Chapter 38: Crossroads - The Maker's Hand

Raviathan woke on a wooden floor in a panic. He stared around the strange room for a moment before remembering where he was. After Allison fell asleep, he had moved to the kitchen floor to keep warm by the stove where his clothing and armor dried. The fire had died down to embers and ash, but the thicker walls of the house held the heat in well. He couldn’t remember his dream, only shadows of being lost and afraid. After a quick breakfast of cheese, bread, and a jar of fruit, Raviathan scrawled a note to Allison then left the quiet cottage with Venger behind him.

Frost lay thick on the ground, the grass crunching with each step. Raviathan shivered in the darkness before dawn. Though Venger’s coat was short, the dog didn’t seem to mind the cold. The panic of the town lay still for a time. Their fears, tangible as bitter roots, were silenced in much needed sleep.

With only birdsong as his company, Raviathan walked through the town at random. Had this been Denerim, the guards would have taken him to prison for being outside the alienage during curfew. He was a Grey Warden, and yet, without another human to accompany him, he was back to being a second class citizen. However, with the coming darkspawn, townsfolk, guards, and refugees couldn’t be bothered with him. How in the Maker’s name was he going to get through Ferelden on this fool’s mission?

If only Duncan were still around. More unpleasant news awaited judging by Duncan’s secretiveness and Alistair’s ineptitude. Raviathan could feel the taint inside himself like a parasite finding root, becoming entrenched deeper than his bones. A dull burning remained in his veins as the sin of the world settled into his body. It was still a foreign thing, but that wouldn’t last. The sin would become part of him. No escape.

A blush of pink touched the night’s darkness as Raviathan found a small garden nestled into an older series of buildings. Perhaps one of the lords lived here. Strange how they kept this garden. Though clean with medicinal herbs in neat rows next to winter squash, an old brier patch twisted along the length of a low wall. The vines tumbled in on themselves, grey, thick with age. Thorns spiked in all directions ready to shred the unprepared. Why had this gnarled thing been left alone?

Raviathan lifted a hand to the ancient rose, his palm a hair’s breadth away from a nest of jutting thorns. Letting a tendril of magic loose, Raviathan explored, layer by year made layer of armored wood. Dead and more death. A battered army armed with swords and spears, yet it fell after long battles against neglect, weather, and time.

He almost left when one last branch, hidden in the deep recesses, caught his attention. Even though the brier appeared to be a dried out husk, and the mass lay as long dead bones, a tiny sliver of life warred at the core of the rose. So faint. So easily crushed. One harsh winter, and the brier would truly be as dead as the sun cracked corpse it resembled.

With the sun still hidden behind distant mountains, Raviathan created his first spell. Despite all the problems being a mage entailed, had he a choice in the matter, Raviathan would never give up magic. Magic had cost Solyn her life, the beautiful soul ending in a torturous death. Magic was a secret that could kill him even now with their status as Grey Wardens hidden.

In his early childhood days he learned what a terrible and insidious thing a lie of omission was. His best friends could never know or they would be in danger too. At the age of five a wall had descended between them that only he was aware of. He loved his cousins, but he could never really be a part of them again. They might play or cry together, they could give comfort, but there was a distance forever put in place that had pained him in those tender years.

Only his mother, aunt, and father knew, and as the women in his life died, his father remained a constant. Since Duncan’s death, his father lingered as the last witness. His father had never shamed him, not really, but he was always uncomfortable with magic, with having a son whose soul was a living bridge to the Fade. Cyrion never said anything, but his discomfort lingered in every shadowed glance or in the tension carried in his lined brow.

Still, with all the danger and estrangement, Raviathan loved magic. When he didn’t think about his father’s disquiet or his friends, in the late hours when he and Solyn played their energies against each other, he knew what living was. He felt sorry for the rest, his parents and friends, who would never understand that feeling. They would never understand how brilliant the light inside felt, how it made his blood vibrate with electricity. Magic was primal, shown inside him like his own personal sun on a warm spring day--full of life and creation--as if happiness could be a physical thing and existed at the very center of him, like a second heart he could feel.

When he was sad, using just a little power, just a lick of flame to light a candle, that little zing of energy could sooth him like arms of sunlight wrapping around him and lifting his heart. When his mother died and grief overwhelmed him, he had turned the iron stove red hot in order to feel the comfort of his magic. The heat had scorched the wall and cracked the windows. If Solyn and his father hadn’t been in subsumed the same grief he would have been punished. Solyn would have assumed his power was out of control. Instead, he scrubbed and whitewashed the wall before the two came back home. The frost was blamed for the cracked glass.

One time he was resting against his mom after a particularly grueling session with Solyn had left him exhausted. He was sweating and limp, but a quiet triumph held him after mastering a difficult spell that would shield him from magic. When Solyn sent a spell at him, he could withstand it behind a hair thin barrier of solid magic. That was the first real spell he was able to master instead of fumbling instinct. Solyn had given him a fierce look of pride for it.

He lay there resting his back to his mother’s front. Her long fingers, so nimble compared to his own still clumsy digits that couldn’t get the compositions on his harp right, brushed his hair. He could have fallen asleep like that, cuddled with his mother, but the feeling was too good to sleep. He wanted to savor it, his mother’s protection and sense of hard won accomplishment. He always associated his mother’s voice with his father’s pipe tobacco. He loved the smell of the pipe tobacco, smoky and spicy, sweet but not cloying. It was a good smell, rich and masculine. Her voice was like the feminine version of that smell. Low and cool, enticing with the wisdom of adults and exotic places.

She asked softly, her lips near his ear so he could feel her breath, “What’s it feel like to do magic?”

He raised his arm, still trembling from the effort of learning the spell, and pointed at the afternoon sunlight on a cracked window. The sunlight glinted in the cracks, making it look like a spider web made of light with faint rainbows. “It’s like that light on the inside. It’s what beautiful feels like.”

Threading his arm through the layers of brambles, Raviathan placed a careful finger on that slender branch that still held the last remnants of life. Had he been certain that the darkened windows held no witness, he would have sent the magic from a safe space, but the spell’s bright flame had to be concealed by sending it through touch.

That little life responded like a frightened child clutching at a parent. The brier shifted with newfound growth as his magic flowed forth. A thorn pressed into the palm of Raviathan’s hand, but he couldn’t stop the spell after feeling the last desperate hope of this little life. A rose. The brier was nothing to most, a plant lost to indifference, but another lesson his magic had brought was the knowledge that all living things struggled for survival. No matter how humble that life was, all living things were touched with the essence of the Fade.

Raviathan watched as a bud formed. He smiled, withdrawing his hand as carefully as possible. Even so, more than one scratch scored his arm, leaving the points of long thorns red. The magic continued to pulse at the plant’s core, feeding it though the source of the power left.

Silly little rose. You’re out of season.

Solyn had warned him of the demons and abominations. If he ever gave into a demon he would become a mad thing incapable of control. The dark side to magic made everyone fear, though he had never felt the call of demons. She confided that she had heard them whisper to her after her sister died, probably expecting he was having the same experience. There was nothing though. No demons. No whispers to take the pain away or promises of power. Solyn didn’t believe him though it was the truth. The powers he called could be used for destruction, the stove was evident enough of that, but magic always remained a living, vibrant thing. It was too life affirming. Maybe if he heard demons he would feel differently.

The taint though. It was becoming part of him. It was darkness made real, but it wasn’t at war with his magic. Odd these two forces inside him, hope and sin.

The crawl of the taint, that sense of intense wrongness that he felt from the darkspawn, irritated like a mild acid that slowly ate at him, constant yet internal. There was no shying away from it. No escape. It reminded him of Duncan’s iron will. Now more than ever he understood what the Grey Wardens were about, why they fought and were willing to do whatever it took to end the darkspawn. Grey Wardens were like a race on to themselves. The consequence of the taint, and by extension the darkspawn, was as real as their own blood. Grey Wardens knew, knew better than any other what the taint was. Duncan knew. Now Raviathan did as well. He was becoming.

Becoming, but what would be the end point? What happened to a body that lived with this poison for decades?

He dared look at his feet only once. When Alistair saw his long, bony feet, the toes were purple running into red half way to his heel. The dirty sock that had barely kept frostbite at bay was shoved back on in haste. The cold that had been holding back this winter now resurged in force. Numb and bleary, Alistair pulled boots on tired feet. Armor followed, but he was too big for the small tent and kept knocking things over or getting stuck.

Squinting at the sun that seemed way too bright, Alistair rubbed at his scalp. While at Ostagar, he forgot how much over-bright sunlight could hurt, like it was sending a knife into his brain through his eyes. Morrigan fed small twigs to the fire like a crow hunched over a dead carcass. Maker’s breath, how could she not be freezing in those rags. Soup burbled in the pot. Alistair eyed it suspiciously. Instead, he grabbed one of two potatoes left cooking in the ashes.

“Ow!” Alistair dropped it back in the ashes, waving his burning fingers to cool them.

Morrigan smirked at him. “Did you never learn that objects left in a fire get hot?”

“Don’t. Just ... just don’t.”

“Such a wit in the morning. How refreshing considering your normal stone-brained state.”

“Funny. You don’t look like a spider anymore, but you’re still as creepy.”

“An attitude like that, no wonder your fellow left you last night.”

Stung, Alistair let the argument go. Taking another chance with the potato, he tossed it back and forth until it cooled. He bit into it while still steaming hot, but if he didn’t get something into his stomach, he was sure he’d start devouring himself. His teeth turned hot, his tongue burning, but he got the half-cooked tuber down. A carrot and second half cooked potato stopped the cramping in his stomach. Maybe they could get some food at the inn? Something with meat to keep his stomach from hurting and, bless the Maker, a bit of cheese?

Part of him felt like he didn’t deserve food. They were dead. His brothers. Duncan. Their bodies left to the darkspawn to be gutted, turned into sick altars. Marcus, who had sparred with him. Alistair couldn’t get rid of the images of mutilated bodies from the Tower of Ishal out of his mind.

Those men didn’t deserve that. Not one of them. They were noble, good men. Some were a bit rough, but to be left on the field, their bodies desecrated? Maker, please, let them have died quickly. Guide their souls to your side. Please, Maker. Duncan was a good man. The best.

The pain crushing his chest competed with the incessant gnaw of his stomach. A better man than he would have the will to honor their passing with a fast. How could he even feel hungry with all this loss? Still, his stomach insisted on attention like a fly buzzing about his head.

Grabbing the last potato and tossing it from hand to hand until it cooled, Alistair left their little camp, eating along the way.

Could they get rid of Morrigan? For the life of him, Alistair didn’t know why she had agreed to come with them. Granted, she had been helpful in the two skirmishes they had. He could grudgingly admit that, but why was she here? Not because her mother told her to go with them, surely. She was mean, disagreeable, selfish, and those yellow eyes made his skin crawl, like she was a snake sizing up a mouse. Maybe she would get bored and slither away. If the Maker would bless them, that is.

Was Rav still mad at him? When the elf said they should separate yesterday, Alistair could have sworn that for a moment the earth and sky flipped. Not abandoned, please. Not again. His vision burred as he tried to right what was going horrible wrong. Now the only person he had left was mad at him. He knew learning about the taint would be painful. If he hadn’t been so clumsy about it...

Alistair walked through the town, grabbing some Chantry notices as he passed. Loghain and Duncan and Cailan and the whole world was a mess that tumbled in his head without relief. This stiffness in his legs and back abated as he moved, but in this condition, the sword at his back was more decoration than weapon.

In what passed for a town square, a grass field trampled to mud with a well at the center, a barely organized crowd of refugees had gathered. At the center an old woman presided, ordering people to beds or into new lines with no nonsense brusqueness. To his surprise, there was the very person he was looking for. The elf sat on a crate as one tattered farmer or worn family moved forward in the line. They left with fresh bandages or a jar of red concoction, all bowing in thanks as they left.

“Miriam,” the elf called in that deep voice of his. Considering how many times he had heard the elf speak over the last week, that voice still surprised him. Though often soft spoken, that voice could snap out commands that had people jump before they realized what they were doing. Such a small man for that kind of vocal power, but Alistair understood why Duncan had recruited him. “Did that delivery of fresh bandages arrive yet?”

“Looks like the boy is coming now.” The old woman coughed, a dry wheeze that sounded chronic.

Raviathan gestured for the older man next in line to sit. Judging from the ages of the two getting attention, Alistair figured they were a boy and his grandfather.

There was so little he knew about the elf. There were a few rumors about him at Ostagar, of his temper and, um, certain activities. Rav fought well enough though his inexperience made him hesitate. Given his size, Alistair was surprised by how well the elf used his agility and speed to equal out his opponent’s strength. With things like ogres, that was a much needed skill that Alistair still had to develop.

The elf was patient and kind when he wanted to be, giving comfort to a child, money to refugees, or helping the sick as he did now. All Morrigan did was scoff and criticize, her snarled lip indication that she thought helping others was a waste. Rav could be a diplomat for the crown the way he handled Morrigan and the Chasind. But then last night ... the elf had been brutal. Maybe Alistair was wrong, and maybe Rav wasn’t as kind as he thought. The way he went after those bandits was pretty brutal too, but then, there was the elf now, healing people while Morrigan sat sharpening her claws.

He shook his head unable to come up with any conclusions. What Alistair knew was that he wasn’t wanted. At all. By anyone. That was clear. The story of his life, he thought. Why should things change now? With that thought, a fresh wave of loss for Duncan welled in his chest, stealing his breath.