Chapter 8
The dwarf bounced on the bed. Once, twice, thrice…all the while grinning at the pacing figure leaving faint smoke trails across the faded rug. The Templars had escorted them to more 'comfortable quarters' where it was made quite clear to them they would stay until such time as anyone could be bothered deciding what to do with them. In the meantime however, they were not to be trusted. Where the Grey Wardens had gone, Dagna had no idea, but she knew Senior Enchanter Diana and her cuddly spouse were not too far away, also 'guests of the Tower'. Dagna bounced again, kicking up her feet and chuckling. She remembered the beds at the Tower – in the Apprentices wing anyway – and they were nothing like this. These were serious mage beds, so thick she could only just feel the thick cord straps under her bottom. And the protesting creak as Dagna bounced away merrily was almost completely muffled.
Ooh, luxury.
Dwarven beds now. Huh, you could play Bounce the Nug off a dwarven bed all day and not even make a dent in it. And they were so cosy with their inbuilt mattress warmers that a person didn't know what to do with themselves getting up in the mornings. Sometimes you couldn't get out of it at all and that made things inconvenient, Surfacers had no idea.
As for furnishings…Who needed all those inconvenient drapes and thick rugs you could sink your toes in after a hard day wrangling brontos and hunting deepstalkers? Psht. A mage had a perfectly usable thousandth-hand trunk made out of good, solid wood the borers had hardly made a dent in and a rustic table propped up by disused, moth-loved paperbacks.
"I've come over all nostalgic, Aunty Lice!" Dagna chirped. "Aw! There's even a pile of dead cockroaches in a dusty corner over there!" She tittered, making little hamster-hands under her nose. "I wonder what's for supper later. If it's watered down gruel, over-boiled tripe and dead sprout mash, I think I shall cry of happiness."
The sarcasm finally appeared to penetrate the thick miasma of rage surrounding Alyce's underlying layer of anger. She stopped pacing and tossed the dwarf a look that scorched a trail of superheated air across the room. "Stop enjoying yourself and start thinking of a way to get the Fade out of here."
"Why?" Dagna chirruped. "Don't you like being held prisoner by paranoid Templars? This is fun!"
Alyce rolled her eyes. "It's an inconvenience, is what it is!" she snapped. "Accuse us of blowing a hole in the Fade will they? Since when did 'I've come to help' suddenly become 'You did it?'"
"The moment we stepped through the double doors at the entry to the Circle Tower?" Dagna suggested with another creaky bounce.
"Whose idea was this again?" Alyce demanded.
"Didn't we take a vote?"
Alyce ignored Dagna's response and pointed at the wall. Somewhere out there was a burning sky with things pouring out of the Fade and no one stopping it. "Why is no one doing anything about that? Instead of blaming us, huh?"
"Weeeell," Dagna sighed. "Perhaps they're too busy constructing a big enough cork to plug the hole, I don't know."
"That isn't helping."
"Uh huh…" Dagna stared pointedly at the Senior Enchanter's restless feet. A gesture which she knew would sail straight over Alyce's head, bumping all the way. She did it anyway. The universe demanded a token effort on her part and a casteless, Master Runecrafter and manipulator of the primal forces of raw lyrium did have their standards.
"So, how do you think Diana's going to convince the Knight Commander to let us go?"
Alyce spun around. "Oh, you're on first name terms with the Senior Enchanter already huh?"
"Just like you," Dagna pointed out.
"That's beside the point," Alyce huffed. "The point is. The point is…where the nug droppings is that small, boppity Warden anyway? And her grumpy Warden Commander? I don't see either of them locked up!"
Dagna pointed again. "Wall, Alyce." She raised her eyebrows. "They tend to be slightly opaque and hard to see through."
"Bah!"
"Look," Dagna told her reasonably. "If I'm being literal-minded, it's all your fault. Look on the bright side. Sooner or later there are going to be so many demons around all the Templars are going to be dead, the Tower will be destroyed and we can walk free."
"You see this face?" Alyce asked. "This is my laughing face."
"No, it's not," Dagna replied simply. "That's your I'm so angry I can't construct logical sentences face."
"I'm going to blow a hole through the wall!"
"We're hundreds of metres above ground, Alyce," Dagna reminded gently.
"What if I land on you?" Alyce suggested nastily.
"Oh, you do care, I'm touched."
"Dagna!"
The dwarf merely threw up her hands, stood up, walked to the door and after pressing her ear to the wood for several seconds, reached into her belt pocket and pulled out a roll of toughened vellum. She then crouched, sighted through the locked door's keyhole and extracted a thin, delicate rod of metal from her roll. A few seconds later there was a soft metallic clunk and Dagna cautiously turned the door handle. It swung inwards noiselessly. She stuck her head out then popped back into the room, grinning smugly at her voiceless companion.
"Surfacer's really can't make unpickable locks for love or money," Dagna grinned. "Now," she prompted the immobile pillar of mage staring blankly at her. "We should make a break for it, don't you think? While the Templars are too busy being heroic demon slayers?"
-oo-
Well, that had gone far better than he might have expected.
The small mage had wandered around Owain's store room restlessly, eventually perching herself on the ancient and priceless Tevinter magical amplifier; the one shaped uncharacteristically like a mabari (Tevinters not being as obsessed with large, boulder-shaped canines as Ferelden folk). She hadn't asked him directly about Them, her prodding edging warily around the actual topic, but she wasn't as opaque as she wanted to believe she was. She was good yes, but not as good as he. He did after all, have the advantage of having no emotional barriers to overcome and so his non-committal answers delivered in his best monotone had worn her down. At one point she had paused and given him a hard stare that – had he been the person he had been before the Rite of Tranquility – would have had him turning the colour of beetroot and wishing his mother had given him a note proving the dog really had eaten his homework and could he be excused from sport as well since his glue ear was acting up again.
With an eventual shrug, she had appeared to accept his claims of general ignorance. It hadn't been as if he'd had to lie about knowing little to nothing. He'd been ignoring Them in any case and so had nothing to say about it all. She'd left the storeroom quietly, peeking around the corner of the door to check the hall was clear before stepping outside. Owain could have told her not to worry. Few people wandered near his special storeroom. Even other Tranquil viewed 'his' room as sacrosanct and left him alone.
Nor had it fazed him at all that this mage so out of time and place with this one had been so familiar with his Tower and in particular, this storeroom.
Duster poised above the glass cabinet, he allowed himself a brief wonder what the Owain in her world was like. He shook his head and, retrieving a cloth from his pocket applied his efforts to a particularly persistent finger smudge on the glass, from time to time swishing the duster about his head as though swatting at an annoying, buzzing insect.
He sighed, waving the duster yet again.
The voices were almost tangible now, poking and prodding at his skull like tiny ice picks. Even the cursed hands had hidden themselves in the darkest corners of the storeroom, uncomfortable by the near audible humming of the voices. It was happening all day now and he still wasn't interested. Give up his peace for all that messy emotion? Not likely. They could keep their bloody emotion. Not even Today's Special Offer of magical cleaning products – with godlike proportions of lifetime guarantee (and a full set of steak knives thrown in) could tempt him.
No. His cleaning cloth and feather duster were adequate. Besides, some magical objects in his care were prone to waking up in the wee, sma' hours of the morning to take a refreshing bath in the Templars' facilities. He hadn't figured out why they came out so shiny. He suspected the sometimes larger than usual request of armour polish from the Knight Lieutenant might have something to do with it, but some things in the Tower were best left to their own devices in his opinion.
Especially when they made his job easier.
-oo-
Merran tip-toed down the corridor. When was the last time she'd wandered down the halls of the Ferelden Tower of Magi? Too long clearly, because she was pretty sure she was lost. In her griffon form she'd had no sense of direction in a place lacking trees and rocks; familiar landmarks to a creature with – let's face it – bird brains. Never mind the lingering hankering for a vole or two. Note to self: darkspawn are surprisingly unsatisfying meals. Eat one and you're hungry an hour or two later.
Should she have stayed in Owain's storeroom? It had been relatively comfortable there though noisy as all heck. The constant whispering in the background had given her a headache and the Owain in this universe was even more intractable, smug and stubborn as the one in hers. The one in hers however…
Back when she was an apprentice oh…how many aeons ago? Owain – her Owain – had sometimes let her sit quietly in his special storeroom until the screaming of darkspawn in her head had abated. Before she even knew what darkspawn were. Back then the gentle susurrus of magical items speaking quietly to each other had been a welcome change. Owain had seemed to understand and didn't mind if she sat unspeaking in a corner with her arms wrapped tightly around her head. He was just another Tranquil. Supplier of magical items and knight protector of correctly completed-in-triplicate paperwork.
This Owain had started to give her the heebie jeebies and that was saying something. Usually it was her that made everyone else uncomfortable so to have it happen to her was disconcerting.
It wasn't right.
He wasn't right.
Tranquil had always been like doughnuts to Merran. They looked the same on the outside. Baked golden brown and dusted generously with cinnamon and sugar a person couldn't tell the difference. It was only when you bit into them and realised one had raspberry jam while the other didn't that you realised they weren't the same after all. Not that she was ever in the habit of biting Tranquil. They didn't really like it when you did that.
This Owain.
This Owain had been…
Merran paused at a statue of the Prophet Andraste. One of the many abilities she'd gained from being in such close proximity to an old god; practically bosom buddies, long lost siblings, joined at the hip-screaming in your head, eating all your yoghurt out of your cooler box closeness, was an even stronger affinity with the Fade and its denizens. Merran had always had a love-abject terror relationship with demons (she loved them and their cute little horns, piercings and fireball party tricks, they preferred to simply run away at first sight) but the things trying constantly to close in on Owain hadn't even noticed her. That was unusual in itself. Tranquil didn't attract things from the Fade. Ever.
Even more unusually, Merran was pretty sure whoever – or whatever - had brought them all here was trying to influence Owain as well. Why, she had no idea. There was no getting anything out of him. He would, she supposed fall into whatever place intended for him, unless he chose to stay out of it altogether (which is what he appeared to be doing right now).
On the other hand, demons taking up residence across the length and breadth of Ferelden like a mass migration of pigeons? Surely even a Tranquil would find that difficult to ignore?
Scrubbing in frustration at her temple, Merran stepped out from behind the statue and nearly collided with someone coming the other way. Her eyes widened, she gasped and, "You!"
-oo-