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Lavellan woke into a dream of green. The water spread around her feet in shallow shining pools heavy with weed; moss lay thick over the rocks; the trees dripped vines like festival garlands.
“The Korcari Wilds,” said a voice behind her. “You remember it a great deal greener than I do.”
“The Inquisition passed through it in summer,” Lavellan said. “It was bright.” She turned; behind her was a little house, with a snow-white raven perched above the door. “Morrigan?”
The raven laughed. “Oh, no! That girl learned all her tricks from me.” She spread her wings; there was a flurry of feathers and a flicker of white, and there she stood.
“Mythal,” Lavellan said, bowing her head. She swallowed, hard; even in dreams her throat was dry. Now of all times she must swallow her pride. “What would you will of me?”
“Can’t an old woman come check up on her vessel?” Mythal laughed, leaning back against the house. “A mother worries, you know. Not that I’m your mother. But close enough. Once you even wore my vallaslin.”
“I did,” Lavellan said. “Not anymore. Does that displease you?”
“Displease me? I am not so easily offended as you think. I’ve lived too long.” She stretched exactly like a mortal woman, her arms arched above her head. “You drank my Well. Why should I care what’s on your face?”
Lavellan laughed, bitter and sharp. “You’re right. I might as well have left it there.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mythal said. “People chose to swear their oaths to you. Were they your slaves? Would you have accepted their oaths, if they had had no choice?”
“Not all of them had much of one,” Lavellan said. “Some had nowhere else to go.” Fiona had looked desperately to her in the shadows of Redcliffe, sleepless bags underlining the despair in her eyes. “I took theirs.”
“Perhaps,” Mythal said. She crossed to a fence that hadn’t been there and perched herself on the top rail, moving as nimbly as a girl. Her hair blew ice-white in the dreaming wind. “Did you know we shared a man?”
“What – Solas?” Lavellan covered her mouth – with her left hand. She paused there, staring at her palm; the flesh flickered under her gaze, then dissolved into the proper stump. She sighed, and looked back up to Mythal. “You and…”
“Oh, yes,” Mythal said, cackling. “Many times. Does he still do that thing with his tongue?”
Lavellan’s right hand covered her eyes. “Fenedhis,” she said, slowly and with feeling.” She raised her head. “Are you jealous?” Her voice shook.
“Oh, for mercy’s sake, girl, no,” Mythal said, laughing. “Try not to be so frightened of me. It’s clever of you, but boring. I left him long ago for better, and I’ve had many others since. He was yours to take or leave, and I gather you took him with a vengeance.”
Lavellan had never blushed in the Fade before. She did now. “He spoke highly of you,” she said. “When I met him as… himself.”
“He was always himself with you,” Mythal said. “Only a part of himself. Many of your friends were like that, weren’t they? Even you were. The Inquisitor was only a part of you.”
“You know a great deal of my affairs,” Lavellan said stiffly. Mythal shrugged one feathered shoulder.
“He took something from me,” she said. “Very little time ago, even by your reckoning – and some things cannot be taken without something given in return. I know more of his mind than he might have once supposed. And you are my vessel, and your own mind linked to mine. Some of your own memories are mine as well.”
“Well. That’s unsettling.” Lavellan shifted foot to foot. “He said you were the best of them.”
“He’s always had a weakness for a woman on a throne,” Mythal said, grinning. “Especially one who’ll listen to him.”
Lavellan snorted, dropping onto a tree stump that waited to serve as a seat. “Don’t remind me.” She shook her head. “There he was, imparting the wisdom of the gods to all the dead little ghosts. I thought he was interesting. He always seemed so glad someone was willing to listen. Anyone. I thought… I thought…”
“You’re twice the mind he ever was,” Mythal said. Suddenly the fence was by the stump, and she leaned down to pat Lavellan’s shoulder. “He knew it, too, by the end. He knew you’d figure him out eventually.”
“It took me long enough,” Lavellan said, and leaned forward over the stump to spit. It vanished into the green Fade air. “You don’t think he thought I was a fool, then? That I was something less?”
“Not by the end,” Mythal repeated. “Not anymore.”
Lavellan reached up to squeeze her hand. “Thank you.”
The two women stared out at the Fade together as the dreams of whippoorwills called in the green.
“You know his plans,” Lavellan said heavily at last.
“Not enough to help you much,” Mythal said. “I could tell you every time he’s furious or saddened or has a bit of indigestion, but you need to know about his armies.”
“I don’t think I can defeat him with bad fish,” Lavellan said. She paused. “Well, it would take a great deal of it.”
“You have a point there. Enough bad fish can be a real problem,” Mythal said, light and dancing.
“Would you help us if you could?” Lavellan asked, looking up at her. “You were an evanuris once. He didn’t kill you, but…”
“Never let it be said you ask your gods the easy questions!” Mythal frowned, looking away over the swamps. Her voice dropped low, all laughter gone: “He locked my vengeance away with them, and I want that badly still. More than you can imagine. But I’ve lived too long in this world, and become too many things contrary to what my nature was. A mother who has done ill by her daughters. A legend of someone else’s people. A foolish old woman who talks too much.” She laughed. “I will have my reckoning, against some fool or another, but I do not wish to see you burn. Our Solas should not have tried to sleep his grief away. A year with you shook all his dreaming to the roots; imagine what a few thousand might have done?”
“I can’t imagine.” She shook her head, remembering Ameridan’s memories brushing green against her palm. “If there’s any one thing being Inquisitor taught me, it’s that history changes every day. More than we could ever guess. Sometimes I’m afraid to choose my breakfast.”
Mythal chuckled, ruffling Lavellan’s hair. “Breakfast I think is safe. But who knows – dinner could lead to a calamity.”
“Not with Josephine on watch,” Lavellan said. She stretched out her neck, stiff even in dreams. “Can you speak to him?”
“Not in any sense too real, and yet perhaps I can enough,” Mythal said. “He already knows you’re coming to stop him. He already knows you love him still. Is there more you need to say?”
Lavellan sighed, dragging her boot through the incorporeal mud. “That was about it.” She grimaced. “I’ve had relationships go sour before. It doesn’t feel any less stupid for being the Inquisitor and the Dread Wolf.”
“It wouldn’t,” Mythal said.
They shared another stretch of silence. The birds called. The sun, which had been noon-bright and high, began to brush on the horizon, though it had not been near an hour. Lavellan knew, as she had begun to know, that she would shortly wake.
“Since you asked,” she said, looking up at the goddess of justice, “yes. He does still do that thing with his tongue.”
Mythal whooped, loud and bright. “Then he’s still good for something after all,” she said, and Lavellan woke with Mythal’s cackle still echoing in her ears.