“No.”
Imshael chuckled. “Honest man. Well, mostly. What if I told you that if you found me a mortal and got him to put his bleeding palm to one of these damned stones, I would make the story of Ser Michel de Chevin true?”
Michel blinked. “How?”
“More effectively than your patron, Comte Brevin, bribing a forger.” Imshael grinned, and his beady eyes glittered among a field of old laugh-lines. “A few spirits whispering in a few dreams. A few documents falsified by men who will never remember doing so. The next time one of Gaspard’s bards goes digging, she finds that Michel de Chevin is exactly who he says he is, and living men will swear by the sadly absent Maker that they remember growing up with you, the noble and honest and entirely human Ser Michel.”
“And in return?”
“I’d get to leave this damned circle and live inside the man who bled on the stone.” Imshael took a deep, happy breath. “It’s been some time since I got to see the world. I’d like to look around a bit.”
Michel stopped, teeth clenched in anger. “You would have me curse some poor creature to your possession?”
“Yes.” Imshael turned to him, and though there was a smile on the demon’s face, his eyes seemed to burn. “Not pleasant, is it? That’s what makes it a choice.”
Michel spun away and started walking again. He saw footprints in the grass ahead of him, and realized he’d come all the way around the stone circle. “I should destroy you.”
“Breaking a couple of the runes would do it,” Imshael said without breaking stride. “Of course, then you’d spend the rest of your life waiting for someone to find out who you really are.”
“I know who I really am,” Michel said, and left the clearing and the demon.
The scouts at the edge of the camp jumped when they saw him. Their bows snapped up with admirable efficiency, and they yelled an alarm even as they took aim, their eyes wide and bewildered as they darted glances back toward the camp where, by all rights, Michel should have been tied up.
Michel raised his hands. “I surrender,” he said. “Take me back to my empress.”
For a moment, he thought they would simply shoot him, but then, after trading looks, they closed in on Michel instead. One hung back, bow still raised, while the others grabbed him and shoved him to the ground.
He endured the shouts, and punches and kicks, without complaint. If it got him back to Celene, it would be worth it.
He knew how she was going to take back Orlais.
* * *
Celene had been awakened by the elven healer in the early afternoon and informed that the others were wandering the Dalish camp. Still woozy, she had sat up, noted the guards with their weapons already drawn, and asked to speak to their Keeper. She had expected Michel and possibly even Briala to be tied up as well. Since they had only kept her bound, the Dalish likely understood her value as a potential hostage. That was, if not auspicious, at least a good place to start.
Now, with her head still aching and elven guards standing over her, Celene sat before the Keeper and the elders of the Dalish clan and negotiated for her life. She had no idea where Briala and Michel were, and she refused to show weakness by asking.
“Once Gaspard is put down,” she said, “I can ensure that the Dalish gain a new measure of respect in Orlais, and we look forward to learning from your wisdom. We already have elves attending our universities, and it would be an honor to allow your people to visit.”
“You do not have the strength to fight this Gaspard,” the ancient hearthmistress said, her cracked voice laced with skepticism, “yet you think to offer us help?”
“Power accumulates,” Celene said with confidence, “like a snowball rolling down a hill. I do not need you to fight Gaspard for me. I only need you to use your skills to help me reach Val Royeaux before Gaspard does. Once I do that, Gaspard will have no chance to oppose me, and I will crush his rebellion and put him to death.”
“Leaving you free to break your promises,” the warleader said, “like the humans before you.”
The Keeper waved him to silence. “You would have me risk the lives of my clan to help smuggle you past your rival’s soldiers, and in return, you offer what? A chance to visit your buildings?”
Celene wanted a drink, but reminding them that she was at their mercy would weaken her place in the discussion. “I don’t know what you want, Keeper. If you have a proposal, I can certainly—”
“You destroyed the greatest empire this land has ever seen!” The warleader stepped forward, fist drawn back. “And when our people banded with Andraste to gain freedom from Tevinter, you betrayed us again!”
She sat unflinching before his anger, then turned to the Keeper. “This discussion is unlikely to change the past,” she said. “If you have a request, name it.”
“You do not understand,” the Keeper said. He gestured again, and the warleader stepped back. “You ask us to speak logically, when our entire history is filled with your people betraying and degrading ours. You took our land, our culture, even our immortality.”
“And you do not seem to understand the opportunity that has landed in your lap.” Celene glared at the warleader, then at the Keeper. “This is the time to demand reparations. Do you wish conditions improved for the elves in our cities? Free emigration to the Dalish clans?” Seeing their blank faces, she took a gamble. “Honorary lordship of Halamshiral and the surrounding lands?”
She had gambled wrong. She saw that immediately as their shoulders drew back, the tattoos on their faces twisting as they grimaced in revulsion, but she couldn’t tell why.
“Honorary lordship.” The warleader sneered.
“Your nature pollutes us,” the Keeper said slowly. “The poor creatures in the alienages you think of as elves are but poor cousins, lost to us forever. Some clans might accept a few of them to strengthen their numbers, or even out of misguided pity, but they are not our people. Do you understand that, shemlen empress? You think to offer a partnership, to let us sit in Halamshiral and deal with shemlen merchants and flat-eared peasants who have forgotten everything of ancient Elvhenan, and bow to you on your throne in Val Royeaux.” He shook his head. “If you and Gaspard slew each other, and the war killed every human in Orlais, and burned every alienage to the ground … then we would be willing to return to Halamshiral.”
It shook her, though she kept her face calm. “Then why are we talking, Keeper?”
“Because that idiot Felassan brought you here, shemlen empress.” The Keeper grimaced. “And now we must decide which of the Way of Three Trees to follow. Do we give you some token aid and hope for some token gesture later? Do we give you to Gaspard and hope for the same? Or do we kill you, burn your body, and hope that you bring Clan Virnehn less trouble in death than you do in life?”
The silence was broken a moment later by shouting from the edge of the camp. The Keeper and the elders looked over, while Celene sat as calmly as she could, trying to think. The pain in her head was dull but steady, and her wits were slower than usual.
She was the Empress of Orlais. She was without her gowns, her jewels, and her armies, but that should not have mattered. She had played the Game and won for twenty years … but these elves played by different rules. If she did not learn them quickly, they would clearly finish what Gaspard had started.
She would not allow that.
“What is this?” the warleader shouted. “How did he escape?” Celene looked over then, and saw Ser Michel, bruised and bloodied, being dragged into the camp by a group of scouts.
“He escaped?” Celene had assumed he and Briala had been held somewhere else in the camp, either to interrogate them or minimize the chance of all the prisoners coordinating an escape.
The warleader looked at her with contempt. “Did you think we would let a shemlen warrior walk free? Bad enough that we let Felassan’s pet loose. He was tied up beside you until…” He broke off, paused, then shook his head, staring at the spot next to Celene in confusio
n.
“He was gone when I awoke.” Celene looked at the guards nearby. “Perhaps you might question the men who let a bound prisoner escape without noticing for several hours?”
“I did not escape!” Michel shouted as the scouts dragged him closer, his voice hoarse. They had not been gentle. “I would not leave my empress.”
The warleader strode forward and yanked Michel’s head up by the hair. “Then how?”
“My mind was taken by magic.” Michel met the warleader’s stare evenly. “As were the guards’. They cut me free, and I came to my senses by a stone circle with a demon standing inside.”
Celene watched the Keeper go white, the tattoos on his face suddenly livid against the pallor. Fear, she understood. Whatever the cause—even, Maker forbid, a demon—fear could be played the same way here as in the court at Val Royeaux.
“Has there been some misunderstanding?” she asked with an innocent smile.
“Bind him,” the Keeper snapped. The scouts threw Michel to the ground, and the guards quickly tied his arms and legs. “Mihris! Come! We will see to the wards!” The Keeper left without another word, and the young healer who had treated Celene’s head ran to catch up with him.
That was one gone.
The rest of the Dalish stared at Celene and Michel with varying degrees of disgust and fear. For a moment, Celene wondered if she had miscalculated again, if they would kill her on the spot.
“I demand to know what is going on,” she said. She glanced at Michel, and he gave a tiny nod. “Your treatment has been intolerable, and refusing to explain yourselves—”
“Enough!” The warleader turned to the clan elders. “I will deal with them.”
They nodded and, looking back with anger and fear on their tattooed faces, left Celene and Michel. That left only one, although he had been the one ready to attack her right from the start.
“You have endangered my clan with your foul magic, shemlen,” the warleader said to Michel. His fists were clenched, his face flushed with anger, and the marks on his face seemed to pulse as his jaw twitched. “I will see you dead.”
“Let the scouts beat me for a few more hours first,” Michel said through bloodied lips, “and perhaps you will stand a chance.” Celene shot him a warning look, but Michel matched her stare, and after a moment, she understood. The elven warleader would see any sign of submission as weakness, and right now, weakness could see them killed.
“When you fight him, Ser Michel, please allow him an ally,” she said, “in the interest of a fair fight.”
The warleader glared and stalked off, and the guards, looking at Michel and Celene nervously, went some distance away. They stood close enough to keep a close watch on Celene, but far enough that they could talk to each other without being overheard. She saw the quick, furtive motions of the hands, the nervous shifting. They would have been laughed out of Lady Mantillon’s sitting room, so obvious was their fear.
“My apologies for taking the initiative in that conversation,” Michel said quietly.
“Hush, Michel. You were correct, and you well know it.”
“That is no excuse for overruling the opinion of the empress,” Michel said with a smile that caused a scab on his lip to split open.
“They will almost certainly kill us,” Celene murmured. “Whatever you found is worth our lives.”
“That may be, Majesty, but it may also save them.”
Celene started in surprise. “Magic?”
“Indeed.” He lowered his voice even further. “The elves have summoned a demon. They seek to unlock ancient magical mirrors that allow the elves to travel undetected across all of Orlais. Protected by magic, secret for centuries.”
Celene went still. “I could get back safely to Val Royeaux.”
“More than that, you could move scouts or small teams in secret,” Michel added, “to strike Gaspard without warning and crush him without mercy.”
Celene smiled slowly. “Now all we need to do is not let them kill us.”
It seemed the visit to the Dalish had not been a waste after all.
With a gentle patter, the first rainfall of autumn began to pour down.
* * *
Briala parted ways with Felassan in the woods.
Her mentor had mentioned a nearby lake that would give her a chance to get clean. He had also suggested delicately that staying away from the Dalish camp would be safer for the moment. Time, he said, would open a path for them.
She took him at his word, more than willing to leave the Dalish alone.
She found the lake with little trouble. It was small and placid, fed by a river that came down from the Frostbacks to the east. Lily pads covered the surface, and dragonflies danced in the air overhead, seizing one last chance to find a mate.
The dark gray clouds rolling down from the north brought with them a cold wind, but Briala stripped off her armor and underclothes anyway. She rinsed off her underclothes and wrung them out, then laid them down to dry and stepped into the water herself.
It was shockingly cold, but she kept moving, first in to her ankles, then her knees, and then the final step down that plunged her beneath the water. For a moment, then, the icy ache became numbness, and she felt nothing except the tiny ripples of the waves pulling her to and fro.
She remembered.
Coming up from the water, ten-year-old Briala shook her head.
“Briala, you’ll get bathwater everywhere!” her mother scolded, though she laughed as she said it. “Come now, wash your hair. We need you nice and clean so that you can wait on Miss Celene tomorrow.”
Briala tugged her hair down into her face. “Celene doesn’t want Lady Mantillon to come. She says that Lady Mantillon is scary.”
Briala’s mother smiled, glancing quickly at the door. “Miss Celene has nothing to worry about. Lady Mantillon loves her very much. Hurry now.” She reached in and worked the knots from Briala’s hair. “You want to look nice.”
“Why?” Briala asked, scrubbing her feet with a soapy brush. “Lady Mantillon never even looks at us.”
“She would see if you were dirty,” her mother said with certainty, yanking on Briala’s hair.
“Can we fix my hair to cover my ears?”
Her mother’s hands went still.
“Mother?”
“No, child. You must never cover your ears.” Her mother’s voice caught, then held.
“Why?” Briala pulled away, then turned around and looked up. “Will I get in trouble for trying to pass?”
“Perhaps.” Her mother smiled again, but her cheeks were flushed. “But more than that, you are my daughter, Briala. We serve a prince, and you serve Miss Celene. None of those Dalish elves can say that. You should be proud of who you are.”
Under the water, Briala reached down with her toes, poking past weeds and looking for solid ground.
Coming up from the water, twenty-year-old Briala saw the coach driver fall with a dart in his throat. The water slid from her oil-sealed clothes, and she made no noise as she pulled herself onto the low bridge. In the moonless darkness, she was just another shadow.
The horses were restless, and she patted their sides to calm them, then opened the crate she had used to block the bridge and force the coach driver to stop.
She took her bow and quiver from the crate, walked around the side of the coach, and shot an arrow through the door.
A moment later she eased the door open and looked inside.
The arrow had taken Lady Mantillon in the abdomen. The wound barely showed against the older woman’s heavy burgundy gown, but her face was deathly pale.
“My apologies for the graceless introduction,” Briala said, “but I feared you suspected an attack, and would have something prepared if I just opened the door.”
With a tiny smile, Lady Mantillon gestured to a tiny, jeweled stiletto that lay on the floor, barely more than a knitting needle with a coating of oily black liquid along the blade. “You feared correctly, Briala.”
/> Briala started, then recovered. “So you remember me.” Her hair, tied back and braided to keep it out of the way even when wet, dripped cold water down her back. “I thought we would all look the same to you.”
“I remember Celene’s beautiful elven servant girl, who watched everything so carefully.” Lady Mantillon’s voice was a bare whisper, and Briala leaned in closer to hear her. “I wondered if Celene might have passed on her lessons in the bardic arts.”
“She did.” Briala smiled and drew her dagger. “All the better to avenge my parents.”
“Ah.” Lady Mantillon nodded. “And after I am dead, Briala, what will you do?”
Briala leaned in. “I will return to Celene,” she said, “and make her the greatest empress Orlais has ever seen. And if anyone tries to use her, to turn her into someone like you, I will see to it that they die forgotten.”
She expected the words to sting, but Lady Mantillon seemed to relax instead. The older woman let out a long breath and settled back, wincing as her breath caught. When she spoke again, her voice was louder. “I regret the deaths of your family, Briala.” She caught Briala’s gaze and calmly asked, “Was there anything else?”
“No.” Briala stabbed just as she had learned, up between the ribs, and Lady Mantillon flinched, nodded once, and went still.
As her body relaxed, a second tiny stiletto fell from her hand and clattered on the floor of the coach. Briala stared at it in disbelief.
Lady Mantillon had almost certainly been close enough to strike. Briala herself had leaned in to hear her last whispered words better. And yet Lady Mantillon had stayed her hand.
Foolish noblewoman.
Briala stepped out of the coach, then cut the horses from their harnesses and slapped their flanks. They ran off into the night, and she turned and walked back across the low bridge.
In the woods, out of sight of the road, she found Felassan lying unmoving by a fire. Blankets were stacked by the cheery blaze, and she wrapped them around herself, taking in the warmth while her mentor lay still, barely breathing. A pot full of stew had been warmed for her as well, though the smoke still smelled of the herbs he had sprinkled into the fire to help him enter the world of dreams.
Dragon Age: The Masked Empire Page 22