Olfina had done right by us when she seated us in the niche; despite the noisy tavern around us, we could hear each other and it wasn't likely we could be overheard. That was exactly what I wanted, given what I had to confide.
"Remember how I told you about the Grey Wardens, the warriors whose job it is to kill Arch-Demons?"
"Yes, the ones the Darkspawn dig up," Eryka picked up her own ale and drank some rather more slowly than I had done.
"Right. Well, the Grey Wardens have the right to conscript anyone into their ranks as needed in the event of a Blight, even if their head is on the block. That was what the Commander, Elissa Cousland, did to me. For me. Both to me and for me. I was going to be executed, basically for being a mage who didn't like to eat Templar shit, and she stepped in.
"The problem is, to become a Grey Warden you have to go through the Rite of Joining, which involves drinking a mixture of, among other things, Darkspawn and Arch-demon blood. If it doesn't kill you—and it does kill a lot of people—there are things you gain, like stamina and the ability to sense Darkspawn, but it also leaves you tainted, poisoned slowly from the inside."
"What does?" Olfina appeared with a tray. "I hope you're not going to say it's the ale, because the next round is on my Mum and Da. They're impressed by how you drink. Here's your dinner." She set a platter of food in front of each of us and a fresh tankard in front of me.
"They're the older couple across the way," Eryka said, raising her tankard to them. I followed suit, and they smiled, raising their own.
"If you need anything else, just call for me," Olfina said, but then someone at another table required her attention, and she left us.
One of the things becoming a Grey-Warden did for you was leave you with an appetite that would lead you to gnaw boot leather if there was nothing else to eat. The bread and cheese of that morning had been plentiful, the dumplings generous, but both meals were long gone and my belly was trying to digest itself. That didn't mean I couldn't regard my plate for a moment just out of aesthetic appreciation. There before me was a thick, juicy looking venison chop smothered in mushrooms, a huge pile of glistening carrots, and…
"Pardon my ignorance, but what's the thing that looks like a rock?" I lowered my voice as I asked.
"That?" Eryka picked up knife and fork. "It's a baked potato. Do they not have them where you come from?"
"No." I shook my head.
"Then you've been missing out! They're very tasty and nourishing, better even than bread. See, you break them open like this," she demonstrated with her utensils, releasing earthy-smelling steam into the air, "and then you sprinkle a little salt on them and put a pat of butter on them too." There was a dish of salt on the table for such purposes and a knob of butter on a little plate, and she put a pinch of one and a sliver of the other on the potato. "And then you eat it, skin and all. This is only one way of cooking potatoes. You can put them in soups and stews, boil them, fry them, mash them up, put cheese on them-it's endless."
"If you say so," I prepared mine as she did hers, and let the butter melt while I took a bite of venison with mushrooms. Oh. Thank you, Maker. It was so, so good... With the famine, even the Grey Wardens were living on tough salt beef and bread baked from weevil ridden flour, the sweepings of the miller's floor. I tried the other items. The carrots were sweeter than apples, and the potato was soft and fluffy on the inside, the skin crunchy and chewy both.
I paused for a moment before I annihilated the rest of the platter. "There was a time in my life, and it was not so long ago, when my idea of happiness was a decent meal in pleasant company, and the right to shoot lightning at fools." (I'd said that to Elissa Cousland, except I'd said 'pretty girl' rather than 'pleasant company' while what I'd really meant was 'a quick tumble.') "The meal is more than decent, the company couldn't be more pleasant, which leaves only one thing. Do I have the right to shoot lightning at fools?"
"If they try killing you first, yes. But you said 'there was a time'. What's your idea of happiness now?" Eryka asked, and the garnet color she was wearing suited her well, setting off the warm ivory of her skin and the polished-wood darkness of her hair.
She was lovely, she had heaps of character and personality both, and I suspected the generosity and kindness in her went down to the bone. There was nothing virginal about her, but there was an innocence to her that had nothing to do with the body, I thought. I truly had no idea how she would take the revelation that I went nowhere alone, that Vengeance was my constant companion. Certainly she wouldn't just be able to look past it. This might be the last time she ever looked at me like a friend and a man, the last time she ever spoke so easily and freely to me. But I hadn't answered her question.
"Now?" I stalled for time. The problem with having one decent meal was, a few hours later, I'd be hungry again. Tumble a willing girl, and soon enough, I'd be lusting for another tumble. After a while, you want all your meals to be decent, and instead of a fast poke up against a wall, you want someone in your bed every night, and the same someone at that. As for shooting lighting at fools—there is never a dearth of fools in the world, and eventually it would get boring. "Now—it's helping people." Specifically mages, but I was willing to expand. I could imagine a lot of Fereldans wanting to settle down here.
"That's a good answer," she nodded.
"Thank you," I took another bite of the venison, which had been aged to perfection.
"If it's sincere. I haven't forgotten about the blue and crackly part. You joined the Grey Wardens, survived, and—then you found out the bad news?" Eryka quirked her brows and waited.
"Yes. It cuts your life short, among other things. If the darkspawn don't get you beforehand, then in thirty years you start to go to pieces and your comrades lead you to the Deep Roads, where you can go out fighting the spawn in one last blaze of glory." Potatoes were my new favorite food, I decided, using some to mop up meat juices and butter.
"Thirty years," She shook her head. "You said you were twelve when you left home and that was fourteen years ago, so now you're twenty-six. How old were you when you joined these Wardens?"
"Twenty-four," I replied.
"That's how old I am. So you'd be fifty-four when Sovngarde beckons. Many people don't get that long in the ordinary course of things. Fifty-four is old bones for a man-at-arms, or a woman who's born a dozen or more children. I do see that it's young for a mage, though." She looked thoughtful and ate carrots.
"Yes," I said, wanting to ask exactly how long mages lived, but it would have spoiled my momentum. "But I was alive, if not precisely free, and in good company, for the most part. Among them was…You'd call him undead. Among them was the spirit of Justice, one of those created by the Maker before he made the world as we know it. He had been trapped outside the Fade by magic, and now he was inhabiting the dead body of a Grey Warden. Once while we were talking, he asked me why, now that I had escaped, I wasn't doing anything to help other mages. I said that that wasn't my problem, or words to that effect. But it got me thinking, and I realized how shallow and selfish I had been.
"Not long after that, Justice's body began deteriorating to the point where it could no longer sustain him. He couldn't return to the Fade, thanks to how he had been trapped, and he had no soul, so he would just…cease to exist. I thought the world would be a poorer place without Justice in it, so I offered myself, willingly, as his host. I wouldn't have to die to do it, and he wouldn't take me over. We'd just share one body, one mind, and together we'd work to bring justice to mages. And we were friends, so it had to be better than him just, just ending.
"Part of it was selfish, though. Perhaps that's why things began to go wrong. The truth is, I saw how he kept Kristoff, that was the name of the Grey Warden whose body he was using—how he kept that body together for so long. And Kristoff was dead before Justice got there. I didn't want to go mad and die in thirty years. Justice could stave off that fate. The problem was, once Justice and I had merged, he changed. I changed him. I never realized how angry I was until I suddenly had so much more power, and now, when something angers me, he comes out as Vengeance."
"So the blue-and-crackly is Justice?" Eryka asked.
"Yes." I finished my second ale, and Olfina swooped in with another.
"If all this had happened here, I'd know-Well, I wouldn't know, actually. It has to do with conjuration, that's the fifth school of magic, and it's the one people look askance at. Not all conjurors are necromancers, but it's certain that all necromancers are conjurors. A necromancer can reanimate a dead body, but not usually for very long, and when the spell ends, all that's left of the body is ashes. Conjurors can also summon lesser Daedra like Atronachs, they're a kind of elemental, but again, not usually for very long. Some can even summon Dremora Lords, they're not quite so lesser, but summoning one of those is risky. How long a summoning lasts depends on the skill and the power of the mage. A permanent summoning—someone who could do that would have to be on the level of the Archmage.
"Anyhow, it sounds to me like you ought to visit a Shrine of Stendarr and ask the Divine of Justice for some help. There's one to the west of here; we could go there in a few days. I've got to go to Riverwood first."
"Could we? I mean, you've made up your mind?" I was a little surprised at how she took the news I was possessed in stride. I was not sure about visiting any shrines to pagan deities, however.
"Yes. I would like to hire you." Eryka took a long drink of her ale. She was still on her first. "The usual rate is five hundred up front and a quarter share of any treasure, and there will be treasure. I'm good at adventuring. If I think you need better equipment than what you have, I'll provide it, but it stays mine unless you recompense me for it. You'll eat as well as I do, and whether it's a tent in the cold or a fine inn, you'll shelter as I do too. I won't ask you to do anything I wouldn't do, and you're with me until I say we part ways or I die, whichever comes first. It would be nice if you would help carry things without acting like it's beneath you, and I would be grateful if you did. Usually the people I've hired have their own places or they make their own arrangements, but I've a spare room you could have. You'll sleep in your bed, and I in mine. That's all I'm offering, and all I'm asking for, you understand."
"Uh, yes, I do, but—why are you offering to hire me? That's what I don't quite understand. It's charity on your part. I hardly know how to do magic here, my current staff is worthless, and I don't even have a spare pair of smallclothes to my name. I have no idea what it would cost to equip me, but I have nothing." Not perhaps the brightest outburst I've ever had, but…I didn't want to be an object of pity.
"Well, if I pay you upfront, then you can buy your own smallclothes and spellbooks or whatever else you need. Or you could take my offer of a loan and go back to Dawnstar, and the alchemist's shop." She scraped up a forkful of mushrooms and ate them.
"It doesn't bother you that I'm housing an extra spirit?" I pressed.
"Is this leading up to you accusing me of being a Seducer Daedra again?"
"No, no." I hid behind my tankard of ale.
"Good. Look, 'Spirit' is another word for 'Soul', and if you're housing one extra, well, you're speaking to a woman with a dragon soul. I hardly have the right to judge you. And I—liked how you healed Seren and how you looked to see if I needed healing after the troll sent me flying. I've had four companions so far. You've heard about Lydia and Uthgerd; the other two were a mercenary named Jenassa, and a mage called Marcurio. She was clever but vicious, too fond of blood, and I knew before the day was out that I could not bear her for long. He began by claiming he was master-class when he was only at apprentice level, and then he moved on to fancying I fancied him, and boasting about it. He wasn't a pleasant traveling companion, either. He talked down to me. You—."
As opposed to the smooth delivery she had displayed when she offered me the job, now her words came out halting, as though she groped for them. "I like talking to you. I like traveling with you. You ask interesting questions and you—Will it be the alchemist's shop, then?"
"I don't think that would be nearly as interesting." I decided. "I'd rather stick with you."
Her answering smile was radiant.
And that was how I became the Dragonborn's companion.