"I can make due," she answered, back to scribbling in her notebook. The quill was one of those oversized white feathers yanked off a the tail of a bird from Seheron. A novelty joke, he rarely saw anyone use it in good standing, but she seemed to enjoy it, the cottony ends of the feather wiping over her face.
"This is stupid," Jowan whined. "I could be doing a dozen other things that would be a hundred times more useful than staring up at clouds hoping to find a star."
"Since when?" she volleyed. "Do you have some great meeting to attend to in Denerim I'm unaware of? Going to finally offer your arcane services to king Cailan?"
"Ho ho, aren't we hilarious. It just so happens I do have a meeting, of sorts." He puffed out his sunken chest to match a sudden jut to the weak chin, "Lily's waiting for me and I told her this would only take a minute."
Her quill paused and she turned towards the man acting more like a child with each passing moment. "Wait, are you serious?"
"Of course I am," he flapped his arms like a vengeful chicken. "Don't start that 'she doesn't really exist' thing, again. She's as real as the bitter cold up here."
"I'm fairly certain it was Margie you couldn't convince..."
Jabbing a finger towards her, Jowan scoffed at the mention of the third member of their trio, "I'm perfectly capable of wooing someone, regardless of what Marguerite insinuates and you encourage. Just because you can't bother to find anyone doesn't mean the rest of us have decided to go celibate."
"Well, you agreed to help me first, so... And this research is important. It'll help with navigation for--"
Jowan leapt up to his feet, hands landing upon his hips as if he intended to scold her to death, "Help how? So all of us in the tower can be even better at figuring out which way is north? Oh look, I bet it's along that north wall with the bookcases. Hurray, Lana Amell saved us all from the heartache of getting lost on the way from the privy."
She watched his rant, only her finger bouncing the end of that white feather as it wafted in the breeze. "And yet you were the one who made the promise."
"Then I'm unmaking it, okay. There's more to life than the spells, and books, and showing everyone up when you can."
"I never..." Lana whispered, what looked like an old argument flaring between them.
"Maybe if you yanked your face out of the library every once in awhile you'd have someone waiting in the warmth for you too," Jowan stomped around her pile of research, nearly knocking into the dampened lantern. "I'm heading in. It's not like you're going to jump off the tower, and there's a templar over there anyway to watch you." He pointed his accusing finger into the shadows exposing Cullen's hiding spot. Lana twisted from her place to find him attempting to blend back into the night, but it was a hopeless cause now.
Without bothering to say a goodbye, Jowan yanked open the hatch and slid two rungs at a time down the ladder to his freedom. Lana glared at the slammed door for a minute before speaking up. "Do I have to re-enter as well?"
Cullen had to shake himself to realize she was asking him. "Ah, no, it...you're fine here. I-I can keep watch in case of, um, you know."
"I have no intentions of killing myself. Jowan on the other hand..." she parted her fingers over her books, her threat hollow. The palpable excitement from when she first rose onto the roof evaporated into the night air. Colder than the previous week's watch, Cullen could see winter sliding ever closer to them as her snorting breath ringed around her head. Lana prodded at whatever she'd been writing on but didn't add another notch to it. Now that his cover was blown, Cullen slid closer into the aura of the lantern. At barely a blue flicker, the light only graced across the top of her cheeks sunken in regret. He was able to make out that it wasn't a journal or even scroll she was writing on but what looked like a series of great circles with dots and lines contained within.
"If you do not mind my asking, what are you working on?"
"Hm..." she shook her head as if to banish away the dour mood and turned to face him.
Once when he spotted her running through the halls in pursuit of some late class or possibly the mage that just abandoned her, the templar he was patrolling with nudged him in the side and said, "That one's gonna be a heartbreaker." They weren't supposed to think of their charges in such terms -- to envision them as anything other than a sexless mage. Not that that rule would stop a dormitory full of young men and women from propagating opinions about who was the most beautiful and/or handsome among the mages. Cullen never understood what it was about Lana that rendered her the 'heartbreaker' as opposed to the 'cheering squad,' 'temptation,' or 'strange one' labels the other mages received. She was breathtaking to be certain, the Maker granting her an easy smile which widened until her luscious lips seemed to strain in joy, and a short frame that made up for her lacking stature with generous curves. While her friends were few, they seemed steadfast, the kind only a childhood bond creates. He on occasion caught her casting spells during classes or practice, and the ease with which she created something out of nothing -- her fine fingers warping reality -- was enchanting. She rarely challenged the other apprentices in skill, and seemed to keep herself aloof from the rising romantic tension between the other young mages. Whatever made her a heartbreaker, he'd never see it. If he had to put a solitary word to her temperament he'd probably call her perfect, which was why Cullen was grateful no one ever asked his opinion. The rumors trailing him were damning enough already.
Those graceful fingers drifted across each of her drawn circles and she traced the lines, "I'm trying to recreate the Star Charts of the Imperium, but for southern thedas."
"Don't we already have one?" Cullen asked, remembering the few he'd seen drawn in blue ink and papered across walls at the training grounds. Then he kicked himself for crushing her spirit again, but Lana didn't retreat into darkness. Instead, she lit up brighter and pointed through her books.
"Yes, but there's this old theory hidden inside of here. So, you know how in the Imperium because it's so much farther north, further north? Eh, anyway, they guide themselves by the right claw of Draconis. Their beacon star, as it were."
He had no idea that was what they did, but Cullen nodded along swept up in her enthusiasm. She all but glowed as she flipped through her books and held up passages for him to read. Bending down closer so he could see the cramped print, for a brief second his fingers danced against hers as he picked up her book. Maker's breath, she was warm -- her skin vibrant in spite of the chill. "Here we use the heart of Satinalis," Cullen said the only thing he knew about the night's sky.
"Right, except, what do you do when Satinalis is covered in clouds?" she extended her hands over the whole sky which looked more like a lumpy grey-blue pudding instead of the stars in her books.
"You wait until morning and track the sun," Cullen said, then grimaced. But Lana smiled and a giggle rumbled through her chest. By the void, Cullen had to stare daggers into the book to keep from leering at a canyon of cleavage jiggling below him. She was so short, it was easy for him to maintain a vigil above her head, but this close and with her sitting below him it was proving nigh on impossible to not leer at that perky form. Peeking out of the gap between skin and robe, he spotted a few more inches of that enticing birthmark across her neck. How deep did it go down?
"Assuming you're being chased by hungry wolves who have a hideout in the east," Lana invented her own wild tale, "and you need to head west to avoid them, what else do you do?"
"I admit, I have never had that exact happenstance arise, but my life's been rather sheltered."
That got him even more giggles. Despite glaring at the same sentence with all his focus, from the periphery he could still catch the occasional bounce of her ample assets. A burn more reminiscent of fire than a blush rose up the back of his neck.What did he get himself into?
"There's an old theory from before, long before. After the Imperium figured out that their beacon doesn't work here and before they discovered our heart, they used Fenrir. Here, like this," she twiste
d around her book and her star charts, aligning both up as her finger trailed first one then the other. "See how it lines up with the heart. Now, look at it a month later. The line is different, but it still points towards the heart."
Cullen dipped down to a knee to lean closer to the stars in her lap. "It changes based upon the time of year," he said.
"Exactly!" Lana shouted. Her exuberance took him by surprise and he turned to find her grinning face so close her breath warmed his lips. She didn't catch on, her find far more interesting than the man struggling to not fall off the roof in embarrassment. "So, I've been trying to track it. Of course the Imperium kept their own Fenrir paw prints from ages back, which I've used as a starting point and for when I can't get out of the tower each month to check the alignment. They used to have a wheel to guide them to..." Fingers fluffed up the book's pages and she closed her eyes. Her lips parted in an admonishing sigh as her sentence faded away into the night. "This does seem rather pointless. It is not as if I would have any need to navigate by stars, and the Satinalis heart does a fine enough job. Perhaps Jowan is right."
"I, uh..." Cullen had no idea how to respond. He wanted to tell her that the mage was only trying to wound her for his personal reasons. She was working on something that could have uses for people beyond the tower. But his tongue knotted itself up like twine in the pocket and he stumbled away.
"Finding someone, all the courtship and romance stuff," Lana snorted, speaking to herself despite a templar hovering near, "I've never been adept at that."
"I'd thought, heard that-that you and Jowan were..."
That snapped her out of her quiet funk and an eyebrow shot up her forehead, "Jowan? Maker's breath, I've known him since I was seven. It'd be...ugh!" Lana shivered at the thought and Cullen chided himself for ever entertaining the idea. They did spend an awful lot of time together, the man toddling in her wake, but they also argued often -- though that could be a supposed sign of infatuation, or so people insisted. He was terrible at spotting interest in anyone, that much he was certain of. "He's a brother and anything more is horrifying to think upon. That's it, the crux of the problem. It's too strange to cultivate interest in the tower with all these people I've grown up with. They're family, so... I don't know how one 'finds someone' without looking beyond that. And, Andraste's tears, I'm sorry for bringing this up with you. That, uh, rather. I should stop talking."
"It's all right. I, that is, I-I can, um." Understand. He completely understood. Cullen didn't know when he hit that age where a person was meant to stumble across his great love, woo her, marry her, and begin a family. Instead of waking one day and discovering he finally clinched adulthood, achieving that stage seemed to keep slipping him by. Even after receiving news that his eldest sister married in the spring, he still thought many more years remained before he'd need to figure out how to navigate these treacherous waters.
Lana gathered up her books, tucking her star charts safely away between the covers. She rose to her feet and plucked them into her arms. While struggling to collect them and the lantern, Cullen picked up the third. It felt warm in his hands from the time it rested in her lap. "I've done all I could with the clouds, and-and I'm certain you're tired of talking to me," she laughed while waving at the now starless sky.
"I could talk to you all day," slipped out of his mouth before his brain could reel it back in. Cullen almost smacked himself in the forehead, but that would have made it worse.
She didn't stammer in disgust, or slip away. Didn't scoff and flounce off as if he wounded her. Lana smiled, displaying a pair of deep set dimples marked next to her lips. How had he never noticed them before? Bobbing her head while wearing a goofy grin, she reached for the hatch handle and yanked it up. Lana made it a few rungs into the tower when her head popped up. In a quick gasp, she said, "You're nice to talk to as well...Cullen." Before he responded, she slipped into the tower -- not that he could have responded in his gobsmacked state.
His name. She knew his name. Didn't just know, cared enough to learn it, to say it and... With the sound of her sweet Free Marcher accent speaking his name, he realized why she was called a heartbreaker. He was in love with her without her having to do a damn thing but be herself.
Chapter Twenty-One
Scars Beyond Counting
9:44 Anderfells
Littered across every backroad, forgotten thicket, and dried up riverbed on thedas rested towns of such little note no one bothered to jot them on a map or sometimes even name them. The three of them wandered into such a one hoping to find anywhere to pull back a chair and rest for the night. It proved more difficult than expected, as not only was the barely-a-village home to only a chantry and half tavern - the other half being the chantry itself - but the pair of them did not project the most welcoming of visage. Alistair's cheek swelled until he couldn't see out of his left eye; red dots broke out over the surface of the black bruise giving him the look of a plague carrier. Cullen wasn't in a much better state with his own bruises and constant scowl lengthening his hunched brow. He couldn't sleep after their fight, though the king went down almost instantly - his snoring jagged enough to keep any wild animals far from their uncovered camp.
With Lana's phylactery pressed in his hands, Cullen watched the stars slide through their nightly dance while he tried to recite all of the Chant of Light. He was no chanter himself and had to mumble through a few forgotten passages. By the time the sun rose, he startled from the king's hand on his shoulder, not out of sleep but from an almost hallucinatory state. His frozen fingers ached from how tightly he clung to her bottle willing it to do what the king promised it would, but no red light poured forth, no life returned.
It was Honor, out of all of them, who managed to secure lodging in the home of the Mayor/Guard Captain/Bartender. Diversifying was the only hope most small villages had of surviving. She had every intention to kick the dangerous ingrates out of her little town until she caught sight of the mabari gnawing upon a back leg and the woman melted. While the humans were left at a tight corner table, doing their best to not look at each other, the Mayor dangled all manner of succulent treats in front of Honor's nose. She'd preface each course with "I'm not sure if you'll like this" as if his dog wasn't prone to eating anything put in front of her, including but not limited to rocks, mud, sea urchins, and one pirate's eye patch.
Rolling the full mug around in his hands, the king kept glancing over at Honor lolling about in the floor in pure joy, then returning to his alcohol of some variety that had never before been categorized. He'd been quiet for their entire day's march towards the west, the silence digging a knife into Cullen's gut. Either it was guilt or a fear the king was waiting to retaliate; he couldn't be certain.
"Has it," Alistair began, then dropped his voice down as if the Mayor wasn't distracted singing a song with the mabari, "has it returned?"
Cullen's hand ran down the side of his leg, glancing upon the bulge from the phylactery in his pocket, "No."
The king frowned deeper. He dabbed his sleeve against his watering left eye and risked a full glug of the drink. "It's never taken this long before."
"So you say," Cullen countered with, but there was no victory there. He didn't want to be proven right.
"Maker," the king slopped his head forward on the table, "the suspense is killing me. Lanny better have a...a good reason to be playing around like this." He tried to laugh but it folded into a croak, the man rolling his forehead back and forth across the tabletop while he recited something unintelligible under his breath.
After a night and a day of this, Cullen couldn't stand anymore. Struggling to his feet, he smiled at the Mayor and asked, "Madam, may I head to my room? I could use sleep."
"Uh," she broke from a game of tug with Honor and a dishtowel. "Of course. There's only the one room and..."
"It will be fine," Cullen sighed. After the day, sharing a room with the man seemed the least worst news he could receive.
"Second door on the left, up the stair
s," she said pointing in the direction behind her. Honor released her hold on the towel and took point as her master shuffled past.
Cullen waved a hand at her, "No, you can stay and play." Woofing once, Honor's entire backside wagged and she scooped up the towel to shove in the Mayor's hands. Trudging up the stairs one at a time, Cullen clutched his head tight, the pounding increasing through his veins.
Behind him, he heard the Mayor ask the only other person in the room, "Are you and he, um...close?"
Almost sad to have missed the king's stutter or more likely vapid response, Cullen stumbled into the second door on the left. It was pinker than he expected. Not the soft pastel pink of a nug's skin but a blaring and nauseating hue that seemed the shade to induce a homicidal rage if anyone gazed upon it too long. It was the kind of pink you feared to find on the edge of death while staring at the back of your eyes, or fresh blood mixed into white soap. Maker, that was not a fun malifecarum to take down. Sure, he's an evil blood mage who was chopping people up, but his soap makes skin so smooth and silky. It can even wear away wrinkles. It was the first time he'd ever seen Meredith blink in the face of such public scorn.
On the plus side, there were two beds in the room. Cullen slumped onto the first, baring a pink bedspread of course, and his backend sank another foot deeper towards the ground. He could feel the floor skimming not even an inch below him. It didn't matter, it was off the ground, that was the height of luxury for him now. Digging his boots off and placing them under the bed, he twisted around to lay out and discovered he was nearly a foot too tall for it as well.
"Can today go worse? I'm asking in case you had more planned as I'd prefer to get it out of the way now."
Andraste didn't answer his plea, but the whine of the mattress from the Blessed Age did. He massaged his temples, certain there had to be another four wrinkles added to his growing mass. Maker only knew how many more grey hairs snuck in overnight. A chuckle rumbled in Cullen's throat at how he'd look to Lana now -- ragged, aging, drawn, and haggard after two years of commanding armies. She'd probably shriek and run back into the fade.
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