turned his head slightly. His blue eyes glinted. "And you are also convinced that you cannot reach your home by normal means. You intrigue me, Sir Casavir."
"I am a simple man," he replied. Hopelessly simple and naïve, according to a former friend. "The only thing remarkable about me are my circumstances."
"I am the last person to insist on the power of an individual to decide their fate. Yet it seems to me that if anyone can influence it – I do not say determine – then it would be you. If you continually find yourself in remarkable circumstances, I suggest that this is not the work of Fen'Harel, or the will of the Maker. The circumstances are merely reflecting the man at their centre." He nodded towards the sky. "Do you see those clouds turning red and orange? It is because they hold the light of the sun in them."
Mathendrian spoke with persuasive fluency, but Casavir was not swayed by his argument. In the seminary he had been an average pupil, strong in athletics for sure, but there were others who were stronger. As he grew, he learned to love his god, and to seek to serve the land that supported Tyr's temples, and sent armies to the mountains with His emblem on the breast of every tunic.
At eighteen, he knew himself to be straightforward, honourable, unimaginative, and assumed that all his peers were the same as he was in their essential character and beliefs. Then, eighteen years of service behind him, and he was riding to the mountains alone, and everyone else had fallen away. It seemed that they had all changed, while only he remained on the old, simple trajectory.
"My arrival here was, I believe, a matter of chance. I do not know if Flemeth is truly able to return me to my own land and people, but…I must hope that she can."
"Do you have a family there?"
"Yes. Parents. A sister. Nephews and nieces. And there is—" He broke off. He did not know if he wanted to talk about Elanee, nor what he should say if he did.
Mathendrian gave him a knowing look. "Good. Then let me give you some advice: find a way back to them, by whatever means you can. No one controls your phylactery. Sir Bryant will try to persuade you to come with us. Even though he's a moderate man, he won't want to leave you in the sphere of an infamous apostate. But he will not understand the full weight of his asking. Not as I do. Refuse him."
It seemed that Mathendrian was more perceptive than was common, even for an elf, or else he was touched with a little of the same gift as Marcus, the young seer from Ember. After Bryant had returned, confirming that there was enough oil for a cremation, and Casavir assisted in the grisly task of preparing the corpses by stripping off their armour, then carrying them down to the enclosed area where he had made his stand, he stepped back into the open, while Mathendrian emptied five earthenware flasks over the corpses, covering their skin and clothes with a thick, clear liquid that smelled of the spice warehouse by the Neverwinter docks.
Bryant took up position next to him. He had left most of his armour beside the pony for ease of movement. Without the oversized shoulder guards and breastplate, he looked like many of the men in Casavir's militia: hardy, of average height, grim. But he had an air of deep thoughtfulness too that was uncommon in soldiers of any stripe.
"Where is your homeland?" he asked. "Really? This place without maleficarum or Tranquil?"
"It is in another world. A world full of gods and monsters." Sometimes the monsters managed to be worse than the humans, but that was by no means guaranteed. Bryant exhaled, his breath turning into a low chuckle at the end.
"When we first saw you waiting there, I thought you were mad. Then when you kept asking questions, making us strip what we were doing down to the bone, I started to think that perhaps it was cleverness disguised as madness…"
"And now you have reverted to your former opinion?"
Bryant hesitated. He pulled his cloak tighter around him. Casavir too had noted the sharpness in the wind. Tonight there would be another frost.
"If you are mad," Bryant said, "you are the most lucid madman I have ever met."
At another time, Casavir would have smiled. "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
As Mathendrian emptied the dregs of the last bottle over the remains of Fillan, Bryant spoke again. "Tell me – this other world of yours. Is it better than ours?"
The dusk hid the worst of the injuries on the closely packed bodies. Mathendrian retreated before gripping his staff, and sending an arrow of flame into the rock enclosure. Fire and shadow danced and twisted on the wall of the ridge. Smoke billowed up. The first smell was of incense. The next was…not.
"No," said Casavir. "It is no better. I think that some of our dreams may be kinder, but they do not always survive contact with reality."
"We are not so brutal all the timie," Bryant replied. "If you come with us, I could show you some wonders. Real ones. And I admit, I would be glad to have you with us on the return journey. The Korcari Wilds are dangerous, and will be worse with the winter running at our heels."
Casavir never felt comfortable turning down requests for aid. It felt like a violation his core principles. Could he travel with Bryant as far as this 'Ostagar' that Mathendrian had spoken of, and loop back afterwards to return to Flemeth? Yet there was no certainty that he would survive a two-fold crossing of Korcari. Should they encounter a large band of darkspawn, they could be surrounded and hacked apart.
But that was a reason to accompany Bryant. Casavir knew that his abilities could preserve him and Mathendrian through many hazards. Was he then not obliged to go?
He swallowed. To be obliged to act. To have obligations. Duties. Because these two men were near strangers to him, that did not, surely, cancel out the responsibilities he had elsewhere? To his family. His people. Elanee. Sometimes he had to be allowed to put them first, even if it felt like putting himself first.
"I am grateful for the offer," he said. "And I wish you well on your journey. But I must go home."
"You could find a good home in the north," said Bryant gently.
"I do not think my home lies at any point of the compass. Not here."
Mathendrian caught his eye. The elf gave him a taut smile, and nodded, as if to say: you have made the right decision.
The two men did not wait for the flames to die down. With the night creeping across the sky, and several miles to go before they reached their planned campsite, they adjusted the luggage on the pony, throwing away what was not needed, and exchanged farewells with him before they departed, leaving the ridge and the blackened bodied of their companions behind them, as well as the dwelling of the woman whom they had been sent to kill.
Casavir watched the templar and the mage fade out of view into the dark northern heaths. Then, after murmuring a prayer to his absent god beside the pyre, he gathered his equipment, and walked south.
Bands of warm light were already shining through the shuttered window of Flemeth's house. Morrigan must have lit the fire in the oversized hearth. Rather than go in, he first drew water from the well, and, after scrubbing himself clean of sweat, he washed the blood and grime from his armour. The turquoise shield he wiped down as gently as he could, mindful of his promise to Mathendrian, and worried lest he damage some part of the design.
Once he had donned his clothes, he still felt unable to go in and reintroduce himself to the domestic space on the other side of the door. He brushed back his wet hair, and sniffed his fingers. Nothing but the sharp aroma of thyme overlying the tallow from the soap. Not even his imagination could detect the funeral pyre on his skin.
He walked stiffly up to the summit of the little hill where he had tried to meditate the day before. Despite his aching muscles and bruises, he kept walking, plodding around the hilltop in circle after circle. Each time he turned north, a deep red glow was visible on the horizon.
The creeping chill drove him in at last. His numb fingers struggled with the door latch, needing several attempts to close round the icy grip, but then he was through. Not looking about him, he went straight to his bed of piled furs, and knelt on it. Slowly, his limbs relaxed; his fingers stung in the sudden heat.
Something small and solid bounced off his knee. Reaching one rigid hand into the fur, he hooked the chain over his thumb. The bronze Eye of Tyr rose as he lifted his arm. It glinted in the firelight, each familiar dark speck in the ornamentation only drawing his attention to the aged-leather warmth of the metal.
Morrigan was sitting cross-legged on her bed. Some of her clothes lay in her lap, while she toyed with a large canvas needle. As she saw him looking at her, she began ramming it through a quilted hood.
Her temper had not improved since their last meeting.
"Thank you," he said.
She scowled at him, and made another hole in the hood. He was not sure what the purpose of her craftwork was, unless she intended to take a comfortable and practical garment, and render it less so.
"Both for looking after this—" he let the pendant spin on the end of its chain "—and for saving my life. I owe you much, yet I fear I will never be able to redeem my debt."
"You did not sound so grateful before. She was not supposed to be here," she quoted, adding a dismissive jeer to the words that he was sure he had not used in reality.
"I am sorry for my lack of grace," he said, hoping to pacify her. "I was angry with myself for failing to see the threat. I did not want you even to see the templars, let alone —" He had felt calm, but the reminder of the tracker she had killed awakened his black mood.
"Do not trouble yourself. Your bargain with my mother will stand. That you survived only through my intervention will be of little interest to her. She wanted the templars removed, and they have been."
That was not what he meant, and, since she was sunken in a pit of sullen hostility, he expected that she knew it too. He watched her sadly. Whatever he had hoped she might learn from him, it was not how to kill.
"I only wish," he told her, trying to hold the door open to a different kind of conversation, "that you had been spared from involvement. Taking a life is a terrible act. Even when we do it for the best of reasons – to save another – it leaves a mark."
"Then why are you not spotted like a leopard?" she snapped. "You have killed three darkspawn and four humans within a few days. Do not try to tell me that you lived a peaceful life singing to birds and weaving flower garlands before you came here."
He imagined what Sand would say if he found Casavir stringing daisies and duetting with blackbirds, and tried not to smile. For all Morrigan's peculiar way of expressing herself, this was a serious matter. People were dead.
"It is true that I am no stranger to battle. I am a paladin. I have laid down oaths before my god to defend those who cannot defend themselves, and to bring down the unjust. By force, if necessary."
"You decide for yourself who is just, and who is unjust, I suppose," she scoffed. "My mother said once that justice is the smooth face of murder with a larger army and better scribes."
Casavir paused. He felt the pendant's chain digging into his palms and finger joints. Morrigan's argument was not new to him, and he was too tired for it tonight. Gods, he was weary. But he owed her an answer because she had saved his life, while he was duty-bound to provide an answer as a paladin. The point when he refused to speak of his ideals, and ignored criticism of them, would be the point when he stopped being a paladin, and became a brute.
"It is true that terrible deeds are carried out in the name of justice. And justice itself can seem terrible. When I…left…Neverwinter, I went to the mountains and joined a group of farmers who were trying to defend themselves against orc attacks—"
He stopped as he realised that she might have no concept of what an orc was. Before he could check her understanding, she leaned forward, letting her sewing slide off her lap and fall to the floor.
"Leave your tedious little city? Why?" Morrigan had been listening to him, but to his pauses; his words had been a mere frame for the unsaid.
She could not fail to notice the long pause that her question provoked. Nevertheless, caught out and struggling with his answer, the irony that a young witch brought up in the middle of a wilderness was calling Neverwinter little provided a spark of amusement.
"Well?" she demanded.
How to answer? He had never spoken of it directly, not even with Ivarr or Elanee. That was a raw, blistered part of his life that he preferred not to display. But there was no deep, sinister secret as Lila Farlong had seemed to believe, along with half the castle.
Morrigan was both precocious and immature. As she was, she would have limited ability to comprehend what he might tell her, not in its outline, but in its steady, crushing weight. People of her age still had an aptitude for dispersing looming clouds with a finger-snap, no matter what those clouds might contain. He missed that ability, though it had never been one of his strongest.
He would tell her. Whatever might happen with Flemeth, once his sojourn in the house came to an end he would never see Morrigan again.
"It was because of a stolen apple," he said. "In the end. After many other incidents."
"You stole an apple?"
He shook his head. "I wish I had. A streetchild stole an apple from a market stall. I was with a friend and brother in Tyr's service at the time. Cothi. He caught the boy, and took him to a watchpost. Because the deed was witnessed, the boy was caned on the spot."
Morrigan sniffed. "I would hardly call that a punishment. The Chasind of Reedholm treat thieves mercilessly. If the stolen goods are their own, of course." She added, in a rare nod towards fairmindedness, "Though they never harm their children. They would consider your people barbaric for that."
"The Chasind would be right to do so…" Red welts on the thin palm, and in criss-crossing lines over the pasty back. He often wondered what had happened to the child. The officer of the Watch who administered the caning had wanted strip the boy naked before thrashing him. Casavir had forbidden it, and could not understand in hindsight why he had not simply broken the cane over the sadist's head.
"But this matter closely followed another," he continued. "Cothi and I had been returning from a specially assigned guard duty. We had been sent to ensure that a meeting took place without problems. A noble lady, whose reputation was compromised after she gave information and resources to a hostile power, had decided to donate a large amount of coin to the state. In return, history would be adjusted to suit her, and a few other minor favours would be thrown in."
Casavir became aware of how much bitterness was flowing into his voice. He had decided to answer Morrigan properly, as he had no one else, in the hope that she could learn something from his experience. Though what, he did not know. Her mother already seemed to have supplied her with enough cynicism to poison a rising of larks. Revealing his own hurt to this acid-tongued girl was the last thing he had meant to do.
"A hungry child stole an apple, and was beaten," he summarised. "A noble betrayed her city, and was given the keys to the palace."
"It is always so," said the girl, speaking as if she had seen more of the world than the clay-and-timber house in the wilds, and was able to form universal principles about its workings. "The powerful take as much as they can, while the weak are too stupid and cowardly to resist them."
Too late, he realised that he had only been reinforcing Morrigan's own sour perspective. No child of the seminary was she. Discussions of fairness and good faith had not washed over a shining walnut table towards her during the family feasts of childhood.
"It is better than that," he said, trying to undo the damage. "People can be better than that." There were examples to prove his claim, he knew, but one of his abiding character flaws was the undue prominence of the bad in his mind. If one watchman took a bribe, while his colleague ran into a burning building to save an infant, it was the act of weakness he recalled first; heroism was rated a poor second by his perverse memory. "I have seen a murderer exposed and condemned before the eyes of the city. My allies have risked their lives to protect others." A chink of light awoke. "My friend Elanee. She ran out under a storm of arrows to help an injured stranger."
Images of well-known, wished-for faces bloomed at the forefront of his consciousness. Duncan Farlong, the generous innkeeper. Ivarr wiping his glasses clean on a blood-stained robe. Raul shaking the flour from his arms as he strode out of Castle Never's kitchens, swearing that if no one else would stop the plague, then he damn well would. Aarin. Callum. Sir Nevalle ignoring Lord Nasher's orders for the first time in his life to fight on the walls of Crossroad Keep.
The darkness was never as deep as he feared. The gate of the prison always lay a little ajar.
"Elanee," said Morrigan. "The one you left your ugly necklace for." Her eyelids lowered; the glitter of her pale irises looked golden in the firelight. "I expect she is very pretty."
"She is," he replied. "Beautiful. More beautiful than she knows."
"And stupid too," the girl added, smirking as if she had been caught adding vinegar to a bowl of punch. The jab rebounded; he might as well have been in his armour. Morrigan had never met Elanee; she was attempting to hurt him, and he believed he knew why, though courtesy and circumspection would never allow him to articulate the reason.
"Because she granted me her friendship?" he answered, careful to keep his tone mild. "I admit, it was not the wisest choice she could have made."
"It was an asinine choice," Morrigan readily concurred. "Why choose a mate who barely survives one battle, only to throw himself into another on the say-so of an old hag in a swamp? You cannot mate if you are dead. Animals know this. Chasind know this. Only foolish templars and knights of Neverwinter cling to their ignorance."
"The elf mage is as free as he can be. Would you have him still a prisoner? Perhaps dead at your mother's hand, or else marched back to his Circle, the gates locked behind him?" That Mathendrian had benefited from his actions today was his only steady source of confidence that he had made the right decision.
"I would have him and the rest of the Circle's pet mages realise their own strength. If they cannot do that, they do not deserve to be free." She answered with glib self-assurance. What would she be like ten, twenty years from now? He would never know, unless fate played him another strange trick.
"Not everyone is as strong or as bold as you," he told her. The flattery might soften the ground for the next idea. "And one day, even you may be in a desperate situation, and need help. I hope you will get it."
The reaction was less scornful than he expected. A succession of emotions raced across her face. Pinkish dots appeared on her white cheeks. "If you stay instead of letting my mother magic you back to your world, which you do not even like, or kill you, or whatever she intends, it could be you that gives that help." She gathered up the fallen sewing work, and stuffed it into a corner of the bed. "Though it will be a wretched pass for me if I ever need the help of one such as you. I would have to have been hit hard over the head beforehand, and to have lost all my wits. I think I would rather die first," she concluded, the dose of melodrama acting to dilute the embarrassing, hungry look that she had sent in his direction before asking him to stay.
"My duty is in my own world," he told her, "and my heart is too." It could even be possible that they were the same thing. He was careful not to observe Morrigan's expression. "It that soup and bread by the hearth? May I…?"
"Do what you want," snarled Morrigan. Jumping from her bed, she stalked to the door, her necklaces rattling in fury, and went out, letting it slam behind her as on the first night.
He was relieved that she had left, for the conversation had been a difficult one on more than one level, and relieved too that she had not kicked over the soup bowl on the way out. Whether Flemeth intended to kill him or aid him, he would prefer to face her well-fed, and not thrumming from head to toe with weariness. In the mountains he had fought, lost allies, and burned the dead where possible, or laid them under cairns since rocks were more common than firewood on the high peaks. And if there was food, he had eaten afterwards, knowing that the next day there might not be.
Recounting the story of Cothi and the boy with the stolen apple, of Lady Tamberlis and her deal, had left him feeling…lighter. A curtain had been pulled back, and revealed a worm, and not the monstrous python he had feared. If he saw his friends again, he would talk to them about those parts of his past. And not in vague hints, but precisely, accurately. Though not in winter. On a bright spring day on the towers of Crossroad Keep, when such things could be managed and distanced.
After wiping up the last of the soup with a hunk of bread, he staggered to his feet, and went back out into the biting dark, where he cleaned the bowl, visited the privy, and scrubbed his hands clean once more. The armour he left outside, trusting that one night in the cold would do it no serious harm. The shield he brought back with him, and set it at the end of his makeshift bed.
Wingbeats chased him through his sleep. He stirred. His eyes as they opened met pure blackness. The now-friendly creaking of the timber house, and the safe smells of food and smoke, reassured him that he was truly awake. Yet on the edge of his hearing, quieter than the scutter of a mouse, he was sure he could still detect the air trembling under wings as huge as a windmill's sails.
He rose, and felt his way towards the shutters. A small push, and they swung open silently to reveal moonlight and frost so pure and silver-white that he breathed out in wonder. It was a still night. No freezing draught rushed into the room through the window space; if the horse nibbling the grass a spear-length away had possessed a mane, then not a strand of it would have moved. But this animal was hairless. Its tail was like a rat's, and its skin had no softness to it. The flanks shone like bones picked clean of flesh in the glow of the crescent moon.
A handsome saddle covered its back. The reins had been looped round the pommel. So this was it. His heart jumped in anticipation.
Turning away from the window, he found that there was just enough light to discern the shape of the hearth, the shield, and Morrigan – a small, dark lump on the edge of the room's only real bed. She must have returned in the night while he slept.
Once booted, dressed in his woollen tunic, and with the shield hanging over his shoulder, he paused. Morrigan's breathing was steady; her sleep was real and deep. Clutching the symbol of Tyr in his hand, he stood over her. What will you be? His earlier musing returned in strength. The Korcari Wilds were full of dangers. The civilised lands to the north where she was determined to venture could be even worse. And that was without giving thought to what she might do to others as her abilities matured. Tyr, stand by her, he wanted to pray. Save her from taking Bishop's road. Save her from Qara's choice.
Tyr was not here, and, in any case, he was certain that Morrigan would not appreciate being made the object of such an appeal.
"Thank you," he mouthed. He lowered his pendant to the floor, and left it there, lying underneath her outstretched hand. It felt like an appropriate exchange: the single eye of a god for an eyeless dragon.
Then he went to open the door, allowing just enough space so that he could slip sideways through it and out into the night. He drew it softly closed behind him.
The bone horse's head twisted towards him on its swan's neck. It snorted, breath condensing instantly into a damp grey cloud, then dissipating. Hurriedly, he strapped on his armour. Even though the pieces should have been freezing and covered in rime, the metal still felt warm, as if had retained the heat of his body. The helmet fit snuggly round his temples. He left the sword leaning against the side of the house; the warhammer he hung from his belt.
Before approaching the horse, he scanned the glade. Empty. No shadowy figure watched from its fringes. The stirrups were already fixed to his preferred level. Relaxed, its marble-veined ears tilted forward in mild interest, the horse tracked his movements. The beast had no smell at all: a picture of a horse would have had more odour.
He put a hand on its shoulder, and was glad of his gauntlets. To feel the living bone of its hide flex under his naked skin would have been uncomfortable, the kind of anomaly that he was more used to encountering in battles against undead than standing at its ease in a grassy hollow.
"Are you waiting for me?" The horse's ears flicked. He moved his hand to the pommel. One last glance behind him showed the patchwork house still dark and peaceful.
He fitted his boot to the left stirrup, and slung himself up. Instantly, unprompted, the horse began to move, first a walk, then a trot. Gripping the pommel tight, he managed to thrust his right foot into the other stirrup, then to shift his weight till he was in a tolerable riding posture.
As if responding to his adjustments, the horse accelerated, its long thin limbs falling into a canter as easily as if it bore a mouse on its back, and not an armoured knight. The shield vibrated on his arm in time with the horse's pitching gait.
They passed from open ground into forest, and the pace stayed the same. Though branches often appeared ready to knock him to the ground like quintain crossbars, none ever touched him. The tips of the outermost twigs always fell a little short, even when he could have sworn that a thick branch barred their way completely.
In the darkest part of the wood, the wingbeats returned, seeming to spring into life from nothing. They were lower than they had sounded when he lay on his fur mattress: as low as the points of the treetops. The moon shining through the canopy cast complex shadows on the floor, but for an instant all of them were subsumed into a larger, deeper shadow that glided through them, wings outspread. The bone-white neck of the horse shimmered as the darkness touched it.
He shivered, and bent low in the saddle, reassured only by the feel of the hammer on his belt. Believing that he knew what it was, who it was, the identity of his shadow in the sky, eased the ancient response of human instincts to the nearness of a higher predator not a whit.
The wingbeats vanished. The night was bright again. As the tension in the atmosphere diminished, his chest muscles relaxed; he had not realised how shallowly he had been breathing.
The horse slowed, and came to a stop. It had brought him to the temple. At night, it was even more beautiful than by day. He looked for traces of the killed darkspawn, and found none. The central circle of the walls traced the line of a sickle-shaped constellation, which held the moon at its centre like embracing arms. Attendants and priests, as graceful as the building itself, could almost be sensed hovering behind fallen doorways, or standing at the turn of crumbling staircases. The cost of centuries seemed negotiable, redeemable.
"You are late," said Flemeth, stepping out of the forest. She touched the horse's throat with the end of her index finger. Its long neck writhed in what seemed to be pleasure; he felt it treading the ground in restless excitement.
"My apologies, lady," he replied. He met her yellow-eyed gaze, and would not permit himself to look away. "But I do not believe you have waited long."
She was still dressed in her peasant garb. Despite that, and despite him being mounted, and she on foot, the old woman's presence shook him. It said first be afraid, and then, afterwards, like the first sip of strong wine after a fast, be reverent.
Flemeth gave a tight, sharp smile that could have whetted the edge of an axe. "I have waited years, young man, though not for you." She paused. "How do you like this temple?"
Casavir turned his attention back to it. The excuse to look away from his host, and back to the moon-filled ruin was welcome. "It is perfect. More beautiful than any I have seen." More elegant than the determinedly oblong churches of Tyr. Lighter than the Temple of the Seasons in Arvahn. "Yet sad." The past lay very near the surface here, but was still as unreachable as ever.
"It is an echo of what it was," said Flemeth, for once without any archness. "Once there were fountains, lights, musicians, scholars, artists and makers of every stripe. Now the trees around us wind their roots through ribcages and broken harps. But even echoes have their uses."
He looked at the long thin trees, uneasy at the thought of what they sprang from. Elanee would have seen it differently. Perhaps instead of giving way to his first instinct, he should pray for the woodland to spread until it enveloped the charred remains of Fillan and his party, so that the grim became transfigured, renewed.
And then there was Flemeth. Many generations had passed since the ruin's heyday, and she remembered that time as a witness, not a historian. That at least did not surprise him. Her lip curled. If she were like her daughter, then it was in reaction to his solemnity. "The musicians were often abysmal, and insisted on playing the dreariest tunes. And as for the scholars…pedants and obsessives the lot of them. Time is sometimes the great improver."
The old woman stooped as fluidly as a dancer, and picked up something from the floor. He glimpsed a fragment of carved masonry. Idly, she flung it towards the section of the wall overgrown by creepers where the sculpture of the savage beast's head lay hidden. The stone bounced across the tiles until was lost in the darkness; the noise of its progress continued long after it should have stopped.
Impatient, the horse started pacing in a circle around Flemeth. 'Can we go now?' it seemed to be saying. With the end of its hard white nose, it gave her a nudge.
"Hold," she ordered. The creature obeyed instantly. "My horse is more eager to be gone than you. Have you reconsidered your wish? You are not compelled to return if you will it otherwise. There are groups here that would accept a heretic with a gift for combat. The Grey Wardens, to name one. Or you could join the marchers that walk between worlds, and have no allegiance. Their fate is a curse to some; others choose it freely."
To Casavir it sounded like a curse. Moving endlessly onward without friends, or faith, without a context to say this is who you are… Only constant change and uncertainty. It could be a flaw in him. A truly great knight might delight in such a challenge, journeying from world to world on a quest to correct the wrongs of known and unknown Planes, not just those of a patch of damp ground on the edge of a disputed sea. Yet his deeper knowledge told him that such a knight, cut off from his natural ties, would soon lose whatever claims to right action he began with.
"I still wish to return to my homeland," he answered. He needed Neverwinter. Without it, he was a book without spine or covers. A gate with no walls. "But…I have so many questions."
"Questions are an excellent thing to have," purred Flemeth, "and therefore I would not do you the disservice of destroying them with answers." She caught the horse's bridle. "Take the reins."
"Why did you bring me here?" he asked, regardless of her unhelpful response. "Was it chance that lead you to me? And why did you send me out to fight?" Looking at her amused, ironic face, already prepared to shut him down with an easy aphorism, he decided to be plainer. "Was it to save your disciple Mathendrian?"
Flemeth chuckled. "The Witch of the Wilds has no disciples. Only a cantankerous daughter who knows less than she thinks like all children, and a horse that eats frogs in preference to hay."
He was determined not to be put off. Not even when the horse bucked and licked its lips with its fork-ended tongue. "And what of Mythal?"
"What of her? A dead goddess is hardly likely to intervene in the fate of her lingering faithful," she scoffed, meeting his stare directly. Neither of them flinched.
"I did not speak of likelihood," he pressed.
Shaking her head so that her silver hair fell forwards, curtaining her hollow cheeks, she loosed the horse's bridle and stepped back. "You have been a fresh influence on my daughter, sir knight. They do not make such as you in this wilderness. She will benefit from it one day. Nevertheless—" her pupils thinned and lengthened "—I will not be pleased if I encounter you again on the Marcher's Way. It would be a sign of tremendous carelessness on your part. Not to mention ingratitude. How is your side?"
As if in reply to her question, the wound stung with a malicious sort of intensity. He pressed his lips together, and hoped the pain did not show in his expression. Then the feeling vanished, so quickly and absolutely that it seemed unreal. "Curiosity is a gift, lady," he answered. "Therefore I will not do you the disservice of sating yours."
Flemeth's laugh rang loud and clear through the remnants of the temple. The curving walls seemed to catch and clarify the echoes. "And a keen wit is the greatest gift of all. Don't use it up all at once, young man. Perhaps your stay here has given you more than an old shield and a trial of blood."
He thought of the fish hanging up to smoke. The bed of fur, and the herbs drying on hooks round the fireplace. Days chopping wood, cooking, or walking through rough country. The hilltop for meditation. How heaven and earth seen from that spot had briefly neared alignment. "It has."
"Good. Now take the reins, and ride. The horse will bring you where you wish to go. Though that may not be where you expect."
This time, he obeyed her, lifting the reins from the pommel and winding them round his hands. "The horse…"
"…will turn round and return to me, and will do so once you let the reins fall, wherever you are, and whether he has a rider or no."
Flemeth took another step back. The night obscured her face and the details of her rough dress, but while the moon still glinted off her hair, and her eyes glowed gold in the darkness, her formidable presence remained.
"Farewell," he said, "and thank you."
"Keep your thanks, Sir Casavir. And beware of yourself, and the god you worship." Her tone became harsh, as stern as the icons of Tyr in the seminary. "Take it from one who knows. Gods do not understand the word 'enough!' What you offer them, they will claim as theirs, not from cruelty, but from nature. The more sacrifices you pile on their altars, the more they will demand, until you have nothing at all left to give."
Before he could reply, could say but if you give nothing, you will have nothing at the end – where then draw the line? the old woman clicked her tongue, and the horse sprang into motion. It turned left and cantered round the temple's outer ring of walls and arches, keeping to a brisk canter. His hands tightened on the reins, and he pushed his feet down and out in the stirrups. The freezing air cut his cheeks. His eyes started to water.
Soon they had made a full circle, and were approaching the spot once more where he had spoken with Flemeth. Rather than beginning a second circuit, the horse turned right. Its hooves cracked against the smooth floor tiles. Casavir lifted himself above the saddle, leaning forward, as his reptilian mount sped up, and galloped towards the wall where the carving lay in its nest of ivy.
There was no time even to throw himself to the ground. The wall was feet away. He closed his eyes. Leaves and vine tendrils whipped against his armour.
The collision he had braced himself for did not happen. He opened his eyes. It was still night. But the moon and constellations shone in a sky the colour of darkest indigo, and the horse was galloping along a dusty chalk track in a soft landscape of meadows speckled with trees. Korcari was gone. The temple was gone. He was back on the road between worlds.
