Chapter 5: Inception

The Fade

When he was younger, maybe fifteen or sixteen, Cailan had begged his father to let him attend the execution of a man suspected of selling secrets to the Orlesians. Maric had resisted for days until at long last, Cailan wore him down. "Being a king will steal your soul one bit at a time," he often told his son. This time when he sat him down in the study, their blue eyes meeting across the polished desk, he was more serious than ever.

"As king, you hold peoples' lives in your hands. If you are a bad king, they will follow you out of fear; if you are a good king, they will follow you out of love. You must never abuse your power and be a bad king, but you must never take advantage of their love for you; that is paramount to being a bad king." Cailan had nodded, eyes darting around the study, looking anywhere besides his father's serious face. He wondered what any of this had to do with wanting to see an execution for himself. "Cailan, look at me." He obeyed his father. "Sentencing someone to death, even if they are guilty, is not something to be taken lightly. Do you know why I attend the executions of the treasonous?"

"Because they betrayed Ferelden, and betrayed you," Cailan said with a shrug. "They deserve to die, and you should be the last person they see."

Maric's smile was almost sad. "I wish it were so simple. I go because I need to remind myself of the decision I made, and not to make any such future decisions lightly. The people follow me because I saved Ferelden. I can't take that for granted, nor can I go about executing people as I see fit. Then I'd be no better than Meghren was."

It always amazed Cailan how easily Maric could say that name. Meghren had ordered the execution of Queen Moira, Maric's mother. He'd had her head put on a pike outside this very palace. The thought of someone doing that to the grandmother Cailan had never known made him so angry he could hardly even think the name. And yet his father spoke it as easily as any other name. Any other name but Alistair's, that was.

Maric leaned back, making his fingers into a steeple and staring at Cailan over the apex. Cailan sat up straighter, tried to seem more adult.

"You must understand that it will be no small matter to watch a man die," Maric said at last, but after his serious lecture a moment before Cailan couldn't feel elation at getting his way. "And that one day you may hold many lives in your hand and watch many men die because of you."

Maric rarely spoke of his time in the rebellion, those turbulent days of Ferelden's past before Cailan was born. But Cailan had read the history in the books: the disasters at West Hill and White River, often overshadowed in favor of Maric and Loghain's scorching victory at the River Dane. And he had read the history etched in the lines on Teyrn Loghain's face, and seen it in his father's eyes when he thought his son wasn't looking. And he knew that while they were talking about the execution of this one traitor, every death Maric ordered reminded him of those disasters he'd led his men to, and each time it pulled away another piece of his soul.

But Maric was good as his word, and the next morning he and Loghain stood on either side of Cailan, surrounded by guards dressed in the bright golden Theirin livery, as the spy was led to the gallows. Cailan watched him curiously. He was an ordinary looking man: dark hair worn a bit long, light skin, in need of a shave. He looked afraid.

Cailan glanced up at Loghain, but the man was solid as a rock, his jaw clenched in anger. This man had been convicted of selling out to the hated Orlesians, after all. He glanced over at his father, who watched the doomed man with something akin to sadness on his face.

The executioner read the crime of espionage and high treason. The crowd booed around them, and as Cailan watched he had the curious sense of being outside of himself. Was he really here? Was he really watching the hangman tighten the rough noose around this so ordinary-looking man's neck? Was he really meeting the condemned man's eyes?

And then a trap door was pulled and the rope went taut. The man kicked and struggled like a fish washed up on the shore of Lake Calenhad: so close to survival, but chances waning every moment. His hands pulled at the ropes binding them behind his back. His face took on a purplish tinge in the shadows the morning sun threw over the courtyard of Fort Drakon. His eyes bulged and then as suddenly as the struggles had started, they were over. The man was no longer a man but a body pulling the rope taut and swaying gently.

That night those glazed and bulging eyes haunted Cailan every time he tried to close his eyes and sleep. He knew his father slept right down the corridor from him, but he couldn't make himself go wake him and prove Maric right.

That dead gaze stayed with him, demanding his attentions. It was the first time Cailan had ever seen a dead body.

And when he'd become king four years later, Loghain and the guards dealt with those aspects of life in Denerim that might prove unpleasant for the king. He wanted to tell them, no, please let me handle it because I'm the king. They didn't let him.

Ostagar was his chance.

But now as he stood in a dull, gray-brown landscape that rolled on and on forever, those dead eyes came back to haunt him. He looked up at the sallow, sunless sky, streaked with clouds in shades of greenish and brown and violet, like bruises overhead.

Cailan turned in a circle, trying to remember what he was doing here. The steep walls of the valley rose around him like jaws ready to clamp shut on him. He began to climb up the embankment and realized he had no clothes or shoes on, and yet the bracken did not tear at his skin. When he reached the top of the steep incline he wasn't breathless. Around him stood the cracked and crumbling ruins of Ostagar.

From here he could look down to the valley he'd climbed out of, and he saw the dead piled like mountains. From here he could see the ground stained red up and down the narrow valley as far as he could see in any direction. Across the mouth of the ravine he saw the hazy Tower of Ishal, with the lit beacon burning a pallid orange against the sickly sky.

His heart beat faster and he walked away from the lip of the valley, inward to the camp. Tents were burned. Bloated, dead bodies lay scattered about, but bulging glazed eyes followed him. No matter where he went Cailan could not hide himself from those dead stares.

You left us to die, they seemed to say. You led us to defeat. Us! Your own people!

He kept walking, hands over his ears so he did not have to hear the accusations. But it was to no avail, for the whispers were in his mind. And everywhere his bare feet stepped, the ground squelched underfoot with their blood.

Cailan crouched at the bridge leading to the Tower of Ishal. The beacon had been successfully lit; so why so many dead? His strategy had been solid! They would draw in and engage the darkspawn forces and then upon the lighting of the beacon, Loghain would flank the enemy and they'd celebrate a glorious victory. But as Cailan hugged his arms to himself and dared a glance back down into the gully, he knew something had gone terribly wrong.

He squeezed his eyes closed. This was one of those times his father had warned him about. He hurt all over with the pain of what had become of so many good soldiers. It wracked his naked body, and he buried his head in his hands and felt the pain of his soul being picked at and plucked at and taken from him.

At long last he opened his eyes and blinked away the sorrow. He stood and turned to see the ranks of the decaying dead watching him. They did not advance, merely watched him with lifeless, glassy eyes. The silence was heavy as plate armor, and just as intimidating.

The front lines of dead Fereldans wore Grey Warden livery, but he also saw some Highever heraldry as well. Fergus's men. They'd gone to war and died while their commander was lost scouting in the Wilds. But they loved the Teyrn of Highever, and did as he asked. All of these men and women had done was Cailan had asked out of love for them, and he'd let them die.

"I've betrayed your love and your trust," he said, his voice sweeping away the silence and ringing out over the ranks of the gathered dead. "But I will see it made right. I will make your deaths mean something. Anything."

A sigh rolled out from the dead men and women. The soldiers all relaxed and began to sink to the ground. However, their gazes remained trained on their king, as if they dared him to betray them again. As he turned and took the first resolute steps toward the Tower of Ishal, burning more brightly now, he felt that he left a part of himself with them.

He didn't know how far he journeyed. There was no way to judge time's passage in the shifting, rolling landscape that he was beginning to think was the Fade. This he found curious and maybe a bit troubling, because only mages could wander the Fade at will, or those ensorcelled by demons. I don't remember demons, he thought, trailing his hand along the ghost of a wall, which disappeared in a cloud of green mist when his fingers brushed it.

Sometimes it looked like Ostagar; other times he had fleeting glimpses of Denerim on the horizon; Fort Drakon speared the sepia sky. But always, all around him, blood pooled on the ground and the twilight was as endless as the road he walked on. It gave him the curious feeling he was walking in circles. As he approached the south, or what he thought would be the south because the fuzzy faded ruins of Ostagar were visible again, he began to see faces.

Not the faces of the dead, but faces of people he knew. And only in fleeting glimpses. He thought he saw his father, serious, and even a little sad. But when he tried to meet Maric's blue eyes, the images was gone. He caught a glimpse of Anora, lithe and lovely with her hair pinned at the back of her neck. She watched him, but sure enough when he tried to look at her directly, she too vanished. And blurry, standing just by the line of the horizon, he recognized Alistair's build, and with him a young woman, but more details he couldn't discern.

Cailan continued along the arc of his travels, ignoring the icy sadness that filled him. Was this regret, then?

As he passed Fade-Ostagar the landscape took on the misty, swampy endlessness of the Korcari Wilds. There was a little hut on the edge of an icy lake and next to it stood a woman with white hair. The way it stood up around her head gave her an almost draconic appearance, but Cailan was certain it must be the effects of the Fade. Yet when he looked at her directly her bright amber eyes met his, and she didn't dissolve into the mists. She smiled.

"And so the prodigal son returns," she said, clapping her hands together like a small child would. "Or does he?"

"Where am I returning to?" Cailan asked. The woman kept grinning as her amber gaze swept over him, and he realized he was still naked. "And can I get some clothes?" he added.

"Whatever for, boy?" she asked.

"Well… I'm naked."

"You are vulnerable," she corrected. "Understanding your vulnerability is the most important thing for you to do right now."

Cailan looked down at his body, which had taken on hues of violent violet and green and yellow. His hands were covered in blood, drip, drip, dripping into the spongy ground below. "You're not invincible. This isn't something you can do yourself, no matter how much you wish it were so."

"Then who can do it?"

"They've already started," she said. "But they fight a war on two fronts, and can only win one. You must take the other front."

"How?" Cailan asked. "Are you talking about the Blight?"

She sniffed. "Just like your father," the woman said. "A one-track mind. Forget the Blight, boy; the darkspawn are the concern of the Grey Wardens. But the kingdom is your concern."

Cailan covered his nakedness with bloody hands to no avail. The woman didn't seem to notice, or to care. If anything she seemed to find his vulnerability, and subsequent embarrassment, amusing. "Stop it," she said at last. "You will have more pressing concerns than what you're wearing. Or not," she added with a wink that made him flush. "The sooner you get over yourself the better."

"I am over myself," he snapped, though somehow he knew being defensive wasn't really the best course of action right now. "Tell me what happened at Ostagar," he said instead.

"For that, you will have to come inside," she said, holding the door open.

Cailan looked into the hut, the doorway a dark mouth opening up to devour him. "What will I see?"

"Many things: things that were, things that are, and some things that have not come to pass," she said with her grin. "But the real question is, are you ready to face what was so that you can change what will be?"

Cailan stared into the darkness, but even more disconcerting, the darkness stared back. He felt it seep into him. He wanted to shirk away and continue wandering the green and sepia mists of the Fade. When he stepped back from the woman and the darkness the bruises on his torso began to fade away into smooth, pale flesh stretched over hard muscles. But when he moved back toward her, the colors began to come back.

Fear gripped Cailan around his middle. Pain engulfed him and he wanted to stumble back into that endless unknown of the Fade, rather than into the darkness that stretched out for him. But the woman was watching him and when she exhaled steam floated like a ghost from her nostrils, and Cailan thought there was something almost dragon-like about it. His feet shambled forward.

As he made his way toward that doorway, reaching out to it with hands dripping the blood of his soldiers and his men and women, he exploded with pain.