Dragon Age: The Masked Empire

by Patrick Weekes

  “You must be joking,” Remache snapped, and Gaspard turned on him.

  “You’re a damned fine lord when it comes to the Game, Remache, and I’m going to need your help to keep my throne. But you’ll never understand men who live and die by their blades.” He held out a hand without looking and took the sword that was passed to him. Then he called out, “By my honor as a chevalier, if Celene’s personal scout defeats me in single combat, he walks away free with his armor, his weapons, and three days’ worth of food.”

  His men called back their approval with a roar, banging blades on shields. Celene’s man took his blade and offered a decent salute. Gaspard returned it, soldier to soldier.

  Then they moved.

  Celene’s man moved well and had a good eye for distance, Gaspard noted as they both took a few cautious steps. But his relaxed grip was wrong on the blade. It was a finesse grip on a weapon that needed to be held tight and swung hard. And his defensive guard suggested training with a shorter weapon. Gaspard guessed he’d been a spearman, with a short blade for close combat.

  Gaspard made it quick.

  A feint that the soldier tried to parry from too far away, years of pike training working against him, followed by a lunge that caught the man in the bicep, a downward slash across the leg, and, without hesitation, a thrust up through the ribs.

  “Good man,” he said again, holding the man up while the life went out of his eyes.

  Remache had not stood up from his spot by the campfire. He smiled wryly as Gaspard came over, leaving the servants to clean the blades and dispose of the man’s body. “I am pleased to see that you survived that completely unnecessary duel, my lord.”

  “That wasn’t a duel.” Gaspard sat. “It was an execution. But he died proud, fighting the man who attacked his empress in single combat.”

  “Yes, he looks ecstatic,” Remache said, glancing over at the body. “We could have gotten more information out of him with torture.” At Gaspard’s look, Remache sighed. “He wasn’t a noble, Gaspard. Your code would not have applied.”

  “He knew nothing worth knowing.” Gaspard gestured for the scouts, then said quietly, “Think, Remache. If he knew where Celene was going, he would either be with her because Celene trusted him, or dead because Celene didn’t.”

  Remache frowned, then nodded slowly. “So all we know for certain is that he definitely met her. His guilty fear of accidentally revealing something made that plain.”

  “Exactly.”

  The scouts came into the firelight, bowing. “My lord?”

  “Get back to where you found him,” Gaspard ordered. “Find his trail, and follow it back. Somewhere, that man met Celene.”

  “Understood, my lord.” The scouts bowed and left at a jog.

  “Can they really do that?” Remache asked. “Follow a trail back for days and find where it intersects with Celene’s?”

  “Damned if I know, Remache.” Gaspard picked his cup back up, squinted into it, and picked out a fly. “But I believe it’s better than trying to take Jader.”

  10

  Ser Michel had grown up in the slums of Montfort, and then in a noble’s estate. Years of training with the chevaliers had taught him how to keep himself and his horse safe in the forests, but he had never grown to like them.

  He detested them, in fact. And now, as Empress Celene followed Briala and Felassan toward the Dalish, they were leaving the plains and returning to the forest for what promised to be an uncomfortable journey.

  He knew that they were vulnerable on the open plains, visible for miles in every direction. He understood that the damned Dalish made their homes in wild lands like the forests and hills. None of that changed the sick wash of dread that passed through him when he left the open air and rode into the twisted branches and dead leaves.

  Felassan said they were getting close, and Michel, though no great tracker, could see the signs. The trails they rode were too wide to simply be animal trails, and the clearings where they stopped to rest hid the ashes of recent campfires under a carpet of dead leaves. The forest around them twitched and crackled and seemed to watch.

  They stopped in one of the clearings that night. Briala had brought down a small deer, and Felassan skinned it with quick efficiency. Celene, to Michel’s surprise, built the fire and gathered herbs from nearby to season the venison. He would have placed a strong wager against ever seeing the Empress of Orlais build a fire, but she seemed to know what she was doing.

  Michel himself tended the horses. His own stallion, Cheritenne, was doing well, though he’d lost some weight. Celene’s gelding was still skittish, and his coat wasn’t in good condition. Michel rubbed him down as best he could with the limited equipment he had on hand. He hadn’t had to care for his own horse since his training days, and his servants had carried the brushes and picks to tend to the horses each night.

  “Sorry,” he said, using a spare leather strap to wipe the sweat from Cheritenne’s flanks. “Best we have on hand.”

  Cheritenne grunted, then let out a snort and lifted a leg for Michel to tend his hoof.

  Michel chuckled. “I’ll see what I can do.” He looked through the small bag that held the tools he used to maintain his armor. A small iron pry bar might work well enough as a pick.…

  “Keep the horses tied tightly tonight.”

  Michel blinked and looked over to see Felassan staring at him, lit with flickering gold by the campfire. The elf held a long thorny twig between his thin fingers, staring at it intently. In the firelight, the tattoos on his face seemed to twist and move of their own accord. Briala and Celene were nowhere to be seen. Likely they had gone off into the darkness to practice with their daggers.

  “I know how to see to the horses.” Michel turned away. “You knife-ears don’t even ride.”

  “Neither do peasants, chevalier.” Behind him, Felassan chuckled.

  Michel spun, knowing that the elf was goading him, but the wave of cold dread that tightened his neck and throbbed around his temples would not be denied. “Still your tongue.”

  “Why? I didn’t promise not to tell anyone.” Felassan grinned at him.

  With an effort, Michel unclenched his fists. The horses were whickering nervously. “What would you have of me?”

  “An answer, to start. Why have you stayed with her?” Felassan asked. “Your empress’s cause is desperate. You rebuilt your life once. You could do so again, hire out your considerable skill with the sword in some town where no one ever knew you were Celene’s champion.”

  “I swore an oath.” Michel sighed. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Honor and duty? Of course not. I’m an elf, and honor and duty are concepts exclusive to heavily armored human horsemen.”

  Michel felt his cheeks flush. “You know nothing of the slums. My life there … The Academie gave me my honor, and the peace of knowing that as long as I am true to it, I may die with a happy heart.”

  “Unless your secret is revealed. How terrifying it must be to spend your life as something you do not believe you are.” Felassan’s voice held no mockery now. He spoke with a quiet sadness better suited to an old veteran. “All the heroic battles, the serving-girls following you to bed, and you can never truly enjoy it.”

  Michel checked the horses’ ties, then went over and sat down heavily by the fire. “I’ve enjoyed my share.”

  “Have you? Or was some part of you holding back?” Felassan asked, twirling the thorny twig through his fingers. “Checking each word whispered by candlelight to make sure no commoner’s slang slipped through? Throwing out slurs like ‘knife-ear’ a little too often so that no one could accuse you of having anything in common with the elves?”

  “How easy it must be for you,” Michel shot back, “walking around with your life tattooed on your face.”

  Felassan leaned back and looked up. Through the clouds, a half-moon shone dimly. “Once, my people walked this land as gods. We worked magic that would blind you with its beauty. Now
, we lurk in the deep forests and prepare for the next time you shemlen do something that upsets the balance of this world. Do you know what I was in my time, boy?”

  “A young Dalish elf who ran through the forest listening to stories?” Michel shot Felassan a look.

  Felassan started, then laughed despite himself. “Well said, chevalier.” After a moment, he stared into the fire and let out a soft breath. “We rode the halla. They leaped with such grace and beauty as to make your horses look like Fereldan dogs by comparison. They were smarter, too.” He chuckled. “Which often made them willful.”

  Michel’s elven mother had told him stories about the great white deer that the elves used to ride. He had been young, five or six, and he remembered being scared. The only times he had seen people riding were when the chevaliers came into the slums to kill people.

  Michel looked over at Cheritenne. It had been a long time since he had thought of that talk with his mother. He had not missed it. “I don’t hear Celene or Briala,” he said, to change the subject.

  “They may be practicing something different,” Felassan said, and waggled his eyebrows.

  Michel glared at him. “That’s offensive.”

  “Love is not offensive. Awkward, doomed, or ill-timed, perhaps, but not offensive.”

  “If you believe your ward can lure the empress—”

  “With her elven wiles? Chevalier,” Felassan said without heat, “do you think Celene could be lured into something she does not desire?”

  Michel looked off into the darkness. “How could she desire that?”

  “I cannot say,” Felassan admitted. “To think she could even be tempted, after your empress burned the slums in Halamshiral…”

  “I meant Celene, the Empress of Orlais, sleeping with an elf!”

  “You meant nothing but to shout ‘knife-ear’ so that all the world would know which face you chose to wear,” Felassan snapped. “And you have enough blood on your hands to be a man. Act like it.”

  “You understand nothing of Orlais.” Michel waved at the gnarled wood of the trees around them. “Perhaps out here, you lie with whomever you like, whenever you like. In the court … It would be one thing to engage in a single dalliance, a passing fancy with one that caught her eye. But to take a servant as a long-time lover … The paramours of an emperor or empress are politically powerful in their own right. Briala holds the ear of the empress.”

  “Hopefully more than just the ear.” Felassan grinned.

  It was too much to be borne, the elf joking about Celene as though she were some tavern wench. Michel rose to his feet. He was unarmored, but his hand went to his sword. “You insult me and my empress.”

  “Quite the opposite.” Felassan rose in a fluid movement, and his staff glowed green as he held it out with one hand. The other still held the twig, which Michel would have sworn twisted and shivered in Felassan’s grip. “I need you. So does your empress. She goes into great danger, and she needs a champion who knows who he is.” He stepped closer. “The Dalish will see the greatest of shemlen warriors, and their foolish young men will want a chance to try their skill against you. You need to still your temper and deny them that chance.”

  “I will do as I—” Michel broke off as something in the woods cracked and crashed. A moment later, a low, rumbling roar shook the leaves in the clearing, and wind rushed past Michel carrying the stench of dead air coughing up from a crack in the ground.

  “What was that?” he asked, turning toward where he thought it had come from. Another great crash sounded from behind him, along with a noise like tearing cloth, and Michel looked frantically into the trees for some sign, some flicker of movement caught at the edge of the firelight, but there was only the hideous unnatural noise.

  “The reason I suggested you tie the horses tightly,” Felassan answered, and held up the thorny twig in his fingers. “This is Felandaris. A powerful poison, though it only grows where the Veil is thin.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that there is a small chance that something might have come through.” Felassan tossed the twig into the fire. It hissed and snapped, then crackled to ash with a wisp of green smoke.

  “And you chose not to tell me this?”

  “I didn’t want you to worry. It was very unlikely anything actually would come through.” From the darkness beyond the clearing came the tearing-cloth sound again, and another roar, and Felassan winced. “Although clearly more likely now.”

  Michel drew his blade. “We need to get to the others.”

  * * *

  Celene feinted, slashed high, and rolled to the side as Briala came in with a flurry of rapid strikes. Her right blade lashed out and traced a tiny line along Briala’s armor, just above the hip.

  “You’ve remembered how to move,” Briala said, panting.

  They danced back and forth, blades flashing. The half-moon shone barely enough light through the trees for Celene to see. Briala was a silhouette, an ever-moving blackness moving smoothly against the deep purple-gray of the forest beyond. When they shifted position so that Briala faced the distant campfire, Celene caught glints of warm light on Briala’s armor and blades.

  Celene moved in again, daggers circling. Briala lunged, and Celene caught and turned the thrust, then stepped in. Her high blade came to rest against Briala’s throat, and her low blade circled around Briala’s back, preventing any escape.

  Briala let out a long breath. “Good,” she said flatly. “I believe you’ve recovered whatever skill you had lost.”

  Celene stepped back and sheathed her daggers. “You used to like it when I held you.”

  “Not at knifepoint.” Briala’s daggers flashed in the moonlight, then disappeared into their sheaths. She turned to go.

  “Bria, please.”

  She stopped, then. A silhouette, with the fire outlining her tousled hair, her long and slender ears.

  “What do you want me to say?” Celene asked, taking a step toward her. “That I’m sorry? You know that I am, and we both know it changes nothing.”

  “It might help to hear you care even a little.”

  “You listened to Lady Mantillon’s lessons as well as I did,” Celene countered. “If I admit to regret, you would pounce upon my weakness to remind me that my regret does the corpses little good. I would ask what would do some good, and you would tell me that nothing could. I will not twist in agony for your amusement because you blame me for their deaths!”

  “Blame you? You killed them, Celene.”

  “I did.” Celene kept her voice calm, though the tremor in it surprised her. “When Gaspard spread the rumor, I had to either put down the rebellion or execute you in order to disprove him and keep the throne.”

  On that, Briala spun. “And you chose me? Should that make me feel better? You killed hundreds of peasant elves to save my life?”

  “I killed hundreds of peasant elves because they rebelled against my rule and endangered the empire,” Celene said, voice low and pleading. “Tell me what else I should have done. Pretend it was a noble house or a merchant guild killing guards and putting barriers in the streets, and tell me what I should have done.”

  “You could have found another way!”

  “Are you truly angry at me, Bria, or are you angry at yourself for knowing in the back of your mind that I did what I had to do?” Celene took another step forward. She was close enough to touch Briala now. “I swear to you, if there had been a way that left those elves unharmed, I would have taken it.” She reached out slowly, carefully, and put a hand on Briala’s shoulder. “How long have we been together, Bria? Do you think I never noticed you urging me to sympathy for the elves? I know how important they are to you … and I agree with you. Maker, I have seen how intelligent you are. How many elves are wasted in those alienages when they could be doing more? How many great minds and loyal servants did I burn in that slum because I could see no other way?” Her voice caught.

  In the darkness, Briala’s face was still just
a silhouette. “That isn’t why I stayed with you, Celene.”

  Celene forced a smile and shook her head. “I know. But if you are done with me, know that the elves will not suffer for it.”

  Her hand was still on Briala’s shoulder. Briala took a breath, and after a moment’s pause, her hand came up to cover Celene’s. She leaned in close enough for Celene to feel the breath on her skin as she said, “I’m not—”

  With a thunderous roar of cracking wood, the tree beside Celene and Briala fell.

  Celene dove away, Briala beside her, and heard more than saw the impact as a branch crashed where they had been standing. She blinked, straining her eyes to make out shapes in the darkness, and heard a terrible ripping noise coming from the ground before her.

  Briala slid her daggers out. “Maker, the tree!”

  Then, with no warning, Briala lurched into Celene, slamming her to the ground.

  Celene scrambled to her feet as more branches crashed down around her. Blinking away the afterimages of the firelight, she took in a scene that set her heart pounding.

  The trees had come alive.

  All around them, great gold-leafed branches twisted into spiny arms, and tree trunks wrenched apart with terrible cracks to become angular legs. Set against a crown of the higher branches were sickly protrusions, warped knobs of wood that formed a grotesque parody of a face. The great beasts’ bodies creaked and cracked, filling the air with the smell of freshly cut wood. Every movement made Celene’s eyes water, her mind trying to make sense of something that should be impossible.

  Celene could see three of the huge things, though the noise all around them suggested that more were nearby.

  One of the great tree monsters held Briala aloft by the throat.

  Celene went cold, felt the chill wash across her body. But years of training kept her mind free, and her fingers were deftly opening pouches and shoving her rings on, fastening the charm about her throat, even as she gaped in horror.