Chapter Text
The Arl’s private office was deathly cold, the fire not yet warming the room after being locked for a month in the dead of Winter. The Great Hall’s closure meant nobody could get in here and only Winter’s chill kept the mice and bookworms out of the library of tomes along the walls. Eamon sat at his old desk, his bare feet cramping and his gout beginning to flare at the chill. Teagan paced behind, movement keeping him warm while Kaitlyn shivered beneath a bear fur with anger to keep her warm.
“What do we do now?” Teagan asked.
It was a legitimate yet terrible question. The Great Hall was opened and the worst possible outcome had befallen them all. Connor had been found in the spot where his mother died, in the middle of the memory of a magic circle. That circle once shattered the Veil, once sent a Grey Warden Maleficar into the Fade to save him from the clutches of a Desire Demon.
He’d been mad. Drunk on power, maybe, drowned in mana or whatever phrase mages might have for someone so immersed in magic that it altered their minds and made them say such insane things. He’d said he could ‘feel’ it all, that somehow his mother’s death had affected the Inquisitor’s actions twelve years later. It made no sense. It wasn’t possible.
It couldn’t be real.
Could it?
Kaitlyn took a deep breath and swore. “Fuck it all, there’s no point in locking the Great Hall now is there? Why bother at this point?”
“I agree,” Eamon said. “And I question the wisdom in trying to keep it from him in the first place. He’s always tried to face what he did, to accept responsibility for his actions. Why save him from it now.”
“You saw what happened in there!” Teagan exclaimed, his voice rising to a shout that he dampened quickly, trying to keep prying ears from overhearing. Still, he pointed down the hall to the open door of the Great Hall. “That is a creature of magic!”
“What did you think a mage is!” Eamon demanded. “Did you believe he could turn it off? That he could abandon his magic at the door the way you or I leave our swords in the weapons rack?!”
“Where is he now,” Kaitlyn asked.
“Upstairs,” Teagan said, both brothers caught in a mutual glare. Neither one would back down and they could be at this for hours if allowed. “Unconscious. I had the servants take him to his chambers. We’re to be alerted when he wakes up.”
“And then what,” Eamon said, his voice carefully neutral even as he challenged his brother’s authority. This was Teagan’s house but this was Eamon’s son and neither man would stand down.
“That depends on him, doesn’t it,” Teagan said with the same challenge in his voice.
Kaitlyn scowled at them both and left, storming off through the Hall and upstairs. The men could posture all they wanted, Teagan wouldn’t throw his own nephew into the dungeons when he hadn’t even done anything and Eamon wouldn’t let him even try. She stopped to check on Anna and the girls, both of them sleeping soundly in their beds, then went to the guest bedroom where Connor slept.
The boy wasn’t any older than Bevin. He laid in the big feather bed, the gold chains on his neck bright red and runed against the pale covers. His eyes were closed as he twitched and twisted in the blankets that were thrown over him by the servants. It was an involved dream, the dream of one Awakened in the Fade and wandering like a demon themselves.
“Arlessa?”
Kaitlyn hadn’t even noticed the elf watching Connor in the corner of the room, perched on a stool to stay as far from the mage as possible while still staying in the same room with him. She knew this elf, what was her name… Palin? Yes, Palin.
“I’ll watch him,” Kaitlyn said. “Go inform the Arl.”
Palin bowed and then fled, wanting to get as far away from the mage as possible.
Once Kaitlyn would have fled like that. But not now, not that she’d gotten to know him. He was just a lost little boy, wasn’t he. Locked in a tower for ten years after everything he’d done and then tossed into a rebellion then a war. Now he was about to join some order of spiritualists or whatever the Seekers of Truth really were.
She sat on his bed and ran her fingers through his auburn hair. He groaned and curled toward her, one arm reaching out for her.
She laid her hand over his and his sleep calmed.
“Dance with me, young one.”
It was not an Offer born of Exchange, there was no Agreement to be found here. His presence alone was payment enough, it always would be though he did not yet understand why. He didn’t have to, not yet, as he took her offered hand and let her pull him into a spinning dance. His hands raised over his head, same as hers did, chains ringing and white silk shining beyond eyes closed in bliss.
There was a purity to dancing like this, to joining a sister or two in the Dances that built and destroyed and Ruined. There was no such Purpose to this dance, only the purity of sensation and the innocence of gathering scattered thoughts.
He could stay like this. One day he might. But not now. Not this time.
And she didn’t resent that. One day he would be ready, one day when those chains around his neck draped correctly he would be ready. Today was not that day.
Today he merely danced surrounded by the sensation of this place, the overwhelming sense of Love that still pervaded this place and maybe always would. Maybe always had.
Maybe it didn’t matter.
Connor opened his eyes.
Candlelight washed the canopy above him in a gentle glow, the green wool drape held up by carved wood ribbing. The feather bed below him was strange, though it shouldn’t have been. It should have been familiar, the same place he’d slept for the past month, yet he distinctly remembered a stone floor, the swirl of red memory, and then being guided into the Fade by so many gentle hands and whispering voices all lulling him deep into safe soft warm…
He remembered wandering the spaces between, surrounded by the sense of being loved, surrounded by the memories that lingered here of darkspawn and blood magic and loving willing sacrifice. Then finally he found someone who drew him into a comforting dance.
All his friends always told him he had an affinity for Desire.
Now he laid in his own bed, a single candlestick burning on the nightside table. The curtains were open, letting light in as well as heat out, and he found the culprit curled up next to him draped in a bear fur. Kaitlyn slept next to him, curled up for warmth, and Connor almost let her sleep.
Almost.
But then… The last thing he remembered in the world was the Great Hall, Feeling everything there, and then he…
Someone had to have brought him here. Was she keeping watch over him? Connor ran his fingers through her hair.
Kaitlyn stirred and stretched under the bear fur, her eyes opening.
“You’re awake,” he said.
She smiled. “I could say the same about you.”
Connor sat up, dragging pillows against the headboard so he could lean against them. He drew the covers up to keep huddled under them and offered some to Kaitlyn, to keep warm. She crawled under them, bringing the bear fur with.
“What happened to you?” Kaitlyn asked. “Last night.”
“I had to know,” Connor said. It was easy to avoid looking at her as she drew up next to him. “I remembered everything. Everything I did, everything the demon made me do and say, I remember all of it. I fought her, I swear I did, I fought her with everything I had but I couldn’t stop her. Then suddenly she was gone.”
He gave a dark laugh. “That’s a comforting lie, isn’t it. It wasn’t as easy as that sounds, she clung to me as she died. I felt her screaming, I felt the battle in the Fade as though I suffered every spell myself. I burned, I screamed, I felt her ripping me apart. But I wouldn’t let her take me with her into death. Instead I grabbed the chain she used to bind me and ripped it from her hands. I swear her own chains started to unravel, all of them ripping away in my hands. And then I felt myself… I guess I felt myself dying.”
“You were just a little boy,” Kaitlyn whispered.
“I honestly considered just letting it happen. But the will to live is stronger than guilt. I wrapped the chains in my hand around my own neck and tied them to myself. Her chains still wrap around me, the Contract she Bound me with. No demon can touch me unless I will it. I can never be Bound again.”
Kaitlyn leaned against him, one arm wrapping around his waist.
Connor’s hand reached up to toy with the gold chain wrapped around his neck. It draped over his shoulders and hugged his throat, bound in the middle with a single large gold ring. A second chain linked to that ring, draping down his chest to attach to an armband on his right bicep. His fingers twirled that chain with practiced ease, tugging on the chain around his neck like tugging the lead on a mabari’s collar. “I needed to know what it was like on this side of it all. Nobody ever told me any details, only that Mother died for me and that the Maleficar I watched tortured, killed, staked and beheaded, he did it. That was all they ever told me.”
“Those of us in the village never heard, either,” Kaitlyn admitted. “I knew you were Taken by a demon, that the Hero of Ferelden saved us all. I knew she’d died to save you and you were taken away to the Tower. I didn’t learn more until Teagan felt I could handle the truth, after the girls were born and the Circles began to fall.”
“I Felt it all in the Great Hall,” Connor said, staring off into the darkened room. “The love the two Malificarum had for each other. The love she felt for me. It all built off of itself, staining that place. The blood magic doesn’t matter, there is no death lingering in those stones. That love is what remains. So much of it.”
“The girls love playing in the Great Hall. They were so disappointed when Teagan told them it needed to be closed off for your stay. It’s a sight to behold, to watch Teagan trying to hold an official function while two girls burst in laughing and screaming and then dancing in a circle.”
“Right where their Aunt Isolde died for me.”
Kaitlyn shuddered.
“Her death isn’t what makes it strong,” Connor insisted. “It’s why she died, it’s what she felt as she died. Spirits cluster to Feel as much as to Watch. If a Feeling is strong enough, it can alter the Fade around it permanently. That altered Fade can then change the world itself.”
“Like the lingering death of a battlefield,” Kaitlyn realized.
“Pain, death, loss, sorrow, these are all strong enough to alter the Fade. It’s considered a rare and beautiful thing to see the Fade altered because of love. It is beautiful, but I don’t think it’s all that rare. I’ve been in Skyhold, the Veil is twisted and rended there in the courtyard. The Veil was rent asunder by hope, faith, and a touch of deserved pride.”
They both sat silent, the candle burning down in its candlestick. The flame flickered and sputtered, threatening to leave them both in the dark. Connor brought one hand to his face and blew into the palm, like blowing a handful of dust to the winds. But it wasn’t dust, it was faint flickering green light that rolled off his hand in a ball of pale green magelight that then skittered across the bed and over the side. The magelight rolled along the floor like a mouse before curling up into the air to lazily spiral up and then around before settling over then both in a lazy spiral up and down and Kaitlyn realized he was controlling it the whole time, toying with it and playing with it.
“What’s it like to be a mage?” Kaitlyn asked.
“I imagine it’s like being a bard with a heart full of songs,” Connor mused. “Or a craftsman who only finds peace in his work. It’s a power, a sense, a whole spark of something deep inside that just grows and grows and grows until I can’t contain it anymore and I just have to…”
Connor shot out with one hand, tossing a charge of magic at the mirror on the vanity. A pale flash of light hit the glass as the magelight danced around it to light up his work, as delicate tracery of frost and ice curled around the glass in soft spiraling patterns.
“What happens if you try to suppress it?”
“I can but…” Connor’s brow furrowed in thought. “It’s like the words of the Black Knight before Kirkwall drove Justice to Fall. Magic is a gift of the Maker. Defying that, hiding it, hurts in a bone-deep way. I’m not a mage because I want to be, I’m a mage because that’s what I am. Suppressing it, hiding it, that’s what allowed Mother to justify my ‘tutor’ and then allowed the poisoning, the demon, all of it. Trying to act like I didn’t have magic cost me everything. And it wasn’t even my choice.”
The door opened. Two girls ran in and jumped on the bed, both of them climbing up to curl up between the two adults who huddled beneath the covers hiding from winter’s chill. Both of them began chattering about events, about the Great Hall staying open, about how the castle mouser Kitty caught a glowing ball of green light and swallowed it.
Candlelight followed them, Teagan carrying a candelabra with all three candles lit.
“Connor’s awake,” Kaitlyn said, as though the racket the girls were making wouldn’t have woken the dead.
Rowan and Fay both climbed under the covers, Connor’s room was so much colder than the rest of the castle for some strange reason, and curled up around him. “I’m glad you’re okay,” Rowan said. “Daddy made it sound like you did something bad.”
“It wasn’t bad,” Kaitlyn said, daring her husband to contradict her. “Just… unexpected. But we’ll talk about it later. Maybe we should let Connor get up and get dressed. Longest Night is coming soon, you wouldn’t want him to sleep through it all, would you?”
Rowan gasped in delight. “He’s staying for Longest Night?!”
“He’s here all winter, ‘course he’s staying,” Fay said with all the conviction of a five year old who knew she was right.
That settled it, both girls jumped down from the bed and ran away carrying their delighted din with them. Kaitlyn uncurled from beneath the covers and wrapped herself in her bear fur, following Teagan out of the room.
The door shut.
Connor drew his legs around the edge of the bed, still warm enough to entice him to stay in. But the chill had its own allure, an element he carried a natural affinity for. Also, something the girls said drew his attention, impossible to ignore now that their voices weren’t ringing against the stone walls.
The cat ate… a glowing ball… of light? He needed to find this cat and figure out if this was serious or if it was just a wisp.
Rowan and Fay both skipped in a circle in the Great Hall. Teagan sat upon the throne of his Arling, he might as well with the worst already happened. The bonfire behind him warmed the entire castle, its heat suffusing the entire castle though warm stones and snaking chimneys that ran through the walls of the family quarters. The castle seneschal stood with book and pen, jotting down notes for the upcoming celebration.
Longest Night was a tradition in Redcliffe dating back to as far as anyone remembered. There was evidence that the Avvar celebrated, with stone circles that lined up with the rising suns that flanked the week of solstice. More northern stone circles had only a single stone marking where the sun rose on that solstice.
Teagan had spent enough winters abroad that he hadn’t planned a Longest Night festival in a few years. He’d always left that up to Kaitlyn, a capable administrator in these things. Now it fell on him to listen to what she’d had planned and decide if it was all worth the risk now that they had a mage in the mix.
Worse, a mage who willingly Consorted with spirits. Even if he was safe during these endeavors, would everyone around him be safe? There were already enough legends surrounding Longest Night, he didn’t need more.
Connor entered the open doors and Teagan had to stare. His nephew dressed like a mage, openly wearing the yellow silk robes of the same mage who walked through those doors and then allowed Jowan to kill Isolde. But these robes were different, tied tightly around the waist and obviously corseted. The shoulders were both bare, all the better to show the gold and aurum chain that he wore willingly to mark him as one who had Consorted in the worst ways.
The girls ran to him, dragging him into their games as they linked hands in a circle and skipped in a circle. The same circle where Isolde had died.
They couldn’t know. He’d never told them. But it still hurt to watch.
Then the chant Connor led them in hit him. That wasn’t a normal skipping rhyme.
First is summer, warm and bright
Glyphs and healing
Buzzy swarming
Wisps and auras in the night
Next is autumn, coming death
Hexes, plagues
And witch’s boon
Nightmares steal your waking breath
Now comes winter, cold and hard
Storms of fire
Ice and sparks
Freezing foes to stony shard
Spring at last, the spirit’s blessing
Mana flowing
Dead a’rising
And magic sets the flowers blooming
Was that… a skipping rhyme about the four schools of magic? And they followed his lead like he’d taught them this very rhyme before.
The three of them all dropped to the floor laughing, the natural conclusion to these types of rhymes, and Teagan had to watch as his girls both threw themselves into Connor’s arms, squealing and laughing and each trying to climb into his lap. It took some wrestling and some screaming and only one single call for Daddy to make the others play fair before the three of them had a spot on the floor of the Hall.
In the middle of the memory of the summoning circle. But there were none of the red lights of that night, none of the memories of runes and magic. There was only the knowledge that Isolde had died there and then Connor’s own half-mad words. Fay had claimed his lap, seated between his legs on his silk skirts in such a way that he couldn’t possibly unfold and stand to escape. Rowan claimed his arm, dragging it around her as she sat on what she could of his silk skirt, pinning him to the ground just as effectively. It was a skill they’d perfected against Anna, their wetnurse and nanny, to pin her to the floor unable to escape.
And only now did Connor seem to realize it. But he didn’t look around to plead for help, instead he seemed to accept his fate. A little too quickly, for Teagan’s taste.
What was Connor planning…
Then he said the words Teagan dreaded, that he had to have known were coming.
“Have you ever heard the story of what happened when the dead rose in Redcliffe?” Connor asked.
“Nooooo,” Fay said. She stuck her fingers in her mouth, a sure sign of nervousness and excitement.
“Daddy always said we’d hear the story when we were old enough,” Rowan said.
Only now did Connor look up toward the dais where Teagan sat and watched. “I’m sure you’re old enough,” he said, then focused on Rowan. “After all, you're almost as old as I was when it happened.”
“As old as Uncle Bevin was?” Fay asked past her own fingers.
“He was about your age, too,” Connor said. “He tried to use his grandfather’s sword to defend the village.”
“Did you try to defend the village?” Rowan asked.
Connor took a deep breath and glanced up to Teagan for guidance. Teagan nodded once, allowing this. It probably meant he and Kaitlyn would have little girls full of nightmares in their bed for the rest of winter but... He realized he didn’t have to tell them. Connor volunteered.
They needed to understand just how dangerous magic really was, from the one who had done the unthinkable with it.
So Connor told a story about a boy, about Rowan’s age, who came into his magic alone and afraid. He had a mother and a father but when he told his mother about his magic she silenced him and made him swear to never speak of it again. He didn’t know any of the stories or rhymes or even any of the songs that Connor sang for them the past month. He only had the Chantry’s tales of danger and demons and scary stories about the Void.
That’s when the mage came. The mage was a nice man, a kind man, he taught the boy magic. Nobody knew the mage was poisoning the boy’s father. Not until the father lay dying. Then the mage was taken away and the boy was alone again.
That night the demon came.
The demon held the boy as he cried in his sleep, listening to his every fear and Desire. Finally when the boy ran out of tears the demon spoke to him.
“I can save your father,” she said. “I can keep him alive for as long as you wish. All you have to do is Let Me In. Let Me In, child, and your father will never die. Let me help you.”
The boy Agreed for what else could he do. The mage was gone. The boy’s mother had sent knights out on quests and they all came back empty-handed. Magic and herbs and healing did nothing for the father. The mother couldn’t even resort to blasphemy for the Anatomist of the Circle of Ferelden was nowhere to be found. Only a demon’s power could save his father now.
And the demon was right. The boy’s father did not die. But the boy paid a terrible price as the demon possessed him.
Teagan glanced around the Hall to find servant’s doors opened, maids and cooks and servants listening to the story being told by the very one who had Accepted that demon’s Deal. Kaitlyn and Eamon both stood at the main doors, both of them listening to the story Connor told to the two girls who listened in dawning horror as they realized who that boy had been.
And what he had done.
Connor’s story continued, as he told the story of how the demon, through the boy, killed the castle staff with glee and raised their corpses to be hungry animate dead. Shades and demons and wisps were summoned, some crawling through the shattered Veil on their own, and the dogs were all driven mad and possessed.
Only the boy’s mother was spared, for the demon knew she might not be able to control the boy if she hurt her. Instead Isolde had to watch as her son became the demon, raising an army of corpses every night to shamble into Redcliffe and carry away the unsuspecting and the innocent, killing them all to join the swelling army of animate dead.
Kaitlyn’s mother died that way, screaming for her children to run to the Chantry, letting the undead take her so Kaitlyn and Bevin could have the time to run.
Teagan had to watch as night after night the city’s defenders fell, as the castle went dark and demonic.
On the third day of nightmare, the Grey Warden Amell came. A mage himself, he’d heard from a wandering knight that Arl Eamon had fallen ill. He found a village besieged by terror and fought to protect them all with his own mistrusted magic. Only then, once the village was saved, did Isolde run from the castle and the Warden learned the truth.
Connor was possessed.
Teagan volunteered to follow Isolde back to the castle, hoping to stop Connor from hurting anyone else. But Teagan couldn’t stand against the demon’s power and Connor had to watch as the demon Enthralled Teagan, turning him into a court jester for the demon’s amusement.
The demon would have been satisfied for a time except the Warden faced down the demon and vowed to put a stop to her. Connor would have let him, if only to end the torment inflicted upon the world by the demon he’d Let In, but Amell had another plan. For Amell had found the mage Jowan and freed him from the castle dungeons. Now Jowan returned with a plan to end the demon’s rampage.
But it required a sacrifice, a life taken by blood magic. Isolde volunteered for she loved her son and refused to allow him to be hurt any longer.
Connor’s voice never wavered as he told the story of his own Abomination, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he remembered all of it. He spoke to a full audience, to the two girls who wrapped arms tighter around him as they cried silent tears and listened, to the assembled he could sense even if they stood completely silent both here in this Realm and beyond the Veil pressing in from the Fade.
Here his story grew more fanciful, it had to, except Teagan knew every word was true. The two Maleficarum had both argued over who would do what, each trying to save the other from Losing themselves in blood magic. Isolde had gone to her death without an ounce of fear or doubt, trusting both mages to save her son. Teagan had tried to stop it once Isolde was dead, only to be held back by Jowan’s words. Amell had nearly died in the attempt, his soul nearly trapped outside his body with the terrible force of the demon’s wrath.
And Connor had felt every moment of the demon’s death throes, stealing her chains from her as she died. The very chains he wore in the Fade and always would.
Finally his voice fell silent, exhausted and rasping and only then could the girls’ tears be heard in the quiet whimper where Fay had stuffed her face into Connor’s thigh, where Rowan wiped her nose on Connor’s bare shoulder.
Eamon turned and walked away, fleeing the place where it all happened, a story even he hadn’t known full detail of.
Connor wrapped both arms around the girls and pulled them close. Finally, for the first time in his life, he could say all of that. The sob that wrenched from him echoed in both girls.
Teagan sat and watched from the dais, his seneschal standing next to him. “There was a time when we would burn witches for much less,” the seneschal whispered.
“There was,” Teagan allowed, voice low. Servants slowly dispersed, doors closing, and Kaitlyn came in to kneel on the floor with the others. “That is a time we will not return to. There has to be a better way.”
Even knowing what he’d done to Redcliffe, to his own family, the girls still clung to him. There was no fear in them even now.
Maybe Connor had been right. Maybe a better way began with them. With the children. With teaching them better. If Connor hadn’t known to be afraid of his own magic none of this would have happened. If no child feared their own magic…
The truth was a good place to start.