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It’s a beautiful morning. I know this because I am told. It is one of many things that I know because I am told. Without that, how would I know?
Ser Tamothy leads me to my place in the stall, behind the bench, where the wares are sold. This is an emporium where many wares are sold. The others are already in their places, in their stalls, behind the benches. Artemis is potions. Valeniel is runes. Ruce is housewares. I am clothes.
“Well, here we are,” Ser Tamothy says, and releases my arm with a hearty pat on my shoulder that makes his gauntlets clank. He is smiling, his lips wide and teeth gleaming white. “What a beautiful morning! It’s a feast day, so we should get a nice big crowd today, uh? Be sure to sell lots of wares.”
“Yes, Ser Tamothy,” I answer. “Sure to sell lots of wares.”
“You got it.” Ser Tamothy leaves me, the Sword of Mercy bright on his surcoat as he walks away. I must be sure to sell lots of wares. It is for the Chantry. The Chantry takes care of us. They give us food, and clothes, and housing, and take care of all the mages in the Circle. It is expensive. The costs add up. So we must sell wares to pay these costs. This I know because I am told.
I am glad to be of service to the Chantry. The Chantry cares for me. This I also know.
Ser Tamothy does the rounds and checks on each of the stalls. Artemis. Valeniel. Ruce. Everything is in order. Everything is as it should be. Everyone is in their place. Ser Tamothy smiles at us, pats our shoulders, tells us it is a beautiful morning, and he leaves.
The marketplace is beginning to fill up. There are other vendors, not only us. There are many customers. They move very fast, they speak very loudly. They laugh. Perhaps they are happy. The sky overhead is covered with glass, dirty now because no one cleans it, but it is a beautiful morning. Through the gaps in the crowd I can see the walls. Through the gaps in the walls I can see the rest of the marketplace. A person could walk through those gaps and keep on going. There would be sunshine out there and a beautiful morning. Ruce does not. Valeniel does not. Artemis does not. I do not.
This is our place. We could not survive in any other place. The Chantry takes care of us and we are lucky.
The sun is almost overhead when two more people walk in. They both wear hooded cloaks, strange on this beautiful morning. They both carry staffs. Their clothes are stained and their boots are scuffed and filthy, but they walk like the Templars do. Firm steps. Long strides. Heads held high.
One of them pulls back his hood. He has dark hair and a full beard, a long red scar across his nose. He grins like Ser Tamothy grins, wide lips and bright teeth gleaming. He raises the hand holding the staff towards the sky, and shoots a fireball into the air.
The fireball explodes. It leaves a great flash and bang and hot sparks rain down over the crowd. People startle, they gasp and look around for the source of the commotion. Some of them start to scream.
“Attention, everybody!” the dark man who shot the fireball yells out, still grinning. “If you will look to my left, please, you will see none other than the man who destroyed the Kirkwall Chantry! He is a very dangerous apostate and let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that anyone who is still in this square when I reach the count of twenty is going to find out just what he does to the people who stand in his way!”
The screaming redoubles, and people run in panic. The dark man’s voice still rises over the hubbub of the crowd, counting out numbers firm and strong. By the time he reaches seventeen, the square is empty of people. Except for them.
I watch them. The others all watch them, too. They are very dangerous apostates. This I know because he said so. The second man sighs and pulls back the hood of his cloak. His hair is blond, pulled back in a long messy braid, and he has not shaved. His clothes are stained and torn, patched with bandages, and he is too. “The answer to that being, of course, that I cast a very potent sleep spell and be on my way,” he said. “Must you always be so overdramatic?”
The dark man laughs. “Well, you have to admit that it was effective in clearing the room of everyone still capable of feeling fear,” he said. “You have the reputation either way, you might as well make use of it.”
“That’s true,” the blond man says with a sigh. “Effective in bringing Templars down on us, too.”
“Isabela’s distraction at the docks should give us at least half a bell,” the dark man assures him. “As long as we don’t waste it.”
“Right,” the blond man says grimly, and he begins to tie back his sleeves. It is a habit I have seen before, in the Tower. It is a habit I used to have too. I kept it for a long time after I wasn’t Harrowed.
The healer approaches Artemis first. I wonder if he is going to take the potions without paying. We are not supposed to let people take things without paying. He stops in front of her, looking straight into her eyes, and raises his hands.
He says something to Artemis. His voice is too quiet for me to hear. “Artemis,” she answers. He smiles at her, and raises his hands. She raises her hands too, but he brushes them aside as he places his hands at the side of her head. He says something else, so quietly, and then his whole body flashes with light.
NO I –
DON’T
please please please
…the light is gone, as quickly as it came. I am back in the marketplace and it is a beautiful morning. There is a man here and he is a dangerous apostate. Everything is in its place, everything is as it was.
Except it is not. Artemis twists in the healer’s hands, her breath coming fast, staring at him with wide eyes. He runs his thumbs down her cheeks and says something soothing to her, and she begins to scream. High, breathless, unrelenting.
The healer sighs, drops his hands and backs away. “Hawke, please take her,” he says, and there is a deep weariness in his voice. “I have to help the others.”
“Of course.” The dark man moves up beside him and reaches out towards Artemis, making little soothing sounds. She doesn’t seem to hear him. She stares at her hands, clenching and unclenching into fists, and keeps on screaming.
The healer ignores them both as he approaches Housewares. “Stop,” Ruce tells him when he gets into arm’s range.
“I can’t,” the healer tells him, and he reaches out his hands just as he did for Artemis. “I know you are not capable of consent as you are now, and I am so sorry. But I swear to the Maker, I am trying to help you.”
The healer touches his head, and the soundless light jolts again
don’t leave me don’t leave me don’t leave
and is gone. Ruce gasps as though struck and stumbles back a step, out of the healer’s hands. He collapses to a heap on the floor, and begins to sob, tears running down the wrinkles in his cheeks.
The healer sighs, and rubs his hands against his own temples. “Oh for two,” he mutters, then blinks and scrubs his eyes. He turns to face Valeniel next, standing over her runes, and his step is much heavier than it was before.
“Are you all right?” Hawke calls out; he is kneeling on the floor, his arms around Artemis and rubbing her back soothingly, but his attention is all on the healer. She has stopped screaming, at last, only letting out quiet keening wails with no hint of tears.
“Fine,” the healer calls back, not turning away from his slow advance on Valeniel. “I can keep going.”
This time I am close enough to hear what he says when he puts his hands on her head. “What is your name?” he asks softly.
Valeniel eyes him distrustfully. For as long as I have known her she has always been rigid around human men. The healer gives her a smile, which she does not return. “My name is,” he prompts her.
“My name is Valeniel,” she says obediently, her eyes still hard.
“Don’t be afraid, Valeniel,” he says, and moves his thumbs to rest on her temples. “It’s time to wake up now.”
The light flashes again and it is not fair that I can’t see it, that the healer stands with his back to me. The light is… the light is…
I… want…
How can I… want…?
The healer backs off a step, and Valeniel stares at him with green eyes blown wide. Her ears are flat to her head as she sucks in a deep breath, then another. All at once she begins to laugh, as though someone has told her the world’s greatest joke; she looks at her hands and at the stall and at the marketplace around her and laughs and laughs and laughs.
“Anders?” Hawke calls, stepping up beside the healer’s side and catching him under the elbow as he takes a step and stumbles. “All right, that’s enough. Three in one day is too many. Let’s get out of here before the patrols come back and catch us with our pants down.”
“No!” The healer – Anders – pushes against Hawke with one hand. “I can do this. I’ve still got some strength left.”
“Strength that you’d better save for running,” Hawke says sharply.
Anders shakes his head. “I can’t stop, love,” he says. “You know why I can’t. I can’t leave anyone behind.”
Hawke’s lips tighten, but he takes a deep breath and lets the healer’s arm go. “I know,” he says. And they both turn to me.
It is hard to breathe, and I do not know why, for my clothes are no tighter than they have been. The healer walks towards me, shabby and unshaven and dirty, and there is a light in him that I cannot see. I could have seen it once. I want to see it again.
“You are a dangerous apostate,” I say. I know this to be true, because the dark man says so. The only way I know anything to be true is what I am told.
“I am,” he says, and reaches for me. I want to pull away. I want to run to him. I don’t understand how I can want anything any more. “But not to you. Only to the Chantry, and their men, and their horrors.”
“The Chantry takes care of me,” I tell him. I have been told this so many times, I know it to be true. It must be true. What else were all these years for, if it wasn’t true?
“They don’t.” He puts his hands on either side of my head, and his hands are hot. His eyes search mine, and there is a blue light beginning to glow in the depths. “What’s your name?” he says softly.
It’s hard to remember.
“Omelas,” I say at last. There was a boy by that name once, in the tower, a long time ago. He laughed like Valeniel, he cried like Ruce. He screamed like Artemis when the demons came for him in his dreams, because he knew he didn’t have the strength to fight them. He didn’t have the strength for a Harrowing. He was only a healer. And then he was nothing.
“Come back now, Omelas,” Anders says, and his thumbs move over my temples. “Come back.”
There is a sun rising inside him, bursting with all the light and color and music of a thousand thousand mornings.
And it’s beautiful.
~end.