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[QueenCrow]

I.

 

 

 

 

     It’s West Hills.  Once upon a time something significant happened here, or close by, and every once in a while, nations stir a stiff breeze of minor importance through, but mostly the little village smack dab in the middle of the Coastlands is a nowhere, and the small people who live here are nobodies.  This is the kind of place where people get a good look around and start wondering why they came.

 

     “Pa, wake up”  The boy shakes the man who has been laying on his side in the straw bed since he came in yesterday.  The lashed together logs of the frame groan with the slight movement.  A rodent skitters from hiding underneath the bed and scurries over the dirt floor toward some other chilly and damp hiding place.  Another shake brings a groan from the man himself.  “Pa, you need to take the baskets and fish to the market.”  The man rights himself slowly and mumbles something incoherent as he rubs a great calloused hand over his face. 

 

     The boy is on the cusp.  He’s still a boy, no doubt about that.  There are no signs of manhood on him yet, but despite the fact that he’s bone-thin and there’s no hint of whiskers, anyone can see that the boy has a man’s share of responsibility.  He turns from the duty of waking his father to the task of feeding his little sister.  She waits at the rickety table picking at a bowl of some musty grains.

 

     “Aiden, it’s hard.  I can’t chew it.”  She talks with grains peppering her lips, then tries to swallow.  He sees her struggle with the porridge and then sets to problem solving while he finishes dressing.  The solution comes with the lift of a nearby pitcher to his nose, a moment of visible consideration, then a pour of clotted cream into the girl’s bowl.

 

     “Let it soak for a minute, Gwennie, then try again.”

 

     She will need the sustenance, for even though she’s only six, Gwen will work along her big brother until sundown.  He thinks it’s better that way.  That way he can keep an eye on her and not leave her to stew at home in hungry, motherless misery.

 

     They are gone toward the pool where the reeds have soaked overnight before their father leaves for the tavern.  He forgets to take the baskets that his children have woven, and forgets the fish that they caught and dried for market.  He can’t be blamed.  He forgets things.  If anyone were to ask about it in the village, some will tell that he was a soldier for Bann Franderel– took his wound in the fifth blight and has never been right in the head since.  Others say he was a Templar and was left like many others – addled, his brain eaten by the demands of his faith and service.  Though the stories are different, the one thing that’s the same is that everyone agrees he can’t be blamed.

[springacres]

Beautiful!

[QueenCrow]

II.

 

 

“Who knows how these things happen?” That’s what would have been said around the village, a verbal offering plate for sympathy passed hand-to-hand, if it had been a normal death. “Maker watch over the little scrap,” is what they would have said. But that’s not what they said after the men who saw what happened charged into the village square crying the news. And it’s not what they said when the Templars rode in soon after.

 

Aiden knows how it happened – most of it. He got up hours before dawn and took Gwen to the stream with him. Together, they set the bait and strung the lines at all the right places. Then he sat down to mend the net that old man Grig gave him, and to wait and watch his lines. He smiled at Gwennie as she spread out the net for him. She was shivering and he called her close, wrapped her in his arms, so they could both get warm before they got back to work. The net could wait a while. They could do the baskets after.  And maybe it was the warmth that grew between them, or the hush of the rushing water, or fatigue that started wearing at the edges of his consciousness. He doesn’t remember closing his eyes.

 

What he does remember was waking to the noise. He remembers waking angry to find grown-damned men shouting and splashing in the stream, making paths right through his fishing lines. He remembers thinking that he and Gwennie would have to start all over, that they got up hours before dawn and froze in the stream for nothing. That was until he saw her – face down in the stream and looking like a piece of driftwood caught on a rock.

 

What came next, isn’t so clear. He’s sure he stopped worrying about his lines because he joined the others rushing through the stream. He’s sure that he wasn’t the first one to take hold of Gwen. He took her once she’d been carried to the bank of the stream. He’s sure he prayed to the Maker’s Bride. And then…

 

What came after that, well, he only remembers what the Templar said as the irons went on. “Villagers said the boy pulsed with magic and brought the girl back from the Maker’s side. We found him clutching the crying girl to him.”

 

When they take him away and during the ride toward Lake Calenhad, Aiden tries to forget. He tries to forget the hateful looks from the people who once wished him good morning and gave him old nets to mend for himself. He tries to forget the vacuous look in his father’s eyes as he stared off into the distance, unseeing, not saying a word in answer to the calls for help. He even tries to forget Gwennie’s crying and the way she clung to his leg begging him not to leave her as they dragged him toward the horses. But he can’t.  Some things he remembers no matter how hard he tries not to. He can't shake the fact that his sister needs him and he tells the Templars that over and over for miles of terrain. He pleads with them, swearing that Gwen can't make it without him. He begs them. He goes on for hours, until they silence him.

[QueenCrow]

III.

 

 

“Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt …  and the wicked and …”

 

She clasps her hands together so tightly that her knuckles are white and her fingers are bloodless.  Her knees are aching from the time she’s been here praying and trying to forget that boy, his haunted eyes, the silent sobs that racked his skinny body. 

 

“Blessed are the peacekeepers…”  The door of the chapel opens and closes behind her.  The heavy wood hanging on groaning hinges warns her that she is no longer alone.  Slowly, she untwines her fingers and is astonished at the way her hands shake no matter how hard she tries to still them.  “The champions of the…” Footfalls sounding as heavy as the chapel door approach behind her and then stop.  She lifts her head from prayer, rises unsteadily from her knees, and turns.  Perhaps her prayers will be answered, she thinks.

 

“Knight-Captain”  The salute from her is not as sharp as it is when she’s had her vial.  He’s one who notices, but no one else could.  He steps forward.  She can see the blue glow of the vial winking from between his fingers, and oh, how easy it becomes to remember her desire to please him.  Her hands tremor ever so slightly as she forces herself to look away to some distant knot on the chapel door.  Without it being put to words, they both know the detached stare toward the door is a ruse, a quiet resistance.  He knows that game very well.  She wills herself to be hard and still as the knot in the wood before her eyes, but standing there at attention, flesh and blood inside the armor, it is an impossibility.

 

“You’ve done well since you came here, Lydia.”  She steals another glimpse of the vial before lifting firm gaze to his righteous face. 

 

“Thank you, Knight-Captain”

 

“But…”  The vial turns over in his fingers and her soul turns too.  “You are soft-hearted, sympathetic.  And while sympathy for one’s charges can be a virtue among those of the Order, it can also be very dangerous.”  He pauses, leaving the last word for her to consider for a moment, turns the vial over in his fingers again, follows the flick of her eyes.

 

“Yes, Knight-Captain.”

 

“The boy you spoke for this morning was removed from his village for his own protection as well as those around him.  He is a mage.  His single-minded determination, emotional outbursts, and his unrelenting persistence indicate that he would do anything to accomplish his goal.   That makes him particularly susceptible to corruption.  It makes him dangerous, to himself, to the people where he came from, and to the brothers and sisters of the Order who depend on you to do your duty.”

 

“Yes, Knight-Captain.”

 

He looks at her for a long moment, watches her eyes flash, unstops the vial and lifts it to her.  “Your duty,” he says.

 

She drinks.  Swallows.  “Thank you, Knight-Captain,” slides through wet lips.  He is right.  People depend on her to keep them safe and she must not fail.

 

“Dismissed.”  She salutes sharply in response to the Knight-Captain’s dismissal, watches him leave, listens to the heavy cadence of his boots on the stone, then turns back, renewed, to kneel before the Bride of the Maker.

 

“Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter.”  The rhythm of her Chant rises, clear-ringing and unwavering.

[RoughTumble]

Nice job on the templars. 

[QueenCrow]

Beautiful!

 Please forgive me for taking a bit to respond.  Sometimes it's difficult for me to accept a compliment without some awkwardness - something I hope to remedy in myself.  You are most kind to leave encouragement.  Thank you very much!

 

 

Nice job on the templars. 

 Thank you!  I very much appreciate your help with the Templars!

[QueenCrow]

IV.

 

 

It is her nineteenth birthday.  She hasn’t mentioned it, and no one else in the Circle has either.  Aside from the letter she received from her mother, she expects it to be a normal day.  But on her nineteenth birthday, Lydia is witness to the Rite of Tranquility.  Without warning, the Knight-Captains enter the barracks and muster all new Templars, march them to the ritual chamber, where they form ranks and then stand silently, twitching, shifting from one foot to the other as the rite is prepared and the Mage is brought in.  She looks away.  It doesn’t seem fitting to watch, but one of the Captains prods her and she turns her head back.  Still, she doesn’t look directly at the Mage, but makes her eyes blur and looks over the condemned man’s head instead.

 

“You who are new to the Order pay attention,” one of the Captains says, pronouncing the word new with a sharpness that means something, though Lydia isn’t quite sure what it is.  None of them have bothered to put on their helmets and Lydia suddenly misses hers.  It hasn’t been necessary to armor fully.  One Mage, one who will not divulge the event after the Rite is complete, doesn’t call for such protocol.  But Lydia wishes she had her helmet. 

 

The Mage pleads, promises he’ll leave the Circle and never be seen or heard from again.  He promises to go into the wilds where he won’t bother anyone.  He asks what he’s done wrong and then apologizes for it before anyone answers him.  He stumbles as they bring him to the center of the chamber and Lydia reaches her hand out as if to help him, then stops, for what can she do?  She’ll likely be reprimanded for making that small gesture.

 

“Does the First Enchanter concur with the judgment?” the Knight-Commander says, and though she can’t be sure, Lydia imagines she hears disgust in his tone and inflection.  Her eyes turn to the First Enchanter and for a moment she feels something urgent without knowing exactly what it is she feels.  Hope, perhaps?  She watches him cast his stare to the floor.  He nods weakly, slowly.  “Yes,” he croaks and Lydia thinks that the Mage must have offended heavily to draw the First Enchanter’s condemnation too.  The First Enchanter is a quiet man, usually amiable, agreeable in Lydia’s mind.

 

Lydia’s hands begin to shake.  She braces them against her sides and she and feels her mother’s letter in pocket of her gambeson.  She doesn’t have to be a seasoned Templar to understand the danger Mages present to the world.  Her mother has warned her from the time she was a small child, and told her what an honor it is to serve the Maker by protecting good people from the danger of magic.  It is a sacred duty.  Though she hasn’t read the letter it’s there, she is sure.  Her mother learned to read and write in order that she and Lydia could stay in touch, and always ends her letters with the most familiar phrase she knows, the easiest for her to write– praise for Lydia doing the Maker’s work.

 

At last, as they restrain him, the Mage seems to understand that he is going to be made tranquil and the Templars lined up begin to understand too.  When the lyrium brand appears, the Mage pitches and rears against the restraints, and the Templars who restrain him.  It isn’t an execution where the condemned man is allowed some final words, but is a quick succession of mechanical acts, where one of the Captains mutters the words to the Rite and no one can hear them as the Mage flops around like a fish out of water - noisy, even when they silence him.  It takes a while for him to stop moving and though Lydia has blurred her vision again, she thinks his stillness corresponds with the crackling sound heard just after the Captains surround him.  And the terrible stink that rises in the chamber.  Lydia puts her hand in front of her mouth, hoping she won’t throw up.  She looks down and sees that the Templar next to her is swaying on his feet, weak-kneed.  Another keeps clearing his throat, as if trying to get rid of a choking knot that has formed there.

 

“Never forget this,” the Captain says as she turns from the Mage to the mustered Templars with the brand in her hand.  As if we ever would, Lydia thinks.  And then the Knight-Commander, Knight-Captains, and First Enchanter leave the chamber.

 

The new Templars mustered to witness remain in ranks, unmoving, unsure whether to take the Mage from restraints, reluctant to touch him.  They let him lay where he is, silent and still, the Chantry sunburst burned into his forehead, for a good long time before they take him down, put him in his place, and return to the barracks.

 

What Lydia learns on her nineteenth birthday, the day she witnesses a man, a Mage, made tranquil isn’t faith, or fear, or obedience, or hardness as much as a sadness and a knowing of the world, how the world works, and, of course, that is exactly what the Knight-Captains intended.

 

The Rite of Tranquility is the end of Lydia’s innocence.  She no longer walks through the Circle library showing soft smiles to her Mage charges.  She doesn’t talk to them anymore, unless it’s absolutely necessary, and then instead of laughing at a small joke or sharing a moment of joy with them as before, she answers their questions, tells them where to go, what to do, to whom they should direct themselves in the proper chain of command.  She stands guard, prays prayers for strength and vigilance, and tries very hard to find truth in doing the Maker’s work.

[QueenCrow]

V.

 

 

In the summer or fall there will be people here, regular common folk, tending graves.  They’ll come with their bouquets of felandris and embrium and prop jars of Andraste’s grace next to markers.   They’ll remember the fallen, whether they adorn ashes of mages or templars, for fighting and dying for the noble cause.

 

But today, as Aiden walks through the field of dead laying as unburned offerings for wolves and crows, he decides that there’s nothing noble about this war, about the killing and the maiming.  He’ll never forget the dead men, dead women, nor the smell of rotting flesh that rises up when he steps over a severed limb or guts that have been spilled out onto the red dirt.  He’ll never forget the sounds he heard when he drew near to the battle and waited, hiding in the thicket on the west side of the field – the strikes of lightening, rush of fire, the sharp ring of steel on steel, rebellious screams pitched over the din of battle which could chill any grown man to the bone, much less a boy like himself.  And then the silence when it was all over.  That is even worse, the silence as Aiden walks among the dead and tries to be grateful that he’s still alive, although he doesn’t know why.  Those sounds, that silence, will follow him into eternity.

 

Why has the Maker spared him and not the mage girl who lays still as stone as he steps over her to get to the east edge of the field, her head laying off to the side, the skull opened as if it were a split melon?  Or the person in templar armor, blackened by magic beyond any identification?  Why has the Maker brought Aiden here, all the way to the Circle tower, only to be held within the confines until that templar – Lydia is her name? – dressed him in disguise and secreted him out of the tower after the enchanters voted?  Was it the Maker who worked through that woman at the lake docks who fed him, dressed him in a new tunic and cloak, and set him on his way?  Why would the Maker save him and not his sister?  It makes Aiden wonder if the Maker cares or if there really is a Maker.

 

He heads east toward Lothering.  The templar woman has said that his sister has gone to the Maker’s side so there’s no reason to go home, and anyway, she said, the templars, if they hunt for his escape path in the middle of this war, will go north toward West Hill, toward Aiden’s home.  That’s what Lydia said as she set him off and decided to stay behind to help the sick woman who gave him new clothes and a pack of food.

 

As he walks into the tree line at the eastern edge of the field of the dead, Aiden decides that there isn’t a Maker.  And even if there is, he doesn’t like him much.

[QueenCrow]

VI.

 

Mirin Redfield is the workingest woman on Lake Calenhad.  She sews for others, charges next to nothing, spends weeks making the simplest garment, taking eight or more stitches in an inch because she loves doing the work.  Each pass of the needle means something precious to her.  “Sewing keeps me from going wrong in the head,” she’s told some of the Circle Tower templars who come to her for arming garments and small clothes.  Mirin stitches her initials on clothing she makes when she is finished.  Not one in ten of the people she sews for ever notices the hidden M.R., but Mirin takes pleasure in it.  She knows it’s a bit of foolishness, but that is her way of being remembered.  After all, a woman, especially a poor woman, doesn’t leave much behind in the world to show she’s been there.  Even the children she bears and raises get their father’s name.  But her sewing, now that’s something she can pass on.  With her initials on someone’s gambeson or tabard, something of her can remain in the world.

 

Of course Mirin keeps that all to herself, because if her husband, Jess, knew how much sewing pleased her, he wouldn’t allow her to do it.  A hard life has taken everything out of the man except meanness, cussing, and a fondness for drink.  Jess Redfield is mean enough to insult the Maker himself.

 

He’s cruel to his wife in other ways, too.  He can get out of the little place at the edge of the lake and go to West Hills or Lothering or even Redcliff, but Mirin is too frail walk the distance.  She hasn’t seen a well day in her life and Jess won’t think of taking a wagon to let her ride along.  Some of the templars and dock folk have hinted that Mirin ought to leave Jess, but she knows he’d hunt her down and kill her, and there are some who believe he’d have that right.  Mirin never tells these things to the people who are her friends, but they have a way of knowing.  More than once, in front of them and everyone, Jess has threatened to send her to her pyre.

 

Lydia understand things aren’t good between Mirin and Jess Redfield, but she doesn’t understand just how bad they are, not until that day she brings the mage boy to the little hut next to the Spoiled Princess Inn to help him escape the trouble brewing before it gets too bad.  She finds Mirin less than an hour away from giving birth – no one has even mentioned she is with child.

 

“Where’s Master Redfield?  Did he go for help?” Lydia asks.

 

“He left two days ago.  I expect he’s on a high lonesome somewhere.”  Mirin twists in agony on the bunk.  “He didn’t know the baby was coming or he’d have been here.  I know he would have.  The baby’s early,” she adds, pleading in her voice so that Lydia won’t say a word of criticism about Jess.

 

Lydia wonders why a wife would protect her husband that way, but Mirin must have her reasons, she decides, and only sniffs.  “It’s too late to go for help.  I think you’re too far along to be left alone.  I guess it’s up to you and me to deliver this baby – mostly you.”  Lydia chuckles to ease herself and to make the woman in the bed smile.  “Being early maybe means a small baby and an easy birth.  I’ll be right here with you and we’ll do the Maker’s work.”

 

The boy mage smuggled from the tower gets his new clothes, the tunic and cloak bearing Mirin’s lovingly embroidered initials hidden among careful stitches – a prayer said as the initials were made, hope for a blessing set in threads.  And the boy gets the pack of supplies Mirin has put together to keep him fed during his escape.  Lydia gives the boy instructions on where to go while Mirin’s cries hurry her attention back in the other direction.  Panicked by the circumstance and urged to be swift, Lydia tells the boy his sister is dead.  She doesn’t know the girl is dead for sure, but she says it so the boy won’t be tempted to go straight home.  If he’s hunted, the boy won’t last past sundown if he heads straight for home and with the trouble starting, she thinks hunters will be much less likely to spend time subduing and transporting captives.  If they catch him, they’ll kill him rather than bring him back.  The lie gives the boy a chance.  It’s for his own good, Lydia decides.  That lie is a sin she’ll take with her to eternity.

 

The labor doesn’t last long, but Mirin is sickly, and it is all she can do to push out the baby, a mewly thing, tiny but healthy.  Lydia wraps the baby in a towel and finishes cleaning up the bed when Jess Redfield stalks in, drunk, cursing his wife because supper isn’t started yet.

 

Lydia swallows her anger and tells him, “Mistress Redfield needs her rest.  She’s just given you a daughter.”

 

“A daughter!”  Jess takes a swig from the bottle in his hand.  “I’d rather have a nug than a daughter for all she’s worth.  I told her a son.  I wanted a son.  All this time, and nothing but a girl!” he says, raging as if he was readying to spit dragon fire.  “Now she’s done with it, she can get up and fix supper!”

 

“I’ll do it,” Lydia says, as she looks over at Mirin, mad enough to wring the man’s neck, glad she's asleep for her husband’s rant.  She suspects that he won’t cook his own food and if she doesn’t do it, Jess will pull his wife out of her bed as soon as Lydia leaves.  There isn’t time for any of that, though.  Neither Jess nor Lydia is surprised when a half-dozen templars arrive from the tower.  And only Jess is caught off guard, cackling his gleeful surprise, when they charge Lydia with aiding in the escape of a mage and arrest her.

[QueenCrow]

VII.

 

 

He doesn’t stop until he’s in the center of Lothering, with thatched rooftops and chimneys smoking, and the traffic of refugees flowing into the little village.  Lothering seems used to the rural folk congregating when there is trouble.  It’s a narrative the village has been through for years, and Aiden easily blends in to the unwashed masses who gather in search of shelter, food, and human comfort in uneasy times.  Undoubtedly, he’s not the only one running from something -  probably not the only apostate.  He spots the Chantry and with only a few steps to go, he cannot bring himself to walk those last steps and ask for passage through the door.  The Chantry, the only familiar thing in an unfamiliar place, fills him with dread.  Under the clothes that Mirin Redfield made for him, he’s sweating, not just from travel or his haste, but in fresh distress.  He turns about, hugs his pack to his chest, and dawdles within sight of the templar guard outside the closed Chantry doors – one of the very few templars who’ve remained with the Chantry, no doubt.

 

On the stone steps of the Lothering Chantry, a small child of uncertain sex, ignored by the gate guard, lies huddled in a soiled blanket that twinkles with melted frost.  In the pale sunlight, the drizzle of snot on the child’s lips and mouth shine like raw egg yolk, and Aiden, disgusted, looks away.  Alive or dead, the child is doomed: it’s not possible to save anyone in this world, except oneself; the Maker gets his amusement from doling out enough food, warmth and love to nourish a hundred people, into the midst of a jostling, slithering multitude of millions.  One loaf of bread to be shared among a thousand wretches – that’s the Maker’s meanest joke.

 

Aiden has already crossed the road toward the bridge when he’s stopped by a voice – a feeble, wheezy bleat, making a sound that could be wordless nonsense, could be “please”, could be “papa”.  He turns, and finds the child alive and awake, gesturing from its swaddle of dirty wool.  The grim façade of the Chantry, stone with no windows down below, flaunts its imperviousness to invaders and children seeking charity.

 

Aiden hesitates, rocking on the balls of his feet, feeling the sweat inside his boots prickle and simmer between his toes.  He cannot bear going backwards when he’s made up his mind to go forwards; he’s crossed the road now and there’s no crossing back.  Besides, it’s hopeless; he could give everything he has and everything he will ever have to destitute children, and still make no lasting difference.

 

Finally, when his heart begins to labor in his chest, he fetches the single coin he has – a silver that the templar Lydia gave him – from his boot and throws it across the road.  His aim is true, and the coin lands on the dirty blanket.  He turns away again, still unsure of the child’s sex.  It doesn’t matter; in a day or a week or a month from now, the child will be dragged to doom.

 

Aiden walks on, his eyes fixed on the place where the road lines the way out of the village and disappears on the horizon, the point shimmering before his stinging eyes.  He needs sleep.  And yes, if truth be told, he is suffering, suffering so much that he’d be relieved to die, or else kill.  Either would do.  As long as a decisive blow is struck for detachment.

[QueenCrow]

VIII.

 

 

Lydia is locked in the tower dungeon to await judgment and isn’t present when another of the templars goes to call on Mirin Redfield and finds her laying in her bunk with Jess sitting in front of the fire.  Mirin rouses herself and turns, her hand covering the side of her face, but her hand isn’t large enough to hide the burn.
 

“That fool mage what escaped from your tower with that fool lady templar burned my wife.”  Jess willfully blames his wife’s injury on the boy Aiden.  What could be easier than for templars to blame a mage, and one already in the dungeon for causing them trouble?  “She screamed her lungs out till I thought I’d have to fist her.  I ain’t had a decent thing to eat for two days.  I need a drink, too.  You got any on you?”

 

Knight Captain Rolf, who led the templars who arrested Lydia, steps forward.  He knows that the mage accused of burning Mirin Redfield was well into his flight the last time he saw Mirin, exhausted from childbirth, but unburned.  “Go get a healer!” he barks in command, not taking the time to argue what he knows about the mage and Lydia.

 

“Get him yourself.”

 

“Go!  Now!” the Captain snarls.  “Or every person on the lake will know what you did to your wife before the day ends!”

 

Jess whines and fusses, uttering he hadn’t done a thing, but after a time, he puts on his cloak and leaves.

 

With Jess gone, the Captain goes to the woman and folds back the thin sheet over her.  Mirin lays there naked, the whole side of her body burned, as if she’d fallen into a fire – or been shoved, Rolf thinks.  He envisions Mirin ripping off her fiery clothes, then laying down on the bunk to suffer for hours.

 

Mirin opens her eyes and mutters, “Ser Rolf?”  She tries to raise her head, but can’t, so Rolf takes her hand.

 

“Redfield has gone for the healer, Mirin.  Be still.” 

 

“No use, Ser.  I’m done for, and I’m glad.  I don’t want to live anymore.  I prayed you’d come.  There’s something I’ve got to give you,” Mirin says, taking her time with the words.  Rolf thinks she means to give him the baby she’s brought into the world, but she lifts her hand and points to a tunic hanging nearby, exquisitely stitched, and expertly embroidered.  Weeks later, when stroking the fine stitches the size of grains of rice, he will discover her initials hidden near the hem.  It is the finest garment he’s ever seen, much less worn, and he looks at it with wonder for a long moment before turning back to the woman whose hand he holds tenderly.

 

“Where’s the baby?” he asks gently.

 

Mirin doesn’t answer for a long time.  “Gone under.”

 

“Oh, Mirin.”  Rolf kneels beside the woman, taking both her hands into his.  “I’ll help send her to the Maker properly.”

 

“Jess’s got rid of her.”  Mirin says it just like that – “Jess’s got rid of her” – as if he’d just stood at the edge of the water and thrown the baby into the lake.

 

Rolf shudders as he can’t help himself from wondering whether the little child was alive when Jess took her from her mother. 

“I loved that baby, loved her as much as I hate him now.  He wouldn’t let something I loved live.”  She explains how she thought she’d seen Jess smother the infant before he took her outside and adds that it isn’t true what Jess said about the mage boy burning her.

 

Mirin says that just before she dies, when there is nothing else that Jess can do to her for telling.  Rolf stays by the woman, listening to the scuffling noise made by rodents in their secret place in the wall.  When Jess Redfield returns, the healer with him, the Rolf tells them it is too late.  Mirin has gone to the Maker’s side.

 

“Who’s going to take care of my old dog?” Jess asks.

 

At that, Knight Captain Rolf rises and connects a merciless throw of his fist into Jess’ face, pounding him as hard as he can, the blow throwing the man through the small room and against the wall of his own hut.  Rolf follows after him with his fist tightened up as if to hit him again, but the healer grabs his arm and holds him back telling him that he mustn’t harm the man further.  Justice must be done, the healer says, but surely what’s happened is the Maker’s will.

[QueenCrow]

IX.

 

 

There are many sorts of outlaws, many sorts of apostates, just as there are many sorts of birds.  A sparrow and an eagle both have wings, but they are not the same.  Singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked nobleman, but most outlaws are simply broken – once good people in the making but become the product of cruel lives.  There are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the Maker and caring only for themselves.  But broken folk are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous as evil ones.  Almost all broken men are common born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house in which they were born until the day someone came around to take them away.  Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away, some to Circle towers, some to war.  They march away, always beneath some banner, some in shackles that are meant to restrain untrained magic, some armed as soldiers with no better weapons than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide.

 

The mages taken from their homes to be sequestered in the Circle towers have heard the stories and they go off with downtrodden, bewildered hearts, despising themselves for the shame and curse they have brought to their families.  And the others, the soldiers, armed not with magic but with blades, they’ve heard the songs and stories too, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they’ll see, of the wealth and glory they’ll win.  Being a templar or a soldier seems a fine adventure to them, the greatest that most of them will ever know.

 

Then, armed with magic or blade, they get a taste of battle.

 

For some, that one taste is enough to break them.  Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the fights they have fought in, but even a being who has survived a hundred battles can break in his hundred and first.  Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe or opened by a burst of mana.

 

They take a wound, and when that’s half-healed they take another.  There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting their breeches from drinking bad water.  If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron helm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the small folk whose lands they’re fighting in, people just like the people they used to be.

 

Aiden, after his escape from the Circle Tower at Lake Calenhad, spent years fighting for one lord or another.  He can no longer remember where it started, or the name of the first nobleman who promised not to turn him in as an apostate if he would fight.  He saw that lord who led him into battle cut down and some other lord shouted that he was his now. 

 

One day he looked up and realized that his friends and kin were gone, that he was fighting beside strangers beneath a banner he didn’t recognize.  He didn’t know where he was or how to get back home and the lord he was fighting for didn’t know his name, yet here he came, shouting for him to form up, giving him leave to use his magic, ordering him to stand his ground.  And then chevaliers came down on him, faceless men all clad in shining steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seemed to fill the world.

 

And Aiden broke.

 

He turned and ran, crawled off in to the dark over the corpses of the slain and found someplace to hide.  All thought of home is gone, and kings and lords and the Maker mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his pain and fear for a few hours.

 

He has lived from day to day for years, from meal to meal, more beast than man.  He slaughters the sheep of farmers, steals their chickens, the fish they’ve hung to dry, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too.  So, after years and years of fighting, living like a beast, Aiden doesn’t think twice about taking the beautiful young girl he finds foraging in the West Hill woods.  He takes his time, day and night, ravaging her, possessing her, using her until she no longer cries, until she lays still and resembles something like the broken husk of a person he himself has become. 

 

When he leaves her laying in a nest of smashed leaves and grass, he doesn’t know her name any more than he knew the name of the last lord for whom he killed.  He won’t know the girl’s name until he reaches a village that vaguely resembles the one in which he was born and hears villagers organizing a search for a missing girl named Gwen.

[Uccio]

Riveting, and I can see the likeness too now. 

[QueenCrow]

Riveting, and I can see the likeness too now. 

 

Thank you!  I'm glad that you can see the likeness now, and also glad that it hasn't been too blatant.  By the way, I adored your latest installment to Caius' tale - though I had to look up "imekari"  I'll be sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for Caius' reaction.

[QueenCrow]

X.

 

SOLD! to Lord Hesperus Vitellius of Vyrantium!

 

Each morning, she works through the mantra of time silently, as if remembering where she came from is the one thing that allows her to realize where she is, and perhaps even prophesy her future.  The song of chains keep time with the cadence of her thoughts.

 

I gave aid to the boy mage.  I was arrested.  I had a trial.  I was judged.  I was dismissed from the Order.

 

Lydia can’t seem to break the fog of want enough to understand that during a time when templars were leaving service of the Chantry and the tower, in droves, dismissal was a mercy.  She might have been forgotten.  She might have thirsted and starved in damp dungeon darkness.  Alone.  But her mind becomes unfocused during the part of the mantra that makes her blood cool and her veins ache with terrible need.  No matter.  This is a time to grasp at what’s real.  There is no strength for what if?.

 

Lyrium.  I … lyrium was all …

 

The silent words filtering through her mind stutter, halt, fail, give way to out-of-body imagery that is one step away from delirium.  Inside her mind, she watches herself on the streets of Denerim - hustling, pushing, finally extorting, ultimately stealing.  The blue vial is always the prize.  A wan woman who looks just like her flashes in mind’s eye – scavenging, begging, eagerly mouthing the member of a portly merchant, the blue vial prize in his hand.  She must remember.  She must.  How else is she to make sense of what is happening?

 

I was betrayed by the merchant.  I was delivered to the slavers.

 

Those two facts plucked from disintegrated clarity explain it – the steps coming down from the auction block, the chains rattling around her bare feet, the manacles.  The collar and leash.

 

I was transported over the sea.  I was sold to a Tevinter Magister.  

 

 

“He’s known for his appetite for the pretty little playthings, tight bellies, pert breasts, elves usually.  What do you imagine Hesperus wants with her?”  Lydia stares at the men discussing her as she moves slowly by.  They look at her dismissively.  Now that they have been outbid, interest in her is confined to passing curiosity.

 

She hears one of the men chuckle, watches him nod affirmation.  “Hesperus has other appetites this one will serve.”

 

Each morning she wakes in the villa of Hesperus of House Vitellius and recites the mantra until they begin her – training.  Then each day after she neglects the mantra, she forgets.  It’s the smallest doses of lyrium she is given before she is to perform that help her to forget.  It’s arcs of electricity searing into her torso and limbs urging her to obey the commands she has been given.

 

“Show us what a templar of the Southern Chantry can do, slave!”

 

She learns quickly.  She devours the lyrium allotted her and even looks forward to these performances for then, and only then, when she is expected to make a display of the Maker’s work, is her starvation for the blue vial relieved.  She learns that the pain arcing into her body will stop the moment she gathers the will to silence whatever apprentice has been made to goad her.  She learns that if she enters the displays, salutes her Dominus and throws a Holy Smite toward an underling - an elf is usually best - that is dramatic enough to strike amused awe into the crowd of Magisters and Alti, but restrained enough that her skill doesn’t invoke fear, there will be no pain at all.  Only lyrium and invisible chains, just the same as when she served the Order.