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Contents 13 страница

“They are spirits of rage and anger,” Felassan panted, close behind her. “How long can you hold a grudge?”

Celene came into the campsite. The sylvans were behind them, but slow. “Briala, grab what you can. Michel, get the horses. Felassan, prepare more fire if—”

Then, ahead of her, a strangled shrieking whinny made her jump. From the far side of the camp, where the horses had been tied, came the sound of cracking wood and twisting branches.

A moment later, Cheritenne, Ser Michel’s beautiful warhorse, fell into the clearing, his flanks bloodied, his legs snapped and twisted like broken twigs, with only skin holding them together. He was screaming.

Michel’s yell was wordless and bloody. He flew across the camp, his longsword held in his shield-hand, and grabbed a flaming log from the fire as he passed it. Without pausing, he hurled it at the sylvan at the edge of the clearing.

As it roared in pain, flinging the flaming log away, Michel tore into it with great strikes that sprayed wood and sap through the air. Over and over he struck, still shouting without words, until a ball of fire ignited the sylvan with an explosion that sent Michel staggering back.

He turned, face flushed, and looked back at them in rage as the sylvan fell.

“Yes, yes, honor demanded you defeat it in single combat. My apologies.” Felassan was leaning on his staff now, breathing hard. “Give your steed the mercy it deserves, chevalier, and then we must flee.”

Celene saw that her own horse, the rangy gelding, was down and unmoving, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Briala quickly grabbed her pack, and Felassan stood, his staff raised, and watched the darkness at the edge of the firelight.

Ser Michel walked over to his horse. He was still screaming, but when he saw Michel, his cry softened to a whine.

Michel opened his mouth, as though his charger had asked a question he wanted to answer, and then swallowed. Then he knelt, his dagger out. “I’m sorry,” he said, and finished it with a clean, fast cut.

He stood and turned to Celene. “I’ll get my armor.”

She nodded.

The crashing and ripping of the sylvans came from all around them now, and Felassan moved in a slow circle, taking everything in.

“How many more of those balls of fire can you throw before you exhaust yourself?” Celene asked him.

The elf smiled tiredly. “I’d love for that to remain a hypothetical question. Chevalier, are you ready?”

Michel slung his great canvas bag over his shoulder, grunting at the weight. “Ready enough.”

Celene listened to the crashing wood around them. It was growing closer, and branches twisted at the edge of the clearing. “Which way is south?” she asked.

Felassan pointed.

“Then light us a path,” Celene ordered, and brandished her daggers.

* * *

Briala had lost track of how long they’d been running.

The thick forest hid the moonlight, and they had only Felassan’s staff to light their way. The green glow twisted everything around them, making even harmless trees seem to stretch out their limbs as they ran.

Roots hidden beneath a carpet of dead leaves caught at Briala’s ankles, and bare branches scratched her face. Her armor rubbed raw at her shoulders and knees where sweat had soaked through her underclothes.

Beside her, Felassan’s tattooed face was a mask of exhaustion and pain, and he used his staff to steady his uneven jog. Celene was flushed, though she kept any discomfort hidden behind a determined glare. Only Ser Michel seemed unaffected, his breath regular and easy even as his armor clanged in the canvas bag slung over his shoulder, though his face was splotchy and red from tears. The chevalier who would kill peasants without flinching shed tears for his horse.

Behind them, wood cracked and roots ripped as the forest came to life and gave chase. Briala wasn’t sure if the sylvans were summoning more allies, or if this whole forest had been full of them to begin with, and they were awakening now that their fellows had raised the alarm. She did not spare the breath to ask Felassan.

“How much farther?” Briala gasped, nearly running into a tree and pushing off of it instead.

“There is no way to know,” Felassan said, nearly tripping on a root that caught his staff. “When they lose interest. They are…” He paused for a breath, then grunted as he stepped over a low bush. “… angered by emotion. Jealous of it.”

Emotion. She and Celene had argued. And then Celene had held her.

“We’re faster than they are,” Michel said, shoving aside branches and holding them for Celene. “If we keep going, they’ll have to give up eventually.”

Briala caught Celene’s glance. The empress still glared, but in the pale green light, her face looked sickly and pale. “I don’t know how much longer we can go.”

“No.” Celene stumbled. “I have not come this far…” She righted herself and caught up with them. “… to be killed by a tree.”

“Lovely sentiment. Ahead.” Felassan gestured with his free hand. “Water. It will slow them.”

Briala forced her trembling legs to a jog. She lifted her head, sucked air into lungs that ached for the breath, and missed a rock hidden under the dead leaves. It slid beneath her, and she crashed hard to the ground.

Warm hands caught her arm. Briala coughed, the leaves at her feet flecked with tiny points of light, and let herself be pulled up.

“Can you make it?” Ser Michel asked, the very model of a courtly chevalier. Behind him, pale, her hands on her knees, Celene breathed hard and looked at Briala with concern.

Briala had fancied herself to be in excellent shape. While Celene entertained artists, Briala had practiced her dagger-work in an old storeroom until sweat dripped onto the moth-eaten Fereldan rug on the floor. She had smirked at her empress, tired from a full day of riding.

Now, to her shame, Briala couldn’t spare breath to speak. She nodded quickly, and stumbled after Felassan, with Michel and Celene behind her. Behind them, the woods crashed and boomed their rage.

The water Felassan had seen—or sensed with his magic, or simply knew about because he lived here, Briala wasn’t sure—was a creek. In the spring, it would have been filled and bubbling with white rushing water. Now, at the end of a long summer, with the fall still dry, it was well below its bank. Felassan hopped down the incline without hesitation, clinging to his staff for balance, then splashed through the knee-high water.

Briala followed. The dry dirt crumbled and slid beneath her feet, and she half-slid the last few feet, nearly falling into the water. She kept moving, sliding on rocks and mud, and was almost to the far side when something made her stop and turn around.

It was not sound, but the absence of sound. Behind Briala, Celene and Michel were nowhere to be seen in the shadows.

“Felassan!” Briala’s throat was dry, and it came out cracked and uneven.

He was atop the far bank, on his knees and clinging to his staff with both hands. He looked down at Briala, breathing hard. “Hurry!”

“Where are they?” Briala stared in vain at the shadows atop the bank she’d just slid down. There was no sound of clanking armor, only the rip and roar of the angry forest. In the darkness, she thought she could see the trees swaying.

“Come, da’len!” Felassan called down. “The sylvans are almost here!”

They were drawn to emotion, he had said.

She was still angry, still hurt, still gutted by the betrayal, even as the truth of what Celene had said, the hurt in Celene’s face unmasked in the darkness, fought back.

But under that, even still, was a dark, empty pit in her stomach at the thought of never seeing Celene again.

Briala swallowed and took in a long breath. Then she stumbled back across the creek, sank trembling fingers into the loose earth, and pulled herself back up the bank.

She was nearly blind on this side. The light from Felassan’s staff only made the shadows sharper. Ahead of her, as she clawed over the lip of the bank, she saw the trees crash and fall apart as a massive sylvan tore into view, leaves spraying away with each savage movement. It lashed out at something beside it.

It was Ser Michel. The chevalier still had his armor in the canvas bag, and now he carried his empress in both arms. Even in the darkness, Briala could see Celene’s pale face, and the blood trickling from her scalp.

The sylvan’s blow smashed into the armor-bag on Michel’s shoulder and sent him tumbling out from the trees. He cradled Celene as he landed, then staggered back to his feet, sliding his longsword free and readying his shield now that his hands were free.

He glanced over in confusion as Briala crawled toward them. “You did not run.”

“Apparently not.” Briala reached Celene, checked the pulse at her throat. She was alive and breathing. “Can we retreat?”

Michel swung his longsword in a mighty arc, tearing stray branches from the sylvan’s arm. “They would crush us before we reached the creek.” He slapped aside a blow with a grunt. “Can you get her away safely?”

“I don’t think so.” One of Celene’s rings summoned magical flames around any weapon she wielded. Briala fumbled at Celene’s hands, shaking with exhaustion and from the unnatural booming roar.

“Majesty!” Michel shouted, leaping away from another crushing blow and hacking great chunks from the sylvan’s trunk. “Majesty, you must wake!”

In the darkness, Briala could not tell the rings apart. She slid both free, then jammed them onto her own fingers.

She stood, raised her bow, drew an arrow, and nocked it. She nearly cried when the ruby ring on her hand flared, and flames lit the arrow.

“Can you get her away safely?” she called, and sent a flaming arrow into the sylvan’s trunk. It flinched back from the flames, roaring in pain.

Michel turned back, staring in stupid confusion, and Briala nocked another arrow and fired, and then again, sheeting flame into the leaves and branches of the beast before her. “I … Yes. I can.”

The trees in front of them ripped apart, and another sylvan crashed out to join its burning fellow.

Briala put a flaming arrow into the sylvan and spared one more moment to look down at Celene’s lovely pale face. “Then go,” she said. “I will—”

She was cut off as two-score arrows, blazing brilliantly with scarlet flame, lit the night sky and rained fire down upon the sylvans.

Briala turned in shock and saw a line of flames across the creek. They danced for a moment and lit the sky again as arrows flashed overhead and then fell among the sylvans.

Burning and booming their pain, the sylvans ripped their roots from the earth and crashed back into the forest, smashing trees from their path as they fled. Briala listened to them go, unaware until she felt the cold in her legs that she had dropped to her knees.

Michel stood beside her and Celene. “That was fortunate,” he said, though it sounded more like a question than a statement.

Briala looked back at the archers across the creek. She could make out nothing, save that one of the scarlet flames burned brighter than the rest. It was near the green flame that she knew was Felassan.

Then several of them climbed gracefully up from the creek bed, simply but beautifully armored in supple leather, with scarlet fire flickering down the lengths of their ironbark blades and making the tattoos on their faces dance.

Briala stared at the first Dalish elves she had ever seen besides Felassan. “Ma serannas,” she said haltingly. “I owe you my life, and—”

“It’s as he says!” one of the Dalish called back across the creek. “A flat-ear and two shemlen.”

“Bind them!” came an older man’s voice, and the elf before her nodded. “Kill them if they resist.”

Beside her, Michel looked at Celene, then the elves. Then, with a soft laugh, he dropped his sword. “At long last, Briala, you’ve found your people.”

“Why by the Dread Wolf did you bring them here?”

Thelhen, the Dalish Keeper, was an elven man of middle years. On his back was strapped the glowing red staff that had ignited his people’s arrows last night. Beneath his tattoos, his face was lined and pale with fatigue, and his hair had gone silver. Briala might have called the face kindly, were it not red with rage that morning as he yelled at Felassan in the middle of the Dalish camp while she sat, hands bound behind her, by one of their great wagons.

Felassan grinned. “You needed to meet new people.”

The Dalish Keeper made an angry gesture. “I have spent years finding the right location and preparing my spells. I have risked contact with the shemlen to get what I needed.”

“Well, then, if you’ve already had contact with the humans, this should be nothing!”

“Now,” Thelhen said as if Felassan had not spoken, “when I am this close to gaining what we need, you bring me some human noble and her champion?” Thelhen grimaced in disgust. “Clan Virnehn has sullied itself enough without your foolish ideas! And her!” He wheeled on Briala.

She kept her back straight and her eyes on him as he glared at her. “Abelas, hahren. I intended no disrespect.”

“Stop, child.” Her words seemed to take some of the anger out of him, and he sighed, then turned back to Felassan. “You expect me to adopt strays? Why not send her to your own clan, if she is so valuable? Is she at least a mage?”

At that, Felassan’s expression went blank. “You took what information I have given you over the years, Thelhen. That information came from her, a gift to the people she thought of as hers.”

“A lovely sentiment.” Thelhen wiped his face wearily. “But why is she here?”

Briala stood up straighter. “The elves of Orlais have suffered, Keeper. If Grand Duke Gaspard comes to power, they will suffer even more. If you help restore Empress Celene, you will save many of your people in the alienages of Orlais.”

Thelhen shut his eyes and looked away from her. “Abelas, da’len,” he said quietly, “but I have no people in the alienages of Orlais.”

Briala sat quietly then, and listened to the argument while she looked around the camp. The great wagons, the aravels, were arranged in a circle like the buildings of a small town. She could pick out the purpose of some of them. One held bows and a fletcher’s tools; not far from it, Dalish children practiced shooting arrows at stump-targets painted like men. Near another aravel, crates were filled with vegetables, while smoked meat hung nearby, and behind a third wagon, Dalish warriors swung wooden blades at target dummies. Briala tracked their motions and saw that the drills were the same as she had seen a hundred times at Celene’s family estate or in Val Royeaux.

They were not her people.

The words should have hurt, but Briala felt empty instead. She looked at elven children laughing and playing, elven hunters joking about their skill, elven cooks singing old songs while their apprentices cleaned up the dishes from breakfast. Through the open door of one of the wagons, she could see an old couple sleeping, snoring softly. There were no princesses, no Fade spirits whisking through the aravels to do the laundry, but it was still more than she could have ever dreamed of. None of them ducked their heads or watched with concern for the humans. None of them feared a human walking into their camp to cause trouble.

And they let the alienages burn, because the elves in the alienages were not their people.

She came back to the argument between Felassan and Thelhen. The Dalish Keeper had finished yelling. He seemed tired. Felassan was calm, as always, and smiling faintly.

“Fine,” Thelhen said finally. “Your … apprentice … may walk the camp, though you vouch for her behavior. And her life is forfeit if she approaches the elgar’arla. The shemlen warrior remains bound, and the noble will be guarded until she awakens. I will speak with the clan elders and see whether they will hear what this noble has to say.”

He gestured irritably, and a young woman holding a slender staff of her own came over and untied Briala’s bonds. She was not yet twenty, and the tattoos on her face were fresh and sharp, a year old at most. Her fingers were deft, but callused from work. The linen of her tunic had clearly come from trade with humans, though it had been stitched in an elegant pattern Briala didn’t recognize and trimmed with fur and wire-wrapped crystals.

Briala tried to read the look the young woman gave her. It was not disgust, but it was not welcoming.

Thelhen and the young woman left, and Felassan helped Briala to her feet.

“You never told me,” she said.

“Oh, Briala, by the way, the people you’ve idolized for most of your life are actually pompous idiots.” Felassan shook his head. “Would you have listened?”

“Yes.”

“Would you have heard?” His expression did not change, and he began to walk out through the aravels. Briala followed him.

“They don’t care.”

“They do not. Well, that’s unfair. They care for the past.” Felassan pointed at one of the cooks singing in the elven tongue. She was mixing dough in a cheap tin bowl that had been painted with icons of Sylaise the Hearthkeeper. “They care a great deal for it, in fact. They spend their lives searching for old bits to preserve and pass on. The old language, the old empire, the old secrets. But the present?” He shrugged. “The present is apparently much less exciting.”

“So while we struggle and endure and burn, they dig in old ruins to learn the elven word for ‘diamond’?” Briala kept her voice low as she looked around the camp.

“Mi’durgen.”

“I helped them.” This time her voice broke a little. “Not just the elves in the alienages that aren’t their people. I helped them, with what I gave you over the years.”

“I know, da’len. So does Thelhen, much as he hates to admit it.” Felassan glanced to the side, and Briala noted the elven hunters watching them as they left the camp and walked into the forest. “That is why you and your friends are still alive.”

“What do we do?” she asked, looking at the trees warily. In the morning light, they were just trees, the few leaves still hanging from the branches brown and dead. None looked ready to come to life and crush them. “Can we try another clan? Your clan, maybe?”

“Ah, no. My clan is nowhere near here.” Felassan winced. “Despite the name, most of the Dalish clans have fled the Dales. Scattered to make it harder for anyone to attack everyone at once. If your empress wants help getting back to Val Royeaux before Gaspard…” He shrugged. “We wait for the healers to waken her. You say that she is very persuasive. Last night, she moved the trees.” He smiled absently. “Perhaps today, she will move mountains.”

* * *

“Shemlen.” The elven warleader standing over Michel said it with a sneer, then grinned at his men.

Michel was bound, tied near one of the wagons. Celene lay nearby on a bedroll, with an elven girl—an apprentice mage, judging by her staff—tending her. Her color was better than it had been last night, or what little of it he’d seen last night. They had stitched the wound from where she had fallen and hit her head, and the elven girl was using healing magic to reduce the inflammation. She hadn’t spoken a word to him, just leaned over Celene, her hand extended and glowing with a cool white light that made Michel’s skin crawl.

The elven warriors had spoken to Michel, of course, but their vocabulary was limited.

“Shemlen,” their leader said again. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, with muscle on his arms that spoke of a lifetime holding a blade, and he was the oldest of the warriors standing over Michel. “Do you know what we do to your kind here? Well…” He pretended to think about it. “In truth, it depends on how much time we have. If we’re in a hurry, we’ll just shoot you, like a wolf with the water sickness. But if we have a few days, there’s a game called Fen’Harel’s Teeth.”

Some of his warriors laughed along. At least one of them, though, the youngest, stopped and stared awkwardly off to the trees.

“We take your clothes and lash your hands together,” the elven warleader said, “and we give you leggings of hard leather, with little nails driven through, so that every step you take sends them digging in. We give you a hundred-count head start, and we see how long you can elude us when every step you take is—”

“It must absolutely burn you that you can’t touch me,” Michel said, without changing expression.

The warleader blinked, then recovered. “Once Keeper Thelhen has what he needs, we’ll do more than touch you, shemlen.”

Each time he said the word “shemlen,” there was a little pause, where he looked at Michel to see if he’d drawn blood. Michel suspected that the elf would do the same thing after a sword-thrust, and noted it in case it became relevant later.

In any case, the warleader could only be disappointed. Each time he threw that insult at Michel, it just made Michel smile more.

“And until your leader has what he wants, will you posture some more before a bound captive?” Michel asked. “Unless I become too threatening, in which case you might go scare the children or yell at the trees.”

The warleader glared. “Felassan called you a chevalier. He said they were the greatest of shemlen warriors. Perhaps I will show you what a true master of the blade can do.”

“Like those children playing with sticks by your wagon?” Michel gestured with his chin over to where the warriors were training. “The man you have training them drags his feet when he sidesteps. In a real fight, I’d have his leg off in three heartbeats.” The warleader glanced over despite himself, as did his warriors. “You should spend more time training your people … Or did you not notice the problem yourself?”

“You insult my clan.” The warleader raised his hand.

Michel snorted. “You insult your own clan, if you cannot control your temper to obey your master’s orders. I have given insult to neither your blood, your history, nor your way of life. Only the personal honor of a mongrel who lacks manners.”

“Nevertheless.” The warleader’s hand cracked hard across Michel’s face, and when Michel’s vision cleared, the elf was smiling again. “Know your place, shemlen.” He turned to his warriors. “Watch him. If he does anything suspicious, kill him.”

The warleader stalked back to his wagon, leaving the others to stand guard.

Michel settled in comfortably to wait. After a time, he performed quiet muscle exercises to keep his limbs from going numb. One of the warriors noticed—the youngest, who’d seemed uncomfortable earlier—but said nothing.

It was relaxing, almost like meditation in the Chantry, to have no duties and no responsibilities. He let his awareness wander, taking in the motions of the camp. The cooks prepared the midday meal, a stew of wild rabbit mixed with vegetables and spices, served along with what Michel recognized from thirty yards away as peasant bread. It was almost equal parts wheat, salt, and grease, and in lean winters, it was sometimes the only thing that could put meat on a peasant’s bones.

It had been years since Michel had eaten it. Watching an old elven woman drizzle honey across a piece now, he remembered his mother putting a bit of sugar on his piece, sugar she’d stolen from the tavern where she worked. His mouth watered, and he looked away.

The young warriors stopped training with blades and took up bows. Hunters came back to camp with rabbits or deer. As the hours passed, Michel was forced to admit that the camp was run well, more like a military camp than the cave full of knife-eared bandits he had expected. Every elf was busy, moving with purpose on their duties, and unlike a military camp, the people he thought of as servants weren’t treated any worse than the hunters or the guards. They called happily to each other across ranks, trading greetings or jibes like a family.

Michel wasn’t certain when the music started to move him, but he felt the slow relaxation ease him into a soothing rhythm as he sat and watched the camp. The music had no source, no melody. It was not even a sound, exactly. It was simply a pleasant and drowsy feeling, like being rocked to sleep by a lullaby. Even as part of his mind was confused, noting that the rest of the camp was walking and moving to the same invisible rhythm, the rest of him was calm and content.

It seemed perfectly natural when one of the warriors leaned down and cut Michel’s bonds. The warrior’s eyes were vacant, staring peacefully at something only he could see. The other warrior was smiling at nothing, shifting idly from side to side in a slow rhythm.

Michel stood, without fear or preparation. The healer kept tending Celene, preparing more herbs with a mortar, humming gently to herself. The warriors tapped their hands against their legs to the melody. No one seemed concerned as the warrior they had been guarding stood up, and Michel himself was not concerned, either. A voice at the back of his mind was shouting in alarm, urging him to grab a weapon, but he ignored that part of his mind and walked calmly past the wagon where he had been kept.

As he walked, turning his back on the guards without fear, his pace was in step with the tune that the healer had been humming. The elven scouts at the edge of the camp paid him no mind. One of them was whistling the same melody to herself.

A trail led from the camp into the forest. Michel walked at an easy pace, allowing the melody to guide him along the winding path that led down a gentle slope, until the trees ended in a little clearing.

It was as if the Maker had scooped out a fistful of earth to make the clearing, leaving a bowl-shaped indentation perhaps a hundred yards across. In the center of the bowl stood a circle of stones, etched with runes that glowed faintly in the afternoon light. In the center of the circle of stones stood a human man in a dark coat. He was short and balding, with a thin black beard and glittering beady eyes.

He was whistling the tune, snapping his fingers and tapping his feet in time to the beat.

Michel was almost to the circle of stones when the runes on the nearest stone flashed.

The music spun away, torn like cobwebs, and Michel shuddered and fell to his knees. It was like waking up from a deep sleep to find himself mid-conversation. Everything seemed too sharp and bright. The grass beneath Michel’s hands was cold and slick, and it felt as though the ground were twisting.

“Want to hear a joke?” the man in the circle asked. From his light accent, he could have been a minor noble in Celene’s court.

Michel’s whole body was shivering, and his teeth were chattering madly. He tensed his muscles, forcing his body through the centering exercises a chevalier used to fight drugs or magic. “What … what…”

“Ser Michel de Chevin walks into a tavern,” the man in the circle said. “The barman looks at him and says, ‘We don’t serve elves here.’ Ser Michel says, ‘Fine with me. There’s no good meat on them, anyway.’” He laughed long and hard.

“What did you do to me?” Michel stood with an effort, moving into a fighting stance rather than risk trying to stand upright. The ground still tilted beneath his feet, but the centering exercises were helping. He kept his breath even and slow, ignoring the prickle of cold sweat that had broken out all over his body.

“Distracted the guards and freed you from bondage to those damned knife-ears,” the man in the circle said with gusto, “all as an act of charity.” He cocked his head. “Oh, specifically? A little trick from the Fade, encourages people not to notice you. Useful for getting out of troublesome situations or watching ladies undress. Not,” he added, “that I ever would. Because that would be wrong.”

Michel looked at the man, and at the circle of stones. “You’re a demon.”

“Spirit,” the man said, smiling broadly. “Please, call me Imshael.”

“Why?”

Imshael, if that was his name, smiled. “Well, you have to call me something.”

Michel glared. “Why did you bring me here?”

“I brought you here because you and I have a similar problem.” Imshael stepped forward until he neared the edge of the stone circle and smiled thinly. “We’d both like to be somewhere, and someone, we’re not.”

The demon left no prints in the grass where he walked. His black coat was finely tailored, and the buckles of his black boots glittered.

“I’ve heard of things like you,” Michel said, trying to remember the old stories. “You’re a desire demon.”

“Choice. Spirit.” Imshael’s smile never wavered. “Do I look like a desire demon? Do you want me to strip down and put on something filmy and sheer?” At Michel’s glare, the demon sighed. “There are all kinds of spirits, boy. Spirits of love, and honor, and valor, and justice…” He waved a hand absently, turning to pace along the edge of the circle. “And yes, also rage, and hunger, and pride. We all carry some connection to this world to bring us through the Veil.”

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