Dragon Age: Last Flight

by Liane Merciel

  Isseya sat back in her saddle, glad that the restraining straps kept her buckled firmly into her seat. A little noise, something like a moan, escaped her lips and was swept away by the wind. Her legs and spine seemed to have gone to jelly.

  Of course the Archdemon was with the Blight. The Archdemon was what caused the Blight. But it still unnerved her to think that one of the corrupted Old Gods was sitting somewhere in that mass of darkspawn, separated from them only by air and Blacktalon’s wings.

  And what frightened her most, even more than the unfathomable destruction that the Archdemon would soon set loose upon that lovely, hapless city by the sea, was how beautiful the melody in her mind had been.

  For the rest of their ride back to Antiva City, Isseya sat small and quiet on Blacktalon’s back, unable to reconcile the horrors of the darkspawn with the sweetness of their song.

  “It’s the corruption,” Warden-Commander Turab told her later, when they were sitting in the barracks waiting for the royal servants to bring in their dinner. Isseya had finally mustered up the courage to approach the formidable-looking dwarf, and had found him unexpectedly easy to talk to. Under his bristly red mustache and scarred gray plate mail, the Warden-Commander had a good deal of caring for his charges.

  He pitched his voice loudly enough to be heard by all of them, old hands and fresh-faced recruits alike, although it was clear that he meant his words mostly for the latter. “The corruption that allows us to sense the darkspawn, and protects us from their taint, also causes us to experience some things as they do. The Archdemon’s call is among them. It’s the same song you’ll hear when the Calling comes upon you, and it will grow stronger as the corruption sinks deeper into your bones. Someday, if you wait too long, you won’t be able to resist. Your duty is to answer the Calling while you still have the choice.”

  “Does that happen faster because we hear the Archdemon’s song?” Isseya asked.

  Turab shrugged in a clanking of steel and silverite. “It might. It comes a little differently to each of us.”

  “Well, that’s something to look forward to,” Garahel said, slapping his palms on his thighs in mock-cheer. “And, oh, look, here comes dinner. I know I’ve worked up quite the appetite, hearing that story.”

  Isseya didn’t even try to smile at her brother’s jest. She took a wooden bowl from a cart that one servant had wheeled in, and filled it with bread and stew from another. None of the food had any flavor. It could have been the sweetest honey cake or fermented pig shit; it would have tasted just the same to her.

  She had been so proud when she was chosen to be a Grey Warden. Everyone knew that the Wardens took only the best: the keenest archers, the most skilled mages, the cleverest tactical minds. It had been her chance to leap out of the semislavery that was an elf’s lot in a human city and, together with her brother, prove her mettle on a more equal field.

  Of course she’d known about the Calling. Everyone who had ever heard of the Grey Wardens knew that someday the darkspawn taint that the Wardens absorbed during the Joining would overwhelm them, driving them to madness and death. It might take thirty years or more, but eventually, if they lived long enough, every one of them succumbed. Their only choice then was to throw themselves into the Deep Roads on a suicidal quest to kill as many darkspawn as they could before they died. That was the Calling—the fate that awaited them all, if nothing else killed them first—and the foreknowledge of doom clung to the Wardens like a shadow.

  But it had always seemed so far away. Romantic, tragic, a storybook ending that befell storybook heroes. Not something that Isseya had been able to imagine snuffing out the flame of her own life.

  The sight of the horde and the echo of the Archdemon’s song had shaken that complacency from her.

  She ate without tasting, and drank without thinking, and put her empty bowl back onto the servant’s cart without any memory of it leaving her hands.

  After they ate, Warden-Commander Turab and a handful of the most senior Wardens, including Huble, left for a second audience with the king and queen. The others played cards or dice games to pass the time, exchanging ribald and frequently farfetched tales of their exploits before Antiva City.

  Isseya didn’t join them, and barely listened, although she heard Garahel boisterously recounting some lie or another, earning raucous laughter from his audience. Her brother had a gift for taking his companions’ minds off unpleasant matters while diverting himself in the process. It was a strength she didn’t share. She simply sat, waiting, until the Warden-Commander and his delegation returned.

  Their failure was written in the grimness of their faces.

  “The queen still wants to fight,” Turab informed them in his gruff baritone, “and because she’s made her feelings so clearly known, Antiva City no longer has a choice. Virtually every able-bodied captain has set sail for safer shores, and every crippled one has been abandoned by his crew. If they’d acted yesterday, the king and queen might have been able to effect an orderly evacuation … but as matters now stand, there aren’t enough ships to save even the palace household.”

  The Wardens absorbed this news silently. Then Garahel raked a hand through his blond curls and asked the obvious question: “What do we do?”

  Turab shook his head unhappily. The little brass rings braided into his red beard jangled against one another. “We have three ships left with loyal captains. We’ll use them to evacuate as many war assets as we can. Mages, archers, templars—anyone with the strength and skill to aid us significantly against the Blight.”

  “And the politically connected,” a scarred female Warden said contemptuously. The long black staff slung across her back marked her as a mage, but Isseya didn’t know her.

  “Yes,” Turab conceded. He raised a mailed hand to quell some of the Wardens’ discontented murmurs. “They’re war assets too. Some of them have armies we can call upon. Some have landholdings that can provide us support. We’ll need food, horses, weapons, supplies. Money. Merchants and nobles can give us those things. That makes them valuable.”

  “Meanwhile the poor, who can’t give us anything, will be left behind for the darkspawn.” The female Warden snorted. “How will that reflect on us?”

  Turab rolled his shoulders in a shrug and trudged across the room to take a mug of ale sitting in the middle of an unfinished card game. “We’ll still look better than the darkspawn. Maker’s mercy, Dendi, it’s a Blight. You think I like this? The idiot royals dawdled a day too long, and now hundreds of people we could have saved are going to die. That’s not even the worst of it. We’re taking the royals ourselves. The rest of the evacuees are going by ship, but King Elaudio and his queen will be leaving Antiva City by griffon-wing, as will a select handful of their advisers.”

  The scarred mage, Dendi, recoiled so far that her staff clanked against the wall behind her. “Who’s taking them?”

  “You and Huble, actually. Blacktalon and Skriax are our strongest and fastest griffons; they have the best chance at outflying any dangers that might pursue from the air. Ostiver, Fenadahl, and the other mages will go with the ships. Their talents will be most helpful if it comes to fighting on the water. I will go with them to ensure that the captains and their guests honor the bargains they’ve struck. The rest of you will take the remaining griffons. Everyone gets a passenger—but only one.”

  Turab surveyed each of them in turn, his gaze forbidding under his bushy red brows. “I won’t have you compromising the griffons’ maneuverability or endurance to carry out more people. Your first task is to make sure the royals get out alive. Do you understand?”

  Isseya nodded along with the others. She wasn’t sure she did understand, really, but it seemed imprudent to say so.

  “Good.” Turab drained his ale. “I’ll take you out to meet the griffons now. Try and make your matches quickly. We don’t have time to wait until morning. I want everyone out of the palace within the next two hours.”

  4

  5:12 EXALTED
>
  “Choose your griffons carefully,” Turab advised the younger Wardens as he led them up the sunbaked stairs to the high walls where the winged beasts had chosen to perch. There were five of them: Garahel, Isseya, a pair of bald-headed twin sisters named Kaiya and Taiya, and a sullen, heavily tattooed tribesman from the Anderfels whose name Isseya did not know. All were carrying their saddlebags; they wouldn’t be spending another night in the palace. “You’re taking a partner who will share your life for many years. You will eat together, fight together, stand long and lonely guard together. Your lives, and your companions’ lives, will depend on the trust you share with your griffon. Abuse it, and you’ll have the worst enemy you could ever know.”

  “Sounds like a wife,” Garahel said wryly, trudging up after the dwarf.

  Turab nodded sagely. “That’s a fair way of putting it. If your wife outweighed you six times over, ate a live goat at each meal, and could snap every bone in your body under one foot.”

  “I did once seduce a Qunari,” the elf murmured.

  That earned a snort of amusement from the Warden-Commander. Upon reaching the top of the wall, the red-bearded dwarf stood aside to let the others pass him onto the wall. Isseya was flushed and sweaty, and both of the sisters were mopping perspiration from their shiny heads after that long hot climb, but Turab wasn’t even breathing hard.

  “Some of these griffons have just finished their training; others lost their original riders to the Blight and need new ones,” the dwarf said as the young Wardens emerged onto the wall. “Fenadahl and the others rode them out here as the last step in the evaluation. We believe they’ll make good matches for the lot of you. While we have recommendations for specific pairs, in the end the final choice is between you and your griffon. So go on, get to know one another.”

  Isseya shaded her eyes against the sun and looked over the preening griffons. She picked her way across the wall to approach them, feeling strangely shy. Up close, the beasts were always bigger than she’d thought, and more beautiful.

  One of them, a muscular black female, raised her head as the elf approached. The griffon’s eyes were a lighter shade of amber than most; against the rich darkness of her feathers, they shone like yellow diamonds. Her beak had a faint tortoiseshell pattern, rough and chipped along its edges. She was the most breathtaking thing Isseya had ever seen.

  She was scarred, too. A long, wavery stripe of bald gray skin ran along the side of the griffon’s neck where something had ripped flesh and feathers away. The injury was completely healed, but Isseya could tell it was recent and had been healed by magic, because the nearby feathers were still cut short. Had the wound healed of its own accord, those feathers would have grown back fully.

  “What’s your name?” the elf murmured, looking down to the front of the griffon’s harness. The great beasts did not wear collars, but their names were inscribed on the chest plates of their battle harnesses. This one said …

  “Revas,” she read aloud. It was an Elvish word: “freedom.”

  The griffon’s tufted ears flickered upward in recognition at the sound of her name. She opened her beak and let out a hiss, then abruptly rested her enormous head on Isseya’s shoulder. Leonine musk filled the elf’s nostrils, along with an undercurrent of blood and bone marrow that lingered around the griffon’s chin.

  The weight buckled Isseya’s knees, but she didn’t mind one bit. “I suppose I’m claimed,” she said to Warden-Commander Turab as he passed by.

  The dwarf paused, a thoughtful look flickering across his bearded face. “I suppose you are,” he agreed. “Revas lost her rider just a few weeks back. His name was Dalsiral. He was a Dalish elf. Did you know him?”

  Isseya shook her head. She felt a prickle of irritation that Turab would even ask—were all elves supposed to know one another, just because they were elves?—but it didn’t last. His question was meant honestly, and anyway, it was impossible to hold on to anger in the face of the awe and happiness that suffused her at having her own griffon.

  “He was a good Warden,” Turab said. He was silent for a moment, then seemed to shake off whatever memory was holding him. “Revas took that wound from an ogre. It grabbed her after a dive, pulled her down. Nearly killed her. Dalsiral gave his life to save his steed. She’s been difficult since. In mourning, the roostmaster says. And angry, too. If you can bring her back, it would be a great service to the order. Revas is one of our best.”

  He continued his walk down the wall, his plate mail ablaze in the sunlight. Isseya turned back to the griffon, who had lifted her head to watch Turab while he spoke.

  “Is that true?” she whispered. “Are you grieving?”

  Revas snorted again and turned her head to watch the others. But she took a step closer as she did, enfolding Isseya in the warm animalic smell of her feathers.

  Garahel was scratching the neck of an odd-looking male griffon about forty feet away. The animal had the rangy look of a juvenile that hadn’t quite grown into its adult frame, and his color was very unusual. Large patches of white splashed across the fur on his belly and forequarters, while the rest of him was a brindled brownish-gray.

  Most griffons were variations of gray. Solid whites and blacks existed but were uncommon, and parti-colored ones were even more rare. While fighting griffons were bred for speed, intelligence, and athleticism, rather than color, gray was the dominant type. The others were recessive, and seldom showed among the Wardens’ ranks.

  Not that color was the only oddity about Garahel’s new friend. One of the griffon’s ears flopped forward instead of standing up in a swept-back point like it should have. There was a sharp kink in his tail, which bushed out in a great furry puff more like a fox’s tail than the long sleek lion’s tail that most griffons had.

  In all, the young male was a very peculiar-looking griffon. And he was actually purring as Garahel scratched his neck. The griffon butted the top of his head against the elf’s chest, nearly bowling her brother over.

  “That’s an odd bird,” Isseya called.

  “Of course he is,” Garahel replied, wheezing for breath. He seemed delighted at having been knocked backward, though, and immediately resumed scratching the griffon’s neck even more vigorously. “He’s mine. The unlikeliest of heroes, that’s us.”

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Thunder, according to the chest plate. But I don’t think that fits, do you?” Garahel asked the griffon.

  The big animal flattened his ears and hissed, sticking his tongue out. The elf nodded sagely at this response. “That’s what I thought. So we’ll need something else. Oddbird, maybe. Scruffy? No, too predictable. Scragglebeak? Hmm, no, sounds like a geriatric pirate in need of a shave. Ah! I know. Crookytail!”

  “Crookytail,” Isseya repeated. “You want to name your war griffon Crookytail.”

  “He likes it better. Don’t you?” Garahel cooed, scratching under the griffon’s chin.

  Isseya bit her tongue. There were bigger concerns in the world than her brother giving an undignified name to his griffon. And really, if there was a single griffon in Thedas who was going to have a ludicrous name, it might as well be that one. Nobody could possibly take the poor beast seriously anyway.

  Within a few minutes, the rest of the Wardens had chosen, or been chosen by, their griffons. They’d loaded their bags, saddled their new mounts, and adjusted the reins to fit their grasps. To Isseya’s surprise, it didn’t seem that anyone was left over, or had been stuck with a beast that they found less than ideal. Garahel had chosen the only odd one in the lot, and the others all seemed as taken with their new companions as she was.

  “Under normal circumstances, we’d have you train together,” Warden-Commander Turab said when they’d all been paired. “Easy rides around Weisshaupt, some flyby target practice, drills with dives and landings. Nice gradual training. Months of it.

  “But we don’t have months. There’s a Blight on, and we need the palace evacuated before the sun sets and the darkspawn
surge. You’ve had some training, enough that I believe you can be ready to go into the field, but we don’t want you fighting. Your mission is to take one passenger each and flee. Do you understand? You don’t engage the darkspawn, you don’t hold ground. You take to the air, high, and you get your charges out of Antiva City as quickly as possible. Huble and Dendi will be with you, and I want you to follow their lead—but if you get separated, or they fall, head for Wycome. Any questions?”

  Isseya shook her head along with the others. She might have had questions if she’d known where to begin asking them, but it was all too much, too fast. None of the others seemed eager to speak up either.

  Turab looked them over deliberately, then jerked his head in a nod. “Fine. Back down to the audience chamber. The senior Wardens will meet you there.”

  It was hard, climbing down from Revas’s saddle. Isseya had just met her new griffon, and she did not want to leave as they were beginning to form their first fragile bond. The fear she felt at the prospect of their mission warred with the exhilaration of finally becoming a true griffon rider, and she wondered if that was why the Warden-Commander had arranged things as he had. Nothing else could have distracted them so effectively from the likely doom they faced.

  But they still had to go on and face that doom, so, reluctantly, she pulled herself off Revas, patted the griffon’s scarred neck in farewell, and followed the Warden-Commander back into the cool blue shade of the Royal Palace.

  The halls were nearly deserted as the young Wardens made their way down. The climbing roses, wilting in the twilight after a long day in the sun, swayed gently in the sandalwood-scented breezes of the interior palace. Along with the flitting of the small yellow-breasted birds that darted amid their thorny branches, those wind-stirred flowers were the only movement Isseya saw. Guards and gardeners alike seemed to have abandoned the place.

  “Word must have gotten out,” Garahel said. His usual easy smile was gone, and he kept his hands close to the pair of black-handled knives tucked into his belt. “If they’ve panicked…”