Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: T

Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age II as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.

Chapter Thirty-Six: Night Elves Watch the Line

"He's gone where?" Queen Anora fairly shrieked, and started out of her throne.

"To the Alienage, Your Majesty. Once we collected our wits we followed him, but the guard he bullied into letting him through the gate he also bullied into keeping us out - even Champion. I'm sorry." Elilia hung her head in shame.

"Hold on now, this might not be such a bad thing," King Alistair said. "Are there any Ashes of Andraste left over?"

"There…are, Al, but how many sick elves are there?"

"A lot," he said, darkly. Elilia sighed.

"So even if he plans to use them, could he really expect them to hold out until he saves all the elves? Will not the sick ones just make the saved ones ill again?" she asked. "And what then for him? Surrounded by so much illness, he's sure to catch his death. Again."

"The guard will let me in," Anora said, fiercely.

"Dearest…if your father has been in the Alienage all this time, it's already too late," Alistair said, as gently as possible. "Don't make things worse by getting sick yourself. Think of the children."

"I am forced to agree, Your Majesty. All we can do now is pray."

"I thought you weren't the praying sort, Eli," Alistair said, with a sick grin.

"I'm not, Al. But the Chantry types would say the Maker already showed Loghain His favor once, and I'm not one to pass up even a faint hope that He might do it again."

Loghain walked through the streets of the Alienage, marveling at how little changed it was from the way it had always been. Sick elves lined the street, falling-down buildings leaned crazily, garbage had obviously not been collected in some time - just as always, in his experience. There were perhaps more sick elves than usual. If his father had been like the bulk of human men with half-blood get, he and his mother would have been forced to live in a place much like this, perhaps worse.

There were small improvements, he saw. The streets had been repaved and leveled out, a convenient byproduct, for the Crown, of the new sewers that drained the area. Elilia had some plans for this place, he knew, even though she had not seen fit to divulge them to him. He suspected it was her idealism at play, that nothing would ever truly change for these poor bastards, but he hoped whatever she was plotting would bear fruit. Of course, if his plot didn't bear fruit, there would be no point in working to improve this place. The elves would be dead.

And so would he, no doubt. Funny how little the idea of that had ever really bothered him. Not that he particularly looked forward to what, if anything, came after.

He found an elf who was healthy enough to walk. "Gather your people," he told the young man. "Everyone who has any strength left must help those who haven't. Children and mothers of small children will receive medicine first. Tell your folks to be orderly about it or no one may be treated at all."

The hopeless dullness of the man's face held for a brief instant, then was gradually supplanted by the terror that was a corollary to sudden dawning hope in one who barely knew such a thing existed. He raced off. Loghain moved to the center of the alienage and positioned himself beneath the vhenadahl, where he began unstrapping his leather chest piece. He pulled it off and began to work the tight knots that held the little pouch of ashes safely inside it. How dismally small it looked, especially with how jam-packed the alienage seemed to be. He would save who he could.

Someone walked up on his blindside. "My mother had that same tattoo on her arm," a male voice said, wonderingly. He turned his head and saw a pair of elves, similar enough in appearance to be relatives. They were hale enough to walk, but that was about all that could be said for them. The one who'd spoken was a man with long black hair pulled back tightly in a single braid, while the other was a redheaded woman who wore her knotted hair short. He recognized that one from the Battle of Denerim. She was looking suspiciously at him. The man was staring fixedly at the small tattoo on his left bicep, the only "ink" he'd ever marked himself with. Words in the Common alphabet but in the Dalish tongue said what one of his men had assured him was "Night Elves watch the line," though he'd always suspected they actually said something along the lines of "Filthy Shemlen rooked us good."

"Then your mother was with the Night Elves," he said. He searched his memory for a face that matched his. "Adaia Imura, right? One of my later recruits."

The elf's black eyes went wide. "You…remember my mother?"

"What is this 'treatment' you've promised?" the redhead burst out angrily. "As I recall it, the last treatment you brought to the alienage saw half our people sold to the sodding Tevinters."

"Well there's no Tevinters this time. There's just me and this little bag of medicine, and we'll do this all out in the open where you can watch me close. Do you have small children, Ma'am?"

"No, she doesn't," the man answered for her.

"Then I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to wait. Can you help bring the little ones and their mothers to me?"

"We can." The man grabbed the still-glaring redhead by the arm and pulled her away. "Come on, Shianni, if he can help us we need to let him, right?"

Word that help was at hand spread throughout the alienage quickly, and in a matter of moments there was a remarkably orderly queue of mothers with squalling, coughing children, in many cases the mothers themselves supported by someone less sick. Loghain didn't even bother to put his armor back on. He began to cure the elves, using the smallest pinches of ashes he could manage. There was a depressingly long line of patients.

When the first screaming, hacking infant was treated and its coughs and cries were silenced, someone shouted, "He killed it!"

The mother, sick and coughing herself, cuddled her child close to her breast and said, "No! She's fallen asleep! She's well! Oh, thank the Maker!"

Loghain gave her the next pinch of ashes and she took the first deep breath she'd been able to draw in a month. "This is a miracle medicine. Oh, thank you, Ser - so much!"

There was a momentary scramble after that, everyone wanting to be next in line, but Loghain silenced the outcry with a stern word. "You will all have your turn," he said, though he seriously doubted the truth of that. "Settle."

The line stretched out forever, and even before he reached the last of the children and mothers he began to expect to feel the bottom of the pouch beneath his gloved fingers as he reached in. But against his expectations, the ashes held out until the last mother and child were well. "The sickest of the young men and women next," he commanded.

There were many more of those, as it was mostly young men and women who came to Ferelden from the Free Marches, looking for work, hoping to set aside coin enough to start a new and better life. By the time he was halfway through the throng, Loghain noticed something he probably should have noticed before. The little pouch of ashes…was not getting any emptier. He'd used enough of his tiny sparing pinches to empty a grain sack, he thought, but the small leather poke was still mostly full. Just another miracle? He had to assume so.

The black-haired man, who had not yet had any treatment himself, and the red-headed woman, who hadn't either, half-carried an elderly man up to him, cutting the entire line.

"Please, Ser," the young man said. "This is our Hahren, and he's terribly ill. I know you said you were only treating the young, but he's too important to us to lose him. Can't you please heal him now?"

"Loghain, I told you, I'll not take cure from the young," the old man said. Loghain was momentarily confused as this man had told him nothing. The black-haired elf blanched and then blushed.

"He was speaking to me, Ser," he said. "I expect you've met a lot of people named in your honor."

Oddly, he had not. Scores of Marics, of course, that had been the most popular name for Ferelden boys born during the early days of the Restoration, and either Rowan, Moira, or Maricia for the lasses, but he could not recall ever in his life meeting another Loghain. He digested this surprise and moved past it.

"It's all right, Sergeant," he said to the old man. "I have plenty of cure for everyone. You needn't fear that anyone will suffer on your behalf."

The old man stared at him wide-eyed, then clapped a weak hand on his shriveled bicep. "Night elves…watch the line," he said, voice weak with sickness and wonderment.

"Elder…you were in the Night Elves, too?" the young elven Loghain said in surprise.

"I was."

"Valendrian was one of my earliest recruits," Loghain said. "He was a Night Elf before the Night Elves were a properly recognized company at all."

He gave the old man a pinch of the ashes, and then cured the two younger people as well. They looked quite healthy and fine once the miracle had its way with them, and even Valendrian, old though he was, could stand under his own power once the illness was gone. He was not, after all, quite as old as he looked - in the way elves had of doing he'd stayed youthful-looking for longer than most humans and then he'd aged quite rapidly once the process began, and barely looked any older now than he had ten years or so ago. He was only a very little bit older than Loghain himself.

"Go to your wife and child, by boy," Valendrian said to the young man. "Nesiara and Adaia were healed already, were they not?"

"They were, Hahren," elf-Loghain said. He directed a half-bow at Loghain. "Thank you for that, Ser - er, milord."

He left then, taking the redhead with him. Valendrian stayed as Loghain continued dealing out cure to the sick elves, no longer worried that he would run out. "Loghain Tabris; a fine young man. I suppose you can guess that there were many in the alienage who tried to convince him to change his name after what happened with the slavers? Myself among them. He said that it was the name his mother gave him, and he would keep it no matter what."

Loghain nodded, but merely continued to dole out the ashes in silence. After a time the old elf spoke again. His voice burst out as if under torture.

"Why did you do it?" he said, and shook his grey head angrily. "Why did you turn on us? Of all the shems in the world, you were the one we counted most as friend. What did we do to deserve our fate?"

Loghain sighed. "Valendrian. Your people did nothing to deserve it. Why I did it I can't seem to figure, I only know that I did. I'll not waste your time and mine by asking forgiveness for the unforgivable."

Valendrian shuffled uncertainly for a time. "There was…a mage, with the slavers. There were many, but this one was their leader. This one held the documents you signed granting him his right to take us. I saw him using blood magic."

"There is some speculation that I may have been enthralled, to some degree. But I was not completely out of my own head, Valendrian: There is no excuse to be had there. And even if no one held any diabolical influences over me at all…I could still see myself committing that terrible crime. If the need was great enough. If it seemed there was no other recourse."

"How? How could you of all people ever do such a dreadful thing? Freedom is the very ideal you fought so hard for, isn't it? Or was only your freedom important? Were we just tools in your rebellion?"

"We were all the tools of Ferelden freedom," Loghain answered. "Any one, or dozen, or hundred of us was expendable, to me. I made myself cold, Valendrian, long before ever I picked up a sword in the name of my King. When you view people as resources rather than as friends, it doesn't hurt you so badly when you lose them."

"The nation stands upon the brink of war," the old Hahren said quietly. "If you needed gold more than you needed laborers, would you do it again now?"

"I don't know. I'm not…the man I was then."

"In my experience, people don't change that much."

"I didn't change much, I just changed enough. The Warden knocked most of the pride out of me. Maybe that was something that ought to have happened years before, or maybe it was the worst thing that ever happened. Either way, I can't…hide anymore. I can't put on my armor and pretend that's all there is to me. I can't act like I just don't give a damn."

He shook his head. "But I don't know. If things were grim…if I saw no other way…I probably could still sign some devil's contracts. But what I don't understand is why I did. I needed soldiers much more than I needed gold. Why did I not think to create another company like the Night Elves? There was sickness in the alienage but it was nothing like this. Fresh air away from the filth and closeness of the city might have cured a lot of it. Of course…perhaps none of you would have fought for me."

"We would have fought. We would have been glad of the chance to defend our homes against the darkspawn, and glad of the chance to prove ourselves for our Regent and Queen. That young man who just left us is a stellar warrior, skilled both with bow and with blades. Most of the others had never held a weapon, but they would have seized upon the chance regardless."

"Howe, of course, that you were rioting and could not be controlled."

Valendrian snorted derisively. "There is always unrest and discontent in the alienage, Loghain, you know that. But the sum total of our 'revolt' was for two of our young men - Loghain, and his cousin Soris, as a matter of fact - to enter the Arl's estate in search of the young women that Vaughan kidnapped. In the process of rescuing the ladies, who included their cousin Shianni and the young men's brides-to-be, they killed a good many guards and two of Vaughan's noble drinking partners. Vaughan himself escaped, which is the only part of the entire ordeal I regret. The bastards had killed one of the poor girls before ever Loghain reached them. Nola, a shy, pious child. Shianni was raped and beaten."

"When they returned to the alienage Loghain's father and I managed to convince the lad it was best if he leave Denerim for a time, and we smuggled him out. He was always very courageous and outspoken, we knew that when the guards came he would stand up and take credit for what he'd done, and then he would be lost to us forever. Soris, on the other hand, was a timid young man, and Cyrion thought he would be able to hide him and keep him safe. We could not bear the thought of sending two of our young men away into uncertainty. We were fools, because the Arl's men came and uncovered Soris' hiding place easily enough, and that was the last we saw of him until the Warden found and set him free a year later. When Vaughan couldn't find Loghain he was incensed, but he assuaged his feelings by stringing up a poor broken-legged beggar he found, and I think in the intervening years he has managed to convince himself that was the man who killed his friends. He doesn't even recognize Loghain when he comes to the alienage these days, or any of the women. Of course, I suppose its easy for such as he not to see us."

"Howe came to Denerim before even you had returned from Ostagar, and I believe his sole intention was to secure the Arling for himself. Vaughan disappeared, Howe claimed we had killed him, and sent in soldiers to 'restore peace.' I'm not entirely certain how killing the residents of a children's orphanage restores harmony or brings justice, but that is only the most horrible of the things they did. The plague, I think, was a direct result of the dead who were left to rot in the streets and buildings for days before anyone came to burn the bodies, and perhaps of a suspiciously-timed outbreak of rabies amongst the dogs, and when the slavers came to 'help' I completely lost all hope for the elves of Denerim."

Loghain was silent for a long time, until he said, "I was a fool. My head was clouded with paranoia and fear."

"If it was clouded by more than that, milord…then I for one am glad to leave the past behind us."

Valendrian stayed by him while he finished handing out ashes to the sick elves. He was left with a leather pouch not noticeably depleted and more than a thousand healthy and exceedingly grateful elves.

"There is one more sick elf," Valendrian said gently. "The young stranger we found whose illness caused this outbreak. Can you cure him, as well? I cannot understand him when he speaks, but I am sure he holds no blame for what happened here. He was obviously carried here inside the crate we found broken open around him, left as so much refuse by those who wished to kill us all."

"Take me to him."

"He is in my house. It is right over here." Valendrian led him to the nearby shack and let him inside. A young blond man lay on a rough straw pallet in the back of the single room, clearly very near death and at least semi-delirious. He rolled his eyes at Loghain as they approached and babbled incoherently in Orlesian.

"Easy, now…" Loghain said, and sprinkled a dose of ashes on the young man's face. A hacking, blood-spattering cough transformed midway into a gasp of surprise and the young man's sapphirine eyes blinked several times before opening with clarity in their depths. His burst of Orlesian gratitude was so fast and continuous that it might as well have been incoherent for all the sense Loghain could make of it. He did hear "Merci messere!" more than a few times, but he didn't know if it was directed at him or the Maker, whom the Orlesians often addressed that way.

"Woah, slow down there, Chatterly," he said. He spoke slowly himself, uncertain whether the man could even understand the King's tongue. "What is your name and from where do you come?"

The man watched his lips with the attentiveness of a deaf man, and seemed to understand at least the gist of his words, but evidently he was too excited to be alive and well to slow his own speech. Loghain thought he caught something that sounded like "Sabine" and "Tremmes" amidst the tangle of phrases.

"Well Sabine of Tremmes, if that is what you said, I don't know if you have anything to say that we haven't already figured out about this mess, but I think it best if you come along with me to the Palace and tell your story to the translators there. I don't know what we can do, if anything, about getting you home, but perhaps that's a place to which you don't even wish to return. I expect you're hungry. We'll feed you up proper. Valendrian, I'll see to it that the quarantine is lifted and the street cleaned and refuse carted away and burned properly. Do your people require anything else? I just got back to the city and I'm not certain what aid is available, but I'll see to it that whatever can be done is."

"We…could use some grain, if there is any surplus," the Hahren said, a bit shyly. "We haven't had fresh supplies of food since the alienage was locked down, and people are running out. No one has had work with which to earn any, and they'll need a decent feeding before they'll have the strength to work now."

Loghain nodded. "Food will be sent. There are an awful lot of elves here these days. Where are you housing them all?"

"Wherever there is room to spare. I have four families sharing my own quarters, in addition to Sabine."

"I'll see if something can't be done about making the living conditions less cramped. I understand why they would not want to be quartered outside the alienage, but perhaps a spot could be found at least temporarily where the overflow can stay and be sheltered from the elements and protected from the humans."

"That…would be welcome, certainly. Thank you."

"Come on then, Chatterly," Loghain said, and Sabine followed him out of the Hahren's tiny house with all the wide-eyed eagerness of a puppy. Loghain collected his armor from beneath the vhenadahl and gave himself a warding sprinkle of ashes, just to be sure. He wasn't going to save the alienage only to bring this illness to the palace.