Veins of Blue Lightning

by Gene Dark

AU DAI. It is 9:38, and the armies of Inquisitor Hawke-Lethandralis have defeated the Wardens of Adamant. Along with his husband, Fenris, Lambert intends to take on Castellum Tenebris and end slavery in Tevinter. They are helped by Anders, leader of the Free Mages, and Knight Vigilant Rylock. But the other Magisters Sidereal, Fen'Harel and the Qunari are waiting to strike.

17. Chapter 17: Love Like Blood

Love Like Blood

The title is from the Killing Joke song, and the chapter song is Troye Sivan: Animal

The four survivors of the Fade grieve their three dead and celebrate life in the only way they can, meaning there is some fairly explicit m/m, f/f and m/m. The actual plot will continue in the next chapter, Wraiths of Tevinter, which will begin the final story arc.

Dawn broke in bloody shadows.

A low, cold sun was cantilevered above Adamant; the fortress an ossuary housing the liquified dead. White phosphorous had sintered bone to porcelain, fragments of flesh clung like remnants of abominations. Ash floated to the ground like grey snow.

Vivienne had lowered her shield, allowing Loghain to command his Wardens to break the gate using blackpowder. Loghain, Carver and Jana quickly secured loyalty of the surviving non-mage Wardens and cleared the place floor by floor. King Cousland led Ferelden's forces, Prince Sebastian commanded Starkhaven's, Knight Captain Harith led the Templars and Fairbanks led the forces of the Inquisition. Duke Cyril de Montfort led his wyvern riders to land atop the fortress, reinforcing them. Any surviving mage Wardens were dealt with by Hira and Morrigan.

Fenris had eyes only for Lambert. His husband – wingless now – looked weary and vulnerable as he always did after battle, as though he had absorbed the pain of enemies and allies. Fenris looked at the glowing emerald Mark upon his husband's left hand and saw it as a giant clock, counting down the remaining three years of Lambert's life. An ancient Elvhen magic that was devouring him from within.

Fen'Harel didn't care. Fen'Harel saw Lambert as no more than a halfbreed host to a magic that would remain long after the mortal it fed on had crumbled to dust.

Lambert returned Fenris' look – his violet eyes enormous – as though drawing strength from their mutual allegiance. They had learned the limitations of love, that you couldn't really share another's fate: the animal fear, the recoil of an organism from its destruction, the sense of being a rat in a trap. Fenris held on to the determination he would save Lambert, somehow – without making a deal with the devil that was Fen'Harel – but he held onto it alone, in an act of faith or fiat.

Voices intruded on their private universe.

"Where is the Warden-Commander? Where is Alistair? And Ser Otto," Loghain added, guiltily.

Lambert faced Loghain, soldier-to-soldier, without flinching. Only Fenris read the sorrow, the defeat, in every line of his body. His bones seemed delicate as the hawk he had been named for. What must it be like, to have to deliver news in a lethal bouquet?

"First Warden Rillian, her Second, Warden-Commander Alistair, and Warden Otto gave their lives to defeat Nightmare and free the Wardens from its spell. Because of their Ultimate Sacrifice, the Magisters Sidereal lose their demon army. Just before the end – when she was more than mortal – she told me she will search the Black City to find the cure for taint."

Loghain had not aged since he took his Joining but all at once it was as if those years caught up with him. His face crumpled, and he suddenly looked like what he was – a man approaching sixty.

"Since the day I first met the Hero of Ferelden – Rillian – I knew I was looking at a dead woman walking. We said – danced – our farewell before Ortan Thaig. She survived – oh, not through the Dark Ritual – and did what Weisshaupt should have done and didn't. She told me the best organizations are those that make themselves unnecessary. And, for that, Weisshaupt branded her traitor."

"There is more," Lambert said, "Rillian told me Corypheus and the Architect were not the only Magisters Sidereal. Two of them died in the Deep Roads and their killer vanished in the depths. She wasn't sure what remained of the final two but suspected one had become First Warden. That's why Weisshaupt don't want a cure. That's why they'd prefer to keep the tithes rolling in. I don't know if they were working with Corypheus or if he went rogue. But they are not our allies. She named you First Warden."

The grief-stricken old man vanished, to be replaced by the soldier. The face shifted and hardened, taking on the blank implacability of Dragonbone.

"Weisshaupt are our enemies but that fortress is a tough nut to crack. They have withstood worse than us for centuries. For now, I will name Montsimmard the new seat of the First Warden. With any luck, they will be so outraged they will attack us."

A schism: as there was now a Tevinter Divine and a Southern Divine, each arguing they were truly the Maker's living mouthpiece on Thedas. Could Weisshaupt win...deal with them as upstarts? They had the knowledge, the history, the weight of centuries. And they had the – discreet – backing of the Venatori. But...many of the tithes came because the Anderfels were unusually devout. And that meant if Divine Victoria declared for Montsimmard they might lose a significant percentage.

Also, now the mages had been freed from Nightmare's spell, how many of the higher-ups – several who must have seen the First Warden's face – would question? Magisters Sidereal had ways of disguising their rot just as Tevinter Magisters wore masks of youth, but Senior Mage Wardens were not easily fooled.

Fiona...she had known. A prisoner, experimented on and allowed to rejoin the Circle only to destabilize it – gain the Wardens the indentured servants they needed – had done what she could for them in Red Bride's Grave. Fenris couldn't blame her for not giving them the full truth. The better part of him wanted to free her as he intended to free Varania and her children.

"You will have the support of the Inquisition, of course."

"And the Templars," Rylock added.

"Ferelden, too, will stand with you against the chaos."

That was hardly surprising. Thanks to Lambert, Fenris had studied enough politics to know the king of Ferelden was Loghain's son-in-law.

What did surprise him was Cyril de Montfort pledging his support. Fenris saw Loghain's blue eyes take on a hard shine like steel. That look was a conqueror's gleam. Loghain was thinking of adding Cyril's wyvern army to his own forces rather than Orlais'.

The weary, battered group secured the fortress, treated the injured, and set watches. Lambert said, "We can discuss this at the War Council. I'm calling one tomorrow."

Loghain turned his attention to the here and now. "Clarel is still alive. She and the other Warden mages who sacrificed their own comrades to summon a demon army will face the Grey Warden penalty for murder and treason."

Clarel groaned, waking up. After knocking her out with the flat of Lethandralis Fenris had bound her hands and stuffed a sock in her mouth, wrapping bandages as a gag to prevent any use of magic. Blood magic would still work, but fortunately he and Lambert could cast the Litany.

In the dark dawn, Lambert's violet eyes were almost black, with only traces of the dancing lights that glimmered like stars. Fenris knew he was remembering Rillian's vision. Neither thought she would have become that – that had only been Nightmare playing on her worst fears – but still...neither felt giving anyone that much power, with no force to bar misuse, was a good idea.

Fenris would always be grateful to Loghain – his sounding the retreat at Ostagar had saved the man he loved.

But he knew - had been told by Rillian - that the then-Regent of Ferelden had made a deal with a slaver named Caladrius to sell Elves to Tevinter in return for forces to defend Ferelden from the Blight.

…"The Alienage was not defensible. What was better: to live as slaves or to die without hope in the Alienage? I had no choice but to sacrifice the few to save the many" ...

…"Easy to say when 'the few' did not include yourself, or anyone like you. You chose death over slavery for your own kind when you killed chevaliers at the border. Try the knife's edge on your own cheek before you shave another. Ser"...

Loghain's act had been no different to Anders' choice to sell him to Danarius to gain the forces needed to rescue the Gallows prisoners. And, while Danarius had 'only' asked for one lyrium warrior, Caladrius had used Blood Magic to create a plague that targeted Elves but spared humans, as a cover for his 'healers' to infiltrate the Alienage.

What might Loghain do as First Warden? He wasn't going to do to Clarel what they had seen in Nightmare's vision, but that didn't mean he would do nothing...especially to defeat Fen'Harel.

...Creating a disease that kills members of one race while sparing another is evil beyond mercy. As is the 'right' to own people. Both must be destroyed. And prevented from ever reoccurring under the guise of the 'greater good'...

Lambert was way ahead of him. He said, with the deceptive mildness he always gained when the going got toughest, "First Warden...you are leader of an ancient order that has saved us time and again, for very little thanks, but that does not make you infallible. No organization can be trusted with absolute power and non-accountability. I respectfully request the fate of these Warden prisoners be decided in the Ferelden manner – by twelve good men and true. As Montsimmard is part of Orlais and the Emperor has sent his own heir to help you, Duke Cyril de Montfort should be present. As should representatives of the Free Marches, Nevarra and Ferelden."

King Cousland voiced his support for Loghain – hardly surprising, since Loghain was Ferelden before he was a Warden – would always make decisions to benefit his daughter and grandchildren first, while leaving other countries and organizations out of the loop.

Rylock backed Lambert.

"The reason the Seekers went wrong is because they were non-accountable. The reason Templars went wrong is because they were only accountable to Seekers – and given absolute power over mages. Power corrupts. Rillian and I debated this once. She believed the way to prevent Weisshaupt going wrong was by making Warden secrets – the darkspawn lifecycle, the nature of the Joining and the Ultimate Sacrifice – available to all. At the time I disagreed with her. I believed there were secrets so deep only a trusted few should oversee them, protecting the masses. I believed the Chantry infallible. But no organization – even if it has Divine origins – is incorruptible because no mortal being is without sin. The divide is not between nations, or Orders, or mages and non-mages...it is right through each person's heart."

She stopped and blushed slightly, unused to talking so openly about sacred things.

Lambert held back. With the tact as much a part of him as his right arm, he realized she had more to say.

"As an Andrastean, I believe in redemption. We will take these Wardens prisoner and rule on their fate at the War Council tomorrow."

Lambert was smiling at Rylock like a sun, totally delighted, shyly responsive. Sebastian raised his voice in support.

As there were three on one side and two on the other the only remaining independent power was Anders, leader of the Free Mages. Anders could either send the debate to a stalemate or ensure Lambert won. Fenris was not sure how he would vote. As a healer, Anders would pick the compassionate option...a revolutionary who believed in justice would see it differently. The differing parts of Anders seldom came into exact alignment. In Kirkwall Anders had had no compunction about making mages and non-mages pay the price for mage freedom...without consulting anyone, even the mages he was protecting.

Anders shrugged self-deprecatingly. He darted a glance at Fenris. "As some people here know what I did while under the influence of a demon I would say mages in glass houses shouldn't throw fireballs. They'll have their trial. Tomorrow. Right now, the work of a healer begins."

A young Warden recruit - so raw he appeared bloody – swallowed nervously and edged imperceptibly toward Lambert.

"Thank you, your worship. We will not fail you."

---

Fenris and Lambert found dilapidated quarters where they saw to their griffons. Both Dumat and Ripples had fought like heroes. Lambert made much of Ripples – cooing and praising the little calico female as though she were Incognito, while Fenris and Dumat shared a less demonstrative, but no less warm, bond of mutual respect.

Then Lambert set up a small workstation, following the procedures he had learned as Rillian's lab technician. Neither had changed out of the clothing they had worn while attacking Adamant. Lambert had used the Anchor to open a Rift and allow the seven to walk bodily in the Fade and somehow, unlike when Fenris phased, they had still been wearing these clothes when they came back. Fenris was wearing the armour of a griffon rider– and the red armband. The armband was the remnant of the uniform he had worn as Lord Amell's bodyguard – a promise he would always be there to pull his husband's nuts out of the fire. It was solid, real; the colour of blood and life.

An assurance he would never become as Danarius had intended: a lyrium ghost fit only to be put down by Templars. Changeless, ageless, deathless. Danarius had taken his memories – memories were the antithesis of being a spirit – and now Nightmare had returned them. They lay like a cold heap at the bottom of his mind.

Lambert did not seem ready to remember their time in the Fade either. He threw himself into the work that made Fenris solid, real, free of pain. In Kirkwall he and Anders had invented 'Apostate's Friend'. It had the effect of making the body resistant to lyrium. During interrogations – when Meredith tried to find out which prisoners were secret mages – they were force-fed lyrium until mana could be detected. Apostate's Friend had been created to help those like Lambert pass under the radar.

But Lambert had soon realized it would also dull the excruciating pain of Fenris' brands. Fenris had never told anyone, but Lambert was always more observant than he would have liked.

Lambert poured the mixture into two amphorae – a Tevinter word for a glass jar that had a long slender neck and two handles – then passed one to Fenris. They linked arms.

"Bottoms up." They served each other. It would dull the pain of both Mark and Brands and prevent them reacting with each other.

The draft was bitter; but certainly no worse than the rotgut wine they had found in Adamant's cellar. Danarius' wine cellar the fortress was not. They made do. Fenris remembered Lambert cooking in Skyhold's kitchen...

...Lambert was stripped to the waist, wearing only his idea of a chef's apron: an apron that was frillier and more ornate than anything seen in a noble's kitchen. His lithe dancer's muscles – more toned since Fenris had begun teaching him swordplay – flexed as he stirred the mixture of what was going to be a cake. Fenris' eyes dropped to his taut buttocks, which rippled invitingly as he moved.

"Pass me another egg."

When Fenris moved to comply, Lambert stopped him.

"Throw it to me. I'll catch it." Fenris remembered Malcolm Hawke had taught his sons to play baseball and Lambert wasn't bad.

"You can beat Carver that way but an egg is smaller than a baseball. You'll miss it."

"Oh ye of little faith. I'll catch it. Go on."

Lambert stood in exaggerated readiness. But, just as the egg left Fenris' palm, Lambert nonchalantly straightened up and turned away.

The egg sailed through the air, dropped, then exploded on the kitchen floor.

Lambert looked at him in mild surprise, raised a feathery eyebrow, and continued mixing the ingredients in his bowl.

These slapstick digressions were so at odds with the way the rest of the world saw the Holy Herald they titillated Fenris into a sort of drunken lechery. Nothing mattered except Lambert was his; the whole fucking world could go to hell...

Lambert had not only succeeded in treating Fenris' pain. He had also developed something he called 'Fenris' Friend'. The purpose of this was to rally Fenris' own immune system to fight the brands.

Lambert had combined Ines Arancia's Northern Prickleweed – which could thrive on tainted ground – with Deep Mushroom, which grew near lyrium deposits and fed on lyrium. He had mixed these with the swamp flower that grew on Llomerryn Island. Rather than cure taint, this variant could cure lyrium poisoning. The final ingredients were elderberry, feverfew, willowbark and foxglove, to rally Fenris' immune system and ease pain.

Lambert emptied the liquid into a glass tube with wooden plugs at each end. Holding it vertical, he unplugged one end, keeping it carefully upright. He emptied the liquid into the tube. Then he drew a small box from a bag Rillian had told Lambert she wanted him to have, in the event of her death. Not the Wardens, not Bianca, not Dagna: Lambert.

The box was sealed with wax and Lambert opened it to produce a short stick. One end was wrapped in leather, and exactly fitted the tube. A wooden plug fit the open end of the tube and a small feather quill protruded from its centre.

The device was for injections.

Used to doing this, trusting Lambert with more than his life, Fenris extended his right forearm. The vein stood proud – his swordsman's training had made them very prominent.

Lambert took the arm very gently – a lord accepting the service of a knight – jabbed the tip into the vein and pushed the plunger.

"Astia valla fermundis."

'Apostate's Friend' was like Lambert's love; it made him solid, real, very much himself. 'Fenris' Friend' was love too – the kind of love that made him strong enough to fight the thing trying to take him over.

In none of Fenris' regained memories – even the earliest – had anyone ever done something just to help him. His mother had never cared whether Fenris was well, free of pain, or himself. Fenris had been the child of the slave Danarius had mated her with – during his attempts to breed potential lyrium warriors for strength – and, unlike her 'real' child, he had not even been a mage. Every mouthful of food his mother gave him was one she and Varania had to do without.

He had made up for it in the only way he could: by becoming Danarius' lyrium warrior in return for the magister freeing his mother and sister from slavery.

…"Freedom was no boon"...

Fenris flushed, irrationally afraid this discovery would change the way Lambert felt about him. It was his greatest shame: that his conception had been forced on his mother and that he hadn't even been born with magic…that he'd been the kind of boy no mother could love.

Relaxed, free of pain, every inch of his compact, muscular frame reflecting tranquility; the Brands quiescent, so pale they might have been scars, Fenris decided he could do without introspection.

He hugged Lambert, and Lambert hugged him. More even than desire, Fenris loved Lambert's body just to be near it. After the Fade of shifting nightmares and unreality this was who they were: the power and the glory of the mortal flesh. He breathed Lambert's scent of cool blue musk and gardenias – sweet and zesty and coconut – and the Purple Rain cocktails he liked so much.

Underneath were warmer, elusive scents that conjured images of flight, of the lithe musculature of a hawk, of bird bones frail and strong. Below were the rivers and branching tributaries of his blood. Lambert's blood smelled like metallic chocolate (as did all human blood) mixed with blackcurrant (both his grandmothers were Elven – in Tevinter he would be known as a 'Mischling of the First Degree') and something else uniquely him.

His mana did not smell like a Templar's lyrium – metallic rain like the Brands – but like an ocean of dreams. He blazed with the white heat of a violet sun.

They kissed. Fenris knew every millimeter of Lambert's face. A handsome twenty-five-year-old. Hair like black silk cropped in a military cut; as a war leader, it had to fit under his helm. His ears were puckish – slightly pointed but still round enough to 'pass' for human, and his eyes were slightly tilted but non-reflective.

Purplish-blue eyes, with violet shadows under them, that always seemed to be looking at something dreamy and lovely and secretive. There was that other world – of music and magic and dreams – that Lambert could enter at will but that Fenris couldn't follow. Fenris didn't mind. He had long since gotten over his childhood yearning to be a mage so his mother might not be so disappointed in him; was content to be the rock-solid partner who could pull Lambert back from long and dangerous sleep.

Stars spilled behind Lambert's lids as his mana soared in elation. Years earlier, he had been afraid to let his magic – as natural to him as breathing – escape him; afraid it might remind Fenris of the magister who had raped him of body and mind. Fenris knew – shamefully – there was a time he might have capitalized on that guilt and fear...ironically, it had been Anders who had put him right...

…"You'll guilt him into taking magebane – keep him helpless and dependent on you to protect him from Templars – you'll take what Danarius did to you out on him and call it love" ...

Never. Fenris had made sure he told Lambert, "I want you as you are,"; had refused his offer to take magebane.

Lambert's mana escaped him like glittering diamonds, like the sheen of sweat on his skin. The scent of him – cloves and clean linen – filled Fenris; his magic enclosed him in safety and desire – a potent mix he had never before experienced.

Lambert's mouth had creases at the corners and his smile had a trick in it; such a slow-blossoming thing, with a sudden radiance of fulfillment. His smile was the first beauty Fenris had ever known – not just because Lambert was handsome but because he had a smile that made him think of beautiful things.

Fenris cupped his face but was gentle with him. Lambert had only just emerged from the Fade. For Fenris walking bodily in the Fade was normal – he did that every time he phased – but he recalled the dizziness and disorientation of his first attempts and treated Lambert as if he were fragile. But he was also filled with the sexual urge to rub his face and hold it and possess it.

Lambert's skin felt a shade cooler than Fenris' own. The part of him still capable of thought knew this was because Lambert was normal, while the temperature of Fenris' skin was a degree or so higher, because he was constantly fighting the infection of the Brands.

They kissed and licked and played with each other's tongues, which was doubly intimate because it recalled the days when neither had had enough to eat. Lambert's parents had spent a lot of his childhood on the run – each middle-of-the-night move necessitated by the discovery Malcolm or his children had magic – and Fenris had been a slave. They were taking sustenance from each other.

Fenris broke away first, ready to start taking each other's clothes off. For him this was easy – only the clawed armour moved with him as he phased and he was wearing the armour of a griffon rider. He reappeared naked, save for the red armband. Lambert's eyes darkened and his lips parted.

Lambert twisted round and allowed Fenris to untie the straps of his breastplate. Then he turned, so the shirt he wore underneath billowed like an unfurling sail. He ducked out of it, then unhooked his trouser belt. Grace and power lined his body; he had the sparkle and limpidity of running water.

Fenris ran his hands over the taut, controlled body, the lithe dancer's muscles and hard erotic nipples. His fingers traced the ridges of the spine, the scars and the griffon tattoo that overlay them. Lambert had long ago stopped minding. Like Fenris' own, the scars themselves were curiously void of feeling - in places puckered, in places satin – but Lambert's imagination did the rest. They were no longer Alrik's signature just as the lyrium brands no longer belonged to Danarius; they were just part of their stories, Fenris and Lambert the captains of their ships.

Lambert was breathing heavily, like a racehorse. "I want you inside me."

Fenris slipped his penis in very gently, and Lambert wriggled around 'til he was on top. Fenris could see the shadows of the feathery wings Lambert had worn in the Fade – some deeply personal part of him – soft as down and hard as steel. The beauty and power of the sight almost cost Fenris his control but he held back, wanting to make this count. He had one of his hands around Lambert's genitals and the other reached round the back. Lambert was hard as titanium and delicate as the first fronds of spring.

"Mmmmmmmmmmuuuuh, Mmmmmmmmmmuuuuh," Lambert said, making soft little noises.

He had a voice made for pleasure. Lambert was a countertenor and Fenris had heard him hit the whistle register before; it was really the implication of this sound of ecstasy that made his singing such a turn-on. His face was excited; beatific. His stomach muscles hardened.

Lambert shook all over and came, in his own time, as if listening to music only he could hear.

Fenris wasn't quite ready to come so he pulled out gently.

"Can I come on your face?" he asked breathlessly.

Lambert's assenting smile was a sun of love. "I'd love that."

They rolled around and Fenris looked down at Lambert's face.

He saw Lambert addressing the Inquisition. Beautiful, powerful, uncompromising about the things that mattered. The man who would never make ending slavery a bargaining chip. The man who would never treat people as things. The man who would never let the ends justify the means.

Lambert started rubbing Fenris' penis, never losing the eye-contact. Lambert's eyes were wide-open windows into his soul: a starlit ocean of dreams. He was ink and moonlight and amaranthine – a shimmer that sang.

Fenris was shaking and making incoherent noises. A low growl escaped his throat; he felt ready to burst out of his skin and at the same time as if he were melting into it, reduced to only the hot blood swirling in his veins. Lambert's mana caressed him; a shimmering blanket of consent. Safe it seemed to whisper.

Fenris broke apart in a thousand shards of sparkling light and felt Lambert gather the pieces. He smeared and caressed the substance all over Lambert's face, into the deep shadows around his eyes and the perfect corners of his lips.

...Mine mine mine...

He fell asleep for a little while, Lambert the gentle beside him, restringing his meanings in opal on midnight.

Danarius found him regardless.

...Mine mine mine...

Fenris scoffed at himself. Lambert is a man – your husband – and you asked him. He told you he loved it and he wasn't pretending. But, still, there was a chill inside him. Would it always be like this: the memories reaching back and back, contaminating the present and making him question everything that was good?

An arrow-slit in the tower let in an inch-wide slat of light. Outside, long, unfurled banners of rain swept over the ground; fresh, cold, heavy.

"Lambert?"

Lambert woke on an in-breath, as though breaking the surface of water that had been threatening to draw him under.

"Maker. Fen. Are you okay?"

Fenris pulled Lambert up so the two were sitting beside each other, as equals.

"Shhh, kadan," he said, "Make love to me."

After the horrific battles and total nakedness of the Fade - like confronting the Maker with everything you had ever done or dreamed of doing – the world was particularly raw and naked, unexplained.

Lambert only has three years...

The man Fenris would have died any death for – or spent an eternity as a lyrium ghost for – would be eaten up from within by the Anchor and there was nothing he could do about it. The wild and desperate sense of mortality – the blazing determination to cure him, condensed by silence like the core of a furnace – rose in Fenris. A wild and desperate need to celebrate life woke in him. Their lovemaking was the feast of starvelings; a thing of need and the trust of oppos and the melancholy joy of a pleasure that counts its days.

Lambert used the muscles Fenris had trained into him to flip him over, his mouth hunting everywhere and his hands caressing Fenris' most sensitive parts. Fenris abandoned himself to total trust. Lambert was careful, gentle, knew every inch of his body.

Long ago he had asked Fenris – not in so many words – whether Fenris could possibly want this; whether he had any right to take this. Fenris had found the question absurd. A murderknife went into the same parts of the body as could be used to enjoy food, or sleep, or sex – did that make the body a thing to be avoided? Rape wasn't sex, it was murder, and there was no reason murder should put a man off sex.

What a force for life Lambert was! Like most men, Fenris could only manage to do this once per night – but Lambert could use mana to recharge himself. He asked Fenris if this was okay and Fenris grinned. They made love, and slept, and made love again. Lambert's lips tickled one of Fenris' lupine ears and he ran one hand down the hard rolling muscles of Fenris' stomach.

Lambert would never cast on him without his consent, but all at once Fenris realized he didn't mind.

"Go ahead," he grinned, "We'll see if your healing magic works on me too."

Lambert's exploring hand went lower. His mana escaped him in sighs; an iridescent cloud that reminded Fenris of a rainbow, gentle and harmless as it brushed along his skin.

Lambert was a chaser of rainbows.

Fenris felt the warmth and the love – like water made into light – and was pleased to feel himself twitch back into life. He grinned – a rakish sort of grin – their pulses coming in bursts. He groaned his own euphoria.

"Hawke," he growled.

As the fire in the grate burned to mere embers Fenris refused to think about the day ahead or the three years to come.

The Fade had shown them time was an illusion; all life a continuous expansion of now.

Now...now...now...

---

Anders found Dorian in Adamant's library. Dorian hadn't let the battle ruin his fine clothes; he was wearing a toga of emerald overlaying scale mail that fit him like dragon skin. High lacquered boots reached his knees – and discreetly added a few inches in height. Not that he needed them. Dorian was six foot tall, well-muscled...the antithesis of a mage who had spent life locked in a Circle.

Anders' life as an apostate meant he was no wallflower, but still...he sometimes wondered what Dorian saw in him: a man nearing forty who had no wealth, no power, just grubby feathered pauldrons that smelled of wet mabari. Older, sadder, wiser than the firebrand revolutionary he had been in Kirkwall. Anders would always feel the loss of Justice – a mother losing her pregnancy; a man losing his twin – the temptation to stay with the Fade spirits was real and only duty had called him back.

Dorian did not seem any happier. He was poring over the paucity of Adamant's book collection with the air of a collector in a flea market.

"They have remarkably little here on early Tevinter history. All these 'gifts' from Magister Erimond and the best they could come up with was the Malefica Imperio. Trite propaganda."

Anders' gaze dropped to the best part of Dorian. There was something to be said for the glories of the flesh...

"But if you want twenty volumes on whether Divine Galatea took a shit on Sunday this is evidently the place to find it."

Anders burst out laughing. Memories of Karl – how they had spent hours annoying the Templar guardians in the library at Kinloch Hold – chased away the Fade shadows. The challenge had been to see how long they could keep such conversations going before the purple-skirted meatheads threatened to Smite them.

Even better was when Karl had asked – in a deceptively innocent voice – the Templars to explain the deeper meanings hidden in the texts. Karl had had such an angelic-looking mop of blond curls – before his Harrowing had left him prematurely grey – that he usually got away with it. Anders – known to everyone as a 'flight risk' – usually got the Holy Smite: like being kicked in the nuts, but all over.

He had sometimes challenged Karl to see how long he could keep the game going. If Karl won – which he usually did – their position was the one Anders was accustomed to. Karl was his first and had been the one to introduce Anders to the only way mages could defy Templars; prove the Chantry could not take everything that made them worth more than the stone they walked upon. If Anders won...well, Karl was nothing if not versatile... Anders was a fast learner...and had enjoyed teaching Lambert...

Anders flushed, afraid Dorian would read the memories on his face. Having barely survived the Fade was no excuse to start reminiscing about previous partners. Dorian deserved better.

"Such a critic."

"I wouldn't have to if you could find some rebellious heretic archivist to join the cause."

Dorian's voice was raised. He sounded genuinely angry. Anders wasn't sure why. He fell into the habit that had kept him going long before Kirkwall...when he had used flippancy to cope with the ugliness of Kinloch Hold.

"Are there rebellious archivists? Other than you, that is?"

"If the Magisters Sidereal start burning masterworks of literature I'm sure a few will pop up."

By accident, Dorian met Anders' eyes – then quickly looked away as if the intimacy made him uncomfortable. He made a not very convincing show of looking through the shelves. "Did I see something by Genetivi here? I could have sworn..."

Anders lost patience. "What is this about, Dorian?"

Dorian faced him. The same height, the men stood eye to eye; dark eyes met hazel eyes and there was more in them than Dorian could express in words.

"When everyone returned, they told me about your tumble into the Abyssal Rift. You went into the Fade. Physically went in. You do realize this feat hasn't been attempted in a thousand years? Corypheus and his contemporaries entered the Fade and began the Blights. In comparison, First Warden Rillian intends to enter the Black City to cure taint. I can only hope such hubris won't be the undoing of us all. What she could unleash... My advice? Keep this quiet. Let them speculate. Too many will see this as a challenge."

For just a moment, Anders had the horrible fear this was jealousy: the son of a Magister angry that a group of non-Tevinters – an Elven Soporati like Rillian – had achieved what only the Magisters Sidereal had.

...If you want to swap – if that's all I mean to you...then forget it...

Fortunately, the words did not leave his brain. Dorian's next words told Anders how wrong he'd been. After Dorian had fought for the Free Mages at Andoral's Reach and for them all at Haven – he deserved better than his own lover treating him as a 'mage from Tevinter'.

"Are you...alright?"

"Not really," Anders admitted. His greatest fear had always been of letting his cats down. Mr Wiggums and Ser Pounce-A-Lot were the only children he would ever have. Ser Pounce was a happy and healthy tom in Skyhold – the father of Incognito's children – and now that Lambert's cats had joined their Inquisitor they were picking up right where they had left off. Anders had never let down Ser Pounce...but Nightmare had forced him to remember he had betrayed Mr Wiggums.

As an adult man, there had been a single vivid time when Ser Pounce had crawled on his lap and Anders had suddenly known...

...I would die any death for you...

It was a knowledge beyond logic – probably he had been tricked by his own hormones; the need for parenthood that biology denied him – but it was real. He had known it in the same way he had known he would spend his life fighting for mage rights.

But the day he had betrayed Mr Wiggums he had been an apprentice, and the incarceration had been the worst fear of a teenager. As a teenager he would have done anything and everything – humiliated himself; betrayed his loved ones – to prevent mental disintegration. His mind was all he had. Conscience had only come years later, with adulthood.

He could only be glad Dorian hadn't been there to witness his shame. Glad, too, that Dorian hadn't had to relive the horror – the mental rape – his own father had attempted to do to him to make him 'acceptable'...to make him enter a sham marriage and rape male slaves, rather than declare his desire for a husband and equal. Like the Chantry making mages Tranquil: a total violation dressed up as being 'what was best for the patient'.

"There are enough idiots in Tevinter who think if they just use enough Blood Magic, their problems will vanish. It's exactly the sort of thing I want to stop back home."

Anders smiled at him...the first genuine smile he had managed all day. It was a beautiful thing when a lover lived up to an ideal.

"I trust you. I believe you and the Lucerni are going to affect change top-down. Only...I don't expect the Wraiths of Tevinter to believe it. Why should escaped slaves believe an Altus? Fenris and Briala have said, "Freedom is not given. It is won." And they have an Inquisitor who is prepared to go to war to win emancipation. I am telling you this because I am hoping the five of us can work together. We may disagree on the methods, but we want the same things."

In unspoken answer, Dorian grasped the Pavus birthright, worn around his neck. Anders had never seen him declare allegiance so openly before. Dorian hadn't dared ask the Inquisitor to help him regain the amulet – Fenris' husband was not known for his sympathy for Magisters – but he had asked Leliana while she was still the Inquisition's spymaster. Leliana had gained the amulet – using methods best kept secret – and one day Divine Victoria would call him on the debt.

"When I ran from my father I sold it because I was desperate. My wish to not use a woman as a 'beard' – not to commit rape against male slaves – was a part of myself I had to fight for as if I were fighting for my life. But I love my country and this...it's a symbol. It means I'm part of it."

Anders was quiet, not knowing quite what to say. He had never been able to feel that way about the country of his birth – Southern mages were told they had no country, no home, no family – no loyalty to anything or anyone. They were cases for Templars to handle, not people capable of honour, courage, love.

He had fought for Ferelden during the Fifth Blight but the mages had been conscripts, not volunteers – brought out as living weapons rather than soldiers. Anders' only loyalty had been to Karl, who had fought and died beside him.

...Karl's void eyes staring into a future no longer his to claim...

But Dorian was looking at him slightly hesitantly, as if afraid he had sounded foolish, or had revealed too much.

"I think a man who loves his country – who sees it for what it could be – is someone I trust more than a group who want to collapse the country from within. Ending slavery is just and right and I have promised to help Fenris any way I can, but you are the man I trust. As for Hira...she speaks of love but she lives in hatred. Be very careful."

"I'm going to stop before I say something syrupy, but I won't forget that. Thank you."

To Anders kissing in libraries was part of his birthright – the best way to annoy Templars and a chance he took as often as he could – but he knew Dorian's father had left invisible scars. Dorian would not be comfortable with intimacy until they were alone.

"Have you been to your quarters lately?"

"Not recently."

"Do, when you have the time. There's...something there that might interest you."

Anders knew a come-on when he heard one and took a quick cold shower using the water pump at Adamant. The Fade had left him clean...but he still liked to wear the musk and patchouli that reminded Dorian of home.

Returning to his quarters, Anders threw more wood on the fire. It blazed in the grate like warmth and life. Then, with the caution ingrained in him as a boy living at the mercy of Templars at Kinloch Hold, he stopped, head cocked, listening. Rain beat against the thick wooden shutters holding out the night. Wind moaned deep in the chimney's throat.

Even though the intruder was wearing a Ring of Doubt, Anders caught the muffled footsteps. Being a mage meant being able to see through the glamour of magical items.

A shiver touched the small of his back, skittered up his spine to raise the hair on the nape of his neck.

That year below Kinloch Hold was a raw wound.

Anders had survived because he had learned to keep those memories buried. An apprentice had no memory of injustices, or punishments, no questions or secrets. Or they disappeared forever, their flesh working for their masters in the stockroom.

...To be chosen to take the Harrowing is an honour. One must deny all that has passed. Past is death and death is killing. Now and tomorrow, those who are Enchanters are the Chantry's treasured instruments, living proof that magic must be used to serve man and never to rule over him...

Magical fire with the heat of the sun slipped under his door, a blazon that grew brighter as the source progressed down the corridor towards him. The fiery glow licked the stone floor, searched all the way to Anders' boots.

The latch crept slowly upwards. Anders thought of Templar rapists. He had been lucky...Lambert had not. Nor – the fairness in Anders insisted on the unwelcome truth – had Rylock. The fact her rapist had been a mage didn't make it any less wrong; he wasn't going to kid himself, "oh, if only the Templars hadn't oppressed these men they wouldn't have needed to punish Templar women." Anders hated rapists and would never blame their victims.

Anders drew himself to his full height, grasped the staff as he had wielded it in the Fade. There, his friends had saved him. If he must fight alone now, so be it. He would not plead.

The latch jerked upward. The door flew open to boom against the opposite wall with a force that set it to shivering like a chilled hand. The man who had done it had a body wreathed in flames that did not harm him, and his darkly handsome face was in shadow.

Dorian.

Passion replaced terror.

Even at Skyhold, Anders' quarters were not as luxurious as Lambert's – but he had privacy and he had books so was in seventh heaven. In Adamant they had to make do...the single hard bunk was not particularly romantic – but Dorian had had an attendant bring food and wine and all of a sudden Anders found he was ravenous. You could survive on lyrium in the Fade – as the Elvhen Ancients did In Uthenera – but Anders yearned to be mortal.

The waiter came with their food – Ferelden salted pork for Anders and salmon tagliatelle for Dorian. The wine was nothing to write home about – perhaps the Joining took tastebuds too, or perhaps the defenders of Adamant had simply not bothered – but Anders downed three quarters of his glass in a long swallow.

"Maker, Anders," Dorian remarked, "Try tasting it. The night is young."

"Believe me, we're not missing anything if we don't. And tonight I'm not interested in the taste – just the effect."

Dorian raised his well-groomed eyebrows. "Fair enough," he said, and swallowed his own drink in one.

The wine completed its blood seduction. During their first time, at Andoral's Reach, Dorian had taken the lead. Anders had been vulnerable and uncertain after the ruins of his relationship with Lambert and the death of Justice – how could he take the lead when he wasn't even sure who 'he' was? But now...Anders wasn't sure what had changed, only that his experiences in the Fade had left him hungry for something else.

He yanked Dorian's trousers down and Dorian put his elbows on the bunk and arched his back. Anders brought his hands down to Dorian's backside and readied him with the skill and intimacy of a man who knew every inch of his partner's body. He let his mana bleed into his lover...having long ago discovered his talent as a healer could make things very good for the other person. He needed Dorian - wanted him, bullishly, for the accumulation of masculine tokens in him – but they were still friends, oppos, and he would give of his own power to make sure Dorian enjoyed this as an equal.

Dorian tasted of almond and cinnamon and turmeric; below, there were warmer, elusive scents of leather and salt and wild parsley. Their mana pulsed between them like the Eighth Note Groove, in perfect authentic cadence. Lambert's Litany was modal – all melody and harmony – but Dorian's tonal music carried a unity and dimensionality Lambert could not match. Neither could Anders; he only sensed it would distantly – oh, very distantly – be related to Dorian's mastery of time magic. For just an instant, Anders pitied Lambert. Lambert and Fenris couldn't possibly know this potent blend of body, mind and mana. It would be like making love with one sense removed.

They exchanged not a word. Instead the room was filled with the muffled argument of breath – indrawn in hisses; expelled in gasps – and the small sounds of unspoken combat. Anders could see beyond it – to where he loved Dorian in an ancient, deep, timeless way – but he knew that to sidestep this passion would be a betrayal; although a betrayal of whom he did not know.

If Dorian was with him in combat he still didn't bring to sex what Anders brought to it. What Anders brought to it was…what? He often thought of Justice, of the spirits waiting for him in the Fade, of the rage demons that were really rage against injustice. He remembered Lambert, and how he had tried (he was ashamed of this now) to mold him into a revolutionary for mage rights. He had partially succeeded…Lambert was a revolutionary now…the fact he dreamed of ending Tevinter slavery rather than ending Circles was a mere detail. Justice was justice.

But Dorian would not be molded by Anders. He was his own man, an equal…and unlike a wife who would have mage children – his children – to ensure they would always be on the same side, Dorian was an Altus. And, one day – for all his teenage rebellion – he would be a Magister.

Anders hoped the Lucerni faction and the Free Mages would be allies, but the fact remained they were allies but not a unit. Different cultures, different priorities. Anders would not betray his mages to make them merely an arm of House Pavus. How would that be different to accepting Cousland's offer?

However much he and Dorian loved each other – had fought together at Andoral's Reach and Haven – they were in part invisible to each other. Somewhere distant was the giant, delicate, enduring edifice of their shared history. Anders was aware of it, revealed for a moment in a certain shift of light. But he knew they weren't everything to each other; there were spaces like unwalked streets.

Anders' goal was the freedom of Southern mages and the healing of the sick. Dorian's goal was to inherit the Pavus title on his own terms. And, however much Anders liked to think of Dorian as a fair man who would see the injustice of slavery, the fact remained he had defended slavery...it was pure luck Anders had managed to field that one so Dorian hadn't ended up in a blazing row with the Inquisitor.

The Lucerni faction were liberals who believed in being true to their hearts – Maevaris Tilani lived as the woman the Maker had intended her to be and had married Thorold Tethras for love...not pretended to be a man and married a woman of impeccable bloodline. Dorian hoped to inherit the Pavus title and live openly with his future husband. But neither cared about emancipation...

…"Everyone owns slaves in Tevinter, darling"...

Believing he owed this to Fenris, Anders said, "Dorian...when Lambert calls the War Council tomorrow he will offer to ally with Tevinter: on condition they oppose the Venatori, destroy Red Lyrium...and vote for emancipation. Lambert will argue slavery is an abomination...all passion and idealism...but think about it a moment. With blackpowder and white phosphorous and chlorine gas the only nations that survive will be the ones that embrace industrialization. Such a nation will need skilled workers, not slaves. Slavery will make no economic sense. You won't need slaves for Blood Magic because the Litany will see the end of that. Seeker training is now a defense against conventional magic. You don't have to agree with Lambert morally but if you play your cards right you can become a power in his new world – House Pavus a leader in a Tevinter allied with the Inquisition that can take on the Qunari. Many Senators will resent being told slavery is wrong by a hawkish outsider...but they'll hate being caught between Kal Sharok and Nevarra and Qunander even more. Lambert won't compromise on slavery...he'll never betray the Free Mages to the Qunari but he won't take the other cards off the table. As a free-thinking Altus you can be Lambert's handsomer and more eloquent counterpart in the Senate."

Interrupting Anders' carefully thought-out speech, Dorian grinned wickedly. "No. Tonight we speak only of the flesh. Tomorrow the Inquisition and the Free Mages can have you back but tonight you are mine."

A pulse in Dorian's neck throbbed against Anders' jaw. He bit him gently, teasing the skin between his teeth.

Anders could feel the rage demons he had summoned in the Fade crying and struggling to get out. Whimpering for the pleasure of being petted. Poor rage demons. What gave them less right than Justice? There were injustices against whom rage was the only just response. But he tamped down his memories and the anger they woke. His own anger frightened him…the fear he might lose control and make Dorian (who was more vulnerable than he liked to project) pay the price.

But Dorian seemed to know Anders had descended to a place beneath words. He met him where he was. Emotionally sand-blasted, riven, they were nonetheless equals. They knew love was possible…or would be soon, at any rate.

Anders penetrated Dorian and felt his body's reflex retreat, all the muscles pulling away from him. But Dorian rose up against him like a snake, fearless and willing to embrace whatever was demanding this of them. He backed into Anders and impaled himself on him like a burning spear. Anders reached round and ensured Dorian came before he did.

Sex had inflicted a fierce sobriety.

A voice inside Anders said, without emotion: stay with him forever, and he knew it was right. Still, the fact they could never be on the same team (because they had the same enemies but different priorities) and their political disagreements remained a stubborn nugget of dissatisfaction. Anders knew the urge to change his lovers was a flaw in himself: he had become frustrated with Karl for not being revolutionary enough – to Karl rebellion had been about tweaking the noses of Templars, not about escape – and he had tried to guilt Lambert into becoming a member of the Kirkwall mage resistance – a thirty-two-year-old healer manipulating an eighteen-year-old prostitute. Anders was ashamed of that now – like many revolutionaries, he had believed manipulation could be excused by 'it was for Lambert's own good' but hadn't the Templars believed that? Hadn't Dorian's father?

Never again.

He knew Dorian would never look away. He would stare straight into Anders' eyes, sensing the attempts at manipulation and radiant with cynicism. He would defend Anders from any outside threat but let him get away with nothing. Anders needed that.

Anders stepped out of his remaining clothes, left them in a heap on the floor. He finished the wine – his body leaden with alcohol but his mind sober as a judge. Looking back, he saw Dorian on his knees in the dark, his head leaning against the wall.

Very quietly, knowing he wouldn't be able to convince himself later he didn't mean it, Anders whispered a word he had come across in an old Tevene text.

He said, in rehearsal, "Amatus."

---

Like any commander, Rylock would not stop until she had seen and spoken to each Templar personally.

Her own squire, Drem, had been quiet at first – partly because of the pain of the arrow-wound in his shoulder, partly the fear he would never again wield a sword with his usual dexterity, and partly shyness with his commander. She had never been good at bantering with soldiers – or socializing with anyone – but she had learned much from watching General Loghain Mac Tir visiting the wounded after the battle of Drakon River.

She recalled Drem's deeds to him and was gratified to see life come back into the young, drawn face. As if talking to one of his own comrades, he bragged a little, and essayed a joke. The joke was not the sort of thing that nobles – or Anders – would have approved of, but it was common among Templars and she smiled.

Drem's brothers were keeping him company. Nyle – the young man who was proving a capable substitute for Josephine – his writing speed incredible and his use of language habile. And Seeker Cale, who had not stayed to defend the mages at Andoral's Reach but neither joined Lambert van Reeves. He was loyal to Divine Victoria. As Rylock was – to all intents and purposes – loyal to King Cousland first – they might not always be on exactly the same side, but right now they were allies, fighting the good fight. She left the three brothers and went to the Chantry to pray for their recovery – for the well-being of all her men.

Adamant hardly had a functioning Chantry. The place was unlocked and half-open and had a single illuminated isosceles. She noted every detail: the canted gravestones (all Grey Wardens – none of the recruits who had died in the Joining) the brittle glass, the dark, down-reaching flanks.

And now the Inquisition was talking about making war on Weisshaupt, and Loghain was setting up a working counter-Weisshaupt, based at Montsimmard – in much the same way King Cousland was setting up a working counter-Chantry in Ferelden. Circumstances had forced her – reluctantly – to agree to serve as Ferelden's Knight Vigilant as the lesser of two evils. Divine Victoria had ended the Circle system and disbanded the Templars. But King Cousland saw a need for soldiers who could take on Tevinter Magisters. Rylock believed – almost laughing out loud at herself, standing among the buried dead – that history was watching her. Not just watching but confirming the raised stakes.

Shivering, she stared at the Chantry's black windows. If you do this and you're wrong, the night whispered, you'll be anathema.

In the halflight the statue of Andraste breathed; arms out, wrists like broken stems. A giant shadow stretched behind her, like the wings of an Archdemon. Rylock stared up into the segment of darkness. There was no sense the Maker was aware of her.

"Are you alright, my dear?"

Rylock recognized Vivienne's soft, cultured voice without needing to turn. They had always had a strange telepathy between them. First Enchanter Vivienne was emerging from a doorway hidden in shadow. Her white robes shone like silverite armour and her headdress was of silver horns reminiscent of a Viddasala.

Rylock met her blazing black eyes. Vivienne's skin was too dark to redden properly, but the stretched skin between her cornrows was faintly flushed. As a Circle mage of Rivaini heritage trying to fit within Orlais, Vivienne had had no choice but to shave her head like a Tranquil...Orlesian hairdressers were not skilled at caring for hair belonging to women outside their own heritage. Rylock remembered the smirks, whispers, gossip among the girls she had been raised with, who had not been kind to anyone who did not fit the norm. Rylock's features had merely marked her as butch; Vivienne's as different.

…"I do hope Bastien turns out the lights before he touches her. But, then, she must disappear in the dark" ...

Ever since Vivienne had joined the Inquisition she had been experimenting with fashion. Oh, she still wore the robes that marked her as a member of Orlesian nobility – carried the staff that marked her as First Enchanter – but the headdress: that was a sign of authority among the Qun that had converted much of Rivain. Vivienne was not a follower of the Qun, but she enjoyed teaching people like Iron Bull to treat her with respect.

And, she had found a Rivaini hairdresser who was skilled at caring for the hair of black women. Almost shyly, like someone discovering the teenage years she had never gotten to experience, she had grown her hair out and was experimenting with different styles. Her features – strong and defined – seemed to sharpen in the shadows. She had been visiting the three young men who were her sons, although they did not know her. Rylock wondered if Vivienne blamed her, as an agent of the organization that had taken them as babies.

…"'I was only following orders' is not a defense" ...

Vivienne said, "I know that in order to defend the South from magisters like Erimond you had to create Circles to hold people like me. I know that mages fare no better in Tevinter unless they are Altuses. Worse...at least a Templar has to gain permission to make an apprentice Tranquil, and the law says it cannot be done after the Harrowing. There are corrupt Circles, of course – like Kirkwall and Kinloch Hold – but these are the exception, not the rule. If Seeker Cassandra had been better at her job these practices would have been exposed. In Tevinter, any mage indentured to a magister may have her blood drained when convenient: "mage blood is most efficacious at summoning allies" so they say. The Chantry took my sons but I could not have raised them in any case – as noble bastards, they would have been housed far away to avoid embarrassing Bastien's wife. At the White Spire I was taught apprentices like me sleep peacefully in our beds only because there are Templars like you willing to do violence on our behalf. I have never forgotten that."

Rylock was glad Vivienne did not hate her – that, unlike the Libertarian faction, she saw Templars and the Circle system as necessary. That she did not believe Rylock had devoted her whole life to nothing. Rylock hoped the discovery any singer could defend themselves from Blood Magic by casting the Litany – that blackpowder could lead to a more equal balance of power – that everyone had access to Seeker training, to defend against conventional spells...would render the Circle system unnecessary.

…"The best Templars are those that make themselves unnecessary" ...

Even after Solas' theft of the Sacred Ashes, Tranquility could still be cured by Seeker training – by the touch of a spirit.

And Keeper Marethari's ritual could send anyone – even non-mages – into the Fade to save apprentices from possession.

No, there was no longer a need for Circles or Harrowings and Rylock was glad.

But, if the Inquisitor was serious about taking on Tevinter, then it would be the Knight Vigilant (authorized by King Cousland, who had never forgiven them for stealing Ferelden citizens) who took them on, not Divine Victoria. It would be her, and Rylock was ready to defend those who could not defend themselves.

She honoured Vivienne's confidence with a confidence of her own.

"The Maker will know I enjoyed that last battle – the thought of Erimond appearing before Him when he expected to be facing Corypheus gives me a smug pleasure."

"You killed him quickly – and far less painfully than he deserved. I think the Maker will forgive you."

"I worry about Keili."

"She'll be relieved he's no longer in the world – able to mess up her life. You worry too much."

"You always understand. I always wonder why."

Vivienne shrugged. "The Envy demon at the Winter Palace told me I was too old to embrace a new world – you are facing the end of your days as a Templar. Do you think the Maker will find use for two old women like us?"

"Theology?"

"Why not? His shoulders are broader than mine."

"That's not religious depth – that's dodging responsibility. I begin to see how you survived the Great Game."

"A truly vicious characterization. You honour me."

The teasing kept the horrors of the Fade at bay; the demons that encircled Rylock – Nightmare's minions, feeding on the scraps of fear it had left behind. She remembered fighting the Aspect and its minions...she remembered, as if reliving them, the pain of her wounds, the hunger and thirst and exhaustion, the fear she would exist in this unlife forever – a stranger in the eyes of the Maker – the grim and bitter anger she had summoned against the fear. She remembered how the poisonous emerald light of the Fade had turned her blood to black.

Shadows moved in her mind. Some were darker, some moved away from her, and others menaced her. The shadows seemed to harden, thickening into reality. The tendrils of Erimond's Blood Control reached inside her - her own hands tortured and murdered the friend she would have died for.

Some fool had once said time heals all wounds, but the Fade was timeless; she had lost Guy tonight. Guy – her first friend, the boy who had stood up for her when the other trainees had laughed at a boyish, awkward teenage girl...

…"No wonder you're training to be a Templar. You'd freeze the cock off any man who tried to touch you" ...

It had been Guy's lessons that had transformed her tall, muscled body into a thing of pride and joy – she remembered sweaty, triumphant spars – his joy when she finally beat him.

…"Now I know why they call you Broomstick. You hit hard and you sweep clean" ...

But Erimond had inverted it all; made Guy's own training the instrument of his defeat. How often she had wished she had not learned his lessons so well; that Guy could have beaten the Blood Puppet and ended her instead.

She grieved for Boann, her sister-by-choice, who had died a death beyond any imaginable meaning. And for Rillian: her closest friend for thirteen years. And the magnificent young knight, Ser Otto, who might have been Guy's little brother. And Alistair, the young lad she had trained: an awkward puppy of a recruit, always tripping over his own feet, who had the gift of being able to laugh at his own mishaps.

Had she been back at Denerim, or Kinloch Hold, she would have been debriefed – "just the facts, please" - but here Vivienne was looking beyond the facts and seeing her, the person.

"I've seen this look when men's wounds get cold. This needs the same remedy. You need a drink – I've got something better than the rotgut they serve here. Come: we can discuss the Fade in my quarters, not this ruin of a Chantry."

That, Rylock thought, was a thing easier said than done. Rylock's own hard bunk was shared with Knight Captain Evangeline, and First Enchanters were expected to share with each other. Only...First Enchanter Sweeney was sharing with his wife, and the only mage equivalent in rank to Vivienne was the leader of the Free Mages. Anders had flatly refused to share quarters with the leader of the Loyalist faction and Vivienne had acerbically told him the feeling was mutual. She had talked Lambert into providing her with private quarters, claiming a Knight Enchanter needed privacy to train.

Vivienne touched her arm – just that small physical contact – bringing her back to the land of the living. Rylock followed.

Vivienne's tiny chamber was cramped and covered with the dust of ages. The only source of light was the arrow-slit that looked onto a rain-washed false dawn. There were no bookshelves, no armchairs. She had pulled two rickety wooden stools beside a table that was an upturned crate. The bunk was hard and covered only by a thin sheet of material so coarse the army called it 'sackcloth'.

Still, Vivienne endured – her vanity retaliated. She had dusted one shelf and repurposed it to hold a memento of Celene's palace – of her time as Court Enchanter. In a small, thin-stemmed glass grew a flawless blue rose, given eternal life by magic. It would never change, never fade, never die. And there was an amphora containing blue lyrium that Rylock heard as a faint singing down the channels of her spine. A bottle of Orlesian red – one of the lighter reds that grew in the valley of the Ghislain estate. And two glasses with long, elegant stems and cups that glimmered like stained glass windows, in a mixture of rubies and emeralds.

Vivienne poured them both glasses of wine and Rylock downed hers in one. She had never had a particularly strong head for alcohol – probably because she had rarely indulged what she considered a sin of the flesh – but right then sins of the flesh were the least of her concerns. She was just glad she had flesh: wrists, throat, eyelids, thighs, in a delicious symphony. Andrasteanism had taught her to disdain it, and since Erimond's rape it had never seemed to belong to her.

Dignity, sanctity, sanity: Blood Control could claim those at any time. The person she was lay in how she treated others – lay between her and the Maker – no-one but she could change it. This realization had at once given her strength and made her alien to her own flesh. It was a tool, like The Keening Blade. She hadn't wanted to raise the stakes by taking it back.

It had been the same with the mind that had been violated. All the memories of her time before Erimond had still been there, inside her, but she couldn't touch them. She hadn't felt she had the right to them anymore. But the Nightmare had returned them. She was, now, all the people she had ever been.

She watched Vivienne, drinking slowly, all the graces of the Orlesian court in the way she held her glass.

Vivienne smiled at her.

"The art is to eat and drink as though you have never been hungry in your life. As a girl in Rivain I was often hungry – mother embraced the Qun because they promised equality. Mother would have sold me – as Admiral Isabella's mother sold her – but fortunately my magic manifested early and the Templars found me before the Qunari. I came to the White Spire and have never looked back."

Vivienne made them tea, using magic to boil the water. This Rivaini blend mixed cinnamon, ginger and cloves, and was said to have healing properties. Certainly it was warm and fragrant. The Fade seemed to vanish like a nightmare upon waking.

"My dear...the seven of you are the first since the Magisters Sidereal to walk bodily in the Fade. If you can bear to talk about it...was it like my Harrowing?"

Rylock found she couldn't tell Vivienne about Guy - Vivienne hadn't known him and it would have been a betrayal. Nor had she known Ser Otto or – really – Rillian and Alistair.

"I felt the exact dimensions of my own shame. And I felt this space around it, going on forever. I gave birth to Keili in Aeonar and the demon was right: I am no mother. In twenty-five years I never tried to find her. And even when I knew...I placed a demon inside her and stood ready to kill her should she fail her Harrowing."

"That doesn't make you a monster, my dear – or, if it does, then I am a monster too. I never tried to find my sons. Oh...I could have persuaded Bastien in a weak moment. Men really are simple creatures. A Game-player has ways. I told myself they were better off without me but the real reason was my life was comfortable and I did not want to risk offending Bastien's wife and being sent back to the Circle. If she had felt particularly vindictive, she could have had me accused of Blood Magic. I chose myself over my sons."

It was not the same. For Rylock, the penalty would only have been dismissal from the Order and lyrium withdrawal. Ser Otto and Cullen had gone through that. They hadn't known they would survive – just as Fenris hadn't known he could escape Danarius. They had chosen it anyway, because it was right.

"As for the Harrowing: I survived it, Keili did, that's how we all lived. If it is no longer necessary that is a good thing, but no mortal can change the past. You were taking the only path given to you at the time."

Rylock saw the little Rivaini girl as if looking through Vivienne's eyes. They lived a handful of each other's moments, or thought they did. Vivienne had had the soft toys – the princesses and carriages – the Seer aspirations, the black antelope fixations. The national animal of Rivain could regrow its horns at will and was a symbol of renewal.

In the White Spire these had flared and mutated: a smart mouth, a little material greed, finding the balance between sophistication and intellectualism: a bookish student who never wore less than her best. Vivienne was sufficiently pretty that the choice of faction had been a sulkily performed chore that took second place to the real business – finding and seducing a good man to take her out of that stone prison. She had declared for the Loyalists as an assurance she was a 'safe' mage who could be trusted to live at Bastien's estate. She had charmed Bastien's wife – better the mistress the Duchess knew about and had absolute power over – than one she didn't.

All this was still there, behind the dark arch of her back. Unlike Rylock, who had jettisoned painful memories until the Fade confronted her, Vivienne had had the bloody-mindedness to keep who she used to be and who she was now. The care for the people of Haven – the fact she had risked herself to defend people she didn't even know – her past could not extinguish.

The youngest to pass a Harrowing.

The Harrowing had first raped Vivienne then made her larger – bestowing on her the powers of a Knight Enchanter – the laser sword a mage warrior could wield at will – in addition to her affinity for ice magic.

"The Spirit of Valour made me a Knight Enchanter and I didn't know why at the time," Vivienne confided, "I was Bastien's mistress – I bore him three children – but so do peasant women. Why did the spirit make me a fighter? Now – hearing the Inquisitor's plan to take on Tevinter – I begin to see."

At Rylock's shocked expression she chuckled.

"Come now, do you expect me to knit socks for the rest of my life?" In a tone wry with self-mockery, she added, "I call myself 'the leader of the last loyal mages of Thedas' but that is a meaningless title. Divine Victoria has dissolved the Circle system and the Templar Order everywhere but Ferelden. I can do as I please and I choose to fight with the Inquisition. Why should Lambert's only mage allies be Libertarians?"

Rylock snorted. "Anders will hate that."

"All the more reason to do it, my dear."

Seeing Rylock's shocked expression Vivienne fell back on a Rivaini saying she had heard in childhood. "A closed mouth catches no flies."

Rylock grinned. Once more, Vivienne's unique brand of theology had gained her the upper hand.

"Then we'll fight together, as before."

Vivienne rose gracefully and stripped without modesty. Rylock stared, imprisoning the naked beauty of her in her mind forever. Viviene drank the amphora of lyrium and Rylock felt the music...it was sharp and beautiful, like a sword going through her, like the beginning of her life or her death. Her own veins were arid, starved of lyrium. This felt like the glimmer of water in a desert.

Vivienne used the mana to create an aura of shimmering raindrops that caressed her skin in iridescent bubbles, then winked out before they hit the ground, vanishing like dreams upon waking. Rylock remembered the Waters of the Fade; those emerald teardrops that glimmered like lights in the shadow. She chuckled. It was like Vivienne to be vain enough to care about the absence of shower facilities and resourceful enough to use magic to do something about it.

Vivienne spritzed her cornrows with the magical rain, then put the metal tip of a comb at the end of each braid and slid it down. As she moved up the plaits stitch by stitch, her inky hair loosened until she was ready to moisturize it with an oil Rylock did not recognize. It occurred to Rylock that, until this moment, she would have assumed any unguent belonging to a mage was an arcane alchemical concoction. She laughed at herself. It occurred to her if she had ever grown her own hair beyond its short military cut she might have had a better idea of the difference between a woman's haircare lotion and the white phosphorous created by someone like Enchanter Adan.

Vivienne met her eyes and smirked, aware of what she was thinking. But there was no mockery in it. She said only, "My dear...I really must introduce you to a spa in Val Royeaux...they have discovered that cheese can do wonders for the complexion."

Rylock thought it sounded like the seventh circle of the Void but decided never to say so. Besides, it couldn't possibly be worse than some of the cheeses Alistair had cooked.

At the thought of the young man – her former squire – she knew a fresh stab of grief. Alistair had been so young, so determined, so idealistic...surely the Maker would not invert all that strength and life? And Rillian...who had had every right to be bitter at a world that had treated her as a second-class citizen but been willing to give up her very soul to save it. What of Rillian? Surely the Maker would protect them in the Black City? Surely Ser Otto and Mother Boann would marry in His sight, all the ugliness that had happened on earth transmuted to an unimportant prologue? Their real story was just beginning. Rylock believed that as deeply as she believed anything.

Mother Leanna had always told her suffering was the Maker's test – a thing she deserved for being born in sin to two mage parents – never to be wished away; but Rylock prayed for her friends regardless.

Vivienne's dark eyes seemed full, as though they might spill over. Rylock had the sense she was being drawn into them. She caught her breath at the luminous darkness of her, the mercurial grace. A scar that could only have come from defeating demons and the subtle striations that marked a woman who has borne three children (which, considering how Rylock had sworn 'never again' at her first, were no less marks of courage).

At the same time, she was uncomfortably aware she herself would not be a particularly pleasant companion. She had ridden hard all day, fought demons and spiders and horrors in the Fade, their black blood drenching her like ichor.

Then she noticed something odd. She wasn't dirty at all. It was as if walking bodily in the Fade had cleansed something in her...getting the soul ready for death, the Andrastean in her said.

But this did not feel like death. It felt more like life. All at once Rylock was grateful for the swordplay and the hard training and the riding...glad the instrument had been tuned up to concert pitch before she had to surrender it.

But she sensed Vivienne's mana like water made into light – like a silver river about to burst its banks

"It's wrong for Templars to sleep with mages. Oh...I don't believe it to be a sin in the Andrastean sense. But the fact remains I hold power over you. I'd never really know if you wanted this or were unable to tell me 'no'."

Vivienne laughed at her. It was a surprisingly joyful laugh, without a trace of mockery.

"Did you not pay attention to how the world has changed? King Cousland has named you Knight Vigilant of Ferelden. His aim is for you to lead Templars against Tevinter so he gets the glory without risking his own men. Even if he did give you authority over mages, these would only be the Ferelden Circle. I am Orlesian, the Divine has dissolved Circles and granted Templars no powers over Orlesian mages. The Inquisitor has named mages and Templars equal allies, with neither side holding power over the other, and neither side beholden to him. You have no power over me, and I need nothing from you. Nothing...except yourself."

Rylock removed breastplate, pauldrons, gauntlets, sabatons and long hauberk, and piled them neatly, like inert silver sentinels. Then she stripped in the manner of a soldier – no frills – and was shyly amazed to see Vivienne's eyes darken with desire.

Me?

If this was a Varric novel here was the time Rylock would have confided her losses and the horrors of the Fade and Vivienne would have comforted her; sex excused by the fact Rylock was only human and needed comfort. Or perhaps excused by alcohol. In reality, neither had drunk enough to be less than fully aware.

The deep reflex was postponement. To speak of the Fade would be to speak of death. They had this one opportunity to come together as if the rest of the world didn't exist. Their lovemaking was freely chosen; a thing of slow, hyperconscious deliberateness.

After Rylock had pulled Ser Otto from the fire, her burned hands had been curiously void of feeling – in places puckered, in places satin – but after she had walked naked through fire (she had choked on her own terror, but forced herself to do it) to gain a pinch of the Ashes to cure Thomas Amell of Tranquility, the blessed flames had healed her hands, though she still carried her other scars.

It meant she could feel Vivienne's flesh: the softness, hollow and swell, skin like black fire and the lithe muscles of a warrior mage. Rylock knew Vivienne could summon a sword of rime with but a thought but trusted her implicitly. Asleep or awake, no demon was going to get Vivienne...she was the strongest person Rylock knew.

Vivienne's hair framed her face like an atramentous waterfall; her bone structure was drawn into lines so uncompromising they almost threatened to overwhelm her mere beauty.

The Maker was with Rylock. The Maker knew what was going on. He prowled the flesh Rylock had dedicated to Him – domine non sum dignus – rushing up repeatedly only to effervesce into nothing at the surface of the skin. If He was getting nothing else out of this it was her admission sex was the imperfect forerunner of the Golden City. The Maker knew how good it was going to be and would not, even in abeyance, suffer her not sharing in the knowledge.

Desire rose between the two women, like a thickening or clouding of blood. The demon Vivienne had defeated was a raw perfume, ghost-traces in the scent of her skin and the hot flower of her breath.

Rylock's own wailing dead – apostates, maleficarum, Aneirin (Nightmare had told her he had become an abomination but loss of self was just another word for death) – fixed her with accusation. Meredith – their high priestess – looked on, judgmental. Fixed her with...

"Don't stop."

Rylock and Vivienne found ways. Kissing, slowly, was one. The beauty spot on Vivienne's lip was one of a dozen or so clustered around her body; Rylock's new constellations. There was no performance, no pornography, just a complete conversion to the religion of each other.

Vivienne lay on her back. All the graces of the Game were there in her parted thighs' sly confidence. She knew the measure of her riches. Rylock yearned to give pleasure and Vivienne was not shy about showing her what she liked. Lovemaking let clairvoyance pass between them.

Rylock saw Vivienne playing a grand piano at the Ghislain estate, a glowing sky over a dark field in the distance. She guessed Vivienne was seeing her sitting on a tree trunk patterned by leaf-branches and stinging over one of Mother Leanna's floggings. There was the Winter Palace – light bouncing off too much glass – there was Rillian fishing in the Korcari Wilds by lobbing a grenade into the water and bickering with Loghain, who had disapproved. Rylock saw Vivienne's feet poking out of glittering bath foam, toenails like a little family of rubies.

Coming, Vivienne gripped Rylock's muscled shoulders and stared at her. Vivienne's dark eyes held the cold omniscience; her sex the hot. Her open mouth moved slightly in affirmation.

Minutes or hours later they became themselves again...two separate individuals who needed clumsy words to communicate.

"Allow me to return the favour, my dear."

Vivienne's supple, spell-casting fingers found points that created warmth...first reawakening the muscle-memories of Fade battles then melting them to drowsy relaxation. Vivienne traced sharp shoulder-blades and then ran hands lightly over old scars: Mother Leanna had been restricted to the strap but Rylock had been one of her favourite victims. It was not because she had been the child of two mages – it was because of her plain face, the dark eyes that let no-one in without resistance, and the fact she had decided – with stubborn force of will – never to enhance whatever positive features she did have. It had mystified her peers:

…"Go on. You'd look like a child of faith if you took trouble over ironing your Chantry tunic" ...

But Rylock had resisted. She was a child of faith. Let the Maker take the trouble to discover it. She wasn't going to advertise.

And she never, ever told Mother Leanna the kind of things she would have liked to hear. Instead it had been...

... "Mother Leanna: if magic is a sin then why did the Maker create mages?"

"The Maker created mages to test the faithful in the same way he created dragons to test dragon-hunters. Your weapon will not be a Dragonlance but a Sword of Mercy. In this way you will atone for your birth."

"I have heard mages can heal wounds. Healing is something Chantry clerics say is of His grace."

"The Forbidden Ones can grant mages a semblance of such but you must never trust the healing of the body at the expense of the soul. Sometimes the Maker intends the dying person to go straight to his side...when mages heal they are defying His plan"...

Mother Leanna had made Rylock bend down at one end of the school room and taken a run at each stroke. As the trained sufferer of countless thrashings, no sound had ever escaped her...which Mother Leanna had read as a challenge.

...Keili, too, and you left her there...

Alrik, too, later – after she had defended Rillian at the Landsmeet – but Alrik was restricted by the fact she was a Knight Commander. He had to reserve his sadism for mages.

...mages like Lambert, who you betrayed to him...

Sensing she had woken memories best avoided, Vivienne adroitly moved lower, across the base of her spine. Lightly brushed her buttocks and thighs, ran exploring hands across her small high breasts (Rylock had borne a child but never breastfed) and flat hard stomach. The skin Rylock wore like armour around her will was alive, awake; its surface was voices. Vivienne's fingers played around it like unknown musical notes. Rylock thought of the Litany – of Vivienne denaturing Red Lyrium with Light in the Ultraviolet C range and thought, "the Spirit of Valour chose well."

They were sitting cross-legged, so close they were almost one being. They kissed, and Rylock felt their mouths as a tropical nucleus in the morning's chill swirling rain that battered the arrow-slit, occasionally spitting sparks of water. Vivienne's lips were soft; her mouth tasted of the warmth of red wine and some strange, sweet herb. Now they were touching – sharing the alignment of bone, the undulation of muscle, the privacy of pulses – they recreated themselves for each other. The rippling aura of a mage's touch was like a promise of dreams in colour.

Vivienne's mouth moved lower, ran a trail of light kisses upon her inner thigh. Rylock's whole body seemed to melt and flow and pulse with sensations that were like delirium in their dreamlike intensity. When mouth and tongue moved between her legs Rylock startled herself with her own high, sobbing cry.

In another moment she was gone, dissolved into exaltation – the wild, strange sweetness of autumn. It was not a yearning for possession but an experience of intense desire...they were both in the autumn of their lives and their desire to fight the good fight came with a sense of incalculable importance.

A climax of total dissolution – as into the Golden City – then the humble return; the reassertion of fingers, scalp, tongue, knees, brain.

Vivienne ran her hand along the scar across Rylock's abdomen. Earlier, the time had been wrong for questions.

"They cut Keili out of me," Rylock explained, "My hips were too narrow. I refused and they did it anyway. I was foolish – I thought the Maker's will was that Keili and I both die, free in the Golden City. But I am glad we are both alive."

"I am glad too, my dear."

Unconsciously, Rylock began to caress Vivienne's own silvery striations, in understanding and acknowledgement. Empathy, apology, comfort…something.

Vivienne said, "You are doing a good job with Drem. He actually called you "the Maker's rottweiler" ...high praise for him. Nyle and Cale think you were a hero at Haven."

Rylock was so happy she surprised herself. She said, "You are everything I hoped Keili's trainer would be. Keili is an idealist, and you are showing her how and why to fight...and teaching her to believe in herself. Oh, she has always been the Maker's child – but people like Mother Leanna can say those words and teach the child to believe the exact opposite. You made Keili know her magic is the Maker's gift."

Vivienne smiled at her. "It's an honour. And... I know if the Inquisitor orders a full-scale attack on Tevinter our children will be fighting. But...I am going to make sure only you and I volunteer for Castellum Tenebris. It's you and me, now. That's all."

Rylock suddenly realized there would never be a time when putting her hands on Vivienne wouldn't palliate the certainty of death. The feel of Vivienne's waist on her palms was a deep geometry that took her into the realm of soul. She had never known sex could do this: cast the Divine fragment back into the whole then reel it out again; dazed, beautified.

Now they lay on the hard bunk like starfish, entwined. The air had a rinsed optimism. To be resisted, the pragmatist in Rylock warned, because already dawn bled rain and the future was galloping towards them.

The War Council awaited.