They took the wagon. Mama seemed better now that they were out of the town than she had at home, but Anders knew she was still as sick as she had been before.
"What is it?" he asked her as they started on the North Road. "I've never felt anything like it before."
She put her hand on her breast, where Anders knew the sickness was coming from. "It's like a growth," she said. "I've seen it many times before. It can grow anywhere in the body - but it's worse if it grows in certain places, and once it grows in one place, it will try to find a way to grow somewhere else as well, even if you manage to get rid of the first one."
"You've healed it before?" he said.
"Only a few times," she said sadly. "It's very difficult, Anders. And the few times I've healed it - it's always come back. Somewhere different usually, but..."
He nodded, watching the road and the hindquarters of Dane, the gelding they'd bought to replace Magda. "What do I need to know?"
She explained what he needed to do. It would take a lot of power, he realised, more than he'd ever used before, even when he burnt Mathus. "Will you let me take Lyrium, Mama?" he asked.
She pressed her lips together in a hard line. It was a sore point with her - Lyrium. She rarely took the blue potions herself - only in extreme cases and in small doses. She said it made it easier for Templars to find them. The Chantry sold her lyrium dust to make into potions but she never made many - only as much to supply the odd mage traveler or warden who passed through Highever.
He knew, however, that there were lyrium potions in the wagon. She may not have liked it, but she was not so foolish as to travel without it, when they had no other protection from bandits and wild animals than her magic.
"Only if you absolutely need to, Anders," she said. "You have to be very careful with it, Anders. It... makes you feel funny unless you use the mana it gives you straight away. And if you take too much of it... you won't want to stop."
They traveled the rest of the afternoon to get to a small turn off that headed into the Bannorn, then camped. Anders wanted to try to heal her straight away, but Mama told him to wait a day. "The further we are away from Highever the better, Anders," she said.
The following day Anders spent a lot of the trip examining Mama while she drove, trying to learn as much as he could about the sickness embedded in her chest. It was like a sticky ball of mud, he thought, with smaller fingers reaching out into Mama's body, ready to make more of itself. The fingers were what worried him the most. He would have to get rid of them first, to make sure he didn't risk any of the sickness staying and starting to grow again.
"You said you've healed this before?" he said to her.
"The... sickness was much smaller in the people I healed, Anders," Mama said. He nodded grimly. He thought that might have been the case. This could take him more than just one night to heal, he thought. Possibly more than a week.
When they set up camp Anders paced around the fire, running through everything he would need to do. Mama cooked them a meal and watched him, her eyes unreadable in the dusk light. When they'd eaten they went into their tent. Mama would need to be asleep while he worked, or she would move around too much. She had taught him a sleep spell - something else he didn't know one could do with magic, and he kissed her forehead as he released it, filled with nervousness.
He gently let his healing sense sink into her and felt around the edges of the growth. Each finger had to be cut off and dissolved, individually. Some of them were very, very small and he knew that if he missed even one of them the sickness would grow again.
It was slow, and painstaking, and Anders didn't notice the flow of time until he was forced to stop and drink some of the lyrium his mother had given him. Half the night was gone, and he hadn't moved onto the main bulk of the sickness. He set his teeth, despite his growing exhaustion, and continued.
When he woke, the next morning, his head felt light and his stomach was growling with hunger. He'd fallen asleep after finishing the last of the fingers. He'd drunk two of the lyrium potions, but the dangerous tingling in his limbs after he'd finished the second and the press of exhaustion behind his eyes had forced him to stop a few hours before dawn.
Mama stirred next to him and he sat up quickly, trying to look like he'd had more sleep than he'd had, hastily pushing the empty lyrium vials out of her sight.
"Anders," she said, her dark eyes flickering open. He brushed her hair back from her forehead. She looked better than she had yesterday, but he didn't think it was because of his healing. He suspected she hadn't slept that long for many months. "You didn't get it all," she said then. He shook his head.
"But I will," he said. "We can stay camped for a few more days. I'll get it all, Mama, I promise."
She squeezed his hand but her eyes were still grim. "We'll stay for two more days," she said. "I don't want to risk any more than that."
Anders set his jaw and looked down. He didn't know if he could get it all in two more days, and he was worried. When he'd been working with it... it had felt malignant. It wanted to grow.
Blessed Andraste, he thought to himself. Help me do this.
He'd watched the wagon leave the city, just as he'd watched it leave so many times before. This time, though, it was just the woman and the boy. The woman had only come back that day - it was strange that they'd be leaving again so soon. So he followed, using the stealth he'd learned from the docks. They didn't see him.
He watched them set up camp. Saw the haggard look in the woman's face, knew that something more was going on than just a trip to gather herbs. When they moved on the following day he was behind them. But not too close. Never too close.
That night he could see the blue light coming from their tent and he knew, just as he'd always known, what they were. They would have to listen to him.
This time he would be able to prove it.
The following two days were the most tiring of Anders' life. He hid it as best he could from his mother, because he knew she wouldn't let him continue if she had any idea of how much it was draining him, but he still fell asleep at odd moments during the day and his body sang with the blue hum of lyrium and power.
Mama didn't say much when she was awake, just looked at him with sad eyes. He knew she didn't think he could do it. He knew she wanted to tell him to stop, but he wouldn't give up.
It always comes back, she had said. That was in the back of his head while he worked, but he didn't let it deter him. He was getting better at it, snapping off parts of the growth and destroying them with more confidence and less fatigue.
It was on the afternoon of the second day the Templars came.
They were in the tent. Mama was asleep and he was working on her and he would have been able to hear them coming if he hadn't been concentrating so hard...
The hands grabbed him and pulled him away from her. They were gauntleted but at the first touch he felt all of his power leached from him and his eyes snapped open as his connection with Mama was severed. Her back arched and she cried out.
"He's killing her!" a voice said. "Filthy little apostate. Attacking his own mother. We should have listened to what that kid said earlier..."
Anders screamed as he was dragged out of the tent, his feet scrabbling on the dirt floor as he tried desperately to get back to her. "She's sick! You have to help her!"
A hand cuffed his head hard enough to make it ring. "Shut up, you little bastard. She'll be fine now you're not leeching off her."
The brightness of the afternoon sun made him clench his eyes shut, but he didn't stop struggling. "Let me go! I'm helping her!"
He could hear other voices, calling to each other, telling someone to gather up their things. "We'll take the mother back to Highever," one voice said. "I'm sure her husband will be glad to see her still alive."
"No, you can't!" Anders cried, struggling more and more violently until the person holding him cuffed him even harder, sending him into blackness.
When he woke up he was slung across the back of a horse behind a man dressed in Templar armour. His hands were bound in front of him in shackles that sparkled with enchantment - they were draining his mana constantly. He struggled a little, but he was tightly bound to the saddle and there was no way he could wriggle free.
"Awake, are you?" a voice came from beside him. There was another Templar, also on a horse. "About time."
"Where's Mama?" he asked.
"She's gone back to her home," the Templar said.
At least they hadn't realised Mama was a mage as well.
He ached inside, though. He knew he hadn't got all of the growth. It would start to grow again without him there to stop it. Mama would get sicker. Then she would die.
He had to escape.
Irving stood in the doorway of the library, Wynne next to him. He'd been in Denerim when the apprentice was brought here, so this was the first time he'd seen the boy.
"Fourteen you say?" he said to the woman next to him. She was showing her age more, he thought regretfully. The grey hair was turning to white. There were so few of them, now, who had been young together.
"Fifteen actually. He's a magnificent healer. I sometimes think it's more than just natural talent.."
"You think someone else has taught him before you?"
She nodded, looking worried. "It would explain why he went so long without detection."
"Well, it's not unheard of," Irving said. "He wouldn't be the first to be trained to hide his talents. He might be the first to be trained to use them, however."
He studied the boy's face for a moment. He was leaning back in his chair, a sardonic smirk on his face as he studied the teacher. The class was full of students much younger than he and Irving could tell he was bored. The blond head turned, as though he sensed he was being watched, and Irving almost gasped as the hazel eyes fixed themselves on him. The boy had a look about him - it was so achingly familiar...
He couldn't place where he'd seen it before.
Anders raised an eyebrow at the two of them before sitting a little straighter in his chair and facing the front of the room again.
Irving motioned to Wynne that they should leave.
"What about his family?" he asked.
"From Highever," she said. "The mother... she died a few months after we took him in. The templars said he was attacking her when they found him. He insists he was trying to heal her."
Irving raised an eyebrow. "What was her name?"
"Joscelyn. Two other children - neither of them are showing any signs of the talent, though from what I understand Anders didn't have the same father."
Irving blinked. "Ah," he said. "Well, it's a shame he didn't have the chance to finish healing her - if that was what he was doing. Does he know about her death?"
Wynne nodded sadly. "The Templars told him. They don't like him much. He's already giving them lip, the poor dear. It's so hard when we get to them late like this."
Irving stroked his beard, thinking again of that hazel gaze. "Keep an eye on him for me Wynne? I don't want you to take him as an apprentice... we'll let one of the primal mages do that since his healing skills are already so good, but..."
His friend touched his arm and smiled, her blue eyes kind and gentle. "Yes, First Enchanter."
That evening, Irving studied his face in the mirror. There were more lines every day - his beard and hair had finally turned completely grey and his hazel eyes were sinking under his brows so they were permanently in shadow. Their colour was fading in any case.
The resemblance would never be noticed.