Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights

by Patrick Weekes

  A second cup of coffee, and a killer who came in dreams—or sleep, since dwarves did not dream. The Carta Assassin was afraid.

  “Interesting to see both Dalish and city elves working with this … thing.” The Mortalitasi grimaced, and then her eyes snapped down to her stirring stick, still moving of its own accord in her wineglass. “I see specks at the bottom, wisp.” Her voice held a warning, and the stirring stick jerked and moved faster.

  “The templars,” the Bard said. “How did they find your safe house, monsieur?”

  The Assassin grimaced. “Guess it wasn’t so safe after all. Haven’t used it since, I’ll tell you that for free.”

  “House Qintara fell with the city of Ventus,” the Executor said, shifting under the cowled robe. “The Qunari may possess the Wolf’s idol.”

  “I do not believe so.” Charter smiled. “I had agents involved with House Qintara before it fell.” Or more accurately, while it fell, but that was more information than the room needed. “The idol was sold or traded to the Danarius family.”

  “So you already knew that?” the Assassin asked, scowling.

  “And now we know that the Dread Wolf has agents working for him,” the Bard added, his mask glittering in the firelight as he tossed back his golden locks, “and that he has the power to kill those who oppose him as they sleep. Useful information.” The hair toss was effective but a little clumsy. He normally styled his hair differently.

  “And another point in favor of this so-called god being a demon,” the Mortalitasi added.

  “Or a poisoner. The Crows have odorless poisons heavier than the air. They steal the breath from sleepers while leaving those seated or standing unharmed.”

  “I know poisons,” the Assassin growled, leaning forward and glaring at the cloaked Executor, “and I know magic, and I know which killed my boys.”

  “This does not help us eliminate the Wolf. You might as well suggest we throw a rock at him.” The Executor turned, the featureless black underneath the hood suddenly looming as it centered on the Assassin. “You stink of lies and fear.”

  The Assassin leaned in, his blade already halfway from its sheath, and the Bard was suddenly between them, one hand raised before the Assassin, the other resting gently on the Executor’s leather glove. “Please, mes amis. If we argue, none of us will learn what we came to find.”

  Charter gave the Bard credit—she wouldn’t have touched the Executor herself unless she’d had a weapon drawn. But then, given the reputation of the Orlesian bards, it was likely that he had a weapon closer than she thought. His hands were ungloved, his fingers long and pale. The flashy rings had no tan lines around them, so they were costuming, not normally part of his outfit.

  “I believe the dwarf,” the Mortalitasi said, “and I have information that supports it. I believe I know where the idol went after it left House Qintara. Stop.”

  The last was directed to her stirring stick, which abruptly went still in her cup. She removed it and gently eased it into a hidden pocket of her staff, just below the amethyst crystal gripped by the silver figures.

  THE MORTALITASI’S TALE

  In Tevinter, the mages made the greatest possible mistake. They chose to rule. In doing so, they shackled themselves to desks and appointments, using their waking hours to command men when they could have been commanding the magical forces that underlie the very fabric of this world.

  In Nevarra, the king rules, and the common people are happy, or at least as happy as common people ever get. And the mages, the Mortalitasi? We rule the king. With a small investment of time, we command one man, and that man commands the others, and beyond that, we need not concern ourselves with them.

  We perform rituals. The specifics need not concern you—only a mage would truly understand, and none of you are mages, unless the Executor wishes to correct me? Ah, so mysterious and silent. But the Mortalitasi know how to pry answers from silence.

  Suffice it to say that we find places where the Veil is thin, and behind it, the Fade flows like a mighty river. In these places, our magic may bind spirits, as is only right and natural, and in so doing, guide the current of that river, so that it flows more to our liking.

  It is not nonsense, dwarf. That your people are blind to magic does not remove its effect upon this world.

  There are others among the Mortalitasi who do other work—the Guides of the Path to shepherd the corpses, the Mourn Watch to deal with magic gone awry—but those who do as I do, who bind the Fade and the world beneath it to their will … we are the truest mages, whatever those who question our methods might say where they think we cannot hear.

  It is in this understanding that we allowed a Tevinter mage to visit and perform a ritual. He came from House Danarius, saying that his master had met some misfortune. He asked for our help, that he might change this world for the better. The war against the Qunari, he said, had not gone well. You all know that the Antaam invaded without permission of the other branches of Qunari government? We had assumed this would hobble them, but it appears the priests and workers were a moderating influence. Without them, the Antaam have crushed the Tevinter opposition in the east. I fear everything east of Vyrantium will be under their control inside a year, and northern Antiva as well.

  Can you imagine the Antaam in control of this land? They hate magic even more than the cowards in the south. Our great works, the magic of centuries? They would destroy it, judging us monsters, as though they had any right. It is unacceptable. I will not answer to witless fools who cannot even see the demons I bind by will alone.

  I will not answer to you either, Orlesian. When you can stand in the Fade and turn the raw chaos to your own purpose through sheer force of will, then I will accept your opinions of whether my magic is safe or appropriate.

  The mage who came to us had a way to drive back the Antaam: he would perform a ritual with our help, directing the course of the Fade against the Antaam, so that every dream, every demon, every half-interested spirit would urge them back to the north, away from humanity. Their resolve would weaken, their invasion would crumble, and all would go back to the way it should be.

  It was a bold plan, unsubtle as Tevinter mages are wont to be, but attractive in its audacity. We brought him one of our ritual chambers, deep in the Grand Necropolis. Here, our greatest mages are preserved, their bodies now home to bound spirits who empower our rituals.

  The Tevinter mage brought slaves with him, and we thought nothing of it. He also brought what he said was an ancient elven artifact, taken from House Danarius before it fell. When he opened the thick chest marked with the Carta’s protective runes and drew it forth, we saw it clearly—an idol crafted from red lyrium, which seemed to show two lovers, or a god mourning her sacrifice, depending upon how it caught your fancy.

  It whispered in our minds when we saw it, but those of us gifted with magic hear such murmurs in our minds all the time, and it is nothing to us.

  Our great cavern had been prepared. Arcane possessions ringed around us, corpses of our greatest mages bound in ritual circles that kept the demons inside their bodies safely leashed. We had all drunk lyrium until we could feel the magic pulse inside the ancient walls, a song whose notes were ours to play. We knew our parts, and I, as one of twelve Mortalitasi, brought forth my magic, enhanced it with the arcane possessions, and focused it upon the idol the Tevinter mage had placed upon the ground before him.

  My part of the ritual was complex, and I was so focused upon it that I did not at first realize the Tevinter mage was killing his slaves. I saw them lying on the ground in a trance in a circle around him, and then he had cut the throat of one of them, and then another, catching the blood of his victims on the idol as he made his way around the circle.

  I would of course have stopped him were it possible, but the ritual was already underway. To give up my bindings could have caused massive destruction, likely killing the slaves anyway. So it was that I could only continue my work and watch the distasteful business, wishin
g I could have stopped him.

  When our power, plus the power of our arcane possessions, plus the power of his slaves’ lives, had all come to him, the Tevinter mage raised the idol before him, and I saw a spike of lyrium spring from the base of the idol, so that all at once, it was not merely an idol, but a ritual blade. He slashed his own hand, and a wave of power pulsed through the cavern. It was as though we were the blood, and the cavern was the body through which it flowed, and we fell, all of us, to the ground, our minds pulled into the raw chaos of the Fade by the power of his ritual.

  All around us was light and color, a dizzying array of the magic that makes up the world of spirits, and it swirled around the Tevinter mage and his ritual knife as though he were the eye of a hurricane. Something huge trembled around us—a spirit so great that it shook parts of the Fade I had always considered to be neutral, devoid of life—and high overhead, where the Black City shadowed the sky, I heard a great booming roar.

  But before the Tevinter mage could complete his ritual, the Dread Wolf arrived.

  It was no elf, no mortal mage. It was a beast unlike any I had ever seen. Lupine in appearance, but the size of a high dragon, with shaggy spiked hide and six burning eyes like a pride demon, and it came to us on wings of fire that resolved themselves into a horde of lesser demons as the Dread Wolf landed before us.

  “YOU MEDDLE PAST YOUR UNDERSTANDING, FOOLISH MORTAL MAGES, AND IN DOING SO, YOU THREATEN ALL CREATION.”

  The words battered us like storm winds, and the Dread Wolf’s jaws closed upon the Tevinter mage, snapping him up in an instant as he screamed in terror. The lesser demons rushed down upon us, crackling with fire and lightning, and our ritual collapsed as we all drew upon our own magics to survive.

  “YOU USE MY IDOL CARELESSLY TO VANDALIZE THE SEA OF DREAMS. NOW FEEL THE PAIN OF WHAT YOU HAVE CREATED.”

  At once, we were awake, back in the cavern, and its walls shook and cracked, and then a rift of green light rent the ceiling open above us, and the demons that had accompanied the Dread Wolf burst into the world in righteous fury, shining warriors with blades forged from the raw Fade itself, and behind them, dimly visible through the crackling light, the shadow of the beast itself, from whose slavering jaws came the final words, roared not in anger, but with quiet contempt.

  “FROM THIS MOMENT, SHOULD YOU EVER BIND A SPIRIT, THEN YOUR LIFE IS MINE.”

  The hypocrisy almost made me laugh. The Dread Wolf forbade us from binding spirits, but why would these lesser demons attack us if not because the Dread Wolf bound them? They might have looked like spirits of Valor or Justice to the untrained eye, but I assure you, no kindly spirit would tear into us as these creatures did.

  I flung my magic at them, driving them back with wards and blasts of raw power. My fellow Mortalitasi fell around me. The Tevinter mage lay on the cavern floor, a withered husk surrounded by the slaves he had sacrificed in his bloody ritual.

  One of my fellow Mortalitasi, a noble’s son, sprinted to the body. He seized the idol—its lyrium blade was gone, retracted or shattered, I know not which—and flung it into the thick Carta chest that had bound its power before. He ran with it, leaving the rest of us to die, and I cursed his name and his cleverness.

  The rift closed, and the demons laid the Mortalitasi to waste. I ran, with a few other survivors. I had to escape the demons, to warn the others, you see, so that they would not endanger anyone else. The demons blocked my path, as did the arcane possessions, the corpses of our great mages carrying powerful spirits.

  There were only two of us left, me and an old acquaintance. She wept beside me, her staff broken and useless as her old arguments and petty politics. A demon caught her from behind, its shining blade piercing her heart with a single clean blow. Her life flowed out beside me, and I was helpless to save her.

  Then the bodies of the sacrificed slaves twitched and shuddered as spirits found them, and a moment later they were on their feet, corpses driven by spirits, and they fell upon the demons and the arcane horrors, giving me time to flee.

  The Mourn Watch, close-minded fools, questioned later why the corpses would aid me. As though my good works were insufficient to draw compassionate spirits who might wish me protected, as though I were some common criminal binding spirits through blood magic, not the victim of the Dread Wolf himself!

  They returned with me nevertheless, ready to banish the demons, but they had already left. The arcane possessions had vacated their corpses as well, as had the sacrifices. We re-interred our honored dead and ended up sealing the cavern.

  We searched for the noble’s son and the stolen idol, but he had fled into Tevinter, and with so much of the Imperium in chaos from the war, it was not safe for us to give chase. I fear that is where my knowledge ends.

  Whatever you know of this mage, put it aside. Whether he is truly the Dread Wolf of elven myth, I cannot say—it is not uncommon for powerful spirits to be worshipped as gods, as the Avvar do. But whatever fear the name of the Dread Wolf carries, he has earned. While we might visit the Fade, it is his natural home, and the spirits there serve him gladly. They whisper in my dreams now, accusing me of crimes I never committed and promising vengeance if my wards fail. A weaker mage would be dead already, or mad.

  And as clear as the Dread Wolf’s anger at what we had done—the Mortalitasi binding spirits he considered his own, the Tevinter mage using forbidden blood magic—was the feeling that we had disrupted his own work.

  He intends something for the Fade, and if he wants the idol, then whatever he intends will be terrible.

  * * *

  The Assassin harrumphed as the curtain drew back, and Charter saw his hand go to his blade again, but it was only the servant returning with his coffee. He nodded at her, and she withdrew, the curtain crackling faintly with magic as it drew silence across the boundary at the top of the stairs.

  “This is useless,” he snapped, and sipped his coffee with a grimace. “I knew the elf was dangerous. Now he’s a demon as well?”

  “Or has an alliance with a demon,” Charter pointed out. “During his attacks on the south, Corypheus allied himself with a fear demon as a way to trap the Grey Wardens.”

  “The Grey Wardens trapped themselves,” the Bard murmured, a hint of disapproval in his voice as he stirred his tea. “Regardless, we know more than we did.”

  “He has begun whatever ritual he intends to use to restore the elven empire,” Charter said, “and he is aware of disruptions. The ritual involves the Fade, and it requires the idol in some way.”

  “The idol also reacts to other lyrium,” the Mortalitasi added, “Perhaps he needs lyrium for his ritual, the normal blue or this strange new red form.”

  The Assassin folded his arms and sat back. “We’ve enough problems without getting mixed up with red lyrium,” he growled. “I told you, it’s Blighted, and Blight is bad for business.” He glared over at the Executor. “And you’ve been happy to listen, but haven’t offered anything of your own. What are we getting in trade?”

  Before the Executor could answer, the Bard raised his hands. “I believe I know where the mage carrying the lyrium idol went next. S’il vous plaît, allow me to continue its tale.”

  Charter nodded, and the Assassin harrumphed again and gulped his coffee. Taking that as permission, the Bard began.

  THE BARD’S TALE

  The war between Gaspard and Celene was a great disruption to my country, expensive both in lives lost and coin spent. Since its resolution, those in my profession have spent much of our time traveling abroad in search of Orlesian treasures sold or bartered.

  Recently, I found myself asked to recover such a treasure, a ring that once belonged to Empress Celene herself, a gift from the previous Lady Mantillon before her untimely retirement. I had traced this ring across Thedas to the neutral city of Llomerryn, where I had heard rumors of an auction where enchanted treasures from across the world were to be sold.

  I procured an invitation and arrived at a massive fortress guar
ded by a pair of massive golems, their stone marked with runes and crystal that glowed green as they examined my invitation. They waved me in, and I entered and made my way to the ballroom, where I found a crowd of the wealthy and influential gathered from all across Thedas.

  An Avvar augur laughed loudly at a Rivaini pirate captain’s dirty joke. A soberly clad noble from Starkhaven glared at an auburn-haired elf whose dagger-knot gave her away as an agent of the Qunari spies, the Ben-Hassrath. A Warden-Commander spoke with a woman who was robed and masked, but as I passed her, I recognized the voice of Divine Victoria herself.

  All of them were watched by a figure who sat upon a chair large enough to be a throne, a withered unmoving figure I would have taken for a corpse despite its finery had it not occasionally spoken by means of some magical artifact to order a small boy to moisten its desiccated limbs.

  My orders were to purchase the ring if possible, or, failing that, make contact with the buyer and facilitate an exchange by some other means. The auction would not begin for some hours, and I circled the floor, listening and making idle conversation.

  I quickly learned that the auburn-haired elf was not the only Ben-Hassrath agent present. She was giving information to others, and out of curiosity at what the Qunari, so averse to magic, might want at an auction such as this, I listened. The words were in the Qunari language, which I know only triflingly, but I heard her mention the Siccari. Curious, I followed the servant, a forgettable human man, as he left the elf.

  He descended down a flight of stairs, and I followed, pretending to be lost in my cups. At the bottom of the stairs, the servant accosted me, a thin blade produced from his tunic, and I regrettably introduced him to my own blade, which was shorter than his but still long enough to reach his heart, and explored the lower floor.

  It quickly became clear that the bottom floor of the castle was intended for servants, which made it surprising to see heavily armored guards stomping through the hallway, watching for intruders. I had understood that the treasures to be auctioned were upstairs in a great vault, but now began to suspect that something else had been kept down here for safety. I kept to the shadows and let the guards pass by, as my blade was not long enough to reach their hearts.