But she didn’t have the strength for that anymore. Not with new reports of sick griffons pouring in day by day, the death toll steadily mounting, and the Calling whispering in her dreams at night. Cursing the Tevinters for their stubbornness, Isseya turned her back on their empire of misery.
Her next choice was her last.
Calien had gone back to Antiva, helping his countrymen rebuild the shattered glories of their nation. It was hard going: there were still pockets of darkspawn and corrupted beasts in the hinterlands, little food, few passable roads. Demons and the restless dead haunted a few of the bloodiest battle sites. Many of the people who had fled had no intention of returning, not when they could make easier lives in other nations.
Antiva City and the cities of the Rialto Bay were too ideally situated to remain empty forever, though, and a few hardy souls had begun the difficult work of reclaiming them. Calien had joined the effort immediately after Garahel’s funeral.
Isseya hadn’t seen or spoken to the other mage since that day. There had been no rancor in their parting, just a sense of sad finality; they both knew that the elf was near the end of her time. But now, with grief and guilt warring in her breast, she knew nowhere else to turn for help. Calien had warned her against opening the door to blood magic, true, but he had done so while giving her the key.
She hadn’t wanted to burden him with the weight of self-hatred she carried. Neither of them had dreamed of this possibility, and if there had been anywhere else in Thedas that Isseya might have found her answers, she would never have troubled Calien with the same aching remorse she held.
But there was no other option, so she flew to Antiva City.
Calien was by the seaside when she arrived, using force- and firespells to clear wreckage from the harbors. The wealth of Antiva had always been tied to its ports, and reopening the sea trade was key to rebuilding the broken nation’s fortunes.
He’d cut his hair short, and had grown out a beard that was mostly gray, but she recognized him immediately. Seagulls flapped and shrieked at the mage, scolding him for ruining their morning. Isseya smiled to see them; it had been so long since she’d beheld anything in Antiva as innocent as disgruntled birds. She waited until Calien had finished breaking apart the toppled building he’d been demolishing, then walked forward into the smoky hush. “Still blowing things up? I thought you’d have had your fill of that by now.”
“Isseya!” The older mage’s smile was immediate, genuine … and tinged with a hint of worry. In the last days of winter, the weather was cold enough to excuse the many layers that wrapped her face and the gloves that shielded her hands, but Calien knew her well enough to recognize the true reasons Isseya wore so many muffling garments. “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting. Do you have time to talk?”
“Of course.” Calien gestured with his staff to a nearby building that looked sounder than most of the others. Fresh wood had been nailed over its windows, offering some respite from the worst of the late-winter winds. A simple sign hung over its door, depicting a blue fish wearing a crown; it looked like a recent addition. “The Bluefin King. We take our meals there. The cook’s better than most, especially now that the fish are beginning to come back. There’s even ale, most days, and sometimes wine.”
“Private rooms?”
“I didn’t realize you missed me that much.” The jest died in his eyes when she failed to laugh, though. Uncomfortably, searching her masked face for some hint as to her purpose, Calien nodded. “There are.”
“Thank you.” She followed him to the inn. It was tidy, prosperous, with a few fishermen in for a hot meal and a whiskery-chinned alewife trying to sell the innkeeper on a sample of her wares. The furniture was all mismatched salvage, but in good repair. Isseya thought it a promising omen for Antiva’s recovery.
The alewife and the innkeeper nodded familiarly to Calien as he entered, but no one said a word as they went upstairs to a private room. Perhaps they’d learned to turn blind eyes to some of the mage’s guests.
Upstairs, Calien closed the door behind them and dropped the key on a nearby table. “Now, what demands such secrecy?”
Isseya didn’t see any reason to be coy. “Blood magic.” Voicing the words seemed to sap what little strength she had. She slid down the nearest wall, sitting on the floor with her head tilted back against the rough plaster. Her eyes closed; it was easier than looking at Calien while she spoke. “What I did to the griffons, the Joining … It’s spread to others. They’re all falling ill. It’s something like Blight sickness, but it spreads differently. Through the air, maybe. Or through the blood. Either way, it’s a plague in their souls, and it’s killing them. I don’t know how to stop it. I came here in hopes of help.”
For a long while, Calien didn’t answer. The silence stretched on until Isseya opened her eyes and lifted her head, and even then the older mage said nothing until finally, after a seeming eternity, he sighed and shook his head. “No.”
“No?”
“I can’t help you. Even if I could, I don’t know that I would—but it doesn’t matter. I can’t.”
“Why?” Isseya asked. Her initial happiness at seeing her old friend had faded, and in its place a weary emptiness had come over her: a sense that this, too, was only one more step toward some inevitable end.
“Brother Vidulas of the Chantry once wrote that magic has its own laws and logic, and that every spell comes with a price that needs be paid. The true danger of blood magic, he theorized, was that it was born of demons, and so its price was hidden.”
“Brother Vidulas wasn’t a mage,” Isseya objected. “I read him too, we all had to. But the man never cast a spell in his life. He was a theologian, not an enchanter. A man who made up theories to explain the laws of a world he never entered.”
“Be that as it may, I’ve given considerable thought to his writings over the years. Yes, he was guessing, and maybe he guessed wrong … but maybe he didn’t. Perhaps there’s some truth to the idea that the real danger of blood magic isn’t that it draws its power from sacrifice, or that it tempts the greedy and ambitious into using the suffering of others to fuel their spells. Perhaps the danger is simply that we do not understand it, and that lack of understanding invites disaster even when our intentions are pure.
“If you’re right, and the griffons are dying because of what we did during the Blight—and that is an ‘if,’ Isseya; you don’t and can’t know for sure that it really is the cause—then our attempt to serve the greater good is what did this. The sacrifice we thought we were making was only the beginning; the real cost was much higher than either of us imagined.
“If that is so—and again, I emphasize, all of this is purely conjecture—but if that is so, how can I hope to make anything better by relying on blood magic again? Why wouldn’t my attempts just worsen the world in some new, unexpected way?” Again Calien shook his head. “I’ve forsworn blood magic. The Circle is turning a blind eye to mages who aided the Grey Wardens during the Blight, but that forbearance would vanish instantly if I were known to be maleficarum. I have not touched the power in blood since the Blight ended, and they have no reason to suspect me … but that could easily change. They are watching me, always. So I cannot help you. But even if I could, I don’t believe I would. We can’t know the price of blood magic until we’re forced to pay it, and I’ll never strike a blind bargain again.”
He paused, seeing the stricken look in her eyes. “I’m sorry—”
Isseya stood clumsily, almost tripping over her own cloak. She’d been foolish to ask him, foolish to come here. He was trying to make a new life, and she’d burdened him with her own freight of sorrows. “No. Don’t be. If you say there’s no hope…”
“I didn’t say that. I said I can’t help. And I said blood magic might ask a price higher than you want to pay, and not the price you expect. But that isn’t the same as saying there’s no hope.”
“Yes, it is. I’ve looked everywhere else already. W
eisshaupt, the Free Marches, even the Tevinter Imperium. No one has answers. No one has hope.” The key was on a table near the door. The innkeeper had found a small decorative statue somewhere: a comical clay dragon with bulbous features and a roly-poly tummy. The key ring was hooked around its stubby snout. Isseya yanked it off, knocking the dragon to the ground.
It shattered into a hundred pieces of shapeless ceramic. Stepping over the shards, Isseya fitted the key into the door, only to find that Calien had never locked it.
She glanced back at him in surprise. Misunderstanding her look, he shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll clean it up.”
“It’s not that, it’s—”
“It isn’t your concern,” Calien repeated, firmly but gently. He bent and began picking up the dragon’s pieces from the floor. “Anyway, what does it matter if you can’t find the answers somewhere else? You’ve always done things that no one else could. The floating caravans, the excavation of the Retreat … and yes, even the griffons’ Joining. Those were all spells of your own invention, and they did what others thought impossible.”
Isseya regarded him cautiously, one hand on the door handle. “What are you saying?”
“I told you why I cannot help you in this matter. But my reasons need not be yours. My limitations need not be yours. They never were before, why now? I might ask that you be aware of the risks and pitfalls in blood magic—more aware than either of us could afford to be when the Archdemon was at our throats—but I’d never try to stop you.
“Don’t look to outside mages for answers. Don’t look to books or scrolls or demons. Look within. You made this thing. How can you expect anyone else to unmake it?”
24
5:24 EXALTED
“I’ve had her locked up,” Amadis confessed quietly, not looking at Isseya. She lifted her wineglass and took a sip, crinkling her nose almost imperceptibly. There wasn’t much good wine to be had so soon after the Blight’s end—not even for Starkhaven’s royal family—and with the war over, and the Ruby Drakes settling into a new role as the de facto royal guard, Amadis had been forced to reluctantly embrace that aspect of her identity.
While the city had never fallen to the darkspawn, and the castle servants had been able to restore many of the superficial trappings of Starkhaven’s grandeur in short order once peace returned, twelve years of hardship had left their mark. It showed in the sour yellow wine that the cook had tried to sweeten with spices and honey, and it showed in how the Free Marchers were handling Smoke.
“She’s gone wild,” the human woman continued in the same soft voice. They were alone in Amadis’s room, their chairs pushed close together beside a low fire, but even so Isseya had to strain to hear her. “I don’t think she even knows who I am anymore. Or maybe she does know and just doesn’t care, which would break my heart.”
“Has Smoke hurt anyone?” Isseya asked as gently as she could.
Amadis nodded miserably. “She injured one of the stableboys and killed another. Not at the same time. It was after she killed the second one that I had her caged. She knew them both, Isseya. They weren’t strangers to her, and they knew better than to provoke her. It doesn’t make any sense.” She stared into her wineglass for a moment, then drained all the liquid down to its dregs of sodden spice without seeming to taste any of it.
“What will you do?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me.” Amadis refilled her empty glass. She raised the carafe in a wordless offer to Isseya, who once again shook her head to decline. “I don’t know what to do with her. Smoke was Garahel’s last and best gift to me, and she’s expecting hatchlings out of Crookytail. Setting aside my personal griefs … that is a tremendous symbol for Starkhaven’s prestige and morale.
“But Smoke isn’t just a heraldic griffon painted on a shield. She’s flesh and blood. She has thoughts, she has feelings, she knows happiness and pain. And I honestly think she’s miserable, penned up in that little cage, never being allowed to fly.” Amadis’s eyes welled with tears. She wiped them away, staring down at her wineglass with a small, angry twist of her mouth that didn’t quite want to be a smile. “I would be.”
A silence fell between them. The logs in the fireplace crackled and sighed, sinking deeper into their shaggy coats of ash.
Amadis drained her second glass and tilted it from side to side in front of the fireplace, watching the red glow bounce off its clear curves. “Why did you come here?”
“I’m dying.” Isseya said it without emotion. She didn’t have much emotion about that anymore; it was a fact of her existence, as unremarkable as the sun setting in the west. “I wanted to make an attempt at correcting the mistakes of my life before it ends.”
The dark-haired woman turned to regard her, a flicker of curiosity in her tear-puffed eyes. “Your mistakes? They say it’s a plague that comes over the griffons. A darkspawn sickness from the Blight, like the affliction of the bereskarn.”
Isseya shrugged. “That’s one way of looking at it.”
“You have another?”
“I fear that the Grey Wardens killed them. More exactly, that I did, under the First Warden’s orders. It was the Joining ritual, I think. Its repercussions. None of us knew this would be the result when we started down this road, but our lack of intention changes nothing. This is what we did, and this is what it’s done. We’ve killed them.”
Amadis’s fingers had gone white and stiff around the stem of her wineglass. Very deliberately, she unbent them and set the glass aside. She walked to one of the room’s small windows, drew aside the heavy velvet drapes that masked it, and opened the wooden shutters to the winter chill. The wind blew her long black hair back over her shoulders and dusted her face with a suggestion of snowflakes. “You said you can correct it?”
“I don’t know, truly. But I want to make the attempt. If you’ll allow me.”
“How?”
“I can’t save Smoke.” It was best to snuff that small hope at the outset. She knew Amadis would have been thinking it, and indeed the other woman’s mouth tightened in a way that told Isseya she’d guessed correctly. “But I might be able to save the hatchlings that she’s bearing.”
“How?”
“Blood magic made this. I am guessing—hoping—that it is possible for blood magic to unmake it, at least in the unfinished minds of the unborn. I can’t change what’s taken hold in the adults. Their thoughts are too complicated, and their blood runs too fast. I don’t have the strength left in me to pull the taint apart and braid their minds back cleanly, if I ever did. Any hope they have will have to come from … quarantine of the sick birds, separation of the healthy flocks, something like that. Something that doesn’t rely on magic, at least not mine. All I can do, I think, is take it from the young ones still in their shells. Maybe.”
Amadis hesitated, ticking her nails against the wooden shutters as she thought it over. Then she frowned. “What will become of them after that? Even if you succeed … won’t they just succumb to the same sickness once they hatch? What’s to prevent them from catching the plague like so many others have?”
“Nothing,” Isseya admitted. “Nothing but time. I fear that we’ve doomed the griffons. I hope I am wrong, and that it will be possible to quarantine the sick from the healthy. But if I’m not, the griffons will go extinct. None of them are immune. Some fall faster than others, but once they’re exposed … I’ve felt it in every one I’ve touched, even Revas. She’s strong, and she hides it … but it’s in her, as it is in all of them, and someday it will kill her.
“But when they die, the sickness will die with them. And if those hatchlings don’t break their shells until the tainted griffons are no more, I think they may be safe.”
“May be. You think.” Amadis moved restlessly away from the window. The drapes rustled back into place, held up in part by the open shutters, and framed a sliver of the night-shrouded city. Under a pale moon, the tiny lights of Starkhaven’s bakers and mages and other nocturnal workers twinkled l
ike a handful of small and scattered stars. In peacetime, the city was much darker than it had been during the endless vigil of siege. “If you’re wrong?”
“I’ll never know. I’ll be dead. Probably no one alive today will know. If I succeed, I do not intend for the Grey Wardens to know it. The Wardens killed the griffons; they don’t deserve to be stewards of the species. Not now, anyway. Not in this generation. Maybe fifty or a hundred or two hundred years hence, when the griffons have become creatures of legend. Maybe then they’ll be more careful about safeguarding what they so nearly lost.”
She looked steadily at the human woman. Her brother’s lover, one of her oldest friends. The only other person who could know what had been done. “I’m asking you to keep this a secret. From the Wardens, from the Free Marchers, from everyone. There’s no one alive today that I would trust with the last griffons in the world.”
“What happens when they hatch?” Amadis asked.
Isseya shifted her grip on her staff. Its crystalline head glimmered faintly in response, swirling with the misty, muted colors of the Fade. “They won’t. Not until someone finds them.”
“How do you know it’ll be the right person?”
“I don’t. But if you keep my secret, I can try to ensure that they will at least pass to someone who understands how fleeting and precious freedom can be, and who will honor the true spirit of the griffons.”
“She was his last gift to me,” Amadis said. The words seemed to choke her. “She’s my most beautiful friend. My strength. My freedom. The power to ride the wind—that’s what Garahel gave me. And you say she’s dying because of something you did—”
Isseya bowed her head wordlessly. She’d thought herself beyond feeling any further guilt, but every one of Amadis’s words hit like a stone hurled at her soul.
“And you couldn’t be more wrong. It was the Blight’s doing, Isseya. If the darkspawn hadn’t awakened their Old God, if the Archdemon hadn’t come upon us, none of us would ever have had to make the terrible choices that were forced on us in those dark days. Garahel always used to say that heroism was just another word for horror, and maybe a worse one. A hero always feels that he has to do what’s right. Sometimes that leads to tormenting himself with doubt long after the deed is done. Or herself,” the former mercenary added, pointedly. “Your brother told me from the beginning that you were too cruel to yourself. I think he was right.”
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