It had been agreed upon, before the party had ventured far, that they would first seek out Aneirin, whose camp was closer to the ruins than the clan's.
Morrigan, of course, was the one who had suggested meeting with the young man. And by suggested, of course, it was widely understood by the party that the meeting would be happening as a matter of course. The notion of speaking against this appeared not to have occurred to anyone, which as far as Zevran was concerned indicated that nobody currently had a death wish.
It was also decided that Alistair would piggyback Wynne when she tired, much to the displeasure of the latter. In all fairness, though, Wynne, who had clearly not anticipated the chance of having to sprint for extended periods, was flagging by the time the party had reached the spot where they had found Danyla. Running the rest of the way back would undoubtedly have meant they arrived at the Dalish camp with an extra nead-dead person in tow– and granted, Wynne was a deeply repellent sort of person, but when it came down to it, death wasn't quite the punishment Zevran would have imposed on her, given the choice.
Of course with that said, had Rhodri asked him to off her, Zevran would have hopped to it without question, but that was by the by until the moment actually came. As it stood for the time being, Wynne was alive and well, and grumbling silently from her perch on Alistair's enormous back.
And then, when the party reached Aneirin's camp to find it abandoned and the fire pit long dead, Morrigan made grumblings of her own that compelled Zevran and Leliana to share a very meaningful look while catching their breath.
"'Tis possible he has not travelled far from here," she said eventually, and without another word, left her satchel with Rhodri, became a bird, and took flight.
"Don't go for too long, Morrigan," Rhodri called after her. She glanced down at Danyla worriedly and brushed an errant lock of hair off the woman's face. "If she doesn't find him, we'll just have to push through until we reach the camp."
Zevran wasn't sure what pushed him to produce a poultice and apply it to Danyla's bite wound. He knew that Vimmark adder venom, which evaded the drawing effects of poultices, would only respond to antivenom. And Rhodri did, too, because Zevran had said as much, and he felt oddly exposed as she watched him with mild confusion while he worked.
When the weight of her attention grew too heavy, he caught her eye and shrugged uneasily, despite not having been asked to explain himself.
"I do not think it will help," he said. "But perhaps it is well to try it anyway, no? There is not so very much to lose at this point."
Rhodri dipped her head down and caught his eye, and nodded fervently.
"It's good to try," she replied in a soft tone that was insistent around the edges. "We will do our very best for her, pretiotus, sic?"
He nodded. What else could he do?
Rhodri caught his eye again and shuffled closer, addressing him in a whisper.
"Do you need anything? Are you all right?"
Puzzled, Zevran couldn't help but smile a little. "No complaints from me, my dear. Especially since I am not the one with the snake bite."
"No, but–" she paused and shook her head when Zevran's bafflement betrayed him. "No, never mind. If you're fine, that's what counts. But you know, of course, if you need anything…"
"Well, now that you mention it, someone to feed me peanuts and magick a warm sea breeze into my face would be very welcome." Zevran gave her one of her barely-there nudges and waggled his eyebrows, and the bemused look she was fixing him with exploded into conspiratorial amusement. She snorted and looked ahead again, rocking a little on her feet as she did.
"Of course, you know I'd oblige–ah," she fell still and glanced in Wynne's direction. Wynne, who was darning one of Alistair's socks, appeared not to have noticed the non-issue; Rhodri sighed with relief and turned back to Zevran with a crooked smile. "I'd oblige anyway, even if it was a joke. Why leave the bit in the realms of theory, sic?"
Zevran smiled and pondered the doability of finding a hedgehog and strapping it to Alistair's back spiny-side up before Wynne climbed on there again. Deciding it was not, he opened his mouth, witty remark about manufactured summer breezes in icy Ferelden at the ready, when Morrigan appeared in the middle of the clearing. Frowning, no less. She shook her head before Rhodri could finish saying, "No luck?" and that was the end of it.
Rhodri sighed and gently patted Danyla's back. "Then we had better get going. We should cover as much ground as we can before nightfall."
§
Zevran had always believed there were many ways to be sure of the Maker's existence. The uncountable ants that peppered the ground, for one. They marched in their droves, unnoticed by Zevran (and, realistically, everything else that was bigger than them) until they invariably sniffed out whatever small treat Zevran had placed in the grass beside him and had begun to crawl over it in an attempt to requisition it as their own property.
No person would have thought to make such fiddly, odd creatures. The average two-legged individual had enough trouble finding their own shoes of a morning. No, as far as Zevran was concerned, ants had to be a god's doing.
What, precisely, had moved the Maker to give life to guilds of insects that devoted themselves to appropriating a man's weekly cupcake was beyond Zevran. A sense of humour, if he had to guess. If he was honest with himself (as he always was, of course), Zevran wouldn't have put it past himself to do the same, had he been in the Maker's position. In fact, if he thought on it a little more, doing simple, odd things for a laugh actually seemed a very reasonable sort of justification.
And with that theory firmly established, it was hard not to wonder what made the cut for humour in the Maker's eyes. Zevran didn't suppose it descended into the depraved, but when it came to sizeable inconveniences, such as running into not one, but two ogres when the party was barely a half-hour's run from Aneirin's camp, well. It had to be said that if the encounter passed with the usual smooth sequence of deaths, it was possible that the Maker considered it His own sort of practical joke.
It was either that, or in his attempt to understand the workings of the Maker's mind, Zevran had dived head first into the realms of serious blasphemy.
If it turned out to be the latter, and the rapidly approaching (and thoroughly enraged) ogres crushed Zevran into a fine paste, he would at least know the reason for his death was likely punitive, and that was a comfort in itself. Uncertainty was best avoided in such matters.
In the interim between the present and his sticky end, whenever that might have been, Rhodri was making good use of him in the interim.
"Quickly, Zev," she turned her back to him. "Untie Danyla, please, and leave her by the tree where we can see her."
Alistair was already running past them, distracting the ogres by drawing them in the other direction, where yet another ruin lay, while Zevran set to work. Leliana, of course, wasn't far behind, hitting the creatures time after time with well-aimed shots to the head and neck, and Wynne and Morrigan brought up the rear with spells Zevran didn't dare speculate over.
When Danyla was free, Rhodri was off like a shot, with her distracted thanks disappearing into the air behind her. Zevran took care to partly cover Danyla with a few leaves to make her a little less conspicuous before taking off himself, and by the time he had joined the fight, some eight or nine darkspawn had joined the proceedings.
Zevran launched himself forward as the nearest hurlock to Rhodri's back, knives and a loud laugh at the ready. There were many ways to kill a hurlock in one go, as it happened; their anatomy was much like any regular person's– though granted, much more hazardous to come into contact with. For that reason, attacking from the back was best. A simple knife through the back and into the heart was all it took to drop the bastards, and that was precisely what Zevran did to the one in front of him.
The hurlock crumpled most satisfyingly, and that was that. A quick check of the surroundings revealed that things were playing out equally well for the other party members. The second (and final, praise the Maker) ogre had perished in a thrilling blow landed by Alistair, and had landed with a crash that shook the ground. Eight hurlocks became six became the final two that were in the process of freezing to death at Rhodri's clever hands.
And then, of course, the corpses emerged. There always seemed to be a stash of them lying around whenever things got interesting. Like ants, or tax collectors.
The air went unusually still as they approached, which was both terribly unnerving and, now that the breeze couldn't waft the rot away, absolutely putrid. Another bad day to have a nose.
Off to one side, Morrigan cursed loudly at Leliana for some unknown crime. Was it she who had made the forest air stifling? Leliana, apparently cognizant of her misdeed, oscillated between profuse apology and firing a rapid sequence of arrows at the waves of undead.
The Wardens, however, were the most disturbed by the sudden change, and their shouts of alarm rang through the clearing. The two of them made for one particular figure: a large, heavily-armoured thing with a notable lack of a face and a sword that more than covered the deficit.
That explained the stifle in the air, at least. And the yelling on the part of the Wardens didn't look to be unwarranted, either. Not when the creature– a Revenant, Zevran thought he'd heard Rhodri call it– all but shrugged off a freezing spell said Warden threw at it.
There wasn't the time to dwell on concerns of the Revenant's abilities, though. It was eminently possible that the creature was responsible for the consistent waves of undead scuttling into the fray, and if that was the case, it was best to ensure none of them reached the only two people who knew enough about the Revenant to identify it.
Zevran accepted his instructions to himself with a nod, and turned until he was back-to-back with Rhodri. He swiped to the right and took the head off an enraged corpse. His left hand drove the knife up the jaw of another and popped the skull off like a champagne cork. In front of him, Leliana was sending arrows in every direction, and Morrigan was off on the edge of his periphery, doing magics he was certain were illegal.
Simplicity reigned, and Zevran slipped into the motions of murder as easily as breathing. Step-deflect-swipe; down went a corpse. Step-step-turn-duck-double stab; that dropped two more of them (duck-stab)- correction: three more.
And it was going well. More corpses were coming, and Maker knew how many more were expected to turn up, but Zevran could hear Rhodri moving, and he himself was still moving, too, and killing with his usual efficient aplomb. Leliana and the others, they were pushing on as well. In all, the party was, to his mind, undoubtedly winning.
A blinding flash of blue-white light bounced through Zevran's field of vision, followed shortly after by the sound of quite a number of bodies hitting the ground. The whole thing happened rapidly enough that, once Zevran's eyesight had returned and thus ruled out the possibility of the Maker mass-summoning them all into the afterlife, he second-guessed himself having seen any flash at all.
But then Alistair shouted Wynne's name, and that made it all eminently clear. There had indeed been something: obviously she, a known mage, had summoned lightning. That explained the spate of thudding bodies on the earth). And Alistair had yelled because said lightning had somehow disturbed him. Perhaps it had caught him off guard and startled him, or arced in an unexpected direction and zapped his backside. How Leliana would delight upon seeing a sizable hole burned into the back of Alistair's trews, where his bare bottom would shine in the vivid light of the setting sun. Zevran couldn't help but smirk as he pictured the smug, lascivious smile he had come to see so often where such parts of Alistair were concerned.
Leliana, however, did not issue any noise of delight. Nor was there enjoyment, or even mild approval. No, instead there was a revolting scrape, of metal tearing open metal, and Leliana screamed like she was being eaten alive.
Zevran spun around as quickly as he dared, and the air caught in his throat. Amid a cluster of corpses– slain ones– Wynne lay motionless on the ground, and Alistair stood between her and the Revenant. With his abdomen opened, no less. How the metal armour covering Alistair's torso had failed him, Zevran couldn't imagine, but it and the skin beneath it were sliced almost from end to end, gaping like a mouth, and Alistair's intestines were making a hasty escape through the manufactured orifice. The Templar gave a shallow gasp and sank to his knees, his hands diving down to catch the eloping organs.
Rhodri had closed in on the Revenant from behind and pinned its arms to its side as she snatched it up in a bear hug. Which, it had to be said, worsened an already pressing inability to breathe on Zevran's part– considerably, in fact, and more than ought to be allowed. Airlessness notwithstanding, his legs carried him in the same direction, and before Rhodri could finish verbally redirecting him, Zevran had wrenched the sword out of the Revenant's hand and snapped the blade in two with a well directed kick.
Evidently unimpressed by its recent imprisonment (and, Zevran liked to think, the requisition and destruction of its only weapon), the Revenant shrieked indignantly, thrashing and struggling as much as the ironclad confines of the Warden's arms permitted. The display was met with some unseen action that made the creature convulse violently for a moment, and then again, and then again. What had happened, Zevran couldn't imagine. Typically, such movements came when injury was incurred to sensitive areas like the kidneys or the eyes. But Rhodri's hands were in plain sight, laid flat over Revenant's chest. Was it magic, then? What else could it possibly have been?
"Don't let Leliana touch Alistair," Rhodri gasped to Zevran when he readied his knives to deliver a stab to a gap in the Revenant's neck armour. Her face was bright red and pouring with sweat, and she dragged herself and the beast a step to the left. "If she gets Blight sickness, she will die."
Madness, Zevran thought to himself. Martyrdom. The other beasts were dead, and she wanted to take on this thing by herself? Had it been anyone else, he might have simply left them to it, but not her. No, there had to be a point where a person was so wrong that they weren't to be taken seriously. Why was no-one else helping?
Zevran copied her side-step. "One quick stab," he soothed gently, angling his hands to administer the blow. "This creature, it is too–"
"No," Rhodri insisted, taking another step to the side and looking out behind him. "Go, now. Stop her. Don't argue with me."
Morrigan's angry, surprisingly resonant voice sounded from behind Zevran.
"Blast and damn you, you burdensome man," she said in a near– shout, and in a few quick steps, her foot met the more tender of his hips in a hard kick that knocked him and his knives to the right. "'Twould be simpler to kill you. Give me room to cast!"
Rhodri admonished her exhaustedly, but the mortification had already set in. Zevran scrambled to his feet, and though the embarrassment persisted as strongly as ever while he ran to Leliana, he forbade himself from considering the cause in any level of detail. The good Sister was on her knees, cradling Alistair's head in her lap and praying over him feverishly. The man had gone a shade of colourless and clammy Zevran had seen on Taliesen in those worrying middle-periods between receiving a serious injury and being given medical attention. Thick, black blood was pooling in the injury site and then spilling over the edge of the open flesh and onto the ground like a tributary, causing whatever it touched to wilt and die. With the angle of the ground they were on, the blood was carving a path that would meet Leliana's knees in short order.
"Leliana," Zevran urged softly, taking her arm and tugging it. "Come, we must give him a little room. Just a little, so his blood does not touch you."
Leliana shook her head hard and dug her knees into the ground a little, her stream of prayer continuing unbroken. Her voice, however, had begun to crack, and her skin, already pale, was approaching transparency.
"Go, Lel," Alistair creaked to her. "Don't get sick. Stay over there a bit."
The good Sister continued to shake her head and choke out her prayers, and resisted Zevran's attempts to relocate her with increasingly vigorous slaps to his person. By the time Zevran pardoned himself and dragged her back, Rhodri was stumbling to Alistair's side with Morrigan in hot pursuit. Leliana was screaming and, with decidedly impressive skill, throwing punches that Zevran often barely missed. Orlesian bards, it seemed, were very well-trained. Zevran decided that if she ever forgave him for pulling her away, he would have to enquire about her training regimen.
"Zev, Leli, I want you two to check on Wynne," Rhodri gasped from her spot beside Alistair. "If she is already dead, there's little we can do, but please help her if you can."
It took a little cajoling, and plenty of apology on Zevran's part, with assurances that Leliana could hate him to her heart's content afterward, before the Sister joined him and they inspected Wynne.
"Her heartbeat is slow but steady," Zevran said after touching his fingers to her neck. "Perhaps a little too much spellcasting?" He tapped Wynne's cheek, and there was a little wince to the affected side. Somewhat conscious, then.
Leliana said nothing, her lips bitten together as she stared over at the Templar. Zevran stole a glance; nothing appeared to be happening. Morrigan was standing over Rhodri with one palm hanging over her head, and Rhodri was allowing it. Alistair, of course, lay still and sucked in shallow breaths, as the dreadfully injured were so wont to do.
Not of a mind to relive the mortification of doing the wrong thing, Zevran took the initiative and rummaged through the Senior Enchanter's satchel. Flasks of Maker-knew-what were extracted; Zevran recognised the red ones, and the blue surely had to be lyrium, but what the tubes of shimmery purple liquid did remained to be seen. Zevran took one of the red potions and, when Leliana appeared not to hear his request to rest Wynne's head on her lap (she had only just done it for Alistair! Truly, good help was impossible to find these days!) Zevran heaved a sigh and did it himself.
It was a simple matter, really; while keeping the head reasonably upright, tip a little– half a spoonful, maybe– of the potion onto the tongue, and that would stimulate the swallow reflex, assuming she was awake enough to do so. Zevran had administered a toothful of the stuff onto Wynne's tongue when Rhodri's horrible, purling lyrium-cough from the Circle Tower started up.
His stomach heaved; he wouldn't look up. He wouldn't. Morrigan was there; she had been there even when Zevran thought she wasn't, and he was not needed in any capacity. He didn't need to think about it, and he didn't need to see it. He needed to do as he was bloody told.
Wynne swallowed and stirred with a decidedly hungover look about her as the coughing escalated, and Zevran's eyes darted up before he could stop himself. And what was he expecting to see? A burning stick of elfroot in the possession of an inexperienced smoker? Hands frantically flapping away a cloud of potent dog fart? What, for the love of sanity?
Apparently he wasn't expecting to see the most obvious thing it would have been, which was Rhodri's face screwed up in an agonised grimace, her mouth and chin entirely covered with the dark, viscous blood seeping out of Alistair. An empty flask fell out of her trembling hand, and she picked up a second one, filled to the brim with sparkling blue lyrium. Morrigan's lips were pursed as she watched the Warden bring the other flask to her lips, and Zevran was able to stomach Rhodri swallowing one mouthful before he looked away again.
The coughing and choking started up again; Zevran glared down at Wynne.
"You are awake, I see," he said smoothly.
Wynne groaned in the affirmative, but did nothing more. Zevran resigned himself to drip-feeding the Senior Enchanter more of that potion until he could get more of a response out of her. By the time Wynne's eyes finally opened, Rhodri had resituated Alistair's innards, and had almost finished resealing their escape route. Her hands were trembling, and the deep breaths she took made her head nod with the effort.
"Well, that was… draining," Wynne mumbled. Her gaze darted up to Leliana, and then over to the two Wardens. Leliana, who up to now appeared to have been fighting the urge to be sick, glanced down at Wynne, patted her shoulder absently, and wandered away to the two Wardens.
Zevran curled his lip a little and raised an eyebrow at Wynne.
"So," he said.
Wynne's eyes flitted up to Zevran's, and then returned to the surgical scene over there. "What happened to him?"
Zevran shook his head. "I do not know. I seem to recall him calling your name, and then some sort of attack came, I presume." He resisted the urge to devolve into crude manners and indicate the Templar by pointing at him, if only because Rhodri was in the same direction; he gestured at them with a flat palm.
"Oh dear," The Senior Enchanter shook her head sorrowfully. "I called on the spirit inside me to lend us aid, but I had not anticipated it would take quite so much out of us both."
Zevran stiffened. "A spirit, you say? Inside you? I am told there is a word for that."
"I think I know the one," she replied with a chuckle, "The word 'abomination'- is that the one you were thinking of? That one isn't so very wrong, but what lives in me is a spirit, not a demon."
"Mm. We will see what the Grey Warden has to say about that."
"I'm quite sure she will be displeased," Wynne sighed. "I'm not proud of the effects of my gamble, myself."
Zevran glanced up at Rhodri, and at the scene around and beneath her. Leliana and Morrigan watched on in silence as the conscious Grey Warden sealed up the abdomen of the unconscious one. When the job was done, she flicked her hand away from her chest. Another swish of the hand, and Alistair was finally stirring. Leliana burst into tears.
"Help me up, please, Zevran," Wynne requested after a moment. "I owe that young man an apology."
He snorted, but got the Senior Enchanter on her feet all the same.
"I am sure you owe one to more than just him," he murmured.
"Perhaps I do."
Alistair croaked out the name of the Senior Enchanter when they drew near; Rhodri's eyes snapped onto Wynne. She pointed a shaking finger at her.
"Explain yourself," Rhodri snarled.
"Let me check Alistair first," Wynne held up a hand and lowered herself onto a nearby rock.
"He has been healed without issue–"
"You are not a spirit healer, Rhodri," Wynne said sharply.
"Correct. Spirits are not an integral part of the healing sciences, and there is less risk of possession when using normal chirurgical magic."
The Senior Enchanter glanced at the younger Enchanter, and it appeared that she had plenty to say in reply to the statement. But Wynne said nothing, and inspected Alistair's operation site in silence. At some point, she gave a nod, and left it at that.
Rhodri, however, had not forgotten her earlier request, and snapped her fingers impatiently at the other Circle mage.
"I allowed you inspection time," she snapped. "Now explain yourself. What spirit lives in you?"
It was something of a relief to hear that the nature of the thing possessing Wynne had not come into question. That had to be good, surely. What sort of things would a person possessed by a good spirit get up to? Mass rescuing of cats stuck in trees? A powerful spell that fixed every squeaky hinge in a ten-mile radius?
Morrigan spoke up now, her mouth curving into the beginnings of a wicked smile: "'Tis clearly not a Spirit of Prudence or Pleasantness."
Rhodri made no move to reprimand Morrigan, which Zevran believed said enough.
"I believe it was a Faith Spirit," Wynne said after a moment. "They have never been seen before, but something tells me I am right. It has been watching me for a long time, and looked out for me many times when I was in need. And now it simply lives in me."
Rhodri spoke up again, "And when did the Spirit enter you?"
"During the revolts in the Tower. Shortly before you came, in fact."
Her brief explanation met with silence and expecting looks, Wynne elaborated and advised that while protecting the children in the Tower, she had over-extended herself and died.
… Died.
Zevran was no stranger to exaggeration. Overdoing a response was a national sport in Antiva, and Tevinter and Orlais were undoubtedly much the same. How else did one interpret complaints from fellow Northerners where the speaker asserted they were passing away because their orange juice contained too little pulp? What of the people who bemoaned the sudden disappearance of their favourite underwear and the abrupt nosedive in quality of life that came with it? Was the apocalypse truly nearing when such things happened? Were Northerners really dying en masse from lesser-pulped juice?
And then, with all that in mind, had Wynne actually passed away from over-exertion? Her expression was serious. Rhodri's was as well, but Maker bless her richly, she met a great many lighthearted things with a grave face. But then, had she not cast excessively before? Unable to move, gasping and panting for breath? Had Wynne's display today been the result of carrying spellcasting an extra step too far?
Zevran's belly plummeted.
"It is a Spirit of Faith," Wynne asserted again, as though to make clear the division between being possessed by a good spirit as opposed to an evil one. "There is no need to fear it. In fact, it is the only thing sustaining me." She gave a wan chuckle and added, "I don't suppose I did it any favours by summoning it, though. It is weaker now. Perhaps not a trick I should use to entertain children at parties."
Alistair and Leliana were the only ones to offer a gentle laugh at the remark. Morrigan, quite predictably, rolled her eyes and strode away to loot the bodies. And Rhodri, who said nothing but watched Wynne intently, earned an irritated, "Yes, Rhodri?" from the latter when this had dragged on for a goodly time.
Rhodri dropped a kiss onto Alistair's forehead and slowly, unsteadily, got to her feet. "We will set up camp nearby, away from the bodies," she announced loudly. "I will wash off and check on Danyla, then set up your tents for you, Alistair and Wynne. Stay resting, if you please."
§
The remainder of the journey back to camp was hideously tense. Somewhat protracted, too, given that there was decidedly less running than Rhodri had promised at the outset. Alistair and Wynne barely managed a regular walk between them, and that required plenty of breaks. At some points, when Rhodri's patience waned, she would haul Wynne onto her back and walk like that, with Danyla still strapped to the front. A particularly awkward thing, given that Rhodri barely spoke a word to Wynne otherwise, but had warm praise and courteous check-ins aplenty for everyone else.
Zevran made himself useful by carrying Alistair's tent and gear for him. Alistair had protested in a red-faced bluster, but when Zevran bypassed it and slung his pack onto his back, the Templar watched him guiltily, and said nothing more. It was one of the most oddly satisfying feelings Zevran could recall experiencing.
Danyla weakened by the day, the mottled colouring in her skin growing increasingly vivid; the bite mark was almost black now. A faint wheeze had developed on the exhale that had become distractingly loud by the time the Dalish camp came into view one evening. Rhodri abruptly shrugged Wynne off her shoulders by that point and bolted the last little way with Danyla, announcing their arrival with a shout that brought Mithra and the other guardians running.
And what a situation arose. There was, of course, a fuss about Danyla, with plenty of noisy weeping from Athras and their young daughter, and a scramble to check the stocks of the necessary antivenom. Danyla was taken to a sickbed and was attended to with no noticeable change to her condition.
More pressing for the rest of the clan, though, was Zathrian's whereabouts. Why had he not returned with them? What had he needed to do to reverse the curse? And what of the werewolves? Had the werewolves eaten him, asked one child. Another child, before the young ones were ushered away to the halla pen, asked with wide eyes if the werewolves had become elves, and the elves had eaten Zathrian.
Rhodri managed to assuage the children that she had not witnessed Zathrian being consumed by anything or anyone before they were escorted away. To the remaining adults, she explained what Zevran had largely missed in those moments of inattention. The curse, so said Rhodri, was invented by Zathrian upon binding a spirit to a wolf– that much he knew already, but it was news to him that a part of Zathrian had also become bound to the creature in casting said spell, and that connection was the source of his unusually long life. More guff with spirits extending lives; first Flemeth, then Zathrian, and now Wynne! Could these mages never simply embrace the cyclic nature of life and let themselves die at the appropriate time?
And it was always the ones people were getting sick of. Had it been a more appealing mage– one who was good company and pleasant to be around, he wouldn't have minded so much. Take Rhodri, for example, whose manifold virtues would take an eternity to list. Or Morrigan! Unfriendly in the extreme though she was, the woman was undeniably good value in the humour department. But no, it was always the insufferable ones that lived forever, and never the Rhodri-like ones. Perhaps that was another of the Maker's jokes. If it was, Zevran didn't find it especially funny.
It was when the clan nodded and Lanaya called for the retrieval of Zathrian's body that Zevran realised that he had, once again, mentally departed from the proceedings. What, in the name of all good things, was seizing his consciousness and removing him from current affairs was beyond him, but it was going to have to stop. It simply wouldn't do to–
"Zev?"
Zevran snapped-to and turned to look at the speaker– Rhodri, in this case. He shot her a broad, wicked grin. "You called?"
She gestured around them. The elves and humans both were departing from the cluster they had made, and were returning to their respective areas (Wynne, Zevran noticed from the corner of his eye, glanced over her shoulder at Rhodri as she returned to the camp with Alistair and Leliana). "Everyone is going to begin preparations for tomorrow night's gathering. Would you like some time alone, or shall we walk back to the camp together?"
A gathering. No doubt the celebration of life that came with funerals and births; had he really missed these details? Absurd, was what it was. Entirely absurd.
"Oh, I think it might be nice to relax by the fire back at the camp. A well-earned rest, no?"
A tiny but unmistakable smile came to Rhodri's face, and she nodded once. She clasped her hands behind her back, and the two of them fell into a gentle stroll.
"Do you need anything, Zev?" she asked, not entirely unexpectedly. It was, after all, far from the first time she had enquired since coming into the forest. "Some, ah… water, perhaps?"
He smiled. "I have my waterskin, but thank you."
"Ah. Yes, of course." She wrung her hands. "Something else, maybe? Sandwiches, or a game– or no games at all, if– if you'd prefer that."
Zevran chuckled and shook his head. "Oh, you do spoil me. No need for–"
Oh, Maker's mercy, why was he not out of the habit of saying that yet? Rhodri was watching him with those big eyes, and the only thing Zevran could think to do was brace himself for impact.
"No, no," she shook her head fervently. "No spoiling. This whole thing must be so difficult for you. These fucking werewolves, and then Zathrian doing what he did. I can't imagine how hard that must be for you. I– no, I owe you an apology, really."
Zevran raised his eyebrows. "Ah… do you? I do not think that you do."
"I do," she nodded. "It's– this is my fault."
"... I'm sorry, what is?"
She gestured at the Dalish camp helplessly. "Danyla. I– I shouldn't have let Wynne come with us. It's like you said, isn't it, anyone here could be your family. Danyla, she could be your aunt, or a cousin, and–- and you deserve to feel sure that I would look out for your family like they were my own."
Rhodri shook her head, "But– but I let Wynne come, and she held us up, and perhaps that cost us the time needed to save Danyla."
Zevran, finding himself at a loss for words, simply managed an, "Ah."
"I'm so sorry, Zev," she shook her head again. "You and Danyla deserved better than that. Believe it, anything I can do to help her, or you, or anyone else in the clan, I will gladly do it."
"Oh," he blinked. "Thank you, of course, but there is no need for concern. These things happen, no? We do our best in the conditions we are given."
Rhodri's face softened. She briefly met his eyes and, relentlessly and no doubt unknowingly, made his belly leap into his throat in consequence.
"You are full of grace and compassion," she murmured, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Zevran was trying in equal measures to button a hysterical laugh in, and to keep his knees from giving out under him.
"You showed so much mercy to those werewolves," she said. "More than anyone could reasonably have asked of you, and more than anyone else in the party was showing, myself included." A small, tremulous smile was pulling at the corners of her mouth. "What a remarkable person you are, Zev. I aspire to be more like you in the future."
Were Zevran's cheeks and ears burning? They were hot. Hot. More to the point, was it apparent to Rhodri that this internal combustion was happening? Zevran decided the answer was no, to both of those things. There was nothing to get hot-faced over, in much the same way that there was nothing for his knees to go weak over. And Rhodri was not looking at his face, so even if there were some heat in his face (and there absolutely was not) , she wouldn't have noticed.
Zevran chuckled– a little more nervously than he would have liked– and sighed. Rhodri smiled.
"I've run out of words," she said after a moment. "But I suppose it's better that way. We're back at the camp now, anyway," Rhodri gestured at the row of tents and the crackling fire in the middle of it all, "which means it's time to speak with Wynne."
Zevran raised an eyebrow. "Oh? About the incident with the Revenant?"
"Mmm. Excuse me, please." She wandered over to where Wynne sat by the fire drinking tea with Alistair and Leliana. The three of them looked either weary (in the case of Wynne and Alistair), or nauseated (as Leliana had since Alistair's accident).
"Wynne, I need to speak with you privately, if you please."
Wynne looked up at Rhodri over the rim of her cup. "Ah, I see you have stopped avoiding me, Rhodri. Or do you wish to sling me onto your back again?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Rhodri snapped. "I put you on my back so we could move to the camp in a timely manner. I am asking you to come with me because I consider it improper to criticise my own people in front of others, and I haven't had the time or inclination to seek you out yet."
"Mm. I would be lying if I said your intentions surprised me." Wynne gave a resigned shrug. "Well, I have nothing to hide. You can do it here. Criticise away."
Alistair and Leliana shared a glance but said nothing. Sten, Shale, and Morrigan, who were all a little further away, paused and turned their heads toward the action. Morrigan, in particular, looked like Satinalia had come early. Zevran, attempting to exercise a little decorum while adhering to the time-honoured Antivan ideal of keeping up-to-date with dramatic events, made himself a sandwich and pretended to be fascinated with it.
Rhodri folded her arms. "I don't care to be lied to, Wynne. I asked you twice in the Tower if you were fit for high-paced and demanding activities. Once when we were about to leave the children and go further in, and then again when you said you wanted to come with us. Both times you said you were."
Wynne sighed. "Oh, dear…"
"I don't understand why you kept the spirit and your death from me. I am accommodating, and I always have been. You have seen me teach and care for those children–"
"You coddled those children–"
"I cared for them," Rhodri cut over her firmly. "I made provisions for their needs, and they flourished with me."
"And then they died, at the hands of the Templars, or at their own hands when you left."
"Do not pretend those children would have thrived if I neglected them, Wynne. They died at their own hands when I was there, too. There have always been four beds in the mage dorms and eighty-eight in the apprentice dorms." Rhodri clenched her fist in her robe ans sighed. "Perhaps the only difference I made, was that they died with the knowledge that someone's heart would break over it, but they did not go unloved."
Wynne raised her eyebrows. "You think the students went unloved, simply because the Enchanters maintained a professional distance? As though I died protecting them for anything less than love and duty?"
"Teachers are not parents."
"You were not a parent."
"I was as good as!" Rhodri shouted. "They needed to be nurtured!"
"They developed a need to be nurtured because you instilled it in them, Warden. Nothing more."
Zevran watched Cristofania in the armchair by the window, bouncing Galindo on her knee. He was an older boy than Zevran– eight, at least; a huge number beside Zevran's modest five years.
It made no sense. How many times had he gone to her, or Teresa, or any of the other whores asking for something like that? Enough to know that the answer never changed: Zevran was too old for that sort of thing.
But Galindo was eight.
And he was a greedy boy, who always had the affection he wanted from her. And now here he was, wriggling and squirming as though he had tiredof her, and Cristofania set him on the ground with a chuckle. Galindo ran off.
Cristofania stayed in her armchair, and Zevran wandered over to her with his most winning smile affixed.
"'Stofania?" He kept the smile in place until she looked over at him.
"Hmm?"
"Will you let me go on your knee, too?"
Cristofania shook her head. "You are too old for that, amorcito."
Zevran gulped, but stayed where he was. "Galindo is eight," he said carefully.
"Yes, he is. But Galindo is my son."
"O-oh."
"Mmm."
"My mother is dead," he said after a moment.
She nodded. "Yes, she is."
"Do boys with mothers get to sit on the knee for longer?"
"Mmm."
Zevran took this in with a nod, and then stepped as close to Cristofania as he dared. "Will you be my mother instead? Please?"
He watched closely, ready to scuttle back if it looked like a smack was coming, but Cristofania's hands didn't leave the armrests. She sighed and shook her head.
"You only have one mother, and she is with the Maker," she gestured at the sky outside, up where Zevran's mother and all the other dead mothers were said to be. Zevran swallowed, feeling a stab of guilt for forgetting a woman he had never met, and who would no doubt still be here if he hadn't come along.
"But I would like to sit on your knee, too," he said softly. "And then you bounce me. That's all."
Cristofania rose to her feet; Zevran leapt away, giving her plenty of room as she walked over to the door. She paused and looked at him over her shoulder.
"Zevran," she said, watching him with a tired expression. "I am already raising you. Isn't that enough?"
She didn't wait for an answer, and Zevran didn't have one. She left the room, and then Zevran was alone.
"I will not defend nurturing children to someone who refuses to acknowledge the benefit of it," Rhodri barked. "My point stands: you should have known to tell me of your needs, and I would have accommodated them, but you said nothing. Why?" She threw up her hand in a forceful shrug. "Was it a sense of martyrdom? Or do you consider me so ineffectual a leader that you thought to take charge of the situation yourself? And fail, evidently."
Wynne's brows knitted. "Perhaps it was a little of both. You have been resistant to stick with the skillbuilding you need to be the level of leader you say you are. You dove into Zevran's lessons on 'knife safety' and 'herbalism.' She gestured at Zevran, who raised a brow at her.
"As I have told you several times, the regimen you set for me was inefficient."
Wynne shrugged. "So you say. I noticed some small progress, despite what you might think."
"The benefits did not come close to the gains I made under Zevran's tutelage," Rhodri bit back. "Herbalism is vital, and what I have learned in knife safety has been helpful in several battles so far."
Zevran, ignoring the warmth creeping up his neck and into his ears and rolled his eyes in delight. It was miraculous that he hadn't yet begun belting the first notes of a victory song. The very second Wynne's gaze landed on Zevran, he winked and blew her a kiss. Wynne took this with a glare, and his heart soared further still.
She turned back to Rhodri. "I am not going to argue with you, Rhodri. I did not admit my condition to you, and it is done. Had I known it would have the effects that it did, I would have said something earlier."
Rhodri shook her head. "We nearly lost Alistair because of you. My own brother, and very beloved to us all." (Morrigan's snort went unacknowledged) "And the only other Grey Warden in Ferelden."
"I am aware of that."
"And that poor lady, Danyla. That family's matriarch might die in front of her own spouse and child–"
"Thank you, Rhodri," Wynne cut over her irritably, "I am very clear over the enormity of my actions, and I am not sure how many times it will take me admitting it for you to be satisfied.
"You are evidently not clear over the enormity of it all, Wynne, otherwise you would be packing your bags."
Alistair and Leliana goggled at Rhodri.
"Steady on," Alistair said. "That's a bit much, isn't it, Rhod?" He– carefully– patted the site of his injury, which by all accounts could be called healed now. "We got through it all right."
"We very nearly didn't," Rhodri replied, her fingers twiddling her robe. She turned back to Wynne. "You know I won't be lied to. It was my condition in the Circle, and it's my condition now. Clearly, you don't have any respect for the way I lead this group, and it has almost cost us Alistair."
Wynne gave a disbelieving scoff. "What do you intend to do with me, then, Warden? Leave me here with the Dalish? Drop me beside the Imperial Highway like a mage child to force a little empathy into me?"
"How dare you," Rhodri spat. "What a horrible thing to suggest. No, we will travel together until Lake Calenhad. From there, I will remove you from the group and escort you back to the Circle.
"Hey now!" Alistair protested gently. "Come on, we don't–"
Wynne spoke over Alistair, touching a hand to his shoulder in wordless apology for the interruption; Alistair fell silent.
"I think," she said coldly, "I would serve the Blight effort here better than I would in the Tower, Rhodri."
Rhodri gave an unmoved sort of shrug. "You have proved yourself untrustworthy. If you think me an ineffectual leader, and you evidently do, I would rather you pledged your considerable services to someone whose leadership you do respect. Like Irving."
"Well, be that as it may, my preference to stay remains," Wynne returned. "I do have considerable services, and as unfortunate as the goings-on in the Tower are, it is a drop in the ocean compared to the Blight. I would like your proposal to be taken to a vote. Or are votes only on offer when it suits you?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Rhodri snapped. "A vote is held to gauge opinion, and I have never held one to suit myself. Very well," she turned to the entire party. "Everyone, all in favour of Wynne remaining in the party, please raise your hands."
Alistair and Leliana's hands shot up, and Wynne's followed.
"Three votes," she said. "And all those in favour of Wynne leaving the party to return to the Circle, please raise your hands."
Rhodri threw her own hand into the air, and Zevran joined with alacrity, as did Sten and Morrigan. Alistair and Leliana visibly deflated.
"Four votes," Rhodri said. "All those who are indifferent or who do not wish to vote, please raise your hands."
All eyes went on Shale, who watched the others boredly.
"We do need some answer, please, Shale," Rhodri said seriously. "Yes, no, indifferent, or rather not vote. All are valid answers, but I need you to pick one."
The golem let out a groan. "The things the flesh bags obsess over. Very well, I officially vote my indifference. Take it back to the Tower, crush its head, make it the ruler of the land, I care not."
"Right," Rhodri nodded. "Three 'stay,' four 'go,' and one 'indifferent.' Majority rules. Then you will be escorted in safety to the Tower in the near future."
"Isn't this a little harsh, Rhodri?" Leliana chimed in now. "Wynne is a lovely lady, and her healing magic is very helpful. Surely if we give her another chance, we can all move on together, stronger than ever."
"I've forgiven her," Alistair added quickly. "It was a mistake, and it could've been bad, but it wasn't. I think we could really use her help."
Rhodri shook her head. "I disagree. We managed perfectly well without Wynne when we were being open and honest with each other. I made a plan, we negotiated on it and then stuck to it. We will do just as well returning to that system."
She turned on her heel and made for the lake, not acknowledging the medley of appalled or delighted looks the others were making at her back. "Majority rules. Please excuse me."
Zevran smirked into his lap and blessed the Maker, just in case this was another example of His sense of humour.