unpleasant. He noticed that the book was a transcription of one of the longer verses of the Chant of Light. It seemed he wasn’t the only one interested in torturing the King today.
“Tell me you have news!” Meghren shouted in exasperation, wiping the sweat from his brow with an embroidered towel. He lay back on his pillows with a great sigh.
Severan removed a rolled-up piece of parchment from his robe. “I do indeed, Your Majesty. This arrived not an hour ago.” He offered it to Meghren, but the man waved it aside weakly and continued to nurse his forehead.
“Oh, just tell me what it says! I am dying! The terrible diseases that swirl about in this land, it cannot be borne!”
Mother Bronach pursed her lips. “Perhaps His Majesty might consider the possibility that his illness is a lesson sent to him by the Maker.”
Meghren groaned loudly and looked to Severan for support. “This is what I put up with now. This from a traitor who actually spoke to that rebel dog!”
She frowned deeply. “I did not arrange the matter, Your Majesty. Perhaps it is the mages you should be eyeing more closely.” She stared suspiciously at Severan, a look he pointedly ignored.
“You spoke to him!” Meghren suddenly shouted, sitting up in bed and looking rather wild-eyed. “Exchanged words! And here you sit and lecture
“I bring the word of Andraste and the Maker, Your Majesty. Nothing else.”
“Bah!” He collapsed back onto his pillows, defeated.
Severan unrolled the parchment and glanced at it, though he didn’t really need to see what it said. “Our agent says that the plan is a success. They intend to attack West Hill, and have gathered up all the other Fereldans still willing to defy you. They have even agreed to use her as an integral part of the attack.”
Meghren chuckled, taking a rumpled napkin from a small pile of equally rumpled and soiled napkins and blowing his nose into it. “So she does well, then?”
“Oh, yes. Our rebel prince is quite enamored of our agent, it appears.”
“For this we sacrificed so many chevaliers?” Meghren snorted. “We should have crushed them in Gwaren when we had the chance. Burned it down, all of it. Shoved it into the sea.”
“Now we can get all of them,” Severan assured him calmly. “We can eliminate the rebellion for good. Prince Maric will be delivered to you before the month is out; that I guarantee.”
King Meghren thought on this for a moment, playing idly with the soiled napkin in his hand. He wiped his nose with it again and then chanced a look over at Mother Bronach. The woman glared at him unrelentingly, and he sighed. “No,” he finally said, “I have changed my mind. I want him killed.”
Severan frowned. “But you said—”
“And now I say this!”
Mother Bronach nodded approvingly. “The King has given his order, mage.”
“I hear him,” Severan snapped at her. He rolled up the parchment irritably. “I do not understand, Your Majesty. Had you wanted Prince Maric dead, we could easily have—”
“I have changed my mind!” Meghren shouted, and then collapsed into a fit of coughing. When he was done, he looked miserably up at Severan. “There will be no trial, no gift to the Emperor. I . . . wish him to vanish! To disappear!” He waved a hand about dismissively. “He dies in the battle; the rest will go as you planned.”
“Is this your desire, Your Majesty? Or the preference of the Chantry?”
Mother Bronach stiffened her back in her chair, her lips thinning into a single line. “It benefits no one to have the last son of Calenhad paraded in front of his people,” she snapped. “I have reminded His Majesty of his duty in this matter. It will be better this way. Final.”
Meghren did not look thrilled by the notion, but waved his assent absently at the Mother’s words. He snatched up a large pewter goblet from his nightstand and gulped down the water greedily before belching.
Severan glanced between the two and frowned. He had hoped to get his own hands on the rebel prince, once he had been delivered to the palace alive. They had expected losses at Gwaren, but he had been quite embarrassed to report just how many chevaliers had been killed. Worse, they had lost three mages sent by the Circle in Val Cheveaux. Severan had been humiliated in front of his colleagues, and now neither they nor the Fereldan Circle were being cooperative. He would have twisted Maric’s spleen in his own fist, given the chance. Now he would have to be satisfied with another.
Slowly Severan bowed. “The rebellion will be destroyed at West Hill, and Maric will die. Quietly. It shall be as you say, Your Majesty.”
“And do not forget, good mage,” Meghren muttered between miserable sniffles, “you will not fail me again, yes?”
Severan walked out without comment. It seemed the King’s fever would prove resistant to a cure for several days longer than he had initially thought. Pity.
11
West Hill was a drafty, poorly maintained place. Sitting high in the rocky hills overlooking the Waking Sea, the stone fortress had once existed to watch the waters for signs of Marcher corsairs raiding the coast. The decline of the corsairs had brought a decline of the fortress along with it, and today the tall watchtowers stood mostly empty. The fortress was useful mainly for its position along the coastal roads bringing sparse traffic from Orlais.
Still, it felt forgotten. Soldiers were stationed here, with a handful of freeholders and servants to attend to them, but once the fortress had held many more. Thousands, whereas now it held hundreds. Many of the upper floors were closed off, as well as most of the underground chambers that weren’t still used for storage. Some doors hadn’t been opened in decades. It was very easy to make a wrong turn in West Hill and end up in a dark hallway full of crumbling furniture covered with drapes and layers of dust. There were many old ghosts here, or so it was said, and the locals spoke only in whispers as if fearful of stirring their
