Katriel paused at his desk. “Let us assume for the moment that our contract was not canceled the moment you changed the plan at West Hill.” She folded her arms, frowning. “I would need to remind you that my contract was to deliver Prince Maric to you, alive. Nothing more, nothing less.” Her green eyes glinted dangerously at him.
Severan paused. The buzzing in his head got worse, and numbness crawled up his skull. He ignored it. “Would you bring me the Prince now, as we agreed, if I asked you to do it?”
She shook her head. “No. I would not.”
“I see.” He raised his palm again, and the ball of fire reformed. It was brighter now, flickering blue at the edges. His eyes bored into hers, daring her to try to strike him with the daggers she surely had on her person. “Then we are going to have an issue, yes?”
Katriel didn’t move. She merely stared at Severan expectantly, her arms still folded. He concentrated, but the buzzing only got worse. The ball of flame sputtered and then disappeared. He would have gasped in shock, but the numbness had spread to his face. He could only open his mouth and then click it shut again.
The room began to spin, and he reached out to grab on to a wooden bedpost to steady himself. He felt the strength in his legs draining out from underneath him.
Katriel gestured toward the door. “A contact poison, coated on the doorknob.” As she slowly walked toward Severan, his hands slid down the post and he collapsed to the floor. Any attempt of his to cry out elicited only a painful wheeze as his throat constricted up tight, making it difficult to breathe.
The elf stood over him, looking down with sadness in her green eyes. She did not seem to be enjoying what she was doing, though that hardly brought him any satisfaction. His heart leaped madly about in his chest, just as his mind screamed at him to move, to find some way out of this trap of paralysis.
“I do not intend to kill you,” she said quietly. “I should do it, but you are right on that count, at least. My honor, for what it’s worth, forbids it.” She crouched down over him, absently adjusting his robe so it did not bunch up around his throat.
Severan tried to reach out for his staff, propped up next to his bed not far away. His fingers flexed, the effort to do so making his face turn red and sweaty, but he could not move his arm. Katriel watched his effort passively. “Consider this, mage: if I had slain you, it would have been your pride that was your undoing in the end. If my time as a bard has taught me anything, it is that men with power can still be approached. The more power they believe they have, the more vulnerable they are.”
He looked up at her, wanting to hurl furious insults, wanting to reach up and strangle her slender throat, but he could do nothing but wheeze and spit. Her eyes hardened as she stared down at him. “I am not your servant, mage,” she said dispassionately. “I am no one’s servant any longer. That is what I came to tell you.”
Katriel stood up and moved toward the doorway, and he continued to lie there, struggling feebly against the poison in his blood. She opened the door and paused, looking back at him.
“If you are wise, you will abandon your plans and return to wherever you came from. If you continue here, you will die, of that I assure you.” She looked off into the distance, her countenance softening for a moment before she shrugged off the feeling. “Consider that warning a courtesy.”
And then she was gone.
Severan lay on the cold stone of his bedroom floor, trying with increasing success to reach out toward the staff. He supposed he should be glad for his life. He was a fool to let his guard down so completely, after all. As the beads of sweat rolled down his forehead, however, all he could truly think of was revenge.
17
Loghain watched Maric quietly from across the room.
They were all exhausted after the days of battle, finally resulting in Gwaren being successfully defended from the usurper’s attack, but still Maric toiled away at his table, writing letter after letter. How many he had written so far, Loghain could only guess, but three riders had already been sent westward, carrying word into the Bannorn and other parts of the land.
Loghain was fairly certain that word of Maric’s return would spread faster than any horse could, but Maric was determined to make a personal appeal to the Fereldan nobility while there was still time to capitalize on their victory. It had come at a heavy cost, after all. The number of dead within Gwaren had been staggering. The Orlesians had been brutal in their efforts to deal with the uprising, so much so that Maric had felt compelled to turn the army about even though they had been barely in fighting form and had been fleeing for their lives.
Maric felt responsible for those lost lives. Loghain could see that. He had stared at the streets full of dead men and women who had fought against mounted knights only because they believed in him, and Loghain had seen that a part of Maric’s soul had shriveled up right then.
It had been a desperate situation when they had fallen upon the chevaliers in Gwaren only days after having been handed a narrow defeat by them, and luck had played into their hands. The usurper’s men had not considered the possibility that they might come back, and their attention was wholly upon slaughtering the ungrateful populace. Maric had been filled with a righteous fury, and even when the enemy finally routed and fled the field, Loghain had been forced to hold him back from ordering them chased down. The rebel force had been decimated, and was in no shape to go anywhere. It had taken both Loghain and Rowan to convince Maric to stand down. They had to recover, and had many dead to burn.
And that was what they had been doing for days, now. Burning the dead. The air had been filled with acrid smoke that never seemed to go away. Only the Legion didn’t take part in their rites. They grieved for their heavy losses but also seemed satisfied that their men had died in a glorious battle. Nalthur shook Maric’s hand before the remaining dwarves took their dead back into the Deep Roads, promising to return soon. Loghain hoped they didn’t meet their end at the hands of the darkspawn after all. A sobering thought, to think that such creatures had existed beneath their feet for so long, forgotten.
At first Maric had insisted on walking through the streets of what remained of Gwaren, watching the funeral pyres and joining in the prayers said by the few Chantry priests that remained. But the eyes of the people were upon him wherever he went. The way they watched his every move and whispered behind his back, the way they
