Dragon Age: Last Flight (2 page)

“I have,” Sekah said. He was a small grave boy with straight dark hair and enormous eyes that made him look far younger than his sixteen years. “Before I came to the Circle, hurlocks attacked our farm. We couldn’t hold them off with arrows or pitchforks, so I burned them. That’s how my magic came to me.”

Valya regarded her companion with surprise. She’d never heard that story before, and had no idea he’d survived such danger. Sekah wasn’t even a real mage yet, strictly speaking; he hadn’t undergone the Harrowing, which meant he was still an apprentice.

Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe there wouldn’t
be
any more Harrowings now that they were all apostates. Only Circle mages had to endure that awful ritual, and there were no Circles anymore.

In that case, maybe Sekah was the most accomplished mage among them.

Caronel certainly seemed to be impressed. The elven Warden nodded at Sekah with real respect. Then he glanced at the others. “And you?”

Mutely, Valya shook her head along with the rest of them. She’d read about darkspawn in the histories, of course, and heard countless stories from those who had fought the horrific creatures. No child of the Anderfels, elf or human, grew up without being terrorized by bedtime tales of hurlocks and genlocks and baby-eating ogres. But she had never personally laid eyes on one, much less faced a howling horde of them in combat.

“Then you’ll have a lot to learn,” Caronel said. “
If
you become Wardens, your primary duty will, of course, be protecting the people of Thedas from the depredations of darkspawn. Not only will you have to fight against them personally, but you will have to lead others in that fight. You will need to know everything about them: their types, their tactics, and all we know about their origins and abilities.” The elf paused. “You’re all mages, so I assume you can read?”

Valya nodded, as did her companions. Caronel gave them another approving glance. “Very good. Then, until it’s time for you to undergo the Joining, you can earn your keep—and perhaps begin to learn something useful—in our libraries.”

“Earn our keep how?” Sekah asked.

“The Chamberlain of the Grey has requested your assistance with his research,” Caronel said. “You should be honored to assist. It’s something to do with blood magic, I gather, although the chamberlain’s being tight-lipped about the details. Old, whatever it is. But you mages love old books, don’t you? You should have a grand time with it. All that … parchment. And dust.”

“Blood magic?” Sekah echoed in a whisper, casting a nervous look to Valya.

She shared the younger boy’s unspoken sentiments. Blood mages were feared and reviled across Thedas, for their magic drew upon pain and sacrifice, and could often be used to control the minds or bodies of others. If whatever this was involved darkspawn, too …

Valya had never heard of darkspawn possessing such magic. She had always thought they were mindless brutes, and blood magic required considerable sophistication.

“Something like that,” Caronel said. “You’ll be looking for accounts where Wardens acted … strangely. Disregarding their orders, abandoning their posts, things of that nature. You’ll also be looking for mentions of unusual darkspawn—ones who could talk and think like men. These things may occur together or separately. It doesn’t matter. Make note of both.

“Not everyone who witnessed such things would have recognized them for what they were, of course. The accounts may be cryptic, and prone to exaggeration or distortion. But any reference you can find would be helpful. I understand that it may be difficult to distinguish incidents where Wardens inexplicably absconded from ordinary desertions, or from outposts that were massacred during the fighting. I also understand that the language may present some difficulty, as you’ll be focusing on materials that may be several centuries old. Do your best.”

“When would you like us to begin?” Valya asked.

“Today,” Caronel replied. He stood, brushing invisible wrinkles from his deep blue tunic. “As soon as you’re done eating, in fact.”

The conversation died out after that. Valya, alight with nervous excitement, had to force herself to swallow her food. As hungry as she’d been before, the bread and cheese now seemed as flavorless as sawdust.

When they’d finished eating, Caronel led them from their room down a long dusty hallway. To their right, the stone walls were hung with tapestries of plate-clad Wardens mounted on griffons and raining death down on armies of shrieking darkspawn. To the left, archers’ slits allowed just enough sunlight to bring out the tapestries’ faded hues.

Weapons were mounted between some of the tapestries. They looked like darkspawn weapons: savagery crystallized in black, cruel and clumsy and terrifying. Old stains covered their blades. Blood, maybe. Or something worse. Valya couldn’t tell. Shivering, she averted her eyes.

“You have to look,” Sekah whispered by her elbow. The boy’s eyes were fixed on a dented, bloodied shield. “You have to bear witness and understand why it is so important to stop them. The Joining, the Calling … it’s all worthwhile if it holds back the darkspawn. Once you understand what they
are
.”

Valya shook her head, her lips pressed tightly. But she looked up, briefly, at the ancient weapons nailed to the walls, and the tapestries that commemorated the grisly battles in which those weapons had presumably been taken. And then she cast her eyes downward, shivering again, and kept her gaze fixed on her own toes as Caronel led them away through the hall and down a sweeping flight of stairs and into Weisshaupt’s great library.

It was an awe-inspiring sight, more of a cathedral than a library. Huge vaulted windows overlooked an adjacent courtyard and flooded the interlocking chambers with cloudy sunlight. Rows upon rows of gray stone shelves, all heavily laden with yellowing books and bone-encased scrolls, stretched for a seeming infinity in front of the mages. Chandeliers of scented candles hung from creaking iron frames overhead, filling the library with the mingled fragrance of beeswax, cedarwood, and old smoke. The walls were richly carved with heraldic griffons and ancient coats of arms and ornamental plants—oranges, pomegranates, and plump juicy grapes.
All the fruits that the sculptor missed in the arid Anderfels,
Valya guessed.

“You’ll begin with materials from the Fourth Blight,” Caronel said, leading them to a smaller chamber that opened off the side of the main library. “The older records are beyond most of us. If you’ve made a study of ancient languages, we’d be glad to have you look at those … but I’m guessing that you haven’t, in which case the chronicles from the Fourth Blight will be difficult enough.”

He stood beside the archway and waved them in. Leather-bound books in uniform rows covered the shelves that lined the chamber’s upper halves. They had the look of official histories, recorded after the fact by scribes in quiet rooms. Underneath those neat gray tomes, enormous ironbound trunks rested against the walls. Two of them were open, revealing a clutter of books, papers, scraps of parchment, and other miscellany that appeared to have been loosely sorted by size but was otherwise unorganized.

“The trunks contain primary materials. Original reports, notes from the field, letters from Wardens and soldiers. It’s most likely that you’ll find what we’re looking for in there,” Caronel said from the archway.

Valya barely heard him.

In the center of the room was a glass sarcophagus raised up on a dais of gilt white marble. At its head, a pair of enormous black horns spiraled up almost to the ceiling, their tips lost in shadow. The sarcophagus was obviously very old; although slightly tinted, the panes of glass set into its walls and lid had been painstakingly cut to avoid bull’s-eyes, ripples, or other flaws common in older glass. The panes in the coffin were no bigger than Valya’s palm, but each one was flawless.

Feeling as though she’d fallen into some kind of trance, the young elven mage stepped through the archway and approached the sarcophagus. Through the lattice of glass and lead, she could see a suit of silverite plate mail gleaming faintly in the wan gray sunlight. It didn’t look like ceremonial armor. The Wardens’ griffon was etched upon the breastplate, and there was some simple chase work on the helm and pauldrons, but it had the look of hard-used service mail. Old sweat stained the leather straps, and whoever had last polished the armor hadn’t quite been able to get all the dents out.

The armor’s empty gauntlets were folded over two weapons: a long knife in a plain leather scabbard, and a graceful, swooping longbow with a pair of gray-and-white feathers tied to its top end like a tassel. It was the sight of those mottled feathers, brittle with age, that made Valya suck in a sudden breath of recognition.

Those are Garahel’s.

Garahel was the greatest elven hero that Thedas had ever known. As a Grey Warden, he had been crucial in rallying allies to fight the Fourth Blight—and he himself had struck down the Archdemon Andoral, giving his own life to break the darkspawn horde.

Every elven child knew the story. Garahel occupied a special place of pride in their hearts. As an elf, he had suffered all the same indignities that they had. Outcast, spat upon, considered utterly beneath respect, he had nevertheless risen above that contempt and had not only forgiven his old enemies, but had spared them from sure doom.

Alone, he had ended the Fourth Blight and saved Thedas.

Valya passed her fingers reverently over the coffin’s glass facets. She didn’t dare touch them; leaving smudges on Garahel’s memorial would have been impious. But even that light brush sent a thrilling tingle through her skin.
The hero of the Fourth Blight
.

The other mages had filtered into the room behind her. They, too, looked at the coffin with its crown of ridged black horns. Their expressions shifted from confusion to awe as each of them came to the silent realization of whose arms and armor lay in that glass casket—and whose horns those were standing like a headstone above his memorial.

Behind them, Caronel smiled. “We keep relics from all the blights here. This isn’t just a library. It is a monument to honor the fallen.” He stepped away, taking his hand from the arch. “Call out if you need anything. There are always Wardens in the library, and the chamberlain’s office is nearby. There is a washroom near the back on the right, behind the case of ogre horns. I’ll be back to summon you for dinner.”

Then he was gone, and the four of them were alone with the books and the trunks and the Archdemon’s horns.

“Do you think those are really Garahel’s arms?” Padin whispered. She was the oldest of them, and the tallest, a gawky blond girl with pock-scarred cheeks and a habit of hunching her shoulders inward in a futile attempt to make herself small.

“Of course they are,” Valya said. “The Wardens wouldn’t have
fakes
.”

“Where do you want to begin?” Sekah asked. “With the official histories or the trunks?”

Valya hesitated. She knew very little about the real history of the Fourth Blight. Garahel’s heroism was a familiar tale, and she’d heard old songs like “The Rat-Eater’s Lament” and “The Orphan with Five Fathers,” which dated from the infamous siege of Hossberg, but the details of troop movements and battles were a mystery to her. The Fourth Blight had lasted more than a decade, hadn’t it? That was an enormous span of fighting. Where should they begin looking for traces of abnormal darkspawn, or Wardens who had absconded from their duties?

“We’ll start with the battle maps,” she decided. “We might be able to tell something from the Wardens’ troop movements. A picture’s supposed to be worth a thousand words, isn’t it?”

“If you know how to read it,” Berrith muttered. The pretty blonde still seemed to be sulking after Caronel had ignored her.

No one else protested, though. Padin lifted the oversized book containing the official versions of the Wardens’ battle maps and began leafing carefully through the pages. The book was very old, but it had been designed to withstand the march of ages and had been reinforced with spells for that purpose, and the colored lines denoting rivers and forests on the tough beige parchment were as bright as the day they’d been drawn.

Almost from the start, the darkspawn hordes overwhelmed the maps. Their forces were rendered as simple black sigils, menacing in their starkness. They marched on and on, swallowing kingdoms, erasing the names of villages and towns and cities under their onslaught. But the uniformity of the markings told Valya nothing about which darkspawn they’d been, or how they’d effected their conquests.

She turned her attention to the Wardens’ movements instead. Perhaps it would be easier to divine a pattern in their responses to the horde.

Unlike the darkspawn, the Wardens were not all marked with the same map symbol. The griffons were designated with a stylized eagle’s head, sometimes rendered in blue and sometimes in red; she supposed those were the forces headed by two different commanders. Cavalry were horse heads, again in varying colors, and infantry were marked by spearpoints. Little pennons sketched under the spears designated whether they were Wardens or allies from various nations.

But there wasn’t much of a pattern to those, either, at least none she could tell from looking at the maps without context. Gradually the other mages reached the same conclusion and drifted away, opening trunks and beginning to sift through the primary documents.

Valya stuck doggedly to the maps. She wanted to at least get to the end of the book before giving up and trying another tack.

A note in the margin of one map caught her eye. At first glance it looked like just another town or village somewhere outside Starkhaven, right on the edge of the darkspawn horde and doubtlessly soon destroyed by the same. Nothing noteworthy.

But the name was the Elvish word for “griffon,” which seemed an unlikely choice for a human village, and there was a subtle shimmer of dust rubbed into the parchment underneath it.
Lyrium
. It was only a tiny amount, and very dilute, but after years of apprenticeship in the Circle of Magi, Valya recognized lyrium dust immediately. That green-blue glow, constant through the world of the living and the Fade alike, was utterly unique in Thedas.