Three: A Thousand Nameless Hungers

In the days after the city was broken,
we wandered heart-sick and longing, troubled
by a thousand nameless hungers.
Fetched up at the gates of the blackened city,
we gathered and wailed, oh the silence!
Oh the hunger! Where are your songs now?
Your fountains are dusty, your gardens withered!

—From The Canticle of Demons, stanza 4: of the Black City

Kathil:

The seneschal was peering at her as if she had sprouted something worrying but probably harmless from her shoulder. "What do you mean, no?"

She narrowed her eyes in order to avoid rolling them, quashed the first five things that wanted to come out of her mouth, and settled for, "Exactly what I said. I am going to become Warden-Commander. I am not going to become arlessa."

"But—" Now Varel was starting to look confused. He was a good man, and intelligent, but evidently he'd expected her to fall into line like a good little Warden. "The arldom is awarded to the Grey. By order of the Crown, and the First Warden concurred. You can't refuse it."

Watch me. "I know the situation around here has been complicated," she said. "But, look. That order by Alistair gave Amaranthine to an Orlesian, and he ended up burning a major port city. In any other circumstance, that would have been an act of war."

"The darkspawn—"

"I know," she said, derailing Varel before he started talking again. "But there's what happened, and there's what looked like it happened, and you cannot tell me that people aren't connecting the two things right now." She fought the urge to pace. They were in the main hall of the Vigil, and behind Varel was an older woman who'd identified herself as Mistress Woolsey and a younger chap who was peering at her and Varel with ill-concealed anxiety. Garevel, she reminded herself. Neither of those two seemed inclined to contribute to the conversation. "We have to admit that it was an experiment, and it failed. Spectacularly. If it were anyone else coming into the Warden-Commander position, another try might be workable. But it's me."

"The Hero of Ferelden. I think that still has some currency."

"The sodding hero of Ferelden is a mage." She kept her gaze steady, her shoulders straight. Lorn lay beside her, watching the proceedings intently. "And if you haven't forgotten, mages are not allowed to hold titles. While Alistair might have some brilliant idea about how the Grey is going to rule over this arling, the fact is that unless he gets off of his royal ass and gets some laws changed—not easy, considering that he has to run it by the Landmeet—it is going to continue to be unlawful for the foreseeable future." She held up a hand, forestalling Varel's sputtering. "Also, there's the little fact that it would put everything I want to work for in jeopardy. No matter what happens, I am always going to be seen as a mage of the Circle. My actions reflect on the Circle, whether or not I want them to, regardless of whether it's right or fair that they do. And they reflect on the Grey Wardens."

"Perhaps you should have thought about that before you vanished into thin air," Garevel muttered.

She ignored him. "The Circle has to be seen as politically neutral. We lock mages up in the Tower for many reasons, not the least of which is that we do not want to turn into Tevinter. If the Circle starts messing with politics, sooner or later it's going to go wrong. Disastrously so. Let the Circle ally with the Grey Wardens, and let both parties stay as neutral as they can manage. And, last, but certainly not least, one of the reasons that Alistair was likely willing to give over the arldom to the Grey is that Grey Wardens don't generally have heirs. I do." She gave Varel a sharp look. "People have enough difficulty with the idea of an elven bann. If it becomes apparent that the daughter of a mage is the potential heir to an arldom, the Chantry is going to have kittens."

Not that it wasn't already going to have kittens.

Now Varel was looking resigned. "I suppose you have a solution in mind."

"I do. We need a non-Warden, preferably someone who distinguished themselves during the attack on the Vigil and Amaranthine, and who has a history of serving this arling. Someone the banns here can feel comfortable with, but who can also work with me. Preferably someone who understands Grey Wardens. In fact, I think I have the ideal candidate standing right in front of me."

There was a long moment of silence as Varel stared at her, his mouth half-open. "I—what? I'm not—I've never—"

"I did some checking," she said over his sputtering. "You've spent your whole life in the service of this arling. You were seneschal under Rendon Howe until he demoted you for objecting to his idiocy. You know this arling, and you've been running the day-to-day business of it for years. I can't think of anyone who's proved better that he has the best interests of Amaranthine at heart."

Mistress Woolsey, behind Varel, was making a face as if someone had sprinkled alum on her tongue. "Seneschal Varel is a competent man, but he is a commoner. Surely, if you must have someone not a Grey Warden as arl, you would choose someone from the nobility?"

She gave the other woman a sharp look. "Ferelden has a long and storied history of commoners rising to serve this nation. Calenhad was the son of a merchant. We'll need King Alistair to make it official, of course." And that might be more difficult than it sounded. He had known what the position of Warden-Commander entailed when he'd asked her to take it on, and hadn't even mentioned it to her. She suspected she knew why, and it was at once infuriating that he thought she was so easy to manipulate, and endearing that he was at least trying.

Woolsey pinched her lips shut, and was silent. I will need to be careful of her. Kathil had studied the histories, and often as not it was the accountants who made the difference between victory and defeat. Armies ran on their stomachs, and coin kept those stomachs full.

The First Warden had sent this woman and this woman alone to oversee things for him at Vigil's Keep. She was positioned to do them all immeasurable good, or deepest harm.

Varel seemed to have recovered a bit. "It is an honor, but truly, I cannot accept. I've never wished to rule, only serve."

She gentled her voice, deliberately. "Do we not all serve, Varel? This arling deserves someone who cares about it deeply. It is wounded, and it will take great care to heal. Help me put it back together."

He considered her for a long moment. "What sort of arrangement were you thinking? One that still leaves the Wardens with at least part of the income of the arling, I imagine."

Thank Andraste for reasonable men. "I was hoping to get your opinion, and that of Mistress Woolsey." She shifted her stance, softening her shoulders. "Right now, the Wardens need minimal income—we're paying for repairs to the keep, of course, but we don't have very many actual Wardens to fund." Surprisingly enough, when she'd consulted with Laurens yesterday he'd told her that all Wardens were entitled to a stipend, though not all of them drew it. Kathil had a reasonably staggering amount of back pay owed her at the moment. "And I'd argue that rebuilding Amaranthine is our top priority."

"We have soldiers coming from various arlings, to help keep order and be present just in case one of our northern neighbors gets any ideas," Varel said. "So we have them to keep fed, as well."

"I do have the goodwill of the Crown to draw on, and I may be able to talk Orzammar into at least lending us people and coin, if not making an outright gift." Maybe. From Dagna's letters, Pyral Harrowmont was not precisely the king Kathil had hoped he'd be when she'd chosen him over his Aeducan rival. "I think we can draw up some agreements about how coin and goods flow through the arling, and then write some codicils that divert most of it to the rebuilding effort for the next few years."

Mistress Woolsey was nodding. "I can draft those agreements, and the codicil. The First Warden may have something to say about it, eventually."

"The First Warden sent Ferelden an accountant rather than men and arms," Kathil said. "I assume this means that he thought we needed you." Or perhaps he just wanted you away from wherever it is you came from. "Draw up a draft, I think we can safely assume we'll be arguing over it for a few weeks. I'll write Alistair."

Garevel cleared his throat. "With all due respect, Warden, you may not have to." All eyes turned to the man. "We had a runner come in this morning. The King and Queen are paying an official visit to Amaranthine. They should be here in fifteen days, or so. Evidently, they're waiting for some forces from Redcliffe to join them in Denerim before they travel here."

Kathil hoped that she didn't go quite as pale as she felt. I'd hoped to have more time. "Convenient," she said, and the word sounded forced even to her ears. "Well. I hope that means that they're prepared to help fund the rebuilding. Any other news?"

"Nothing of quite that import. I dropped the messages on Laurens's—your—desk."

"I'll have a look at them later. I don't have anything else, if none of you do." They had only been here for five days; not quite long enough for the Chantry to get its knickers in a knot. That was still coming. Laurens was delaying his departure for the very practical reason that there weren't any ships in what was left of the port. The Waking Sea was in a foul mood at the moment, and vented her displeasure in the form of cold, lashing wind and rain. Only the qunari and certain pirates would risk their ships to the Waking Sea's wrath. As soon as the weather cleared, Laurens would take ship.

He could go the long way round, but that wasn't precisely practical this time of year, either. The Frostbacks would remain impassible well into late spring. So for the moment, he was here. With any luck, Cullen and Jowan and the rest would be back soon, with news about what had happened to the errant mages and Templars from the Circle. She'd managed to pry out of Laurens that they'd shown up at the Vigil and had been turned away. He had no idea what had happened to them, afterwards. I had my hands full, he'd told her.

She was still waiting for him to tell her what exactly had happened over the winter that had left most of the Wardens in the Vigil—fifty-two in all—dead. All she knew was that it had something to do with speaking darkspawn and, improbably, a battle between two factions of darkspawn. She would have thought that Laurens was barking mad, if it hadn't been for the fact that she'd seen the support he had among the Wardens he'd recruited.

They couldn't all be insane. Could they?

The others demurred, and she nodded to them and retreated, Lorn following. She went in search of Zevran, who'd taken charge of Cerys while Kathil had gone to deal with Varel's impatient request to discuss business, as he'd put it. Her head was starting to hurt, and Cerys would want a nap just about now.

She found him in the inner ward, talking to Wade and Herren. Herren was holding Cerys, and Wade was dangling a thin chain over the infant, who was chuckling and swiping at it with her hands. "You do realize that she's a baby and not a kitten, yes?" Kathil said as she drew near. The wind had calmed for the moment, though the sky was still spitting rain and people hurried through the ward with shoulders hunched and cloak hoods up. Lorn loped ahead and barked at Wade, who used his free hand to ruffle the wardog's ears.

Forge-steel man! said the flicking ears and the lolling tongue. Lorn leaned against Wade, so hard that the smith nearly staggered.

"Yes, but look! She loves it. Perhaps a weight of some sort on the end? A miniature mace? It'll keep her entertained for hours." Wade looked up and appeared to actually see her for the first time. "You! The elf, here, told me you had the temerity to go and get married and you didn't even let me make rings or bracelets or anything for you."

Kathil lips twitched into something that felt reminiscent of a smile. A man as tall and broad and with such a very big moustache as Wade shouldn't pout nearly as effectively as he did. "I don't think Herren would forgive me if I asked you to make jewelry for me. He has enough trouble every time I ask you for a set of armor."

"Oh, no, no, it's no trouble! Really! Bracelets, I think. Dragonbone with silverite chasing? Or maybe gold! No, no, your coloring is all wrong—"

"Wade." Herren broke in with a stern look. "The Warden isn't going to commission bracelets from you."

"Oh, but they're going to be a gift!" Kathil exchanged amused glances with Zevran. "I can make them between orders. Really, Herren, everything we've been given recently is so dull. Drakeskin this, red steel that, it's all so tedious."

"You like working with drakeskin." Herren gave a long-suffering sigh. "You are impossible."

"It is what you get for working with an artist, no?" Zevran said. "And if you will excuse me and this little one, I believe the Warden-Commander has come to fetch Cerys and I."

"That's acting Warden-Commander at the moment," Kathil said. Herren stepped around his table and deposited a squirming Cerys into her arms, and then went back to arguing with Wade. Lorn left Wade, sniffed Harren politely, and then joined Kathil.

The warhound looked up at her, and at Cerys. Pup is safe?

"I don't think Zevran is about to let anything happen to her," she told the hound. Lorn gave a canine snort of approval in response. "I wish Cullen and Jowan and the rest would get back," she said to Zevran. "Miserable few days out there, and I think Sigrun and Nathaniel at least would like the chance to say goodbye to Laurens." She glanced at her shoulder at Wade and Herren, who had settled into an amiable bickering. "At least those two never change."

"Though I was surprised to find them here. Alistair's meddling, I believe." Zevran quirked one corner of his mouth. "It is good you arrived when you did, else Wade may have attempted to make armor for Cerys. He was certainly enchanted by the possibility."

In Kathil's arms, Cerys stirred, her mouth puckering. She wrinkled her nose as a drop of rain fell on her face. Kathil wiped the baby's cheek with her free hand. "Can you imagine? She'd grow out of it before he was finished." She gave Zevran a sidelong glance. "Varel decided to be reasonable."

"Ah, as I knew he would. Though I would have given much to see the look on his face, when he realized that you had trapped him."

"I did not trap him." They passed under the portcullis and into the keep. "I simply pointed out certain things. He'll be a good Arl, I think."

"Mmm. You do have a habit of rearranging the leadership of this country to suit your liking."

"Only a very little meddling, except for Alistair." She gave Zevran half a smile as they turned the corner and headed up the stairs to the rooms they shared.

"I think you forget Orzammar," was his reply. "Though, from the sounds of things, your predecessor did some rearrangement of his own. All in good faith, of course. Conspiracies and such. So refreshing; it reminds me of Antiva, all of the delightfully bloody politics. Perhaps my skills will not grow rusty from disuse, yes?" He looked slyly delighted.

"Except that this is Ferelden, not Antiva." Lorn trotted ahead of them, his tail wagging. "Ah, I could sleep for a week, and that infernal wind is starting up again."

"Perhaps not a week, but an afternoon could be arranged," Zevran said. "Come, my Warden. We will curl up together for an afternoon, yes?"

Before Kathil could reply, there was a call of, "Warden! Er, Warden-Commander! Wait!" They turned, and saw the lieutenant who was usually posted on the main door rushing down the hall after them. Nadine's cloak was shedding droplets of water on the stone as she rushed towards them. "A messenger came just after you went inside. Well, not so much a messenger as a Templar. I thought it might be important." She came to a stop and held out a damp piece of folded parchment out to Kathil, who shifted Cerys and took it from her.

"And what did you do with the Templar?" The parchment had the seal of the Tower Templars on it, pressed into red wax. Greagoir. This cannot be good. There was a familiar yawing feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if the ground under her feet were pitching slightly.

"He went to the chapel, the Sisters will sort him out. If there's nothing else?" Kathil shook her head, and Nadine scampered away.

Their room was not far, and Kathil settled Cerys in the cradle that Varel had managed to dig up from one of the keep's storerooms, then settled down on the big bed with her note. She broke the seal, hoping beyond hope that it was not the one thing she feared—

To the Grey Warden Kathil,

I am grieved to tell you that First Enchanter Irving passed in his sleep at the beginning of spring. It was not unexpected, but it is still a great loss for the Circle.

More so a loss because there are no suitable candidates for First Enchanter currently resident in the Tower. Irving was of the opinion that either Senior Enchanters Petra or Kinnon would be suitable if they could be somehow recalled from the Grey Wardens, even if they have already joined. If you have found them, and if either can be persuaded to return, we may yet be able to salvage the situation. There are alternatives, but none of them are good.

I hope that this message reaches you, and I hope that you are able to convince Petra or Kinnon to return. I have sent other messages, but what I have heard of the situation outside these walls does not give me confidence that those messages will be heeded. We can get along without a First Enchanter for only a short time—until midsummer, no longer. After that, I will have to contact the Grand Cleric of Ferelden and implement one of several unpleasant alternatives.

I pray that you have been able to locate our errant mages, and that you can persuade one of them to return.

Ser Greagoir, Knight-Commander, the Tower

Too numb for grief, Kathil sat and stared at the letter, reading the first line over and over again. Irving is dead. "Irving is dead," she repeated aloud, as if saying it would make it real.

Zevran said nothing, only sat beside her on the bed and wound his arms around her. She refolded the letter with shaking hands, leaned into Zevran's familiar and much-welcomed warmth.

Irving is dead, and the Circle is without a First Enchanter.

So much had rested on that one heartbeat, that set of shoulders worn thin and frail by all that was on them. She knew the alternatives that Greagoir had mentioned. The Rite of Annulment was among them, as was the possibility of importing a First Enchanter from elsewhere—perhaps Kirkwall, or Orlais.

Years of careful work by Irving and Greagoir could become so much dust, blown away on an errant breeze. The Grey Wardens stood to lose the alliance that was being built between themselves and the Tower. And the few that were left in the Tower stood to lose their lives.

Cullen, Jowan, I surely hope you manage to find Petra and the rest...

Cullen:

He stood at the edge of the dubious shelter of the lean-to, looking up into the steel-colored sky. "I think it's stopping," he said, then winced as a gust of wind threw cold needles of rain into his face. "Maybe," he amended. Fiann was digging enthusiastically in the mid a few yards off.

"If we go north, we won't have to cross the Hafter," Nathaniel said. He was standing next to Cullen, squinting upward. "It'll lose us a couple of days, but then we'll have the road and we can make up some of that. I had almost forgotten what spring is like here."

"Kirkwall was nicer?" Cullen asked. Sigrun had mentioned that Nathaniel had been in the Free Marches for a few years, completely missing the Blight in Ferelden. Cullen had managed to pry out of the man that he'd been stationed in Kirkwall for a time, but nothing more.

"Weather-wise? In a manner of speaking. More heat, fewer storms. The politics were quite a bit more fraught, however." Cullen gave Nathaniel an inquiring look. "Very long story, and my part in it was small. Maybe later."

Maybe later, with Nathaniel, meant never.

Behind them, under their makeshift shelter, the Templars were busy putting together a meal (and when asked why they, of all people, were doing the cooking, Guaire just shrugged and said that Petra liked to experiment with the food, fires burned way too hot around Kinnon and he burned everything, and Keilli tended to forget she was cooking and wander off if she saw an interesting bird), and Anders and Jowan were, as usual, not speaking to each other.

Very, very loudly.

The two of them had been engaged in an escalation of hostilities for the last few days. Cullen wasn't sure where the argument between them was rooted, but it seemed only a matter of time before they graduated from stinging nettles in bedrolls and "accidental" singeings to actual attempts to kill each other. Cullen had always liked Anders, despite the fact that he was a lot of trouble. He was at least cheerful trouble, unlike Jowan, and also unlike Jowan he was useful. The mages who specialized in healing tended to have a lot of troublesome behavior overlooked, in the Tower.

(Though that was probably unfair. The maleficar Warden had proven that he had skill and power and was willing to put both of them to good use. But Cullen had not missed the fact that Kathil had sent him out here with Jowan, presumably to keep an eye on him.)

"North it is," Cullen said to Nathaniel. "I'm willing to bet the Hafter is running so high that the south ford we came through is going to be impossible."

Fiann left off her digging, coming back into the shelter. She shook, sending mud flying, and grinned up at him. Cullen wiped his face with one hand, sighing. They were all wet and filthy. He'd stopped objecting to the occasional shower from Fiann a few days ago.

The archer turned towards his packs, running his fingers over the bow he carried in a practiced motion, the same way Cullen would check his sword. "Looking forward to getting back to the Vigil. Altogether a bit wet out here."

"So am I." He looked up at the sky and grimaced. "After we eat, we can set off again. Maybe we can find a farmhold to shelter in for the night."

"And a proper meal," Sigrun said. She stepped into the shelter, out of the rain. "No beasties nearby. Justice will be back soon. He has no reason to want to get out of the rain. It's all the same to him." She grinned and poked Cullen in the ribs with a hard finger, in the gap that his cuirass didn't cover. "You're in a hurry, I hear."

He never knew quite what to do with the Legionnaire. She made fun of him—she made fun of everyone—but it was all in play. Sigrun liked people. She even liked Jowan.

And underneath the cheerfulness and the open face lurked the heart of a Dust Town brigand.

"I have a family to get back to," he said. "And I think if we don't get back soon, Anders and Jowan might actually kill each other. Not that it would be much of a loss, but I think the Commander might have some choice words for me about it."

"I heard that," Jowan growled from the back of the shelter.

"I think I could stand to be shouted at," Anders muttered. "A Warden. Of all the things—"

Sigrun sighed and rolled her eyes. "What is your problem, anyway? All you do is glare at each other and sulk. You'd think you were five, not however old you are."

Cullen cleared his throat. "That's not relevant—"

"Isn't it?" Anders stood, all at once, surprisingly graceful for someone as tall as he was. "Should I tell her what her fellow Warden did in order to get his useless maelficar self out of the Tower?"

"You'd have done the same thing—" Jowan protested. He was standing now as well, holding himself stiffly. Keilli was nearest him, and she flinched away with wide eyes. She'd barely spoken two words to anyone since the Wardens had found her and the rest. Cullen remembered what this mage had been like in the Tower, and gave her a wide berth.

Fiann, beside Cullen, whined softly. He dropped a hand to her head, a restraining gesture. She glanced up at him with worried eyes.

"First you use me to get access to the restricted stacks," Anders snarled. "Then you get me to help you defeat the wards on the books themselves. I can't believe I bought that bit about applications of healing spells you thought you were going to find in those books. And then, when you'd managed to figure out how to use blood magic, you started experimenting. On the Tranquil."

"I wasn't experimenting, I was—Andraste's Ass, you're never going to listen to me, are you? It was the only way I could keep myself out of Uldred's hands!" Jowan's pale skin had flushed bright red. "I saw what he did to Sati—"

Then he stopped, shuddering.

Anders wasn't listening. "I had to put the Templars you hurt back together after you made your escape," he said, and his voice had gone cold. "I've never hurt anyone when I escaped. And I especially didn't leave behind a Chantry initiate who was being hauled to the Aeonar by Templars who knew she'd slept with a blood mage. You used me, Jowan. You used me, and you used Lily, and you used Kathil. Not to mention that Tranquil—what was his name? Gelm?"

"I was trying to help." Jowan shook his head. "I thought—if the Rite could be modified—"

"You got lucky that you didn't burn out what was left of his mind! I held my tongue, because I knew that if they figured out who had done it, they'd soon enough figure out how you got into the books in the first place." The mage's normally-affable features were hard. "And here you are. Rewarded for being a maleficar, because your best friend got conscripted into the Wardens."

"A reward. Is that what you think this is? My former best friend demanded a phylactery from me when she conscripted me. This is the first time I've been allowed out of her sight for half a year, and she sent her personal Templar to keep an eye on me. I joined the Grey Wardens in hope that I would be able to set something, anything right. To make things better, instead of making them worse." Jowan spread his hands, and Cullen would swear that the anguish on his face was real. "Look, Anders, I'm sorry. Sorry about what I did to you, and Lily, and Kathil, and I'm even sorry about the stupid Templars, and everything else I've done. But sorry's not why I'm here. I'm here to try to do something right with the rest of my life."

The two mages glared at each other in silence for a long moment. Then Anders snorted and went back to sorting out the variety of dried plants and roots he had with him, evidently not deigning to dignify Jowan's outburst with a response. They were all silent, except for the gusting of the wind and the shushing patter of rain as it picked up once more. Justice loomed out of the rain, stopping at the edge of the shelter to watch them all, a puzzled expression on his face.

Fiann leaned into Cullen, seeking comfort. Two-legs are complicated, said her drooping ears. She still watched Jowan and Anders, as if seeking some explanation of their behavior that would make sense to a canine mind. Cullen rather wished Lorn were here; Kathil's wardog was older and more experienced in the ways of people, and Cullen had caught him "explaining" things to Fiann on more than one occasion. Mostly things about kitchens, and how to best set her ears to get tidbits, but sometimes about how packs made of people worked.

The meal was a quickly put together, an assortment of salted meat soaked in a pot over the fire, and a vaguely bread-like substance baked in the coals. They ate silently, packed back up, and moved on.

Something was nagging at the back of Cullen's mind. Jowan had mentioned Sati, having seen what Uldred had done to Sati. He'd known that Sati had been one of the Senior Enchanter's protégés, but she had switched mentors right before her Harrowing.

Uldred had been a demon, for how long nobody truly knew, and his coterie of students and sycophants had held themselves apart from the rest of the Circle.

What did you know, Jowan, that you didn't tell Kathil?

Those days were long over, and Sati had been dead for six years. Right now, they had a long, wet walk in front of them, and too much potential trouble in their immediate future to spend time digging it out of the buried past.

He pulled up his cloak hood, and ruffled Fiann's wet ears. Keep on.

Lorn:

This is a strange territory they are settling into.

It is stone, like the tall stone place that was most recently his territory. But it spreads out instead of goes up, mostly. The territory he will establish is the tallest part, in the center. There are kitchens, storerooms, places that reek of steel and oil and leather, the big room with the huge fire in the center. That is one of his favorite places when the rain is coming down outside, which it usually is.

None of these things are strange.

There are more people who smell like his human and her dust-knight and her mouse-mage do, like hunger and sin. And there are other knights, and other humans and elves and dwarves and even one of the big ones like the one who traveled with their pack before. There are other Mabari, too, and an established pack structure, and sometimes he has to growl and tussle to make his point, that this is now his human's territory and therefore now his. He spends much of his time doing that, when he is not guarding his human or his human's pup.

That is not strange, either.

His human has sent her knight and the mouse-mage and Fiann away, and that is a little strange. They will come back. But he is not considering that, right now. What he is considering is a hole.

The hole is very strange.

He is beneath his new territory now, beneath the place where the smells tell him that people were once imprisoned. There are many tunnels down here, most of them blocked off, but the ones that were clear led him here.

There is a ladder, leading down into the hole. Which argues that some human, someone, knows about it.

But do they know how very strange it is? Lorn sniffs again, and whines in confusion. Darkspawn, and old bones, and stone, and dwarves. These things are not unexpected.

Sunlight. That is unexpected. As are so many of the other things that Lorn's nose is telling him—and the fact that they are changing. He thinks he smells Yvrenne, for a moment, a memory of obsidian and blood. He smells healer-mage, and demon, and some soft sweet milk-scent that makes Lorn's tail wag itself. He smells smoke and shattered stone and the insides of bones and dragon breath. Lakewater. Hungry things.

He backs away from the edge, growling. Something is down there. Something unlike anything he has ever encountered.

Lorn's human will want to know, so he turns and lopes up the tunnel, up and up, until he comes out into the place with the statue and the forge in it. (The statue is a signpost, though for some reason the humans get upset when they see the Mabari using it as such.) But when he arrives, Fiann is there! And his human's knight! And other mages and knights and there are voices raised in greeting and his human's elf is hugging the dust-knight and he forgets all about the strange thing beneath this territory for the moment.

He forgets all about it, that is, until he is lying next to Fiann (who had to have a bath before she was allowed indoors) in front of the roaring fire in the big hall. His human is sitting on the steps leading up to a platform. She smells tired, sounds tired. The dust-knight is holding the human pup, and the others who smell of hunger are gathered around except for the one who smells a little like the healer-mage but more like something that ought to have been buried a long time ago. That one stands a little way off.

They are growling and tussling. There was a piece of paper, a few days ago. The paper made his human sad. Now she glances at the dust-knight, and Lorn reads how her shoulders are set, how her hand brushes her leg, and reads fear.

Not fear of the dust-knight. Fear for him, perhaps?

Humans are complicated.

He dozes in front of the fire, Fiann's head on his flank, and sunlight and lakewater invade his dreams.

Kathil:

Petra crossed her arms. "You can't ask this of me, or of Kinnon. We've come too far to go back now."

The mage's mouth was set in a tight, hard line, her brow furrowed. Beside her, Kinnon looked slightly panicked. Kathil tried to steady her breath, calm the roil of emotions that surged through her. "I like it as well as you do." And I would have reacted much as you have, if after six months of freedom someone asked me to go back to the Tower. "The Tower needs a First Enchanter, and the ranks of Senior Enchanters are very, very thin. There's Iselle, Jerrik, and Liam, and that's all."

"Iselle would be a disaster as First Enchanter," Kinnon blurted, then looked surprised at his words. "I mean, everyone likes her, she's really very nice. But she's..." He groped for words, frowning.

"She's a pushover, is what you mean," Petra said. "And that's the last thing a First Enchanter should be. And the other two can no more lead the Tower than a cat can fly. Good mages, but they're terrible with people."

"You see the problem," Kathil said. "I didn't want to ask either of you to do this. I think both of you would make good Wardens. But I don't think there's much chance of anything good coming of the Circle being annulled, or of inviting foreign mages in to the Circle."

Silence strained between the three of them. That the mages and Templars had been found so easily, Kathil had thought, was a blessing. (It had helped that Sigrun and Nathaniel between them had remembered a number of farmholds that had been decimated by darkspawn, and they'd surmised that a group of sufficiently determined people might hold one of them against the winter.) She'd hoped that Petra or Kinnon would be sufficiently disenchanted by life outside of the Tower, or sufficiently fond of the Circle, to consider going back.

Such was not, it seemed, the case.

Nothing can ever be easy, can it?

"Why not you?" Petra asked. "Irving wanted you as First Enchanter. The other Senior Enchanters who objected are...well, from what you said, they're gone now."

"I have a daughter. Just how well do you think that would end?" Kathil asked. Silent stone, staring Templars, the Chantry ever close at hand, all that rose to her mind unbidden. She raised her hand, touched the Warden's Oath at her throat, dangling on its jeweled chain. "And no, I am not leaving her with someone to raise for me. I have gone to great lengths to save the Circle from itself. But I will not give up Cerys to save it again."

Petra's eyes were narrowed, but it was Kinnon who spoke. "We left for a reason. The Tower...there's something wrong there. Apprentices dying by their own hands, Templars, mages." He shook his head. "We couldn't stop it. Maker's Breath, we couldn't even save any of the apprentices. We could just get ourselves out."

Ah. That. She hadn't had a chance to tell them what had happened at the Tower. The news of Irving's death had taken precedence. Her mouth was dry. "Well. There are some things I should tell you."

And she did.

Not all of it. She left out the fact that the demon had followed them to the Brecilian Forest, glossed over Zevran's unwilling participation in the creation of the hole in the Veil. She didn't mention that she had nearly gotten stranded on the wrong side of the Veil, frozen within the dream-image of Urthemiel.

The rest, she gave to them.

When she finished, her throat hurt and her eyes burned. Petra and Kinnon both looked like they were thinking hard. "I never—" Petra stopped, and shook her head. "I never imagined it was a demon. Andraste, the poor apprentices! If we hadn't abandoned them—"

"You had to save yourselves," Kathil said. "You couldn't have known. None of us knew, and would you really have believed the apprentices, if they'd said that the White Lady was real? We've all heard that story, but I don't remember anyone actually believing it."

"A little bit, down deep," Kinnon said, and shrugged. He was looking out the arrow-loop closest to him, apparently focusing on the wind and rain. She knew Kinnon, and knew that it was when he seemed most distracted that he was actually paying the most attention. "I was older than you were when I came to the Circle. Everything was so strange, I wasn't sure what to believe. And you have to admit, thinking that maybe you can summon someone to help if things get too bad is an attractive prospect, even if you know it's probably just a lie."

"We'll think about it, and talk about it," At least Petra wasn't fuming quite so much any more. "Just out of curiosity...your daughter, she is yours, yes? As in, you carried her? Wynne said that wasn't possible for us."

"She told me the same thing, and it was just as inaccurate when she told you as when she told me. The thing is, the spell that's put on us that prevents conception isn't foolproof. And if you're sleeping with a Templar..." Kathil quirked the corner of her mouth. "Might want to be aware of that, if you're pondering bedding Guaire."

Petra's mouth fell open, and she went white, and then splotchy red. "I—I never—We're friends."

"And I was friends with Cullen." She drew a long breath. "Look, there are more things you should know about the relationship between mages and Templars, but it can wait for another day. Let's just say that what the Chantry says we have to be to one another is only one of many possibilities. They could be our brothers. Partners. To protect the world from us, us from the world, us from ourselves. And we can do the same for them."

The other two mages were staring at her as if she'd gone mad. "Did Guaire stand at your Harrowing, Petra?" Kathil asked.

"He did—I don't know what this has to do with anything."

Kathil laughed. It felt hollow in her chest. "Neither do I. But Cullen stood at mine, and ever since if he's ever been given a choice he always comes down on the side of protecting me. And I do the same for him." She remembered standing under the unfriendly gazes of her fellow Wardens, daring them: do your worst. I am ready.

And an afternoon in the Tower, alone on the back stairs and trying to justify to herself what she had done to her Templar.

Petra was taking long breaths, visibly making an effort to remain calm. "We'll talk more about that later. For now, we should go. Anders was planning to challenge the Dalish warden—Velanna, yes?—to a duel of some sort. He was saying something about some counterspell he was working on..."

Now that Kathil was thinking about it, she had heard Velanna fuming about the mage who dared believe that he could counter anything she did. "Please tell me you're kidding. I'm not sure that Velanna's acquainted with the concept of pulling her punches, so to speak."

"Or anything remotely resembling social skills," Kinnon muttered. "Let's go make sure that they haven't killed each other."

They piled out of the small room Kathil was currently using as an office and went in search of Velanna and Anders. At least it would be a nice change from Anders and Jowan sitting at opposite corners of the great hall, glaring at each other. Kathil didn't know what their precise problem was, but she could guess at what it might be. Jowan had done a lot of stupid things in the name of getting out of the Tower, and Anders had always been too helpful for his own good.

She'd thought things were going well, that she'd be able to have the Vigil well in hand and the issue of the empty First Enchanter position decided by the time Alistair and his entourage arrived. It would have been nice to be able to hand over the disposition of the arldom as a fait acompli, to be able to simply offhandedly mention that Petra or Kinnon had taken over as First Enchanter...

And oh, by the way, I've had a daughter and gotten married since the last time I saw you.

Right now, she didn't know if she were anticipating or dreading the arrival of the King and his entourage. Both, really.

She went to deal with a pair of quarrelsome mages, and tried not to think about everything looming that she was not dealing with.

Two days later, word came from Amaranthine that a qunari vessel had been sighted off the coast.