Dragon Age: Last Flight

by Liane Merciel

  It should have felt like a victory. Later, perhaps, it might. But as Isseya looked down to the bloodied remains of Traveler, who had already been torn apart into a scattering of fur and glorious, ruined feathers, it was hard to rise above the leaden emptiness in her chest.

  Regret was a luxury she couldn’t afford. The fighting wasn’t over, not yet. Calien had escaped to a safe patch of ground, where he was using his spells to drive a halting mob of bruised limping darkspawn back from Lisme’s painfully slow retreat.

  Somehow the mage had summoned the strength not only to survive her repeated blasts of near-suicidal flame, but to stagger away from the battlefield. Her left foot dragged uselessly behind her, leaving a scuff in the dirt with every step, and her charred robes fell apart in crumbling flakes of ash that left a sooty trail behind her. She looked more like a demon-possessed corpse than any living being.

  But living she was, and when her griffon saw her, he let out an earsplitting peal of delight. He was a scarred, white-muzzled beast named Hunter, and he was one of the fastest griffons in their flight after Garahel’s Crookytail. Age had begun to slow him a little, but none of that was in evidence as he folded his wings and dove toward his mistress.

  Lisme stumbled and fell before Hunter could reach her. Calien threw one final fireball to finish off the last of the darkspawn and hurried forward, a spark of healing magic glittering in the crystal head of his staff. It flowed into the androgynous mage as a trickle of pale blue energy, closing some of the oozing burns that pocked her body, and easing the ragged roughness of her breath. She stayed hunched a moment longer, trying to gather her strength, while her griffon landed nearby. Hunter stalked over with a suspicious glare at Calien, using one great wing to push the mage aside from his wounded rider. Isseya, worried, signaled Revas to circle lower.

  “The dwarves,” Lisme croaked, hoisting her injured left leg up awkwardly and dragging herself into Hunter’s saddle. “The dwarves are still out there.”

  “I’ll stay with them,” Isseya said. She glanced down to where Tunk and Munk stood. The dwarves looked ready to meet any possible danger, although no darkspawn remained to threaten them. Their supposed protectors had never bloodied their axes. “Can you fly?”

  “Yes,” Lisme said. She wrapped Hunter’s reins loosely around a wrist, using the saddle’s armored front guard to steady herself. Closing her eyes, she drew a shaky, painful breath, then exhaled and nodded. The last of the unexploded beads broke loose from the blackened strands of her wig and tumbled to the ground. “I can fly. If we don’t have to do any fighting.”

  “Good. Go back to Hossberg. Tell Garahel we need another pair of riders to collect the dwarves, and a survey team to scout the area and confirm that we’ve closed off the entrance. But … we’ve done it. We’ve cut off their reinforcements. Now is the time to break the siege.”

  Lisme managed a weary, faltering smile. “I’ll tell him,” she said, and signaled Hunter to fly.

  13

  5:19 EXALTED

  “Is there anything you can do to help him?” Danaro asked. His voice was quiet, stripped of hope. Unconsciously, as he spoke, he twisted a corner of the coarse field blanket that covered his injured legs. The fabric was dirty and frayed from similar fidgeting over the past day and night.

  In a day or two, he’d be well enough to leave Hossberg’s infirmary. Already the healers had tended to most of his wounds; they kept him under observation only to see whether the poison in one of his legs might worsen. The mage didn’t seem concerned about that possibility, though. It was Shrike that worried him.

  “I don’t want my griffon to die for saving me,” he said. “There must be something. He can’t become … can’t become a ghoul.”

  “He won’t,” Isseya promised. Her heart ached in sympathy for Danaro. All riders feared that their griffons might fall in fighting, as Traveler had.… But as awful as that death had been, at least it had been relatively quick. The slow suffering of ghouldom was infinitely worse.

  “I’ve heard tales of wildflowers in Ferelden.…” Danaro began, but he trailed off and shook his head disconsolately without finishing the thought. “Children’s stories. I’m such a desperate fool, I’m looking for hope in children’s stories. Even if such magic existed, by now? Seven years into the Blight? Every such flower would have been plucked down to the roots and used ages ago. I might as well wish for a fairy godmother to fly in through the window and save him with a twinkle of her wand.”

  “There might be one thing we could try,” Isseya said. She hesitated, looking doubtfully down at Danaro from where she stood beside his bed. “If you’re willing to take a risk.”

  “The Joining?” Danaro suppressed a flinch as he said the words. He rubbed the side of his nose with a broad thumb, worrying at the mole there. “You know that’s been tried. It doesn’t work in griffons. The attempts were such a disaster that it hasn’t even been thought of in fifty years. Even if the experiments had ever had any success … surely it wouldn’t work in a griffon already dying of the taint.”

  “It might not,” Isseya agreed, “but it’s the only thing I can think of. The first ritual was made to stave off the corruption in people who faced exactly the same fate that awaits Shrike now. What do you have to lose?”

  “A lot, actually.” Danaro’s lips twisted in an attempt at a smile that came out as a grimace. He stopped fidgeting with the brown mole by his nose and dropped his hand back to the blanket, fraying its cloth a little faster between his fingers. “Shrike. You. Maybe quite a few of my friends. You remember the tales we were told of attempts to put griffons through the Joining.”

  “I do.” The last such attempt had happened more than fifty years ago, yet the warnings remained clear and fresh in the Wardens’ minds.

  Mabari war hounds could be put through the Joining with no worse effect than humans experienced. Some died, some survived and gained the immunities and attunements that Grey Wardens shared. It was believed that if they lived long enough, such hounds might also suffer the Calling, but if any dog had lived that long, Isseya had never heard of it. The lives of dogs were short, and war dogs’ even more so.

  Griffons, however, did not respond the same way. The great beasts went into an uncontrollable, rabid rage when subjected to the Joining. Their explosive violence was lethal not only to everyone in their vicinity, but to their own selves. The hatred that griffons felt for darkspawn carried over to the taint in their own veins, and it caused the noble creatures to tear their own bodies apart in wild spasms of loathing. The horror and the tragedy of the early experiments had convinced the Grey Wardens to stay far away from that path.

  But those Wardens hadn’t been blood mages. And Isseya believed, somewhere in the tangle of what Calien had taught her, that the key to inducing a griffon to accept the darkspawn taint might lie somewhere in that. If she could bend their minds, twist their wills in just that one small way … not a full possession, but just a forced acceptance … then they might be able to override the blind hatred, and coexist with the taint.

  Maybe. It was a long shot, and not something she would ever have considered doing under ordinary circumstances. But if it was the only thing that might keep Shrike from death or ghouldom? Surely, surely, her way had to be better than that. The griffon’s loyalty did not deserve such a cruel reward as either of those two fates.

  Danaro finally lifted his head and gave her a searching look. The mage had a plain peasant’s face, broad and open and honest, and he could not disguise the plaintiveness of his hope. He wanted to believe she could help his beloved griffon, but he didn’t. Not really.

  “Try,” he said.

  “I will,” she answered, and went to find her brother.

  Garahel was in the castle’s war room, conferring with Amadis and more than a dozen others: the veteran Grey Wardens, militia captains, and mercenary warlords who led the cobbled-together Army of the Anderfels. They were planning, Isseya knew, to exploit the loss of the darkspawn reinforcements to
break the siege of Hossberg while they could.

  Uvasha, the Lady-Commander of the Anderfels Royal Army, was there as well, as was the lovely, perpetually pouting Queen-Regent Mariwen, who had been ruler in Hossberg since her husband, King Henault, had ended his brief reign by getting his ribcage crushed by an ogre two years ago. Henault had left a son, but at three years old, King Grivaud wasn’t capable of ruling his nursery room.

  His mother, unsurprisingly, had been delighted to take up the reins of state. And it was perhaps the most damning indictment of Queen Mariwen’s reign that Isseya had heard several people muttering in the halls of state that the Anderfels were better off under the Blight, because while the country remained at war, ultimate power rested not with Mariwen but with Lady-Commander Uvasha. While the Queen insisted on frivolities and flirted with every handsome mercenary she could find, Uvasha worked quietly and tirelessly to ensure that what needed to be done was.

  It was Uvasha who stood in a close huddle with Amadis and Garahel around one end of the map table. As Isseya approached, she saw markers being moved about the map. Milky marble figurines represented the Wardens, mages, griffons, and various mercenary companies camped in and around Hossberg. An assortment of pieces from a child’s game of black-and-white stones marked the Anderfels Royal Army. And a heap of dry dead cockroaches, gathered by the castle servants on one of Garahel’s more whimsical orders, stood in for the darkspawn.

  They were discussing how best to lay a killing field alongside the Lattenfluss River, and how to drive the darkspawn into that trap. Even when guided by an Archdemon, darkspawn didn’t think or fight the way ordinary armies did. They didn’t care about protecting supply lines or avoiding troop losses; they were driven by a reckless, all-consuming ferocity that made it possible to bait them forward in circumstances where a human or dwarven commander would have held back in caution.

  Sometimes, anyway. Other times, the Archdemon’s cunning would pull them away from destruction and turn their enemies’ plans against them. The unpredictability presented a considerable challenge.

  It wasn’t her challenge, though. Not today. Isseya slipped past the table and tapped Garahel on the shoulder. “I need your Joining materials.”

  Her brother looked up testily. “Now?”

  The strain of the long siege and coming battle showed on him, as it did on Amadis and Uvasha. All three of them were thinner than they’d been, and all three had lines of weariness pressed around their eyes and mouths. Uvasha’s light brown hair was dingy from lack of washing, and Amadis’s clothes were creased from having been slept in.

  The best she could do was get out of their way quickly. Isseya nodded and held out a hand. Seven years ago, that hand had been smooth and shapely. As she stood in the war room on the eve of breaking Hossberg’s siege, it was scarred with the legacies of war wounds and emissaries’ spells. “Now.”

  “It can’t wait? We’re a little busy at the moment.”

  “I’m not asking you to do it. Just give me the bottle and I’ll take care of the rest on my own.”

  Still Garahel hesitated, although now it was curiosity rather than irritation that lit his green-flecked eyes. “You’ve never wanted to recruit anyone for the Wardens before.”

  “I’ve never needed to before. The bottle, Garahel. You have other concerns right now.”

  “Fine.” He reached into a pocket and unclipped a small steel ring. A single key dangled from that ring. It was plain silver, tarnished to a deep dull gray, and too small to fit anything but a jewelry box. “The case is in my desk drawer. Put it back when you’re done.”

  “Of course.” Isseya took the key, excused herself with a small nod to Amadis and Uvasha, and retreated to the door.

  Before she could leave the room, however, Queen Mariwen intercepted her. The Queen laid a soft, powdered hand on Isseya’s forearm. Every one of her fingers glimmered with a jeweled ring, and her nails had been freshly lacquered. Light as her touch was, it pinned the elf as surely as a steel rod driven through a butterfly.

  “Tell me about your brother,” Queen Mariwen whispered, leaning in conspiratorially and widening her blue-violet eyes. A shimmer of pearl dust brightened her eyelids, while kohl accentuated the long sweep of her lashes. The fragrance of roses and late-summer plums clung to her curled black hair and wafted up from the low-cut neckline of her blue velvet dress.

  Seven years of siege didn’t seem to have touched the queen, either in appearance or thought, and Isseya found that profoundly irritating. She tried to keep that irritation off her face, but she didn’t try very hard. “My brother? You’ve known him for years. What do you need me to tell you?”

  “Oh, perhaps I misspoke.” The queen’s sweet tones lilted upward innocently. “Maybe what I really meant was for you to tell him about me. The Field-Commander is such a busy man, he doesn’t seem to have much time for me. Understandable, of course. He’s preoccupied with the nastiness outside. But it seems that the siege is soon to break, yes?”

  “We hope,” Isseya replied cautiously, extricating her arm from the queen’s grip.

  “I have no doubt the Grey Wardens will prevail. You are all so wonderfully brave. And Field-Commander Garahel is handsome and gallant on top of that. A rare man. I’m a tremendous admirer.”

  “I’m sure Garahel’s very flattered,” Isseya said.

  “I wouldn’t know.” Mariwen’s smile went brittle. “Of course I have tried to tell him, but again, he has so little time. But it is my great hope that this will change once the siege breaks. When this dreadful war is over, and Uvasha can go back to tending to more mundane matters … then perhaps he’ll finally have the luxury of being able to enjoy a queen’s admiration.”

  Isseya’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded once, curtly. She wondered what her brother would say—and what Amadis might do—once he heard that the queen intended to hold the Anderfels’ future cooperation hostage to her demands. “I’ll relay the message.”

  “I knew you would.” Queen Mariwen tossed her glossy black hair over a shoulder and turned away with a final coy flutter of her lashes. “All the Anderfels are grateful for your service.”

  “So glad to hear it,” Isseya said. Exchanging a glance of disbelieving annoyance with another veteran Warden who had overheard some of their conversation, she slipped out of the room.

  Once she was outside, she immediately felt freer. As dangerous and unpleasant as the task before her was, it was a thousand times better than dealing with the queen’s petty desires. The elf exhaled a long breath and went up the stairs to Garahel’s private rooms.

  A young Grey Warden was standing watch outside her brother’s chambers. Under his impassive facade, he looked nervous. The youth straightened self-consciously as Isseya rounded the hall and came into view. “Ser.”

  “No need to stand on ceremony,” she said, waving aside his clumsy salute. She couldn’t remember the young Warden’s name, but she recalled that he had been put through the Joining less than a month earlier. He’d been a volunteer, as many of the Anders were. “I’m only here to collect some of my brother’s things.”

  “Is it anything I can help with?”

  Isseya shook her head, not unkindly. “All I need are the materials for the Joining.”

  “Oh.” The youth swallowed. A mixture of hope and remembered dread flickered across his face. “Someone else is being recruited?”

  “Maybe.” She moved past him, pushing open the door to Garahel’s room.

  It didn’t take long to find the drawer that held the materials for the Joining ritual. Garahel’s chambers were exceedingly spartan: other than a few battle maps and letters on his desk, a washing basin, and an unmade bed, there wasn’t much to clutter the space. Over the years, he could have accumulated enough campaign trophies to decorate the entire castle, yet the only ornament in the room was a single vase that held Crookytail’s shed wing feathers, which her brother used to fletch his arrows. One of Amadis’s sleeping robes and a pair of her sheepskin slippers
rested next to the bed, and a faint whiff of the woman’s perfume lingered amid the smells of armor polish and leather.

  The locked drawer was on the bottom left side of the desk. Isseya inserted the key and pulled it open.

  Inside was a box of black wood bound in dull gray metal. It bore no sign or sigil of warning, but the stark simplicity of its design conveyed a sense of foreboding. Isseya lifted it out gingerly, as if it were filled with live scorpions.

  Its actual contents, of course, were far more dangerous. Using the tips of her fingers, she lifted the lid.

  A tarnished silver chalice, a pouch of lyrium dust, and three small bottles of smoky gray glass sat within the box. Shabby velvet cushions, worn bald in places so that the horsehair padding peeped out in dark bristles, cradled the objects. Two of the bottles were filled with murky black fluid, while the third was nearly empty. Scarcely more than a few drops lay at the bottom of that bottle, but Isseya thought it would be more than enough to meet her needs. It took only a drop of Archdemon’s blood to seal the Joining.

  She closed the box, stuffed it under her cloak, and relocked Garahel’s drawer. The young Warden outside the door gave her another salute as she let herself out. “Ser.”

  “Warden,” she said formally, imitating the youth’s gesture. It wasn’t a standard form of address; for all their history and prestige, the Grey Wardens were not overly given to ceremony, particularly in the field. But the boy seemed to take some comfort in the rituals, and Isseya saw no harm in giving it to him. She wished she could find a salve for her own fears so easily.

  It didn’t seem that the Maker was about to offer her one, though, so with a final nod to Garahel’s door guard, she left the castle and went to find Shrike in the infirmary stable.

  The griffon was huddled in the corner of his stall. It took Isseya a few minutes to locate him, for even sick and injured griffons rarely chose to spend much time confined in the stalls. They preferred to be out in the open air, and spent their days perched on top of the infirmary stable with their wings spread to catch what they could of the Blight-shrouded sun.