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Don't go into the ruins, the Elders told her. They are filled with traps and secrets that should not be unearthed.
She should have listened.
As ruins went, it wasn't anything spectacular, or even unusual. High, arched openings lifted to a cloudy sky, their empty spaces yawning like eyes or mouths. The walls were crumbling, but she could still see where once they had been graced with beautiful mosaics in soft colors. She couldn't tell what they represented, although one intact shard that lay on the floor held almond shaped eyes. Three of them, offset to each other as if they were on the same side of the face. She adjusted her grip on her daggers and ducked under a thick, ropy vine that blocked the way. She knew better than to hack it off to clear the path. Such living aspects in ruins tended to be highly protective. Their defenses could sting even her calloused skin.
She had no magic, of course, as a dwarf. But she could feel something in the air, some ephemeral, ineffable scent or aura. The plants here were too large, too tropical for such a mountainous location. The Elders called them Fade-touched. And while they had no practical experience with the land of dreams, that did not stop them from understanding that anything from the other side of the Veil was dangerous.
Don't go into the ruins, they told her.
She had never listened.
She ducked through more vines, even clambering over giant roots that had lifted the smooth tiles of the pathway into ruptured piles of rubble. And when she reached the center, she realized that this was no temple, no shrine of an elder race long gone. It was a sleeping creature, now awakened by her presence.
Lark stared into the gray blue eyes of the elf she found and stumbled back to fall on her ass in shock. The elf, meanwhile, blinked at her and breathed. Long and slow, as one coming out of meditation is wont to do. Lark took in the once pristine white sheet wound around the man, now layered in dirt and grit. She saw the length of his hair tangled about his head, the stone bier upon which he'd managed to lever himself upright, and she remembered other tales the Elders told around tidy fires while dinner cooked. Tales that predated her life with the Carta. That predated her House's exile to the surface.
She remembered the lessons her Granddam had drilled into her before her death, gasping for breath as sickness drowned her. Language, history. A mythology that had long since swept aside the truth for most surfacers, but remained pure in their minds. They had no wall to carve their memories into now, but that did not stop them from remembering. From passing on what they knew.
Don't go into the ruins.
“Aneth ara, stranger,” she said.
The elf stared at her for a long while before answering. In Dwarvish, no less. “Greetings, Child of the Stone.”
Hearing her mother tongue from the mouth of an elf should have surprised her. But she had guessed what this place was, and his archaic dialect flowed seamlessly into the observations she'd already made. He was more ancient than the ruins they sat in, obviously. He held more knowledge than any Shaperate.
“How long have you slept?” she asked, switching to the Trade tongue, just to see if he knew it.
He looked around the ruin as if it might give him answers. Finally, he looked back at her. “Too long.”
His accent was all sharp edges and clipped sounds, but it was clear he knew the language. Had he dreamed it? Had he listened in on conversations from the other side? How did that even work?
“You have a name, stranger?”
Again, he stared. Then he spoke. Just a single word. “Pride.”
Lark got off her butt and reached for her waterskin. She offered it to him while keeping her distance, and he watched her every movement as if he knew how skittish she was. He nodded his thanks and drank deep, seeming to absorb more than just the liquid. It was like he was following the course of where she'd filled it back to its source. Tasting the journey from glacier to mountain stream to rushing waterfall over the precipices around them to the slow, sluggish current of the river as it passed through a valley, now beginning to freeze over as the season turned.
“Ma serannas,” he said when he was done. She took the bag back from him and saw that he was steadier now, although he didn't appear to be ready to try getting up and walking.
His skin was pale under the grime of however many centuries he'd lain here. His hair was coiled and matted but she could see that once it had had form. Blackened bits of bone and tarnished baubles hid in the mess, glimmering out at her as the sun passed through the clouds overhead. She looked up then, realizing that the ceiling of this place was long gone. How had none of the stones that once held back the elements fallen on him?
He saw the direction of her gaze and followed it. A shaft of sunlight hit him then and he closed his eyes. She suddenly felt like she was intruding. A tear slipped down his angular cheek, a strip of clean skin appearing out of the dust. He took a shuddering breath and let it out slowly and did not speak. It felt wrong to break the silence too, so she remained where she was and kept her mouth shut.
“How are you called, Child of the Stone?” he asked at last.
“Lark. Lark Cadash.”
His eyes fell on her, piercing and very nearly unearthly. But he said nothing more.
---
He had magic, of course. Of course. An ancient elf, born before the Veil? Of course he did. But it was weaker than he expected, and Lark assumed that meant he had not woken once since before the Sundering. Strange that her people knew of that, and others did not. Then again, dwarva had lived in Thedas long before humans. The Shaperate knew. And when House Cadash was cast off to the surface, the wall of memories became an oral tradition, dwindling as the Ages passed until only a handful remembered. She supposed she should count herself lucky that she was among them, but her Granddam had always wanted her to become a Shaper. Not...this.
Never this.
“You seem unsurprised at my presence,” the elf who called himself Pride said as she gathered up twigs and dead wood to build a fire. He was still sitting on the stone bier, his legs crossed under themselves as he conjured balls of light and flame to his palms, testing his mana. “I was unaware any knowledge of my kind remained.”
“I was raised on tales of Before the Sundering.” Lark layered twigs on each other and stripped the bark from the larger pieces for kindling. She got out her flint and iron to set a spark, but the elf held up his hand. She sat back on her haunches and raised an eyebrow at him. With a faint smile creasing his lips, he waved his fingers. A flame grew in the center of her little circle of stones, licking at the shavings and twigs. She smiled at him. “Not bad.”
“Before the Sundering,” he mused. He shifted on his bier and the smile he'd worn so briefly was gone, leaving his face drawn and morose. The expression suited his features, she decided. “So it is remembered.”
“By me, if no one else. Few surfacers care to know their history, and Orzammar dwarva have bigger concerns on their hands. Humans don't know it at all.”
“And the People?”
Lark stood up, figuring this bit of news wasn't going to go over well with one named Pride. “City elves have nothing remaining of their culture. It was beaten out of them by their conquerors. The Dalish...well...they have myths.”
“Dalish?”
“Nomadic clans. They refused to bow down to humans when the Dales fell. Now they wander and tell themselves legends as if they can rebuild a history from them. They have a lot of it wrong, but don't bother trying to tell them that.” Her face twisted and he contemplated her for a long moment. It grew disconcerting to be the focus of his gaze, and she turned back to feeding the little fire so it would grow.
“How did you come to be here?”
The question was laden with curiosity, and no small amount of suspicion. Lark smiled down into her little fire, feeling back on solid ground. This was the attitude she expected from an elf.
“I'm on my way to Kirkwall. To help with the disaster.”
“What happened?”
She glanced at him, at his cocked head and piercing eyes. “An apostate mage blew up the Chantry there. The Circles of Magi have fallen and it's all out war now.” She fed a larger piece to the fire and sat back on the crumbled tiles of the floor to open her pack for something to eat. “If you plan to travel, be wary. You'll be marked as an apostate and killed on sight.”
“By whom?” he asked sharply.
Lark snorted. “By anyone. Fear addled peasants, Templars, bandits who can't think their way out of a hole...the list is endless.”
“And you?”
She grinned at him, a little feral, a little sly. She pulled one of her daggers and danced it over her fingers. “I don't worry about bandits. And Templars won't look at me twice, as a dwarf. Besides, I'm Carta. With the Chantry in chaos, many of them have turned to the black market for their fix.”
“For?”
“Lyrium.”
He leaned away from her, his position suddenly precarious as if he might fall over. She understood. For an Elvhen, the idea that lyrium was a substance still used must be shocking. “So, your people still mine it?”
“We're the only ones who can,” she said by way of agreement. “We do not dream, do not use magic. But we are the backbone of the surface's economy.” She made a wry face. “Whatever that's worth, these days.”
“It appears I have missed much in my slumber. I think I must sleep now.”
To anyone else, it would have been a highly amusing statement. He just woke up, after all. But if he was truly one of them, then he would learn more from wandering in his dreams than she could ever hope to tell him with words. She nodded, gnawed on the strip of jerky she'd found in her pack and kept the fire going. She decided she would stay, at least until he was stronger. He was fascinating, she would admit it.
---
She didn't remember falling asleep, but the hand on her shoulder woke her. She sat up, shaking out leaves and detritus from her hair, her hand automatically reaching for a dagger. The owner of the hand had stepped back and when she opened her eyes, she saw his gleaming in the dark, reflecting the firelight as a cat's would.
“Only me.”
“Sorry.”
“I take no offense. It seems the world has changed much since I entered uthenera.” He looked away from her, the outline of his form tall and narrow against the darkened ruin. It was only then that Lark registered that he was standing. Somewhere he'd found clothes, ragged trousers and a tunic that hung off his shoulders like a great weight.
“All caught up then?” she asked, sliding her dagger back into its sheath. She rolled to her feet, not quite sure why, but presuming that she wouldn't get any more sleep that night.
“I know what I must do.”
“Tell me you don't plan to start in the middle of the night.”
He looked up at the sky, searching the twinkling stars for something. When he looked back down to her, a small smile turned the corners of his mouth upwards. “No, not tonight. I must regain my strength. And perhaps beg a favor.”
“Ask.” He ran a hand over the disheveled mess of his hair. There would be no way to untangle it all. Not if she was as immortal as he was. “Ahh. I'm afraid there's no hope there.”
Again he gave her a small half smile. “No. And my hands are too unsteady for a blade. Would you...?”
Lark leaned against a pillar, marveling at the oddness of his request. An elf asking a dwarf to shave his head. “Shall I save the decorations?”
“Please.”
“Can it wait until morning, when there will be light?”
“Certainly.”
She fished in her pocket for a whetstone and drew her favorite dagger. Without another word, she set to sharpening it by the light of the fire, her movements sure and practiced. She could do it in the dark of the Deep Roads if she had to. He said nothing, but sat cross-legged opposite from her, watching.
---
Seated, he was just barely shorter than her. Which was good, since it wasn't like she could find anything stable enough to stand on while holding the honed edge of her blade against his head. She began by slicing through the hanks of twisted braids and ropes woven with the baubles first, saving each piece as wholly as she could. In the light of day, it was auburn and not the muddy brown she'd first thought. It seemed a shame to have to cut it; the color was so rare among his people. But she knew there was no way for an elf to venture into the world and hope to blend into it with this mess. She stifled her misgivings and kept cutting.
“Hold still,” she murmured some time later, when she'd gotten it ragged but short enough to shave. He complied, sitting so motionless it was as if he had made himself stone. He gave a soft gasp at the first pass of her blade across his skin, the sound nearly a whimper when she followed it with her hand. How long had it been since he'd been touched? How sensitive had he grown? “Does it hurt?”
“No,” he whispered. “And yes.”
“I'll be careful.”
They were the last words exchanged for a long time. It was intimate in a way that should have felt off-putting, but between his stillness and her deliberate caution, there was little room for any other emotion. Gradually his scalp became visible, pale and smooth. This close, she could see the faint remnants of freckles across his nose and cheeks. Evidence that once he had lived under the sun. But there were none across the dome of his head. He had never been a servant, forced to keep his locks cropped out of safety or compliance. Or if he had, it had been so long ago to have faded entirely from his body. It told her much about him, just that fact.
When she was finished, she turned her dagger in her hand so that the blade was tucked against her palm and rested her hands on his shoulders. She could hear the wind sighing through the ruin, could feel the bite of cold weather coming. There were no insects here, or birds. They were tucked into a silent corner of green in a world turned gray and white. She didn't know how long they stayed that way. He trembled under her touch. His breaths shuddered in and out. She couldn't tell if he was crying or if it was simply sensory overload. She didn't ask. She ached for him, she realized. He had lost everything, as her House had once. He was forced to start over in a world that was foreign. It would not be easy for him.
If he at all embodied the name he'd given her, he would not appreciate her sympathy either. So she did not offer it.
“Thank you,” he murmured finally.
The spell broke and she stepped away from him to clean and sharpen her dagger once more. While she worked, she saw him going through the pile of hair, picking out the pieces that held decorations. He pulled a jawbone from one of them, black as obsidian, and just as solid. It had been woven into the hair on a length of ribbon that disintegrated in his fingers as he loosened it. He didn't seem to notice, but cradled the bone in his palm, staring at it. Lark got the feeling he was seeing something else entirely.
“I have leather cord, if you want.”
He started and looked up at her where she sat on a fallen column of stone. His face, now that she could see it clearly, was long and lupine, the sharp angles of his jaw and cheeks and nose standing out in unmitigated relief. He was not what she would call handsome, but his face was compelling. Something about it made the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The long sweep of his ears did nothing to detract from it, nor did the now smooth slope of his skull. His nobility was plain. Again she was struck with the thought that he would not have an easy time moving through the world as it had become.
“I would appreciate that,” he said. For a moment she'd forgotten her offer, so caught up in analyzing his face. She jumped down from the column and searched her pack, coming up with a length of cordage wrapped around itself into a compact bundle.
“Here. Take as much as you need.”
“You have shown me kindness, Lark,” he said slowly. “I will not forget it.”
“You're welcome, Pride.”
---
Lark woke alone in the ruin. The fire burned merrily at her back, and the sun shone down on her face. But the day was cold. The season had turned and it was time to move on if she planned to cross the Waking Sea before it was too dangerous. But before she could pack up her few belongings – and determine that indeed yes, Pride had vanished – she found a length of once tarnished beads strung on a length of leather cord. The rest of the spool lay next to it, coiled perfectly as it had been when she offered it to him.
You have shown me kindness, he'd said.
And so he had repaid her for it. The beads gleamed in the sun, brilliance that spoke of their purity. Silverite, stormheart, aurum and lazurite. They tinkled in her hand as she lifted them from the ground. As riches went, they were paltry. But their value was held more in what they'd meant to him, and now to her, than their weight in coin.
Lark tucked them into a safe pocket of her coat, shouldered her pack and sheathed her daggers. She poured water on the fire to douse it and gave a final glance over the ruin that had held such a secret.
When she looked back to see it as she walked away, she found that the entrance was now gone, hidden behind the growth of vines turned brown with the cold. She turned north, to Kirkwall.
---
The citystate was in shambles. Everywhere she looked was devastation and despair. Kirkwall had always been thus, but now it was visible in the scorched remains of the Chantry. In the empty halls of the Gallows. The pocked roofs of buildings where stone and timber had fallen from the sky like rain.
She did not stay long.
There was talk of a meeting for peace. A Conclave of both sides of the war. Templar and mage. Lark snorted to herself at the futility of it, knowing nothing would ever truly equalize the balance of oppressor versus oppressed, and quietly went about her work for Dasher.
Midwinter found her near Denerim, running Carta notes between cells. She caught herself humming the tune of an ancient dirge – The Gangue of Cad-Halash – and wondered idly what Pride would have thought of it, and the connection between their peoples that had died in the lost thaig. It was the first time she'd really thought about him since waking alone in his ruin. She wondered what her Granddam would have thought of him.
Too late now, on both counts.
Spring found her in Redcliffe, and the rumor of a new kind of lyrium appearing on the black market, the same kind that had been seen in Kirkwall. Dasher was worried. She learned that the date for the Conclave was set, as was a location. The Temple of Sacred Ashes in Haven. Dasher wanted her to go, to learn what she could, to report back on the strange lyrium and the decision of the humans' Divine.
Summer found her finally on her way, not that the journey was long to Haven. But the roads were choked with Chantry folk, with Templars who sneered and twitched in withdrawal, with fearful mages who huddled in groups and moved only when the others had passed by. She saw Dalish elves and other Carta dwarva. She even saw a troop of Vashoth, working as mercenaries for some human noble.
The first day of autumn found her in Haven, buffeted around by busy humans who cared little for her short stature and questions. She filed along with the rest towards the Temple. She looked for a lupine face among the crowd, but did not find it. She told herself she wasn't disappointed but relieved that he was not here.
She had no memory of the explosion, or of walking the Fade. She remembered little of the glowing figure of the Divine reaching for her. Of falling out of the sky, or was that into it?
She woke in chains, her palm glowing. Her fate sealed.
---
“My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions,” Pride said, his gaze caught on the twist of beads hanging in her hair. He smiled at her, but it was not the smile she remembered. “I'm pleased to see you still live.”
Lark looked up at him, seeing how well he wore a mask that hid all but the faintest glimmer of his thoughts. How his posture had changed, how he now wore a staff across his back like any other mage. She saw the jawbone hanging on his chest, strung from her own leather cord. She offered her hand to him, feeling his long fingers wrap around her whole hand, warm and alive and powerful.
“And I you,” she said, her mother tongue slipping out in front of these others who did not need to know what she knew. The human was a Seeker, a Chantry thug. The dwarf was a surfacer, like her, but unalike. She knew his face, had heard his name while she was in Kirkwall. It seemed she had stumbled into something too big, too insane. She had no way of knowing just how much bigger it was going to get.
Don't go into the ruins, the Elders had told her. She'd never listened.
She should have.