Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel Comics, Dragon Age, Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, or any of their related characters. Character Warjen Zevonishki or "Zevon" is an homage to my favorite musician, long deceased, no disrespect intended, I included him because King dedicated the novel Doctor Sleep to his memory. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.
Rating: T
Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Doctor Sleep, Dragon Age Origins, Origins DLC, Awakening, and Dragon Age II, Dragon Age II DLC, Dragon Age Inquisition as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling. May also contain spoilers for Marvelmovies, series, and/or comics. Song lyrics included herein were used without permission.
A/N: The song Loki makes up, "Pony Man," is actually a song by Gordon Lightfoot, a Canadian folk musician, now deceased, intended as an homage, no disrespect intended. All of the song titles given as "Old Songs," other than the ones at the festival are also Gordon Lightfoot. "Dragon Spooge Befouled my Bonny Bonny Lass" and "Alehouse Lilly (She'll Bonk You Silly)" are actually song titles suggested in Christopher Moore's wonderful dark comedy satire Fool. If you like my silly musings I highly recommend you pick up his work. He's a master of the macabre yet hilarious.
Chapter One: TANGLED
In the cellar of the Gnawed Noble tavern, chosen perhaps deliberately as either a test of will or a spot of irony, the Denerim chapter of SAA – Skooma Addicts Anonymous – gathered on Loredas evening to speak of their wrongdoings and make amends. Front row center, as instructed by his sponsor, relative newcomer Warjen Zevonishki, known to all as only "Zevon," made notes and listened attentively, but had nothing to say of his own. He was a minstrel by trade, a wanderer by disposition. Ferelden was not his homeland. He was relatively young, skinny, and fairly short even by the standards of a Breton. He had wildly curly blond hair and dark eyes that saw too much from behind their large spectacles. One got the feeling, looking at him, that he had led a rough life. Perhaps that had led him to the skooma. And thence here.
He came to these meetings three times a week. He was serious about getting clean. Not just from the skooma but all of it. Moon sugar. Liquor. Isogen. Fuck, even beer and ale. No more of that shit would ever cross his lips. No more would he live in a delicious haze of unreality, even if it felt better than the real world. He was done with it. Done before he hit rock bottom and started chewing devil grass, which was a fast track to a pauper's grave. No more.
As the meeting wound to a close he absentmindedly doodled four letters below his careful notes. He wrote them bold and dark, as if they held some special significance, but they meant nothing to him. Well, they meant something, of course. Taken together they formed a name, which in Nordic Standard meant "Tangled," which was a pretty fair description of his life. But he was not a Nord, though almost everyone in Asgard spoke Nordic Standard, it was the national language, and he knew no one by the name. It wasn't exactly common to name your children something that meant "Tangled." So he had no idea why he wrote the letters down.
L.
O.
K.
I.
LOKI.
Zevon was used to receiving odd mental flashes. As a child it had been quite common for him to see things others couldn't. Even as an adult it had been rather more common than he liked. Therefore, skooma. It dulled the senses. But he had no sense of what this mental flash meant or where it came from. He closed his notebook, set aside his questions, and got up to help clean up after the meeting.
One hundred miles away, in Gwaren, the Teyrn and his wife had just arrived home from a momentous trip to the Sacred City, far away on the other side of the realm. They were met at the door of the Keep by the Teyrna's grandmother, an ancient but quite hale woman named Reyne. She was not a little surprised to see them holding a small bundle that could only be a baby.
"The baby was just born. They let you bring it for a visit already?" she said, amazed.
"No, Momo. The baby is ours," her granddaughter told her. Her face was grim and pale.
"Yours? Matana, what do you mean?"
"Frigga made a prophecy," Teyrn Loghain said. He passed a hand across his brow and Reyne was startled to see that hand shake. She would have said nothing could make that man tremble but the wrath of the gods, and maybe not even that. Nothing! "We're to raise the boy as our own. Away from the palace. Away from… all that entails."
Reyne knew of her great-granddaughter's gifts. She rarely shared her visions, but when she did, it was wise to heed them. She had the Shine. Sometimes it was passed down. The boy could have some of his mother's ability as well. He could have the Shine. It was too early to say. If so, it probably was too dangerous to have him around that unctuous lot that crowded round the throne, looking for a place to stick a dagger while they smile in your face. They would want him out of the way before he was old enough to be a threat to them.
"Here, give him to Momo. You two look tired. I will take him and get him settled. Have you a room picked out for him?"
"The empty suite in the east wing, I think," her granddaughter said, with a look to her husband for confirmation. "It gets a lot of nice morning sunshine and it should be pretty easy to fit out for him."
"Momo."
"What, dear?" that worthy woman said, turning to her granddaughter with the baby in her arms, a question in the set of her eyebrows. But her granddaughter shook her head.
"I didn't say that."
"I'll be damned if Loki didn't say it," Loghain said.
The elderly woman looked doubtfully at the child in her arms. "Nonsense syllables only, a coincidence that they happened to be the same as Celia's nickname for me. Nord babies talk early, but it's far too early for him to talk."
A shriek of laughter from the babe, and a clap of tiny hands coming together perfectly, and then, "Loki!"
"Still think it's nonsense syllables?" Loghain said. "He may not know what he's saying yet but he's definitely saying it."
"We will have to nurture this child carefully," Reyne said. "He is very special, I think."
"You don't have to tell me twice," Loghain said.
Zevon didn't get any further clarification on why he'd written the name Loki in his SAA notebook for a few months. He nearly forgot all about it, in fact. Nearly. But when he got the next message he wasn't terribly surprised, so it must have been kicking around somewhere in the undersurface of his mind.
To pay the bills, because gigs were mostly just something he did because he couldn't see himself doing anything else and not something he did because they paid well, he worked in a hospice care facility in Denerim called the Haljen Rivensdottir House. He'd worked in many such places over the course of his wanderings because he had a special way with those on the threshold of death. He was not the kind of Angel of Mercy who used narcotics or even laid hands on them, except to offer comfort in their final moments. No, he used what his old friend Ken Cays had called his "Shine." He used whatever strange gift or curse existed inside his grey matter to ease their final moments so they could peacefully transition to… well, whatever came next. Zevon wasn't exactly sure what that was, and wasn't prepared to argue with anything anyone said about it. Sovengarde? Sure. Reincarnation? If you like. An endless sleep? Sounds good to me. All he really cared was that the dead got wherever it was happy, and did not, I repeat, DID NOT, come back angry. He had bad experience with ones that did.
Hence the skooma.
Gigs he usually did in the evenings, on weekends, at the local taverns. The Gnawed Noble, if he could get the booking, but that place passed for upscale by Ferelden standards. The Fishwife's Cloister, down by the docks, if they wouldn't have him. The other thing, the thing the staff at the Haljen Rivensdottir House had taken to calling him "Healer Sleep" for, that could happen any time, but most often came late, late at night or early, early in the morning. It was almost predictable. He had his own room at the illustrious hospice care facility, in the attic (it had been a sort of junk storage space before he arrived) and the only thing he kept from the junk that was in it prior to his coming was a large holoboard, on which he kept a running tab of the comings and goings in the house. When he left for his gig at the Fishwife's Cloister, hauling his guitar case and his keyboard (Maker, couldn't they make them less bulky? Wasn't Asgard supposed to be the most technologically advanced civilization in the universe?), everything was as it should be: the names showed just as he'd typed them in. When he returned later on after his five hours were up, however, they were gone. The board was clear, except for a single word, typed in an elaborate font few adults would favor.
Hello
Of course it didn't actually say "hello," it gave greetings in Nordic Standard, which is not the word Hello but actually remarkably close. And this isn't what it looked like, because Nordic Standard is written in runes, but it gives you an idea of the font.
"Hello," Zevon said to the empty room. "Are you Loki, by any chance?"
He received no response, or at least no direct response, but he did hear a few notes of music coming from the holoboard. He recognized it immediately. It was one of his own compositions. It was currently his most popular song, most frequently requested whenever he played. The title was "Werewolves of Gwaren."
"Who are you?" he asked, but there was nothing more.
He went to the holoboard, erased the greeting, and set about replacing the names of the hospice's current guests. He had an idea that the mind reaching out to his own was young, but he had no clue as to how young.
"Listen to this, Celia, the boy is reading to me! Two months old and he is reading to me!" Reyne said.
"I know how smart you think he is, Momo, but that's impossible."
"Loki, read for your Mama. Start from the beginning," Reyna said, flapping a hand at the infant.
The little boy, wearing only a cloth diaper and a big, toothless smile, turned back the pages of the children's book he held and obediently started over. "Long ago, before your gran'father's gran'father was born'd, there lived a boy name Tim Small."
"The tale of Tim Stoutheart and the Starkblast? Momo, how many times have you read him this book? He must have managed to memorize it."
"I swear, I never read him it before."
"Never?" Celia looked into the little boy's bright eyes. Green eyes, like her own, with spiral pupils, like the Al Bhed. But deep inside, tiny bio-luminescent photofors glowed, just like in his grandfather's eyes. That was the Alamarri in him. They were exactly the same as his mother's eyes, and she'd been pretty precocious, too. Not like this, but… well, she supposed he came by it honestly. Lord knew his grandfather had most likely been a smart little whippersnapper as well, not that he'd ever received much in the way of a formal education in his youth. And Momo had brains. She was a professor, now emeritus, of literature at the Denerim University, an absolutely amazing thing for an Al Bhed. She'd written many volumes of poetry and won awards for a lot of it, though it never paid much.
"Loki, can you read Mama a different book?" she asked.
"Diff'ent?" he said, looking at her quizzically.
"Yes, I think I'd like to hear something else. How about… oh… this one?" She picked one at random from Momo's shelf. They were not children's books. She would not have read them to Loki.
Loki clumsily opened the book, which was much harder to manipulate than the thick cardstock children's book, and turned to the first page. "Some of the caddies were poor as sin and lived in one-room houses with a ner… neurast… neurasthenic cow in the front yard, but Dexter Green's father owned the second-best grocery store in Black Bear – the best one was The Hub, patronized by the wealthy people from Sherry Island – and Dexter caddied only for pocket money."
Celia snatched the book from the boy's tiny hands and read the first line, aghast. It read exactly as Loki had said it did. She looked at the cover. The book was titled Great Asgardian Short Stories.
How did a two-month-old puzzle out the word "neurasthenic?" I'm not even certain I know what it means, she thought. And where did the childish pronunciations go? When he was reading the starkblast story he sounded like a little boy. When he read that he sounded like a professor of literature, minus that one little stumble.
"Mama? You want me to read?" the child inquired.
"Not… right now, Loki," Celia said. "Mama just remembered something she has to do. Keep reading about Tim Small and the Starkblast. Read to Momo."
"Aw'right." The boy crawled over and grabbed up the cardstock copy of "Tim Stoutheart and the Starkblast." Even the fact that he was crawling already – holding books, not just children's books but heavy hardback adult books – was out of the ordinary. The child was just… just…
What?
Too fast, that's what. Growing up too fast. Bringing home her grandson to raise was supposed to be her chance to return to the joys of motherhood, but it looked like this little one was going to grow up and leave her behind all too quickly. As it seemed now that her own children had done, though of course they'd grown up much more normally than this little prodigy.
She went to her garden, where she often went when she felt bad. The well-tended blooms always made her feel at least a little better. The smell of the roses made her think of Loki's scent. He didn't smell like a baby, or at least not like any baby she'd ever held before. That smell was pleasant, at least when they were clean, but it wasn't like Loki's unique aroma, an odd but pleasing mixture that smelled a bit like warm pumpkins, fields of fresh lavender, and a goodly amount of vanilla extract. She had no idea why any baby would smell like that. It made you want to breathe him in for hours. If he smelled like that into adulthood, he was going to have women flocking after him. Probably men, too. Of course, adolescence generally brought with it some nasty aromas, but he was a Nord. Nords don't sweat much, so adolescence isn't a time of severe stinkiness for them, at least not compared to most other peoples.
She thought about him growing up. Gwaren was such a tiny town. There were few small children, and what there was generally expected a poor education. What would a brilliant child like Loki have for friendship around such a place as this? Who would be his companions? She would speak to Loghain about it. Perhaps arrangements could be made with his father, playdates with children of means and education. She herself was from relatively humble origins, and Loghain had grown up in the poverty of the peasantry, but Loki would have the best of everything, including friends, if she could help it.
Zevon had one crucial assistant at Haljen Rivensdottir House, a mouse-colored tabby cat (not a khajiit, an actual cat, both species live in Asgard, one distantly related to the other, but don't call a khajiit a cat or you'll get clawed) named Azreal. Azreal was not his cat, he was a resident of the house and had been there longer than Zevon, but he had a special talent that worked well with Zevon's. He prowled the halls and grounds at will, but never entered any of the patients rooms… until their final time approached. Then he would either enter and jump on the bed beside them if the door was open, or stand outside softly yowling if it was closed. Then he would calmly wait, purring, allowing himself to be petted if they had the strength and presence of mind, until Zevon arrived to do his thing, which was typically when he departed, his job complete. Azreal's talent was a great boon to Zevon, because he had no good way of knowing who was going when. The dead flies – visions of flies buzzing over peoples faces that presaged death – buzzed in droves over each patient's face in this house. As far as he was aware, any of them could go at any time. Without Azreal, it would be difficult to do his work, helping people pass calmly and easily from one plane of existence to the next. He'd done it before, many times, but he had missed a lot of opportunities to do so for a lot of good people.
There was an intercom system in his room that connected to the front desk of the house, which was manned at all hours. This intercom could stir him at any hour of the day, but as previously mentioned it usually happened at some ungodly hour of the late night or early morning. He was used to that. He really didn't mind it much. He was a musician, he was used to odd hours. And it was peaceful, at those hours. Quiet. Calm. It helped his work.
At twenty-five oh-two one night (Asgard runs on a twenty-six hour clock) the intercom buzzed and the night manager's voice alerted him that Azreal was paying a visit to one of the house's tenants.
"Jingur Gunderson?" he asked. He'd been expecting the ancient Nord to drop for weeks, but the old fart held on with grim determination. If all Nords were as tough as that one, it was small wonder they held all the power in the realm.
"Nope. Rileigh Baree."
"Really? I played wizard's chess with him all afternoon. He seemed fine."
"Well, Azzie could be wrong, I suppose, but…"
"He never has been before. All right, I'm on my way."
He got out of bed, dressed, and went down to the first floor, where Rileigh Baree, an eight thousand and some-year old Bosmer, otherwise known as a Wood Elf, lay in the final stages of renal failure. In younger people kidney disease could be easily treated but when you got beyond a certain age, things got tricky. The healers just tended to give up on such things. Cancer was the same way in Asgard. Easily treated in the young, generally fatal in the old. And almost everyone was prone to such things. Nords weren't, lucky dogs, but even they could get it. It just wasn't as likely. Most of them died of nothing more nor less than extreme old age, if they survived their endless warring.
The door to Mr. Baree's room was open, but he knocked anyway. It was polite.
"That you, Zee?" The voice was weak, almost querulous, but there was a thin vein of humor in it. And hope.
"It's me, Ser. I heard you had a visitor."
"Yeah. Your cat's been sittin' with me fer the last half hour or so."
"He's not my cat, Ser. Belongs to the facility."
"Yeah, I know, I know. Are you… here to help me?" The hope sounded brighter in that weak voice.
"I am, Sir, if you want me to."
"Please. I know I shouldn't be, old man like me, but… I'm terrible scared."
"There's nothing to be afraid of, Sir. All you have to do is go to sleep."
He sat down beside the bed and took gentle hold of the old elf's bony hand. This was typically Azreal's cue to get up and depart but the cat stayed where he was, purring like a skiff engine. Zevon saw the bruises on Mr. Baree's wrist. Fresh ones, that looked like finger marks. Of course, the older they were, the easier they bruised, but these marks looked to have been applied with some force. He felt a red-hot rage build behind his eyes and tamped it down. Don't let the last thing Mr. Baree feels on Mundus be that rage. Send calm thoughts. Be peaceful. Wherever he goes after this, and Zevon did believe there was something, he had good cause to believe that, send him there happy.
He sensed something out of the ordinary in the room, like a radio receiver picking up stray transmissions. Someone was watching. He sensed no threat in the observer. In fact, he was fairly sure it was his young friend who wrote on his holoboard. An even better reason to send Mr. Baree off well. Kids don't need to learn bad things about death. Goodness knows if the kid was as strong in the Shining as they seemed to be they would be learning all the bad things soon enough, if they hadn't begun already.
He spoke slow, soothing words to Mr. Baree, but most importantly, he sent slow, soothing thoughts. And in Mr. Baree's mind, they were momentarily one. He was five years old, playing among the oaks of the Brecilian Forest, standing so tall they challenged the heavens. He was two thousand, standing beneath an arch of yellow summer roses, waiting for his bride to join him at the altar. He was six thousand and something, watching his grandson graduate from Denerim University. Zevon cycled through the old mer's entire lifespan in the course of a few moments, and then…
…and then the old mer slept. The "dreamless sleep of death," as some old bard had put it. Zevon waited, watching. A few moments, and then, a final red puff escaped the old mer's withered lips. He knew no one else would have seen it. It wasn't a breath. The elf was done breathing some time before. He didn't know exactly what it was, but it was, he thought, something like their essence. Perhaps even their soul, if that wasn't getting too religious. Zevon tried to stay away from religion as much as possible. Azreal got up, stretched himself out in that extraordinarily limber way peculiar to cats and contortionists, and exited the room without a backward glance.
Zevon still sensed that Other, his silent witness. "Loki?" he asked. "Is that you?"
Instead of an answer, he felt the Other withdraw. Perhaps, in spite of greeting him on his holoboard, the kid was scared that he knew his name. Or maybe this wasn't Loki but someone else. But he knew, without knowing how he knew, that neither of those were true. The child withdrew because what he'd seen tonight had given him something to think about.
It was always bad. Celia had experienced childhood nightmares before, both as a child herself and as a parent of children, but never before had she experienced what the Denerim pediatrician, Healer Johann, called "Night Terrors." It was an apropos term. Loki, now just under seventy-four months old (there were seventy-five months in an Asgardian year), would be bolt upright in bed, eyes wide and glazed, screaming, utterly insensible for upwards of twenty to thirty minutes. Nothing she or Loghain or Reyne said could break through to him. He would just scream and scream and scream until whatever terror gripped him finally released its hold. What monsters could lurk in such a tiny child's mind to cause such nightmares?
Some good news: his father was sending his Adviser and his Shield, along with their families, to live in Gwaren for a time. They both had young sons, older than Loki by a few dozens of years but young enough. It was rough, them having to leave their homes and their duties just so Loki could have playmates, but she didn't regret it for a moment. Perhaps having friends would calm the night terrors. She hoped the boys would get along. Children could be cruel when they sensed difference. The Scientias and Amacitias had good reputations, she had high hopes.
They would be arriving in time for the Feast Day celebrations, which was always a fine time in Gwaren. Loki would surely enjoy it, and it was his good fortune to be bright enough to understand it for what it was. Most children his age wouldn't be able to do so. Most children his age would sleep through the festivities blissfully unaware of them.
The people of Gwaren were already preparing for the celebration. There was food in plenty this year. Gwaren didn't have a harvest, exactly, it did not lay on farmland, though everyone had at least a small garden patch to grow vegetables and perhaps some wheat. Most produce had to be purchased from elsewhere in the province, however. Meat, though, was plentiful. Mostly seafood, culled from the Frozen Sea, fish and shellfish of all varieties, but some of the hardier menfolk had ventured into the Brecilian and done some hunting. They'd been quite successful, too. And, for a wonder, they'd all come back alive. That was hardly commonplace. The Brecilian was dangerous, to say the least. Daemons stalked there, even during the day. There were other dangers, but that was the worst. It was hard to say what Gwareners had more respect and fear for: the wild and raging Frozen Sea to the south and east of them, or the dark and ominous Brecilian to the north and west.
Momo set Loki to bed the night before the new arrivals were due, and she sang to him some of the old songs, folk tunes that were probably Nordic but which had mostly lost racial identity over the long aeons. He enjoyed music a great deal, though he said some of the old tunes were a bit too "sappy" for him – tunes like "Pussywillows, Cattails, Soft Winds and Roses," which admittedly, was pretty sappy. He preferred tunes with a bit of bounce to them, like "Oswin-na Bound," "Boss Man," and "Big Steel Rail." Momo was still a pretty good singer considering the advanced age of her pipes, but she didn't play an instrument. That didn't matter. She often found herself with accompaniment when she sang Loki's favorites, the notes apparently coming out of nowhere, Antivan guitar, alehouse piano, and Ferelden country fiddle, all expertly reproduced apparently through the very power of Loki's mind. They tried not to let it show that it was a bit frightening. Thankfully they'd had a bit of practice accepting the extraordinary with Frigga, so they were good at keeping straight faces.
"I hope the Scientias and the Amacitias are… 'open-minded' people," Celia said to her husband, listening in on this partially psychic concert that night.
"They know about Frigga, Loki shouldn't take them too much by surprise."
"Loki is much, much more powerful than Frigga was at this age."
"Don't I know it. I didn't know this… this gift or, whatever it is… could ever do half of what he's shown us he can do. I mean what do you call this? Telekinesis? Maybe if there were instruments around for him to be manipulating psychically but… there aren't any. He's just making those sounds happen. From thin air."
"You know, dear… Frigga's powers got stronger… as she got older…"
"I know," Loghain said, mouth a grim white line on his pale face. "Kind of scares you, doesn't it? If he's this strong now, what will he be in a year? In ten? A thousand?"
Momo stopped singing before they came up with any response to that, and when Loki begged her for another song, she asked him to sing one to her. The request seemed to take him aback momentarily, then he looked thoughtful. A moment later he opened up his mouth, and in an improbably deep, mature voice, began to sing. It was not a song that anyone in earshot was familiar with, but it was similar in composition to the old songs. It also told a very familiar story. One that Celia often told Loki before bedtime, though not in song or even in rhyme.
"When it's midnight on the meadow, and the cats are in the shed,
And the river tells his story at the window by my bed,
If you listen very closely, be as quiet as you can,
In the yard you'll hear him, it is the pony man.
We're always there to greet him when he tumbles into town.
He leads a string of ponies, some are white and some are brown,
And they never seem to kick or bite, they only want to play.
They live on candied apples instead of oats and hay.
And when we all assemble, he gives a soft command,
And we climb aboard our ponies as in a row they stand.
Then down the road we gallop and across the fields we fly,
And soon we all go sailing off into the midnight sky.
And as we gaily walk along beside a rippling sea,
There's Tom and Dick and Sally and Mary Jo and me,
And the pony man is leading 'cause he's traveled here before.
And he gives a whoop and a holler at Mr. Moon's front door.
And then we stop to rest awhile where this older river glides.
Up to the slip comes a pirate ship to take us for a ride.
And the pony man's the captain, and the children are the crew,
And we go in search of treasure, and laugh the whole night through.
And when the hold is filled with gold, and the sails begin to strain,
And the decks pile high with apple pie, we head for port again.
And down the whirling starcase, so swift our ponies fly,
And we're safely in our beds again when the sunbeams kiss the sky.
When it's midnight on the meadow and the cats are in the shed,
And the river tells his story at the window by my bed,
If you listen very closely, be as quiet as you can,
In the yard you'll hear him, it is the pony man."
"Loki, where did you learn that song?" Celia asked. She was rather shell-shocked. She thought her stories of the pony man were her own invention.
"From you, Mama," Loki said, with a shrug of his tiny shoulders.
"I never sang you such a song."
"No, but you told me the stories. I made it up from there. Did I… do something wrong?"
"No, my love. Nothing at all. I was… simply surprised, that's all. Goodnight, dear."
She gestured for her husband to follow her out of the room, which he did. "He can compose songs? He's less than a year old!" she said in a fierce whisper.
"He'll be a year old in a month and a bit. Really, dear, you shouldn't be that surprised. He's proven himself exceedingly precocious in pretty much every regard. Why wouldn't he be a musical genius as well?"
"And what about that singing voice? That was not the voice of an infant!"
"Actually that voice surprised me least of any of this. I had a prematurely deep singing voice as a child. My father thought I was going through puberty way too early so he had healers look at me, but it was just my voice that was wonky, nothing else."
"Were you a little under a year old when you were singing like that?" Celia said, with an unusually stern glare for her.
"Well, no, but I was only a few hundred years old, so pretty damned young all the same. Loki is a thousand billion times more precocious than I ever dreamed of being, physically and mentally, so no, deep voice at his age doesn't surprise me. Nor does the fact that he's actually good at singing, which I never was."
"Maybe you could have been if you tried harder."
"Why would I? It was the Thalmor Occupation, dear, you remember how it was back then. Not a lot of joy and not a lot of singing."
She smiled, stretched up to put her arms around his neck, and kissed him. She was only able to reach his mid-chest, he was so much taller than her, and she was a tall woman. "Only until you kicked their yellow asses back to the Summerset Isles, darling."
"That took a long time, and in the process I lost any desire I might have had as a child to raise my voice in song."
"A shame. Some of the old songs seemed to have been written expressly with you in mind."
He chuckled. "Like what, exactly?"
"'Heaven Don't Deserve Me.'"
That wrung a true bark of harsh laughter from his throat. "I confess, that one does speak to me, somehow," he said.
Momo joined them outside the little boy's room. "Loki is asleep," she said. "I've never had so much difficulty putting him down for the night. It was just like he was so full of energy it was coming off him in waves."
"He probably knows he has guests coming tomorrow. Boy's excited to meet them," Loghain said.
"You're probably right at that. Maker knows you cannot keep a secret from the child." She fanned her face with one arthritic hand. "Well, much as small children need their sleep, old ladies need it more. Good night, you two."
"Good night, Momo," Celia said, and gave her grandmother a kiss on the cheek.
"Sleep well, Reyne," Loghain said.
Loghain and Celia also went to bed, but they did not get much sleep. In just a few hours, they were wrested from their beds by the nerve-wracking but all-too-familiar sound of Loki's screams of terror. They tumbled out of bed and raced to his room. Momo met them at the door a few moments later.
"This sounds like an especially bad one," she said, worry knitting her brow. "Good luck in calming him."
Loki was standing up in bed, hands gripping the rail of his crib, though he probably didn't really need a crib given how advanced his development was, they considered it a case of better safe than sorry. His green, swirl-pupil eyes were wide, the photofors inside blazing brilliantly, and it was clear that he wasn't seeing anything that was in front of him. His screams continued unabated. And, in the midst of his screams, as they struggled to reach him, to calm him, he spoke.
"No! Daddy, please, no! Don't hurt me no more! I swarn I be good! I swarn!"
Loghain and Celia both stopped short and looked at each other in surprise. Loki was very young, too young to be speaking at all, honestly, but at this point in his life he spoke very clearly, with few lapses into babyish pronunciations. And he called Loghain "Papa," not the more colloquial "Daddy."
"Do you… think he's picking up someone else's pain?" Celia said, face stricken.
"I'm almost sure of it. Maybe that's what these night terrors have been all along. Instances of people's cruelty to one another that Loki has been forced to witness as his sleeping mind ranges wild and free."
"How do we… save him from this?" Celia said.
"I don't know, dear. I'm not sure we can. Frigga perhaps could help him in some way, teach him to control his powers, but that avenue is closed to us."
Celia stroked Loki's thick black hair. He didn't look very much like Loghain, except for that hair. His features were more delicate, like hers, at least for the time being. He did seem to have the beginnings of Loghain's nose, though. Maybe something of his chin. It was hard to tell in someone so young, of course.
Of course his closest resemblance was to Frigga, and that made perfect sense. She was, after all, his true mother.
His eyes cleared, suddenly, and his screams stopped. There was the usual moment of disorientation.
"Mama? Papa?" he asked, uncertainly.
"We're here, Pup, it's okay," Loghain said.
"Loki… what did you see?" Celia asked. It wasn't the first time she'd asked him about his nightmares, and she didn't really expect him to respond. He never seemed able to remember. But he surprised her.
He shuddered. "The drunk man was hurting the blitzball boy."
"The… blitzball boy?" She didn't think Loki had ever encountered the sport of blitzball, so she wondered how he came to know of it.
He nodded. "I don't know his name, but he loves playing blitzball, whatever that is. Every chance he gets he's in the water, practicing. He hopes to join the junior league when he's old enough."
"You saw this? It wasn't a dream, was it?"
"Huh?"
"It was really happening, somewhere out there in Ferelden. Maybe right here in Gwaren."
"Oh. Uh, I don't know. It felt pretty real."
"Did you recognize the drunk man?" Loghain asked. "Have you ever seen him before? Like from town?"
"No, he was a stranger to me."
"You'd never seen the boy before, either?"
"No."
"Everyone in town will be at the festival tomorrow," Loghain said. "If it was a local, maybe Loki can point him out for me."
"What if it wasn't a local?" Celia said.
"Then I suppose there's nothing we can do, unless we figure out some way to pinpoint exactly where Loki got his vision from."
"That doesn't sound too likely, does it?"
Loghain shook his head. "No, it doesn't. Still, I wouldn't think he was bringing these visions in from too far away, right? Frigga always has to be close to the source of her prophecies, touching them in most cases. Loki is stronger but… he couldn't possibly be pulling in visions from other towns in Ferelden, could he? Maybe an outlying farm, at best."
"I really couldn't say, darling. But if you're right, they'll likely be in town for the festival tomorrow."
"And then hopefully Loki will be able to point them out to me."
"Yes," Loki said, and curled his left hand to his mouth in a gesture of comfort. "Blitzball boy needs help."
It didn't take much effort for Zevon to ferret out who put the bruises on Mr. Baree's wrist. Only one orderly at Heljen Rivensdottir House was that kind of stupid and mean, and of course he worked the night shift. Sven Hledglundson. A Nord, who probably didn't even have to try very hard to hurt these poor old people. Baree was probably lucky just to get away with bruises. Not many non-Nords would tangle with a Nord, even people with magical ability like most Bretons. Zevon had never studied much magic, but he wasn't scared of a Nord so cowardly as to take his anger out on the helpless. The moment he was done in Mr. Baree's room that night, he tracked down the orderly and got in his face, at least as best he could considering the man was more than a foot taller than he was. Probably across the shoulders, too.
"Listen to me, Shit-for-brains," he said, dark eyes flashing, "the next time I see evidence that you've hurt one of these people I am going to shove your head so far up your ass you'll never get it back out. Metaphorically it's already up there, but I'll make it literal. Understand?"
The big man laughed. "Watch your mouth, Healer Sleep. You don't know who you're talking to."
"No, you don't know who you're talking to." He punctuated this with an open-hand slap across the man's face. It rang out in the silence of the late night hospice like a rifle shot and the big man was actually rocked by it. He raised a hand to his jaw and eyed Zevon with suddenly wary eyes. It seemed that whatever else this man was, Healer Sleep might just be Healer Crazy.
Sven Hledglundson, a true coward even though he belonged to the most powerful known race in the universe, began to be honestly afraid of the little Breton.
"Just… just leave me alone, crazy person," he said, chest heaving with slightly panicked breath.
"Leave the residents alone, and I will," Zevon said. "Get your jollies elsewhere."
"Fine, fine, just go away and bother someone else."
Zevon backed away, hands out to the sides, showing peace. "Remember: it's up to you."
Zevon went back upstairs to bed. He put the encounter out of mind quickly, and began to think about the Other who had witnessed Mr. Baree's passing with him. With him and Azreal, and was that Other the reason Azreal had stayed, which was uncharacteristic of him at best? Zevon thought it might be. If any supposedly non-sentient animal had the Shine, it was Azzie. Cats in general, probably.
He hoped the kid would come back around eventually. It was an odd sort of relationship, if relationship it could be considered, but he kind of looked forward to these little moments of contact. Reaching someone on a psychic level was rare, even though the Shine really wasn't all that uncommon. He'd met lots of people, in his wanderings, who had a small touch of it. Intuition, they thought it was, but it was stronger than that. It was knowing. They didn't know how they knew, and it often scared them, but Zevon could have told them a few things about it, if they wanted to hear it. Most of them didn't.
When he first entered Denerim, he met Ranmir Valderson, a Nord with more than the average touch of Shine. It wasn't anything spectacular, nowhere near his own level, and he thought his level didn't approach his young psychic friend in the least, but he was more than just casually aware of things he really had no business knowing. He hadn't known he had the Shine, of course, not until Zevon told him. Zevon himself hadn't known his gift had a name until he was told by his old friend Ken Cays when he was a child. Ranmir was an older fellow and a good sort, the Chief of City Maintenance in Denerim, and he was pretty much directly responsible for getting Zevon his first job in town, by recommending him to his own boss, the City Manager. And it was Ranmir who realized that Zevon was drinking himself to death, and got that City Manager, a skooma addict himself, to sponsor him for the SAA program, in which he was a long-time chip holder.
For quite some time, Zevon thought he'd seen the last of his mysterious psychic friend, because he received no more messages on the holoboard, and did not feel watched at any time. Then, as he played at the Fishwife's Cloister late on Feast Day evening, he received a mental communication that rocked him.
Help me!
He broke three guitar strings reacting to the powerful shout in his skull. He shook his head and sent a cautious reply, hoping it would be heard, wherever the kid was.
Loki? What's wrong?
I'm dying! Help me!
You're not dying. Just calm down. Tell me what happened.
I got bit by a daemon snake. Papa called it a mary-lith. It hurts. It hurts so bad.
A marilith? Maker's salty balls, that was as bad as it gets, when you talk about daemon snakes. The kid probably was dying after all. Shit.
"Where are you?" he said, not realizing he said it out loud in front of an angry crowd of drunken revelers who wanted to know what happened to the music.
Papa took me back to the Keep, but we're going to Denerim, to the hospital. There isn't one here.
You mean you're not in Denerim? Where are you exactly?
Gwaren.
Gwaren. Zevon had never been there, the village didn't have much to draw him, but he knew how far away it was. Three hundred miles. Approximately half an hour's trip on a fast skiff, if they pushed it. But what boggled him was the fact that the kid was able to communicate… easily… over such a distance. The hardest thing to do, in Zevon's experience, was to send his thoughts to another mind. It generally required physical contact. The fact that the kid could do it without contact had suggested the kid was strong, but it never once occurred to him to think that the kid could do it from a great distance.
Alright, kid, I'm gonna help you, but I'm not going to help you die, you got that? I'm going to help you sleep. Just sleep. So the trip to the healer in Denerim doesn't hurt so much. That means you've got to set yourself to hold on. You've got to hold on tight, you got that?
I got it. Please, just make it stop hurting.
I will, kid. Just clear your mind…