The trio, with a handful of volunteer guardsmen, raced through the woods, their destination the Silverite mines.
The ones Anders and Arlessa Deedolit left weeks ago. Anders leading them, Loghain behind on Anders' heels. His leathers, he fitted barely, seeing his time as Regent made him fat and lazy, no longer shielded with the heavy armor he once wore.
The armor, a symbol to the Orlesians, whom he had relinquished the previous owner. Armor that weighs in his heart and mind, armor the woman he now seeks, saw him adorn himself in with disgust.
"How could you wear such armor?"
"With choice, to let them know, never again."
"You wish to become a symbol. That hardly sounds like you at all."
"With what I have lived, allow me this elf."
He pressed on with the sole thought. 'I cannot lose you as well."
The woman who he knew intimately was not the same person who now inhabits the Keep. Lighter as they tore through the paths that lead to the Silverite mines, Loghain kicked his steed, pushing past Anders' own.
'I will not lose you.'
There she lay on a cloud, down filled bed befitting an Elven Queen. Is what Maric claimed. He filled her completely. Needing thrust after thrust, he grunted to keep his wits. She felt wonderful against his skin, the feeling of her surrounding him as he lay between her thighs.
"My Meleth, am I hurting you?"
"Never." She breathed into his ear. Their moments like this together, drenched in sweat, hair damp, cling to them, lips on every inch of skin, Maric worshiped her. He did not leave the soles of her feet without kisses.
Her laughter, music to his ear, her passion song spurred him to drive deeper into her.
Feeling the arch of her back, clamping tight around him, he swore he felt her magic tingle to bring him to completion with her.
Collapsing atop his beloved, he sighed, gathering her into his arms. "My Light, my love." Kissing her cheek, she settled into him with a grateful sigh of her own.
"My King, we should bathe." Taking his hand, bringing sword worn fingers to her lips. "I want you to show me how to make the bath fill."
Maric chuckled. "It's just a wave of my hand, no magic." Her fascination with how a simple spell of enchantment delighted her amused him.
"It is because you are not a mage. Come, my Love." Getting up from his warmth, her long hair covering her long naked body. She glowed in the sunlight, brighter after their lovemaking.
He gazed at her, watching her pull up her long hair. A mischievous smile tugged the corners of his mouth. "I believe I have already. Do you wish for more?" Maric purred.
Deedo's head snapped in his direction. A smile on her face, ear to ear, caused her to blush from the tips of her ears to her toes. That delightful laughter of hers called him like a siren's song. He sprung from the bed, grabbing her in his arms once more, kissing her tenderly.
Maric filled the bath for them as he continued with his declaration of love. Stepping in the warmed water, another enchantment, he guided the Lady in. Sighing when they both settled him behind her, she leaned once more into him.
"We should hurry. The children are arriving this evening." Deedolit rubbed Maric's legs. "I do not wish to be late because of our activities. Perhaps you are trying to sire another child?"
The sound of sloshing water, Maric, did not deny her. Instead, he cupped her breast with one hand, moving starlight tresses to the side to tilt her head, nipping softly on her neck. "Perhaps." Husky his voice, he would indeed fill her with his love, many times.
Deedo could feel his arousal pressing into her back. "Your virility pleases me." She teased with a giggle. Her hands on the side of the large tub for two, she rose slightly out of the water. Maric took the cue and guided himself once more into the warmth of his lady love.
"Mother, Father, how is it you are always late when we arrive? You even leave our beloved god parents to wait on you." Lili'Enyel teased.
Maric chuckled, taking his wife's hand and kissing it. "When you are older, my daughter, you will find someone who will love you with all that they are and more." Maric stated as he gazed into the Queen's eyes.
Loghain and Rowan made similar expressions, content with their own bubble of happiness, while their children looked on proudly.
There were shouts of agitated commotion coming from outside of the hall where the group sat.
Maric, Deedolit, Rowan and Loghain rose to deal with the sudden disruptive behavior. The eldest children, Rowan's Cailan, Deedolit's Lili, both sets of twins, Ruroni, Tenkou, Okhor and Olett, with young Alistair stayed close behind watching.
Deedo's head tilted, listening to the sounds beyond the door. "That sounds like a child, husband?" Nudging Maric's arm. The shouts grew louder as they all approached, a nod for the guards to open the doors. A raven headed boy came rushing in, angrily.
"Mamil, what are you doing here?" The boy shouted, looking at Deedolit.
Deedo opened her arms to welcome the child. "My dear, who are you? How do you know my King's tongue?"
"It is I, Kal'an. Mother. Listen to me. Olett is in danger."
Deedo shook her starlight head. "No. She is right here. You must refer to her as Princess Deedolett. Where are your parents?"
Wide eyed, she was deep in her dream. She did not forget him, had she?
Rowan stepped forwards taking the boy's hand. "Young man, how may we help you?" Kal'an looked amongst them. Olett was not with them as his mother claimed, that man… Loghain, the man that Olett described. He was there.
"Mother, that man is my father. Have you forgotten?"
Maric looked at the boy. Taking him by his hand and pulling him aside. "Forgive me, son. You speak of my Queen and brother as if you know them."
Kal'an growled. "That woman is my mother. I was called here by her! She should not be here. She is supposed to be searching for my sister!" He bit back. "Teyrn Loghain is my father. I was born before Cailan. Why I look like a child now… Mother, I am Ikal'antúlien Gareth Aehswin mac Tir Swiftleaf. Son of Teyrn Loghain mac Tir!"
Kal'an's outburst struck a chord with his mother. He thought for a moment. The time he last saw his mother, he was but a boy.
The hall they stood in, everything around them slowly faded, save the King, Deedo and Kal'an. Maric watched as the boy reached for his mother's hand.
Kal'an knew there was one thing he could try. Swallowing hard, his heart hurt for his Mamil. "Mother, I wish to go with you when you make the journey to Thedas and see my father." He remembered when he himself asked to visit those many years ago.
Maric closed his eyes, Deedo filed their dreamscape, he remembered, he had the woman in the fade. They needed her in the waking world.
Deedo squeezed his hand tight. With a shake of her head, tears trickled from her eyes. "No, you must stay in Felwithe, so I may keep you safe."
Sundermount, Day 22, Month 6 - Justinian of Dragon.
It had rained for three days and nights. Several claimed it was the fault of the newcomer, others joined because it was the Keepers First, Merrill who brought her to them.
The Keeper Marethari was impartial, the elf needed care, anyone could see that she was unwell. High fevers for the time that they brought the woman before them, and for three days, many herbs gathered to tend to the ill young woman.
A groan escaped the body that lay next to Merrill. Her task was to keep watch. It was safest for Merrill, so Marethari thought.
"You are awake? Hello?" Merrill called tentatively.
Another groan. As Flemeth tasted the bitter herbs that lingered in her mouth, her eyes fluttered open. Hazy was the image of the dark-haired young woman before her. Blinking several times, she shifted and stretched in her prone position.
"Where am I?" she asked.
"You are with the Sabare clan. Are you Dalish, who is your clan?"
Merrill helped her to sit up. With a shake of her head, she responded with a slight shrug. "I have no clan. I am a city born. Where are we? I was on the run from a horrible man who kept me as a pet."
Merrill covered her mouth, then placed an arm around the beautiful woman to protect her. "Ir abelas, you are safe now. I will fetch the Keeper… Keeper Marethari." Merrill left the tent just as quickly as she spoke.
Flemeth looked around for a bit as she felt her limbs coming back to life. Stretching her body, feeling herself in her vessel, she produced a simple spell. Her body did not fight back. She snorted, pleased. They inadvertently helped her tame the wild, powerful will of the original owner of this body. Flemeth felt she was much closer to the mountain. Her new sharp hearing heard the footfalls of the Keeper and the woman that was in with her moments ago.
When they entered, the sea jewels greeted them, looking between them in confusion. The Keeper came over to feel her head. "You are much better now. How are you feeling, da'len?"
Flemeth smiled at the endearing term, though she was much older than the elder before her. "I am well, my thanks. I would like to move about." Her smile was sincere, and she said she felt she had been laying for too long.
Marethari smiled. In kind, along with Merrill, who went to help the woman stand. "We have to go up the mountain. Keeper has felt an odd presence." Merrill whispered. "You may come with us. I would fear anything to happen to you, after you have just recovered, while we both are away."
With a gentle nod, Flemeth agreed to hurry her recovery. "My name is Itarelle." She needed to go to the plateau ruins, if they were where she felt they were.
The next few days that had passed as Flemeth proved to be stronger still. She laced herbs that suppress illness with some that help to relax the mind. It was still a long while before she could settle in, completely shutting out that elf's creation.
It was to be a day trip, short travel up the Sundermount cliff to investigate what caused recent haunts. Or what they thought to be lingering spirits. The three women had climbed from the base of the mountain up, Keeper Marethari leading the young woman, who were chatting with each other. Merrill had pointed out several times that the grace in which Itarelle carried herself around the many rocks along their path was amazing.
"Watch your step, da'len." Marethari called to her First, as she always did when she took notice that the girl was not watching where she was going. Flemeth smiled as she lightly touched the ground, floating on air with her stolen powers.
The Keeper's warning came too late as Merrill tripped over the very rock she was warned about. Flemeth doubled back to help her to her feet, seeing the bruised knees and lost skin on her palms of the jagged mountain rock.
"Mythal'enast! Someday, I'll learn to watch where I'm going." She winced. Merrill struggled to get her footing once more, even as Flemeth helped her. Flemeth smiled softly, as she saw the girl's hands covered in blood, waved her hands, summoning a small air spell to rid the open wounds of debris.
Flemeth held a finger to her lips in their little secret. Flemeth's hearing stopped to look around. Where they were, must have been their destination.
"We're here." Marethari announced.
A large cave, the mouth of it at least was enormous, stalagmites and stalactites may have very well been the teeth to chomp down on them. Merrill tried to steel her fright but to no eval. The cave mouth is unbearably spine-chilling, even for Sundermount. It was an eerie sound that came from it. The most Terrifying Mountain in Thedas, possibly. Mist swirls out of the mouth, that led to the blackness of its throat as if it's breathing. The surrounding hillside is barren. A gaping maw, devouring all the life within its reach.
"Is that how you see it? It cannot be so horrible, it is not alive." Itarelle teased the dark-haired elf, running her finger along Merrill's arms and back.
Merrill sighed as she shivered. 'Not a good mindset, Merrill. Think positive! At least the weather's fair.' She thought, trying to not defeat the mood with haunted sour thoughts of their demise.
"You feel it too, then?" The Keeper's voice snaps the young women back to reality. She's looking at Merrill expectantly.
Merrill, at a loss for words, tried to smooth her tunic, only smeared blood down the front. Hissing at the sting of the fabric to open wound contact. Wonderful, she is making a bigger fool of herself in front of their company. Still not having answered the Keeper, she looked at her and it dawned.
"Ah, yes, Keeper. The voice is much louder here." The whispers that have been tugging at the edge of her thoughts were louder indeed when they made camp. Now she can make it out if she concentrates. In the camp, she could only hear it in her dreams, and she lost the words upon waking the next day.
Only a memory of terrible loneliness remained. Even the Keeper woke sobbing the second night. Itarelle looked about the cavity in the mountain. With the scant light from the opening behind them, Merrill could hardly make the woman out. The deeper they went, the more she noticed the elf with them had a glow about her, which was odd to say even out loud presently. Mage lit stones on their staves as their guiding light as they made the descent further in.
"Come to me."
Merrill shivered. This is definitely the source of the plaguing dream like voice.
"Follow me, da'len, Itarelle. And keep to me, and your wits about you." The Keeper vanishes even deeper into the hungry mouth of the cave.
Itarelle behind her, practically skipping, Merrill could do nothing but sigh, gathering her courage and follow behind. She was a First. Nothing should unnerve her.
The dark is a shock after the sun-drenched mountainside. Like jumping into a pool of icy water on a hot day. Her eyes adjust to the dimness. Even with the faint light from their stones, they pass through a narrow passageway into a grand chamber and they see… ruins.
Itarelle smiles this is what she needed, this source, to wait for the Hawke. It was once a magnificent temple, not nothing left but visible fallen pillars, once dedicated to an Elven Goddess. Light, rays of the sun filtered through cracks in the ceiling, broken by the shifting of time and tree roots that have reclaimed the area. The foliage grew in, but not out of the cave, as if this was nothing but a living entity.
'Not a cave after all then? A temple or a tomb or… I don't know what this is. Strange.' Merrill thought as she dimmed her stone to look about more. "It doesn't look elvish, does it, Keeper? Tevinter, maybe?" Merrill looked at the Keeper, who was peering silently at some sort of archway with a disapproving frown she knew all too well. 'Poor archway. It did nothing, if she suspected it to do anything .'
Itarelle was by her side, causing Merrill to jump practically out of her skin. "By the Dread Wolf!" a harsh whisper she breathed out.
Itarelle stiffed a giggle. "It is, was, a temple." As if she read the mind of the girl.
Merrill looked at her in confusion. 'How did she know my thoughts? Could she have heard them? Did I speak aloud?'
Hearing Marethari continue, they silenced themselves. "If this place was part of the war, then it doesn't matter who built it. It is dangerous." The Keeper turns from the archway, apparently dismissing it. "If it isn't from the war, it is unknown, and probably still dangerous."
Her reasoning held some flaws. Somewhere it mattered not where the flaw lay. It seems like the middle of the cavern is quite a dangerous place to argue the point. They can feel it, the three of them, with the latter needing to syphon a fragment that will complete her broken ritual. Marethari descends a short, worn stairway into the pit that held a temple below.
Itarelle and Merrill trail after her, who gave the archway a reassuring pat as she pass.
"Come to me." They could hear the voice clearer.
It comes from the far end of the temple, from a hideous statue of a big squatting thing with too many arms and legs. It did not bode well, especially with Merrill.
"Who calls us?" The Keeper demands, drawing herself up. Merrill imagined this was what the Keeper looked like in her younger years. Much like the elves of Arlathan did, regal and wise, and the authority in her voice, that says, 'I care not if you are a spirit, I will thrash you if you give me a reason.'
Merrill shared with Itarelle the memory she has of when the Keeper scolded a wild sylvan with that commanding voice, and it stumbled off looking ashamed of itself. "Well, as ashamed as a tree can look, anyway." Both held back chuckles.
Itarelle looked on curiously.
"Help me." It warily called out.
That was unexpected. The stone spoke. Keeper Marethari seems to grow taller, becoming a towering pillar of angry Dalish-ness. In the eyes of Merrill. "Name yourself! Or be left to your silence."
"I am One Who is Trapped. Help me."
"Your name!" Her voice echoed the cavern.
Merrill leaned in to Itarelle's ear. "I have never seen the Keeper this angry. Not even when Tamlen disappeared."
Itarelle feigned ignorance. "Who is Tamlen?" Merrill quieted herself when the Keeper's voice reverberated once more.
Three seems to be the magic number. Audacity. The voice is like a winter wind, bitter and ragged, that flowed through the three women.
"A demon." The Keeper spats the word as if it tastes foul. She nods at me. "It is bound to the statue. It will not threaten the camp. We will set wards to silence the voice." She turns to leave, satisfied.
"Wait! They have trapped me here for time beyond counting. I bore witness to the fall of your kingdom. Help me, Keeper of the Dalish, and I will give you knowledge of all I have seen. For a moment, I see visions of the world as it once was. An empire that spanned all Thedas, glittering cities of the elvhen…. All this could be yours. The elf with you…" The voice trailed off. The image of what once was its simmering splendor faded as the statue fell silent once more.
Marethari slowly looked at Itarelle, who seemed to sneer at the now quieted statue. "Come, da'len. We must hurry before the sun sets." The Keeper beckons.
Merrill nodded, then turn and follow her out into the light.
"Merrill, who is Tamlen? Can you tell me now?"
"He was part of our clan, he and his brother. Poor boys, they died in the ruins where we once stayed in Ferelden." Merrill went on with her tale and how they had stopped to visit with a clan the boy's sister was a part of. The girl was a mage, as they were in the area. "Only one mage per clan, two if you count myself and the Keeper. I remember they had with them a young boy by the name of Vy'el. Either way, there was this eluvian, a mirror of the elvhen. Shattered, and both brothers lost to us. We sent word out for the sister to know, but nothing had come from it. We had to travel away from what came of this." Merrill pulled from her hip pouch a shard of the mystical mirror of elves.
Flemeth reached out for the shard, her mind whirling, the harsh whispers of lingering magic, tainted by the Blight. "What are you planning to do with this?" Flemeth asked.
"I wish to cleanse it." Merrill stated. "It holds many secrets, much of which I know. I wish to learn more. I will not find that if I continue to stay here." She whispered, out of Marethari's earshot.
"With your clan?"
Merrill nodded her short raven head.
Flemeth knew how to clean it. Knew how when she left many things in her hut. Or about the wilds, for others to find. Maybe she had been to the ruins when the Blight first reared its head. Maybe not, but what Flemeth knew, she needed this young girl to know and without rousing more suspicions than she may have by silencing the statue. "There are many ways to clean magical items. My former master had books he would let me read. I could guide you to what I know." Flemeth looked through her thick lashes as she even eyed the Keeper who was just feet away.
"You can?" Merrill was hopeful. Too hopeful, and too trusting.
Itarelle nodded with the softest of smiles. "I can help you, if you wish?"
"Ma serannas!"