Dragon Age: The Masked Empire

by Patrick Weekes

  The one holding Briala stepped forward. As its leg lifted, roots tore out of the ground with a sound like a tapestry being ripped apart. It raised its empty arm over Celene.

  “Maker take you, spirit,” Celene hissed, and slid her daggers free. “She is mine.”

  As the tree monster brought its arm down, she stepped to the side, and then leaped nimbly onto the branch that crashed to the ground. She took two steps, running up the thick and twisting length, and leaped. Both daggers sank into the branch that held Briala, and fire danced along their length.

  The tree monster roared, though it had no mouth to do so. The great noise boomed out of the bark of its skin and shook Celene’s stomach. It flailed, flames trailing in the air from the branch Celene had stabbed, and Briala fell free. As another branch swung toward Celene, she kicked off the monster’s trunk and leaped to the ground.

  “Bria? Bria, get up!” Celene brandished her daggers. The tree monster before her roared again, the booming wail rattling her teeth as tiny tongues of flame smoldered along its arm, and the other two lumbered forward, each step ripping roots from the ground.

  “I’m up.” Briala forced herself to her feet, though she was breathing hard.

  “Good.” Celene dropped into a crouch. “I won’t lose you again.”

  All three of the trees roared now as they closed upon Celene and Briala. Celene dodged a crashing branch and left a long burning slash along its length, then darted quickly between two of the creatures. They were slow, but with their strength, a single blow would be enough.

  “Are you having any luck?” Briala yelled. Celene risked a glance and saw that Briala had lunged in, leaving a dozen quick slashes along the trunk of the one attacking her. They bled a sickly black sap, but the creature seemed unharmed as it raised its branches to strike again.

  “Well, they’re trees, so … fire?” came a voice from behind them, and then a burning brand sizzled overhead, lighted in the leaf-crown of one of the creatures, and exploded with a burst of flame. The creature roared in pain, its branches popping and cracking as the fire spread.

  Felassan’s staff glowed green around him as he stepped over to Briala. “Beyond that, you may be out of luck. Sylvans fear little besides fire and magic.”

  “Their mistake.” Ser Michel came to Celene’s side, chopping through an upraised arm with his blade.

  The creature—sylvan, Felassan had called it—roared in pain and swiped at Michel with its other arm. Michel batted the blow away with his blade, his silverite slicing through the wood, and Celene rushed in, slashing over and over at the sylvan’s trunk with her burning daggers.

  Behind her, another ball of fire sent a sylvan roaring back, batting at itself as its leaves shriveled to ash. Celene saw another sylvan slam an arm down at Felassan, but the ground itself rose between them and warped into a wall that turned the blow aside. Briala had fallen back and drawn her bow. She loosed arrows that split wood and sank deep into the trunks, but the creatures barely seemed to notice.

  “There are more coming!” Felassan said. “So whenever the rest of you would like to leave…” He raised his staff and hurled another ball of fire at a sylvan that was already burning. It roared, staggered, and finally collapsed, flames eating it from the inside out. In the firelight, Felassan was sweating and breathing hard.

  Michel stumbled on a root, then blocked a great clublike arm with his shield, staggering back. “Majesty?”

  “Come on!” Celene lunged in, slashed the sylvan attacking Michel, and then darted past another great arm and fell back. “To the camp!”

  The others were behind her. She heard their footsteps and breathing, fast like her own, under the sick ripping noise of the pursuing creatures. “Felassan, how long will they chase us?”

  “They are spirits of rage and anger,” Felassan panted, close behind her. “How long can you hold a grudge?”

  Celene came into the campsite. The sylvans were behind them, but slow. “Briala, grab what you can. Michel, get the horses. Felassan, prepare more fire if—”

  Then, ahead of her, a strangled shrieking whinny made her jump. From the far side of the camp, where the horses had been tied, came the sound of cracking wood and twisting branches.

  A moment later, Cheritenne, Ser Michel’s beautiful warhorse, fell into the clearing, his flanks bloodied, his legs snapped and twisted like broken twigs, with only skin holding them together. He was screaming.

  Michel’s yell was wordless and bloody. He flew across the camp, his longsword held in his shield-hand, and grabbed a flaming log from the fire as he passed it. Without pausing, he hurled it at the sylvan at the edge of the clearing.

  As it roared in pain, flinging the flaming log away, Michel tore into it with great strikes that sprayed wood and sap through the air. Over and over he struck, still shouting without words, until a ball of fire ignited the sylvan with an explosion that sent Michel staggering back.

  He turned, face flushed, and looked back at them in rage as the sylvan fell.

  “Yes, yes, honor demanded you defeat it in single combat. My apologies.” Felassan was leaning on his staff now, breathing hard. “Give your steed the mercy it deserves, chevalier, and then we must flee.”

  Celene saw that her own horse, the rangy gelding, was down and unmoving, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Briala quickly grabbed her pack, and Felassan stood, his staff raised, and watched the darkness at the edge of the firelight.

  Ser Michel walked over to his horse. He was still screaming, but when he saw Michel, his cry softened to a whine.

  Michel opened his mouth, as though his charger had asked a question he wanted to answer, and then swallowed. Then he knelt, his dagger out. “I’m sorry,” he said, and finished it with a clean, fast cut.

  He stood and turned to Celene. “I’ll get my armor.”

  She nodded.

  The crashing and ripping of the sylvans came from all around them now, and Felassan moved in a slow circle, taking everything in.

  “How many more of those balls of fire can you throw before you exhaust yourself?” Celene asked him.

  The elf smiled tiredly. “I’d love for that to remain a hypothetical question. Chevalier, are you ready?”

  Michel slung his great canvas bag over his shoulder, grunting at the weight. “Ready enough.”

  Celene listened to the crashing wood around them. It was growing closer, and branches twisted at the edge of the clearing. “Which way is south?” she asked.

  Felassan pointed.

  “Then light us a path,” Celene ordered, and brandished her daggers.

  * * *

  Briala had lost track of how long they’d been running.

  The thick forest hid the moonlight, and they had only Felassan’s staff to light their way. The green glow twisted everything around them, making even harmless trees seem to stretch out their limbs as they ran.

  Roots hidden beneath a carpet of dead leaves caught at Briala’s ankles, and bare branches scratched her face. Her armor rubbed raw at her shoulders and knees where sweat had soaked through her underclothes.

  Beside her, Felassan’s tattooed face was a mask of exhaustion and pain, and he used his staff to steady his uneven jog. Celene was flushed, though she kept any discomfort hidden behind a determined glare. Only Ser Michel seemed unaffected, his breath regular and easy even as his armor clanged in the canvas bag slung over his shoulder, though his face was splotchy and red from tears. The chevalier who would kill peasants without flinching shed tears for his horse.

  Behind them, wood cracked and roots ripped as the forest came to life and gave chase. Briala wasn’t sure if the sylvans were summoning more allies, or if this whole forest had been full of them to begin with, and they were awakening now that their fellows had raised the alarm. She did not spare the breath to ask Felassan.

  “How much farther?” Briala gasped, nearly running into a tree and pushing off of it instead.

  “There is no way to know,” Felassan said, nearly tri
pping on a root that caught his staff. “When they lose interest. They are…” He paused for a breath, then grunted as he stepped over a low bush. “… angered by emotion. Jealous of it.”

  Emotion. She and Celene had argued. And then Celene had held her.

  “We’re faster than they are,” Michel said, shoving aside branches and holding them for Celene. “If we keep going, they’ll have to give up eventually.”

  Briala caught Celene’s glance. The empress still glared, but in the pale green light, her face looked sickly and pale. “I don’t know how much longer we can go.”

  “No.” Celene stumbled. “I have not come this far…” She righted herself and caught up with them. “… to be killed by a tree.”

  “Lovely sentiment. Ahead.” Felassan gestured with his free hand. “Water. It will slow them.”

  Briala forced her trembling legs to a jog. She lifted her head, sucked air into lungs that ached for the breath, and missed a rock hidden under the dead leaves. It slid beneath her, and she crashed hard to the ground.

  Warm hands caught her arm. Briala coughed, the leaves at her feet flecked with tiny points of light, and let herself be pulled up.

  “Can you make it?” Ser Michel asked, the very model of a courtly chevalier. Behind him, pale, her hands on her knees, Celene breathed hard and looked at Briala with concern.

  Briala had fancied herself to be in excellent shape. While Celene entertained artists, Briala had practiced her dagger-work in an old storeroom until sweat dripped onto the moth-eaten Fereldan rug on the floor. She had smirked at her empress, tired from a full day of riding.

  Now, to her shame, Briala couldn’t spare breath to speak. She nodded quickly, and stumbled after Felassan, with Michel and Celene behind her. Behind them, the woods crashed and boomed their rage.

  The water Felassan had seen—or sensed with his magic, or simply knew about because he lived here, Briala wasn’t sure—was a creek. In the spring, it would have been filled and bubbling with white rushing water. Now, at the end of a long summer, with the fall still dry, it was well below its bank. Felassan hopped down the incline without hesitation, clinging to his staff for balance, then splashed through the knee-high water.

  Briala followed. The dry dirt crumbled and slid beneath her feet, and she half-slid the last few feet, nearly falling into the water. She kept moving, sliding on rocks and mud, and was almost to the far side when something made her stop and turn around.

  It was not sound, but the absence of sound. Behind Briala, Celene and Michel were nowhere to be seen in the shadows.

  “Felassan!” Briala’s throat was dry, and it came out cracked and uneven.

  He was atop the far bank, on his knees and clinging to his staff with both hands. He looked down at Briala, breathing hard. “Hurry!”

  “Where are they?” Briala stared in vain at the shadows atop the bank she’d just slid down. There was no sound of clanking armor, only the rip and roar of the angry forest. In the darkness, she thought she could see the trees swaying.

  “Come, da’len!” Felassan called down. “The sylvans are almost here!”

  They were drawn to emotion, he had said.

  She was still angry, still hurt, still gutted by the betrayal, even as the truth of what Celene had said, the hurt in Celene’s face unmasked in the darkness, fought back.

  But under that, even still, was a dark, empty pit in her stomach at the thought of never seeing Celene again.

  Briala swallowed and took in a long breath. Then she stumbled back across the creek, sank trembling fingers into the loose earth, and pulled herself back up the bank.

  She was nearly blind on this side. The light from Felassan’s staff only made the shadows sharper. Ahead of her, as she clawed over the lip of the bank, she saw the trees crash and fall apart as a massive sylvan tore into view, leaves spraying away with each savage movement. It lashed out at something beside it.

  It was Ser Michel. The chevalier still had his armor in the canvas bag, and now he carried his empress in both arms. Even in the darkness, Briala could see Celene’s pale face, and the blood trickling from her scalp.

  The sylvan’s blow smashed into the armor-bag on Michel’s shoulder and sent him tumbling out from the trees. He cradled Celene as he landed, then staggered back to his feet, sliding his longsword free and readying his shield now that his hands were free.

  He glanced over in confusion as Briala crawled toward them. “You did not run.”

  “Apparently not.” Briala reached Celene, checked the pulse at her throat. She was alive and breathing. “Can we retreat?”

  Michel swung his longsword in a mighty arc, tearing stray branches from the sylvan’s arm. “They would crush us before we reached the creek.” He slapped aside a blow with a grunt. “Can you get her away safely?”

  “I don’t think so.” One of Celene’s rings summoned magical flames around any weapon she wielded. Briala fumbled at Celene’s hands, shaking with exhaustion and from the unnatural booming roar.

  “Majesty!” Michel shouted, leaping away from another crushing blow and hacking great chunks from the sylvan’s trunk. “Majesty, you must wake!”

  In the darkness, Briala could not tell the rings apart. She slid both free, then jammed them onto her own fingers.

  She stood, raised her bow, drew an arrow, and nocked it. She nearly cried when the ruby ring on her hand flared, and flames lit the arrow.

  “Can you get her away safely?” she called, and sent a flaming arrow into the sylvan’s trunk. It flinched back from the flames, roaring in pain.

  Michel turned back, staring in stupid confusion, and Briala nocked another arrow and fired, and then again, sheeting flame into the leaves and branches of the beast before her. “I … Yes. I can.”

  The trees in front of them ripped apart, and another sylvan crashed out to join its burning fellow.

  Briala put a flaming arrow into the sylvan and spared one more moment to look down at Celene’s lovely pale face. “Then go,” she said. “I will—”

  She was cut off as two-score arrows, blazing brilliantly with scarlet flame, lit the night sky and rained fire down upon the sylvans.

  Briala turned in shock and saw a line of flames across the creek. They danced for a moment and lit the sky again as arrows flashed overhead and then fell among the sylvans.

  Burning and booming their pain, the sylvans ripped their roots from the earth and crashed back into the forest, smashing trees from their path as they fled. Briala listened to them go, unaware until she felt the cold in her legs that she had dropped to her knees.

  Michel stood beside her and Celene. “That was fortunate,” he said, though it sounded more like a question than a statement.

  Briala looked back at the archers across the creek. She could make out nothing, save that one of the scarlet flames burned brighter than the rest. It was near the green flame that she knew was Felassan.

  Then several of them climbed gracefully up from the creek bed, simply but beautifully armored in supple leather, with scarlet fire flickering down the lengths of their ironbark blades and making the tattoos on their faces dance.

  Briala stared at the first Dalish elves she had ever seen besides Felassan. “Ma serannas,” she said haltingly. “I owe you my life, and—”

  “It’s as he says!” one of the Dalish called back across the creek. “A flat-ear and two shemlen.”

  “Bind them!” came an older man’s voice, and the elf before her nodded. “Kill them if they resist.”

  Beside her, Michel looked at Celene, then the elves. Then, with a soft laugh, he dropped his sword. “At long last, Briala, you’ve found your people.”

  11

  “Why by the Dread Wolf did you bring them here?”

  Thelhen, the Dalish Keeper, was an elven man of middle years. On his back was strapped the glowing red staff that had ignited his people’s arrows last night. Beneath his tattoos, his face was lined and pale with fatigue, and his hair had gone silver. Briala might have called
the face kindly, were it not red with rage that morning as he yelled at Felassan in the middle of the Dalish camp while she sat, hands bound behind her, by one of their great wagons.

  Felassan grinned. “You needed to meet new people.”

  The Dalish Keeper made an angry gesture. “I have spent years finding the right location and preparing my spells. I have risked contact with the shemlen to get what I needed.”

  “Well, then, if you’ve already had contact with the humans, this should be nothing!”

  “Now,” Thelhen said as if Felassan had not spoken, “when I am this close to gaining what we need, you bring me some human noble and her champion?” Thelhen grimaced in disgust. “Clan Virnehn has sullied itself enough without your foolish ideas! And her!” He wheeled on Briala.

  She kept her back straight and her eyes on him as he glared at her. “Abelas, hahren. I intended no disrespect.”

  “Stop, child.” Her words seemed to take some of the anger out of him, and he sighed, then turned back to Felassan. “You expect me to adopt strays? Why not send her to your own clan, if she is so valuable? Is she at least a mage?”

  At that, Felassan’s expression went blank. “You took what information I have given you over the years, Thelhen. That information came from her, a gift to the people she thought of as hers.”

  “A lovely sentiment.” Thelhen wiped his face wearily. “But why is she here?”

  Briala stood up straighter. “The elves of Orlais have suffered, Keeper. If Grand Duke Gaspard comes to power, they will suffer even more. If you help restore Empress Celene, you will save many of your people in the alienages of Orlais.”

  Thelhen shut his eyes and looked away from her. “Abelas, da’len,” he said quietly, “but I have no people in the alienages of Orlais.”

  Briala sat quietly then, and listened to the argument while she looked around the camp. The great wagons, the aravels, were arranged in a circle like the buildings of a small town. She could pick out the purpose of some of them. One held bows and a fletcher’s tools; not far from it, Dalish children practiced shooting arrows at stump-targets painted like men. Near another aravel, crates were filled with vegetables, while smoked meat hung nearby, and behind a third wagon, Dalish warriors swung wooden blades at target dummies. Briala tracked their motions and saw that the drills were the same as she had seen a hundred times at Celene’s family estate or in Val Royeaux.