BioWare owns all but my character's and her dog's names. : )
So what is going on, and who is our mystery figure, a creepy voyeur or something else? I hope you enjoy this next installment. Please let me know what you think.
And a little bit of a surprise for Alistair and Kai, that I would love to know if anyone reading along saw coming. I tried to hint but not too strongly. So read on to see, and hang on to your hats, it is going to be a bumpy ride. : )
Thanks for all your support and encouragement. Your reviews, private messages, and putting me on your favorites, and author watch lists means so much. It really helps keep the muse going.
Blessings!
Kai and Alistair jumped guiltily and grasped at the, Maker be blessed, covers. Kai had a moment to think how funny this moment might be with them both blushing, especially Alistair whose flush seemed to be extending all the way down to his...um...toes. That is, if it were not for the creepiness of having a hooded female figure standing at the foot of the bed. The figure merely smiled as if she could read Kai's thoughts. Kai couldn't really see much of the face except the mouth because the rest was in shadow, so she had no idea if the smile was one of amusement or something else. "You two might like to get dressed, yes? And then we can all go back to Highever. Or at least what your minds created as Highever here." The figure turned and walked a distance away keeping her back to them.
"Friend of yours," Kai asked Alistair with a grin as she put on her tunic.
"What? No!" Alistair spluttered. "Why would you think that?"
He is so cute when he gets flustered and blushes, she thought to herself, "Because you have been in the Fade longer than I have?" Kai raised an eyebrow at him. "I thought maybe you picked up a girlfriend while I was stuck in the real world," Kai laughed at him.
"Oh, you are evil, you're a bad person." He grinned at her.
"Do you hate me?" she asked him coyly as she reached over and kissed him, running her fingers through his hair.
"Yes." And he nibbled on her earlobe setting off a familiar aching need.
"You had better stop. I don't think our visitor is going to want to wait while we have hot animalistic sex again."
"Oh, 'animalistic', what did you have in mind?" he asked cheekily, but he pulled away from her, running his fingertips down the side of her face in that familiar way.
"Shall we go now?" The cloaked figure gestured sweeping out her arm, but there seemed to be amusement in the woman's voice and body language. Kai grinned at Alistair and shrugged. They followed the figured across the forest glade which shimmered and became the great hall at Highever before they hit the tree line.
Apparently, everyone but Oren was sitting and waiting for their arrival. This conversation was for adults only, it appeared.
They had one other new visitor whom Kai did not recognize at first. It took a moment. He looked so familiar, like Alistair and Cailan, another brother? And then it hit her, King Maric, her king, and her old friend. He looked younger than she remembered.
She had seen him at a tourney held at Highever in his honor when she was a little girl. He had given her private lessons with wooden daggers he'd had made just for her. The man sitting here was the same man who had sat her on his knee and told her stories and fed her cheese. The man who had given her a set of finely made dual daggers when she was ten, and had given her more lessons, the man who had written her when his busy schedule permitted. The man who had been the second friend to die on her, and taught her what grief truly was.
She went to him and was about to kneel, but he put a hand under her elbow and stopped her. "Please, my little friend, dear lady, don't do that. As Cailan said, none of us have titles here." He smiled a familiar lopsided smile, and she realized how much Alistair and Cailan looked like their father.
"I..." Maric put a finger on her lips and stopped her. "Please, no explanations or apologies to me, my dear friend. I have nothing to complain about." He simply looked at her with the same bright blue eyes Cailan had. Maker, they all shared so many traits she was going to give herself mental vertigo comparing them. She gave herself a mental head slap.
Alistair walked up behind her and placed his hands around her waist. Maric smiled at them both. "You have grown into a strong, smart, beautiful woman. But then, I knew that you would be remarkable, from the first moment we met. My son is very lucky."
Alistair kissed the back of her head, and she could feel him smiling. "Thank you my lord, Maric...my friend, Maric?" She corrected herself, laughing self-consciously.
"Well, that is my name and one I gave you permission to use long ago. I have missed your friendship, dear girl. I am so very happy to know that you and my son found each other. I couldn't have wished for a better person for him. You made him happy-"
"Makes me happy, Father," again Kai could feel his grin in her hair.
Maric smiled at her again, "For that, and your love of me, not as your king but as your friend; and for your saving Ferelden, I owe you my gratitude. But especially for Alistair."
The hooded figure had watched all of this quietly, standing near the flames roaring in the fireplace. The soft voice broke into the exchange. "I believe I offered you answers, Warden." She gestured for Kai and Alistair to take a seat.
Kai sat next to Alistair; he took her hand and linked their fingers. Kai broke in before the cloaked figure could start. "First of all, who in the Maker's name are you? I mean, I don't want to be rude, but you're showing up, cloaked and offering answers, are really kind of creepy." Kai just looked pointedly at the figure. "And you're being cloaked and standing in front of the fire so you are just a silhouette is not helping."
"Not to mention maybe watching us in an intimate act of passion," Alistair whispered out of the side of his mouth, causing Kai to grin at him.
Again, Kai thought she caught a smile from the hooded figure, but it was really hard to tell. "Let us just say I am a messenger for the Maker."
"Really, does he send a 'messenger' to all newly dead people? Do I get a fruit basket, a welcome-to-being-dead gift?" Kai asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I think she has been around Alistair a little too long," came Duncan's retort.
"Hey, I resemble that remark," Alistair quipped. "But I certainly didn't get a visit when I showed up here. I feel insulted."
The hooded figure sighed. "You did not get a special visit because you were indeed dead. But, the Warden is not."
Kai felt herself leaping up from the couch as if she had been set on fire. "Not dead, of course I'm dead. I am here aren't I?"
"Part of you is here in the Fade, in large part due to your connection to Alistair. But a part of you is still alive there in Ferelden. The mage Wynne used her spirit helper, at great risk to herself, to keep you alive." The hooded figure paced. "When the Maker makes souls, some souls get split in two. They are really one, but can inhabit two different bodies. This doesn't happen very often, but you and Alistair are two such souls. It is why you can speak to him across the Veil, and he to you. You are never really separated. It is why you would have found each other even if your lives had been different and the Blight had not brought you together. But, only a part of your soul is here. There is a small spark still keeping your corporeal form alive, aided by Wynne's helper."
The hooded figure took a pitcher and poured water into a silver bowl that had materialized in her hand. She held it out to Kai. "Take it and I will show you."
Kai took the bowl and sat back down on the couch. The others in the room all gathered behind her. The hooded figure brushed her hands over the water, and it began to sound like the tide lapping and to sparkle like sun on the surface of the lake. "That is what I saw before I ended up here."
"Yes, it was your way of passing through the Veil. Look."
Kai saw a doll – no it was herself – lying in a bed. Zev, dear Zev, was sitting in a chair next to her along with Fergus. Zev had placed a red rose, the rose in her hands, and he stroked her hair and kissed her forehead.
So that was why he went right after her at the funeral. He saw her put the rose on the bier, and he had taken it back. She had been so distraught she hadn't even noticed it was missing. She could hear Zev speaking as if from a long way off.
"Kai, you need to come back. It is my fault, dear friend; I should have seen the signs of poison sooner. We need you here. If you don't come back, Anora wins." She watched as Zev clenched his fists and unclenched them. "I need you here, we all need you here. Please, come back."
"Please, little sister." Kai watched while Fergus put his hand on her forehead. It was breaking her heart to hear the fear in their voices.
"They need you, Warden Kaidana Cousland." The cloaked figure used her full name. "Ferelden needs you once again, or great suffering will befall it."
"Will befall it? You mean Anora is going to be that bad?" Alistair asked. The figure nodded an affirmative to Alistair's question. And then, everyone in the whole room started talking at once.
"No," Kai whispered.
"I don't understand." The hooded figure effectively cut everyone off mid-sentence.
"I said 'No.' I will not go back. I'm through. You overplayed your hand, spirit. I did my duty by Ferelden. I'm not going back," Kai said slowly and deliberately so her meaning was not lost.
"Kaidana..." the hooded figure began, but was cut off as Kai threw the bowl from her lap with such force that it hit the wall and dented, splashing its contents over half the room. She got up from the couch, shaking.
"I said 'NO!' I have had enough of being the Maker's puppet, his toy, his plaything. He can't even keep his other creations from the Blight without help. Well, let him find another to clean up his messes. I'm done!" Kai's rage and her fear rose up to swallow her.
How could they see her as this savior, this hero? Didn't they understand?
She thought she was going to choke on it all. She found everything spilling out of her, all the failures. Everyone kept on seeing her as this strong, smart leader. They looked at her as if she knew what she was doing. Maker, she had been a Gray Warden all of four days before she was running around Ferelden trying to get an army together and avoid Loghain. She was no leader, it was just a facade. Couldn't they see it? Kai pleaded with them. All her decisions just meant death and destruction. How could they not see it?
Kai felt all the anger, grief and despair that she had kept locked up behind a numb wall, finally choking sobs had her bending over on the floor and confessing all of her failures. Her failure to save Duncan and Cailan because the beacon took so long to get lit, killing men in Lothering simply because they were starving and thought the bounty on her head would put food on their tables, watching Daveth die, killing Branka, Oghren's wife, so they could destroy the Anvil of the Void. Alistair had been there for all of it, but these weren't his decisions. Her decisions created such death and destruction. It all rested squarely on her shoulders. The burden was her's, and hers alone.
The litany of her failures kept tumbling out of her mouth. She listed them all, not expecting any absolution or forgiveness. How could there be? And then she confessed the one that broke her, Alistair's death. She had watched him die when she could have used magic to save him. What had her choices done but bring death and destruction? So much death caused by her or because of her. And they wanted her to go back and cause more? Kai sobbed while they all tried to comfort her. Alistair in particular tried to hold her but she was inconsolable.
Then, Maric's quiet voice broke through her sobbing, "So many lives rest on all of your decisions, don't they? To know that, not only can just a few people die based on what you decide, but that a lot of people can and probably will?" Maric bent down and smoothed away her tears with his fingers. "To become what you hate to save what you love."
Kai just nodded, he understood where the others didn't. Maric just smiled a sad and knowing smile.
"I was told by Flemeth that was what would happen to me. She was right. I think it happens to anyone who is called to, who is born to, do the difficult jobs that no one else can do." He gently picked her up off the floor. "I think, dear lady, you are one of those people as well."
"Then you must see why you were, are, such a well-loved king," Kai told him.
"Then it should not be so hard to see why you are so well loved yourself, dear friend. No one is asking you to be perfect except you. And believe me, perfection is not possible. I tried, and it made me miserable, and I failed spectacularly at it." Kai could see where Alistair got his humor from. "I would rather have someone like you, who agonizes over the consequences of her decisions, helping the country, than someone like Anora, who does not. Wouldn't you?" Maric smiled at her before encircling her in his arms, hugging her and helping her to rise.
"There is something else you should know Kaidana," the hooded spirit interjected. They all looked towards their visitor.
"Uh oh, this can't be good," quipped Alistair.
The spirit merely turned an amused look on Alistair and said, "The Theirin line is not dead. It lives in you, Kaidana."