“Another message?” More news from Gwaren would be welcome. If it was bad news, Severan at least had an excuse to avoid Meghren for a while yet.
“No, my lord,” the lad gulped, nervous. “There is a woman. She sent me to find you. I’ve been looking everywhere!”
“A woman?”
“An elf, my lord. She told me to say her name is Katriel.”
He paused. “Katriel, you say? Where is she now?”
“In your quarters, my lord.”
Severan didn’t wait for the page to reply, breezing past him quickly. Katriel had done excellent work at West Hill, but had then disappeared under suspicious circumstances. He had wondered if she had been killed, perhaps found out after she had finished her work. There had been several unanswered questions, which had begun to make him suspicious. If she was back, however, this boded well.
Provided, of course, that she could supply an explanation for her absence.
It took several minutes for him to reach his quarters, even moving at a steady pace. He considered briefly calling the guards, but decided that would be unwise. It was unlikely the guards would dare to question him, but rumors spread far too easily. Who knows what Meghren might happen to overhear?
Instead he paused at his door and cast an enchantment of protection over himself. As unlikely as it was, if she intended him harm, it was good to be prepared. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and entered.
Katriel was as he remembered, golden curls down her back and majestic green eyes sizing him up. She wore dusty leathers and smelled faintly of sweat and horses. She had traveled here quickly, then, and had not stopped even to wash herself up? A good sign, then. His room was shadowed except for the flickering light of a lantern on his desk, and Katriel thumbed idly through one of his journals.
“I trust you have a good reason for your disappearance,” he said evenly. “And why you haven’t contacted me prior to your appearance here?” Severan didn’t like to show off his magic, but he held out a palm and allowed a lick of magical flame to spin itself into existence. He imagined it drove home the point sufficiently.
“I do,” she responded. The elf seemed far more solemn than he recalled. She closed his journal quietly and stared at Severan without challenge. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
“Good,” he said. The ball of fire hovering over his palm winked out, and he stepped farther into the room. He kept a wary eye on her even so. “Are you still situated in the rebel camp with Prince Maric? Or did they lose you at West Hill, as well?”
“I am still with the Prince, or at least I was until their victory at Gwaren. Then I came directly here, though it was not easy to escape detection.”
Severan waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. He frowned, nettled. “Victory? Then their counterattack was successful? They are back in control of Gwaren?”
She nodded. “Yes. Though not before your men slaughtered half of the town. That will cause quite a stir when news of it gets out.”
He waved away the matter, frowning. “That isn’t important now. With your help, we can strike at the rebel force and finish it once and for all. I assume the prince in Gwaren is actually him? Not some pretender?”
“It is,” she replied.
“Pity. Well, he will have to die. Thankfully you can make certain it is done properly this time.” Severan paused as he felt a buzzing sensation in the back of his head. Uncertain what it was, he increased the magical aura of protection around him and watched Katriel more carefully. What was she up to?
The elf seemed oblivious of his discomfort, merely shaking her head as she glided toward him around his desk. “No,” she murmured. “I’m not going to do that.”
“I see,” he said stiffly, ignoring the buzzing. “And what about our contract? I was led to believe you bards held your honor above all else.”
Katriel paused at his desk. “Let us assume for the moment that our contract was not canceled the moment you changed the plan at West Hill.” She folded her arms, frowning. “I would need to remind you that my contract was to deliver Prince Maric to you, alive. Nothing more, nothing less.” Her green eyes glinted dangerously at him.
Severan paused. The buzzing in his head got worse, and numbness crawled up his skull. He ignored it. “Would you bring me the Prince now, as we agreed, if I asked you to do it?”
She shook her head. “No. I would not.”
“I see.” He raised his palm again, and the ball of fire reformed. It was brighter now, flickering blue at the edges. His eyes bored into hers, daring her to try to strike him with the daggers she surely had on her person. “Then we are going to have an issue, yes?”
Katriel didn’t move. She merely stared at Severan expectantly, her arms still folded. He concentrated, but the buzzing only got worse. The ball of flame sputtered and then disappeared. He would have gasped in shock, but the numbness had spread to his face. He could only open his mouth and then click it shut again.
The room began to spin, and he reached out to grab on to a wooden bedpost to steady himself. He felt the strength in his legs draining out from underneath him.
Katriel gestured toward the door. “A contact poison, coated on the doorknob.” As she slowly walked toward Severan, his hands slid down the post and he collapsed to the floor. Any attempt of his to cry out elicited only a painful wheeze as his throat constricted up tight, making it difficult to breathe.
The elf stood over him, looking down with sadness in her green eyes. She did not seem to be enjoying what she was doing, though that hardly brought him any satisfaction. His heart leaped madly about in his chest, just as his mind screamed at him to move, to find some way out of this trap of paralysis.
“I do not intend to kill you,” she said quietly. “I should do it, but you are right on that count, at least. My honor, for what it’s worth, forbids it.” She crouched down over him, absently adjusting his robe so it did not bunch up around his throat.
Severan tried to reach out for his staff, propped up next to his bed not far away. His fingers flexed, the effort to do so making his face turn red and sweaty, but he could not move his arm. Katriel watched his effort passively. “Consider this, mage: if I had slain you, it would have been your pride that was your undoing in the end. If my time as a bard has taught me anything, it is that men with power can still be approached. The more power they believe they have, the more vulnerable they are.”
He looked up at her, wanting to hurl furious insults, wanting to reach up and strangle her slender throat, but he could do nothing but wheeze and spit. Her eyes hardened as she stared down at him. “I am not your servant, mage,” she said dispassionately. “I am no one’s servant any longer. That is what I came to tell you.”
Katriel stood up and moved toward the doorway, and he continued to lie there, struggling feebly against the poison in his blood. She opened the door and paused, looking back at him.
“If you are wise, you will abandon your plans and return to wherever you came from. If you continue here, you will die, of that I assure you.” She looked off into the distance, her countenance softening for a moment before she shrugged off the feeling. “Consider that warning a courtesy.”
And then she was gone.
Severan lay on the cold stone of his bedroom floor, trying with increasing success to reach out toward the staff. He supposed he should be glad for his life. He was a fool to let his guard down so completely, after all. As the beads of sweat rolled down his forehead, however, all he could truly think of was revenge.
For this indignity, she will suffer. Then the rebel prince after her and all the rest.
Oh, they will suffer.
17
Loghain watched Maric quietly from across the room.
They were all exhausted after the days of battle, finally resulting in Gwaren being successfully defended from the usurper’s attack, but still Maric toiled away at his table, writing letter after letter. How many he had written so far, Loghain could only guess, but three riders had already been sent westward, carrying word into the Bannorn and other parts of the land.
Loghain was fairly certain that word of Maric’s return would spread faster than any horse could, but Maric was determined to make a personal appeal to the Fereldan nobility while there was still time to capitalize on their victory. It had come at a heavy cost, after all. The number of dead within Gwaren had been staggering. The Orlesians had been brutal in their efforts to deal with the uprising, so much so that Maric had felt compelled to turn the army about even though they had been barely in fighting form and had been fleeing for their lives.
Maric felt responsible for those lost lives. Loghain could see that. He had stared at the streets full of dead men and women who had fought against mounted knights only because they believed in him, and Loghain had seen that a part of Maric’s soul had shriveled up right then.
It had been a desperate situation when they had fallen upon the chevaliers in Gwaren only days after having been handed a narrow defeat by them, and luck had played into their hands. The usurper’s men had not considered the possibility that they might come back, and their attention was wholly upon slaughtering the ungrateful populace. Maric had been filled with a righteous fury, and even when the enemy finally routed and fled the field, Loghain had been forced to hold him back from ordering them chased down. The rebel force had been decimated, and was in no shape to go anywhere. It had taken both Loghain and Rowan to convince Maric to stand down. They had to recover, and had many dead to burn.
And that was what they had been doing for days, now. Burning the dead. The air had been filled with acrid smoke that never seemed to go away. Only the Legion didn’t take part in their rites. They grieved for their heavy losses but also seemed satisfied that their men had died in a glorious battle. Nalthur shook Maric’s hand before the remaining dwarves took their dead back into the Deep Roads, promising to return soon. Loghain hoped they didn’t meet their end at the hands of the darkspawn after all. A sobering thought, to think that such creatures had existed beneath their feet for so long, forgotten.
At first Maric had insisted on walking through the streets of what remained of Gwaren, watching the funeral pyres and joining in the prayers said by the few Chantry priests that remained. But the eyes of the people were upon him wherever he went. The way they watched his every move and whispered behind his back, the way they bowed low whenever they spotted him and refused to get up even when he begged them to; their worship disturbed him.
Returned from the dead, they whispered. Sent by the Maker to free them from the yoke of the Orlesians at last. Despite the fact that Maric’s mission had not changed, suddenly it seemed real to them. Suddenly it seemed possible, their loss at West Hill forgotten. And Maric would kill himself to make sure their belief was vindicated.