Shadow and Rose

by Lady Norbert

A/N: I hope I'm doing a decent job of making Alistair's crush on Elissa evident without being ridiculous. Thanks as always for reading and reviewing!

Chapter Eleven: Golem Control Rod

Dwarven runes flicker along this crystalline rod. You've been told that it controls a golem in the village of Honnleath, near the Korcari Wilds.

We took our leave of Redcliffe just after lunch, to make our way back north to Soldier's Peak. From what Levi Dryden said to us when we left him, he should by now have started summoning a few of his relatives to help him make the place habitable for the next generations of Grey Wardens. Since he's a trader, and we already have Bodahn Feddic trailing after us everywhere we go, that should enable us to start stocking the place with supplies. If nothing else, we're going to need food for the winter.

We also are going to need some people living there in order to fulfill certain needs. Elissa and I had a brief meeting with Bann Teagan this morning about that, actually. I shouldn't be surprised by it, but she's really very smart about such things; in fact, she came to the meeting with a list. That must have been what I saw her writing in camp. The keep will need a cook, with two or three kitchen hands to help out; a few domestic workers to help keep the place clean; and a small platoon of strong men who are handy with maintenance, since after two centuries of rot there's bound to be plenty to do. And that's just where she wants to start.

"Some carpenters would be especially welcome, to work on replacing the worn-out furniture, and a stone mason should almost certainly inspect the walls and foundations to confirm their structural integrity," she said. "Of course, we and our companions will do what we can to help, but I don't think any of us were ever trained in those particular arts. I can't imagine there's much of anything left in the way of a treasury, so we're not going to be able to pay any of these people a salary until the Wardens are redeemed and we can start collecting tithes again, or at least get some assistance from the motherhouse at Weisshaupt. But assuming that we can arrange sufficient food supplies, we can at least repay them with room and board in safety."

Both Teagan and I sort of stared at her for a minute or two. I mean, I know perfectly well that Elissa's intelligent; I've seen it often enough firsthand. So I don't know why I was so surprised that she'd given all this so much thought, but I was. Maybe because I really hadn't thought about it much myself.

"Of course," she added, "once we're able to get a better look at Brother Genitivi's research, we'll resume the search for Arl Eamon's cure. We have to return to Denerim and confront his assistant, who deliberately misdirected us. But in the meantime, I need to know that my companions will have safe harbor for the winter, and that future Grey Wardens will have a place to call home."

"Yes, of course." Teagan recovered his powers of speech. "Well, I will be remaining in Redcliffe to oversee the arling during Eamon's incapacity. But what I can do is send Ser Perth - he can be trusted with the message - back to my own bannorn to recruit such assistance as you require. With all the refugees, I don't know if I can guarantee much in the way of a contribution to your food stores, but I'm sure that there are skilled workers enough who would be glad to shelter in a place where the darkspawn dare not seek them."

"I'll leave the list in your care, then," she said. "But do caution Ser Perth that it's probably not wise to send men and women with large families. Soldier's Peak really isn't an appropriate place for children, much as I think we would all wish to protect them. Tell him that single men and women, or even childless married couples, are preferred if at all possible. I'll appoint someone to act as seneschal when we're not there, probably Levi Dryden himself in the short term, and he'll direct their efforts."

"You've given this a lot of thought," he noted admiringly.

"Well, I am the daughter of a teyrn," she pointed out, smiling. "My father may have raised me to be a warrior, but my mother insisted I learn the minutiae of overseeing a noble household, since she figured sooner or later I'd be married. I suppose that the resurrection of Soldier's Peak could best be described as a combination of both halves of my education."

She excused herself a few minutes later to finish preparing to leave. I watched her go, deeply impressed by just how many burdens this one woman is able to bear. Teagan cleared his throat.

"Alistair, may I offer a word of advice?"

"Er, sure."

"Don't let that one get away."

Maker willing, I won't.

I'm trying to forge a better relationship with Toby. I mean, it seems like a good idea; Elissa loves that dog, and he's devoted to her. So it makes sense for me to get into his good graces, right? We didn't start out so well, unfortunately. There was a point in camp, early in our travels, when I thought he'd stolen some food. Apparently the mabari can understand a lot of what we say to them. There's an old maxim here in Ferelden that mabari are smart enough to speak and wise enough not to. Maybe it's true.

So I'm trying to talk to him, show him that I want to be his friend. We both sort of adore the same woman, after all. (Oh, Maker, I'm not that far gone already, am I?) Problem is, he doesn't seem much more inclined to listen to me than anybody else in our party. When we stopped for a breather, I thought I was making some headway; he let me scratch his ears. I had to wonder whether he really understands what's going on, with the Blight and all, but when I asked him he just wagged his tail.

"We've all got big parts to play," I told him. "Even you. Especially you, in some ways; you're the mabari. You guard one of the most important people..." I didn't get to finish my thought because he barked, and picked up a stick and brought it to me. He wanted to play, not listen.

It doesn't seem to have been entirely a wasted effort, though. Elissa heard what I said. And if you ask me, she's not one of the most important people in this campaign against the Blight - she's the most important person. I wasn't lying when I told her, however long ago it was, that she's the reason I think we have a chance.

We're heading north, of course, on our return trip to Soldier's Peak. Generally speaking, our party travels faster than the caravans; we have no horses or other livestock to rest and feed, our tents are small and simple, and we pack relatively light (except for Bodahn Feddic, of course, but he's only with us about half the time). We stop about four or five times in the course of a day, to sit and drink some water or to have a meal. We only do any cooking when we actually make camp for the night, however, so by day we get by on dried meat and increasingly stale bread. In recent weeks we were sometimes lucky enough to come across a bush full of berries or even a stray fruit tree, but with the harvest now over and the frost setting in, that won't be happening again for a while.

Elissa continues to try to devote part of her day to speaking with each of us. As the party gets larger, that becomes more difficult, but she does try. She and Wynne seem to have taken an immediate liking to each other, which is sweet. I think Elissa misses her mother more than she lets on, and having Wynne around maybe makes that less painful. I sort of envy her that, in a way. I don't miss my mother. You can't miss what you never had, can you?

I'd actually venture to say, based on these early observations, that Wynne's probably going to end up the best-liked person in our whole group, after Elissa herself. Morrigan detests her, of course, because Morrigan's a bitch and she detests any Circle mage, but everyone else seems to like her. Well, I'm not sure Sten likes anybody really, except for "the kadan," and even that has its limits. But he seems to tolerate Wynne a bit better than most.

I like her myself, from what I know of her. She seems very kind, very determined to do the right thing, but she's got a wicked little sense of humor too. Truthfully, I was a little worried that she might be put off by my Templar training, so I wanted to set things straight with her early. When we took one of our breaks, I sat down next to her. "So, you... know that I am a Templar, right?"

"I believe what I heard was that you were not, in fact, a Templar. You were trained as one before you became a Grey Warden."

"That's right. But I still have all the abilities of one, of course. That doesn't make you nervous?"

"Should it? I am no apostate. Perhaps you should be directing this question at Morrigan."

That made me laugh, and I explained that Morrigan claims she's not afraid of me. Actually, Morrigan claims she's not afraid of anything. It's probably even true. We talked about it a little more, and Wynne is really perfectly comfortable being around me, if only because - as she pointed out - she reasons that I would warn her before deciding to go ahead and slaughter her. Like I said, wicked little sense of humor.

In addition to bonding with the dog, I've been trying to get to know Sten a little better. It's not going as well as I might have hoped. Today I asked him how he passed the time while he was locked in that cage in Lothering. He was there for a good three weeks before Elissa got permission to bring him with us; he must have been bored out of his mind, I figured.

I don't think he liked the question much. After some evasion, he finally said, "On good days, I posed riddles to the passersby, offering them treasures for correct answers."

"Really?"

"No."

Too bad, honestly. As I told him, that had serious potential. I didn't get to talk to him about it more, though, because we were interrupted by a small shout. Elissa and Leliana, who had been collecting some of the elfroot and deathroot plants that are still growing in this forest (they're useful in things like herbal poultices), had come across a strange ditch. Lying in its center was an oddly shaped rock, which glowed in an almost magical fashion. Wynne says she's never seen anything like it. I wasn't sure we should disturb it, but Elissa's somehow rather taken with the stuff and insisted on bringing it in her pack. I hope that wasn't a bad idea.

That was unexpected.

We breakfasted this morning and struck the camp, and continued north, entering the bannorn. As we were passing through one part of the forest, where the snow was just beginning to assert its dominance, we came upon a group of guards menacing a lone man. Unsure of how to proceed, we concealed ourselves in the trees and watched.

"That's the livery of Bann Loren," said Elissa thoughtfully. "And he... he looks sort of familiar..."

"That's one of Cailan's men," I hissed. "One of the king's honor guards - I'm sure of it. I thought they all died at Ostagar."

I'm sorry that we chose to err on the side of caution, and remain concealed in the trees to see what happened. If we'd only known - we could have ambushed them, and perhaps saved his life. Instead, we watched in horror as one of the guards pulled a knife and plunged it into the man's stomach, leaving him for dead. Leliana clapped her hands over her mouth so she wouldn't attract their attention with her gasp of horror. We couldn't risk an altercation - we outnumbered them by one, but Bann Loren is one of the nobles whose support we'll need against Loghain, and as far as we could tell, his men were only following orders.

As soon as they were out of sight, we rushed to the fallen guard. I knew him - Elric Maraigne, honor guard to Cailan just as I'd suspected. He identified Elissa and me as Grey Wardens immediately. She tried to administer a healing poultice, but he waved her off, saying they had given him his death wound. "I've been a wanted man since Ostagar... for desertion," he wheezed, clutching his stomach. "Knew I couldn't escape forever. Listen to me, Wardens." He explained, in an increasingly weaker voice, that Cailan left documents in his personal chest which were to be given to the Grey Wardens in the event of his demise. Elric had the key, but he had buried it at the base of a statue in Ostagar so that if he was captured, it wouldn't be taken from him. He begged us to go there and retrieve this hidden cache. To return to Ostagar.

Elissa looked up at me. "You will take me with you when you go, won't you?" I asked her. That she would do it, I had absolutely no doubt. She just nodded, and looked back at Elric in time to see him breathe his last. She bought an extra blanket from Bodahn Feddic to shroud his body, and we buried him under a large oak.

I'm still wondering about what it is Cailan wanted the Wardens to have in the event of his death. What information could those papers hold that's so important, he would only entrust them to our order? Cailan, for reasons of his own, revered the Wardens, so if he was so anxious for us to have the papers, then he must have intended us to do something with whatever they contain.

In the more immediate future, however, we're almost back at Soldier's Peak. I can't help noticing that Elissa seems sort of excited. She's got all those plans, and I think she's anxious to get them started. I wonder how long it will take for Ser Perth to join us with whatever volunteers he's able to recruit from among the refugees in Teagan's bannorn.

We haven't talked about the kiss, she and I. I've thought about it plenty, but bringing it up is another matter.

We are come home to Soldier's Peak once again.

Levi was as good as his word; we were able to come up the main road to enter the inner bailey through its main gate. He seemed delighted to see us again. We got to meet his brother Mikhael, who is a blacksmith, and there are a number of other Dryden relations roaming around. There's even another dog, so Toby has a playmate of sorts.

The Drydens have been busy. They've cleared out all of the old bones that cluttered the area, of course, but they've also unclogged both wells, tidied up the keep, and opened up the smaller buildings that line the wall inside the inner bailey. These are apparently residences for the staff of Soldier's Peak, since the soldiers themselves live inside the keep, but from what I could see they're very snug and comfortable. The Drydens are living in a few of them. There are more in the outer bailey, and the Drydens have also opened up the second gate which leads to that area. There we got to see a stable, kennel, a small hospital, and granary. There's also a fair amount of ground that seems to have been reserved for gardening, so I'm sure Elissa's put that on her list of things to have the refugees do after the spring thaw.

She explained their impending arrival to Levi. "Alistair and I have an errand of sorts to perform in the southern country," she said, "so it's likely they'll get here while we're gone. But I'll give you a list of what to have them do. If the stables are cleared out, that should be a good place for the carpenters to start work on repairs and construction of whatever's needed. There are plenty of fallen trees in the forest - we should use those before we start felling any live trees. Bann Teagan said he'll try to send some food supplies with whoever volunteers, but he couldn't promise much."

She introduced Levi to Bodahn Feddic, who was predictably not thrilled that he'll be sharing our business with another merchant, but he didn't have much to say about it. While Bodahn and Sandal set up their wagon in the courtyard near Levi's stall, Elissa went to Mikhael Dryden and showed him the strange metal we'd found on our way. He looked thunderstruck.

"This is star metal," he said. "It came from the distant sky. With your permission, I can forge this into a new sword for you, Warden. No, I won't take payment - it would be a privilege to work with something so rare and magnificent."

I could tell she was puzzled, but she gave her consent to have him make her a new longsword. "I'm not giving up the Cousland family blade, though," she told me as we made our way to join the others inside the keep. Levi was anxious to show us the residence barracks, which they'd cleaned up particularly in anticipation of our arrival. All the beds had been aired and were laid out with new sleeping furs, with additional furs on the floors and plenty of wood stacked by the fireplaces, and there are enough rooms that while only our party occupies the keep, we can each have our own.

"And we've a special surprise for you, Warden," he added. "The Warden-Commander gets his, or her, own room, you know, even in ordinary times. So we've made that up nice for you, and my brother Mikhael did something extra. We collected all the pieces of Grandmother Sophia's personal armor, and he cleaned it up and reinforced the old metal, and added a helmet. It's on an armor stand in your room. Why don't you go try it on?"

Several minutes later she returned, wearing the gift. Navy blue, with hints of purple and gold, and the double-headed griffon emblem of the Wardens emblazoned across the breastplate. The new helmet made by Mikhael is of the same purple metal as some of the armor, and has a delicate noseguard that still allows her pale cheeks and huge blue eyes to be seen. The collar of the armor gaps open just slightly, almost like a shirt collar, exposing the Warden's Oath pendant resting in the hollow of her throat. It was like the whole suit had been made just for her. It hugs her body like a second skin.

I'm going to go have a bath. A cold one.