Although she had done her best to keep from showing it Dorian's words had bothered Elanna and she carried them throughout the day. She did not fault him for observing the truth, but she had never heard the dread notion put to words and now they only felt all too real. The Keepers each did their best to preserve the ways of their clan and in what way they could they recorded the rites and tales of the Elves as a whole. But much of it was an oral tradition that was become more frayed at the edges with each passing generation.
Whispers of Arlathan had come in some songs but if pressed to describe the capitol of the old Elven Empire Elanna would have been at a loss for words. She would have spoken in the vaguest terms, speaking generally about magic and bottomless food. Elanna might even say that the gods walked among us, even if she knew that half of these tales were filled only with her own fantasies. How much of what the Keeper had told her for certain was salted with its own embellishments borne of a want for a truth they could never find? How much had the Keeper before him done the same?
Her thoughts carried her at first to the library alongside Dorian, her eyes darting over every scroll and leather binding she could find. The tomes were bafflingly unhelpful, causing her to growl aloud and wave her hands in frustration at Dorian, who was gawking in quiet amusement.
"The Murders of Havencrow and the Insidious Deeds That Followed?" she read aloud, waving her hands in exasperation. "A Case Against Medaro's Arboreology? Do shems write nothing worth reading?"
"Oh on the contrary!" Dorian huffed. "Medaro set Arboreology back nearly a generation with his careless research into Twittleleaves."
Even in spite of the perceived direness of her search Elanna could not help but laugh. "Skyhold used to belong to the Elves, did it not?"
"That's what Solas says."
"You would think there would be at least one...thing left by the Elves."
"Yes that's the thing about conquerors. They're surprisingly inconsiderate of the vanquished."
Elanna stuck her tongue out at him then turned to resume her search.
She found a handful of promising leads with Dorian's assistance but nothing of any particular substance. Most of it were observations by humans that Elanna spat at as "Shem Blabber". Some of it was amusing to read if only to be able to see from both sides of the looking glass and laugh at the observer's misunderstandings. Her favorite was the essay on Elven surgeons that must be necessary to facilitate births, given the women's narrow "unwomanly hips".
Her options seemed limited in the main library, but there was a smaller archive in Skyhold's undercroft. Even the squalid state of the throneroom and main hall seemed well maintained and furnished compared to the forgotten, austere room that one could be forgiven for missing entirely. Some time ago the wood of the door sealing the archive away had rotted off of its hinges and threatened to fall. Rather than fix or even take it down entirely the occupants had settled for placing a pile of furniture in front of the passageway.
Once the objects had been moved away the ancient library within was revealed, with pages strewn about on the floor and crinkling, shattering under foot and vanishing into dust along with whatever was contained on the parchment. Cobwebs hung like canopies from bookshelf to bookshelf where the contents had been tossed aside by looters long ago, searching for hidden jewels with no regard for the treasure of knowledge contained inside.
The most peculiar feature of the lower library was the eight foot wide painting depicting jungles and pyramids at the far end. Under the dust and grime of the ages the best that Elanna could make out was that it was an artist's rendition of Par Vollen, the land of the Qunari.
If there was anywhere in Skyhold that retained the ancient knowledges of a time long past it was here. a place overlooked by the masons and the masters who each had an opinion on the proper way to house a castle of substance.
The search began on a hopeful note when she chose a book by chance. If there had ever been words or markings on the cover they were now gone, replaced by scratches and burrows from moths and other insects. The first few pages fell to the floor when she opened the book, but when she finally found text she grinned inwardly to herself. She recognized the old runes of the Elven tongue when she saw them, their smooth shapes that could easily be mistaken for art in their own right.
Had she found what she was looking for and so soon?
The script on the first page was nothing of note, mostly acknowledgments and gratitude for a patron that allowed them to write it. Dragging each page with a delicate care to avoid crumbling it Elanna finally let out an exasperated sigh when she found out that it was a Tevinter spellbook. She knew it might interest Dorian, if only for its historical significance, but it did nothing to aid in her search.
She realized then that many spellbooks were written in similar script. Although conversationally the language was largely dead in the kingdoms it still had a prestigious role to play among the mages. Many of the formulas for spellcraft were still done using Elven script for ease of use and habit. The amount of effort it would take to translate the entirety of the arithmetic that the Elves had used during their prime had left the feat largely untried, creating a universal language that any of the races or civilizations could comprehend.
Elanna poured through others. She found obscure histories that bored her in her current state, even if she could acknowledge their value. Unlike the library up above the vault's records were clearly more archival in nature. Day to day servants would find little use in old dissertations about the taxation of newly acquired peoples but each grimoire Elanna found among the silk and grains held an indisputable cache of Thedasian history.
Hidden away in the underground of the castle she had not noticed how long she had been sifting through the ledgers and scrolls. The sun had no sway here and the candles that gave out were stubbornly relit with a motion of her fingers without so much as a second thought. To her chagrin she felt as though she now had a greater understanding of the development of rhetoric in the new Tevinter Imperium but that did little to assuage her primary goal in searching.
The Elves were mentioned a great deal, even with some first hand accounts, but it was usually more of the same, or worst of all whispers and hypotheses that intrigued but ultimately led nowhere, making her wish she had never discovered the thread of thought to begin with.
She was awakened from a dream she did not realize she was having with images she could not remember. There were fleeting thoughts of birds in flight and someone standing across a ravine with dark skin but she could not hope to put a face or meaning to any of it. Elanna knew her back ached from the posture she had fallen asleep in, cross legged and hunched over one of her books so that she was half folded over herself. Her tailbone and hips were protesting with a red hot fire.
Above her Elanna heard breathing. She jumped and looked up, realizing that the candles had long since burnt out their wax and she could not see more than few inches in front of her. That caused a momentary panic that nearly sent her tumbling off the table.
"The chandlers will eat well this winter after the Inquisition's demand for candles," she recognized the voice of Solas, an unusual hint of brevity in his tone. Even through the darkness she could see him in her mind's eye, the way he would be tilting his back into an arch, hands clasped on the small of his back. But her favorite part of all, the part she wished she could see through the extinguished candles, was the way his lips would battle to keep from grinning, causing small dimples to form just above the edges of his mouth.
How long had she been asleep and how long had he been standing there watching her?
Rather than asking either of those questions when her mouthed opened she found her hazy mind asking, "Where are the candles?"
"Gone out, I'm afraid," Solas answered. She heard his shirt shuffle then felt the air gust around her and all at once the room was again bathed in orange light. At first her eyes were overloaded with a sensation of pale white as she tried to readjust and she put a hand over her face to try to keep out some the oppressive glare. "You've been down here a long time."
"How long?" As she spoke her dry lips were chopping and her throat was parched.
"If Dorian is to be believed since around noon yesterday."
Noon was a lot longer than she had anticipated. Elanna stretched back until she could feel her spine pop. Then his words set in and she snapped back forward.
"Yesterday?" she exclaimed, earning a nod from Solas. "Why didn't anyone come get me?"
"Well I am here, so I would say someone came and got you." As she stretched and tried to return feeling to her feet Solas leaned over and took the book from her lap. She froze as he tenderly turned the book around and cradled it in his palm. His eyes fell to the old ink and darted back and forth to get an assessment of what she was reading.
The sensation of his interest on the book sent a pulse that started in the back of her skull and carried all the way down her spine. She could not tell if he could sense it or if the entire event was playing out in slow motion but he seemed to take an eternity to finish the page, lick his thumb and turn to the next, the tingle she was feeling heightened by the sound of the crinkling page.
When he finished with a clear of his throat the tension of his reading snapped and Elanna felt as though she had been dropped back into reality. He closed the book with a slow, careful grace to protect it.
"I did not realize you were such an avid reader of Caspier Veneraut," Solas remarked, pressing the book up to his chest and grinning again, dimples and all.
Elanna huffed and leaned back with the flats of her hands on the table to support her weight.
"Well," she joked, raising a foot and poking him in the knee with the tip of her toe, "his later works got a little uh, lofty, but his earlier pieces are still good."
"Are they?" Solas mused, his face softening to show he was aware of the location of Elanna's foot even if he did not look down to acknowledge it.
"Of course, are you not familiar with him?"
Solas glanced down at the book. "According to this particular tome he was a Divine Age heretic that believed that Andraste was a spirit of lust. He advocated abstinence to avoid her from possessing and, by extension, corrupting more men."
Elanna's face was flat and confused. Was that what that book had been about? She glanced down at it, pressed against Solas's chest. She remembered a jumble of words that seemed to drone on in fanciful language, meant primarily to flatter the author and perhaps the readers that understood it.
"Well," she stammered, clearing her throat to try to add some moisture to it, "maybe she was. You never can tell with Shems."
Solas raised a mocking eyebrow. "Indeed." He put the book down on one of the shelves then took a seat next to her. "So why don't you tell me what brought you down here?"
With no results to speak of Elanna felt defeated in her search and brought her knees up to her chest, not wanting to confide in her failure. Looking across the way at the book of the Andrastian heresy made her feel like a fool for even venturing down here.
"There's nothing written about us is there?" she finally asked, chewing in pain on the words.
Solas raised an eyebrow. "Us?"
"Elves. The Dales." Solas did not answer, instead urging her on with his silence. "All we have is what other people have said about us and little things we try not to forget. But that's it, that's all we are. We're whispers in the wind and somebody else's story."
Solas watched in silence for several moments as he digested her words, carried on a voice that seemed caught somewhere between sadness and frustration. Her search had not bore any fruit, exacerbating any anger or sorrow she might have felt in the first place.
"You want to remember things even the Elves themselves have forgotten," he observed at length. Elanna looked up at him and with no better way to respond found herself shrugging and nodding. With that gesture Solas climbed to his feet and spun on his heels. "Well we are never going to discover anything in the depths of Skyhold."
Elanna raised an eyebrow. "Pardon?"
"Come," he insisted, a sudden and unusual spring in his step. "We have searching to do."