“What witch?” Rowan asked, confused.
He barely heard her, looking off into the shadows again. “You will hurt the ones you love the most,” he quoted, “and become what you hate in order to save what you love.”
Rowan reached up with a hand and brushed his cheek, and he looked back at her again without really seeing her. “Those are just words, Maric,” she said gently.
“There’s more. Much more.”
“It doesn’t matter. Katriel loved you. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
He seemed pained. He closed his eyes, reaching up to cover her hand on his cheek with his own, and it appeared to bring him comfort. There was a time she would have dreamed of this moment. Once she had thought of nothing but running her hands through his beautiful blond hair. Once it had meant everything to her to prove to him that she was what he wanted.
“I don’t know that she loved me at all,” he muttered. “I don’t know anything.”
“I think she did.” She pulled her hand away from his. “We think she went to Denerim to cut ties with Severan, Maric. Whatever it was she was supposed to do, I think she changed her mind.”
He chewed on that idea. “It doesn’t change anything,” he finally said.
“No. It doesn’t.”
Maric looked deep into her eyes. He was so full of pain, she could barely stand it. “She tried to tell me,” he confessed, “and I didn’t listen. I told her I didn’t care what she’d done, but I was a fool. I’ve no business being on that throne.”
“Oh, Maric,” she sighed. “You are a good man. A trusting man.”
“And look where it’s gotten me.”
“Look, indeed.” She summoned a wan smile. “Your people adore you. The men in this army would lay down their lives for you. My father loved you. Loghain—” She stopped short and struggled to continue. “—all of them believe in you, Maric. For good reason.”
“Do you still believe in me?”
“I never stopped,” she said with absolute sincerity. “Never. You’ve come so far. Your mother would be so proud. But you can’t always be a good man, Maric. Your people need more than that.”
Maric seemed hurt by her words, though he said nothing. He hung his head low, weary and exhausted. “I don’t know if I can give it to them,” he breathed. Then he began to cry, his face racked by grief. “I killed Katriel. I put a sword through her. What kind of man does that?”
She wrapped her arms around him, patting his hair and whispering that everything would be fine. Maric cried into her chest, the desperate sobs of a broken man. It was a sound that alarmed her and filled her with incredible sorrow.
And then the lantern gave up at long last, and the room was blanketed in darkness. She continued to hold him, and after a time he quieted and they held each other in the shadows. Rowan lent him her strength, what little of it she had to give. He needed it. Perhaps this was what queens did. Perhaps they held their kings in the darkness deep within their castles and allowed them that moment of weakness they could never show to anyone else. Perhaps they gave strength to their kings because everyone else only took it from them.
Loghain was right. Damn him.
In the hushed darkness, Rowan leaned down and kissed Maric on the lips. He embraced her readily, eager for her forgiveness . . . and she gave it. He seemed so uncertain and hesitant, and that made it easier. His warmth and gentleness made her cry, but she couldn’t let him see that. Tonight, for him, she was strong. Tonight she embraced the role that she had been born for, and while it was like nothing she had ever thought it would be, it was instead the way it had to be.
18
Maric waited quietly in the dark chantry, contemplating the marble statue of Andraste that towered above the holy brazier. The robes hung heavily on his shoulders, and he found the thick wool lining hot next to the brazier’s flame, but even so he had to admit he liked them. Rowan had produced them from somewhere, claiming they would make him look more regal. And they did. The purple was a nice touch.
Rowan had been quite attentive since that night in Gwaren. She was always at his side, always ready to offer advice or even just a simple smile. This wasn’t the Rowan he had known. It was a stranger, if a helpful one. When he looked into her eyes, he saw only a wall there, a wall she put up to keep him out. It had never been there before, and he supposed that was his doing. An unspoken agreement had been forged, and with it came a distance he could feel no matter how close they lay.
The army had been on the march for two weeks now, heading westward across the Bannorn and spreading the word of his return. The number of recruits that they were getting now was astounding, increasing every day. There were reports of violence all over the country as farmholders up and left their lands, as townsfolk pelted Orlesian guardsmen with rocks and burned Orlesian businesses. Attacks on Orlesian travelers had prompted the usurper to increase the guards on the roads threefold, and with each reprisal against the people, their resolve only stiffened.
The executions were brutal, he was told. There wasn’t a single settlement in Ferelden where rows of heads didn’t line the roads leading in as a demonstration of what defying King Meghren meant. The thought of them all haunted Maric. Yet still the people rebelled. They had had enough.
Already the banns were coming over to the rebels. Yesterday there had been two banns, old men who had not even come to his court at Gwaren. Two days before it had been an Orlesian, of all things, a young man who had fallen out of favor with the usurper and had begged to be allowed to keep his lands if he joined the rebels. He even promised to marry a Fereldan woman, offered even to change his name. The family that had once owned his lands was now dead, executed to the last child long ago, but Maric still wasn’t sure what he was going to do about that.
It was all coming together so quickly. He reminded himself that if West Hill had taught them anything it was that it could fall apart just as fast. Still, this felt different. For the first time in his memory, the rebels had momentum. It was undeniable to everyone.
Outside, off in the distance, a bell began to ring.
It would be time for them to arrive soon, then. The flames in the brazier bathed the statue above him in a soft glow, while the rest of the chantry was left in shadow. The darkness made everything serene, he thought. Andraste looked down upon him kindly, her hands clasped in prayer to the Maker.
It was her most common depiction. Andraste as the prophet, the bride of the Maker, and the gentle savior. If the statue were more truthful, Andraste would have held a sword in her hand. The Chantry didn’t like to dwell on the fact that their prophet had been a conqueror; her words had stirred the barbarian hordes to invade the civilized world, and she had spent her entire life on the battlefield. There had likely been nothing gentle about her at all.
And she had been betrayed, too, had she not? Maferath, the barbarian warlord, had grown jealous of playing second husband to the Maker. The more lands he conquered, the more the people adored Andraste, and he wished glory for himself. So he sold his wife to the magisters, and they burned her at the stake, and Maferath became synonymous with betrayal. It was the oldest story in Thedas, one that was told time and time again by the Chantry thoughout the ages.
He wondered if Andraste won her battle in the end, even though she met her end in flames. But somehow Maric felt more like Maferath. The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Footsteps on the stone alerted Maric to the fact that they had arrived. Slowly he turned about and watched as a group of men filed into the chantry one by one. The bright brazier was behind him, which meant that these men no doubt saw only his silhouette . . . and that was good, for he didn’t want these men to see his face.