“I’m not a templar anymore,” Reimas said. She spoke so quietly that it was almost a whisper, but the sound of her voice, after such a long hush, startled Valya. “It’s no longer my duty to stamp out maleficarum wherever it exists.” There was something in her dark, perpetually weary eyes that Valya didn’t know how to read. Hope, maybe, or resignation … or a little bit of fear?
“What does that mean?” the elf asked.
“It means I’m allowed to see shades of gray,” Reimas answered. “So maybe it is possible to do something good with blood magic. Maybe. What was this Warden’s legacy?”
16
5:20 EXALTED
Three days after the battle at Hossberg, when the griffon riders failed to see any sign that the darkspawn horde was returning, Queen Mariwen announced that she would hold a feast to celebrate the Grey Wardens’ breaking of the seven-year siege.
Privately, Isseya doubted that they’d accomplished anything of lasting import. It just didn’t seem possible that anything could halt the long, awful march of the Blight. They’d been fighting for almost a decade, and every time the Wardens seemed to have reclaimed territory, the Blight came back and swallowed it. Time and again, they had laid down their lives for victories that lasted no longer than smoke in the wind.
Her brother and Amadis thought otherwise, though, and when the first messages began coming in from griffon riders on other fronts, they learned that Garahel was right. The Archdemon, the Grey Wardens of Orlais and the Free Marches said, was showing itself more often. The darkspawn were more aggressive, and more agitated, on the field. The Wardens had struck a telling blow, the messengers said, and it had heartened their allies tremendously—but it had also provoked the darkspawn into new furies.
That cast a shadow over the joy of Hossberg’s freedom, as did the knowledge that one broken siege wouldn’t end the war. Even if Queen Mariwen was acting as though they’d already slain the Archdemon, the rest of them knew that victory was far from assured. If anything, the challenges that faced them had become starker, the stakes higher.
The Free Marches were dying.
Under the withering influence of the Blight’s magic, the coastlines had become bare strips of rock flagged with the wrinkled skeletons of dead seaweeds. The ocean itself had deadened to a murky gray. Its fish had either fled or died, and the mussels and oysters that once fed the cities of Wycome, Hercinia, and Bastion had perished in the water, leaving vast beds of empty shells that clacked eerily in the tide.
Inland, the devastation was even greater, for it was not masked by the sea. Large swaths of the forests were dry and dead, the standing corpses of their trees blotched with unnatural fungi. Once-rich farmlands had turned to cracked hills of dust crowned by a few wispy stalks of headless barley. Children and livestock born under the clouds of the Blight tended to be small and weak, frequently deformed and easily lost to disease. The few wild birds and beasts that had escaped the traps and arrows of desperate Free Marchers had either starved or succumbed to corruption; after nearly a decade, even those that had survived long enough to become ghouls had died years ago.
Hunger and hardship, as much as the swords of the darkspawn, were killing the people of Thedas. That was the message from all the griffon riders, and all the kings and generals whose tidings they bore; that was the knowledge that cast such a profound pall over celebrations of Hossberg’s freedom.
“We have to go to the Free Marches,” Garahel said. “We’ll let the Queen have her feast, we’ll pay our respects to her, and we’ll take our army to the Marches.”
They were alone in his room, he and Amadis and Isseya, poring for the thousandth time over maps of Kirkwall and Cumberland. It was well after midnight, and other than the muted clanging and curses of the kitchen servants working to prepare the Queen’s feast for the morrow, the castle was quiet. Gone were the endless footsteps of soldiers on night watch against stealth attacks from the darkspawn; hushed were the horns that had cried out warnings against nocturnal threats. Peace, unsettling in its silence, reigned over Hossberg.
Amadis poured a glass of deep red wine. Queen Mariwen had opened the last of her cellar’s reserves to thank them, and she’d had some precious bottles hoarded. The carafe in Garahel’s room contained a fine Orlesian vintage, better than anything Isseya had tasted in years.
But she found no enjoyment in it. “What makes you think they’ll go?”
Garahel frowned. They’d had this argument before, going around and around in fruitless circles, and he was plainly irritated that Isseya had brought it up again. “What choice do they have? What choice do any of us have? The darkspawn are weak in the Anderfels. It’s the Free Marches where the Blight is strongest now. That’s where the Archdemon is. Therefore that’s where we must go to draw it out to battle.”
“The Anders are tired of fighting,” Isseya pointed out. “They want to go home and see if they still have homes. They want to plant crops and have babies and try to get on with their lives in the way everyone else outside the Blight’s path has been trying to ignore it. They don’t want to march to Starkhaven and risk losing everything if the darkspawn come back behind them.”
“They don’t have a choice,” Garahel repeated.
“The Ruby Drakes do,” Amadis said, sipping her wine. Her black eyes were cool and calculating. She wasn’t arguing, Isseya thought, but it was close. “My mercenaries are tired of fighting for promises on paper and someday-in-the-future gold. Darkspawn don’t pay ransoms for their captives or carry anything worth looting, so all this fighting is paying them nothing. There’s been some unhappiness about that.”
“Unhappiness that you’ve controlled,” Garahel said testily. He held out a hand for a glass of wine, but Amadis didn’t stir. With a grunt of annoyance, the elf got up to pour it himself.
“So far I’ve controlled it,” the black-haired woman said. “But the fighting’s over now. At least it is here. And you’ll have to pay them in something heavier than paper to make them fight for you again.”
“What?” Garahel asked.
Amadis smiled slightly and swirled the crimson liquid in her glass. It clung to the sides in a translucent, wavery ripple that gradually went pale. “Queen Mariwen’s price is just you, isn’t it? Your public obeisance at her feast, and your company for a night. That’s all she wants: for you to legitimize her rule and give her a little pleasure before you go.”
“Yes,” the elf said stiffly. He pushed the carafe away and stalked back to his chair, drinking the wine like water. “I’ve made no secret of that. I told you the instant I received her offer. I told you I’d refuse, too.”
“And I said you had to do it,” Amadis said, “which you do.” Her smile was serene—not a natural expression for the fiery-tempered woman, and one which made Isseya profoundly uncomfortable. “It’s a cheap price, really. I get you nightly, and I don’t even have a crown.”
“You do have an army, though,” Garahel said. He finished the wine and, with a longing look at the carafe, set the empty glass aside. “Maybe that’s the only reason I let you take advantage of me so shamelessly. Maybe I just want the use of your Ruby Drakes.”
“Maybe so,” Amadis agreed, “but if you want to keep using them, you’ll have to pay me a little better than that. I refuse to be bought for less than that throne-thieving harlot.”
Garahel clapped his hands. “Ah, at last, we get to negotiating. Lovely! What’s your price?”
“I want a griffon,” she said.
That, for one extraordinary moment, rendered Garahel speechless. His eyes went wide and he rocked back in his chair, so unbalanced that he had to slap a hand against the wall to catch himself.
“A griffon?” he managed after a moment, sounding strangled. “You don’t know anything about them.”
“I’ve been living among griffons and their riders for almost a decade,” Amadis replied acidly. “In fairly close proximity, you might have noticed. I’d like to think I’ve learned a little.”
&nbs
p; “Yes, fine, point taken … but you’re not a Grey Warden.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I want it. I’ll be the only non-Warden outside Weisshaupt to have one. It will be a symbol of enormous power and prestige. It’ll hold enough value to keep the Ruby Drakes with you across the Free Marches, even if you have to keep paying them in promises. The griffon will show your good faith, and it’ll give them something to lord over the other mercenary companies, who might follow along in hopes of getting their own griffons.”
“Well, maybe.” Garahel straightened his shirt where it had been pulled up by his near-tumble off the tipped chair.
“Maybe nothing. That’s my price. I want a griffon. A breeding female.”
“You’re going to start a breeding colony?” the elf asked with a disbelieving lift of his eyebrows.
“I might.” Amadis finished her wine, set the glass aside, and laced her fingers across her knee. “I think you’ll need me to. How many griffons are left today? A few thousand? Half of them are fighting; you’ll lose many of those before the Blight breaks. Of the rest, how many are too old to breed? How many too infirm? How many hatchlings will you lose to disease or deformity because they were born under the Blight? You’ll need help rebuilding the population, Garahel. I can do that. Outside Starkhaven, or maybe in the Vimmark Mountains, if the griffons prefer that kind of terrain. My family has holdings there. But you will need another breeding colony.”
Slowly, he nodded. “Yes. You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.” Amadis stood and sauntered toward the door, tossing a smile over her shoulder. “We can talk about which griffon I’m getting later. For now, you’d better get your beauty sleep. You have to look pretty for the queen.”
* * *
He did.
Garahel arrived for Queen Mariwen’s feast resplendent in a doublet and breeches of green and gold brocade, carefully chosen to deepen the color of the elf’s eyes and accentuate the brightness of his golden hair. His velvet half cloak was lined in gray-edged miniver, its color just close enough to ermine to suggest nobility without offending anyone by its presumption. Other than the soft striping of the fur, however, he wore no gray at all. They knew who he was.
As much as Isseya disapproved of the whole affair, she had to admit that Garahel cut a striking figure under the twinkling lights of the queen’s candle trees. Her brother was putting all his effort into winning Queen Mariwen’s favor, and as he strode into the feast hall, the gathered nobles and mercenary captains hushed.
He is beautiful, Isseya thought, fiddling with her fork. She wondered if it would matter. Promises like the queen’s were seldom kept after the desires that spurred them were sated.
“Your Highness,” Garahel said, stopping and bowing before the high central table where the Queen and her favored ladies were seated. Isseya was not among them, and neither was Amadis. The Grey Warden sat on a table to the queen’s right, along with Calien, Lisme, and other mages and Wardens who had distinguished themselves in the fighting.
Amadis sat in stony silence at the table to the Queen’s left, flanked by her lieutenants and the other mercenary leaders. She had chosen to wear a gambeson of deep red leather, studded with bronze to emphasize its similarity to armor, instead of an elaborate gown such as the other noblewomen flaunted. Her sleek black hair had been chopped back to the length it had been when they’d first met in Antiva City, and its angular fall emphasized the hard clean lines of her jaw. The captain of the Ruby Drakes could not have been more different from the women of Queen Mariwen’s court, and she meant for Garahel to know it.
Undoubtedly he did, but he hid it well. Nothing less than absolute devotion shone from his face as he rose from his bow.
“Field-Commander Garahel of the Grey Wardens,” Queen Mariwen said, delighting in the words. She was as radiant as ever, the only person in the room who seemed untouched by the Blight or their long siege. Her blue-violet eyes had been artfully shadowed with paint and powder; her rich purple dress was worn low on the shoulders, exposing a scandalous span of creamy skin. The nobles around her might be thin and drawn after seven years of grief, and their clothes might be nibbled by moths and ten years out of fashion, but the queen’s beauty held no flaw.
“We are honored to have you,” she said. “All the Anderfels are grateful for your heroism in breaking the long, dreadful siege of Hossberg. We pray that you will accept this humble meal as a token of our thanks.”
“You’re far too generous, Your Highness,” Garahel replied. “I only did my duty, as we all must in such challenging times.”
“Of course. But your duty is heavier than most.”
“It is. I could not carry it alone. Nor could my order. The Grey Wardens are indebted to the Anders for their courage and ferocity in fighting the darkspawn.” He paused, looking into the eyes of every person at each of the three high tables. “We will continue to need that courage as we press onward to the Free Marches. Without your help, we have no hope of ending this Blight. But with it, I firmly believe, we can bring doom to the Archdemon, and safety, at last, to our homes.”
Silence followed his words. Then the mercenary captains began banging their tankards against the carved wood of their tables, cheering on the Warden’s promise. The other soldiers took up the cheer, and finally the queen’s retinue joined in, though less enthusiastically than the rest.
“We of the Anderfels will do our part,” Queen Mariwen pledged, standing. The delicate golden crown nestled in her hair twinkled like a coronet of fireflies under the feast hall torches. “We have always been fierce enemies of the darkspawn. We know the predations that our friends in the Free Marches suffer. We will not rest until we have struck a final blow against the Archdemon—and our valiant soldiers will surely be at the fore.” She cupped her hands before her, tilting her head at Garahel with a winning smile. “But for tonight, good Warden, let us celebrate the victories we’ve already won.”
The elf conceded with another bow and moved to his seat of honor at Mariwen’s right side. He’d gotten what he wanted—a public pledge of military support—and Isseya noted the subtle air of satisfaction in her brother’s posture. Whatever happened in private tonight, the queen had committed herself before the leaders and generals of Hossberg.
“Hope she honors it,” Isseya muttered into her goblet.
She hadn’t meant for the words to be overheard, but Calien snorted at her anyway. “You have doubts?”
“I always have doubts.” The elf shrugged. “But it’s out of our hands, so no point worrying. It’s up to Garahel now. And he’ll seal it tonight, if anyone can.”
“He’d do anything to end the Blight, wouldn’t he?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
The servants were bringing in the first course of the feast, and Calien fell silent as they approached. Despite the long hardships of the siege, Queen Mariwen’s servants had put together a creditable series of dishes: pigeon pie, venison served in a sauce of dried apples stewed with brandy, elaborately braided breads topped with honey and chopped dates. They’d stretched the few luxuries still in the castle cellars and carried in by the Wardens’ griffons to eight courses, and Isseya could not remember if she’d ever had a more sumptuous meal.
Eventually, though, the servers and wine bearers stepped back, and as the castle’s minstrels struck up their first song—some newly cobbled-together piece celebrating Garahel’s heroism and the Anders’ doughtiness, cloying to Isseya’s ear but evidently thrilling to the increasingly drunk soldiers and mercenaries, who cheered and hooted every verse—Calien leaned in.
“No,” the blood mage said. “There are some things I wouldn’t do.”
“Oh? What?”
Calien speared a forkful of pigeon pie, but did not immediately lift it to his mouth. In their hurry to prepare the queen’s feast, the cooks had gotten a bit careless about plucking their birds, and a single small feather stuck out from the filling. Damp and bent, its downy barbs crusted with sticky
juices, it called uncomfortable echoes to mind.
“You know the answer to that one,” Calien said, extracting the feather from his pie, “or else you soon will.”
17
5:20 EXALTED
“She’ll give us the soldiers,” Garahel said over breakfast the next day. He looked tired, which didn’t surprise Isseya, and oddly exhilarated, which did. “More than I’d dared ask for. We can leave as soon as we’re outfitted. Two weeks, maybe three. The sooner the better, I think. Let’s not give her time to change her mind.”
“Have you told Amadis?” she asked.
“No.” He had the good grace to look sheepish, and wandered over to one of the shelves that lined her borrowed room. Before the siege, they’d been covered in religious trinkets, many of them lovingly passed down through generations of pious royal Anders. Over the years, though, any bauble that might buy a sack of flour had been sold. All those gilt-leaved prayer books and dragonbone figurines of Andraste were adorning some Orlesian merchant’s mansion now, and all that remained on the shelves was a scattering of simple wooden carvings skirted in fluffy gray dust.
The shelves’ emptiness left Garahel nothing to fidget with, and after a moment he turned back to his sister, clasping his hands awkwardly behind his back. “I’m not sure how to tell her.”
“Don’t look to me for advice. I’m hardly an expert on keeping lovers happy.”
“No?”
A prickle of irritation ran down Isseya’s spine. She shrugged it away brusquely. “No.”
“Really?” Despite his own distractions, Garahel managed to look genuinely surprised. “Not even Calien? I thought you two might have—”
“No.”
“Are you that afraid of having your heart broken?”
Isseya scowled. “You’ve seen how quickly death comes on the field, Garahel. Who wants that? Who needs it? Our losses aren’t bad enough without inviting that extra pain? I already have you to worry about, and Revas. At least if my griffon goes down, I’ll probably die with her, so that’s some consolation. Neither of us will have to be alone. But the last thing I need when I go out there is something else to fear.”
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