The next weeks passed in a blur. Orzammar. The dwarven kingdom was in uproar to rival the civil war above. And despite Kaei's desire to stay out of it, they'd been forced to involve themselves to get the help they needed. So now, the Aeducan bloodline was ended, and Lord Harromont was the King of Orzammar.
It all seemed very strange to Kaei. Bloodlines.
To the Dalish, blood was important, but not in the way it was to humans and dwarves. All Dalish blood was pure; and even the flat-ears could become pure by pledging their hearts to their ways.
We are the Dalish: keepers of the lost lore, walkers of the lonely path. We are the last of the Elvhenan, and never again shall we submit.
But bloodlines were exactly what Kaei was seemingly trying to preserve by putting Alistair on Ferelden's throne. And as terrifying a thought as it was, it was clear to her that he would make a good king. Not that she really knew what a good king should be, of course. But what could be better than a good and man; a man who'd come to understand that all on Thedas; human, elven, dwarven and qunari were as deserving of freedom and peace as the next.
Still, there was a cold pit in Kaei's stomach. They were traveling along the western border of the Brecilian forest, freshly come from battle with Flemeth, searching for the Dalish. As difficult as the battle with the witch had been, and the frightening familiarity of her shape-changed dragon form had been, that fear paled in comparison to what was coming.
You can't go home again, Leliana's words echoed in her head.
Adding to her unease, that the land here was tainted; blighted. There were few darkspawn about, but Kaei wasn't sure she would have been able to sense them even so. The taint here was so strong. The land rotted under their feet. The trees were skeletal, the earth blackened. And there was a humming in the back of Kaei's head she couldn't block out. Alistair could hear it too; she could tell by the stricken look in his eyes.
As much as she hated the idea, they couldn't walk forever. They wouldn't be able to clear the tainted area before nightfall. They would have to make camp here, amidst the fetid earth. Although the others couldn't hear or feel the horror of the taint as keenly as Kaei and Alistair did, they looked equally troubled by the idea of sleeping here. But there was no other choice. If they kept moving, they'd all be too exhausted to protect themselves.
Zevran and Leliana walked close together behind Kaei and Alistair. Leliana was pale as a sheet and clung to Zevran's arm for dear life. He was uncharacteristically quiet but seemed comforted by her close presence. Despite their matching agitated expressions, they seemed to find solace in one another. They looked happy somehow. Kaei wondered if that was what others saw when they looked at her and Alistair. She hoped so.
Camp was quiet and tense. Although before now, they had all made the pretense of having separate tents, it seemed fear had drawn them closer together. There were only four tents in the camp. Even Morrigan seemed loathe to put her normal distance between herself and the others. She snapped when Wynne suggested they share a tent, but she accepted it. That alone would have been enough to frighten Kaei, as if she wasn't already overwrought.
The dreams had been so bad since they entered the blighted area, she wondered if she'd ever truly sleep again. But she tried; they all did. Once the sun set, the land here was so eerie, they all quickly retreated to their tents. Kaei almost hoped to hear the newly familiar sound of Leliana and Zevran's none too subtle love making but there was nothing. Kaei shivered and tucked herself closer to Alistair where they clung together in their tent.
"I don't want to sleep," Alistair said softly. "I am so sodding tired of these dreams. It's like my joining all over again every time I close my eyes."
"Me neither," Kaei replied. "But we need to try. I can't imagine that we won't run into more darkspawn and we need to be able to fight."
"I know," he sighed. "But sometimes I feel more tired after the dreams than I would if I just stayed awake."
"I understand, I do," Kaei said. They were quiet for a while. They were both jittery. Kaei wished it was for the same reason it had been on nights prior when their new found intimacy made them too aroused to sleep. Those bleary mornings had been well worth it. But now, it was all Kaei could do to keep from shivering. As appealing a thought as it was, making love was the last thing she thought either of them were capable of at the moment.
Alistair sighed irritably. "Maybe I should go stand watch with Sten," he said. "I'm not helping you fall asleep. And it doesn't seem that I can."
"Don't go," Kaei said, gripping the front of his tunic tightly. "Then I'll never sleep."
Alistair make a small contented sound. "Somehow that makes me feel better."
"Good," Kaei said. "Maybe we shouldn't try so hard to sleep. Do you want to talk instead?"
"Hmm," Alistair pondered. "Why don't you tell me more about your people. I don't want to say something stupid when we find them."
Kaei chuckled. "Don't worry, they'll be so shocked about their sister choosing to be with a human, they probably won't hear a thing you say."
"Are you worried about it?" he asked seriously.
"A little," Kaei said. "But I'm not ashamed. I love you. Because you're a good person. If it doesn't matter to you that I am an elf; if I want the world to see that I am a person, then I can't behave like you are not."
"Good to know," he said. "But I still wish I knew more."
"Alright then," Kaei said. "I was never big for history; that was Tamlen." Her voice caught a little when she said his name. Alistair tightened his arms around her.
"I do know a little," she continued. "Why don't I tell you the story of the Fall of Arlathan. This one I've heard so often, I can recite it just as our storyteller did. It doesn't speak too kindly of humans, but maybe . . it will help you understand the Dalish better."
"And you, I hope," he said.
Kaei cleared her throat. "Before the ages were named or numbered, our people were glorious and eternal and never changing. Like the great oak tree, they were constant in their traditions, strong in their roots, and ever reaching for the sky.
They felt no need to rush when life was endless. They worshiped their gods for months at a time. Decisions were made after decades of debate, and an introduction could last for years. From time to time, our ancestors would drift into centuries long slumber, but this was not death, but Waking Sleep. In Uthenera.
In those days, our people called all the land Elvhenan, which in the old language means "Place of our People." And at the center of the world stood the great city of Arlathan, a place of knowledge and debate, where the best of the ancient elves would go to trade knowledge, greet old friends, and settle disputes that had gone on for millennia. But while our ancestors were caught up in the forever cycle of ages, drifting through life at what we today would consider an intolerable pace, the world outside was changing. The humans first arrived from the north. I know it is not something that the humans today will accept, but all the ancient accounts of our people that can be found agree it is so: one day the humans came from elsewhere, into a land where they had never been before. We called them shemlen, or "quicklings". To our ancestors, the humans were pitiful creatures whose lives blinked by in an instant. When they first met with the elves, the humans were brash and warlike, quick to anger, quicker to fight, and they had no patience for the slow pace of elven diplomacy.
But the humans brought worse things than war with them. Our ancestors proved susceptible to human diseases, and for the first time in millennia, elves were dying of natural causes. What's more, those elves that spent time bartering and negotiating with humans found themselves aging, quickened by the humans' impatient lives. Horrified at the prospect of losing their way of life forever, the ancient elves immediately moved to close Elvhenan off from the humans for fear that this "quickening" effect would crumble their civilization.
Perhaps they believed that ignoring the shemlen would make them go away. Perhaps they assumed that two peoples could simply live in peace, remaining ignorant of each others' ways. Perhaps they meant no insult, or perhaps they meant to start a war. We know very little of the time that followed, only that the time of ancient Elvhenan was gone forever.
The human world was changing. Clans and tribes gave way to a powerful empire called Tevinter, which came upon Elvhenan to conquer it. When they breached the great city of Arlathan, our people, fearing disease and the loss of immortality the humans would bring, chose to flee rather than to fight. With magic, demons, and even dragons at their behest, the Tevinter Imperium marched easily through Arlathan, destroying everything that had existed for ages. Our people were rounded up as slaves and taken from their ancestral home, the quickening driving itself through their veins and making them mortal. The elves called to their ancient gods, but there was no answer.
As to why the gods didn't answer, our people had only a legend. They say that Fen'Harel, the Dread Wolf and Lord of Tricksters, approached the gods of good and evil and proposed a truce. The gods of good would remove themselves to heaven, and the lords of evil would exile themselves to the abyss, and neither group would ever again enter the others' lands. By the time they realized the Dread Wolf's treachery, they had been sealed away in their respective realms, never again to interact with the mortal world. It is a fable, to be sure, but those elves who travel the Beyond claim that Fen'Harel still roams the world of dreams, feasting upon the unwary as a glutton at his lunch, all the while keeping watch over the gods lest they escape from their prisons.
Whatever the case, Arlathan had fallen at the hands of the very humans our people had once considered naught but pests. It is said that the Tevinter mages used their great and destructive power to force the very ground to swallow Arlathan whole, removing it from the world just as it was soon to be removed from the minds and hearts of its people. All records and artifacts lost to them forever, the whole of elven lore was trapped in the fading minds of a people who would soon forget what it meant to be an elf.
Andraste. To you and to your chantry, she was a prophet. To our people, however, she was an inspiration. Her rebellion against Tevinter gave our people a window through which to see the sun, and our people reached toward it with all their strength. The rebellion was brief but successful; the death of the prophetess did not end our fight, and we fought on for independence even as the human Imperium began to crumble. In the end, we had won freedom and the southern reaches of land known as the Dales.
It was a home, a new chance to gather and rebuild all that we had lost. In our centuries of slavery we had lost our immortality, our language, our culture, our crafts… but never our sense of belonging to each other. From across Thedas we came to the Dales. We walked on foot, sometimes crossing thousands of miles with naught but our will to sustain us. Many of us perished on the Long Walk, but those of us that arrived at our new home were all the more determined.
There, in the Dales, our people revived the lost lore as best they could, and even turned to worship the old gods in their ancient prison. They called their first city Halamshiral, "the end of the journey," and founded a new nation, isolated as elves thought they must be. They created an order called The Emerald Knights and charged them with watching the borders for trouble with the humans.
But you already know that something went wrong. Our ancestors' worship of the old elven gods angered the Chantry, which constantly sent missionaries to our land. The Chantry wanted to convert our people to their worship of the Maker, but the Dalish would not submit. In protest, a small elven raiding party attacked the nearby human village of Red Crossing, an act that prompted the Chantry to attack and, with their superior numbers, conquer the Dales.
We were not enslaved as we had been before, but our worship of the ancient gods was now forbidden. We were allowed to live among the humans as second class citizens and worship their Maker, slowly forgetting once more the scraps of lore we had maintained through the centuries. Those that refused were forced to wander, landless and friendless in their wagons, across a world that told them they were unwelcome.
Those that wander became the Dalish, the last clans that refused to set aside our pride and live in the alienages set aside for elves in human cities. We wander the lands in our aravels and tattoo the symbols of our gods on our faces to pronounce to all who see us that our beliefs are sacred, and we shall never surrender them.
We keep to ourselves. Our way is not to do battle with the humans unless we must.
Our way is to gather what bits of our culture and our language we can find, to guard them carefully and preserve them – for the day will come when we have a homeland once again. And when that day comes, we shall be ready. Our brethren in the cities who have forgotten, they will come to us on that day and we shall teach them. They will learn the ancient magic of the Keepers, the crafts of our masters and the language of our ancestors. And we shall not make the same mistakes again.
We are the Dalish: keepers of the lost lore, walkers of the lonely path. We are the last of the Elvhenan, and never again shall we submit.*"
Kaei's voice faded off. Alistair's breathing had become slow and steady and she thought for a moment that her tale had finally sent him to sleep. She wasn't sure if she should be offended or pleased. But then he spoke.
"It's very sad," he said quietly.
"It is," Kaei replied. "But Thedas is full of sad stories."
"I hope ours won't be one of them," he said.
"Me too," she sighed. She pressed her face into the hollow of his throat and closed her eyes.
And sleep came.
Kaei woke to the sound of her own screaming.
The archdemon. Darkspawn like waves of blackness. She could swear she could still hear them, even awake. Then it hit her that she could still hear them. They were under attack! Alistair woke and realized the threat just as she did. Grabbing weapons and not bothering with armor, they both sped from the tent in such a flurry that it collapsed behind them.
Kaei nocked and arrow and let it fly, the shaft burying itself in the neck of a hurlock. She saw Sten swinging Asala around his head in an arc, severing the heads of two more. A shrill piercing scream shattered the air.
"Shrieks!" Alistair screamed over the din.
Kaei swung around, face to face with one of them. It was twisted and black, it's long talons reaching out for her. With a shout, Kaei bashed it across the face with her bow. It fell to it's knees, stunned by the impact. Grabbing the dagger from the hurlock she felled, she charged forward. The blade buzzed against her skin as she slashed the shriek's throat. Black ichor splattered through the air.
"Andraste's flaming sword," Zevran cursed. Kaei turned to see him pulling his longsword out of the remains of another shriek. He too was covered into blood, but wore only his smallclothes. It vaguely registered in the back of her mind that the tattoos on his face continued down his body, disappearing into the cloth. He grimaced, putting his hand against his ribs. Some of the blood he was splattered with was his own. Leliana appeared at his side like magic, pouring a salve onto the open wound. Zevran grimaced again as the wound slowly closed.
Kaei dropped the dagger she'd been holding. The darkspawn blade had left a red welt in the palm of her hand. She stared at it blankly. There were no more screams now, just heavy breathing and small grunts of pain. Kaei steeled herself and looked up. Half asleep or not, she needed to make sure the darkspawn were all defeated. When she looked up, she spotted a small figure, standing on the edge of the camp. It was a darkspawn, her blood told her that much. But this was different somehow. The figure didn't move to attack. It didn't seem to move at all.
Kaei stalked forward, raising her bow and nocking an arrow. Perhaps it was stunned or confused by some spell of Morrigan's. Either way, it was a darkspawn and it had to die. Her eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness. She came into range of the creature and prepared to loose her arrow.
"Kaei?" the creature gurgled.
She dropped the bow, the arrow planting itself deep into the ground. Suddenly weak, her fingers lost their grip. The longbow fell with a thump.
"Tamlen?" Kaei said. Her mouth fell open.
"Lethallin," Tamlen whispered. "Creators. . . don't come any closer. I am sick. I . . . I don't want you to see me like this." He turned to flee. Kaei regained her senses enough to chase after him. She grabbed his shoulder. His skin hummed under her palm just as the darkspawn dagger had. He slowly turned to face her.
He still wore his Dalish leathers, but they were torn and tattered, coated in black blood. His hair was gone and his skin was mottled black and violet like a terrible bruise. But the intricate lace of his tattoos still stood out on his marbled skin.
"Oh gods," Kaei whimpered. "Tamlen. Don't be afraid, let me help you."
"You cannot help me," he said. His voice was strangled, wet. "It is too late for me. I can hear them now, I hear him. He sings to me."
"Please," Kaei said. "There must be . . . something . . . ."
"No," Tamlen whispered. "Too late. I watched you, followed. I want peace. Please . . . end this."
"I can't! Don't ask this of me!" Kaei shouted. "Shue shah tauthau toetoi thuet!"
"Always . . . loved you lethallin," he said, pulling a dagger from his tattered belt. He turned the point towards himself. Slowly, he reached out with his other hand and put his hand against Kaei's face. "I am . . . so sorry."
Before Kaei could react, his hand sped to her shoulder and he pulled her abruptly forward, the weight of her body pushing the dagger through the leather into Tamlen's chest. Kaei felt his blood spill over her hands. She looked down in horror, realizing his blood was as black as pitch. Tamlen felt to his knees and Kaei followed, just managing to cradle him against her as he fell. He looked up at her, his eyes still the same beautiful violet-blue trapped in a body ravaged by the taint.
"Always . . . ," he sputtered, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "Always . . . loved you."
"Tamlen," Kaei wept, "I love you, please . . . please don't leave me again."
"Abelas," his voice was barely a whisper now. "Vir lath . . . ." He coughed and a spray of blood splashed from his mouth. "Vir lath sa'vunin." His eyes rolled back into his head.
Kaei screamed inarticulately and clutched him to him to her. His blood soaked them both and pooled on the ground beneath them, seeping into the earth. Kaei felt a gentle hand touch her shoulder and she jerked away, snapping her head up.
Alistair took a step back. "What is . . . oh Maker," he whispered, understanding dawning in his eyes. "Is that?"
"Tamlen," Kaei sobbed, dropping her head to rest on Tamlen's unmoving chest. "It's Tamlen."
"Oh Kaei," Alistair moaned, sinking to his knees beside her. "I'm so sorry."
He draped his arm over Kaei's shuddering shoulders, the other coming around and helping hold Tamlen's body against her. Kaei turned her head to look at him. She couldn't speak. Tears coursed down her face.
Alistair swallowed. "It is a mercy," he whispered. "He is at peace now."
Kaei tried to reply, but her voice came out in a strangled croak. "If only," she managed to whisper. "If only I'd looked harder. Duncan might have been able to save him too."
"Maybe," Alistair said softly. "Or maybe not. All I know is that he came to you to grant him peace. Tainted or no, he died happy. With you."
"I . . . ," she stuttered.
"Shhhh," Alistair hushed her. "I know you love him. I will never ask you to stop."
Alistair held them both for a while, the hushed voices of their companions like the wind through the trees. Kaei felt the warmth of Tamlen's body slowly fade until he was as cold as the ground they knelt on. Slowly her tears spent themselves, leaving behind only a painful ache behind her ribs. After what seemed like an eternity, Alistair spoke again.
"Once we are beyond the blighted ground," he said. "I will help you bury him. And plant a tree in his honor. I owe him that, for loving you."
"What do you mean?" Kaei murmured.
"I understand how he loved you and why he came for you," he said. "I would have done the same thing. I know I would not have blamed you, if this happened to me. And I know he did not either."
"How can you know that?" Kaei whimpered.
"Because I know what it means to love you," he said. He kissed her temple, and then leaned over and kissed Tamlen's cold face, seemingly obvious to his tainted flesh.
"What is it that you say?" Alistair asked. "When you say farewell?"
"Creators speed you on your way," Kaei whispered.
"Yes, that was it," Alistair said. "Creators speed you on your way Tamlen, and may the Maker watch over you."
With a sob she didn't even know she had left, Kaei buried her face in Alistair's chest. He held her in silence, Tamlen's cold body still cradled between them.
* This is taken almost word for word from the Dragon Age codex. I considered re-writing it myself, but in a culture of oral tradition, it is common for stories to be memorized word for word and only change a little from one story teller to another. So I made only a few changes. Kaei might not be a story teller, but being Dalish is still important to her.
Shue shah tauthau toetoi thuet – I don't want to kill you
Abelas -- I am sorry
Vir lath sa'vunin – We love one more day
