Chapter 4:Fate or Chance
Korcari Wilds; Flemeth's hut south of Ostagar
Flemeth sniffed the air. Winter was coming, and bringing with it the darkness of the Blight. Her daughter had disappeared over the northern horizon with the two remaining Grey Wardens just a few days ago. Morrigan was now far beyond Flemeth's reach, as were the two Wardens. It was up to them to end the growing stain of darkness upon Ferelden.
Flemeth taken flight to oversee the battle at Ostagar, and hadn't quite been prepared to rescue the two human Wardens. But they'd been hopelessly outnumbered. Wounded, weapons dragging, they fought on but it was clear they were losing. Flemeth didn't know what manner of emotion caused her to swoop down and scoop up man, woman, and dog and bring them back to the hut for healing. And as she sniffed at and felt the air currents shifting around her, she still wondered the question that plagued her for the better part of an age: was it fate or chance?
It was a question she asked often, and now wondered of herself yet again as she turned to the stilted hut that looked as if it were leaning into the bog behind it. It was built in the Chasind style, but though Flemeth shared the Chasind's lands, they gave her a wide berth. Most were afraid of her, which was wise; but most did not know why they feared her, which was unwise. Flemeth had never given them any reason to fear her. It was those damned legends. All that superstition.
"Eat their children, indeed," she muttered as she headed inside. Her home was small and it was rough but it was clean and neat, and just the sort of out of the way place she'd needed throughout the years. Now she was more grateful for the privacy than ever.
Flemeth put a kettle on and stoked the fire, then lifted the curtain between the main room and the bedroom. Just a few days ago the female Warden had lain here, recovering. Her broken back had taken a toll to mend, but she was young and resilient, thank that Maker they all seemed so fond of. Her injuries had been the more serious of the two, and Flemeth had thought that once she sent them all off she might have some peace.
Then she went to survey Ostagar.
The rout of the king's armies had been brutally complete. The darkspawn only scattered because they feared the dragon soaring overhead. Something about Morrigan's words had stuck with her. "Why save them?" she'd asked with customary disdain. "Certainly their king would have been more worthwhile. If anything he'd fetch a handsome ransom."
"Always thinking with your senses, girl," Flemeth had snapped back as her magic lingered in the female Warden's damaged spine. "If you don't know by now that things are not what they seem, then I have taught you nothing, and you may as well not be my daughter." And she'd sent Morrigan to gather elfroot, even though they already had plenty.
But Morrigan's words chanced to echo in her mind, and she descended into the valley. The smell of decay thickened the air into a porridge of death. The dead were all around and try as she might, Flemeth could not avoid stepping on a hand here, an arm there. Crushed and broken bodies lay by useless weapons. The ground was spongy with shed blood. The air was silent but for the moaning…
Moaning?
Flemeth listened more intently and moved carefully in the direction of the sound. The pallid sun glinted on armor, drawing her eyes… and yes, the man was alive. Barely. It was a true talent to transform into her dragon body and pluck him from the human wreckage without causing further damage to him.
So now he lay behind the curtain and his injuries would sap her even more than that girl's had. Perhaps she would send word to Viviane. Though not a mage, the girl had a talent for healing that bordered on the magical.
The kettle had been whistling for some time, which Flemeth noted just now. She took it off the heat and poured the water into a bucket, where it sent up ghosts of steam. She added a good deal of elfroot, and the air began to smell pleasantly of the herb. She took out clean rags and entered the healing room.
Out of his massive armor, he wasn't much to look at. His body was surprisingly lithe for a man who fought with a two-handed greatsword. His limp hair hung in tangles over his shoulders, and his chest rose and fell too quickly. Flemeth frowned. His breathing was too shallow; his skin was grayish and his lips were almost blue.
Flemeth spread her hands palms down over his body, not quite touching his marble-pale and cold flesh. She closed her eyes and felt the pain radiating out of him. She moved her hands. His limbs seemed intact, which was surprising. But his torso was a mess of crushed bone. That he still lived was nothing short of miraculous. She opened her eyes and looked into that stony reposed face and felt all that pain rolling off him in waves as dark as the taint. "Fate or chance?" she whispered.
She could never be sure. She laid a cloth over his sweating brow, then rinsed his blood-streaked limbs with the elfroot-infused water. As he grew warmer some color began to return to his skin, though his lips remained bluish. She paused to listen to his breathing. It was labored, as was his heart. Flemeth held her hands over him. She was tired, but if she did not use her magic there would be no hope for him. As it stood Flemeth was still amazed he was alive at all.
Her magic reached out like tendrils sprouted from her fingertips and took root in his body. She hummed a tune with no true melody as she worked, following the pathways of his body and feeling for where the pain was worst. His pelvis, ribs, and lower spine had been all but crushed. Flemeth drew on her reserves of strength and power and began to knit the bones back the best she could.
It was long work. The small splinters had found their ways into his lungs; blood had pooled in his abdomen. But when Flemeth at last looked up, her own limited human body feeling the shaking and straining of such intense healing, he was breathing much more easily and some of the blue tinge had left his lips. She bathed his open wounds in more elfroot water. She paused to try and detangle his light blond hair. "I told your father that that man would betray him each time worse than the one before. This… may be his final betrayal. But not all hope is lost. You'll see to that, I'm sure."
His answer was silence.
But Flemeth still smiled her slow, knowing smile. Fate or chance? Perhaps it wasn't an either/or sort of question. Perhaps it was a stroke of both. Chance had allowed her to find her patient still alive, even if just barely, on the ruined battlefield at Ostagar; and he would return to see to the fate of Ferelden.
She heard a timid knock on her door, and still smiling, bid the knocker to enter. Shy steps sounded on the creaky wooden floor. "Hello, Viviane."
"Hello… Flemeth." Viviane's hesitation made her voice shake, though when Flemeth turned to see her, the girl was doing her best to hold herself straight and proud. She was clearly nervous, but the determined set of her painted jaw earned Flemeth's approval. "I've come for more of your herbs. My patient woke." She craned her neck around to see over Flemeth's shoulder, into the small room behind the Witch of the Wilds. "How does yours fare?"
Flemeth turned quickly and drew the curtain over the doorway. "He'll fare well enough if he's given the time to rest, and fool girls don't come by to bother him," she said, but her tone was good-natured, and Viviane seemed unscathed by it. It was so unlike Morrigan. Morrigan didn't have the sense to fear her mother, and yet Flemeth's usual sharp comments drew hurt glares from her. But Viviane had a healthy caution around her, and managed to let Flemeth's sarcasm roll off her shoulders. If Morrigan was truly beyond Flemeth's reach now, perhaps Viviane would suffice as a surrogate daughter…
She dismissed her thoughts. They tended to ramble like the brooks that fed the swamps of the Korcari Wilds. Sometimes they ended up in interesting places; other times, they just served to feed the old madwoman image Flemeth was fond of.
"Your patient?" she asked Viviane, her words startling the younger girl.
Viviane squared her shoulders. "He regained consciousness and has no sign of the taint. He should recover, but his bones have broken very badly. He asked when he would walk again, and I had not the heart to tell him he should be wondering 'if' he'll walk again. And he spoke of his wife and child."
"He is lucid then, and the fever did not harm his mind," Flemeth said and Viviane nodded in response. It was her turn to stare over Viviane's shoulder, out the window, to the rolling, icy swamps beyond. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of elfroot and firewood and feeling the currents of magic and time coursing within her. "Tend to him closely," Flemeth said, eyes still closed. "He will be important."
Viviane stared at the curtain over Flemeth's shoulder now. The entire time she'd been there neither woman had looked the other in the eye. "I will. Can you… cast about for the future?"
Now Flemeth's yellow-amber eyes met Viviane's moonlight-pale ones. A ghost of a smile alit on her thin lips. "You tread dangerous ground girl," she said.
Viviane clenched her fists at her sides, and under her intricate face paint, she was flushing red. "I don't ask this for myself. The man has a family. I ask for him, and for their sakes."
Flemeth found Viviane's naïveté both refreshing and problematic. But she stood there, so proud, like Morrigan, but with conviction. Her own daughter was proud, but rode the tides of time and change like a gull, with no point or purpose. At least yet; ideally her voyage with the Wardens would prove purposeful. But Viviane was a hawk, focused on what she wanted and ready to grasp at it and hold onto it.
Flemeth sighed and closed her eyes while tapping into the currents of time and space and existence that flowed around everyone, rarely seen and even more rarely experienced. It was like stepping into a swiftly moving stream, swollen from spring rains and melted snows, rushing toward an endless ocean of uncertainty. If one were not careful, it could sweep one away into a fate worse than the Fade for all eternity.
Certain threads and currents reached out to tantalizingly caress her consciousness. Morrigan's darkness, twisting around the light of the two Grey Wardens; the deep purple of the barely living man just the next room over; and near his, wavering closer and closer, the man Viviane had saved. Flemeth reached toward the thread and focused.
When she opened her eyes at last Viviane was watching her with concern. "Are you unwell, Flemeth?"
"I have seen things that would make you weep all your days," Flemeth said, "and things that would make you laugh your life away. I have been at the ends of extremes. And it leaves one, while not unwell, not quite well enough." She forced a smile onto her thin lips. "As for your man, his family will not worry after him. I can assure you of that."
Viviane sighed and her shoulders slumped, as if a great weight had been removed from her. "That is welcome news. He will be glad of it." Flemeth handed her a pouch of herbs, but didn't quite let go, forcing Viviane nearer. "What is it?"
"His family will not worry after him because they are all dead." Flemeth watched Viviane's face drop, her light eyes misting over with tears. "Do not tell him yet," she warned. "The news will pain him beyond measure. He must live, but more importantly, must also have a will to keep living. Do you understand?"
Viviane nodded, the tendrils of light blonde hair sweeping across her painted cheeks as she did so. "What do I do when he recovers? When he wants to see his family? What do I tell him?"
This time Flemeth's smile was genuine. "When he recovers you bring him to me. He and my patient will be powerful allies."
Viviane's sadness seemed to lift slightly. "Why? Who is he?" She looked at the drawn curtain again, curious, but daring to pull it back and see the mangled body for herself.
"The king of Ferelden," Flemeth said. "He lives."
The clouds broke, sending rays of sun over the bogs and marshes of the Korcari Wilds. The light was pale and the light was weak. But it was there.
