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“Aneth ara.”
He stopped, his foot cloaked by blades of grass that whispered into rock. Twilight was settling heavy around him, colouring the sky a dark and contemplative blue moving to deep blush. It was a large and open plain, easy to feel comfortable in one’s surroundings; to imagine that they might not be happened upon in their quiet trek. Too much to hope for, these days. He shifted his head to one side, heavy hood shadowing his cheeks. Clinging to the side of the mound, grey clothes blending with the rock, a child stared up to him wide-eyed. Dalish. Still too young for the vallaslin to take precedence over their features.
“Andara atish’an,” he returned, his tone kind, though not fully warm. His thoughts had been deep and dark indeed, impossible for one to easily see the bottom. The child’s face, in comparison, was bereft of trouble or anxiety – though they were wary too. The Dalish were not trusting of strangers at the best of times, and their reserved nature passed on to their young. “Why are you here alone, da’len?”
“The hahren are teaching me the way of the bow.” The child paused. “They say I am not good enough yet to hunt.”
“But you are hunting regardless,” the traveller noted. A staff whittled out of dark stained oak was clutched in his right hand, propping his weight as he paused atop the angling mound. Many days’ worth of pack and rations was strapped to his back as well. The child was observant, he saw, and took in all of this. “They will miss you, if you do not return home.”
The child said nothing. A mop of brown hair fell over his brow, his cheeks faintly freckled. The familiar complexion dug briefly into the traveller’s belly. What if – ? But no. He would have known, and it would not have been her way. The traveller readjusted his grip on the staff.
“Are you searching for the elgar?” the child suddenly spoke. They straightened from their place against the rock, quickly tossing the mop of brown hair from before their eyes. “Only the hunters come out here, otherwise. She wants to be left alone.”
“The spirit?”
Uncertain, the child nodded. “That is what the hahren call her. They say she will hunt us and eat us in turn, if we disturb her.”
Is that what you have become, ma’arlath? “I am familiar with the way of spirits. The woman I seek is not of their kind.”
The child paused again. Their eyes darted from the traveller to the horizon, from where he had passed through the Dalish settlement. “Then she is not a spirit? The elders are wrong?”
“Often we label the things we do not understand in a way that does them little credit. They will not be the only ones to do so.”
“Then she will not kill you?”
That is yet to be seen. The traveller smiled. The butt of his staff itched against the grit of earth and grass. The light was waning, and he had yearned to find her before the sun set. He could not be certain where she went when the stars shone bright. Ever she had been fond of night wanderings – escaping to open places where there were none to lay eye upon her. The child took his silence for the ambivalent answer it was. They took a step away, as though death pervaded from him.
“They say that Andruil has forsaken her. That she tore her mark from her face and that is why she has been cursed to hunt, always, her hunger never sated. She is harellan, even if she is not a spirit. You should not go to her.”
The traveller’s smile did not wane, but it was mirthless and sad. He parted the hood from his head, the twilight shining upon his hairless pate. “Tel garas solasan. It is she who keeps her distance from you – who has tamed this place for you to hunt. Do not think that those who are called monsters, and those who are, are one and the same. Run home, da’assan.”
The child turned to run, though they turned again as they crested the next mound, watching the traveller pass on his way. He felt the child’s eyes upon him for much longer, but they did not still him, nor give him cause to worry. Once, these woods had been infected with much and worse. The very fabric of the air had been torn apart, but it was not the spirits that came forth that had troubled the traveller. He had seen the avarice of the living – the corruption that spread when the land was at its weakest. Those had been his monsters. The true monsters.
Yet, she had ever been merciful toward them. Even when her heart was wary, and she had mistrusted the shemlen, she had made sure to heed the calming words of her advisors. Of him. He wondered how she had changed – if she had changed. His head bowed, he continued on his pilgrimage. Lathbora viran – the path to a place of lost love, in its most literal sense. Had he the humour for it, he would have laughed at himself. The corners of his mouth tugged upward against his will.
Then she will not kill you? Would he blame her if she tried? What would he do? Would he let it all go to waste, knowing that he deserved whatever end she deemed fit?
The sky had darkened completely, but here in the plains, the stars did not shy away from display. When he lifted his head, they seemed each as bright as a sun, and he knew that if he gazed upon them for so long, the night would pass without his knowing. She had stood on her balcony in Skyhold, her head tilted back so that her braid whispered against her thigh. Only in those moments did he consider her remotely child-like, retaining an innocence that she had kept closely guarded within herself. Does she see them now like I? Does she feel my coming?
The endless stretch of ground gave way to a brook; a copse of trees. In the day, the sunlight would mottle the earth like stained glass, but in the starlight, each blade of grass seemed individually silvered at their tips. Here, the traveller knew, he would find a hut. Alone, out of the way, older than most inhabitants of the plains knew. He knew there would be a candle in its lone window, peering out at the chuckling water. If she was awake and within, he might see her shadow bracing against the timbered wall. If she was away, the candle would gutter and flicker on its own, a quiet sentinel.
When he approached the door, the whisper of grass told him that his guard had been too loose. The creak of a bowstring being pulled back only affirmed the suspicion. The traveller let loose his breath in a long, quiet exhale.
“Na din’an sahlin.”
“Ma nuvenin.”
He imagined that the tension of the string did not grow lax even an inch. Her breath was silent, held expertly as only a hunter could. She has laid her own staff aside – forsaken magic. Why for? Does she fear that calling upon the spirits of the Fade will bring my notice? He had noticed her besides, from afar. That she would go to such lengths to remain shy of him briefly tightened his chest.
“Garas quenathra?” Her voice, strained, followed the length of silence. The traveller finally turned, letting the hood slip back from his head once more. She did not mask her face as he did. Her pale complexion was turned up in defiance behind the draw of her string, and her hair – she had cut her hair. No longer did the long braid fall down her back, but it swept over the side of her head, nestling against her throat. The sudden desire to reach forth and feel it between his fingers brought the ache deeper within him. An unspoken, unreachable ache.
“Did you think I would never come?” he whispered. The brook near swallowed his words, but he knew that she could hear him. She never let anything slip the notice of her long-tipped ears. “Did you imagine I would cast you aside as nothing more than a shadow of my past? That I would have such strength of will?”
In her eyes, he saw the memory of the girl he had turned his back upon. His gaze drifted to her left arm. What should have been flesh and bone was an intricate contraption of wood, held in place by leather straps, the wildlife of the forests she had grown through as a child engraved along where her wrist would have been. No longer was there the pulsating glow of green that signalled her irreplaceable strength. Yet he knew that what had made the Inquisitor was her heart. That still shone fiercely within her dusk blue irides.
“But you did, vhenan’ara.” She had changed, he realised. Her voice rasped, deep and ancient in years within, if not without. He had pressed and dried the flower with no care to its petals. Now the words flicked from her lips as dry as the pages of a dusted tome. “You turned from me when I begged you to stay. When I asked that the Dread Wolf not be the monster that they say. If you have come to me, it is not to bring a smile to a young girl’s face. I am a burden to you.”
I am a burden to you. She spoke it so flatly, resigned. He knew himself the fool then. She had known he would come. The walks she took along the brook at night, she had imagined that she was savouring the last nights of her life. He doubted himself, suddenly. Is that why he had come? Had he allowed himself this weakness in knowing that it was his strength?
His hesitation seemed enough for her.
“Then finish me. I am no match for a god.”
Niamh did not lower her bow. She did not do anything besides stand where she stood, the arrow centred upon his heart. Her eyes signalled defeat; acceptance. And in that way, it was her victory.
“Banal.” It was an ugly sounding word, to say it as he did. Her eyes glittered in the dark adjacent him, and only then did the strength of her shoulders start to wane. No doubt she had wished to face him in the way she would wish to depart the world – stubborn, and on her own terms. She had told him once that she had desired to be a huntress of her clan – to follow the will of the Lady of the Hunt. When her talents had been discovered, she had been kept from the sport, and taken under the tutelage of her Keeper. Yet, she had been wilful – a calculated terror. The elders warned me of Fen’harel, she had said. How he hunted children who did not behave; who were more wolf than elf. He had seen the wolf in her heart from the moment they had first laid eyes upon the other. He had known her then, as familiarly as he would know a thorn in his own.
Niamh’s arrow pointed to the ground. Though she fought fiercely, the tears ran loosely down her cheeks. He saw the traces of faded scars, signs of new across her bare shoulders. The small imperfections of her face were even less noticeable than they had been during her tenure as Herald – the freckles too, somewhat receded with the years. The linen wrappings about her chest and the burlap breeches that encompassed her slender legs were all she had aside from her milk glass skin. The bare flesh seemed to reflect the stars’ prying eyes, and he felt blinded to look upon it, and yet hard-strung still to look into her face. So he looked to the ground.
“Would you stop me still? After all you have seen – how our people have fallen?”
“Our people? You have never considered the Dalish your people, but they are mine. Tel garas solasan.”
She would use my own words against me. He dared to brush his eyes up, over her knees and her thighs, to the naked stretch of her stomach that was as lean as the meat found on this land. Her chest rose and fell, the hunter’s quiet betraying itself for the emotion she held at bay. Her collarbone, sharp, speckled with moles like the constellations made a home above. Her shortened hair began to drift up in the breeze. It picked up from the plains and then whistled between the trees, and the traveller imagined that it seemed to encircle her – to shroud her, as though it meant to protect the child of the Dales from the Dread Wolf himself.
“I would not have hunted you,” he said softly. He feared again that his voice would lose itself in that startled wind – that she would not hear him now from the blood that rushed in her ears. “You would have been my kindred, whether I loved you – whether I loved you or could fight my own heart. You are not like them, ma sa’lath. You have known this for as long as you have lived.”
“Do not.” With the lifting of her hair came the hackles. “Do not belittle my brethren to paint the stars in my eyes. I am not the girl you left behind.”
“You were never a girl to me.”
The wolf was borne out of her with a ragged cry. She launched herself at him, but he stepped free of her turbulence. Her hand swung loosely where his head once was, and when she swung again, the wood of her makeshift wrist collided with his staff. The shock stunned her, and she fell to her knees before him. This time, Niamh did not cloak her tears, and she did not care to cloak her sobs. They came out of her an ugly storm, her pale face reddening with rage and frustration. Hurt.
“Mana!” she cried. “Mana!” Her fists collided with the earth, for it would not dodge her blows. “Len’alas lath’din … len’alas … ”
She still saw herself the child. The ugly outcast of her own clan, sent to spy for them at the Conclave, yet quickly abandoned when the world set its sights upon her. His fingertips closed around her chin, and he lifted her face to him. Long gone was the vallaslin, as the child had named her harellan for. He wondered if she would let him take the marking from her now, even after knowing its origin.
“I will stop you,” she whispered in the sudden quiet between them. “I will always stop you.”
The wind settled, and the leaves whispered back into their limp clusters. None would ever presume to think the Herald of Andraste lived there. Herald of a martyr that she had never believed in, leader of an inquisition she had no faith in. The traveller knew her tale after their last meeting – that she had walked away from the court intrigue of Orlais, her rising myth in the Free Marches. She had returned to what she believed to be the origin of her ancestors – to the Dales, and the exalted plains within. She had made herself small and unknown, a hermit to scare children away, while their elders told tales of her – painted her a vengeful spirit. The people of the Inquisition would never lose track of her, and those who came after would seek her advice. The advice of the woman who loved the Dread Wolf, and who the Dread Wolf had loved back.
Why am I here? Why have I come? A pilgrimage that serves no end to my cause, but for knowing that she is my weakness. The one thread that could unravel me.
He knelt. Face to face, a hollow echo of when they had met as Niamh and Fen’harel. His thumb brushed over her lips, feeling the shuddering warmth of her breath. Of all the things that pulled at him, from her tears to her desperate words, it was the lack of her braid that pained him the most. He would measure her comings and goings by the swing of it. When she arrived to gaze upon his murals at Skyhold, it would be slung over a shoulder, her face contemplative and indifferent of its fall. When she left him, it would swing along her back. When they were alone, he would thread his fingertips through the intricate folds, even knowing that he would only leave a mess where he had found them. He had left a mess where he had found her. His hand travelled round the side of her head, cupping her shorn hair. His nose brushed along hers, and his mouth paused against her gentle gasp.
May the Dread Wolf take me. There had been times when she had uttered the curse staring brazenly up into his face. His words had slipped and caught on the tip of his tongue. How many moments could he have confessed? How many moments, in turn, would that confession have changed? Perhaps he would never have been the string that unravelled her.
“I know.”
He felt the stirrings of power that twisted between her fingertips. Her energy still felt ragged to him, as though the Veil twisted and crumpled over her knuckles like dented fabric. Too powerful for her, and yet imperfectly controlled. She had learnt to twist the autonomy of the spirits to her will – to dabble in the arts of the death mages of Nevarra. Despair and apathy lay thick on the air as honey, but he would not let it permeate his will. He bent his mouth to her cheek, to her ear. The wind could not swallow his words from there.
“Let me take you from this place. Let me take you from them. This is not for you, to be forgotten.”
“Ir tel’him. This is my place.”
The spirit mark dug into his flesh, a dark and virulent energy. He swallowed the gush of decay that filled his throat, his palm pressing into her nape. Her hand pressed into his heart, her fingernails sinking into his skin. This was the way their spirits danced one around the other in the world of dreams. The web of black that bled from her sanctuary in the copse marked her presence whenever he drew near, and for that, he had come braced for the welcome. Where she chose to corrupt the energy around them, he reached between her hungry fingers and drew from the remnants. He drew the healing to his body, and he magnified its presence around hers. He coiled it around her, until he felt her begin to gasp for air against him – until the coils of corruption became so faint, he could only feel bruises on his mortal flesh from the press of her fingers.
There had been similar moments before where he had feared for her. Similar moments where she would fall against the rough terrain of the plains, or the forests, or the desert, her breath gasping out of her in an ugly lurch for life or death. She had grown to trust him from that. There was no-one you trusted more than one who strove to greet death with you at every turn. When first she had embraced herself in the Herald’s Rest and turned with sparkling eyes to him, gladdened to be alive, he had imagined it would always be simplest to be Solas. Solas, in love with Niamh of clan Lavellan. Solas, with pride in his name, but not upon his shoulders. Solas, with Fen’harel lost to the annals of history. Solas, holding her close with love, with trust, with faith to rebuild.
“Solas,” she gasped against him. Not Fen’harel. Not the Dread Wolf. Solas. What a macabre marriage of identity; of love and of duty. The tears ran down his cheeks as well, though he was late to recognise it. Late to recognise the tremble to his hand.
“Elgara vallas, da’len – melava somniar. Mala taren aravas … ara ma’desen melar.”
She grew quiet against him, her hand softening over his heart.
“Iras ma ghilas, da’len, ara ma’nedan ashir? Dirthara lothlenan’as, bal emma mala dir. Tel’enfenim, da’len; irassal ma ghilas. Ma garas mir renan. Ara ma’athlan vhenas … ara ma’athlan vhenas … ”