Chapter Fourteen: Dream Stalker
Song is Avenged Sevenfold: Nightmare
"...once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in..."
(Haruki Murakami)
There was a bright place and many voices I fell into darkness it was an anti-birth I came out to find I was dead.
The dragon who had once soared across stars and darkness was liberated. The Alienage Elf who had dreamed of doing so was a silent passenger.
No sound reached Rillian. No sensation. Her mind struggled in the empty darkness like a limned bird. Someone was screaming: an anguished, terrified howl of inconsolable loss. It couldn't have been her. She had no mouth, no lungs, no heartbeat.
This is not my body. My body's gone.
The alien body thrust outward into space. Cold as starlight, the empty Void enfolded her. The space was wine that ran white-hot through her veins and freed her to achieve speeds no mortal dragon could. The great joy lay in flying beyond the Veil, forever and ever, bathed in strange fire. She was a ray of light that streaked across time as well as space.
The Dragon of Beauty was a star of great brilliance, and she lived in the greater brilliance of the Old Gods. Her claws were shimmering lyrium and her scales were shooting stars. She had lit up the Void beyond the sun, before the Maker had used the place as a tourniquet around taint. The imprisonment of taint had saved the Old Gods...for taint was fissiparous and could never, in a million years, have found any way to arrest its own transmission. Until Andruil the Huntress had brought it back as a weapon against Titans who were helping slaves defy Evanuris. The Titans had let the slaves drink of their silver blood in a ritual called the Joining. It gave Soporati resistance to magic and the ability to Dispel its effects. Taint had infected the blood of the Titans and forever debased the Old Gods. That was the true reason Fen'Harel hated the Wardens. He mistrusted anyone who used taint as a weapon.
Urthemiel had been woken by darkspawn who ensured every breath was a battle against her own rot. The only children she would ever have would never sleep, never dream, never love. Tzara'at had taken her mind as well as her body, so she could do nothing but follow the darkspawn to the largest mass of humanity. It was a strange irony that the little Elf who had come to put her to sleep was the only child she would ever have. The mote known to other mortals as Rillian desired Beauty as Urthemiel did, though admittedly on a smaller scale.
Even as a child Rillian had longed for a thing she called the Spark. It was a strange name for Bellitanus, the constellation known as The Maiden who inspired musicians, artists and poets, but Urthemiel understood. 'The Spark' had come with Rillian's first sight of the stained-glass window above Denerim Chantry...with the singing of "she shall see fire and go towards light"...and with the spirit-like reflection of light within raindrops, and as always when the Spark came it had brought a joy like tears and a longing for something she could not name.
Rillian had the seeds of the Great Longing in her...and Urthemiel was slowly training her up in the way she should go. Because the Old God was now only a specter, Urthemiel never talked to Rillian. Her songs came in the night only, because even Soporati could dream in the Fade.
Now Rillian was here bodily - and had shared the half-Dragon Morrigan's lessons on shapeshifting during quiet moments in camp – the sleeper would awaken.
To Urthemiel's delight, her exaltation, Rillian was learning. Rillian's body was frail and when she took off her Dragonscale armour she looked like a skinned animal but her eyes were beautiful. She had come to be aware of Urthemiel, to know her, in the small shadowy way of a child.
Rillian would know her better yet. Urthemiel would teach her everything there was. She would raise her up to be the equal of one of her own kind. Not only the Architect of the Works of Beauty but Urzara, her own daughter. And then...and then...
"Oh, this is shitty," said the voice of the human Rillian called "husband." "I'll fight whatever you give me, darling, but nobody said nothing about getting dragged through the ass end of demon town."
Rillian giggled – a sound like slightly hysterical brilliance – and the body of the mortal woman on two legs reappeared.
The slick rocks hung like stalactites. They were shiny, wet, luminous as the green comet that touched the skies of Thedas only once every fifty thousand years. The waxy gibbous moon washed out the colour, the haze drowning the spectral traces as though underwater. It reminded Lambert of a giant saucepan.
The Fade atmosphere was composed of a dust of silver-golden light so delicate it melted together in a tantalizing shimmer. Through this delicacy he perceived his six companions burning with fierce solidity: a relentless, profligate fire that left its imprint on his retinas when he turned to the empty darkness beyond. He was looking down at his friends, as though from the sky...at first he thought he was on Ripples' back then realized the bright wings were growing from his own shoulderblades.
He blushed, embarrassed; he wanted to be on the same side as his friends. He caught strange scents: the fir trees of Haven were there, plus Purple Rain cocktails and the smell of a ripe field in Lothering. Grasses – unclear as if he were looking at seaweed underwater – rippled in a breeze that seemed to come from nowhere. Far away, towards the rose and opal sunset, a sound came floating: a low coughing grumble.
"Where are we?"
"Isn't that obvious?" Fen answered Alistair. "This is the Fade. I walk bodily here as a lyrium ghost...through the minds of Magisters like Danarius before I kill them. Nightmare is going to reflect our own worst memories, that's all."
"All?" Alistair asked shakily.
Fenris smiled through blade-thin lips. "Compared to the minds of slave-owners who rape children, Nightmare will be a walk in the park. The only things we'll need to fear are the ghosts we bring with us. This group may have some issues but none of us are monsters."
Lambert swallowed, hard, but would not insult his husband by crying for him. He said, only, "And you were alone, then. Now we've got each other's backs."
Lambert had intended the words to reassure, but as soon as they left his lips he realized he had brought Fenris' worst fear to life. Fenris did not fear his memories, nor the agony the brands caused him, nor even the prospect of becoming a lyrium ghost forever, unable to live or to fully die. He feared betraying Lambert. Believed he already had.
Lambert knew that was nonsense. As Madame Lusine's finest, Lambert had once offered himself to Fenris as a thank-you for saving him from Danarius. Fenris had desired him but had only ever seen it done to cause pain. A dark part of him had wanted to accept – because taking a mage would be proof of his own freedom – but he had refused.
…Thoughts are not deeds...you are not guilty of a crime you refused to commit...
"Have you forgotten I betrayed you to Wyrme to save my worthless skin?"
That, too, was untrue. Lambert, Anders, Fenris and Varric had entered the Fade through a Dalish ritual in order to save a young half-elf from possession. Keeper Marethari had told them they must kill Feynriel in the Fade to render him Tranquil. Had warned them a Somniari – the first in two hundred years to survive - was too dangerous to remain a mage. Lambert and Anders had refused and Fenris had argued with them. Fenris had wanted to kill Justice in the Fade in order to save Anders from possession. He begged Lambert to fight beside him. Lambert had chosen to defend Justice and Feynriel. Wryme had convinced Fenris if he lost they would make him a slave again, and Fenris had allowed it in.
...You didn't betray me. You were honest and so was I. We were free men on opposite sides in war. I chose to fight you and I knew if I lost I would wake up Tranquil. Wryme convinced you if you lost we'd make you a slave...and Anders did try to sell you to Danarius. You didn't give us up to the demon...you are the only person I know who has never once treated another person as collateral damage. A wise woman once told me all evil comes from treating other people as things. You never have. You treated me as an opponent but never a thing. Rylock believes in deontology but you have really lived it. You've never let the ends justify the means...
But before Lambert could find the words Anders beat him to it:
"You betrayed us to Wryme and I betrayed you to Danarius. But I think we both draw the line at Nightmare. And, as for you, Rylock – I'm no fan of Templars but I'll pick you over that thing."
Rylock rolled her eyes. "An infantile statement but essentially correct."
"I can see," Ser Otto said in wonderment. The handsome young knight ran his hands over his unburned skin. Without the marks of hideous pain stamped there, he looked spiritual as a strained glass window. Rillian and Rylock, beside him, smiled in recognition. They had known him before the Blood Mage had melted eyes, skin and fingertips.
Rillian seemed unchanged – an armoured figure burnished like a dragonfly, with long flaming hair, but there was a darkness about her – as if some huge creature Lambert couldn't see followed after her and she walked in its shadow.
Rylock looked like the tall, plain Templar she had been in life but where was the gray hair? Where were the lines around forehead and eyes? Where had this young paladin come from?
And Anders... Lambert had witnessed him at a distance during the Second Battle of Ostagar...battle-magic burning darkspawn like justice. Anders had saved the army. Lambert had next met him in Kirkwall. All Lusine's people had known the healer who treated internal injuries, sexual diseases and – in Lusine's girls – unwanted pregnancies, and asked for nothing in return.
Lambert had always known the healer was a good man – a good man who had done an unforgiveable thing to Fenris because he had been forced by Justice - but was unprepared for the full truth. Anders blazed – not with light but with an intense compassion that could be felt on the skin, like sun in a desert. He had always known Anders healed the destitute – the down-and-out – without fear or judgement but had never seen so clearly this fierce charity that wished health and joy to everything that lived.
...It's nice to not have to see through a glass darkly...
The mana surrounded Anders like a silver-blue halo against the night; a bright and independent angel separated from the rest of the heavenly host.
Lambert looked at the hard black-violet sky ahead – like a glass dome – and the road of silver glass that stretched towards a distant desolation of barren peaks...the pinnacles of a great many-towered Chantry that rose on a peninsula, its stained-glass windows creating a prism of colour that danced and shone like marbles. He remembered dusty golden afternoons – pale days that held the silver sun captive, seven-starred mornings without shadows, glowing green dawns.
After a moment - if it could be called that, for even moments past felt like now - he chose to fall, to make the world reverse itself so he stood on the same side as his friends. He miscalculated and fell – and Anders offered a hand to help him up.
"Are you alright?" the healer asked – his fingers surreptitiously on the inside of the arm, to find the brachial artery for the pulse.
"Never better," Lambert said. The casual touch of Anders' hand had staggered him like a spell but, strangely, he felt more alive than ever...almost more alive than he could bear.
"Just let yourself breathe. It'll pass," said Anders, sounding slightly abashed. "Sorry. I want people to be better and they get that way. Dangerous stuff. Those wings getting heavy?"
"No problem," he bluffed.
He joined Fenris. His husband's hard, callused hand lifted his chin. Lambert stood a broadsword's width short of six feet but Fenris was taller. The touch emptied Lambert of any awareness save of him. He inhaled Fenris' warmth; the humid masculinity of him. The right hand - the hand that could tear the hearts from mages – loomed at the edges of his vision; dark, descending, drifting closer. Fenris stroked his brow, then deliberately traced the arches of each feathery eyebrow. The fingertips were rough; their touch moth-soft.
Lambert moved to the pressure of his arm, letting him lead as if they danced.
"Fen..." he said, and ran out of words. He was deeply moved, and didn't know how to adequately express it, until he became aware of Fenris feeling the emotion with him and knew there was nothing more that needed saying.
"Let's get on with it, then," the Herald decided. "Uphill?"
His legs were possessed of an inexhaustible energy – moving seemed to require no effort at all. It was merely what he did, as reflexively as blinking or breathing. The path was overarched by the bare, black branches of the Fade's impression of trees. They looked clearer and sharper than most of the Fade's scenery and he suspected this was because Fenris had drawn them for him in Starkhaven...a memento Lambert cherished.
Drawing was sometimes the best way Fenris had to express himself – he had painted Lambert as a pale chanting Goshawk and as a figure in white against a black piano. The only colour was the violet of Lambert's eyes and a hint of green on the carpet. It had made Lambert feel a joy like tears and he gave it pride of place on their mantelpiece. Happiness flowed through him. His feet thumped the imaginary footpath in a rhythm that seemed both natural and miraculous.
Despite the strangeness Lambert found the going pleasant, especially the feeling it wasn't him giving orders, but the whole group doing this in concert. If there was a problem it was that the changes in the environment began to become irregular, unpredictable. Past and present began to shift not with the melting grace he had become used to but spasmodically. Images tore, whirled and jumbled together.
He glanced at Anders – who had been his mentor as far as magic was concerned.
"Trouble?"
"Very likely. We are approaching the realm of Nightmare, which means we're in for some rough stuff. Keep an eye on everyone – make sure we don't lose each other."
"Let's go then," Lambert said – and didn't even need their murmur of acquiescence. The bright wave of their support - the willingness to follow wherever he led - hit him so hard he was afraid he would fall down.
The land ahead began to reassert itself – as if gravity became heavier and heavier. It was like looking into Solas' eyes...where the stress of formulating an idea alien to the immortal mage had become a physical toil and the arguments had come out of his mouth stillborn. He struggled through it, while on and on the Fade scenery became more and more spasmodic...swirling around him in an increasing storm of instability.
He turned back to check on the welfare of his people. He was the leader – they were his responsibility. He would look after them as he had looked after Fenris and Feynriel in the domain of Torpor and Wryme.
It was as if the world were coming apart.
"The non-mages in back," he gasped at Anders – remembering what he had already done to save their most vulnerable troops. He had never thought of non-mages in the way he had thought of troops like himself and Carver during the Fifth Blight but in the Fade they were. In the Fade magic ruled and elemental needs put him and Anders at an advantage. Which must be used to help their less experienced companions and never to rule over them.
The storm of imagery almost hid them, walking with heads down, struggling into tempest.
"On it," said Anders, "We'll each find a group to take care of." He patted Lambert's shoulder then vanished into the howling maelstrom.
Lambert walked with Fenris, Rylock and Ser Otto – Anders with Rillian and Alistair.
They headed up the steep slope, through the whirling, tattering landscape. Lambert was in deep pain – his slow-growing telepathy had begun bringing him the distress of his companions whose own minds and bodies – which were the same thing in this place - were being torn, shaken. This is beyond accepting, he thought in his own terror, as again and again his thoughts seemed to slip out from under him.
Get a grip.
Get a grip? Grip on what? There is nothing to grip onto. Everything is slippery. Life is infinitely hard. It involves a thousand thoughts all at once. And I am a thousand different people, all fleeing away from the centre.
The thought brought a dream, presented to Lambert in a bright, truncated utterance.
Red lanterns dotted Kirkwall like a fall of burning stars. Behind him, a faint warm glow rose from the door to the Blooming Rose. He was leaving the establishment on the way to a client who had offered an inordinate amount of money. Danarius. Experience had told the teenager that when something seems too good to be true it usually is – but he had accepted the ten sovereigns anyway.
It would have been pleasant to just stay here – to watch the lanterns come on one by one, like dark sparking jewels amid the rain. The silent drizzle fell like feathers soft as the pauldrons on the shoulders of the mage he loved. But Lambert was a working boy. Love wouldn't put food on his family's table – and his uncle's gambling certainly did not.
Outside Danarius' mansion in Kirkwall it was raining, and the brown bricks of Kirkwall started to drip and darken. The smoky-gray sky was the mirror of his soul. Lambert had done what he always did before a particularly rough client - used his last copper pieces to buy a bale-sized lump of smoking weed so he could ride out the next few hours in a pink haze, chasing the dragon. He gave a lightning blink at the back door to the estate – the Magister would never want a boy using the front door – and it starkly outlined the place. It was as if the door blinked back at him. The windows were browned with city-soiled clumps of soot.
Kirkwall was bright and dark at the same time. Bright with a high, full moon shining among the spreading clouds and dark with a slowly flowing mass of mottled shapes…a kind of filthy outpouring from the black sewers of space.
Lambert thought of all the clammy basements and gloomy attics of Tevinter, where such things were always done – to slaves who had much less choice than him. Who had no choice at all. Choosing to work for Madam Lusine to feed his mother and Uncle Gamlen was a terrible choice – but he owned it. This life of dry and choking places, of dust and broken bottles – he had chosen this. Because Kirkwall had given him three choices: become a mercenary and kill for money...become a smuggler and feed addictions...or sell sex.
Slaves like Fenris - children – had been property. Their minds and bodies violated by owners whose pleasure increased in direct proportion to their pain. Five-year-old Fenris had been no more than a utensil...who didn't contain enough blood to be of use in sacrifice but whose body could be violated in a thousand different ways. Bleak locales Lambert tried not to think about, but at the same time couldn't keep from his mind.
The glamour and snobbery of his future as Lord Amell – of eating foie grass at the Winter Palace or at Château Haine – wore a new mask of rats and rot. It was monstrous that Thedas had been ordered so – that children were tortured in dark places - and the great and the good did nothing.
Lambert was facing Danarius – the client who had raped and tortured him, his pain and the nine pints of his mage blood - "mage blood is most efficacious in summoning allies" - serving to summon demons that would recapture his 'little Wolf.'
Only this time there was no Fenris to save him. Fenris had been imprisoned in his own Nightmare – also of this monster. Lambert knew there was nothing to save him now.
Then a pale, slender man in the purple and gray robes of Magister Alexius stood at the foot of the bed where he lay tied. The smooth-skinned young face was familiar. In the future, a few years after this moment, Lambert had saved him.
Feynriel got out a bottle that looked like powdered light and sprinkled it over the hungry features of Danarius. The descent into the place beneath words had transformed the old Magister into something no itinerary of features could ever reproduce. He looked around, astonished at the interruption.
"You! The protégé of Magister Gereon Alexius? The only pupil he had left, after his own son was revealed to be a squib and his other pupil proved he would rather fuck Elven men in brothels than study time magic? Return to whence you came and I will forgive this interruption."
"Lambert saved me," Feynriel said simply. "And this...doesn't it look like pulverized diamonds? See... it dissolved right into you. There's no point in trying to rub the drug off your flesh, or cleanse it with water. The burning is in your system now. Can you feel the effects yet? Beyond the fact you are now paralyzed from head to toe? That's just the beginning of what a Dreamstalker can do. The opalescent lyrium has made possible a very interesting relationship between us. The drug has now rendered you fantastically sensitive to a certain form of quantum energy. Or, to put it more poetically, I'm dreaming you. Not dreaming of you – I'm dreaming you. Your arms and legs don't respond to your sleeping mind's commands because I'm dreaming someone as still as a statue...Damn! I suppose that was your attempt to scream. You really are terrified, aren't you? I suppose I'd better dream of someone without a mouth."
Lambert remembered his baby niece – the glass doll who had had no face and died almost as soon as she was born. Still, he had other things to worry about. While Feynriel dealt with Danarius he worked at untying arms and legs...biting through his gag and using the mana remaining to him to heal his wounds.
"There, that should do it. You do look strange like that, though. But this is only the beginning. A Magister without a mouth would no longer be able to argue against the Inquisitor at the Senate but the sight of him would raise questions. Your mind is about to become the flesh and blood kaleidoscope of my imagination. I am going to do to you what you did to Fenris. You took everything he was while leaving him physically unchanged. I don't need to do it to you...you are already dead...but to the others who do as you have done. Can you feel the power of my dreaming...my dreaming...my dreaming..."
Feynriel helped Lambert up and he fought not to flinch. "Don't be afraid – you and Anders saved me. You are the reason I became apprenticed to Magister Alexius at Asariel. Oh...I know you were one of the twelve who voted to execute him...I was in your dreams and you argued for clemency. I wanted to kill the others - and I could have – but the rest of the army would only have blamed Alexius. He'd have been three days dying. So, I had to let him die. At least it was quick and painless. With Felix a Warden and Dorian in disgrace Gereon had named me his heir. Oh - like you I am what Tevinter calls a Mischling in the First Degree but I didn't need to bribe the Archivist to alter my genealogy or the Alchemist to lie about my blood type...I simply changed their dreams so they really believe I am an Altus. A distant offshoot - I believe I picked Trevelyan. If you were from my land I'd have done the same for you – with Parlathan. Tractus Danarius – his methods are more direct. No one ever crosses Magister Nenealeus. Calix Quintara...he's been even cleverer. He should have been a bard. You see – there are more of us than you know."
"Are you...are you going to help us against Nightmare?"
Feynriel shook his head. "For what you can do yourself you do not need my help. There will come a time you will need me. Asariel pledges loyalty to the Inquisition and on that day I will find you in your dreams."
He vanished on waking and Lambert looked through the bastardised memories of Kirkwall. The rippling shingles that covered the roofs were shaped like the scales of a great fish, sea-green and sparkling in the storm. Thousands of raindrops fell among the shadows, as the early-morning air went cold and the red-dawn sky gained shadows of its own. The light rain spotted the empty, ashen streets, watering the barren ground and creating a fragrance of filth and decay.
The morning sky was stained-glass: indigo, amber, verdigris, carmine in soft and overlapping bands. Lambert felt he had been travelling a long time...distant, light-headed, with the heavy-handed imagery taking on the dizzying significance of a dream. He walked through fractured roads past vacant hovels, boarded houses...the Dark Foundry that had cost his mother a price he could not bear to think of.
He tore his eyes away...tried to remember Starkhaven...the enormous millwheel that was his earliest memory. That Fenris had bought and rebuilt for him. But the stalled millwheel loomed impotently over a dust-dry landscape. There was only the silvered remains of the Minanter River...the Waters of the Fade in the process of simmering away into nothing. It boiled like the colourless dive of a dragon's wings, leaving only a pale scar.
The hard rime of salt was like sun-crusted snow...a filthy spume had dried in rippling tide lines that receded into the featureless distance. Starkhaven had survived some brutal attack...there were only faded shores, corroded pillars crusted with filthy white sediment, the sun-bleached detritus of dreams.
He felt his feet sink deep into gray sand but when he looked down he saw it was not sand at all, but bones. The foul shards were thick with decomposition. As he crossed the crystalline flats the mirage glimmered into view...an impossible sea in the midst of a desert.
The poison lake whispered sweet nothings: promised shelter and succor like the voices of demons that had haunted his dreams until Seeker training. Despite the stink and the rot and the waste of it...despite the staring eyes of the dead...he couldn't help but quicken his pace. He felt sure the answer lay ahead. He stumbled towards this vision like a false dawn...a blood-red ribbon that separated prismatic sky from looking-glass sea.
He could feel himself falling through the sky; all of it lit with celestial light.
What he saw – the actual features of the land that now held still though its features shifted and melted like wet paint in rain – distressed him more than mental anguish could.
"Oh Maker," he murmured, "What have we gotten ourselves into?"
"By the Maker! Could that be..."
"I greet you, Warden. And you, Inquisitor."
"Divine Justinia," Rylock said – for the benefit of Ser Otto, who had never actually seen the late Divine - "or, rather, the spirit who has taken her place."
"You think my survival impossible, yet here you stand alive in the Fade yourselves."
"I saw Divine Justinia's eyes make the last shift. She died at the Conclave. We did not die."
"What about the stories the souls of the dead pass through the Fade on the way to the Golden City?" Rillian said softly.
"Warden," Rylock said gently – aware she was treading on sacred ground - "That is all from bad lithographs and Low Church superstitions. There's not a word of it in the Chant of Light. And... you know it cannot be like that. The Fade is a space that does not obey the rules of the rest of reality but it is still a space for the living...a space created by Fen'Harel when he raised the Veil. We will not find the Maker in the Black City. The dead would not need to travel from one part of reality to a different part of reality on their way to His side."
"Then...the man I married in the dream sent by Sloth..."
"Was not Nelaros." Aware there was nothing she could say that would soften this truth Rylock did not try to sugarcoat it. Alistair took Rillian's hand.
"That doesn't mean Nelaros isn't waiting for you in the Golden City," he told his wife.
"After I married a demon who took his face? Now that I love you as much as I loved him?"
"I am here to help you," the spirit said. "I am not Justinia but I possess enough of her memories to care about you all. I am a Spirit of Faith. One of my siblings is the Spirit of Faith who touches the minds of Seekers in the Hunterhorn Mountains. Another is the Spirit of Faith who resides in Wynne. The spirit who touched your mind, Inquisitor, was a Spirit of Compassion – drawn to your kindness – who has taken the name you bestowed and chosen to become mortal. None of us wish harm to mortals."
"You have all lost memories that were taken by Nightmare. Fenris: Danarius stole yours the day he inflicted the Brands. Lambert: you needed to forget the death of your sister – the place you dare not look. Anders: you enjoy the tale of Mr Wiggums taking out three Templars but that was not what happened deep in the bowels of Kinloch Hold."
Anders shuddered. He had enjoyed the stories of desperate prisoners befriending cats. But what happened when the food ran out? When the Templars 'forgot' to lower the rancid supplies down the chute to feed those in the deepest prisons, far below sea level, buried among the ghosts and the demons?
"Rylock: there is much you have forgotten about your time in Aeonar. You tell yourself you chose to give birth to Keili because an Andrastean believes life begins at conception. You won't let yourself remember the frustrated, raging, agonized pleas...they needed to cut the baby out of you and you believed this was a sin. You believed the Maker intended for Keili to go to his side, cleansed of her curse of magic, and you wanted to join Guy, free of the memories. But the more you protested, the more inexorably the healer kept on cutting. You hated him. For every part of you he stitched together you'd happily have undone ten of his. After they took the child and you recovered, the Templars would regularly administer...tests. They told you these were tests to ensure you were free of Erimond, because Blood Mages are cunning and patient. A Blood Puppet will defend itself. If you had defended yourself, you would have been killed like a mage after a failed Harrowing. You needed to forget or you could not have sent mages there."
"Ser Otto, you have chosen to be willfully blind about the one question you cannot ignore: are your Templar powers without lyrium evidence of the Maker's existence or do they come from another source? Are you casting through taint, like a darkspawn emissary? That would mean the woman you loved is not waiting for you...that the only immortality is taint. This unliving and immortal thing. Clarel told Erimond she would never worship the Blight but that is the only way you will see Boann again. Boann as a Broodmother and you as a darkspawn, both vectors to an infinitely greater power. Your Chantry has fed soft things to do...there never were any souls. All mortals are potential hosts of taint – all bankrupt – some not yet declared."
"Rillian...you fear looking into a mirror and seeing Avernus staring back. You fear yourself for what you want to do to those who hurt you – and you are right to. How many abusers were victims once? Alistair: you fear you will fail her just as you failed Maric, and Arl Eamon, and Fiona."
"If the spirit pretending to be the Divine says this to us then either Justinia was very cruel or you are a poor impression. An Andrastean could go far before she found a spiritual guide like you. If she was lucky," Rylock said dryly.
"I am trying to inoculate you. To prepare you for what you will hear in Nightmare's realm. You must take back everything it took from you. Only then will you be strong enough to finish it. Nightmare feeds on your memories of fear and darkness, growing fat upon the terror. The false Calling that terrified the Wardens into making such grave mistakes. Its work."
"I will gladly avenge the insult this Nightmare dealt my brethren." Alistair's voice was bleak, cold, hard. For him Weisshaupt would always be his dream...his belonging-place. This demon had corrupted it...had stolen something extremely private and precious from him. The first place where he had found friendship and belonging; a purpose and worth. He felt nothing but hatred for Nightmare.
"You will have your chance, brave Warden. This place of darkness is its lair. The demon has taken a part of each of you. Before you do anything else, you must recover what it took. These are your memories."
They existed as tiny jewels about to wink out, like stars. Lambert and the others chose to grasp them – holding bright shards of hope that cut their palms, even though they were afraid they would find nothing but empty darkness.
Anders saw his companions hesitate. He knew they were afraid...had come to learn them well enough to understand why. As a healer, Anders had often wished he could do more than just the physical...could heal emotional damage as well...but the wish to do that could so easily warp into what Spirits of Compassion did...they stole dark memories because they believed forgetting was kinder.
Anders suddenly knew the origin of Nightmare. Knew what a Spirit of Compassion would become if it absorbed too much ugliness.
He had, still, admired Lambert's power...viewed him with a kind of wonder and awe. Lambert was a far less skilled healer than Anders but he was a pain-eater. He could take physical pain from his patients and transfer it to himself. He had done it as an army medic. Anders had wondered at the foolishness of a boy who would do that even for Templars...wouldn't they realize he had to be a mage?...but, no, they had seen him as a miracle-worker; which, he supposed, was how people saw the Herald. Anders had realized, though, that in a way Lambert was getting too close to his patients to really be effective. A healer had to have some distance...a person who was experiencing his patient's pain would hardly be in a fit state to operate.
But neither he nor Lambert could help their friends now. Rylock really was afraid of what she would remember about Aeonar – what that would mean for the number of mages she had sent there – because the Seeker Order had refused to teach her there was another way. Lambert was afraid of what he would remember about his sister's death...had there really been an ogre, who subsequently fell to a wounded young scout and a mage who could barely light a candle with magic? Fenris feared he would betray Lambert – as he had betrayed the Fog Warriors at Danarius' command – as he had betrayed them at Wryme's command. Rillian and Alistair...she feared staring into the abyss and seeing the abyss staring back. Alistair feared not being a strong enough man to save her. Ser Otto feared the worst of all...that Boann had never gone to the Maker's side. That either there was only taint, or there was a cosmic sadist. That she existed as a Broodmother for all time.
Anders picked his shard up first...leading by example.
What must be borne, grasp.
Time was gone. That being the case, it was impossible to say the experience took longer than his usual dreams in the Fade. But it seemed the experience was deeper somehow...more real. During his waking dreams, there was always the very slightest sense the real Anders was somewhere else. That was gone.
Anders was surrounded by the spirits who had gathered to help him, before Justice. The Spirit of Compassion who had helped him heal Lambert was missing...they had become Grace. But there was Valour, who had helped him pass his Harrowing, and Freedom, who had given him the courage to attempt escape again and again, and Wisdom, whom he didn't listen to very often but appreciated most of all. There was even a nascent Spirit of Justice...not the one he had tried to help and corrupted but the embryonic form of the concept, rising like a phoenix.
The green-golden splendour burned with stars. The fierce green sky was piled with citron-coloured clouds so bright they burned the eyes.
The spirits were huge as monoliths...faceless, featureless...immortal. They looked down on him in silent, implacable regard.
They leaned towards him and their shadows closed around him. He smelled the cool violet scent of wisdom...heard a chord mortal instruments could not reproduce...felt the weight of glory. He reached up and dared one more time to try what had always been impossible before…threw his arms around the spirits to hug as people did.
They bent lower, closer, till they hung low above his head: a promise of affection like a mother's and protection of a father better than the one he had had. It was less seen than sensed…a cool smell of incense; the warmth of crushed grass. He threw his arms as far as he could around their ephemeral shapes and his heart nearly burst with shock and joy as he felt the embrace. He pulled himself to the spirit who had been with him in the darkness without trying to possess him and held it tight. The murmur of the voice entered his mind like gentle surf, blotting out everything so only he and they remained.
The rumble of the great voices shook his bones.
"Flesh brother – child of Thedas – how is it to come to us in body and not in dream? It was never your way to be so solid among us."
Anders knew he had Lambert to thank for that. Lambert had gained the power to walk bodily in the Fade and trusted him to share that power. To the Fade spirits, the physical world in which mortals moved was a dream they could not touch…not without possessing mortals and so becoming demons. When they moved, it was already in eternity, with every possibility existing at once. When they tried to touch mortals in companionship or comfort their hands went through them as if they were ghosts.
Often enough Anders had longed to be able to touch, just once, the strange creatures whose wisdom and compassion and inner beauty had shone like stars in a dream and turned fear and fascination into first friendship, then love. It was this longing that had found expression in his union with Justice…which had corrupted and finally killed the spirit, because Justice could not live with what they had done, had become what he could not be.
"Wisdom," he said in their speech - not haltingly, but with their own leisurely certainty - "all I know is I am bodily in the Fade and I wish this never to end. I have seen much death and much life and won freedom for my mages; yet all my desire has been to return here, for you are my people and realer than real."
"We also have grieved for the healer who was possessed and so gone from us. Now you are possessed no more and if you will remain here bodily that is well. But the future says you will not…that you are needed on Thedas and this time has an end, for you."
Anders' eyes burned. "I was afraid of that. But though I will dream all the rest of my life this memory cannot be taken from me. For this moment, we touched."
"We will touch again, though you must break your bonds first. That is an easy thing…you will do that, some day, in your sleep by the fire, with a cat beside you. But you have things to do first. We will wait, as we have always been here."
Anders was grateful these spirits had given him strength for what was coming. They had told him he had things on Thedas to do first and Nightmare showed him one possible future...
...With the Ferelden mages swayed by King Cousland's promise, the apprentices were being raised to soldier. But Cousland died in battle and the Landsmeet voted on his successors...his daughter, Eleanor, married to Kieran Theirrin, or his elder brother Fergus. Attitudes in Ferelden had not changed much in such a short time...the memory of the Free Mages helping the Inquisition was soon offset by the cautionary tale of Redcliffe...no-one was ready to put a crown on the head of an untried girl married to a part-Dragon mage. Fergus wasn't cruel – but he was a traditionalist. He kept the mage army...but insisted the rest of them stay in the new Circle built at Redcliffe.
Divine Victoria had dissolved the Circles in Orlais...but in practice all this meant was mages being the minorities in every village they were born; chased by ignorant dullards without Enchanters or even Templars to defend them. No country in Thedas was kind to minorities. There were many mage children raised as Cole had been...feared by their own parents as Anders had been feared by his father.
Vivienne de Fer's solution had been to reestablish the Circles. Oh, they were not ruled by Templars...but by Loyalists who held to a strict interpretation of Chantry law. Vivienne had protected herself and her right to see her children by ensuring these Loyalists held loyalty to her first but the only way they were tolerated by the public was by the implicit promise they would protect ordinary folk from mages. And, since having mage neighbours tended to make people uncomfortable, it was deemed necessary to protect both groups by separation. Vivienne had risen to the top and kicked the ladder from under her.
The only thing Anders could do was keep the Free Mages as a bloc – mages first and citizens second – as the only means of self-defense. But magic was no longer the unanswerable weapon it had once been. Anders realized only now that – though he had hated Blood Magic and counselled against it – he had (somewhere far below his conscious mind) secretly been grateful for its unanswerability: for the fact mages had access to it in extremis.
No longer. Anyone who could carry a tune could cast the Litany. Cassandra had opened Seeker training to everyone and those who passed became immune to Blood Magic and gained the power to Dispel conventional spells. Fearing for Lambert, Fenris had shared the secret of blackpowder with his fellow slaves to use against Magisters but never the Chantry...but now Rillian had invented the Northover projector that had quickly become a firearm anyone could use. Anders had not been directly responsible for the Northover projector...but it hadn't been hard for researchers from the country that had already invented blasting powder to tweak the proportions, and the use of chlorine gas and white phosphorus at Haven had quickly spread. Military secrets are most perishable of all. The face of war was changed forever.
Mages could use all this as well as cast spells, but the power disparity was no longer enough to offset the fact non-mages outnumbered them five thousand to one.
The Free Mages fragmented. Fiona led some to become slaves of Tevinter. Others did as the Hawke family had done, staying under the radar. Some Elven mages joined Solas. Even Anders' lover, Dorian, had left him to avenge his father's assassination by Venatori – and to take his place in the Magisterium.
Anders was alone, bereft of support. Which made it easy for Knight Vigilant Rylock – given power by King Fergus Cousland - to arrest him and take him to Aeonar.
"You will pay for your war crime against Kirkwall Chantry – and the lies you spun about the woman I loved. Your imprisonment will clear her name."
They took him to the dungeons below Kinloch Hold...below Lake Calenhad...as they had done after his sixth escape attempt. Buried with the ghosts and the demons.
Dorian had once said to him, "What they did to you was vile – but they only took a year of your life."
Only a year? You could lose a limb, a life, in seconds; it was no argument. The man who had entered the Pit was not the same man who had emerged.
There, in the dark, he had had his first experience of derealization. The fetid air had choked him, and the darkness was locked and absolute on all sides, and suddenly he had understood that his distress and panic meant nothing to his jailors – that sensations like fear and asphyxiation meant nothing – that the locked cell and the depth and the darkness made him unreal. He had felt himself losing reality, felt his existence leeching out into the enshrouding blackness.
He hadn't realized it at the time but this response had protected him. It had prevented the demons who howled on the other side of the Fade, promising him freedom if only he let them in, from gaining his mind.
He didn't need their help if he didn't exist.
But sometimes he would remember and his anger would burn red-hot. He would remember to count the days...each one a dash on the wall behind him, that he could just see by the light when they lowered the trays of rancid food. The dashes were the only weapon he had. He would wish for 7 am to be 8 am. He would wish for morning to be evening. He would wish for a week to be a month. He would remember a toy globe he had had as a child and wish he could spin it into the next century.
He would build up hours and minutes like money. It has been six weeks since they locked me up. I have forty-six weeks to go...
...A month into his captivity, Knight Commander Greagoir came to visit him. Anders twisted away from the glaring torch when the thick cell door squealed open. Some of its light penetrated to the back of his cell, exposing loathsome insects, darting for cover. Anders scrambled after them, stepping on as many as he could before they scuttled back into the chinks and cracks of the stone walls. Ignoring Greagoir, he searched for further victims, swallowing his bitterness and disgust. His hatred of Greagoir was of minor importance compared with the chance of reducing the population in his cell. Only when the light persisted did he realize Greagoir wasn't simply checking in on him. The man wanted something.
Anders had never trusted Greagoir. Oh, everyone said he was a decent man...not one of those Templars who abused mages...he appeared grave and dignified with his handsome face and well-groomed moustache. But there were the rumours he had had a sexual relationship with Wynne – of all people! - and everyone knew that "sexual" relationships where one party had absolute power over the other were really something else. Even if Greagoir thought Wynne had consented...would she have dared to say "no"? The liaison had resulted in a child and of course it had been Wynne who had suffered when they took Rhys...Greagoir would have been relieved the evidence of his embarrassment was hidden.
They said Greagoir had a bond of mutual respect with Irving...but all that meant was Irving knew how to tow the Chantry line. At least outwardly. Anders and Karl had once sneaked into Irving's study and found the kind of books that would ensure the gates of the Golden City would never open for him.
Raising a shielding hand to his brow, Anders turned and peered into the dazzle. Metallic armour gleamed like a silver sun. The Templar sword on the breastplate was raised, in the old way, to show Greaogir's readiness to fight maleficarum. At least the man wasn't a hypocrite...Anders hated the new design even more. There the sword was pointed downwards, in the shape of Andraste's stake. The Templars claimed it showed their willingness to sacrifice themselves...but Anders was sure they were imagining mages on those stakes.
Greagoir spoke and the torch was lifted higher, cascading more light into his cell.
"I'm not here to make you Tranquil. Irving persuaded me to be merciful. In fact, I gave my word to look in on you to ensure no-one mistreated you."
He paused, and Anders felt the man waiting for him to beg. For mercy...for the year-long sentence to be reduced. If he babbled an apology...claimed to have learned his lesson...it would not have to be the full twelve months.
He resisted. Begging would be wrong. He wasn't sorry for trying to escape. He was only sorry he had been caught. He would not lie. It would be shameful to the Libertarian cause, degrading to himself.
He wanted to.
In the Fade he was strong. With the crusted grime on his skin revealed, and the welts of the insect bites, there was no such thing as pride. His own stink threatened to choke him.
He pictured himself on his knees, begging Greagoir for another chance. Yes, he'd do that. Anything. Tell Greagoir he had been right to imprison him - that the doctor knew best for the patient. And mages were patients, by their very nature. Being born a mage meant you were not a person, an equal...you were a case to be handled. He'd thank Greagoir for making him see the truth. Make him believe. Tell him it would be proper to imprison him even longer.
Not like this, though. Not the cells. Greagoir couldn't really know what it was like. No one could. Not even a Templar would punish someone so cruelly if he knew what it was like. Anders would tell him about the force-feeding...because the guards didn't let prisoners starve themselves. Even if they wanted to die, they had no control over that either. But, no, Greagoir must be aware of that. Might see it as a kindness rather than a final loss of control...would believe mages were children who lacked the capacity to decide for themselves what and when they wished to eat. Not even Senior Enchanters were allowed to cook for themselves.
He would tell Greagoir about the filth, and the things that touched him in the dark. But, no...Greaogir might find out about Mr Wiggums, the cat who helped Anders keep the rats in his cell to a minimum. Greaogir might decide a cat was too good for a mage. If he lost Mr Wiggums...the cat was his only friend. Mr Wiggums always had the sense to make himself scare whenever the guards made an appearance.
But Anders could see Mr Wiggums was suffering. The primordial gloom...the deep dark anguish all mages suffered, because even the successful were sentenced to an absent sun...affected animals too. Whether preening in hallways, purring against his legs at dinner, or curling up on his chest at night, Mr Wiggums had been a source of comfort and amusement. The baby brother Anders would never see again...the child he would never have. But Mr Wiggums was not immune to the contagion of despondency. Lately Mr Wiggums had seemed thoroughly disgusted with his surroundings, and sought isolation in unfrequented corners. His growling discontent echoed Anders' own. Anders' purely animal fear – that sense of being a rat in a trap (or a laboratory) was compounded by total isolation and the ever-present terror that the thousands of tonnes of rock might collapse over his head. Then he would feel his death, by slow degrees, happen moment by moment, feeling the pain grow worse with each minute change in the position of the rubble.
"A bath." The words came unbidden, barely comprehensible. He tried again.
How long since he'd spoken? Six weeks? No, longer, because a runaway mage didn't dare talk to anyone. It made no difference. The cells below Kinloch Hold had no days, no nights, no seasons. They had the time of the grave.
There was a smile in Greagoir's voice when he said, "I barely understood you. How odd. You used to be so glib. I'm afraid a bath's out of the question. Not until Seeker Cassandra's inspection."
"When? Please...when?"
Greagoir paused portentously before answering. Why? When he saw how much misery he'd inflicted already, how could such a simple thing as keeping him in suspense give him any more pleasure?
"You were foolish to swim across Lake Calenhad in midwinter. Seeker Cassandra will not be crossing Gherlen's Pass till spring."
Anders would plead. Yes, beg.
But when he tried to speak his tongue was wood, with no connection to his brain.
The door slammed shut, closing out the light.
Anders screamed, throwing himself at it. Hoarse, guttural sounds bubbled out of his mouth; non-words that implored. He could only follow Greagoir's departure by watching the smear of torchlight wane. He dropped to all fours, fingers drifting along the juncture of stone and wood. He stared at black nothingness where the light had been. The ripples across Lake Calenhad retreated like that, carrying the sparkle of sunlight with them, back to underground depths. Sunk far below where sunbeams can reach.
Anders sank back against a wall, chewing on a knuckle until he remembered the danger of dirt creatures in this place. The discipline that kept him from rubbing the itching insect bites would be wasted if he rubbed a raw spot on his hand. As a healer, Anders knew the dangers of infection better than anyone.
He threw himself into the physical exercises he used to keep up his strength. This wasn't going to be his last escape attempt. The Templars might want a mage whose rotting body wouldn't carry him past the Tower but Anders would be happy to disappoint them. As he started running in place, the air in the cell grew even fouler. Hysteria trickled the edges of his thoughts: what difference did more smell make? He stifled laughter, hoping the stench had made Greagoir vomit on the way out. In his mind, he ran outside the Tower grounds, through the gates towards Lake Calenhad. He had arranged to meet his lover there. They would escape together. His bare feet kissed the sun-warmed earth. He ran to Karl.
Seeker Cassandra visited in spring, and Anders was allowed a bath (prisoners were given baths once a year, whether they needed them or not) then locked back into his impossible life. There was no end in sight. Just week after week of continuance, with the months blurring into each other, looping back on themselves, becoming hopelessly entangled in his mind. He met spirits in the Fade and dreamed of Karl, but these saving events were rare as pearls and too widely spaced upon the gray ropes of time.
In the summer the temperature climbed and climbed, even amid the bowels of the earth. The sun thundered against the walls and the air in the cell grew hot as a forge, as if the black room were an oven and Anders the meat inside. In such situations life simplified. Anders abandoned the luxury of higher, complex emotion. Nothing mattered except physical survival, and to that end everything could be sacrificed: dignity, sanctity, sanity. He no longer marked the passing of the days, he no longer exercised (which would simply have added to the heat and fetidity) he used magic to freeze his tears and surrounded his body with the cubes as though packing ice around a corpse.
Turning his anger outward was the only alternative to disintegration. But for a mage that was a death sentence...the rage demon howled delight at being let in. Mr Wiggums saved him. Anders wanted to believe he had never intended to allow the demon to possess the cat as a proxy for himself but he could never be sure...he had certainly picked a time when the cat was present to indulge his white-hot rage. So he survived and Mr Wiggums did not...and all Anders had to set against loneliness and guilt was the story of Mr Wiggums taking out three Templars. Nightmare exploded that lie like so many other comforting fictions...if even one Templar had died as a result of Anders' fury Greagoir would have made him Tranquil. As it was the anti-magic wards had taken care of the rage demon – and the poor cat – and the year had continued to turn.
As a healer, Anders knew when nourishment stops, the body starves. His year in solitary taught him it was the same with the mind. When the daily ration of fresh experience dried up, the mind turned first to its accumulated memories. It drew on anecdotes, long-forgotten faces, lessons learned from its rich and many-layered reserves.
But slowly, slowly, the stock diminished. He began to remember more about his childhood, reaching further back, rummaging for something new. This steady drawing down of memories caused strange disturbances. There were times he was not sure which was real and which was imagination. The discovery a cherished memory could not have happened that way led to the unexpected collapse of a whole shelving system...he became inordinately angry. The sudden surfacing of people and places he had not thought about for years began to haunt his waking moments and his dreams.
Sometimes there was pleasure to be had in the unexpected moments that floated up into his consciousness...the story his mother had told him about the cat who came indoors...how she had learned the wife was the head of the husband and bonded with her as a kindred spirit. But his predominant emotion was fear. What would happen when the accumulated reserves ran out? Would the mind, like a starving body, start to consume its own supporting structures?
...The bad memories were piling one on top of the other and there was nothing to stop them. Nothing to distract his mind from them or give him something, anything, to cling to. Anders could no longer focus his thoughts voluntarily. His mind moved of its own accord. There was no longer any way to avoid thoughts. All the bad memories...the beating of his father to "drive the magic out of him", the tears of his mother...came plunging back at him and there was no stopping it. His mind was a field on which all these things were wild birds pecking...
The dashes he had so laboriously made upon the wall had grown more and more confused. The neat rows had gone haywire, as though affected by some lichenous growth. He had not given up. Instead, he had said to himself, "oh, well, it doesn't have to be perfect...what's a few days more or less?" He had corrected his approach, and concentrated hard...and in a few more weeks he had looked at it again and wondered, "Who am I doing this for? I have only Greagoir's word he'll let me out in twelve months. Suppose another Knight Commander takes over? Suppose they forget about me?"
His sense of time was utterly gone. It was difficult now to tell if he was awake or asleep, or even to know the difference. No matter how he kept reminding himself who he was or why he was here, any sense of purpose slid away almost instantly. Thoughts could no longer take hold in his mind. Then the distortion set in, as in a nightmare. Dammed to the redundancy of his own thoughts, he felt the horror of the future.
They've forgotten I'm here. But where is here? I'm not sure anymore. Did they forget having a mage named Anders? It was never my real name. How can there be such loneliness?
My hands. They're falling off. I have no wrists to hold them. My skull is growing. Soon I'll be all thought...how can I still be alive this way?
Death isn't supposed to feel unnatural like this. But this isn't life, and how can there be anything other than death and life? This is monstrous. Unforgiveable. Where am I? Let me out! Don't leave me alone here. It's so cold...