Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights Read online

  Vir Bor’assan, Strife thought, keeping his eyes on the guard. It was one of the first things the Dalish had taught him. The Way of the Bow: as the sapling bends, so must you. In yielding, find resilience; in pliancy, find strength.

  The guard finally looked away. “Come,” he muttered, and walked off.

  Strife moved to keep up, and Myrion, with a muttered oath, also hurried to keep pace. “What are you doing?” the human muttered as they walked across the beach toward the Qunari command tent.

  “Don’t worry. In a few minutes, it won’t be your problem.”

  Bas-taar looked up from papers as the guard came in. When he saw Strife and Myrion, the smile he gave made Strife think of cracking knuckles. “What do the bas need?”

  Strife bowed. “I am trained in alchemy. I worked with another elf. He called himself Thantiel.”

  Bas-taar snorted, the gold paint on his face wrinkling, but he seemed interested despite himself. “We do not know the names of the bas.”

  “He has marks upon his face.” Strife touched his cheeks. “Like branches. He is also trained in alchemy. Together, we could help with more than cutting down trees.”

  “Ahh.” Bas-taar smiled, slow and easy. “I know this bas. He also talked too much.”

  Bend but never break, Strife remembered. “Put me with him, then,” he said, “and I will see to it that he is quiet.”

  Bas-taar looked at the guard and said something in the Qunari language. He turned to Strife. “You will go to the other elf now. You will work as he does.” His smile curved like a sword built for chopping. “The Qun is generous in fulfilling such requests.”

  Strife ducked his head. “My thanks, Bas-taard.” Myrion’s elbow dug into his side, but Myrion was a whiny little man who wouldn’t be Strife’s problem for much longer.

  The guard led them across the beach toward another large tent. Strife walked easily, watching as the other prisoners set to work with axes. The dull thumps of axes cutting into wood were a little drumbeat under the constant foamy song of the ocean waves crashing against the shore.

  “I don’t like this,” Myrion muttered beside him. “The Qunari don’t change their minds like that. I took classes in this. They think everyone is born to do a certain job, and they don’t just let you change your mind because you complain about it.”

  “Wishing you’d let them know you were a scribe and not a laborer?” Strife asked.

  “Listen, you knife-eared idiot, you’re causing trouble, and I don’t want to get caught in it, too!”

  “In a few minutes, we’ll be chained to different people, and you’ll never have to worry about me again,” Strife said.

  In a few minutes, he’d be with Thantiel, who’d signaled that he’d gotten his hands on the Qunari plans right after Ventus had fallen. Then he and Thantiel would be off into the woods, waiting for a certain halla to show up and guide them to safety, and a few hours after that, he’d be singing old elven songs around a campfire, with Thantiel warbling on the high notes and Irelin telling him that his accent was still terrible after all these years. They would laugh about the Qunari and about idiot Tevinter men who’d never learned to stand up for themselves with blood magic and slaves to support them, and Strife would turn the shackles into a lovely decoration on his quiver.

  The guard opened the flap to the tent, and Strife and Myrion stepped inside, their chain clanking between them.

  The smell hit Strife first, hot lye and sweaty steam, and as his eyes adjusted, he realized that it was the stink of laundry. Robed figures were dumping dirty clothes into vats and stirring the clothes around.

  Not the alchemists, then, Strife realized. Their robes were different from the prisoner’s uniform he’d gotten, and they didn’t match each other, either. Some robes were slim, while others hid the figures inside them behind voluminous folds. If they hadn’t been mindlessly beating the clothes, Strife would have thought the prisoners were Chantry priests.

  “Where’s Thantiel?” Strife asked the guard, stepping into the room. Enclosed like this, it would be even easier for the two of them to escape once the guard left. Strife looked around, squinting against the acrid steam, and saw a tall slim figure who wasn’t wearing robes. “Thant! That you?”

  Thantiel didn’t answer, and Strife went to him, Myrion trotting behind with awkward, jittery steps. “Wait,” the human was saying, “wait, this isn’t right…”

  Strife caught Thantiel’s shoulder and turned him around.

  The eyes, the bright blue eyes of an elf who had never known the pain and indignity of living in an alienage, met Strife’s stare. They were dull and glassy and devoid of recognition. Thantiel’s mouth hung open, and he swayed in Strife’s grasp, a vacant weight. The vallaslin tattooed across his face, a mark of adulthood for those raised in the Dalish clan, were the only remnant of Strife’s friend.

  “The robes,” Myrion hissed. “These were mages!”

  Strife turned and saw another worker, who was dragging a wooden hamper across the sand. Her eyes were flat and empty, just like Thantiel’s, but her robe, filthy and sodden as it was, still glittered at the hem with remnants of gold trim.

  What did the Qunari do to the mages they took prisoner? Strife tried to remember, and then cursed himself for a fool as a blow cracked across his back and brought him to his knees.

  “This bas also spoke too much,” said the guard with a gristly smile, now standing before Strife. He held up a bottle filled with viscous brown liquid. “Now he is quiet. You work with him? You will be quiet, too.” A meaty hand clapped down on Strife’s shoulder. Myrion tried to pull away, and the guard backhanded him, sending the man to the ground with a bloody nose.

  “Thant! Help me!” Strife tried to stand, and the guard delivered a blow that set the world spinning and rattled Strife’s teeth. A few feet away, Thantiel stood impassively, watching without interest as the guard pried Strife’s mouth open.

  The Qunari gave mages something, some kind of poison that left them like walking corpses.

  He tried to knock the bottle away, but the guard’s grip was like a vise. Another blow rocked Strife’s head, and he gasped despite himself, and then the bottle pressed against his lips, and bitter liquid flooded his mouth.

  A thunderclap shook the room, and Strife collapsed as the guard let go. He spat the liquid to the floor, coughing and shaking his head, and then looked up.

  The guard lay on the ground, smoke wafting from a hole in his chest.

  Beside Strife, Myrion stood with one hand pointed at the guard. Little tendrils of lightning curled around his shaking fingers.

  Myrion looked down at him. “Do you know how hard I tried to hide?”

  Strife opened his mouth, and then Myrion’s fist rocked his jaw and left him seeing stars.

  “This is your fault!” Myrion snarled, and Strife felt hands close around his throat.

  * * *

  The stupid knife-ear had nearly gotten Myrion killed. The elf wasn’t dead yet, but as good as. Myrion’s fingers dug into the older man’s throat, and his vision pounded red. Blood from his nose dripped down his shirt and onto the sandy ground.

  The knife-ear was saying something. Trying to, anyway, hands clutching at Myrion’s wrists.

  “Can you break the shackles?” the elf gasped, and Myrion’s fingers clenched even harder in his anger.

  “If I could break the shackles, do you think I’d still be here?”

  “Then…” The elf’s voice was a ragged gasp. “I hope you’re ready to drag my body as you escape.”

  Myrion froze.

  A moment later, he snatched his hands back, and Strife hunched over, coughing.

  “What do you mean, escape?” he asked.

  Strife coughed a bit more, then smiled up at Myrion, his face still red. “How would you like to see the sights of Arlathan Forest?”

  Everyone knew Arlathan Forest was haunted, wracked by old elven magic that lingered centuries later, dangerous and uncontrolled. A monument to the elve
s’ lack of discipline, an old magister had once told Myrion. Myrion had thought it sounded sad.

  But today, it might mean freedom. Myrion narrowed his eyes, wiping the blood from his face. His nose had finally stopped bleeding. “You can get us away from the Qunari?”

  Strife’s grin showed some teeth. “I can give you a better chance than you’ve got standing here.” He stood and stepped toward the other elf, who still stood vacant-eyed and impassive before them. Myrion followed as Strife grabbed the elf’s shoulder. “Thant. Thant, it’s me!” He slapped the elf’s cheek. “Come on!”

  “It’s no use.” Myrion saw the naked pain in Strife’s face and looked away. “The Qunari drug, it’s called qamek. The Magisterium warned us about it. With as much as they’ve given them … I don’t think they’re ever coming back.” There’d been a pamphlet about it. He’d read it over lunch before an afternoon playing wisp-darts with friends. Jasecca had said a nice empty mind sounded like a welcome relief after dealing with warding rituals all summer. Her sun-kissed skin had gleamed, her robes trimmed to leave her arms bare except for twining serpent bracelets that glittered in the light.

  One of the laundry workers wore robes that left the arms bare. Her back was to him, but Myrion saw little white lines against tan skin where bracelets would have sat on her arms. He refused to look at her face. “If you’ve got a plan, we need to go now.”

  Something in his voice got through to the elf, and Strife looked over, nodded, and then pulled the other elf close. “Same clothes. Maybe…” He pulled the elf’s tunic open, pawed through it.

  “What are you doing?” Myrion demanded. “Do you want to end up a mindless husk?”

  “Thantiel snuck into your city to get information about the Qunari invasion. He said he’d got hold of their plan.” Strife pulled his hand back with a small folded square of paper. “Right, Thant. I’ll carry it for you.” He sighed, then reached up with both hands and cupped his friend’s head and chin. “No cure, you said? No coming back?”

  “Not when they’re like this. I’m sorry.”

  “Then I can at least give him peace.” Strife sighed, and then twisted sharply. Myrion heard a crack. “Andruil guide your way, Thant,” he murmured as he lowered his friend’s body to the ground. Then he stood and turned to Myrion, his face grim. “If you want to live, magister, you’ll do as I do.”

  “If not for me, you’d be helping with the laundry right now,” Myrion snapped.

  Strife knelt by the guard. “No key.” He pulled at the guard’s ax, then let it drop with a wince and grabbed the cudgel instead. “Bow would’ve been too much to ask for.” He stood. “Right. Back of the tent.”

  They shuffled over. Heading toward the tent just minutes ago, they had found a kind of rhythm. Now the chain jerked and danced between them, hitching their steps. Strife pulled up the tent flap, waving impatiently. “Under.”

  Myrion ducked down and stepped under, out onto the sandy beach. Strife followed, blinking at the cool clear air. On one side, Myrion saw the ocean, waves frothing with a promise of sucking undertow. On the other, the impenetrable foliage of Arlathan Forest, with prisoners chopping ineffectually at its edges. “What now?” Myrion asked.

  “Now we get to the forest,” Strife said, “and meet my clan.” He started walking.

  Myrion fell in beside him, matching the elf’s stride on a path behind the rows of working tents running parallel to the shore. “So you are Dalish.”

  “Guess we were both hiding something, magister,” Strife said with a bitter chuckle.

  “Why don’t you have the tattoos?” Myrion asked. “Like your friend back in the tent?”

  Strife paused and looked back at the tent with a glare that promised violence. “Thant was a good man. He deserved better than the Qunari gave him.”

  So had Jasecca, Myrion mused, thinking of the figure back in the tent whose face he hadn’t looked at. No one deserved to be a prisoner in their own mind, shackled by Qunari drugs just like the mages rendered Tranquil in the south, denied even a quick death.

  It was an awful effort without a staff, pulling little wisps of magic into order. He mouthed an old meditation chant that he’d learned at university, guiding the magic with his will, until it was ready, scratching at the edge of the barrier between the mortal world and the world of spirits, and then, sweating, he opened the path and let the energy through.

  A ball of fire rolled wetly across the top of the tent, sooty flame curling out as the leather caught. The cries of alarm were immediate from the Qunari command tents. If anyone inside the laundry tent cried out, Myrion didn’t hear it.

  “What in Andruil’s name did you do?” Strife shouted.

  Myrion met his look. “I gave everyone in that tent a merciful end, like you did for your friend.”

  “You idiot!” Strife grabbed him by the front of the tunic. “They might not have noticed we were gone for an hour! Now they’ll be on our heels!”

  Myrion shoved Strife away. “You’re saying we should have left them like that?”

  “I’m saying you shouldn’t have started a big fire,” Strife growled. “Come on!” He turned and started to run.

  Myrion tried to follow, and then, tangled in the chain he’d forgotten was there, he tripped and fell to the sand. His hands and forearms stung from the impact, and the salty air nipped at his eyes. Using magic always left him feeling sensitive, as though everything were just a bit sharper.

  “On your feet, magister!” Strife pulled on his shoulder, and Myrion let himself be dragged up.

  “Not a magister, you damned knife-ear,” he muttered, and then they were running.

  “Inside foot, outside, inside, outside,” Strife muttered beside him. “Find the rhythm, if you want to make it to the trees!”

  Myrion tried to find the rhythm, his blood pounding in his ears louder than the surf as they ran. The sand pulled at his sandals, and around him shouts of alarm came from both the Qunari and the prisoners. Myrion kept running, looking at his feet next to Strife’s.

  The sand turned to scrubby grass beneath his sandals, and Myrion heard a shout from his right, past Strife. He looked up to see one of the guards turning toward them: a thick-bodied Qunari, short for their race, whose horns had been replaced with little dragon’s-head caps.

  Strife caught the guard in the face with the stolen cudgel, kicked him in the knee, and then smashed the cudgel across the back of his head.

  He might have done more, but Myrion had still been running, and a moment later, the chain snapped taut between them with a painful wrench that sent Myrion face-first to the turf again.

  “Idiot mage!” Strife hissed. He’d ended up on his back and rolled now to his feet, yanking the chain back with another tug on Myrion’s leg.

  “You didn’t say we were stopping!” Myrion got to his hands and knees, then pushed himself up, yanking on the chain as well.

  “I didn’t think I had to! Inside foot, go!” Strife jerked into a run, and Myrion clumsily matched his stride. The chain between them hissed through the grass, jerking when it hit twigs.

  Then the forest was before them, dark angry trees looming overhead as if daring Myrion to approach. He stumbled, and Strife grabbed his shoulder and pulled him into the forest proper.

  The darkness was sudden and blinding after the morning light on the beach. The air reeked of dead leaves and old dirt, and branches slashed at Myrion’s face and arms as he followed alongside the elf. His lungs burned.

  They both jerked as the chain snagged on a root. Myrion staggered into a tree to catch himself, then slid down the mossy trunk to his knees. Strife snarled and turned back, tugging at the chain.

  Myrion looked up at a flash of movement before him. The snowy-white deer was there, sliding out from between two trunks ahead of them. No, not a deer, a halla; that was what the Dalish called them.

  The halla looked at Myrion, his breath heaving and his leg throbbing from the shackle, and then at Strife.

  Then, with a s
himmering sparkle of magic, the halla slid into the form of a young elven woman.

  She was thin and her features were more striking than pretty, her hair cut short and freckles on her face blurring into the Dalish tattoo across her forehead. She wore supple leather trimmed with fur, and she held a bow in one hand, along with a quiver of arrows.

  “I brought you a bow,” she said to Strife. “You brought me a magister.”

  “Yes, your gift is better. You win.” Strife tugged on the chain.

  “Where’s Thant?” She waved a hand, and the root slid back into the soil, leaving the chain free.

  “The Antaam used the mind-poison on him.” Strife sighed, and after a glance at Myrion, added, “All we could give him was a merciful end.”

  “The Antaam will pay.” The woman’s voice was quiet, but Myrion felt the air shudder at her anger.

  “I’m not a magister,” he said. “I am a mage, though. My name is Myrion.”

  “No key?” she asked. Myrion blinked, then realized she was looking at the shackles.

  “None,” said Strife. “I don’t suppose your magic can get us loose?”

  The elven woman squinted. The tattoo on her face made her look like she was glaring, or maybe she was glaring. “No. You could cut the magister’s foot off. Then you’d only have the chain to worry about.”

  “I’m not a magister, you stupid knife—” Myrion broke off as Strife cuffed him on the back of the head.

  “Play nice, Irelin,” Strife said to the elf, smiling. “He keeps the foot for now.”

  “I can hide your trail,” the woman, apparently Irelin, said.

  “No. You need to go.” Strife pulled out the paper he’d gotten from his friend’s tunic and passed it to Irelin. “The Qunari are moving into Rivain. You need to get word to the clans before they land.”

  Irelin looked at Myrion with her maybe-glare, then back to Strife. “I can be there and back by midnight. Can you stay ahead of the Qunari until then?”