Celene thought. She had moved perfectly, using everything Lady Mantillon had taught her to position the pieces for this last gambit. All the other players, everyone she had trusted, stood to lose as much as she did if their plan failed. She remembered sipping wine with Lady Mantillon’s son, drinking Antivan coffee with Lord Joseph Montbelliard, gauging each move, catching the subtle hints their bodies gave when they glanced at the passing servants.
The passing servants …
Celene swallowed.
“My estate is currently empty,” she said, “save for the servants.” She met Lady Mantillon’s gaze. “An attack by would-be assassins might build more sympathy to my cause … and ensure that bards hear no tales in the marketplace.”
Lady Mantillon looked at her for a long moment.
And then her perfectly made-up face broke into a slow smile. “I agree, your Imperial Majesty.”
“If I had not ordered the servants killed, Bria, Lady Mantillon would never have backed me. Gaspard would have had me killed.”
Briala nodded slowly. “As I thought. And so Gaspard wins the duel.”
Still leaning against the bench, Gaspard laughed weakly. “I wouldn’t have had you killed, Celene. Might have married you off to some Fereldan noble to get rid of you, though.”
Daggers drawn, she advanced upon him. “You did not win this duel, Gaspard. You forfeited before…” She looked at Ser Michel, who did not meet her eyes. “… your opponent yielded, when your mages cheated to help you win.”
“I’d wondered what happened to Lienne,” Gaspard said, looking past Celene at the fallen girl.
“With her treachery, this duel is forfeit.” Celene held her dagger out, ready to strike.
Gaspard snorted. “To forfeit, I would have had to approve such treachery. Which, on my honor as a chevalier, I did not.”
“How convenient for you,” Celene said, and attacked.
His mailed arm knocked her strike aside, and with a grunt of effort, Gaspard lunged up and threw an elbow that caught Celene in the gut and sent her stumbling back.
“I’m hurt, cousin. Not dead.” He leaned on the bench, teeth clenched. “And you gave your champion all the pretty little rings you wear to cover the fact that you never had to learn to fight properly.” He reached down to his boot and came up holding a short-bladed dagger. It was ugly but practical, a wedge of steel Gaspard had likely kept as a weapon of last resort since his days at the Academie. “How do you like your odds?”
Celene spun her dagger. He’d caught her by surprise, and the blow had hurt, even muffled by her leather cuirass. “I like them well enough, Gaspard. Unfitting as such a job is for an empress, I will see you dead by my own hand, and then I will claim the eluvians and retake Orlais.”
“Briala?” Michel said, and Celene stepped back out of Gaspard’s reach and looked over her shoulder.
Briala was walking through the labyrinth of runes, her steps small and careful but sure as she made her way through the twisting pattern. She was already more than halfway through.
“But she can’t! She doesn’t have…”
Briala had seemed so forceful as she’d kissed her just a few minutes before. One hand had pressed tightly to the back of her neck, and the other had gripped Celene’s waist.
Celene’s hand went to the pouch at her waist where she’d kept the keystone ruby. It was empty.
Gaspard laughed. “She is dangerous.”
Celene turned and sprinted for Briala. She could see the ruby now, clutched in her hand. Briala was almost through the labyrinth. Celene raised a hand, leaped for her, and then fell back with a cry of pain as a jolt of energy flung her away. The runes at the edge of the labyrinth glowed angry red.
“Briala!”
She didn’t look over.
Celene raised her dagger, shifted it to a throwing position. “Bria. Please. Do not do this.”
Then a wave of frost snapped against her side, an icy numbness that was followed by a burning cold as Celene stumbled back, the dagger falling from nerveless fingers.
“I think,” said Mihris, rising to her feet with her staff ready for another blast, “that I am ready to choose again.”
Celene looked at her, then at Felassan, rubbing the feeling back into her arm.
“I was so worried about Gaspard,” she said, “that I never thought to concern myself with you.”
“Don’t feel bad,” he said. “Happens to the best of us.”
With no other gambit, no last stratagem, Celene could only look at Briala as she stepped to the pedestal. She placed the ruby on it, leaned in close, and whispered words that no one else could hear.
She lifted her head, met Celene’s stare, and as a wave of ruby-red light washed over the room, she said, “I claim these eluvians for the elves of Orlais.”
* * *
The wave of red light had awakened every eluvian in the room, at least for a moment. They were all dormant again, now, but Briala could sense the lingering energy in the air, the hum of power when she stepped close to them. They would awaken when she chose.
Gaspard and Michel looked at her as they bound their wounds, sneaking glances when they thought she wouldn’t notice. She ignored them. Mihris stared at her openly.
The magic had flowed through her as well in that moment, a thrill of cool wind that had raised the hair on her arms as she had stood over the pedestal. The eluvians were hers now, all of them, ready to take her and her people anywhere she chose. It would take time to explore, to deal with any possessed corpses or ancient traps that might endanger her people. But those threats could be managed.
And when that was done, she would have everything she needed to help her people.
“I would have freed them, Bria.”
Celene stood a few paces away. Mihris and Felassan leaned against the pedestals, not quite blocking Celene’s path to Briala.
“So you say,” Briala said. “But freedom is not given. It is won.”
“It is both.” Celene shook her head, wiping tears from her eyes. She seemed so much smaller now than she had in Val Royeaux. “Have you seen nothing in all the years you spent at my side? Change comes through careful planning, through compromise.”
“You compromised my parents.”
There were tears in Celene’s eyes as she nodded, and without makeup or a mask, Briala could see the spots of red on Celene’s cheeks. “I was sixteen, Bria. The Game had just killed my mother, and my father had just died avenging her. I would have been killed had I not proven myself worthy to Lady Mantillon. For all I knew, you would have all died with me!”
“And that was how you decided?” Briala asked, her voice even. “Sacrificing some to save the rest?” There was a time, she knew, when hearing Celene admit it would have broken her, stripping away everything Briala thought she knew about the world and her place in it. Now … it still hurt, of course, and Briala would shed tears later over it, for a long time to come. But she had endured worse pain in her life.
“I…” Celene looked away. “The blood of your family is on my hands. What does it matter how I came to my decision?”
Causes matter, Felassan had said. Briala knew that he was right, some of the time. But not now.
“You more than proved yourself to Lady Mantillon. She supported you even when I killed her,” Briala said, and Celene started. “She could have taken me with her, but she stayed her hand. I always thought it was because she felt guilty about what she had done to my parents. But it was because I told her that I would serve you loyally. She saw that you had fooled me, and she did not wish, even to avenge her own death, to deprive you of a useful tool.”
“You are not a tool, Bria.”
“Not any longer.” The fear and excitement of the moment was starting to fade, and she felt the great yawning darkness inside her. She kept it at bay. She would not cry now.
“Michel and Gaspard are gone,” Felassan said. He stood by an eluvian, and as Briala looked at it, the mirror went dark.
&nbs
p; Briala had offered them all safe passage. She could feel the eluvians now as she felt her own hands, and she directed Celene to a mirror that would take her away. It was whole, undamaged, and with a strange thrill, Briala could even feel the fresh air against it that meant Celene would not be walking to her death in a sunken crypt.
“Then it is your turn,” she said to Celene. “Where do you wish to go?”
“Val Royeaux.” Celene’s smile was bitter. “I have an empire to reclaim.”
Val Royeaux would be possible. Briala felt the pull of the magic through her, felt it twist to match her intention. But Val Royeaux would also put Celene in a position to end this war quickly and easily.
Briala was done helping Celene.
“Go, then,” she said, nodding to hide the implicit lie. “Fight for your university, your culture. I will fight for the others who have no one to champion their cause.”
Celene swallowed. “I will fight to save this empire, Bria. And I will take joy in my love finding her people, even as my breast aches with every heartbeat I live without you.”
Celene walked alone to the mirror, and with a quiet phrase, Briala awakened it.
“As does mine,” she whispered after Celene had disappeared.
Epilogue
Briala stepped out of the tunnel and into the light of the midmorning sun.
The ground was sheathed in white, and it caught the wan light and glinted. The first snows of winter had come in earnest while she had been down walking among the eluvians, and most of Orlais would be covered with snow by this point. Ahead of her, trees whose bare branches were draped with snow creaked in the breeze. Behind her, the plains stretched, gauzy white in the distance.
She was near the Dales, judging by the trees. She had come back here at Felassan’s request, though she planned to make her way to Val Royeaux as soon as possible. She had work to do.
With the eluvians, she could move across Orlais faster than a chevalier on horseback. And that chevalier would never find her.
“It will be a hard winter,” Mihris said from behind her, shivering. “If neither Gaspard nor Celene finishes this quickly, many people will die.”
“Wars often have that effect,” said Felassan as he came out into the light, squinting.
“I meant that they would starve,” Mihris said sharply.
“And why would that matter to you?” Briala asked, turning to her. “Do you think the Dalish will suffer? Are you concerned for the other clans?”
“Always,” Mihris said. She looked at the trees, and Briala knew that she was getting her bearings. Her clan had lived near here for years. Briala wondered whether Mihris intended to search for survivors, bury the dead, or simply leave. It didn’t really matter. “As you are concerned for … your elves.”
“My flat-ears, yes.” Briala looked back at the tunnel entrance behind her. Even just a few paces away, it blended in perfectly, almost impossible to see unless you were looking for it. Nevertheless, she knew where it was, could sense it like a part of her own body thanks to the magic that still hummed inside her. “I am very concerned for my people, Mihris. And for the first time, I have a way to help them.”
“If you gave the secret of the eluvians to the Dalish,” Mihris said, “we could—”
Briala laughed in her face, and the Dalish woman went silent.
“Every elf in those alienages thinks of you as creatures of legend,” she said to Mihris, “the elves who never surrendered when Halamshiral fell. They’re either terrified of you or inspired by you—you’re the elves who keep fighting, who have the old magic. They think you’re helping them out here, that you’re doing more than playing with demons and hunting for old relics, and if you had actually helped them, you’d have had an army of loyal elves ready to bring back Arlathan for you.” She smiled. “But you didn’t. You said that they weren’t really your people, and you left them to die. So I will help them. I will keep fighting.” She gestured at the entrance to the tunnel. “And I have the old magic.”
“I am not your enemy, Briala.” Mihris lowered her gaze. “I helped you.”
“I had something you wanted.” Briala kept smiling. “And your people are my people, even if they’ve forgotten it. I will work with the Dalish, but only if they help all our people. Pass that on to the next clan you meet.”
Mihris swallowed and nodded. She turned to Felassan. “Will you take me to your clan?”
“I don’t think you want to meet my clan, da’len,” Felassan said. “But good luck with whichever one will take you.”
“Whichever clan I join,” Mihris said, “it will not be one that deals with demons.” She walked off into the trees. Her staff glittered the same color as the fresh morning snow.
“Do you think I should have killed her?” Briala asked when the Dalish girl was lost in the trees.
Beside her, Felassan shrugged. “I suppose you’ll find out.” Briala chuckled, and he turned to her. “Are you sincere? You will use the paths of the eluvians to help your people?”
Briala thought for a moment. “Celene and Gaspard saw an army, but that would be fighting their fight. With the paths, I could get food to alienages where elves would otherwise starve. They would let me move ahead of an oncoming army and warn the target, or move behind them and attack their supply lines.”
“Which army are you going to hamstring?”
Briala looked over at Felassan, smiling, even as she started to shiver from the winter’s chill. “Whichever one seems to be winning. What was it? Anaris and Andruil?”
Felassan smiled. “You prolong their fight, and in the chaos, your people work free from their bonds?”
“It can work, I think.” Briala held her arms around her. “Halamshiral rioted because of a single nobleman. I can find elves who will help me with my work in every city in Orlais, and more who are too afraid to fight, but will serve as eyes and ears if I can help their children survive the winter.”
“That is,” Felassan said, and after a pause, finished, “a unique use of the ancient relics of our people, da’len.”
“I think Fen’Harel would have approved,” Briala said, and saw Felassan give a startled laugh.
“He might have,” her teacher said, “though I very much doubt it.”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” she said. “The passphrase to access the eluvians. In case we’re separated, it’s—”
She broke off as his fingers brushed her lips, looking at him in surprise.
Felassan smiled again, but his eyes were sad, and wiser than Briala could ever imagine. “Don’t.”
She looked at him silently for a moment, and then put it together. “You’re leaving.”
“I must.”
“The Dalish?”
He snorted. “Them? Please.” Then his face turned serious. “But the elves of Orlais are in good hands, it seems. Many other things are not, and I have more work to do elsewhere.”
She nodded, though her eyes stung. Begging him to stay would accomplish nothing, she knew. The protestations in the back of her mind—that she had more to learn, that she could not do this without him—she silenced before they gained a voice. The wisest man she had ever known trusted her to win her people’s freedom. And to her surprise, she found that she didn’t doubt his judgment.
“One last question, then, hahren. Was this…” She gestured at the tunnels; then at the woods where, somewhere a few days’ journey away, Clan Virnehn lay dead; then to the north, where Halamshiral tilted toward the war that might set her people free. “Was this always your plan?”
He chuckled one last time. “No, da’len. You did this yourself.” He leaned in and kissed her gently on the forehead. His lips burned like a brand, and her head spun for a moment.
When she opened her eyes again, she was alone, and though she looked in all directions, no tracks marked which way Felassan had gone.
Briala looked back at the tunnel. She was no longer shivering. Perhaps Felassan had left her some trace of his magic to guard her ag
ainst the winter chill, or perhaps simply having a purpose warmed her.
She mouthed the passphrase, and the tunnel closed behind her, as if it had never existed.
“Fen’Harel enansal.” The Dread Wolf’s blessing.
She would make it count.
* * *
Wincing against the unnatural light, Celene took the last few steps on the path and stepped through the eluvian.
She had asked Briala to send her back to Val Royeaux. It had been her original goal, after all, back when she had a lover and a champion. Reach Orlais before Gaspard, make it clear that Gaspard’s attack had failed, and then rally the full might of the Orlesian army and crush the rebels.
And it would have worked.
But Celene had seen Briala’s face when the empress had made her request. She had seen in Briala’s soulful eyes the little glint of calculation. She knew what she herself would have done in Briala’s place.
And so she was not surprised when she stepped through the eluvian, blinked against the strange wave of energy, and found herself in a modest dining hall decorated with elven relics.
She had used the room for breakfast on occasion, since it had lovely windows that overlooked the gardens.
She was in her own Winter Palace just outside Halamshiral.
Celene sighed and shook her head. It could have been worse. Briala had at least been kind enough not to send her to her death in some long-abandoned tomb. She turned around and glared at the eluvian, and after a moment the crimson clouds marking its surface faded to dull blue-grey.
She had no champion, no army, and no master of spies. She was far from her seat of power, near a city Gaspard had likely conquered.
Her heart was broken, and she would cry about that later, she was sure. But perversely, some small part of her, deep in the darkest parts of her mind, was laughing. She felt like a girl of sixteen again, orphaned and alone in Val Royeaux … and the last time she had felt that way, she had won.
For a time, she suspected, she would have no trouble sleeping late in the mornings, even if she slept alone.
Dragon Age: The Masked Empire Page 35
