Dragon Age: Last Flight

by Liane Merciel

  “No,” the lead templar replied. The baritone she’d heard earlier was his. Sweat-caked dust coated his mustache, making it impossible to discern its true color, and Valya could see little else of the man’s face. She didn’t think he was from Hossberg, though. She knew all the senior templars there, and she didn’t recognize this one. Besides, his accent was unfamiliar.

  “The first two holds we tried were empty,” he was saying. “Entirely abandoned. No one’s sure why. The locals told us that the Wardens had sold them their spare horses and livestock. At a pittance, too. They seemed to be in a hurry. But they didn’t leave any explanation for why they might have run off or where they might have gone. We heard no rumors of darkspawn in the area, nor did we encounter any ourselves.”

  “Deserters?” Sulwe asked doubtfully.

  The templar seemed to share her doubts. He shook his head, loosing a fine cloud of dust from his hair. It hung in the torchlight, making a dull red halo. “They didn’t try to keep it a secret that they were going. Anyway, one hold might have deserted, but both?”

  “Maybe one group convinced the other to go. It would still only be a handful of Wardens.” The scarred woman sounded none too convinced herself.

  “Maybe.” The templar shrugged with a clank of armor and another puff of red dust. “I couldn’t tell you. All I can say is that we didn’t see them. After the second hold, we took the Imperial Highway until Churneau, then broke off north to come here. Picked up some letters and correspondence from others along the way. I have them in my pack, but I will tell you now that what we have are letters from conscripts’ families and dispatches from nobles. We bring you no word from other Grey Wardens. As I said, we never saw any. If we had, we might not have bothered to come this far.”

  Sulwe nodded and motioned Caronel forward. “We’re grateful to you for bringing the letters. My colleague will show you to your quarters. Please rest and refresh yourselves. In the morning we can discuss your refuge.”

  They’re refugees too? The thought spun confusedly in Valya’s head. She had assumed the templars had come to track down the Hossberg mages. But it didn’t sound like that was their intention at all. It didn’t even sound like they knew the Hossberg mages existed.

  If they’d come from somewhere south of Churneau … That was halfway across the world. She’d spent the past two months staring at maps of Thedas; she knew exactly how long and difficult that journey would be. Even in summer, with the foraging relatively easy and the weather kind, that was no leisurely stroll.

  Had they, too, come to escape the mage-templar war?

  They had. She learned that, and more, over the next few weeks. The templars hailed from southern Orlais, not far from the shores of Lake Celestine. Their leader, Diguier, had been a Knight-Lieutenant in his order. He had heard of the slaughter at Kirkwall and the chaos of White Spire, and, along with a handful of like-minded comrades, had decided that they wanted no part of it.

  Originally there had been eight of them. Two had died along the way, and one had deserted. Valya had difficulty gleaning particulars, but she gathered that both the deaths and the desertion had been connected to the templars’ lyrium addiction. The supply they’d stolen when they absconded had not, evidently, been sufficient to sustain them to Weisshaupt.

  All of that she pieced together from the meager rumors others gave her. She never spoke to the templars directly. She crossed halls to avoid them, pulled back into doorways to keep from catching their eyes. It was stupid—they had no reason to suspect her of anything and no right to say a word if they did—but she couldn’t stop herself. Old habits were too strong.

  She watched them as a doe watches wolves. Laros, the dwarven templar, struggled with his weight; there seemed to be a sadness in him that he tried to press down with honey cakes and candied almonds, even if it meant his armor barely fit. Reimas, the only woman among them, held herself icily aloof and never smiled, but was so gentle that she carried captured insects from her room and, no matter the weather or the time of day, set them free outside without fail.

  And Diguier, bereft of his duties, spent his days alternately sparring with Grey Wardens on the practice field or praying alone, fervently, in their little chapel. He hardly slept, he barely ate, and he didn’t seem to notice Valya or the other mages. All he did was pray, while worry carved deeper furrows in his face and the weight fell off him day by day.

  “He wants peace,” Sekah said as the Hossberg mages gathered in the library one morning. The season was turning toward autumn, and the blistering heat of the Anderfels’ short summer already seemed a faraway thing. Days came crisp, with a chilly edge that took until noon to melt and warned of bitter nights ahead.

  “Between mages and templars?” Valya asked. Like the others, she wore a borrowed gray cloak to ward off the worst of Weisshaupt’s drafts. It helped, but in a few weeks they’d probably need more to stay warm. Sitting motionless in the library for hours on end didn’t help much with that.

  The younger mage shook his head and turned back toward the weathered old map he’d been reading. They’d worked through about half of the chamber’s contents, but there always seemed to be another map or diary or bundle of bloodstained letters to get through. And for all that work, they’d found maybe four references to Wardens who had disappeared mysteriously, one darkspawn with uncanny abilities of speech and reasoning, and two or three possibly related incidents they weren’t sure the Grey Chamberlain would deem relevant, but had marked for his consideration anyway.

  “Peace for himself,” Sekah said. “Some sign from the Maker that he did the right thing. Better yet, some sign of permission that he won’t be shirking his duty to the Chantry if he becomes a Grey Warden.”

  Valya blinked. “He wants to become a Grey Warden? How do you know that?”

  “Because I’ve talked to him,” Sekah said patiently. His eyes were large and dark and solemn. “You can talk to templars, you know.”

  “Maybe you can,” Valya muttered. “I can’t even stand looking at them.”

  “Try to,” Sekah said. “They might be our comrades-in-arms soon. If we’re lucky. If the Maker gives Diguier the sign he’s looking for, and the First Warden doesn’t decide to pick a side in this conflict after all.”

  Valya hesitated. “How do we make that happen?”

  “The Maker’s ways are his own. There’s nothing we can do about that. But as for the First Warden…” Sekah curled the corner of the map he’d been studying around his finger, just enough to point the yellowed parchment at Valya. “We find something useful. Something to prove our worth. We give the Grey Wardens whatever answers they’re trying to find about the Fourth Blight. Do you have anything like that?”

  “Not yet,” Valya said, “but if that’s what it takes, I will.”

  7

  5:12 EXALTED

  “You’re the only survivors?”

  “Yes,” Isseya answered wearily for what felt like the thousandth time. “We lost the royals. The Archdemon blasted them out of the air.”

  She understood why Warden-Commander Senaste was upset. They were all upset. And angry, and afraid. The loss of the entire Antivan royal family, as well as Warden-Commander Turab, was a major blow to the power and prestige of the Grey Wardens.

  The others had regrouped in Wycome as planned. The ship carrying Ostiver, Fenadahl, and their charges remained out at sea, but the griffon riders had made contact with them twice and, for the time being, it seemed that they were safe.

  It was unclear how long that safety would last. The Blight was spreading out of Antiva like a wind-whipped wildfire. As yet no nation had organized any significant resistance, and the Free Marches were more splintered than most. Each city-state seemed to prize its independent sovereignty almost as much as its own survival; with darkspawn on their doorstep, they seemed nearly as lost in denial as the Antivans had been.

  In the streets of Wycome, the prevailing mood was still caught between disbelief and determination. Every day its citi
zens could be seen drilling with makeshift weapons in hastily assembled militias, or working feverishly to reinforce the city walls with earthen bulwarks and fresh-hewn logs. They were out at the crack of dawn and, under a parade of flickering torches, worked late into the night, but it was plain to all the Wardens that these efforts were futile. The city’s walls were not made to fend off darkspawn, and its people’s courage was matched by neither skill nor numbers. What they should be doing, Isseya thought, is evacuating their civilians to the safety of the sea islands and sending their soldiers to Starkhaven or Kirkwall.

  But they couldn’t. Wycome was a fishing town. Its boats were made to hug the coast; they weren’t built to withstand deep water, nor to brave storms on the open seas. The handful of merchant ships they’d had were long since fled. And even if the Free Marchers wanted to gamble on their boats, they didn’t have enough to carry everyone to safety.

  Traveling overland to Starkhaven or Kirkwall was no better. To reach either of the larger cities, the citizens of Wycome would have to walk directly into the path of the Blight as the darkspawn raged south from Antiva. The fastest horses might be able to make the journey in time to evade the darkspawn hordes—but people on foot, or in wagons drawn by mules and oxen, would be slow and easy prey.

  So they had no choice but to stand and fight, and they had no chance of prevailing. There seemed a good chance that the city might fall before Ostiver’s ship reached its harbor.

  That, Isseya knew, was the real reason for Senaste’s icy tone. The Warden-Commander was clearly a woman seldom acquainted with defeat. An imperious blond warrior, hardened by twenty years of service as a Grey Warden, she carried herself with the rigor of one who expected sheer force of will to crush all problems in her path—and whose life had been shaped by the success of that strategy.

  The Blight, however, had given her an unwanted taste of failure and promised another. And that, even more than the loss of Antiva’s royal family, or the deaths of two good Grey Wardens and their griffons, was what had Senaste’s temper so sharp.

  “How did you survive where Turab and Dendi did not?” she demanded. The Warden-Commander had claimed the office of Wycome’s militia captain. Pennons and regalia from past campaigns draped the walls, along with old maps whose moisture-curled edges furled up over the nails that held them in place. Senaste’s gaze was fixed on those maps as she spoke, but Isseya doubted that the Warden-Commander was really putting much effort into studying them. There wasn’t any need.

  “It wasn’t my doing, not in any significant part,” the elf said. “Garahel and his griffon baited the Archdemon into chasing them. I distracted it a little—well, more truthfully, my griffon, Revas, did—but they did most of the real work. The Archdemon tried to pull us out of the sky with a … a hurricane of dark energy, I don’t know what you’d call it. No magic that I know made that vortex; it had no connection to the Fade.

  “It would have destroyed us all, but somehow Garahel’s passenger, the mage Calien, was able to make an explosion with his spells that tore us free. They were the heroes of the day. I did almost nothing.”

  Senaste turned back toward the young elf. Sunlight spilling through one of the office’s high windows gilded her short, near-white hair. Her stern stance relaxed as her shoulders lowered almost imperceptibly. “Throwing yourself in front of the Archdemon as a distraction is not ‘almost nothing.’ This was your first battle?”

  “Yes.”

  “You acquitted yourself well. Amadis Vael of Starkhaven and Calien d’Evaliste are valuable allies. Not to mention the likelihood that your intervention allowed three other Grey Wardens to reach safety with their own passengers.” The Warden-Commander was briefly silent, as if weighing a decision. Then she nodded briskly to herself. “You’ll come back with me to Starkhaven. All of you. You and your brother, however, will go to the Anderfels after we have rallied that city’s defenses.”

  “The Anderfels?” Isseya repeated blankly.

  “Wycome will not hold. Its defenses are too weak and it’s too close to the Blight. Even if we could raise armies overnight—and we can’t—we’d have to march them to exhaustion to arrive before the darkspawn come pouring down the coast, and a tired soldier is a dead one.” Senaste swept a callused hand at the nearest maps. “The Blight will take Rivain, as well. The peninsula is already cut off from the mainland. There is no hope of saving it if the darkspawn flow that way. I’ll send ships and a flight of griffons to save whoever we can, but the nation itself is a loss.

  “But in Starkhaven and Kirkwall, we may be able to make a stand. There, we may have the time, and the force, we need to stop the Blight.” Her pale blue eyes fixed on Isseya’s, pitiless as a hawk’s. “If we can gather enough allies to the cause.”

  “Orlais and the Tevinter Imperium are stronger,” Isseya said. She wasn’t arguing, just confused. Why the Anderfels?

  “They are,” Warden-Commander Senaste agreed, “and they’re also more prideful. You and Garahel have neither titles nor noble blood. Worse, you’re elves. Sending you to either of those empires would be construed as an insult. In the Anderfels, however, a person’s accomplishments count for more than her name. Fighting an Archdemon to a draw is precisely the sort of thing that impresses them. So that’s where you’ll go.

  “Gathering them will not be easy or swift. The Anders are a scattered people. Most of them live in small towns and villages; there are hardly any cities worthy of the name. There are few roads, and the land is bitterly inhospitable. Only a griffon rider would have a prayer of gathering the people we need.”

  “And you want me to be that griffon rider?” Isseya asked. What she was hearing seemed impossible. She was so new that she hadn’t even built up proper saddle calluses yet. The mantle of a Grey Warden sat uncomfortably on her shoulders; she couldn’t imagine using that authority to push the villagers of the Anderfels into war against the darkspawn.

  But Senaste was deadly serious. “One of them. Yes. You, your brother, and very likely Calien, among others. I think they will rally to your heroism.”

  “If they don’t?”

  The Warden-Commander shrugged. The wall of ice dropped back over her mien, and she returned to perusing the maps on the walls. “They will. You’ll make them.”

  That was as clear a dismissal as Isseya had ever heard. She bowed her head helplessly and retreated from the office.

  Outside, the sun was bright in a clear blue sky. Lacy ribbons of white cloud streaked across its shining glory, undisturbed by any hint of wind. The perpetual storm of the Blight was a bruised purple thumbprint in the distance, barely visible from there.

  Its presence hung heavily over the town, though. The smell of boiling pitch permeated the air, along with the smoke from dozens of cook fires. The people of Wycome had slaughtered their livestock and were salting or smoking all the meat they could in preparation for siege. Rows of whole fish lay on wicker racks next to sliced strips of beef and goat. Long after sunset, they’d continue their preparations, smoking meat over the fires laid to illumine the barricade-builders’ work.

  It was a brave, doomed effort. Isseya couldn’t stand watching.

  She made her way to the city’s lone market gate. Wycome had four gates, but only one was big enough to admit two-horse wagons. A small commercial district had grown up around it, and it was there that Isseya headed. Any local alehouse would be crowded with citizens trying to talk themselves into hope, and she couldn’t bear listening to any more of that just now.

  The nearest tavern had a sign over the door proclaiming it to be the Glass Apple. Like all the others, it was crowded to the point of bursting, but Isseya pushed inside anyway.

  A momentary hush greeted her entry. When the patrons saw that she was wearing the insignia of a Grey Warden, however, they turned back to their drinks and conversations.

  Elves are no trouble as long as they can be categorized, Isseya thought sourly. Warden or servant, it didn’t matter which, as long as they didn’t challenge any
one’s preconceptions.

  Even as the thought crossed her mind, though, she was ashamed of it. Maybe it was only because she was a Warden, but the Free Marchers had been kinder to her than most humans. She only wanted to think badly of them to lessen her own guilt at being unable to help.

  Wrestling with that unwanted pang of self-awareness, Isseya made her way to the bar. The crowd parted before her, muttering respectfully about the Grey Wardens and gratitude and Wycome’s salvation. She tried to close her ears to their chatter.

  “Wine,” she told the barkeep.

  “Not much of that left, and what little remains is piss-poor swill. I wouldn’t serve that to a Warden,” the man replied, simultaneously proud and apologetic. He was a tall man, skinny except for a prodigious potbelly, with a face burned red by the sun, and carrot-orange hair. It was hard to say which was brighter, his ruddy face or the shock of hair above it. “Got standards to maintain.”

  “What do you have?” Isseya asked.

  “Dwarven ale, if you’ve a taste for that. Blackwater rum. Some winter cider, though we’re running low on that, too. The way people are drinking, in another few days we’ll be selling beer brewed from spit and moldy bootstraps.”

  “I’ll take the cider,” Isseya said. The barkeep poured it efficiently, waving aside her attempts to pay him.

  Across the room, her brother’s voice rose above the din. “Isseya!”

  She scanned the room. It didn’t take long to find Garahel in the crowd. He’d claimed, or had been ushered to, the best table in the house. Kaiya and Taiya were with him, as was Amadis, her nose scrunched as she tried to will herself to choke down a mug of pitch-black dwarven ale. Calien sat in a corner of the room, a dark blue cowl pulled low to hide his face. He hadn’t tried to replace the feathered hood lost during the Archdemon’s attack, which Isseya considered a significant improvement; the mage looked much more dignified without those feathers bobbing over his head.