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The Templars, with Meredith and Cullen at the front, were lined up in the courtyard when Hawke and her people came out. Varric thought they seemed awfully few and small and under-armored in comparison with the lines of metal-clad Templars. But they had stood strong against tougher forces than they were before. Surely they could do so again. The lines of Templars were thinner than they had been earlier today, at least that was something.
Meredith had a small smug smile on her face as she watched Hawke approach. "And here we are, Champion. At long last. Come to surrender?"
No one who knew Hawke would ever have asked her that question. Looking at the two of them there, Meredith so neat and shiny, Hawke so bloodied and battle-worn, Varric wondered what Kirkwall would have been like if the two of them—and Aveline, that other force of nature—had been able to work together. What a glorious story that would have made.
But this was the real story. Might against right. Power against determination. Varric's fingers itched for a quill.
Hawke's lip curled in disgust. "I would never surrender to the likes of you. You'll pay for what you've done here today."
Meredith laughed. "I will be rewarded for what I've done here today, in this world and the next. Those blood mages, those abominations, they deserved to die. And I took them out. Myself. Oh, yes, Champion, the world will worship me for this."
The worst of it was, she wasn't wrong. Most of Thedas would believe the narrative she told them, that Blondie acted as one of the mages of the Gallows, that Hawke was with him on it, that Meredith had saved the city by slaughtering as many mages as she could get her hands on. Unless someone else told a better one.
Hawke stood silent, while Meredith went on, crowing over her own glory. "I have done nothing but perform my duty. What happens to you now is your own doing. You are no mage, but in supporting them you have elected to share their fate."
Before Hawke or any of her people could respond, another voice broke in, startling all of them. "Knight-Commander," Cullen said. "I thought we intended to arrest the Champion."
The voice of law and order, Varric thought in some amusement. Cullen still thought they were playing the game by the rules. But Meredith had thrown the rule book out years ago.
She turned on her knight-captain. "You will do as I command, Cullen."
Would he? Varric was interested to see how far she could push someone as straight-and-narrow as Cullen. Would he follow her because he had been trained to take orders, or would he push back because he believed in doing things by the book?
Cullen seemed unsure of that himself for a moment. Varric could see him wavering. Then his back straightened. "No. I defended you when Thrask started whispering that you were mad. But this is too far."
"I will not allow insubordination!" Meredith shouted, pushed out of her calm by opposition from a place where she had expected to be met only by blind obedience. "We must stay true to our path." She drew the sword from her back and pointed it at Cullen.
Varric could feel the hum of that sword in his very blood. It sang so loudly he wondered that no one else was staring at it. Red, glowing, like no sword he had ever seen before. "Andraste's dimpled buttcheeks," he said hoarsely. "Hawke. The sword."
She looked at it and blanched. "Is that—what I think it is?"
"'Her heart was like ice.' That's what he said. He meant her." Suddenly it all made sense. Bartrand had sold the idol to Meredith, and it had taken her mind.
Meredith glanced down at Varric, her mouth turning up in a cruel smile. "You recognize it, don't you? Pure lyrium. Taken from the Deep Roads. The dwarf charged a good deal for his prize." Her face and eyes glowed red in the reflection from the sword.
"You have no idea what that thing has cost," he whispered. He couldn't stop thinking of Bartrand—his brilliant brother, reduced to gibbering madness by that thing.
The Templars had all fallen back, uncertain what to do in the face of Meredith's sudden change in look and tone.
"The idol poisoned Bartrand's mind in the end," Hawke said. "You have to know it has poisoned yours. Fight it, Meredith. You're stronger than this!"
For a moment, Meredith looked up, her eyes blue and clear, but the red glow came back almost instantly. "The dwarf was weak. He had no way to understand the power he held. I am not weak, and I control this power. I, and I alone."
The power controlled her. When it had taken her over, how long it had sung its insidious song in her mind, no one could say, but she was too far gone to be saved now. Like Bartrand had been.
Meredith turned to the Templars, sword held high above her head. "All of you. I want her dead. And her … companions with her."
The bucketed heads turned this way and that, all of the Templars looking to each other to see who would follow.
Cullen stepped forward, toward Meredith, the devotion to the right overcoming the habits of obedience ingrained in him over a lifetime as a Templar. "Enough. This is not what the Order stands for. Knight-Commander, step down. I relieve you of your command!"
Meredith snarled at him. "My own knight-captain falls prey to the influence of blood magic." She turned around, waving the sword in the direction of the assembled Templars, who fell back another step. "You all have! You're all weak, allowing the mages to control your minds, to turn you against me! But I don't need any of you! I will protect this city myself!"
Drawing his own sword, Cullen stood firm in front of her. "You'll have to go through me. Templars, to me! This will not stand!"
Relieved to have a clear order to follow, the Templars lined up behind the Knight-Captain, and Hawke's people behind her. It was all of them against Meredith, and her glowing red lyrium sword. Varric wished he thought it was a fair fight, but he was very afraid the red lyrium was stronger than all of them. It told him so, singing in his head.
"Hurry up, Hawke," he muttered. "Let's get this over with."