"This is remarkable," Anders whispered as he sat reading the book.
"The Seekers created the rite of Tranquility, knowing from the beginning that it could be reversed…. By summoning a spirit to touch the Tranquil's mind. Seeker initiates are themselves made Tranquil, before being restored by the spirit of Faith. It is said that afterward they are then protected from possession. Wow," he read aloud while rubbing at his brow. "A spirit touching the mind restores their connection to the Fade. That explains why Karl…"
Anders' eyes went distant and he sat in silence.
"Karl?" Selise asked. She was steeping tea in the kettle as they warmed themselves by the fire. They'd located a narrow cave and made camp within, grateful to get out of the biting cold.
"Karl… Yes, he was a mage I knew. I tried to get him out of the Circle, but I got there too late. He was already Tranquil. I was ambushed by Templars and once Justice came out… his mind came back. But only for a few minutes. I have been wondering ever since how that was possible. He…"
The sadness in Anders' voice struck a note deep within Selise, and she stopped stirring the tea.
"He was someone who was very dear to me," he said, his voice becoming shaky, "This means he could have been restored. Maker! If only we had known!"
Anders' shoulders drooped as though they carried the weight of the world. Selise brought herself closer to him, wrapping her arm around his back.
"Could have been?" she asked. "We can't find him and do it now?"
"I had to kill him. He begged me to," he muttered.
"Oh. I'm so sorry my love," Selise said gently. "That's terrible."
His brows were drawn, eyes squeezed closed. Selise felt his pangs of sorrow as they ached in his chest. She realized she must have let her barrier slip again, and had to reweave it. It had been happening more and more often. She could only guess it was because of how comfortable she was with him, how open.
"Those monsters!" he growled. "Karl and I were in the Circle together for 2 years when we were growing up. We cared for each other. He was my… my first."
"Your first…?" Selise asked.
"Yes. That kind of first," he said. "And the only thing that made the Circle bearable for so long."
Selise squeezed him tighter. She wasn't terribly surprised that Anders' first lover was a man. After spending three years in the Circle herself, she knew that in there everyone was bedding everyone, regardless of gender. Everyone except her, anyway. But she was sure that was only due to her lack of social skills. There certainly was that tall blond girl who was always giving her long, ostentatious glances, but Selise had only been confused by it all at the time. Later on she realized what it must have meant, not that she would have been interested in return. She wasn't even particularly interested in the boy she did sleep with, she was only curious about all the fuss made over taking someone to bed.
She tucked a cord of his hair behind his ear. Her barrier was resurrected, but her heart still ached for him, as strongly as though nothing had been blocked out at all.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered again.
Anders sat silently for several moments. Selise poured some tea into the metal cup that he'd brought along, and set it in his hands. He turned to look at her with deep, sad eyes.
"Well at least we know now. And you won't ever have to endure anything like that again," she said softly. He nodded, his eyes falling down to stare into the cup of tea.
"So there's no other spell or anything needed beyond summoning a spirit?" she asked. "I mean… whatever that entails."
He shook his head.
"Do you think… Could that maybe mean that you are immune to Tranquility yourself? Not only is your mind touched by a spirit, but it's inhabited by one," she asked. "Does it say anything about that?"
"Not that I've seen yet. But I've only just begun," he paused to take a sip of the tea, "that would be interesting though, wouldn't it?"
"It would. It would give me a little peace of mind. To know that no one could ever eviscerate you like that," Selise said. He leaned over and kissed her on the temple, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her in close. She nestled into the nook of his arm, feeling his touch combine with the heat of the fire to drive away the last of the cold that remained in her bones.
"Now we just need to get you possessed as well," he joked sadly.
She recalled how she almost had been, in the dungeon. But surely that wasn't the same. The moment she let go of Anders, the spirit had retreated completely back into his body. She couldn't help but wonder what would happen if she completely sucked Justice in. Would he stay? Could she actually take his possession from him? It seemed the obvious end result to what had already happened. Selise shook the thought out of her head. Even if it was possible, they would never try it. They shouldn't ever try it. Anders wouldn't want that, and it would probably be irreversible. She could drain energy from people, but she couldn't put it back into them.
It had been a long several days on the horse and the first time that they'd found an actual cave to camp in. The wind had gotten stronger as they'd pressed deeper into the mountains and they hadn't seen or heard any sign of the Inquisition soldiers since Anders' had brought the cliffs down. She'd begun to suspect that they'd pulled back, but knew that didn't mean they had given up. Most likely Leliana would station many of her people in all the towns just on the outskirts of the Frostbacks, to listen and report back to her whenever she and Anders emerged into civilization. Surely there were still scouts and soldiers about, but she'd felt no psychic alerts on them in two days now, and even before that there were no indications that anyone was actually very close. Not that they stayed in one place long enough to find out.
Anders stood abruptly and began pacing the cave, leaving the book open on the ground next to where he had been sitting. He was angrily muttering things under his breath that Selise couldn't quite understand. She left him to it and picked up the mug of tea, pulling the book toward her. She flipped absentmindedly through chunks of pages, skimming through passages and little drawings, but found herself unable to focus, her eyes blurring right past the words and images.
She wished they'd had the time in Skyhold to just read the thing instead of take it. The important bits of information they originally sought had already been summed up in a handful of sentences, which Anders had been able to relay to her in less than a minute. They really hadn't need to steal this whole thing, had they?
And what if they hadn't? What if the book was still exactly where it belonged back in the Ambassador's office and the Inquisition didn't have that to add to whatever other charges against them existed? Would they be more inclined to back off them eventually? Wouldn't their forces be better spent on other things, instead of trying to track them down if all they were doing was fleeing?
Her mind began to race.
She was also concerned about the horse, whom she had begun to call Click. She wasn't sure why, other than that the constant clicking of his hooves against the ice was all she had heard all day, every day for a week now. They didn't have any proper food for him and she was already starting to see him get thinner, and more cantankerous as time went on. She'd been rationing out all the fruits and vegetables for the horse, but those were aging and shrinking, and would be gone very soon. In most other places she could let him out to pasture to graze on grass, but there was none of that here. Only snow and rocks and ice. Unless they got to a town very soon, the horse would begin to starve. And Selise absolutely could not abide the thought of that.
What if… what if after they read everything they needed to, they secured the book to the horse, and got him back to Skyhold? Or just put him back on a course to meet whatever soldiers might still be behind them? It would mean somehow getting him past the wall of rock, but if the Inquisition received the book back, and the promise to obey the banishment and get out of southern Thedas, at least after the stopover at Denerim, was there the possibility that they might just leave her and Anders alone?
She wished she knew the answer to that. Maybe the elf could tell her. Whenever it was that he showed back up in her dream, if that was even real.
Selise sighed deeply, her chest feeling heavy. She heard Anders continue to do whatever he was doing, pacing, talking, marking something out on the stone wall, but it wasn't enough to draw her out of her thoughts. Ever since that dream about her father, where Solas had showed up, she'd been thinking about Leliana, Fiona and the Circle. They had shown her such trust and kindness over the years, teaching her how to act like a real person, not the sheltered, traumatized, unsocialized girl that she was the night she walked away from the house that had imprisoned her. They'd become her surrogate parents for a time, until her talents had been recognized by Fiona and she'd been given the opportunity to strike out on her own. Even then, they'd always provided guidance, and a place to come back to when she had no where to go. They'd been her first real friends. She had no idea what they would be thinking about her escape with Anders. She had no desire to have done anything differently, but she hoped that at the very least, they didn't hate her.
And there was Solas' face from her dream, burned vividly into her memory. She'd had the dream about the events of the night she escaped so many times that by the point she went to the field to watch the house burn, she felt very little. It happened, it wasn't going to change, and she didn't regret it. But the horror of the situation, the horror she no longer saw, had been written all over his face. In his sharply drawn brows, pursed mouth and disturbed eyes. It hadn't meant much to her in that moment, but the memory of his face kept coming back again and again, worming its way into her emotions, causing growing ripples of unease.
"Think more upon your past," he had instructed her. "For that is where you will find important clues to enhancing your magic." But what was she looking for? Was there no other way? She could barely force her mind to find so many of those memories, much less linger on them, or penetrate and analyze them. And in all honesty, she didn't want to.
Selise let her head hang over the book. She should read it, or as much of it as she could manage. They both should. But try as she might, her mind wouldn't focus.
She stood up and walked to the mouth of the cave, leaving the echoes of Anders' disquiet behind her. She pulled one of the grey wool blankets around her shoulders and inched herself around the horse, who was tied up on a length of rope that allowed him to come just inside the cave to escape the wind. The frigid air of the night cut straight through the blanket, but the chill didn't lessen her desire for a moment of solitude and a few minutes of stargazing. Across the sky blushed the gentle green shimmer of an aurora, and while it took her breath away with its beauty, she was also reminded of the sickly green of the Fade rift she and Anders had seen. Just the one so far, but she was sure there were more of them out there.
Behind the aurora shone the billion pinpricks of twinkling light, and her mind was invited into a beautiful and contemplative abyss. A deep breath brought in air so frosty that it burned her lungs and she almost coughed, breaking her reverie. But she refocused, smelling the pleasantly acrid pine of the surrounding trees, hearing the low croon of a distant owl.
Each day had been so paradoxical, the daylight hours filled with cold, hunger, boredom, sore muscles, heavy minds, and anxious bellies. And during the nights she and Anders' released their stresses by indulging in each others' bodies, exhausting themselves until their minds fell quiet. Some nights they stayed quiet until sleep took them, and some nights they whispered through the dark, sharing fears, hopes, memories. He was her salvation, her comfort. But there were things within her that even he couldn't touch, that she couldn't bring herself to tell him. Just as she saw in his eyes and felt in his energy, that he had many of his own things that she would never know. She understood instinctively that it wasn't so much that they were trying to keep secrets, it was that the act of telling would mean re-experiencing things that they wanted to forget. Things that would bring nothing good in their revealing, only the firing up of a pointless, helpless anger, and possibly even pity. They'd just have to settle for a silent acceptance of the well of darkness that the other carried, at least for now. At least until a time came when they were ready to divulge all the bloody details.
Selise opened up her mind, trying to rid her mind of all her thoughts. She just wanted not to think for a minute. She just wanted to be empty and free of worries, and to commune with the night, with the stillness of the sky.
It didn't take long before the soothing darkness slid inside her and blacked out all the chatter that was cluttering up her resolve. But its calming effect didn't last. With the absence of thought, came a flood of unbidden images, as vivid as the moon-drenched landscape before her. She saw a cave similar to the one they were camped within now, but larger, and filled with unfamiliar, robed bodies. She saw old, rusty cages with flat metal strips for bars and felt the raw, nauseating whirring of an unfamiliar magic. Spells older and darker than anything she had ever known. There was a foul scent of decaying, putrid blood in the air and Selise shivered, her stomach filling with a sickening dread.
She shook the scene out of her mind. She knew not what they referred to, and saw nothing of herself or Anders within them. Was it a warning? A portent of things to come? Or just some strange waking nightmare?
She was about to turn and go back inside when she felt the soft touch of Anders' hand on her back. She opened up the blanket and he slid in behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder, silently joining in her admiration of the night sky.
Xxxxxxxxxxx
He had stopped Click and climbed off, stomping through the ice and looking at her wide, incredulous eyes.
"You want to give the book back!?" he wailed.
She looked at him calmly, hoping he might eventually exhaust his initial emotional reaction and then come to think more calmly about it. She hadn't meant to mention her idea, but the more they trotted away from Skyhold, the more she felt the possibility of easily returning the book slipping way. It had been all she could think about from the moment they had set out that morning, and the suggestion just seemed to fall out of her mouth, surprising her as much as him.
"That was the whole reason I was there! I let them keep me in chains for weeks while we were being transported to Skyhold! It was all for this book. And now we have it."
"Anders, did you not get the information you wanted?"
"Yes but we don't even know what else is in there yet!" he screeched.
"So we read it. We read it, copy down the things we need to… You were already willing to try that if we had the time at Skyhold, but the Inquisitor forced us to act quickly. If we were still there, would it be any different? We find out what we need, and give the book back. What does it matter whether the information comes directly from the book or if it comes from us? If it's the truth, then it's the truth. The source isn't going to change that."
He stopped before her, his eyes dark, blinking wildly as though he couldn't process her suggestion.
"For the credibility! For the proof of Templar's abuses! People have been accusing me of exaggerating about the Order's evils for years Selise. No one believes the radical mage when he claims conspiracy, no matter how right I am!"
"But what if, what if there was the possibility that they might not continue to pursue us if not for the book? Have you seen Cassandra? Do you really want her hunting us down for year after year?" she asked, her voice gone shaky. "Giving the book back might mean freedom, for us. Less looking over our shoulder for the rest of our lives. And have you thought about what we do beyond Denerim, after we deliver the information to the mages there?"
"Well, yes actually. If we know how to cure Tranquility then that is exactly what we do. We find the Tranquil and make them whole again. That is the whole point!"
"Okay," she said gently. "Anders… we wouldn't really be losing anything if we have all the information it contains, would we? We can still cure the Tranquil without it, as long as we can find out how to summon a spirit. Maybe the book will say, but once we know, then we know. Carrying this thing around is just a liability, it makes us more of a target than we already are."
Anders turned and stalked quickly toward her, taking her hands in both of his and training his wild brown eyes on her.
"Selise don't you trust me?" he asked.
"I don't see what that has to do with…"
"Just trust me, please. The Circle needs to see it. They will need to read it for themselves. I might have entertained the idea of just copying things down before but I can't do that now. We're past the point of no return and…"
"No we're not!" she gasped.
"So, what, you want to just turn around and go back to Skyhold? March up to the gate and say 'here you go!' and then think we can walk right back out again?"
"No, not at all. Anders… the horse is beginning to suffer. We needed him, but we weren't prepared to bring him. We don't have the proper food, we don't know how to take care of his hooves… if we keep him much longer we're going to have to just put him out of his misery ourselves. We can secure the book to his saddle and direct him toward Inquisition forces. It would require some backtracking but…"
Anders cut her off with a derisive laugh.
"You have a point about the horse, but come on. Do you seriously want to just send one of the most important books in Thedas out into the wild on the back of a horse, with no guarantee it will actually end up in the right hands?"
"Who else is going to be out here? We haven't seen a soul since the day we left. And you know they haven't given up that quickly. Maybe they pulled some of their forces back, but surely there are still soldiers out there. We could get really close if we need to, observe from a distance," she told him wearily, though she cold see he still wasn't buying it. Still, she would rest much easier knowing that this particular monkey was off her back. "We've been lucky so far, but our luck could change at any time. If we give them one less reason to want us, they might even decide to show us some mercy and let us go."
Anders let out another sound, a cross between a laugh and a sneer, "You sure have a lot of faith in this Inquisition."
She sighed and looked for a place to sit. She walked over to perch herself on a boulder and felt the fight begin to leave her. She expected resistance from Anders about the idea, but not an all out argument.
"Maybe I do. There are good people in there, and they have more important things to do than worry about us. If they don't accomplish what they mean to then there won't be any Ferelden circle remnants to take this book to. What is that in comparison to a catching a couple of runaways? Because without the book, that's all we are. With the book we're thieves. Traitors."
Even as she said it, she wondered if she was wrong. She had also thought they'd at least hold Anders overnight before transferring him out, but they weren't going to. She could very well be giving the Inquisition way too much credit to think they might give up looking for them, or that it would make any difference to anyone if they gave the book back, especially since they'd still have the incriminating information the book contained. Plus backtracking would be a big problem. She had no idea how far they'd have to go before they'd get close to the soldiers.
She pulled her hair out of its tie and began fingering through all the knots and tangles as she glowered at her feet. Was she completely off base? Did she sound as ridiculous as Anders was making it seem? She heard his footsteps come across the ice and then drop down beside her, sitting directly on the ice.
She would talk to Solas about it, she decided. He was still in Skyhold and should know about the book by now, and possibly about the search. He hadn't made another appearance in her dreams yet, but he said he was coming back. Maybe she could seek him out somehow, or call to him. They'd had maybe a total of 30 minutes worth of conversation total since they first met, but she didn't see what other avenues there were to explore.
"Well, then I guess we should probably go," she said as she piled her hair back up on her head. Anders didn't answer right away, and she didn't meet his eyes.
"So what, you're just dropping it then?" he asked, his voice sounding much calmer, softer.
"For now," she told him. "There's still a lot of it left to read anyway."
He slid a hand up to her lap and grabbed hers, squeezing it affectionately. She could see his eyes in the corner of her vision, burning up at her, but she couldn't make herself look back. She was suddenly feeling thoroughly confused. She knew that she would feel better if they gave the book back, but that didn't mean it was the right thing to do, or that it would have the effect that she thought it might.
"Think of all the mages who have suffered at the hands of Templars, my love," he urged gently. "I know you have friends there, people you respect. But this is bigger than them. It's bigger than us. The world has the right to know whatever secrets the Seekers have kept and it's going to take a long time to get through them all. We hardly have the time to do it now."
Selise nodded. He was making good points. She finally looked up at him and found him staring pleadingly back at her as he threaded his fingers through hers over and over again. She wondered what would happen if an opportunity arose where she could put the book back in the hands of Cassandra, and she took it. Would Anders be so angry with her that he would break off everything they had? Or would he love her enough to try to understand, and work through it with her?
Maybe Anders was right that she should be thinking of the bigger issues beyond just Tranquility that were at stake. Perhaps it was just harder for her to keep the fires of anger burning under her because she herself had spent so little time in the Circle, or in the real world at all. Unlike Anders, who had decades of first hand knowledge of the abuses that were commonplace for most mages. Selise only knew what she'd been told, and what she'd read. Her three years in the Circle had been relatively easily, at least compared with everything that came before that. It was enough for her to support Anders' past actions on principle, but as far as real world experience went, she had little. She had her father. But her father wasn't abusive because he was a Templar. He was a Templar because it gave him an opportunity to be abusive. She supposed a lot of dark minded people might be drawn to the Order for that same reason. The thought made her shudder.
"Shall we?" she asked as she stood. She pressed down her concerns, drowning them out with more immediate matters. She helped Anders to a stand and they made their way back toward the pitiful looking horse. Selise felt a deep stab of concern as she approached the poor beast. Whatever it was they eventually decided to do with the book, the time was fast approaching that they would have to make a decision about Click. And almost any way that went would probably have the result of them having to make the rest of their journey through the Frostbacks on foot.
She stroked the grey horses' neck, who cranked his head back and began sniffing and nudging aggressively at her hands and pockets, demanding food.
"There is still the matter of this guy," Selise said. She walked around to her pack, and pulled out a handful of dried berries. Not only was the food for the horse getting low, she and Anders were getting low themselves. She had been keeping a close eye on the slopes around them as they traveled, watching for creatures to hunt for their own meals and saw nothing other than a few small birds. She expected that at some point they might begin to at least see some Ram, but there had been nothing yet. Her stomach growled as she thought about a thick, grilled steak. The handfuls of nuts and remnants of stale bread had done little to fill them up, and they'd begun to feel the energy drain from the lack of nutrients.
Anders stood quietly by as she offered the dried berries to the horse. Click inhaled them and then continued to nibble at her palm, biting down hard once no other food was found..
"Ow!" she cried as she jumped back and rubbed at the searing spot on her hand. The horses' teeth had pinched flesh against bone and pain radiated outward, causing the whole hand to throb. Anders took it into his own and relieved the pain quickly, but neither of them made a move to mount the horse.
"There is no grass under any of this snow, is there?" she asked.
"Doubtful. I'd guess that the ground below hasn't seen direct sun in… well, a very long time. If ever."
Selise nodded, lost in thought.
"Let us just walk him for a while. Give him a break from carrying our weight. We should probably get used to being on foot anyway," she said quietly.
He nodded and then stood before her, lifting her face to his with a gentle finger under her chin. He pressed his lips to hers. They were warm, but rough, chapped from day after day of riding into the cold wind. She kissed him back gently and felt herself soften toward him again, the tension that she still held onto from their argument begin to ebb. She pushed herself into his arms and rest her cheek against his the cold leathers of his coat.
"We'll be okay, Selise. We will figure all this out, I promise."