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Carver had never been prone to seasickness, but as he stepped onto the docks of Amarantine, his stomach was in knots.
For the first time in five years, he stood on Ferelden soil.
He was home.
The air smelled of salt and seaweed, the faint rot of wood and rope. Men shouted to be heard over the wind that whipped through his hair, pulling at his clothes as though suspicious hands were searching him for contraband. Hounds barked in the distance. The light was paler, falling from a different angle than he’d become accustomed to while traversing the Marches with Stroud and Dulac and a mute elf named Naïlo.
He waited. For the sense of belonging to rush in, for some hitherto overlooked imbalance to right itself in his soul and felt…
Nothing, save a twinge of disappointment. Amarantine was just another port in another city on the Thedosian coast. His father had never brought the family so near to Denerim. Carver, along with his older brother and twin sister, had grown up on the outskirts, in the hamlets and forests and mountains of this land. That was the home he visited in the Fade on the rare nights when it was safe enough to dream.
He wasn’t like Wreath, who’d taken to city life in Kirkwall like a cormorant to the cliffs.
“Warden-Ensign Hawke!”
Carver broke from his thwarted nostalgia. He glanced up, spotting a statuesque woman striding toward him. He’d seen her likeness; would know who she was even without the insignia gleaming on her armour, but what stilled his breath was not surprise at finding the Constable of the Grey and a Hero of Ferelden greeting him on the docks.
The same blue-grey eyes he saw in the mirror met his own. There was familiarity in the slant of her nose, her jaw, the golden hair looped in an elegant braid like a crown. His mother’s hair had turned white after Father died, lines of sorrow etched in her face and growing deeper after Bethany, after the news of the lost estate and a year in Lowtown, watching her sons become criminals, but this… this was how she’d looked to him in her youth. Not the same face, not entirely, but close enough to pick at the splinter of loss festering in his heart.
A divot formed between her brows as she stopped in front of him. Carver realized that he was staring, that he had yet to offer a salute.
He swallowed thickly, brought his right fist to his left shoulder and dipped low at the waist for good measure.
“Aye, Constable Amell. Ensign Hawke reporting.”
It seemed this visit would not be free of ghosts, after all.
A carriage awaited them. Practical and inornate, yet unmistakable with the two-headed griffon emblazoned on the door.
Carver glanced out the window, watching the scenery pass. He felt himself being studied.
“Your father, Malcolm Hawke,” she ventured.
Carver turned to meet her eyes.
“I’ve heard he was Chasind.” It was a statement, devoid of inflexion.
It was not what people usually fixated on. Most who knew the story (and were bold enough to broach it) asked about his father’s magic, about the “apostate” who’d raised him in voices laden with either pity or censure. Given the unspoken history that hovered between them, Carver supposed he knew why that particular tangent was being skirted.
He, and his sister while she lived, had favoured their mother ever so slightly. They could pass for Nevarran, or perhaps Tevinter as long as no one questioned their accent – unlike Wreath who wore their Korcari ancestry in the bronze of his skin. Like his brother, Carver had inherited Malcolm’s stature, his aptitude with a sword and according to some, his temper. Wilders weren’t known as hospitable folk, but he rather thought that had more to do with highlander abuses than a lack of courtesy among the marshland tribes.
Carver squared his shoulders, tilted his chin. “He was.”
“And, was he… a good man?”
Carver nodded. The Constable looked down at her hands.
“My father was not.” She closed her eyes. “I am sorry.”
Carver blinked. His lips parted to speak, though what he planned to say he didn’t know. He hadn’t expected this. Hadn’t expected her to acknowledge—
He’d missed his mother’s funeral, her ashes already cold when Gamlen’s letter reached him on the outskirts of Tantervale. He’d been angry at Wreath for not writing himself, until he considered what it must have felt like to be there, to see what that bastard done and to watch her slip away.
He’d barely spoken of her fate since it happened. He’d received condolences before, of course. But this, from a stranger with her face, made it abruptly real in a way he was ill-prepared to confront.
The Constable drew a breath. “He killed my mother too.” Spoken so softly, Carver almost thought he’d imagined the admission.
“I was… very young. I wasn’t sure before, but now—” She shook her head and met his gaze. Her eyes shone. “I am sorry, cousin.”
“My brother killed him,” he heard himself say.
Her jaw was tight. She nodded.
The rest of the journey passed in oppressive silence. Carver listened to the scrape of the wheels and the rhythmic clip-clop of hooves on the road. His mind was blank, a roil of unnamed emotion threatening to erupt in his belly. Too large, too dark to face.
The carriage slowed, there was a slight tilting sensation as the road took them up a hillside.
“We’re almost at the Keep,” the Constable said.
Carver leaned over and stuck his head out the window. The great edifice of Vigil’s Keep stood before him. The turrets rose above the ramparts, the stone dark and austere. One of the towers must have housed a rookery to account for the number of ravens circling above the castle. Dozens of black dots darted and swerved on the horizon, their cries rolling down from on high like a warning.
He’d heard of the battles the ancient Alamarri fort had withstood, the most recent being the darkspawn incursion of 9:31, four years ago.
Unbidden, the memory flashed of Ostagar, of the darkspawn charge surging across the field in an unstoppable deluge of snarling, gnashing death. His sergeant, a veteran of the Orlesian war, had shouted the command to retreat, but it was only the insistent hands of his fellow infantrymen, refusing to abandon him to the folly of youth and compulsion as they dragged him from the battle, that saved his life.
His sergeant had scolded him afterward, accusing him of recklessness and vainglory. He hadn’t bothered to correct her, but it was never glory that drove him. In the heat of the fray, he’d seen the faces of his mother and sister, even Wreath, who was older and stronger and commanded the Fade. Wreath looked so much like Father, a man Carver had thought invincible until that overcast morning when he helped his brother lay the pyre for his sword-marked corpse. The thought of those tainted, Maker-cursed things swarming the last house Malcolm Hawke would ever build for his family had filled him with a resolve beyond reason to break their advance.
His gaze panned the hillside. Patches of grey, sickly grass lay between the remains of skeletal trees, gnarled and twisted as if in pain. Stroud had told him that darkspawn blood poisoned the ground. In nearly four years as a Warden, this was the first time he’d seen the truth of it.
How many of the beasts had fallen here to scar the land so starkly?
And… was it true?
Had the horde that besieged the Keep been led by a sentient darkspawn? One who spoke and reasoned, who rallied the mindless swarm even in the absence of an Archdemon; worst of all, who could twist the taint in Warden veins to enslave them to its will, turning their one advantage against them?
Rumours had reached the Warden garrison in the Free Marches, dismissed by his fellows as the embellishment of bards. Carver hadn’t believed it either – until he saw it for himself.
They were approaching the gatehouse.
Carver righted himself in his seat. The Constable was staring out the opposite window, gaze unseeing. Clearly, her purpose in meeting him had been personal. She had not come to question him.
It was almost a relief to be reminded of his purpose in coming here, summoned to the Wardens’ most venerated outpost.
Corypheus.
Perpetrator of the first violation. Usurper of the Golden City, cast down by the Maker himself. First of the darkspawn.
Carver had heard the creature speak, listened as it confessed to the hubris that brought the Blight’s taint to Thedas, yet it seemed more dream than real. As if the knowledge was too big to fit into his mind, threatening to overwhelm every memory and thought until it was all he knew.
Did more of these monsters remain?
If so, Maker help them.
The carriage came to a halt in the inner bailey. Even here, the ground was dust, bereft of verdancy.
The Constable led him up an imposing stairwell, flanked by sneering gargoyles, to the entrance of the keep-proper. The doors were huge. Iron knockers in the shape of griffon heads glowered from the dark wood, reinforced with a grid of metal rails.
Their arrival must have been anticipated as the doors creaked open before them.
The entrance hall was dim. The same dark stone of the outer walls swallowed the light trickling in from the high windows. Despite the twilight, fires crackled in interspersed hearths, banishing the cold and damp. An eclectic assortment of quilts and tapestries hung from the walls, depicting a dead dragon, the rising dawn, the head of a Mabari and the Flame of Andraste, sewn in different styles – tributes from the people of Ferelden, displayed in pride of place, adding a touch of optimism to the otherwise foreboding gloom.
“Luthias!” the Constable called. An elven lad (judging by the name and the breeches) hurried toward them. “Show Ensign Hawke to his quarters.”
The Constable looked to Carver. “Valdrin is impatient to hear your report, but you’ve had a long journey. Eat, wash and dress to meet the Commander. We convene in an hour.”
With that, she turned and strode toward one of the archways leading from the main hall.
“If you would follow me, Messere,” the elf said. Carver nodded.
He was led along a labyrinth of corridors until they came to a passage with a row of doors. The elf stopped in front of the third and pushed it open.
“Messere.” He gave a bow, leaving Carver to do as the Constable had instructed.
A plate of bread, cheese and fruit awaited him inside, along with a pitcher of water. He ate, washed and dressed in his uniform. The room held only the most rudimentary of furnishings, but to Carver, who was accustomed to sleeping in a bedroll on the ground, or a barracks shared with a dozen others, a room and a bed to himself seemed as close as he’d come to opulence.
The elf returned.
Again, he was led through the castle, up a spiralling stairwell that ended in a heavy door. The servant gave an abrupt bow and hurried down the stairs as though eager to be gone from the tower. Carver watched his retreating back for a moment before facing the door. He drew a breath, squared his stance and knocked. He’d barely retracted his hand when he was bade to enter.
Six people awaited him inside. The Constable and another woman were seated at a circular table along with two elves. A dwarf and a human remained standing.
Carver recognised several of the assembled, by reputation if not acquaintance, but it was one man in particular whose face registered like a blow to the belly.
Loghain Mac Tir.
The vaunted general. Who’d abandoned his king to die, who’d allowed the Blight to sweep across Ferelden as he waged civil war for the throne, all the while blaming the Wardens for his coup.
Again, the memory rose of Ostagar. Of Lothering burning in their wake as they fled with the clothes on their backs. Of Bethany, broken and still on the parched soil of the Korcari Ridge…
Carver had known that Ferelden’s Warden-Commander had offered clemency to the Traitor Theyrn, a chance at redemption by serving the Order he’d nearly destroyed. It was the dwarven way; never waste a sword that could be pitted against the ‘spawn’s ceaseless assault on what remained of their empire below the world. The reasoning was sound. Carver agreed with it even, but to stand face-to-face with him, close enough for a fist to land, for a blade thrust and cleave—
The older man held his gaze, though only for an instant. He glanced to a spot on the floor, expression bleak, eyes hollow.
“Ensign Hawke.” The dwarf stepped forward. His voice was cultured, edged with an authority that cut through the tension. He stood nearly to Carver’s waist, tall for one of his people.
For the second time, Carver realised that he was overdue in showing deference. Heat spread up the back of his neck as he dipped in a hasty salute. “Commander Aeducan, it is an honour. Uh, Your Highness,” he added, suddenly unsure of the proper address. He’d never been in the presence of royalty before.
Oh flames, should he have taken a knee?
The dwarf’s lip curled in a wry imitation of a smile. “Thank you, Ensign. Commander will do. Whatever titles I held in Orzammar are of little relevance here.”
The accent of the Thaig clung to his speech, but his grasp of the Prophet’s tongue was as sure as any surface dwarf’s… which, Carver supposed he was.
“You’ve met Constable Aleria.”
He nodded.
The Commander gestured to the woman seated beside her – a slim redhead, whose face tugged at his memory. “This is Sister Leliana.”
“Sister?” Carver echoed. “Wait, weren’t you—? You were at the Chantry. In Lothering.”
“Indeed, Warden,” she confirmed, smiling with the serenity of the faithful. “I remember you as well. From the village, mind. You were not one for sermons.”
A bubble of latent fear burst behind his sternum. It didn’t matter anymore. Beth and Father were gone. Wreath was Champion of Kirkwall, the most infamous apostate in Thedas. No templars to run from, no secrets to guard.
“No, I wasn’t,” he said, more tersely than warranted, given that the woman was seated at a table with two mages.
“To. Her. Left,” the Commander pressed, “is Zevran Arainai from Antiva.”
One of the elves, olive-skinned with flaxen hair, rose and bowed in formal greeting. A sinuous tattoo curved from temple to chin. His clothes marked him as a man, though as with most his kind, his features were confusingly androgynous to human eyes, until he spoke. “A pleasure, Warden.”
Carver nodded in acknowledgement.
“Leliana and Zevran are not part of our Order,” the Commander explained, “but their aid was instrumental in ending the Blight. They graciously continue to lend their skills to our efforts.” His gaze moved to the next person at the table. “I trust you’ve heard of—”
“Eríst Surana, Warden-Enchanter. Charmed I’m sure,” the second elf spoke over the dwarf, impatience lacing his tone. Unlike the Antivan beside him, he did not rise. He lounged in the hard wooden chair, exuding ennui as he twirled a lock of long auburn hair around his fingers. There was a softness to his face, verging on plump for an elf, exaggerating the femininity of his features. The glint in his mismatched eyes, one green, one gold, warned that judging him by appearance would be a fatal mistake, however.
Carver had indeed heard of him.
Aeducan, Amell, Surana and Theirin.
The four Wardens who’d survived Ostagar and went on to rally the nations of Ferelden, ending the Fifth Blight with the Archdemon’s fall in the Battle of Denerim. Albeit, not before – he glanced back to Loghain – deposing the regent pretender from the throne.
“You recognise Warden Mac Tir,” the Commander surmised. “I understand you fought at Ostagar.” He drew a breath. “Bear in mind, Ensign, that we stand before a common enemy. As Wardens, we do not have the luxury of bearing grudges. We are all allies here, and it is only through unflinching cooperation that we will prevail. Opposing the darkspawn, in whatever incarnation they present themselves, is this Order’s first and last priority. Do I make myself clear?”
Carver stared at Loghain for a moment longer. “Of course, Commander.”
If his voice was a little hoarse, a little sharp, no one deemed it worthy of comment.