Important note at the bottom of the chapter, so don't miss it.
Perchance to Dream
Solas was sleeping, naturally, when I finally managed to make my way past his wards. He had set them to recognize me, but it took more than a little coaxing on my part to make them accept Sylalhan, too - an oversight on his part, I supposed. It was unusual for him not to consider such details, and I took it as yet another sign of the depths of his grief.
I tried not to disturb him, even though I was well aware how difficult that was to do, covering him with a fur pulled from a bedroll and then setting up camp around him. There was no chance of me pitching a tent with anything like efficiency, and I wanted to have it up before dark, so I started there. As expected, it took me the rest of the afternoon and into the twilight following sunset - I was lucky that the days were growing steadily longer as spring advanced, and I thought I should probably have Solas look it over when he woke to make sure everything was as it should be and it wasn't likely to collapse or get blown away.
Once the tent was - probably - secured, I started a fire with wood Solas had at least been kind enough to gather together for me. There were limbs and thick logs, none of them in any shape to actually be put onto a campfire, and I didn't trust myself with a hatchet. But I had magic at my disposal, and so I spent a frankly ridiculous amount of power breaking up the wood that way, and then started a fire and a meal.
My mind drifted as I waited for my pot of soup to boil and soften the jerked meat I had thrown in. While I waited, I absently rubbed the still-active Anchor and tried to arrange the arguments I would offer Vivienne when I told her what I intended to do with the mages I had sent to Skyhold. I needed to attempt to view Circles from her perspective, or I wouldn't have a chance of persuading her, and that was difficult.
She was, I knew, a great believer in retribution as a primary driver of disciplined behavior, but I wondered how she explained the fact that blood mages kept becoming such problems within Circles. Hadn't the Circle of Ferelden fallen to blood mages only a decade before? She looked at problems as occurring within individuals, but the Dalish knew that nearly every problem was, at some point along the line, a communal one. If blood mages kept appearing, then something within the structure of Circle life - almost universally, no matter what Vivienne claimed about the uniqueness of each Circle - provided incentives for the mages to use blood magic. Those incentives were strong enough to overcome whatever disincentives might exist, no matter how harsh.
Solas might scorn the Dalish position on blood magic, but we didn't actually prohibit it the way humans did. Our vallaslin used blood magic to tie the clan together, after all. The problem with blood magic, as he had observed, was that it weakened one's connection to the Fade. The more one used blood magic, the more one needed to use blood magic in order to use magic at all. A Keeper's duty was, foremost, to the clan, and our clans spent long periods far from other people. What was a Keeper who relied on blood magic to do in an emergency, then? Sacrifice a member of the very clan they were charged with protecting?
No, blood magic - at least within the context of Dalish daily realities - was an ouroboros. Its regular use heralded a clan on the brink of consuming itself. The only blood mage I knew of within generations was Merrill of Clan Sabrae, and she had been cast out - though more for consorting with a demon than for the actual blood magic, and her expulsion was, in itself, a tragedy. It spoke of some dysfunction within the clan, or at least between Merrill and her former Keeper.
I had said the Dalish had no answers except to questions of stubborn survival, but I might have been wrong, at least a little bit. It was true that what held a Dalish clan together couldn't work in any other context, but the Dalish had evidently put together a series of systems that didn't incentivize the use of blood magic, and had done so without outright forbidding it.
Perhaps forbidding it was the first mistake.
I meditated on how to best create internal accountability within enclaves of mages as I tended the fire and soup. Young mages, after all, had to be apprenticed, and once those attachments were formed, most would probably prefer to remain close to those they had trained with. Many others would find the world a hostile place for a lone mage - because the world was a hostile place for a lone anything - and would prefer to remain near others who shared and understood their abilities. Circles weren't precisely a bad idea, but they ought to be self-selecting rather than created from the outside.
Solas woke just as the food was ready, his timing with his sleep impeccable as always. I silently filled a bowl and handed it to him, uncertain whether or not he would want to speak. He accepted it and sat down a little apart from me - far enough that I really couldn't read his expression at all. I filled a bowl for myself and listened as he took perhaps half a dozen slow sips.
Then I heard him place the bowl on the ground with a sigh. "I owe you a great deal more than a mere apology," he said quietly. "That I could be so cruel to you, when you devote so much time you cannot have to spare to my comfort, is undoubtedly a condemnation of my character."
"That's a little dramatic," I informed him. "You lashed out at me during a moment of incredible suffering, and it wasn't as though you were wrong. I had overlooked Alexius in my…organizing of this emergent principle I have discovered among our decisions. You have already apologized, and I've already forgiven you."
He chuckled darkly. "You fail to disprove my thesis, ma vhenan."
"I'm capable of cruelty, too, Solas." There was Alexius, of course, but also the man who had once commanded the Blades. He hadn't had any interest in redemption, but I had exacted pointless vengeance on him. Were my scouts any less dead for the pain I had inflicted? Of course not.
"Yes, to your enemies," Solas agreed, "when you're sufficiently provoked. Not to those whom you love."
"You don't know that," I pointed out.
He rose and stepped toward me, dropping down to sit beside me on the rock I had claimed. "I've little faith to spare, Inana - but I have faith in you and the fathomless depths of your kindness."
"Why?" I wondered.
He didn't answer, but kissed my hair and then leaned his head atop mine as I finished eating. When I had set my bowl aside, he rearranged us so he could sit behind me, wrap his arms around me, and pull me back against his chest. Then he took my left hand in both of his and began soothing the Anchor in a series of rapidly-cast manipulations, each one following so quickly after the one before that I barely had time to understand what he was doing. He had never done this while I was awake before, and I was fascinated.
"Wisdom held my memories of how our bond came to be," he told me quietly as he worked. "She passed them back to me before - before."
It took me a moment to absorb the meaning of his words, and I twisted around to stare at his profile as he continued to focus his attention determinedly on the Anchor. Wisdom? Wisdom had been involved? But - how? And why? I briefly reeled with the revelation before finding a more important question: "What of my memories?" I asked.
"They're in the keeping of another," he said, running his thumbs across my palm and sinking healing magic into my abused flesh. I didn't know quite what the Anchor was doing to me - it was too…bright for me to see through with my healing magic - but my left hand was slowly going numb, which couldn't possibly be good, though I tried not to think too hard about the implications. "I asked. She would not say whom. But my guess was right: before you took a body, you existed as a spirit."
I hadn't given our conversation about the subject any additional thought - it had seemed so far-fetched, and useless anyway, that I hadn't bothered. To have it suddenly confirmed…I realized my hands were gripping his tightly. "What - what kind?"
"Modesty," he said, both amused and...something else. There was a kind of exultant joy in him, and yet sorrow, and grief, and bitterness, as well. His arms squeezed me a little, pulling me closer, and I wondered if I was shaking - and if he could feel it. "It was Wisdom who persuaded me to swear the oath."
"How?" I wondered, and then wondered again at the steadiness of my voice.
"My focus wasn't…what it is now within the dream," he said carefully. "Because of it, I'm certain I was easier to influence. But she wasn't wrong in pointing out that the change you planned to undergo would send the bond deep into dormancy - so deep that it was only likely to wake if we were sufficiently compatible to bolster it."
"Did she know me, then - before?"
"So it would seem."
The way she had greeted me when we met suddenly made sense.
"Though," Solas said, slightly apologetic, "we perhaps should not refer to Modesty as you. Although the spirit's influence on the formation of your character is clear, you do not have it's memories, and modesty is only one piece of who you are."
"Did you know me - the spirit?" I asked.
He hesitated. "A little. I…was more familiar with it, once, but it had been years since we had encountered one another, and it was changed." I could tell he was trying to be truthful, but there was something he was keeping back.
I opened my mouth to point out that I could tell there was more to it than that, but then something else he had said came out of my mouth at the same moment it occurred to me: "I thought you said you nearly always remained lucid in your dreams?"
"Even a born Dreamer must master their abilities in youth," he said. "I have not spent the whole of my life capable of dreaming with full consciousness."
I nodded along for a moment, accepting the explanation - until I realized the statements weren't actually related. He hadn't said, " I wasn't born knowing how to be a Dreamer," he had made a blanket statement about Dreamers in general. Then he had made another non-specific statement - "have not spent the whole of my life capable of dreaming with full consciousness" - which implied he was speaking of his youth, but side-stepped actually saying it.
Why would he do that unless he was carefully misleading me without outright lying?
And now that I was considering misdirection, there were some oddities and inconsistencies in other things he had told me tonight…
But now was not the time to pursue them, even in my own mind. "Will you eat any more?" I asked, turning a little in his arms so that I could look at his face more easily. It was pale and haggard, with dark shadows under his eyes and deep lines at the corners of his mouth. The dusting of freckles across his nose stood out starkly, while those under his eyes were nearly lost to the shadows there.
"I have no appetite," he told me.
"I know. At least drink some water."
He buried his face in my hair and I felt him take a slightly shaky breath. "I fear you were wrong, vhenan."
"That doesn't tell me anything - there's too much to choose from. About what in particular?" I asked, covering his hand with mine and threading my fingers through his.
"I'm not alone now that you are beside me." He let out a soft sob or laugh, I couldn't tell which. "I am...not entirely not alone, I suppose. To a degree, all are alone in grief. But you're a comfort of a kind I've never had, nor even knew was possible. Ar lath ma."
"Ar lath ma," I agreed, but then broke away from him. "I meant it about the water, though." I had thrown my pack nearby - my waterskin wasn't difficult to find. When I handed it to him, he drank dutifully.
"I intend to sleep a great deal," he told me between sips.
"That's exactly what I expected. I told Cassandra we would return in two days," I replied.
"You do not mean to stay awake for most of two days just to keep watch?" he asked, surprise and disapproval evident in both his voice and through our bond. "I have placed wards."
"Of course I mean to," I chuckled. "Births adhere to no one's schedule, and I've done my share of assisting Deshanna in her role as midwife, and waiting for the halla to drop their fawns. There are certain decoctions that, when blended together and activated with lyrium, will keep me alert for two days - or longer, if it were required. We'll have to ride back together, though - I'm sure I'll fall asleep. I'm not leaving you out here for two days, in the middle of a war zone, with only wards for protection."
"Are your decoctions safe?" he demanded.
I shrugged. "Safe enough for short periods. Three days might be pushing it, though hunters sometimes stay awake that long when they're running large prey to exhaustion. If you're really worried, give me three hours to sleep in the morning. That will reduce the strain considerably."
There was a pause - he might have nodded, though I was no longer close enough to be certain. "Very well," he said, and then rose to his feet.
"Oh, and Solas? Check the tent before you trust it to sleep in. I put it up, after all."
He chuckled. "I suppose it would disturb my explorations of the Fade if my canvas roof tried to smother me. I will, vhenan."
"Eras son, emma lath," I replied, and listened to the sound of his retreating footsteps.
Eras son, emma lath: Dream well, my love
The creation of Modesty as the counterpart of Pride was suggested to me a long time ago when I read Ursula Le Guin's "The Conversation of the Modest." In the essay, she presents modesty as the natural opposite of pride - a virtue requiring active self-control and leading to a clear-eyed assessment of one's own strengths and weaknesses. Humility is too extreme, too loud in its protestations of unworthiness, and (to me, at least) is more properly the opposite of arrogance than pride. At her core, Inana isn't humble, though life experiences have, at times, humbled her. Anyway, I thought this short explanation might be necessary, because "modesty" has so many unfortunate religious overtones. But modesty isn't rightly a gendered virtue - a grounded understanding of one's limitations is valuable to anyone.