I’m wandering in the
Alienage, and I’m not sure which one it is. It has a familiar feeling,
as if it was Denerim, but the buildings are Highever’s. That makes me
realize I’m in none of them… but in the Fade. This must be a dream.
A
tall figure soon towers over me and I raise my eyes to meet my beloved
husband’s ones. He seems as lost as me… There’s nothing more confusing
that dreaming and being aware you’re dreaming. Especially when you share
the dream with someone else.
“Is
this… the Fade?” he asks, searching for my hand. Somehow we both know
the other is the real one. We’ve visited this place awaken often enough
to tell the real things from the false ones.
“Seems
so. But it looks so peaceful… I hope we won’t meet Edanhor’s demons
again”. He grabs my waist and holds me closer as only answer. We both
have too recent what Edanhor’s demons did to me when we were here the
last time…
Suddenly we’re inside
one of the houses, without transition because that’s how dreams work,
and we face a beautiful elven woman sitting in front of us. Lirya,
Kyle’s adoptive mother, smiles and makes a gesture for us to sit too.
Her
hair glows black as a raven again. Not having forgotten her botanical
knowledge, she started to dye her hair black again when Kyle and me got
married, but I have the feeling here in the Fade she looks as she looked
before the Orlesian Inquisitor held her captive: dark-haired, young and
beautiful. As usual, I wonder how does manage Kyle to be always
surrounded by stunning women, and why on earth did he chose me, such an
average red-haired, as his wife.
Lirya
takes my hands and looks at me sadly, and I shiver. We didn’t tell her
about my miscarriage in Tevinter, because we didn’t want her to worry,
but she knows. Somehow she knows, and my heart aches. Then she looks at
Kyle, and I can hear his breathing change. The look in Lirya’s face,
here in the Fade, has nothing to do with the look when she’s awaken. In
the real world, Lirya loves us and is grateful because we rescued her,
but she doesn’t remember her past… and that breaks Kyle’s heart. But
here… here she remembers everything… and she’s looking at Kyle as she
was meant to look at from the beginning… A mother looking at her son.
Kyle swallows, and Lirya’s smile widens.
She
moves a hand and takes the hair away from his forehead, touching the
almost unnoticeable scar he has always had there. He grabs her hand, and
presses it against his face. He’s not crying, but I know this look in
his face. There may not be tears in his eyes, but his heart is aching.
“Mother…” he mumbles.
“Shh”, she replies. “It’s all right, honey. You’re doing it right”
“But why?” he asks. “Why can’t you remember when you’re back?”
She
shakes her head. “I don’t know. Something blocks everything. Maybe the
liryum, maybe the magic… maybe the hate. But it is all right this way”
“No, it isn’t!” I complain. “He’s broken inside, can’t you see it?, What can we do to have you back with us?”
Lirya
retrieves her hand, and at the same time a tiny sparkly of light, one
of those whisps from the Fade, moves around her like a butterfly around a
flame. She just glances it, but doesn’t pay much attention.
We
have been studying with her the diaries I found in the Inquisitor’s
cellar, and the results have been more grievous than productive. The
diaries only describe the processes he has experimented on her body, all
of them probably painful, and reading them back made our teeth grit,
but brought no memories from her. If half of the descriptions are
accurate, though, I’m happy she doesn’t remember it, but I know Kyle
needs her mother back, and I won’t hesitate to achieve it.
“I
don’t think those diaries will help”. Lirya confirms my theory. “At
least not in our hands. Maybe you should hand them to someone who
understands magic, and can find out a way to revert what was made to me…
if it can be reverted”
I nod. “But
who?” I doubt our mage companions, Haakan and Lauren, are qualified to
find anything in those texts… at the Circle Tower the mages didn’t seem
much qualified either. Though if we ask Haakan, he will surely come out
with a thousand of paranoid theories he will swear are absolutely right
and logical. Anyway they will soon go on their own way to retrieve their
phylacteries and do all the things they want to do to get married in
what Haakan’s think is a safe way. I smile against my will. It may take
them decades to achieve that. I’ll never understand everybody’s interest
in marrying. Maybe that way he thinks he’ll prove his love to her but
wouldn’t it be better to share a life together without so much risk? I
would have been happy enough moving to a home with Kyle forever, and I
didn’t even had to pay for my wedding dress. Well, it is their life, and
I don’t plan to mess with it anymore. I’ve had enough hostility as it
is.
This is a very secret magic…
maybe we should go as far as back to Tevinter to find a mage able to
replicate these experiments… Unless we ask Edanhor of course, I shiver.
Kyle
fists his hands. “There must be a way! If I had been there… maybe I
could have made talk that bastard before they killed him!”
I
stroke his shoulder. We were in the ruins when the rest of the group
fought the mage in the tavern and was forced to kill him. “I doubt he
would have helped us, love”, I try to comfort him.
“Yes…
but maybe if she had seen him… maybe that would have brought her
memories back?”. Kyle looks hopefully at her mother. Lirya shakes her
head.
“There’s no use on crying over spilled milk, my son”
Then
a light hits in my brain. “The inquisitor is dead… but Kyle… when you
tracked her up to Orlais, wasn’t there other people involved?”
“Yeah.
Commander Raleigh, but he was already dead” he looks at me. I nod. I
remember Raleigh’s times, and him being killed was the best it could
happen to our community. He had even captured Adaia once, and she had
not nice words for him either. I’m grateful to whoever did that dirty
job.
Lirya stares at us with a mysterious smile. She says nothing, but I feel we’re close to the answer.
“The person who sold Lirya to the Inquisitor?” I ask. “The Orlesian woman? What was her name?”
“Marjolaine”,
Lirya whispers… and we both look at her. The whisp is floating around
her face and gives her a gloomy shine. But her smile shows we’re on the
good track.
“Marjolaine”. And when I
open my eyes in the real world, as the dream starts to vanish, the word
stays there. “Marjolaine…”. I look at Kyle by my side, he’s blinking
confused and I know he’s trying to keep that name too. “Marjolaine…”
“Where can we find her?” I ask him, instead of saying good morning.
“We
will start in Denerim”, he says, leaning on one elbow. “Some one must
remember her. And then, we’ll follow her. To Orlais, or wherever”
I nod. We have something. And we won’t leave it fly away.
