The rearing black bulk of Howe's estate loomed before her. Lights from the torch brackets that lined the walls flickered in her vision. The sounds of street vendors - barking dogs - the murmur of voices, were muffled and distant. Dread coated the air like a shroud. Rilian concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, avoiding the rippling black puddles that dotted the road like bloodstains. Her armour had cooled and hardened around her body like a prison. The frozen chill made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She didn't look back, and her mind had gone curiously blank. The images of kidnap, shame and terror that had swirled like an ice-storm had faded, bled into the night until all that was left was willpower. It carried her onward like a ghost.
The high steel gate gleamed like a series of dagger points. Two guards stood on either side. Helms hid their faces: they appeared as no more than suits of armour, empty as the guardians summoned by Connor. She walked towards them very slowly, palms up.
"What the...wait!" Recognition sharpened one of the shem faces: the broad, grizzled features tightened in surprise...
..."I don't envy you your fate, but I applaud your courage"... There was an odd note in the human Captain's voice - almost of regret. She had given herself up, and knew there would be nothing so quaint as a trial. All that was left was the process of dying...
"Captain Arvall!" she blurted out, with irrational relief. The guards had become people again: brutal, greedy, violent - but not faceless monsters.
"The more things change..." the Captain said wearily, with that same odd note, "Well, Ril - Warden, you know the consequences of your actions. Tobias!" he called, and a third guard came running, "Report to the Arl that..."
Rilian froze; her muscles turned to water. Erlina had told her the Teyrn was here - but these were Arl Howe's men. They followed his orders.
The pleas, the words that screamed in her mind, shamed her, even though she managed somehow to stop them at her throat. She said nothing - straightened and looked at Arvall with icy, bleak pride.
"Wait!" The startled young guard turned at the Captain's shout. "I believe the Regent has authority here. Report directly to him."
"But, sir..."
"Do it." Arvall's voice cracked like a whip. Rilian could only stare, awed by the kindness. She knew what he risked - what the man would suffer once Arl Howe found out what he'd done.
"Thank you, ser..."
"For what, exactly?" Arvall's face was an impassive mask, "I am doing my job."
"Of course, ser."
She let him continue to do his job, handing over the Dalish sword and Adaia's dagger without question. The Dragonscale armour afforded few places to conceal weapons; his search was brisk and professional. He made her give up the dagger concealed in one of Adaia's boots. Then they walked, with her a few paces in front, through the courtyard toward the inner doors. He did not draw his own blade, use it to prod her along. He knew there was no need.
The heavy wooden doors were embossed with the forms of stylised dogs. In the pearly moonlight, they gleamed an iridescent black, lustrous as oil. They creaked open, and as Rilian walked inside she had the sense of being swallowed...
...The stone floor was dank and chill against the side of her face; an odd coppery taste filled her mouth. For a moment, she did not know where she ended and the darkness began. "I think she's coming round..." A bright flash of green-and-pink waved in front of her. Memories of green choked her thinking: a pair of green eyes, the leaves of the Vhenadahl, the beads on her wedding dress. The colours resolved into a sleeve and hand - soft yet strong: Shianni's. "Cousin - are you all right?"...
The orange flare of a torch lit the darkness. The tunnel opened into vast space: a stone hall, whose rich red carpet smelled of oil and perfume and dust. A river of blood... The thick smell dazed her. Two guards lounged, smirking. Stony, calculating eyes ranged her body. It stirred indefinable dark things in hidden corners of her mind. For one cold moment, she allowed herself to think how very alone she was. Her pulse raced.
Shianni's face swam before her, a shadowy image against the smudged cloud of smoke rising from the fire grate. She stared back. One locked gazes with her. His neck swelled and turned red, but it was he who looked away. The smirk twisted and wrinkled like Blighted leaves. She saw the worried twitch of humiliated eyes searching the other face, wondering if the failure had been seen.
Then suddenly, the inner doors were flung open, and an armoured man strode in. The candlelight sparkled off the Orlesian plate in a thousand tiny points, reflecting the colours around so that the figure seemed ablaze in darkly-glimmering jewels. Beneath the febrile glitter she sensed an inchoate darkness, a heaviness, as if the man were bottling up something larger than himself. It seemed to draw the air towards him, sucking it out of the atmosphere, forming a dark island amid the faceless guards. He strode forward with the peculiarly solid grace of a fighting man, continually poised to deliver a fully-leveraged blow.
Unlike the guards, he was bare-headed. The winter-blue eyes were keen and sharp, as though he had spent years honing them like a pair of knives. Stern, shadowed, sparked with internal fires, they were angry magnets. They blazed out of a craggy, hard, predatory face.
Rilian knew a kind of shock, a sense that she should have been more prepared. She had met Teyrn Loghain at Ostagar and at the Palace gates, but had half-forgotten that intense presence of purpose. Unconsciously, she straightened up; matched his stare. Something about him evoked a response that was half a desire to follow him, and half challenge.
It was the Teyrn who spoke first, voice taut with controlled fury. "How like one of you," he sneered. "Because of you, hundreds of men will die who might have lived - yet when faced with the choice, your first thought is to protect your own kind."
There was a moment's stillness. Then Rilian stepped forward, light as the lion running up for its spring. She was standing straight: her eyes had gone golden, her face pale, her voice cutting.
"How dare you accuse me of your own failings! At Ostagar you turned the chevaliers away to save yours! Your feared their slavery more than the Blight, and as a result a thousand men lie rotting in the field. And the women...worse than that."
She saw the possibility go through Loghain like slow ice. For a fraction of a heartbeat, those hawk-like features collapsed in loss. For a moment, he looked utterly desolate. Like a predator scenting blood, Rilian pursued. "You chose death over slavery for your own kind - yet when we choose the same, you cry foul. Try the knife's edge on your own cheek before you shave another. Ser."
Loghain recovered himself. He was a soldier first and foremost - he would not waste time dissecting his actions or the Warden's. "Let us dispense with the pleasantries," he grated out, "You're trying my patience, Elf."
"Which was never your best feature anyway," she retorted.
For a moment he gazed at her in silence, perhaps in surprise, while she bit her lip over her unpremeditated goading. Then his smile warned her. But of course the warning came too late. "No," he said almost mildly, "It was never my best feature." His eyes held the gleam of a knife.
He made a gesture, and at once Captain Arvall stepped forward and began to remove her armour. Rilian's belly clenched; her tongue felt suddenly too large for her mouth. She didn't resist - resisting would only succeed in robbing her of the last of her dignity. It took several breathless seconds before she realised that not only was the Captain doing his job with brisk professionalism, but that Loghian too looked utterly disinterested. This was not what Arl Howe had intended, not at all. In a moment she stood, unarmed and unarmoured, in the griffin tunic and black trousers she had worn underneath. Oddly, she found she did not feel more vulnerable. Sheer pragmatism told her the Dragonscale would make no difference to her fate. In her exhausted state, the lightness was a relief.
The Teyrn was in armour, even at this hour. Did the iron exoskeleton hold flesh and bone and soul together? She remembered Caridin, placing shivering naked warriors in iron shells, then pouring molten metal over them till only the iron remained.
Suddenly, like a doe sensing a hunter, Rilian stiffened, head up, alert. A movement beyond the open door, at the edge of her vision, drew her attention. Arl Howe glided down the hallway and into the room. The exposed blue lining of his cloak gleamed jewel-bright in the fireglow. He stopped. Standing behind Loghain, he turned slowly, deliberately, and looked right into Rilian's eyes. Beside her, Rilian smelled the sharpening of the Captain's sweat; he shifted nervously. Shadows moved to shroud the Arl; he stood in their embrace. From a face transformed to pale, shaded malevolence, his reptilian gaze continued to burn across the room. Rilian smiled mockingly into that arrogance.
She sensed his start of shock, that silken-covered rage. She refused to look away, feeling all her triumph, all her contempt, ooze onto her face. Her lithe muscles drew smooth, like steel bending; she felt the terrible fear and blood-red exaltation of battle. This was irreversible confrontation, beyond alliance. Her lip curled delicately in a tiny, knowing sneer... Ah, but there is no peace in the world of nobility. You murder and torture innocents and you take what you get. Sometimes you get stared at... As the seconds ticked by, she owned him.
Then suddenly Teyrn Loghain had her wounded shoulder in a grip that made her gasp, was turning her forcibly toward the door. The movement broke the eye contact - by the time she and Loghain entered the corridor, Arl Howe was nowhere to be seen.
Loghain kept his hand on the Warden's shoulder, steered her unceremoniously down winding corridors. These were mostly deserted - a few servants darted curious eyes. He knew the gossip would be all over the estate by morning. It was exactly the same at the Palace: the low, constant thrum of sly whispers - no wonder he sometimes yearned for the forests of Gwaren. Its people were hardy - ruthless as Loghain himself when threatened - but they killed while looking their opponent in the eye.
The Warden looked no more or less impressive in armour than without: which wasn't saying much. Whip-thin, muscular, so well-co-ordinated she seemed to glide like a cat: a thing of spring steel and the bounce one only associated with youth. In truth, he had grown insufferably tired of her: that childish arrogance, the posturing. The petty triumph on her face when staring at Arl Howe - so pleased to have embarrassed a loyal Ferelden soldier - was a case in point. The red armour set his teeth on edge - not only would it have fed ten soldiers for ten weeks, it was so ostentatious it was bound to be a show-piece. He thought of Cailan: that ridiculous golden armour with the sky-high shoulder-guards - how he had strutted at Ostagar like a something out of a story. Brightness and grace and childish dreams swept away in a few shattering moments of pain and terror. He had not seen the King fall, but his imagination echoed with the screams. So young, so unready...
Loghain brought himself back to reality with a start, irritated with himself for falling into reminiscence like an old man. The Warden was brave, he would give her that. And quick-witted - her arguments here and at the Palace gates proved that the stories of her diplomatic successes were not lies. But he could scent a glory-hunter a mile off. He supposed he couldn't blame her. Born in the gutter - kidnapped and brutalised by Bann Vaughan (that insolent pup, worst of a bad litter - Loghain had heard him in taverns boasting of his Elven "conquests") - then handed power on a plate. That fine-boned face held a look he'd only seen on Elves: a kind of hunger. The Night Elves he had once commanded had had the same look: a fierce, feral drive for the power the world denied them. He'd respected them, fought with them - but he'd always known that what they wanted might have nothing to do with what the rest of them fought for. He had seen the other side of that ambition. Katriel had taught him a lesson he'd never forget.
He stopped outside his own guest-chamber and pushed open the door. If the young female prisoner felt nervous about being brought to his bedroom, that was not his problem. He had no time to pander to delicate sensibilities - the room was the one place where he could discuss things with no-one to overhear. He could have chosen the dungeon - that had been Arl Howe's suggestion - but he was far too practical to damage a person he needed. He needed her armies, not her secrets.
In fact, he had a better way to loosen her tongue. When the Elf looked around the room he startled her by going to the mahogany cabinet (Arl Urien's overdone furniture) and fetching a pitcher of red wine. He poured the dark, sparkling liquid into two glasses, and gestured for her to sit. The Warden did so, drawing one booted foot up to the edge of the antique chair in a louche casualness that could only come from youth and bad manners. He noted that she did not wrap an arm around the bent leg as most people would. She had left room to defend herself if the need arose.
The room was a surprisingly comfortable place. Warm yellow candlelight gleamed upon the silk and velvet of the large, plush chairs and seemed to give life to the patterns and pictures woven into the fine rugs. The only additions of Loghain's were the maps covering the desk and walls. The Warden was staring at them, that angular catlike face half-lit, half-shadowed. Before Loghain could speak, the Elf beat him to it, giving every appearance of thinking herself the one in charge.
"I think it's time we got to the point here: what do you want from me? If all you wanted was to keep me out of the Landsmeet I wouldn't be here. I don't imagine it's for my body or my company or even my information: you have some plan in mind."
To defeat the Blight. To keep Eamon from putting a puppet on the throne. And - if need be - to send you to die against the Archdemon.
To sit in the Palace war-room and find no empty chairs at the table. To lose nothing else. To hold the borders that I've spent my life defending. To end this war...
Because he couldn't say any of that, Loghain did something unusual for him and played for time. "You tell me, Elf - what do you want?"
"What I want?" The Warden looked thoroughly startled. "What an odd question!" She went very still, every thought turned inward - then rose to her feet in a sudden quick movement and paced.
"I want to protect my people. I want to see Alistair become a great King or a great Warden. I want an answer to my question: is it possible to save Denerim? Could we stop the horde before it reaches the Capital? Could we kill the Archdemon before it rises from the Dead Trenches?" Her eyes - eyes that could look as flat and metallic as gold coins - were bright and full and oddly vulnerable. "I don't trust you. I know you'll be Alistair's enemy for as long as you live. But if you can help me make that happen I will work with you, I swear it."
Loghain rose too, face dark in a wash of bitterness. "It might have been possible if you hadn't opposed me at every turn! If that fool Eamon were not calling for a Landsmeet in the middle of a Blight! He's pulled the entire Bannorn away from the country's defence and forced us to wait here while we settle things. Because your army is camped to the west, I can't even send scouts to monitor the horde. And because you stopped the trade with Tevinter, the coffers are empty. Although," he added, bearing down on the words in a kind of furious disgust, "The sale of that expensive Dragonscale armour will feed a few."
"I have no objection," the Warden said coolly, "Provided you do the same with your own. That Orlesian plate is just as much the skin of a dead enemy and nearly as expensive. So we can both feed the troops - and go into battle in good solid Ferelden armour. As for the Landsmeet - surely it's possible to talk the Banns into postponing it?"
"Do you think I haven't tried? Or do you have someone else in mind - you, I suppose?"
"I was thinking of the Queen."
Loghain was silent, pessimism and distrust warring with a sudden mad hope, painful as shards of glass in his clutching hand. He had grown so used to his daughter's objections to his every necessary measure he had almost forgotten her strengths. An iron hand in a velvet glove, wrapping the Bannorn around her little finger with her silver tongue and razor-edged determination. He didn't trust these two - Howe had hinted there was some plot between his daughter and the Warden - but between them it might work.
"With that in mind, is it possible?"
"I need information. These allies you have: numbers and distance from the Capital."
"The twenty mages from the Circle Tower left two weeks ago..."
"Twenty mages?! Those are all that's left - and you expect them to make a difference!" Disbelieving rage thickened his mind.
"Along with four units of Templars. Knight-Commander Greagoir agrees with me it's better than guarding an empty Tower. They march with the mages."
Mages and Templars, working together...
"The Dalish clan Mahariel can field fifty archers: they promised to gather the hunters of ten more tribes. And the Dwarves: five cohorts of regular infantry plus one unit of the Legion."
Memories choked his thinking. Another time, another Elf... Centuries of rock and oily, dust-scented shadows pressed in on him. The steamy reek of a hundred unwashed soldiers rose in a wave. Firelight flickered on tattooed faces, their beards split by fierce smiles. The Legion's commander, Nalthur, bellowed with laughter. "And it's true - that sky of yours is more frightening than an entire horde of darkspawn!" A small delicate Elf touched the Dwarf's arm, one strand of pale blonde hair trailing on his shoulder. She smiled sweetly at him. "...So there is, in fact, honour to be found on the surface..."
Pretending ignorance, he looked at the Warden curiously. "How does the Legion fight?"
"Like demons. They're already dead, you see - dead to redeem their names. Orzammar holds a funeral service for them. They don't like pain any more than the rest of us, but they don't fear dying...But you know this! Kardol mentioned the Legion fought in the time of the rebellion - and it's in the Shaperate's Memories." Her voice grew soft, wistful, almost reverent. "So many books, so much history. Libraries of many lifetimes..."
Loghain said nothing to confirm or deny it - merely strode purposefully toward the bedside desk and brought out what looked like a long leather tube. It unrolled over the table to become the finest map he had: a map of Ferelden that showed not only land forms and cities, but trade routes, defensive positions, secret trails. The Warden's eyes devoured it. Curiously - utterly incongruously - a faint memory brushed his mind, lightly as the wings of a moth: firelight, smoke, the smells of tent leather. The long evenings with his father over maps such as this, arguing over the significance of landforms, alliances, campaigns, defenses. His ears rang with Gareth's stories of what he'd learned as a Sergeant-at-Arms. At the time he couldn't see the importance - they were a band of starving outlaws, not a military unit. Years later, sitting in Arl Rendorn's tent over talk of strategy, he had wondered how much he'd learned - and how much more his disinterest had cost him.
The Warden's eyes were alight with exhilaration - she traced one slender finger over the coastline. A dark suspicion edged in Loghain's mind.
"Elf," he said seriously, "You style yourself commander of an army. Please tell me this isn't the first time you've seen a map of Ferelden."
The Warden refused to confirm or deny it. Instead, she said thoughtfully, "Now that I see these political boundaries, I understand why Ferelden nobility is like it is."
"Oh?"
"They're land-starved. Each Bann coverts his neighbour's, and knows his neighbour coverts his. Have you ever seen two dogs by the fence where one of them lives, running up and down barking?"
Loghain startled himself with a bark of laughter. It trailed off into sour silence. "But when dogs come to a gap, they don't rush through and fight - they just look surprised and walk off. Sometimes dogs have more sense than men."
The Warden's red hair seemed to crackle with exuberance; the amber eyes were bright as stars. She dropped down onto the chair and rested her sharp chin in her hands, staring at the map as though she meant to dissect it, peel away the political layers to get to the bottom line: how to use the land against the darkspawn. Loghain found himself remembering his poaching days, laying still and silent, squinting into dark-shrouded forests. He remembered staring into a thicket, and one chance movement revealing the hidden creature. He bent forward over the map, piecing together the rest of the beast. The Warden sketched his suggestions as he spoke. Her hands darted across the map, a contradictory flow of feminine grace and sinister suggestion as he described his vision of the battle to come.
"We intercept the horde - hit them before they hit us. With Orzammar and the Tower in the northwest and the Dalish and Redcliffe forces from the south, we can be anywhere ahead of them, on their flanks. We choose the time and rely on trickery, give ground to create the battlefield we must have. Attrition, Elf. We cripple their strength; disrupt and defeat them in pieces. We may be crushed, even so. If we meet them head-on, we must be crushed."
The feathery red brows were narrowed, intent. "I've seen the horde in the Dead Trenches," she said quietly, "Imagine facing a number five times, ten times what we fought at Ostagar."
It wouldn't have surprised Loghain to see apprehension in the Warden, or anger at what she no doubt saw as his betrayal. What he saw, however, was a deep pain. The young face was suddenly frozen, mask-like, drawn into planes and angles that spoke of years lived in months. He had learned more from the Orlesian about what it took to kill an Archdemon than he'd ever considered - but it occurred to him that the Warden might yet know more. The Orlesian possessed a lifetime of knowledge - but no first-hand experience of this war. In a twist of fate that was as clear a proof as any that the world had no natural justice, the Blight had come to Ferelden, not Orlais.
"Tell me everything you know about them, Elf."
And the Warden did. She told him of the Deep Roads - her first sight of the Archdemon - and of the Broodmother; forcing her voice, when she could, into the flat tone of instruction. Loghain thought of Sergeant Kellis - Mother Boann - all the women at Ostagar. But the time the Warden had finished, the silence between them was greyer than fog. It was Loghain who broke it - he was not a pragmatist for nothing.
"Not even the Archdemon can attack Denerim alone - if the creature could, it would already be here. The main force must take care of the horde - while the Wardens and the Legion pursue it to the depths."
At his words, life had begun to come back into the young, drawn face. She rose as if too eager to keep still. "I have learned," he said slowly, "That only a Grey Warden can kill an Archdemon." To his surprise, the Warden didn't question how he knew. Loghain frowned darkly - he would need to have a word with Howe about security. But later. He looked at her curiously. "Are you prepared to be the one?"
The Warden rolled her eyes. "What do you think I've been doing these six months: sitting around with Arl Eamon playing checkers? My companions and I have killed two dragons: one an abomination in dragon form; the other the High Dragon worshipped as Andraste." The air of logical discussion fell from her like a cloak, and she was the young, impassioned warrior. The hands and features grew animated. The measured stride became a lithe glide. "You get mages and archers to the rear and flanks. Ali...a warrior under magical protection to distract the beast. Then I run at it from behind and ride the thing. Even a dragon dies when you stab through the soft flesh at the back of the skull!"
"So much for the coldly rational strategist," Loghain observed dryly, but his mind was whirling. A one-day Warden at Ostagar - of course no-one would have told her. Likely the would-be King didn't know. Sensing something in the quality of his silence, the Warden looked at him, nettled. She pitched forward, fists on hips. Short, brilliantly red hair seemed to grow to a natural length and shape in the way of a lion's mane. The lambent eyes were intense, their golden irises encircled by a ring of shadow.
"Do you think I'm afraid to risk my life?"
"No," he said slowly, "You've shown that you can. But I think you do not understand how much you may have to give."
The Warden shrugged. "I may die. It's likely. We all may. I came here: you could have had me tortured, killed. Worse, I could lose my family, my people. I know I could hardly live through that - but I can't imagine anything else."
She turned away, held her hands out to the fire, warming them. The flickering heat-shimmer ruddied her skin. Its shadows danced around her. Loghain was silent, feeling almost as though he were watching her last expression of life. Quicksilver passion flickered in her like light on water; as vibrant - yet as achingly temporal - as the dancing flames.
But he said nothing further. For all her talk, there was a difference between risk and certain death, and he absolutely could not take the chance that she might hesitate. He thought of the men he had killed for Ferelden; the cost of Ostagar. Other soldiers, other battles. The men he had abandoned to die at West Hill... What was she, compared to that?
He wondered if he were losing his sense of proportion.
"So," said the Warden, "Does this mean you'll do it? Ask Queen Anora to visit the Banns and play for time. Join forces?"
"Yes - until we defeat the Blight. I need your allies in order for my men to survive - but not as much as you need my knowledge to protect yours. Will you place your troops at my disposal?"
"Never. I command my men. We have an alliance."
Storm-clouds gathered in the room, heavying the air. Within the swirl of compressed energy, Loghain rose, gained his feet, and glared down at her as the hawk watches the prey. The Warden met his stare, lips curved in a cold eager smile. The eyes - now flat as two golden discs - glittered with a quality he recognized, because he shared it: an indomitable fighting will which would see the body it drove broken apart rather than yield. That was a quality of mind, not of muscle.
The moment might have stretched into eternity, had the Warden not deflected it in a way Loghain was incapable of, though he had watched Anora do it. She did not break, she bent. She smiled - a surprisingly bright, challenging grin, and said:
"Ser - you must know that my allies are not really my allies at all: the treaties are with the Wardens. As such, they have no reason to follow you. But you and I will have an understanding: if you only pass along "advice" to me I will consider it."
"Elf, call it what you want," Loghain snapped, exasperated, "Call it advice, suggestions, your mother's bedtime stories, I don't care - but if I say position your men here, or deploy to a flank there, you'd better hear my "advice" and act on it. I'll agree to this "alliance" because I see no way out of it, but I'll be damned if your inexperience gets my men killed. Later we can argue all we want and cut each other's hearts out. Or in your case," he added under his breath, "perhaps cut your throat so you'll shut up."
"I didn't catch that last bit," the Warden snapped.
Loghain wearily lowered his head and shook it. "Nothing, Elf, don't mind me."
"Another thing - if we're to be allies, you had better stop addressing me as "Elf". There are thirty from my community following me already, plus a...gentleman from Antiva, and soon to be ten Dalish tribes. Shouting out "Elf" will get you too many responses. Most of them, you won't like."
"I see your...logic. I will dispute that Denerim's Elves are included in the Wardens' treaties."
The Warden stared at him in a silence that seemed to absorb into itself the crackle of the fire, their breathing. Her body, taut as a drawn bowstring, shivered with repressed violence. The very mildness of her tone was a warning.
"The free peoples of Ferelden expect the protection of their Lords: but you and Arl Howe have not done much work in that line lately. The minute you signed those papers you lost rightful authority. Denerim's Elves are free agents - and will come with me, or stay, as they choose."
Loghain sighed. "The Night Elves I commanded were better served at Gwaren, I'll admit. But I did what was necessary. Denerim's Elves have never fought - you must be the only one. Under Orlais they were slaves to King Meghren. Potter - baker - dockworker: out of these, you'd make an army? Well, I wish you luck with it. As for what to call you, I don't know your given name."
The tamped-down rage flared briefly - a swift current. The air around her crackled with it. "My father calls me that - the father you tried to sell to Tevinter! You may call me Warden. Or Commander. Nothing else."
Fair enough. Since calling the chit "Commander" was out of the question, he settled on the former as acceptable to both.
"Warden, then. Now, if you will excuse me, I must brief Ser Cauthrien at the palace. I will return at dawn tomorrow, and you and I and the Queen will begin preparations."
He had wanted to speak to Anora tonight - but he knew better than to send a servant to wake her from slumber. Anora valued her routines: she went to bed almost at dusk and rose early, believing in the importance of sleep and discipline. Loghain too was an early riser. The fact that he also worked till midnight was immaterial: Ferelden needed him. There would be time enough to sleep after the Blight.
"You - you're going to leave me here? At Arl Howe's estate?" The angular features had paled and tightened; her eyes were dilated, the irises only a golden rim around the black. For a moment, he did not understand why she looked like one betrayed.
Understanding crowded into Loghain's overworked mind. He snorted. "Don't be a fool. I have no interest in hurting you, and will order Arl Howe and Captain Arvall to treat you with respect. I intend to honour the pledge I sent through the Arl's messenger."
The look of outrage faded as the Warden realised he meant it - to be replaced with a very odd expression. For a moment, he had the strange, uncomfortable sense that she hovered on the verge of laughter - or tears.
"Yes, I heard the Arl's message. Perhaps more clearly than you did."
The tone was an echo of his daughter's complaints about Howe's scheming - vague insinuations unsupported by a shred of proof. Yet they'd had no time to concert it... No, of course they had. Howe had warned him his daughter was in contact with the Warden through her maid. How else was the Warden unsurprised by what he'd learned from the Orlesian? And what a co-incidence - the maid had vanished shortly before the Warden had arrived. A couple of tragedians, cueing one another to undermine a loyal ally, create their own drama. As if the Blight were not drama enough.
Yet her look of white, blind shock twisted in his mind...for a fraction of a heartbeat, another face hovered just out of sight like a taunting spectre. And the memory of what Arl Howe had done to Oswyn Sighard made him cringe inside.
Despite his rage, his furious threat to feed the man his balls as soon as the Blight was over, Loghain had no intention of turning on his ally. Howe had been right: he had been acting within the latitude Loghain had given him. His orders had been to root out the conspirators by any means necessary. To give a soldier permission to commit atrocities and then cut him loose when he did not like the results was the worst sort of cowardice. It had happened on Loghain's watch; it was his responsibility.
He disliked Howe, and found him too slippery by far - but the man was a patriot, committed to a united, independent Ferelden. Through that framework, everything else fell into place. It had been Howe who had suggested bringing the Warden here, because he knew they needed her allies. If the Warden thought the man would jeopardise the country for the sake of the Alienage fiasco or a petty staring match, she was flattering herself.
"Warden," he said, "I can't allow you to return to Eamon's estate. I believe you mean what you say" (and he did trust her, to his own surprise, though not enough to bet the country on it) "but it would be too easy for Eamon to hold you there until the Landsmeet, and force events to a standstill once more. You insinuate that Arl Howe has disobeyed my orders in some way. I don't deal in hints and sideways remarks. Speak plainly: tell me exactly what you think he's done, and I'll take you with me to the palace. Otherwise - I suggest you get some sleep while you can, and I'll see you in the morning."
The Warden looked at him in silence, some inexplicable conflict storming across her face. In another moment, all that had cleared - her expression was blank, steady, unreadable; a mask of stone.
"I have nothing to say."
"Well, then," Loghain said, a bite of impatience in his voice, "There never was a problem, was there." He summoned the maid from Amaranthine to see the Warden to a guest room - as far as possible from where he held the Orlesian - and had Jowan seal the door. Then he saw Howe and Captain Arvall and explained that the Warden was to be treated as the Queen herself: denied freedom of movement but allowed every comfort. She was not to be harmed. Captain Arvall looked as jumpy as a cat on hot coals - he supposed it was embarrassment over the Alienage mess. In fact, Arl Howe had been surprisingly lenient with him - he hadn't even been demoted. Howe agreed readily and passed the instructions along with his usual smooth efficiency. Loghain took his leave and left. He paused a moment at the gates, head in hands, and reflected on a world saturated with nonsense. Then he straightened, steps firm and unyielding as he headed for the palace.
Rilian stood in the centre of the guest room. Its four-poster bed was grander than any she'd seen: a dark and ugly monolith. She was so exhausted the room took on a dreamlike quality. Sometimes as a child she'd dreamed of vast shadowy buildings, of losing herself in a labyrinthine mass of alien corridors. There was a dark, ornately carved cabinet to hold clothes - a desk and chair. The carvings were of dogs. Rilian wrinkled her nose. It looked like somebody's dream of a dog, not the wonderful, exuberant, lolloping reality. Her brain whirled as dizzily as a drunken bee. She was glad to find the Teyrn was a man she could understand - and work with. He was blind, stubborn, ruthless, capable of almost any atrocity when his country was threatened - but he was faithful. Far more trustworthy than the man in whom he had placed his faith. She felt her blood go thin when she thought of Howe. She wanted to hide, shaken by an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Vaughan had made her a thing. Arl Howe had the same eyes. Howe was worse, though, because in his pinpoint gaze was the precision of high, reptilian, calculating intelligence. Understanding of what he was created a dread she actually tasted, like acid at the back of her throat. Walking up to the estate - being disarmed by Captain Arvall - facing Loghain and meeting the eyes of Howe in the Hall hadn't accomplished that. Of course, she'd been afraid - but her
fear was entwined with a fierce battle-anger that made her want to strike back. Waiting was no doubt easier to bear than rape or torture - but it was harder than defiance.
But she couldn't tell Loghain the truth, no matter how she yearned to. Erlina's words were burned into her mind: if he learns I spoke to you of this, you finish me. If she told Loghain he would take her to the palace - have angry words with Howe - but he would not turn against his ally, just for that. Howe would not dare touch her - but he would make Erlina pay as surely as he would Captain Arvall. The thought was a clammy hand at the small of her back.
The gentle cough behind her brought her round in a defensive crouch. The sight of the small Elven woman in a shapeless grey robe was so far from what she expected that sheer surprise held her in place long enough to still the hammering of her heart. Her gentle pale hair seemed as fine as spider silk, and as gracefully light. Her skin was paper thin and white as old bone. At first glance the woman looked old - old beyond all joy - but then she turned and Rilian saw she was only Nigella's age, or her father's. In a soft singsong voice she said, "I am Myrtle, servant to Arl Howe, assigned to you."
"I don't..." Rilian began - then stopped. She didn't need a servant - but suddenly her aching loneliness, her terror, expressed itself as a crawling chill all over her skin. She needed the warmth of contact - the touch of one of her own - if only for a moment. "Thank you," she whispered. Her hand hovered, white and erratic - froze in sudden indecision - then lightly touched the woman's shoulder.
Myrtle's gaze fell on her, but didn't settle. The woman's brown eyes were fractured, abstracted - staring into some memory with a smoky, inward-looking distance. Then she held out her hands, and the bright silk gown she held flashed like kingfisher feathers.
"Her ladyship bade me bring this to you," the woman said. Rilian knew the clothes she wore would make no more difference to her fate than the armour would have done - but undressing at Arl Howe's estate was out of the question. Despite her earlier pragmatism, she needed as much armour around herself as possible. Still, she could not keep from touching something so beautiful, feeling its lightness run like water through her fingers. Nobody in the Alienage would ever have had such silk - the closest they could come were the wedding dresses lovingly created from pieces of fine cloth, collected through lifetimes and passed down from mother to daughter. "Give the Queen my thanks," she said softly, and then, knowing the woman would understand, blurted, "It's as lovely as a wedding dress!"
Wedding dress - wedding night. Nelaros - Alistair...The mingled ironies, the repetition, threatened to choke her.
The woman smiled like sun on flowers. Rilian caught her breath, the expression was so beautiful. "I made my pretty girl a dress like this."
"You have a daughter?" Rilian asked eagerly, wanting to prolong the conversation, find common ground. This woman was not from Denerim's Alienage - she must be from Amaranthine - but the talk of marriages, births and deaths was always the same; the glue that bound her people together.
"Five little ones," the woman said, "I had five little ones." At the last, loss chilled Rilian's heart.
"I'm sorry..."
Myrtle didn't seem to hear her. She continued, looking off into the distance. "Five little children. None left. I loved them all. So many troubles. The sicknesses. The slavers." Rilian's stomach churned at the sing-song recital, but Myrtle wasn't finished. "At least my pretty girl didn't live for the filthy slavers to carry away. It was better for her to die. But why should she have to? Or her brothers and sisters? It was Arl Howe's doing." Her lips thinned until Rilian could only think of a scar.
While Rilian groped for words like a blind man stumbling in the dark, Myrtle wandered onto a completely different subject. "The guards brought their former Captain downstairs. The Arl said he should sing in the dungeons for two days. The men were talking about you. I heard them laughing..."
Rilian's stomach collapsed in on itself, became a burning coal. She nearly doubled over. Then she gritted her teeth and straightened up, lips pulled back in a soundless grimace of determination. Whatever Arl Howe meant to do, he still needed her. He couldn't kill her - couldn't even leave visible damage. The thought of all the unseen things he could do prickled her skin like a mass of icy wasps, but Shianni's face swam through the roiling storm... If you're not dead, you're still alive...I just don't want them treating me like a fragile doll... No steel was ever stronger, Rilian thought, and understood exactly why her cousin had not wanted anyone to know - how that would have made it quite unbearable. Whatever happened tonight, she must still lead men against the Blight tomorrow - needed all her strength to keep her self-control and sanity. She wouldn't tell - not Alistair, certainly not Loghain - but she would survive to see Howe dead.
The lilting, gentle voice meandered on. "I heard them in the kitchens - that's where I normally work, you see..." The strong, capable hand, its callused palms as rough as sand, reached into a fold of the grey robe. "I don't know why her ladyship sent me here. I work in the kitchens: with gleaming pots - the smell of spices - sharp knives..."
The gleaming sharpness came up, winking at her; candlelight glittering along its edge, hard and true.
Myrtle gave the blade into the young woman's hand, then turned to melt into the corridor, where the guards and the boy in robes were waiting to seal the door. She needed nothing else. She was a ghost of vengeance, thinned and bled white, drifting through the house of her children's murderer. She was quite startled when the golden stranger - the young woman who flickered at the edges of her reality like a lambent flame - moved to touch her, shyly at first, then embraced her in a passion of gratitude. The greyness exploded in radiant colour, like rainbow dyes in water - the warmth rippled and shifted. The taut shoulder muscles became smooth and delicate; the red hair darkened to brown. For one brief, transient moment, Myrtle had her daughter back.
A shout from outside broke the spell. Myrtle curled into herself like smoke - the warm living presence vanished as the woman glided away. Rilian felt the loss, the coldness along her skin. Taut as a drawn bow, she crouched by the door, blade ready. But the only man's voice she heard was a familiar one: a soft, slightly nasal whine, with leaden undertones of self-contempt, self-pity, resignation and fear. Yet she had heard him laugh in exaltation when his attempt to save Connor worked - heard him promise to try with an eager hopefulness that couldn't hide fear, but refused to surrender to it. He had deserved better than to be given to the Circle, and was clearly as much a prisoner here as she. She heard him seal the door, and the guards' footsteps fade away. Of course, they had all night - and other victims. She thought of Captain Arvall's fate - for trying to protect her - and vomit crawled up the back of her throat. His pain, and Myrtle's, were dark chains weighting her to the earth.
She held the blade in front of her like an anchor, a lifeline. The candlelight turned it to a molten sliver; her body, burning with exhaustion, seemed to melt and flow toward it. It led her, became part of her, all her will poured into it. She blew out the candle. They would be coming from a lighted corridor - she would see and they would be blind. Instantly the pearly moonlight shone through the slitted window, turning the heavy furniture to a mass of glistening silver lines. She was a fly in a spider's web; the knife was a needle, pinning her in place. The oily blackness between the silver made a jigsaw pattern and seemed to pulse like purple bruises, while her thoughts ran everywhere like spilled milk. She was sure she felt Alistair's waking - his sense of horror and betrayal on finding the note. It was a lead weight in her heart. What had Loghain meant when he spoke of killing the Archdemon? He had said...something about giving... She tried to remember but the thought slid away. Other thoughts paraded around her - a disjointed storm of colour against the blackness.
The shadowy bulk of the bed was a solid block of yearning. The moonlight bathed the white sheet in a frozen glow like a glacier. It was madness to lie down - but she had reached the limit of her endurance. She sank down, uncovered, the knife still clutched in her hand, and dozed in a kind of half-waking nightmare. Her nerves strained for the sound of footsteps, while sparks of dreams danced across her brain like seeds of lightning, like white birds pecking...
...She lay half-locked in the embrace of a featureless expanse of ice. Parts of her - her head, her knees, her fingertips - broke the surface, but the bulk of her body was buried, clutched, the frozen weight holding her down. She was so cold she burned - and her fingertips, visible to her, had gone the sickly-purple of dying flesh. She lay looking up into a high pulsing sky with an icy wind tearing over her. The shadow of a vast wingspan stained the ground; the purple-black wave flowed towards her. She yearned to disappear into the ice, pull it over her like bed sheets, but her own force of will would not let her. She gazed upward to watch the creature approach. The Archdemon was a roiling red-and-black flame - she drowned in its shadow. At the last instant, when it was so close she could smell the taint on its breath: iron tinged with sickly-sweet decay, everything changed.
She was behind the dragon. Its long, skeletal body stretched in front. Her entire being was seared with hate and a kind of ecstasy: she was no longer helpless! She only held a kitchen knife - but she knew it would be enough. She ran along the dark ridges of its spine. It was what she did, as natural as breathing. She reached the neck, straddled the creature, raised the knife. The blade screamed downwards.
Then a strange thing happened. She was following the path of the blade - stretched out flat along the dragon's spine - her own blood dripping into the wound. She felt her musculature and skeleton fluidly rearranging themselves. It was wonderful, like discovering a forgotten freedom - or immortality. She spread her wings, laughing. The green hills and valleys and farmland of Ferelden rolled beneath her: a perfect, beautiful map. She almost saw it as Loghain did, touched the lightest tremor of his love for that rugged, untamed country. And she saw it as herself: never mind the borders, those were people down there; tiny sparks of life. So small and yet so bright.
Something was wrong. The sky roiled with fire; the land crawled with taint. It reached inside her with sticky fingers; tore her open, rearranged her. She could no longer control her flight; sped downwards in a terrifying arc of headlong, unpreventable consequence. She reached the victim buried in the ice - claws extended towards the upturned face...
...Alistair's face...
Rilian woke gasping for breath, the weight of horror squeezing her chest like a vise. Nothing made sense except the certainty of danger. Tearing herself out of bed, stumbling, clutching the knife, she could hear her own breath whistling through her teeth. She heard booted footsteps, coming down the corridor like a many-legged creature. The air in the room was thick - the air of nightmare that fought every movement. Surely she could be up in seconds! But no - hours seemed to pass while she swayed and fought for balance. For Howe and his men, the air was weightless - or a current, speeding them towards her.
But she reached the door just as Jowan's voice, wretched with misery, opened the seal.
Rilian was no longer afraid. One part of her was coldly eager. The other dispassionately calculated odds. She was balanced on the balls of her feet, bent low in a feral crouch, ready to spring. Her mouth went dry and her stomach muscles tightened. She raised the knife like a glittering fang.
The door burst open.