AN: This chapter is, I think, my favorite. I hope you all enjoy it. Two chapters to go.
9:37 Dragon, Autumn
When I was a boy, one of my tutors told me that all places get their names from the way death greets you from within their borders. The Green Dales – death is the wild animals on the plains, he said, your corpse disguised amongst the lush green grass and tall trees. The Dark Swamps – death will dress up as your worst fears, he said, and claim you in a nightmare. The Hundred Pillars – death will come for you at the head of an ice spike, he said, jutting up from the earth.
Goran had nightmares for weeks after that and eventually my mother dismissed the tutor, but I never forgot what he said. After spending all these years in the world, I think he was right.
The desert south of Perivantium – the way I need to go to get home – is named The Silent Plains. Death claims you in silence, he said, because there is no living soul around to hear your dying screams. He was right. It's so quiet out here that I hear every pebble grind against the sole of my boot. I hear wind a good five minutes before it reaches me, and whenever something alive comes within a thousand meters, I hear it.
The Silent Plains are a blighted land. It's like a cold desert. During the Tevinter Imperium's rule more than a thousand years ago, the very first Blight ended here. The very first Grey Wardens killed the very first archdemon, routing the darkspawn forces, scattering them to the far corners of Thedas. They called it The Battle of the Silent Fields, because this place used to be a peaceful retreat. Lush and green and filled with fig trees and tropical animals where birds larger than a child used to fly the skies. The Silent Fields. But now it's a cold wasteland. There are patches of earth that are still scorched, either by the archdemon's fiery assault or by its disciples' magic. The dry, cracked earth stretches on and on into an endless matte-grey canvas that absorbs every living thing thrown into it. Color, light, hope. There are no fields. There is just flat expanse. The Silent Plains.
This is what magic does. It burns everything away. Magic makes it so that when everything is gone, it stays gone forever.
It's midday, and I have to stop and rest. For a while, it'll be too windy to walk. I've been traveling parallel to the Imperial Highway, which I've never set a foot upon. It's not a place for someone who wants to go unnoticed. I see all sorts of travelers, and they move fast, on horseback, in carriages, sometimes on foot but usually in large groups. This is no place to be caught alone. Slavers, mercenaries, henchmen… all sorts of people wander the Highway just like Senestra said. They look for marks just like me.
The autumn is fading away, and the wind has picked up, meaning that the plains have become hopeless instead of just gloomy. Although I am anxious to get home, I stopped in a small village, a border town to the border town. They called it Solas. I have no idea why; the sun shone there as much as it shines here, which is to say that it never shines at all. The sky is blanketed with a grey haze, the same color as the dirt. Anyway, I used the contents of Liam's satchel to outfit myself. He packed close to 15 sovereigns plus some trinkets that sold for another 10. While I was in Solas, I bought a set of too-heavy chainmail, an enchanted waterskin that refills every twelve hours that cost me close to 10 sovereigns alone, and a new sword. It's decent, but it'll never be as nice as my sword, One-Cut. This sword is more like Three-Hacks-and-a-Slash.
Anyway, no one in Solas seemed to recognize me or ask me any questions. I guess they get a lot of people passing through. I admit, I slept in an inn for a month, eating eggs with butter and goat's cheese, thick slices of bread soaked in beef gravy, and bloody steaks served on top of potatoes mashed with milk. It was nothing like the food of Starkhaven, which is as rich as an Orlesian lord, but it might as well have been the greatest food in Thedas. Of course, I would suffer Starkhaven's Fish Pie at this point.
Despite the stories, there are living things here, both large and small. There are these mammoth lizards that roam like cattle, lazily unfurling their forked tongues in and out as they waddle across the plain on their bellies – in Starkhaven, we called them dragon lizards, because, well, they are enormous. Yet they aren't scary because they are easy to avoid. It's the small things that I have to watch out for. Flying bugs, burrowing lizards, and scorpions – Andraste's stake, the scorpions! They fit in my palm, are the same color as the grey sand, and can kill me faster than a sword through the gut. They are everywhere, too. I see them during the day resting on the tops of rocks, and I hear them during the night as they hunt. They prefer the warmth though, and when I sleep, they mistake my warm body for rock, climbing across me in my slumber. One morning, I wake up to see a pincer out of the corner of my eye. I remain very still as I reach for my knife, but I am very quick as I stick it into the scorpion that is snoozing on my shoulder.
I am alone again. And again, I have too much time to think. About where I'm headed, about where I left. About the people I have met. And about how they died. Why has everyone died but me? My family... mother, father, my nieces and nephews, the prince... The slavers and all those slaves... Senestra. Thea. Desh. Except Liam... Liam...
His absence pierces through my chest like a splinter that I can't quite find, and I wonder just where along the journey that I began to care for him. About what happens to him. About protecting him from everything that was impossible to protect him from. Did I make a mistake? Should I have not taken him to Tevinter? Should I have done things differently? Could I have?
This regret eats at me, nagging me at every moment of every day, giving me something new to stew over other than that fateful decision of giving myself to a demon in Sammie's place. The one decision that sent me careening through the world. It changed everything. It changed me. And now I am changed again.
Run, Liam had said, and so I did. I ran.
Andraste... if you're up there... if you're listening... please guide him through Tevinter. Help him to make good choices. Make what's left of his heart whole again. Help him to know that he is never alone so long as I remember him.
Praying is all that I can do for him, because he's gone. I know I need to let him go, but I can't. That little boy's shadow looms over me at every step into the hard earth of this place. I keep putting one foot in front of the other and wait for the memory of him to fade but he's not fading. Nothing makes sense about what happened. He and I survived the Hundred Pillars in the winter! We escaped a slaver mine run by the Crows in the heart of Antiva! Things like that don't happen only for one of us to sacrifice themselves to a magister. I did everything right. I fought hard and didn't give up, and I convinced Liam to do the same, and yet I am here and he is there.
Why did I let him stay? Why did I leave?
I crush my eyes closed and silently berate myself for making choices that, deep down, I know were made me for me. Perhaps that's what truly nags at me. I could scream from this torment, but that might draw one of those dragon lizards, and I'm tired of fighting. One instance a day is my limit, and the scorpions provide enough to fill up my calendar.
After a month of walking, I start to think that I'm going mad, but it's more likely that I'm not used to being alone again. The swamps were bad enough, but this place... there's just nothing in every direction. The wind that sweeps across the plains kicks up the sand so that there is no horizon. My throat burns from breathing in the dusty air. My lips crack, resembling the earth; it's without color, without water, and without break from severity. There is nothing here but death and silence, and as that tutor implied, sometimes they are the same thing. Is it fitting that this is the last leg of my journey? Am I traveling through a metaphor for my own despair?
I take a draw from my enchanted waterskin and put one foot in front of the other. I must keep moving. I must keep going. If I stop, I'll surely die.
One afternoon when the sun is high overhead – at least, I assume that the hazy greenish ball in the sky whose light is heavily filtered through the grey haze is the sun – I approach a canyon. I am not happy about this, because it doesn't look like there are any escape routes once I go in and it doesn't seem as if there's a way around it. I can see from here that the Imperial Highway has been severed just over the lip of the gorge, but the path diverges, running along the canyon's edge. I guess people don't go across anymore – they go around. I look across the canyon. It goes on and on as far as I can see, and if my memory of geography serves, this must be the Shattered Canyon. Dried up like a year-old prune, it drops down so deep that I can't see the bottom. Maybe that's just the haze.
I sit for half a day trying to figure out what to do. Do I chance the Highway? Do I venture down? It would be shorter to cross the canyon than go around it, I bet. I wonder what might be living inside it – lizards, drakes, mercenary groups preying on caravans? – but what lurks within discovers me first.
I hear the hiss come from behind me, and spin around to face—
Holy Maker! Darkspawn!
They look like corpses. Running, hissing, shrieking corpses. I half expect them to lunge at me like drunks, slow and ambling because of their thinness. I can see their ribs protruding from caved-in bellies. But they sprint for me instead. I reactively draw my sword, unable to pull off my shield in time, as I am unprepared for how fast they are coming at me. Once they get close enough, I can see that they are almost all muscle. One of them has a sword and it lifts it up with an ashen arm, the skin shriveled so badly that I can see the disfigured shapes of the well-preserved muscle and smooth bone beneath. It widens its eyes, and they are ragged, pallid spheres in decaying pits of tar. It opens its mouth, letting loose something between a groan and a scream. Its lips curl backwards menacingly, disgustingly, revealing a jagged line of badly chipped, half-rotten teeth.
I've seen sketches, paintings, even sculptures of darkspawn, but none of those artists' renditions give them their due. I've come face to face with dragons, demons, magisters, slavers, apostates, the demented and the clever alike, but these things are, without a doubt, the most terrifying creatures that I've ever laid my eyes on.
But for all their threatening posture, they can't fight for anything. The one with the sword swings it at me so wide that all I need to do is step to the side to avoid the blade. The second one thrusts its axe forward, but any novice could block that and I disarm it easily. The third one jumps in front of me, but instead of swinging its mace, it hisses angrily, and some kind of blackened goo dribbles down its chin. And so I do it the favor of separating its head from its body, since it clearly wasn't using it anyway. The other two are so easily dispatched that I have to wonder if this is some sort of trap. Oh, Maker... their stench is overwhelming; sweet and foul like a rotting carcass lying in its own vomit. Aside from the overwhelming smell, I decide to vacate the area in case other more skilled darkspawn happen by.
But the real problem is where to go. Everything in my body is screaming at me that travelling down into this pit may as well be jumping into the Well of All Souls, but the Imperial Highway is as good as climbing onto a dead man's pyre. I could walk parallel to the canyon along the edge but when I pull out my map, dismay settles upon my shoulders like a lead cloak. This thing stretches out in both directions, taking me away from Nevarra no matter which way I choose. If I walk near the Highway like I've been doing, it will be months of walking in the wrong direction, leading me into the Anderfels, where there are more darkspawn than rocks.
I squint into the hazy distance, and I can see the other side of the canyon from here. If I can make it through the canyon, a canyon that I am mostly certainly convinced is full of darkspawn, then I could be to Nevarra City in a month. I think about those darkspawn that I just killed – are all darkspawn that easy to kill? Trust your instincts, the masters said. My instincts tell me there are no good choices, but I am taking no great risk by going into this canyon any more than I take by choosing the Highway or by simply being here.
With a deep breath of the hazy air in my lungs, I take my first step. And it takes me down.
They say that during the Battle of the Silent Fields, that the archdemon let loose an inferno of blighted flame that stretched so far and so wide, that it killed more than five thousand Grey Wardens instantly, incinerating them down to a fine ash. They call them the Ash Wardens. Their remains had the darkspawn taint burned into them, or so the stories go, and over the next hundred years, it ate away at the dirt, as if the taint can even destroy that which is already dead. Further and further the earth decayed under the weight of the Ash Wardens, eventually stopping about a mile down, creating the Shattered Canyon. This canyon. I think of all those dead Wardens as I step lightly over grey powdery dirt. Is this the ash?
Hoping to sneak through unnoticed, I move achingly slowly. Every step I take could be my last, and so I take them stingily, watching the ground, the air, and the shadows. I stop often, listening to the silence around me. Listening for anything. I hear nothing.
I take a sip from my enchanted waterskin and take small bites from my dwindling rations of jerky and dried fruit. I have tied a long string around my waist to keep my scabbard from flopping away from my body, knocking into rocks. My armor isn't as quiet as it needs to be. My boots are worn down from traveling for months over hard earth. It could have been any one of those things that produces enough noise to stir my first predator. I am not sure what caught its attention, but I guess that I'm about halfway through the canyon when I hear it.
At first, it's a faint grating noise, almost like those pebbles that plunk down from the canyon walls. But I hear it again, this time closer and it most definitely sounds like shuffling feet against gravel. I don't want to draw their attention, because where there is one darkspawn, the masters said, there are a thousand.
I hear the skittering again, closer this time, and I hasten to skip over rocks and twigs, angling my body sideways through a narrow crevasse in the rock. Once on the other side, I search the grey landscape for any place to hunker down, but there is nothing here! I take a left, then a right, and then move forward, the canyon's maze-like ravines making my directional decisions for me and now I can hear more of them, the hissing noises sound like I'm wandering through a pit of snakes. To my left is a tunnel of sorts, and I duck my head under thick layers of rock, squatting through into a fair-sized chasm. There are several choices of which way to go, but once a darkspawn emerges from one of the pathways, I dart sideways, stumbling through one of the other choices. My shoulders bounce off the adjacent rock faces as I hurry through – left, right, right – don't get lost, Beenie. Keep going. Left, forward, keep moving, keep moving.
Four darkspawn jump out from an adjacent pathway, and I hop to my right, crashing over a rock, scrambling up to my feet, sprinting now, moving fast, faster than they can, but another group of three cuts me off. Quicker than I can think about what I'm doing, I pull my sword from its sheath, and the ringing is so loud that I cringe reactively right before I slice through the neck of one of the hissing fiends. I pivot, turning my hips as I bring my sword around to hack another across the chest and finish the third with a thrust through its heart – well, where its heart should be.
The group of four catches up to me. Turning and moving faster than I have in months, I breathlessly block incoming blows from their weapons – blunt clubs and splintered swords. I kick one away, turn around and punch another one in the face, swing left, right, turn again to slice one of their heads clean off – gotcha! I hop around, tripping the one with the club, and I stomp my boot into its skull, grimacing at the deafening crunch. Turning away, I take out the last two quickly, clean thrusts right through the chests. As I pull my blade from the last one's trunk, I notice bits of brain and bone clinging to my boot. I stomp on the ground repeatedly, feverishly trying to flick away the filth. Nervously, I look up, my hands shaking and the sweat dripping from my hair like raindrops.
Don't wait for death to find you, my master's voice echoes inside my head, pushing my body into motion and I nearly fall backwards before my legs start to work. The adrenaline pumps through me, lifting my feet over the jagged earth and carrying me away.
Some things are ingrained in us, and some things fade away, but there are those things that come back to us right when we need them. My skill with the sword came back to me just when I needed it, and that which is ingrained in me reaches for reason. For purpose. Was it the Maker? Was it Andraste? Am I supposed to go through this? Am I destined to return to Starkhaven, bringing this experience with me?
I go on for as long as I can, finally exhausting myself at what seems like dusk, through it's impossible to tell in this forsaken place. I take a long pull from my waterskin, and find a rock to lean against. I need to rest. My hands are still shaking.
The days that follow are exhausting, for the farther that I travel into this canyon, the more darkspawn I fight. I hear them before I see them most of the time, which makes it easier – fighting offensively versus defensively expends less energy, and I need all of mine to survive every day. At least there are none of those infernal scorpions down here.
One day, as I'm traveling through a dry and winding gulch, I see a darkspawn in the distance scampering across the path up ahead, and I duck behind a big rock to avoid notice. It – he? – seems busy, trying to get somewhere, and I let him go. Opting not to fight is the best way to save energy. After a few minutes, I resume walking, but I've underestimated them. Most days, the darkspawn that I encounter don't display any intelligence at all. Unthinking, already-dead monsters that lunge at me without thought for their own existence.
But not today.
As I round a corner, I run into a group of about eight, and at their center is a fat darkspawn. It's shorter than the others with a round belly and a sneer wiped across its round, decayed face. One of its cheeks is completely gone, and through it, I can see its back teeth, browned and broken. It grumbles out a laugh, and then brings its stubby palms up, moving its bloated hands around in a circle over its head producing a purple swirl of light – magic!
Maker! Andraste! If there's anyone left up there that cares enough to notice an insignificant nephew to a dead prince, place your divine hand on my shoulder and give me the courage to face the brutality of this place and emerge unsullied.
I pull my sword from its sheath, pulling my shield from my back as well, and understanding that this may be the last moment of my life, I grip both until my knuckles turn white.
I avoid the first magical assault by ducking behind my shield, but the magic sears the face of it to a scorched black – it can't take many of these. The foul minions of this darkspawn mage launch themselves at me, and I turn this way and that, forcibly slashing my blade through one, two, turning again, my sword meeting another blade in a loud clang. There are too many! I take a blow to my back and I spin around, slashing through the offender's skull, which crumbles into a crunchy mess, its blackened brains exploding across my blackened shield.
Too overwhelmed to be disgusted, I turn again just in time to see another magical bolt coming for me, and I don't have time—it hits me square in the chest. Andraste preserve me! It burns! I cry out from the pain, dropping to the ground and rolling away from the darkspawn who are trying to stomp on me with their mangled feet – half of them aren't wearing boots. I manage to kick upwards, knocking two of them back until I can get back to my feet. But once I do, one of them jumps on my back and I flail around, swinging my sword outwards as I pass by another – slicing it cleanly through the neck – and another – ripping it open at its belly, it's blackened, slimy entrails spilling onto the grey dirt. It slumps over as I twirl myself around, trying to avoid the claws of the darkspawn on my back that is riding me like a pony. I comically trip over the darkspawn that has just slumped to the ground in time to luckily avoid another magical bolt of purple energy, and while I'm on the ground, I roll over onto my back, pinning the darkspawn to the ground. I see another hovering over me and it stomps a heavy bare foot onto my ankle –
Pain! Horrendous, piercing pain like fire within my bones rips through my ankle, down to my toes and up to my knee! I scream loudly, but even through the pain, my instincts haven't left me. At least not yet. I kick up with my other foot, my boot connecting with the offender's chin, knocking its jaw clean off, and it reels backwards and out of sight.
I've dropped my sword somewhere, and so I pull the dagger from my hip, flip it around, and stick it into the soft slush of the pinned darkspawn's gut. I hobble up, searching for my sword in the dirt and finding it just in time for the jawless darkspawn to come back at me. The pain dims, the anger I feel at all unjust things claims my heart, and I don't bother with the sword as I raise my shield into the air and slam it down onto the darkspawn's head, bashing its face flat. It crumples to the ground in a heap.
It's just me and the mage darkspawn. I throw the dagger at the mage's head – of course, I miss, but that doesn't matter because the mage had to stop casting to avoid the blade. While it ducks, I charge, letting loose a feral yell, bracing my shield against my shoulder, slamming into the beast hard, knocking it down, and before it can raise a palm to me, I lift my sword and drive the tip into the mage's face. It stills almost immediately.
I breathe hard, gasping and grunting, my body fiercely alive and yet deadened to the horrors of survival. I look at my hands, which are covered in blackened goo, and in a fit of disgust, I drag them through the dirt, trying to clean them off, trying to rid myself of this, but it will stay with me for a long time. All of this will.
Liam. I am now glad that you aren't here for this. That you never saw this. That you never saw me this way.
Nothing is permanent, my masters used to say. But some things should be. This should be. I don't ever want to forget this, but I also don't want to harden my heart or lose myself in all of this evil. I am still Corbinian Vael, Marquess of Starkhaven, inheritor of all the land north of the Northern Gate and heir to the Golden Torch of Corin. I am engaged to Samantha Mayweather of Starkhaven. I am going to survive this. And when I am done, I am going to live. I am going to live.
I pull my waterskin from my pack to find it damaged – damn it! It won't refill now. I drink the rest slowly, dragging out the end of my fresh water for a week. But when it's gone, it's gone. My chest burns, my collarbone aches, and I now have a limp. That darkspawn may have badly wrenched my ankle, but I can't be patient any longer. I have to run now.
And so I do. And it's laborious. Fighting, hiding, running, fighting some more. I kill so many darkspawn that I lose count. Fortunately, I don't run into any more mages.
When I find a path that actually winds upwards, I can't contain myself, dragging my body towards the ash-grey sky. The rock cuts through my worn chainmail, leaving my palms and knees bloody and sore. When I emerge onto flat ground, I can't help laughing with relief. I am alive! I am out of that wretched canyon! Laughing kicks up the dust in my lungs, and I cough, eventually coming close to hyperventilating with elation, but I am not done yet. Nevarra City. That's where I must go, and without even resting, I break into a limping run, heading south. When I reach the Imperial Highway, I stop caring about whether or not anyone sees me. I know that I look like the walking dead. I have filth and gore covering me from head to toe, my shield is a splintered and blackened mess, my sword no longer shines, and there's a terrible hitch in my step from my ankle. I feel tired. I feel angry. Maker help whoever messes with me.
There are no guards posted at The Bridge of the Cleansed, which connects the Imperial Highway on either side of the Minanter. Its name was changed when one of the first Grand Clerics of Nevarra blessed the waters so that anyone who crossed would be cleansed of the horrors of the Silent Plains. It used to be called Peregrine's Bridge, so named for the first ruler of Nevarra who also happened to be one of Maferath's sons. But not the son who killed him.
I stumble down into the trenches, submerging my hands into the churning, reddish-brown waters. Thought it bubbles over rocks like its boiling hot, it feels blessedly cool on my skin. The darkspawn blood that has been stitched into the lines of my hands lightens, but not by much. I lift palmfuls of the brown water to my face, closing my eyes and imagining that all the horrors of the Silent Plains drip off of me and into the river. The ash from those dead Grey Wardens. The bloody bits of darkspawn. My own blood and sweat. I run my hands through my hair and they come out black. I am not cleansed. I can't clean this away by myself. It sticks to my arms and cheeks and it knots in my hair. I could scrub myself pink and still feel it. Maybe it will always be there.
I plunge my fingers into the soft mud of the riverbank to pull myself from the trench, and when I reach the top, I see a patch of blue in the sky. It starts out small, but quickly grows, the faint rays of sunshine pushing through. And then I see it. A rainbow.
I drop to my knees and wonder if the world is full of signs that we refuse to see. I've felt for a long time that the Maker has left me, but maybe we were never together, not even in Starkhaven. How wonderfully selfish of me to think that he would favor me, that his bride would bless me and protect me because of my rank, my family, and my wealth. What have I ever done to earn it?
Is the Maker working magic in the sky?
I think about all the people in my life who have come and gone, those who I have forsaken and forgotten. How I treated so many as secondary, as though they were just set pieces in a grand play where I was the star. But I am not the center of anything, and all those whom I have loved – my parents, my brothers Goran, Sebastian, Liam, my friends Flora, Ruxton, Innley, Vincent, Arianna, and maybe Benji Garrity, but most of all, my Samantha – were the real stars for I have learned the most important lesson of my life here on my knees in the mud, alone and lost to the world: that my importance rests solely in hearts of those I love.
There's something out there. A blurry outline of brick and stone. I try to focus on it, and lose my balance, falling over into a mud puddle. Get up, Beenie. You aren't done yet. Get up get up get up. I push myself up and squint into the horizon... Are those Chantry spires?
I can barely lift my head to know which way to go. My body doesn't want to move.
Push yourself up. That's it...
I can barely see. I'm so tired that my eyes don't want to stay open.
One foot in front of the other...
My tongue feels thick in my mouth, like I've got a mouthful of sand.
One more step... One more step...
My amble turns into an elegant walk as I travel along Starkhaven's granite path, a small hand hooked through my elbow. We come to a stop at the fountain of Andraste and I turn to face my Sammie just as she lifts herself onto her tiptoes. Her bare shoulder feels soft underneath my hand and as the flyaway strands of her hair tickles my chin, her soft whisper puffs into my ear.
You best not keep me waiting.
When have I kept you waiting?
I'm always waiting for you.
I forget that this is probably a dream. That I am collapsed in the muck, blanketed by grime, and probably dying from my wounds. From thirst. From all of it. None of it matters.
She lowers herself down from her tiptoes, away from my ear, and turns her sparkling eyes up to me, so bright, like gemstones catching the Maker's sunlight. I lay my palm upon her soft cheek. And then my Sammie smiles at me.
I think that it doesn't seem right that I should die out here. After all of this. That I end up all alone.
No, Beenie, she says. You are never alone so long as I remember.