Isseya worked her way through the press of other patrons, cradling her cider glass close to her chest. “How long have you been here?”
“Since Warden-Commander Senaste gave us our orders,” Garahel replied grandly, sloshing his glass in a broad salute. From the smell of it, he was drinking cider too, and had been for a while. “Long enough to get royally inebriated. Come, join us.”
“I might as well,” Isseya agreed. Taiya moved to share a seat with her twin, offering her own chair to the elf as she approached. “Have you spoken to Senaste?”
Garahel shrugged with expansive resignation. “I have. Didn’t much care for the orders I got. You?”
“Same as yours. Starkhaven, then the Anderfels.”
Garahel finished his cider and pushed the glass across the table with a thrust of two fingertips, where it joined a small forest of other empty vessels. “Well, at least we’ll all get to stay together.”
“As will I,” Amadis interjected.
Garahel raised a golden eyebrow. “The Warden-Commander seems to think you’ll be more useful in Starkhaven.”
“The Warden-Commander can make sweet, passionate love to a diseased ogre,” Amadis replied in honeyed tones, fluttering her long black lashes. “She has no authority over me. And if she wants my help in Starkhaven, she’ll grit her teeth behind a smile and let me go wherever I want.”
“Why would she want your help in Starkhaven?” Isseya asked. “You’re not really a Crow, are you?”
“No.” Amadis laughed, shaking her head. She pointed to Calien, who hadn’t budged from his seat in the shadowed corner. “He’s the Antivan Crow. I told you the truth when we were in the air. I’m the second daughter of Fedras Vael, cousin to the Prince of Starkhaven.”
“And the leader of the Ruby Drakes,” Garahel said, “which might be more important.”
Isseya nodded slowly. She’d heard of the Ruby Drakes, and the rumor that the mercenaries’ new leader was a young noblewoman from the Free Marches. They were said to field a fighting force of a thousand infantry, three hundred horse, two hundred archers, and twenty battle-trained mages.… And perhaps the greatest measure of their strength was that the Chantry’s templars had never tried to seize those apostate mages.
Of course the Grey Wardens would want to court the Drakes as allies. An army that size would be a considerable asset against the Blight—if they could convince mercenaries to join a battle where the only payment would be their own survival.
“You’re an Antivan Crow?” Taiya said belatedly, blinking at Calien.
“Yes,” the mage replied without stirring. Nothing of his face was visible beneath his hood. The single, gravelly word sank into a silence.
“Well.” Taiya blinked and rocked back on her half of the chair, rubbing a hand across her scalp. The hair was beginning to grow back in, darkening her head with a dusting of stubbly brown. “I didn’t realize they had mages. I thought they were all … well … you know. Assassins. With knives, I mean, not spells. What do they have you do?”
“Whatever needs doing,” Calien replied. A note of dark humor had crept into his rough voice.
Isseya finished her cider. She hadn’t eaten all day, and the fizzy juice had gone straight to her head. “Whatever needs doing, eh? Can you get these people out of Wycome?”
Calien’s eyes glittered darkly in the depths of his cowl. “You know that’s not possible.”
Taiya looked from one to the other, a gesture mirrored by her twin, Kaiya, beside her. “Why not? You can’t move them with magic? With a … gate, or something?”
“No.” Calien’s answer was flat and final.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Isseya said apologetically. She’d known that before she said anything, and now she regretted making Taiya look foolish. “You can’t wave your staff and transport a person from place to place in a twinkling.”
“Can you change them into something else?” Garahel asked, perking up behind the cluster of empty glasses. He had a familiar, troublesome gleam in his eye. “Mice, maybe, or … cockroaches? Something small, so we could fit the whole town onto their fleet of fishing boats?”
Isseya shook her head. “No. That’s just a children’s story.”
Calien leaned forward slightly, breaking from the shadows. His hood tilted back, revealing the hard planes and angles of the mage’s face in the tavern’s slanted sunlight. “It’s not a story. But it’s beyond my power. The Witches of the Wilds can transform themselves into all manners of beasts. Might be able to shapechange unwilling victims, too, for all I know. But I’m no Witch of the Wilds, and neither are you.”
Garahel rocked his chair back in exasperation, knocking the wicker against the tavern wall. “Well, what can we do?”
“Aravels,” Isseya murmured.
Her brother raised his eyebrows. Amadis snorted. “Aravels,” the black-haired Marcher woman repeated. “You mean landships? Like the Dalish use? Great big wagons that fly through the trees? Those aren’t real.”
“They are real,” Isseya said, “and it’s magic that lets them pass through the forests. We can’t blink people through the air, and we can’t shapechange them into mice, but we can use magic—and a little bit of carpentry—to make their fishing boats into landships.”
She watched the idea sink in among the Grey Wardens and their companions around the table. Somehow, no one scoffed. Garahel looked intrigued, Amadis skeptical, the twins purely delighted by the novelty of the suggestion.
Calien pushed his hood back completely. “Do you know how to enchant an aravel?”
“No,” Isseya admitted. “I’m not Dalish. I don’t have their lore. But we know that it can be done, so we should be able to find our own way. Ours don’t have to be as strong or graceful as true aravels. They only have to be good enough to get the people of Wycome over the sea or across the river plains before the Blight swallows them all.”
“That’s still a lot to ask,” Calien said dubiously. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to research new magic?”
“A week,” Isseya answered, “because that’s what we have.” She stood, pushing her empty glass aside to join the others with a clink. “As it happens, the Grey Wardens share the same rule as the Crows. We do whatever needs doing. And we’ll do it in seven days.”
8
5:12 EXALTED
It didn’t take seven days. It only took three to build their first aravel.
Compared to the legendary Dalish crafts, it was a squat and graceless thing. It looked like a reinforced fishing boat clumsily mounted on wagon wheels, because that was exactly what it was. The Wardens had cobbled it together from pieces that the townspeople had donated, and had practiced trying to move it around an old sheep pasture overgrown with weeds.
Once Warden-Commander Senaste understood what they were trying to do, she’d brought in another pair of senior Wardens to aid Garahel’s effort. The Warden-Commander wasn’t willing to sink significant resources into such a seemingly frivolous project, but neither was she willing to pass up any chance at preventing all of Wycome from being swallowed by the Blight. Giving them two more mages was her way of splitting the difference.
With the help of those two mages, they’d succeeded, after a fashion. Their aravels would never float smoothly through the forests as the Dalish ones did, but Isseya had mastered the perilous art of modifying force blasts to hold them at a steady, sustained height in the air. Early on, she’d misjudged the intensity of her spells, with the result that she’d blown their first attempted aravel to splinters after hurling it ten feet into the air.
But the new one was built more sturdily, and Isseya’s calculations had improved, and so on the third day, they had a craft that could make a swift, if thoroughly uncomfortable, run across the Free Marches.
On her own, all she could do was hold the thing motionless in the air. She could levitate the aravel, but she could not make it fly. But with a griffon in harness to lend its forward momentum, the aravel could effectively fly twenty feet abo
ve the ground, and it went as fast as the griffon was able to pull.
“Now all we need is a hundred more of them,” Garahel said, leaning against a worn stone pillar that had once supported part of the long-gone pasture fence. He didn’t even try to hide his grin as Isseya jounced and bounced the makeshift aravel down to an agonizing landing on the hillside.
“And a hundred griffons to pull them, and a hundred mages to keep them aloft,” Amadis agreed. Idly, she picked a daisy from a clump of grass, twirled the stem between her fingers, and flicked it into the pasture. “It’s so simple, I can’t believe no one thought of it before.”
“To be fair, you do have to be threatened with a Blight before getting into one of those things could possibly seem like a good idea,” Garahel noted. “And even then, I’m not sure how many of the townspeople are going to want to jump in.”
“I’m so glad you two are entertained,” Isseya muttered as she raised the aravel again and brought it back down to the earth. Liftings and landings were the most dangerous parts; those were where she was likeliest to break the vehicle. She noted, with some satisfaction, that the wheels barely jolted upon landing this time. “But if you wanted to be useful, you could get to work making those hundred other aravels. If we had those, we might actually be able to save most of this town.”
“Senaste’s already given the order,” Amadis said. Her smile couldn’t have been more self-satisfied if she’d been a cat with a canary. “She made it official an hour ago. The Grey Wardens will begin evacuating Wycome by aerial aravel—how’s that for a tongue-twister?—as soon as twenty of the vessels are finished and loaded. The three of us, and your two griffons, will escort that first group to Starkhaven.”
Isseya stepped away from the fishing-boat “aravel,” smoothing her wind-tousled hair as she crossed the grassy pasture back to her companions. The birds in the surrounding hedges, which had been startled into silence by the vehicle’s bizarre movements, began to stir back into song. The first warbles and whistles of their renewed melodies escorted the mage out of the meadow. “She’s hedging her bets again.”
“Of course she is,” Garahel said, “but she’s still making that bet. We have our chance, Isseya. We can save this town.”
Some of it, Isseya thought, but she didn’t say that. She didn’t want to dim the thrill of excitement that lit her brother’s eyes. Hope was Garahel’s greatest gift, and it was one the Free Marches badly needed just now.
“So, twenty aravels?” she said. “Better get to hammering.”
* * *
As it happened, Garahel was abysmal at hammering. The care and patience demanded by good carpentry work was entirely anathema to the elven archer. If he couldn’t shoot it, woo it, or tell it lewd stories, Amadis groused, Garahel had no interest in a thing at all.
Not that the Marcher woman was much better. But, as Amadis was quick to point out, she knew her limitations and stayed out of the townspeople’s way. Instead she spent her time writing letters to various friends and relatives in the nobility of the Free Marches, other mercenary captains of her acquaintance, and anyone else she thought might be of use in the war effort. Often she asked Garahel to deliver those letters on griffon-back, a task that routinely kept him out of Wycome from dawn until dusk.
Finally, after one morning when Amadis had given her brother a satchel full of letters and a detailed list of names, Isseya had to ask her: “Doesn’t the Warden-Commander get annoyed that you’re using Garahel as a messenger boy?”
“Of course not,” Amadis replied, her dark eyes widening in surprise. She tossed her sleek black hair with a laugh. “What better use could there be for him? He’s got no gift for magic and he’s hopeless with a saw, you’ve seen it yourself. Ask him to help build aravels, and he’d find a way to sink those fishing boats on land.
“But what he can do is ride that funny-looking griffon to the far corners of Thedas at extraordinary speed. And there he can use his gifts of charm to win lords and ladies and hardened killers to our cause. Do you have any idea what kind of prestige those people attach to a personal message signed by the princess-captain of the Ruby Drakes and delivered by a Grey Warden on a griffon? That’s a tale for their grandchildren, if they live long enough to have any. It’s something to tell their friends and awe their underlings. For the ones who aren’t prone to awe, it’s a pointed reminder of the force we can exert at will. Either way, it makes it very, very difficult for them to say no.”
“So it’s politics,” Isseya said distastefully, looking around. That explained why Amadis had been given a private room with her own desk, a sheaf of paper, and the rare luxury of writing quills when all Wycome’s goose feathers were being requisitioned for arrows. She had thought it odd for the resolutely practical Senaste to show such consideration for a guest, no matter how closely connected to Starkhaven’s ruling family … but this put a more pragmatic gloss on the Warden-Commander’s actions.
“It’s politics,” Amadis agreed with a companionable grin, “and you’d better get used to playing the game. War is just politics with swords, and we aim to win.”
“I’m better at magic,” Isseya muttered, leaving the human woman to her letters.
Those letters worked, though. Every day, Garahel brought back more promises of support and pledges of aid. Prince Vael sent word that the refugees from Wycome would find safety in Starkhaven, and although Amadis cautioned them to take her cousin’s promises lightly, it still felt like a victory.
Or, at least, it felt like it could be a victory, if only they could get those people to the city in time.
Their days were running out. Even with every able-bodied man and woman working day and night to build aravels from fishing boats and wagon wheels—or donkey carts and sleigh runners, or whatever else they could find—they weren’t likely to have more than thirty done before the Blight took them. Isseya found herself hoping that she’d still be leading the first group out of Wycome when the darkspawn struck, just so she wouldn’t have to watch the town fall.
But the townspeople worked as if possessed, and a week after Isseya first proposed the idea during their inebriated meeting at the Glass Apple, they had enough makeshift aravels for the first transport run out of Wycome.
Eighteen vehicles were harnessed in a double line. They’d finished only nineteen in time, and one had broken during stress testing when Isseya slammed it down on the sheep pasture to simulate a bumpy landing.
Almost two hundred and fifty townspeople had crowded into those vessels, which seemed absurdly fragile to carry them across the Free Marches at speed. Food, clothing, and precious heirlooms mounded the thin wooden shells between wide-eyed children and their parents, who put on brave faces and hugged them close. Lacking much space for storage, most people had chosen to wear their best clothes to save them, and their festival finery gave the affair a grotesque air. Disgruntled chickens and geese protested in wicker cages strapped over the boats’ sides. Their constant squawks and screeches, and occasional bursts of feathers, added to the surreal atmosphere.
Crookytail and Revas stood at the head of the procession, each linked to a chain of nine aravels. Warden-Commander Senaste had procured new harnesses for the griffons, and the bright silver medallions strung on the padded leather straps gleamed like jewels in the misty morning light. It seemed impossible that the griffons, however powerful, could lift such a tremendous burden into the air—and it was impossible, without magic.
Maybe even with, Isseya thought, before she pushed those unwanted doubts firmly aside. She tied the sleeves of her robe around her wrists and elbows, adjusted the wide band that held her hair firmly in place, and glanced across the way to the Warden at the head of the other line. Garahel sat alongside the man, murmuring reassurances to his griffon. He’d control Crookytail, but it was the mage who would keep their aravels aloft.
Isseya didn’t have anyone else guiding Revas. She would do everything on her own, because taking both tasks onto herself meant that there was room for one
more passenger.
She took a deep breath, then called over to the other lead aravel: “Ready?”
“Ready!” Garahel called back. He sounded much more cheerful than Isseya felt.
“Ready,” the other mage echoed solemnly.
Isseya wrapped Revas’s reins around her left wrist and tightened both hands around the smooth solidity of her staff. She opened herself to the Fade and felt its ethereal energy fill her, flowing through the conduit of her staff. The whispers of spirits and demons teased at the fringes of her thoughts, echoing the thrum of the magic through her soul.
She pushed those whispers away and gathered the magic. As she’d practiced so many times in the days before, Isseya shaped it into a soft, broad-based cone. It was a pillowy formation, dissipating into a cloudlike cushion at the bottom. That amorphous, flattened base was wide enough to support the entire column and also diffused the spell’s force, preventing it from breaking the aravels apart. Once she had it steady, it was bearable, although taxing, to sustain the circling waves of force that coursed through the spell.
Gently, she called to Revas: “Lift.” As the griffon spread her black wings and pushed upward, trusting in Isseya to make it possible for her to lift the impossible burden instead of breaking herself against it, the elf thrust her force cone at the earth.
The aravels lurched up behind the griffon, crawling into empty air like an enormous caterpillar of wood, rope, and metal. A rush of gasps and cries came from behind Isseya, echoed a second later as Crookytail took to the air alongside them and brought up the second line.
The ropes and chains that bound the aravels together creaked alarmingly, but with the mages’ spells buoying them, they held together. Twenty feet above the ground, they steadied. And with no weight burdening them, the griffons pulled smoothly forward in harness, each one trailing a long line of floating fishing boats and exhilarated, terrified riders.
Neither of the griffons was accustomed to flying so low. Neither was Isseya, for that matter. Revas’s ears were flattened against her skull, and the flare in her nostrils showed the griffon’s unease at so nearly brushing the treetops. Isseya wanted to give her free rein to fly higher, where she’d feel more comfortable. But she couldn’t, because the force cone that held the aravels aloft could reach no higher. If they ascended, the magic would falter, and they’d all come crashing down.
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