My Love

by Sabrina Zbasnik

  "Yes, it's...we're fine," his voice jumped an octave before settling back down. Martin glared a bit more before sliding towards the end of the cart. That's right, disappear back into your hole. Cullen thought, sneering in the unimpressed man's wake.

  If Lana noticed it, she paid it no heed. With one hand she patted the bronto's nose, trifling her fingers through a strip of white hair. With the other she reached close to Cullen's pocket. "Are we still on the right path?"

  He dipped in for the phylactery, not that he needed to bother. That close to his skin he could feel the pull of the blood without needing to concentrate. It was a difficult sensation to describe to non-templars, a bit like a book needing to return to its proper place. You could set it down on a different shelf or another table entirely, but the world felt wrong until it was returned home. Lightly thumbing his finger across the glass, he nodded his head, "Yes, it still feels west, but..."

  "What is it?"

  "No matter how far we move, the distance never decreases."

  She puckered her full lips together in thought before speaking, "He could be keeping pace with us."

  "Then we should move quicker than him, and abandon this...caravan of horrors."

  Lana giggled at his shudder, and it was so sweet Cullen's bad mood broke - at least for a breath. "They provide excellent cover, and..." she leaned closer into him, placed her hand upon the blue linen stretched over his upper arm, and whispered, "someone in the caravan likes you."

  "What?"

  She didn't explain, only lifted her eyebrow in conspiracy and smiled brighter. How did she seem to be enjoying this? Was it a fresh delight in traveling incognito as an average Ferelden and not the conquerer of the blight, or did she find a perverse joy in his discomfort? Maker knew plenty of other mages got their jollies from trying to make his life miserable and mages had more ample means than the average person. Even the word prank made his teeth grind. All he wanted was to find this blood mage, finish the job, and return to the Gallows. Meredith was less than pleased with his request for a sabbatical, and suspicious of his need for no other templars to accompany him. But Cullen had proven himself for five years in her stead. If she could not trust him, who could she? The city was quiet, surprisingly, having fallen into a summer stupor silencing the eternal templar versus mage debates. Plus, it now had a Champion to look over it. One measly templar missing for a week would not go noticed.

  "Wait a moment," Cullen stumbled in his steps. He reached deeper into his pocket, trying to unearth the phylactery. Upon skin contact he knew with certainty what he'd felt in his gut; the direction had changed. "It's moved," he whispered to Lana.

  "Where?"

  Cullen closed his eyes, trying to make sense of the vague feelings crawling up his skin, but the message was muddled. He whipped his head around, trying to scour the landscape of little more than farmland followed by untamed thickets of trees. "This makes no sense. He should be here, right here. The direction keeps altering from east to west, even north or south. I don't understand."

  He'd expected her to look as concerned as he felt, but she only rolled her eyes and sighed, "I feared as such. Well, you have your wish. We'll need to be leaving the caravan."

  "What? I don't understand."

  She smiled, and patted George again, "Don't look a gift bronto in the mouth." Then, raising her voice to the sitter, she said, "I'm afraid the Grey Warden has sensed a darkspawn nest that must be destroyed for the sake of the local populace and his duty to the order. You'll have to carry on alone. We thank you for your hospitality."

  "Oh, that's a real shame," the sitter said. "But we understand. Don't want those filthy creatures chasin' after us and givin' us all the blight. Your time and company was much appreciated!"

  Lana slipped her hand around Cullen's arm and guided him away from the wagon. He tried to rein in his slack jaw, but the relief was tempered by confusion. As the travelers pulled away, it was Martin of all people who looked back at him with a strange sorrow and then winked. Returning to the Gallows had never sounded more enticing.

  "I do not understand..." he began, expecting Lana to remain watching the caravan rattle off. But she tossed off her own facade of bumbling scribe, strength shoring up her bones as she strode towards the north.

  "The reason the phylactery keeps changing position is because our blood mage is below us," she explained over her shoulder.

  Cullen jogged to keep up, trying to close the gap between them. He had no idea she could move so quickly. "Are you saying that..."

  "Yes," she stopped and turned around, "he's in the Deep Roads." Lana frowned, and placed both hands on her hips. "Cullen, I can't ask you to follow me. The Deep Roads are not safe to travel, they barely are during a blight much less so many years after."

  "And you expect me to let you walk through it alone." He couldn't believe what she was saying. After all that time she took collecting him, to abandon him now a days walk outside of Kirkwall.

  Lana only shrugged, "I've done it before."

  "Maker!"

  "I prefer to have someone watching my back, but you will not be able to sense the darkspawn the way I can, and you will not be..." she reached over and caught his hand. Her eyes pleaded through a pain he couldn't read. With her thumb, she massaged the back of his hand -- the intimacy throwing Cullen off guard, "the blight could kill you."

  "This blood mage, he is dangerous?"

  "Very much so," she said, still clinging to him.

  "Then it is my duty as a templar to stop him, blight or no."

  Lana's bittersweet smile plucked upon a dangerous string in his heart, but she didn't fight him on his decision. Releasing his hand, she nodded her head and said, "As you wish. Now we just have to find an entrance into the Deep Roads."

  "That should not be too difficult, follow the darkspawn?"

  Lana frowned, her nose crinkling in disgust, "I'd prefer to avoid them if at all possible. Luckily, I set out with maps of the area. We should establish a camp and rest up, there will be little sleeping once we're in the deep."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Rabbit

  At least she didn't laugh at him. That was Cullen's only saving grace as he struggled to skin the rabbit he'd more blundered into than snared. They had stores, but Lana thought the coney might serve them better for the night while the rest was preserved for the deep roads. He wondered how long she thought this chase would last.

  "Do you need help?" she asked, her voice airy even as she watched him like a hawk that would have made a cleaner job of disemboweling the rabbit.

  "No," Cullen knee jerked, then regretted it instantly as his knife skidded across fatty tissue and bit deep into muscle. Blood welled across the rabbit's fur, marking another failure on his part. "You already gathered water and started the fire. This seems the least I could do."

  "Well," she twisted her fingers around the jumbled wood pile. From her machinations, the metallic twang of the fade danced upon Cullen's tongue. Flames licked higher off the kindling, twisting not with the wind but her whims. "This part was a bit of cheating. It was about all I could add to traveling for...a depressingly long time. Have you ever dressed a rabbit before?" She turned from the fire to watch him, her eyes burning a hole through every poor cut he made.

  "Yes...though not since I was young." And even then most people would chase him away from any butchering, terrified of what remained to work with after he hacked away at it. There was a good reason he never planned on the farming life. "What of you? Not many opportunities to learn how to skin your own game in the tower."

  She smiled, "I am uncertain of that. Have you seen the size some of the spiders could reach? You could hollow a few out and make a nice rowboat." Cullen laughed with her from the memory. Neither mage nor templar found the source of the giant arachnids swarming through the crawlspaces of Kinnloch. It was a rare coming together moment for both sides as they decided to wall up the area and never speak of it again. "But, aside from pest control, the tower did not prepare me m
uch for life outside it. Imagine. So, I picked up what I could here and there. It's better you're doing it, actually. I'd have sliced my thumb open by now."

  "Oh, well, that's..." he giggled at her admittance, and tried to bite down the blush crawling up the back of his neck. A spider would have been preferable. Lana must have missed his discomfort as she returned to the fire, weaving it through her fingers like a strip of grass. "Here," he lifted the gutted and skinned carcass off the stump and held it out by a still attached foreleg. That felt wrong for some reason. "Um...where do you want it?"

  "We'll have to stew it, unless you brought a frying pan with you."

  "I'm afraid I left it in my other skirt," he said, lowering the rabbit into the simmering water. While she tended to their dinner, lifting the pot away from any rising flames, Cullen wiped his knife clean of rabbit blood, then his hands. It took him so long to finish the job, the gore began to clot. Crimson globules wobbled in the grass beside his boots, which he tried to not trod through. He sheathed his knife across his chest and turned around to watch Lana sprinkle something green into the pot, her delicate fingers hovering just above the water. She shouldn't look so achingly beautiful in the tempering glow of firelight, her lips pursed in concentration with her lower jaw jutted out. A thick cloak wrapped around her body rendering it shapeless, but it didn't matter. He feared his tongue would trip away even if she were covered in dung and dressed in a burlap sack. A small part of his brain tried to remind him that she was a mage, and he a templar, but the extenuating circumstances about that arrangement sat beside her. When he wasn't wrestling with the rabbit, she pored over the maps, that same enchanting pout upon her lips.

  "Perhaps now is a good time to go into more detail about this blood mage we're chasing," he said, clinging to the first distraction he could find.

  She twisted around to him and planted a hand upon her knee to see up to his height, "That is fair. Forgive me for the secrecy, this is not easy and Wardens do not go for help lightly." Cullen crossed to his bedroll and sat down on her right. It was a good six feet away, but he still shifted upon his hip to maintain a proper distance. "He is an elven mage. Slight frame, slight even for an elf. He calls himself White, though that is not his given name."

  "Why White?"

  Lana smiled, a sentimental one that softened her face. Cullen felt a stir of something primal through his gut. What was this White to her? "When he was twenty something, he entered the fade and the experience turned his hair stark white. He's called himself nothing but since."

  "Twenty? How old is he now?"

  "Forty, I think three. That would be useful, I suppose."

  A small smile turned up Cullen's heart. Forty three was far too old...and, he caught himself. What right did he have to speculate on what she found old? "What circle was he with?"

  Lana frowned and pursed her lips, "He was not with a circle, he was a Grey Warden."

  "I understand that, but you must have some connection with a circle. Templars to watch the mages even within the wardens." She stared through him and he continued to explain her own order to her, "For protection from abominations."

  "I'm aware what templars are for," Lana cut in, the first whiff of frost between them. "White was in the circle in Nevarra. I forget which, precisely. Then he was recruited into the Grey Wardens. Mages who take the...join, fight darkspawn, but White showed skills in study and manipulating the fade beyond any of our scribes. So he was moved to the order's outpost in Ostwick to research the blight for the First Warden."

  "And that was where he became a blood mage? Where he attacked his fellow wardens?"

  Lana stared at the rabbit's mutilated muscle bobbing below the waterline. Without breaking from it, she said, "Yes, it was Ostwick. It was--"

  "You were there?"

  She lifted one shoulder, "I was not present at the time of the attack, but I had to see for myself, to...aid in tracking him. I'd prefer to not speak of it, if it's all the same."

  "I..." Cullen slunk back. The pain was fresh in her voice, the wound still weeping. He knew the same need burning inside her. People often asked him about Ferelden, especially after he first transferred to Kirkwall. They wanted fun stories about the blight -- heroics, bravery -- and all he had to tell them were horrors that kept him up at night wearing a hole through his floorboards. Rain was the worst. Not a torrent, but the slow drip as the last of the storm passed. Each plop sounded so very like blood dribbling through gaps in the floor.

  "I'm afraid dinner won't be for another hour at best," she sighed, prodding her finger into the rabbit and watching the flesh bounce back. "What shall we do 'til then?"

  "Please not charades," Cullen groaned.

  She chuckled, then wiped her hand down her face to straighten her features, "I promise no charades, no guessing games, and no miming."

  "Sweet Andraste, I forgot about that cursed invisible box that...what was his name?"

  "Rothchild."

  "Yes! Rothchild would climb into near on every meal."

  "People seemed to enjoy it," she said, always quick to defend the defenseless. But there was no excusing the man's antics. He was a senior enchanter near on fifty, yet he preferred to spend his time pretending to be caught in an unexpected windstorm, or moving down a nonexistent set of stairs much to everyone's chagrin.

  "That was the worst part, the encouragement," Cullen shuddered.

  Lana's laugh broke through the falling night, and she shook her head. Through a smile stretching her cheeks, she asked, "Was there nothing you liked about the tower?"

  Panic struck Cullen. He whipped his head away as if he spotted some animal rustling in the bushes, even sticking a hand out to follow the imaginary thing. She had to know the answer to her question. No matter how much he tried to walk it back in his mind, confessing the truth of his infatuation to her face burned through his memory like a torch. The shame and the immorality of it stung him still, a stain no amount of prayer could blot away. He'd never wished someone was actually a demon so badly before, or for the ground to open up and consume him. That didn't seem such a terrible possibility now either. But no darkspawn horde erupted from the grass, and she'd probably warn him if it was about to.

  "It seems to have gone," he said at first, sticking to his cover, before smoothly sliding to, "What did you? Oh, um, I rather enjoyed the desserts."

  "Yes, the butter cookies," she jumped up, her face ripe with enthusiasm, "with that sugar on top, not a glaze or a frosting, but I could never figure it out. The cooks at the Keep can't seem to get it right."

  Right, she wasn't just a Grey Warden but the Grey Warden placed in charge of a keep in Ferelden. An entire arling, in fact. "I admit, I am surprised that you travel alone. I've never known nobility to move from one room to another without five people trailing them."

  Lana snorted at that image, then sighed. "Yes, I've been to court a few times as well, against my better judgement. One man, I think it was only a bann no less, had a servant carrying around a footstool during a dance. For hours. He never even sat down. I don't understand any of it."

  "So no servants in the wings to clean your shoes off with their lips?" Cullen asked, dragging his teasing on.

  Her pulled face told him all, but she still shook her head and volunteered a, "Maker, no."

  "There must be someone who watches out for you, to -- you know -- keep you safe for the wardens?"

  "Grey Wardens tend to be their own bodyguards, and I think I've finally gotten off the Crow's list. If Zevran is to be believed."

  He should have stopped after that. They were on polite but distant terms. No reason to go and... "You left no one behind?" his tongue wagged freely, as if loosened from drink. He wished he could blame it on intoxication.

  But Lana used the chance to make a small joke, "Only a keep full of soldiers, and wardens who can't find their own bottoms without my pointing out they sat upon them." Cullen decided it best to drop his inquiry before the awkwardness consumed him entirely when she sat higher and
offered up, "but, no one else of importance. Wardens, we do not...fraternize." She managed to twist the last word from a spit to a regretful sigh. Prodding the rabbit anew, she turned her attention upon him, "What of you?"

  "Me?" Cullen pointed at his chest, roughing up the griffin across the sternum, as if someone else were present.

  "You must have enchanted some pretty thing in the echelons of Kirkwall society," her voice was genuine, but a smirk sparkled in her eyes.

  Cullen snorted at the insinuation, as if he had any time for the few nobles who thought it sport to prod into templar business. It was Meredith who dealt best with them; when they were passed off to her second-in-command she wanted a curt and tactless response.

  "Fair enough," Lana bobbed her head, "and I do not blame you for it. My seneschal has perfected the 'No, the Arlessa is not available for marriage at this time' response." She chuckled at the foolish idea of her settling down, then turned her eyes upon him, "The Templar Order's not against marriage, I thought. You're free to couple."

  "True," Cullen spoke before his mind could scamper away to form anything of a passing excuse. If any of his fellow templars had shown an interest in him, he did not see it. He did not want to see it. His life was busy enough with his devotion to the order and maintaining a balance in always precarious Kirkwall. It was also beyond the pale for him to take up with a woman underneath his command, the nobility bored him, and...there was no one else. "I would rather protect and guide the knights below me than...uh, bed them."

  He felt an idiot for saying as such, but she nodded her head as if he spun sage advice instead of terrified dribbles. She caressed her forehead, her fingers cupping her face, "I understand. They're your...children sounds dangerously patronizing, doesn't it?"