Chapter Text
The market was quiet for the morning, but filling slowly as the sun brought all in Lowtown out into the streets. Varric’s cart was already set up, his vibrantly decorated display drawing wide curious eyes from the passers by. It was always the children, Varric hummed to himself, far more open-minded of the strange beardless dwarf and the promise of entertainment. It didn’t matter where it came from to them, it was the adults that took longer to give into their interest.
“It’s beautiful, right?” Varric drawled, leaning slightly out of the cart and gesturing to the chantry.
No matter where you were in Kirkwall, save perhaps Darktown, the chantry dominated the skyline. Varric had always found the sight reassuring, in a way. He was Andrastian at heart, dwarf or not, and he saw the symbol as a reminder of the Maker. It strengthened him. But it was not to the chantry itself he was gesturing. At this hour, as Kirkwall woke and a new day began, the city echoed with music. Bells, to be specific- and Varric rarely was if he could help it. His audience of five grubby children, perhaps orphaned, perhaps not, Fereldan and Kirkwaller alike, were rapt in their attention of the strange storyteller speaking to them.
Varric’s hands gestured slow and languid in their air, listening to the melodic ringing of the bells that soothed him as familiar as his mother’s voice. “There’s a whole army of bells up there; big, little, soft, loud- you name it. All of them ringing every day like clockwork. You ask anyone who’s been to Kirkwall to describe this place and they’ll mention those chantry bells, I guarantee it.” He cocked his head and held back a grin as the smallest girl- he thought it was a girl, human children all looked alike- followed his hand to stare wide eyed at the chantry far above them. He sighed, “Listen… beautiful.” He repeated. Emphasis was key with kids. “But you know, they don’t ring all by themselves!” Flourish and flare, that was Varric’s speciality. None of the kids saw the puppet coming and Varric wanted to congratulate himself on his own stitching.
“They don’t?!” He cried in a soft, high voice as the children smothered giggles.
Varric shook his head indulgently at the puppet. “No, look here,” He guided the puppet, and his audience, to look once more at the chantry. More than a few adults had stopped to watch, feigning they weren’t and were actually looking at vendor stalls. “High, high in the dark chantry tower lives the mysterious bellringer!” Oh, he had these kids eating out the palm of his hand. “Well, Varric Tethras here will tell you. Let me tell you a tale…” He drew the puppet closer to his mouth and pantomimed whispering into it’s ear as the children stared. “It’s the tale of a man… and a monster!”
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Hilda clutched her baby to her chest, desperately hushing the squalling bundle as her brother shook her arm. Fear was choking them, her heart hammering in her chest as loud as her son’s cries and making her shake. The tiny boat they were huddled into rocked sharply with each wave as they slipped into Kirkwall’s docks and did nothing to settle Hilda’s already heaving stomach.
“Shut it up, will you?” Berthold pleaded.
Hilda cupped her son’s face. “Hush, please, little one,” She breathed, flinching as the ferryman whirled around to accuse them of drawing attention. As though Hilda and he weren’t perfectly aware what anyone sneaking into Kirkwall would be accused of. There were few reasons why anyone might run far, and Kirkwall was far from the Anderfels. Hilda was at least grateful that her son was no longer glowing blue with fadelight for every templar in the city to come down upon them- escaping her husband’s wrath had been difficult enough. A cohort of soldiers would be impossible.
Bypassing the bridges and the piers entirely until they reached a point they could step off onto filthy sludge that could be called a shore of sorts. It would be a short journey to the sewers, to Darktown. Where they would be safe, where her son would be safe, Hilda hoped.
As hard as her heart was hammering, she heard the armour but a moment too late. Berthold grabbed her and pushed her behind him, ever the big brother protecting her even as he was wary of her clearly mage son.
They were surrounded. Six templars in the filth of Kirkwall’s dock with them, four more upon the dock itself with bows drawn. There was no escape in front, but as Hilda turned to see how far back the shore ran they had been anticipated. Berthold sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of the lone figure astride a horse as fearsome as beast of legend. Broad as a barrell and higher than Hilda could measure by eye, the horse gave gravity to the figure atop it. Gravity that was not needed.
“Kight Commander Meredith Stannard!” Berthold breathed her name with such fear, fear that Hilda felt in her bones as she realised who was before her.
A Knight Commander as young as she was unheard of, but her story preceded her. She championed the iron fist that all mage’s should be held by, a beautiful face of chantry might in her armour and her finery- a vision to rival Andraste herself. Beneath that beauty Hilda saw nothing but ice, a heart turned hateful from fear and disdain until there was nothing to be reasoned with.
Meredith’s control of the mages under her care, if it could be called such, was infamous. Justice, she called it. Her cruel form of justice gave most pause and was more than enough of an example for how the rest of the circles in Thedas should act. That her actions were questioned was of no concern, she carried too much power. Years past now, word had travelled that the Kirkwall Circle had been made Tranquil all but entirely. Some fled but most were doomed, Tranquil and slave to the chantry sworn to protect them, the previous Enchanter made a figurehead at the chantry building. Here she was, towering over Hilda and her made son, and Hilda saw her son’s death. She had fled Anderfels and her husband, escaped the circle’s clutches there only to watch her child be murdered here?
“She has something.” Meredith peered down her elegant nose, regal and powerful, her cold eyes seeing to the heart of Hilda’s fear. “Take it from her.”
Hilda ran.
She didn’t know Kirkwall’s streets at all, and every time she thought she was lower she wound up turned around and climbing higher. Darktown, she told herself, to Darktown, as though the Maker might guide her to safety and protect her son as he had done thus far. Meredith’s horse proved to Hilda’s advantage as Hilda kept to the alleys and narrower streets, leaping over walls with adrenaline fueling her feet, one hand ever clutching her precious child to her. Her son had fallen quiet now, squirming in protest of the jostling but otherwise still. As her own breath heaved in great lungfuls as she ran it seemed her son and Thedas held a collective breath to see if she would escape.
Turning a corner Hilda found herself staring up at a chantry. A chantry the size of a small village, beautiful and dominating. Perhaps the Maker had guided her after all, she could claim refuge for a night and none would disturb her or her son- it was unusual enough to have a mage present too young, let alone while still swaddled. As long as no templar came near, and they were not often in the chantry at night, she could protect her son. Harbourage would be granted to those seeking it for the night, safety from starvation and cold, the chantry would provide, she prayed. Justice, they called it, as hollow as they word rang when she had seen her son glowing in her arms and knew the injustice’s he would face at their hands.
She did not slow as her feet carried her to the closed chantry doors, her bare palm hammering on the aged wood as she screamed out, “Please! Justice, please! Grant me entry, Maker, let me in! Justice!” The whinny of the horse behind her felt like a Blight itself raining down upon her, the door at her back remaining closed to her as she darted to run again. There would be no Justice, not for her and her mage child. She barely got five steps before Meredith was bearing down upon her and Hilda felt herself lurch back.
Meredith’s hand had snarled into the fabric of her son’s swaddle, Hilda’s grip on the child no match for the warrior as the baby was wrenched from her grasp. Still, she clung, but Meredith’s leg kicked out. It flung Hilda back, down the stone steps of the chantry and then-
When the woman did not move, Meredith deemed the matter resolved. Blood began to seep from where the woman’s head lay, crooked and bent. It ran in thin rivulets down the gray-white stone, pooling thickly under her and spilling down in a steady flow. From the small bundle Meredith had taken from the woman, an infant’s cry came.
“A baby?” She incredulously lifted the infant, pulling back the mishandled swaddling to reveal the squirming child. To her horror, the fade sucked in around the baby and the pale skin split into cracks of blue, raw power itching at Meredith unpleasantly as the baby cried out. “An abomination!” Meredith corrected to herself, steeling herself against the disgust she felt at holding the mage child at all. Possessed. The baby did not even have teeth and already Meredith felt the unbridled power of the fade not even apprentice mage’s could muster. The baby was possessed.
Her gaze landed upon a well. Ever did the Maker provide, she thought.
“Stop!” Cried Orsino, the figurehead First Enchanter hollered at her. His mockery chantry robes, little more than embroidered mage robes, made him look as though he had sway or power. He did not. Still, Meredith found herself pausing, the screaming infant dangling over the gaping maw of the well.
She sneered as she turned to him, wasn’t it enough she spared him the fate of his charges? He still felt he could question her at every turn, and she sometimes deigned to justify herself to him. “This is an unholy mage, possessed already and not yet even weaned! I am sending it to the Void where it belongs!”
Orsino flung a hand to point at the crumpled body of the woman Meredith had struck to the floor. “And she? Was she a mage?! Or do you murder the Maker’s flock in the streets now? On the chantry steps, no less!”
“She ran from Justice.” Meredith gave an easy roll of one shoulder, but already she had drawn her horse closer to Orsino, the baby held grudgingly in one arm as she listened.
“Now you would add that baby’s blood to your hands! Mages might mean nothing to you but you have killed a woman you would see as innocent- not a mage, or she would have never made it so far, would she Meredith? You wanted to take her into custody, not murder her. Now there is guilt on you conscience.”
She bristled and bared her teeth at Orsino in rage, but he had long ago stopped cowing to her. “My conscience is clear!” She insisted.
“Lie to yourself, lie to the Divine and the whole Templar order for all I care,” Orsino spat, grief and injustice so beaten into him it made him bold. It straightened his spine to her hate, for what else was left to lose? He was the last circle mage in Kirkwall left. “You’ll never hide what you’ve done from the Maker, Meredith. That woman raised no arms against you, would the Maker be so understanding of this?” Orsino raised a hand to the chantry at his back, the towers reaching for the sky inlaid with so many sculpted faces- all of them peering down upon Meredith and crushing into her with the guilt she refused to feel. “There are none of us can hide what we’ve done from the eyes of the Maker. Even you.”
Meredith shifted uncomfortably atop her horse, feeling small beneath the presence of the chantry bearing down on her with the unflinching authority of the Maker himself. Orsino had spilled guilt into her with his words and now she could not shake it, her unfailing righteousness struck to it’s core at the imbalance of the death she had caused to an innocent, and the death she now felt she could not add to it. A mage was no innocent, but it was alive. In the faces of the statues above, Meredith saw the stricken faces of men, women and children, heard the screams they had given pleading for their lives as they fell to her blade- she had been right to annul those who would not kneel to the brand. They had almost all turned to blood magic in desperation, that she pushed was not her fault- and yet the guilt was there. A chance to ease it, she thought, the Maker’s gift of a clean slate was what this was.
“It is possessed, it must be put to the sword then when it is old enough.” Meredith offered the child to Orsino, who stepped back with a flat look of emptiness that had not always been there. “Take it in.”
“This is your child to raise now. You cannot let the mage go to an orphanage, nor can you pass it off to anyone not equipped to deal with a possible demon.” Orsino offered her an unsympathetically quirked mouth. “What a mess you have, Meredith.”
Meredith sneered, “I am to be saddled with this abomination of a-?!” She paused, looking upon the chantry before her. She would not invite an abomination into her home, and yet the Maker’s home was before her. If it were to be the Maker’s will, then the answer was clear. “He will live here.” It was as close to a circle as remained any more.
“Here? Where?”
“The bell tower, perhaps.” Meredith straightened her spine, the guilt easing around her like a relaxing grip around her throat. “The Maker works in mysterious ways, this abomination might prove to be of use to me before it’s demon overtakes it..” It had such power, she had felt it. If she could harness it, keep it leashed and handled like the qunari kept their mages then possessed or not the mage might be useful for a time. If not, then her sword would be ready.