Six Escape Attempts (Part 6)
The Six Escape Attempts (and Single Escape) of Anders
Mulit-Chapter, a bit long.
Rating: PG at max
Some implied pairings, but only Anders/Karl stands out. A few OC Wardens, who don't conflict with each other and don't play much role.
Ch. 6 - The Phylactery Attempt
30 Haring, 9:26 Dragon
Amaranthine was strangely unlike Denerim, and Anders knew which of the two he preferred. He had not yet had the courage to attempt travelling to Denerim, but as his third year in the city was getting close to the halfway-marker, he thought he might try to risk it soon. He had no idea how much longer the templars here would accept his registration. The good news was that they rotated in and out often. No one seemed to really enjoy living in Amaranthine. It was a place of transition that Anders had somehow become stuck in. Instead of moving from place to place to avoid repeated encounters with templars, Anders had simply stayed put in Amaranthine and let the templars move around him.
Eventually, however, people did start asking questions. Greagoir had been prudent enough to date the registration papers next to his signature and, while he had marked no end-date for Anders’ stay outside the circle, the chantry templars had begun to inquire about his extensive visit. Anders always answered that the Knight Commander would send word when it was time for him to return, which technically would have been true, had Greagoir thought to send word to a dead mage who had been travelling to Amaranthine for three months.
Anders assumed that Tavish would have reported him dead. He had made every effort to give that appearance in any case, and he doubted that Tavish would have even looked beyond the robes to see if it was his mage that lay burned on the ground. Had he been trying to fool a more clever templar, Anders would probably have just run, but he could trust Tavish to be too distraught to check the veracity of his report before giving it to the Knight Commander. There wasn’t anything too odd about bandits killing a mage and a templar, after all. A mage burning his own face and hands, however? That would have been unusual. Greagoir would have looked into that. So Anders had traveled to Amaranthine and stayed there for two reasons. First, if anyone came looking, he had registration and could say that he had gone exactly where he was supposed to go and done exactly what he was supposed to do (all of which was true in a very literal way), and second, he doubted whether Greagoir would ever consider the option that, given his freedom, he would go exactly where he had said he would. The Knight Commander had probably sent templars to Denerim to check on Tavish’s story. They would have come back reporting that he wasn’t there, of course, and so the Knight Commander would have no reason to think that Anders was still alive at all. So it was something of a surprise when a templar who had been at the chantry for two months suddenly asked to see his registration.
“You do have them on you, don’t you?” he asked.
“Well, yes, but you’ve already seen them, haven’t you? I mean, when you first got here-“
“What I’ve done in the past doesn’t matter,” the templar said over Anders’ sputtering. “As a mage residing outside of the Ferelden circle, you are required to have your registration papers on your person at all times and to present them whenever you are called upon to do so by those who are watching over you.”
Anders winced at the phrasing. Most of the time, the templars in Amaranthine didn’t so much watch over him in as distractedly glance in his direction once in a while. This templar was a little too dutiful for Anders’ tastes. He pulled the papers from his robes and the templar took them from his hands. He read through them quickly.
“Name?” the templar said sharply.
“Anders.”
“Full name, please,” he revised.
“Dunno,” Anders said, shrugging, “Anderfels, I guess? That’s all anyone calls me, and that what I assume the Knight Commander wrote on the papers.”
“Come with me then,” he said, and without checking to see if Anders would do what he said, he turned and began walking toward the chantry. Anders did follow, telling himself that he was doing so out of curiosity and not simply following templar orders.
The market district of Amaranthine was around the corner and down some stairs from the chantry, about a two minute walk away, so Anders didn’t have much time to wonder what was happening before the templar ahead of him pulled the doors open (he didn’t hold it for Anders, so he had to run the last few steps to catch it before it closed) and stomped inside.
“It’s him, Revered Mother. We have him, just as the letter said,” The templar announced, seemingly to the chantry as a whole.
“There’s no need to disturb the worshippers, Wesley,” a quiet voice from the back of the chantry said. “Lead him into my office, if you would be so kind, and I will meet you both there momentarily.”
Wesley sniffed and raised his chin, then walked up the aisle and a little to the right, Anders following behind him even though every fiber of his body was telling him to run. There were too many people in the chantry to get away without a fight, and they were all staring at him curiously. They knew he was a mage. One man kneeling in the left section had come in to have his arm healed last week after suffering a bad break. They knew him. Amaranthine was nothing like Denerim at all.
Wesley continued to ignore Anders even when they reached the Revered Mother’s study and sat down next to each other in plush chairs near her desk. He looked straight ahead, a sense of intense purpose making his eyes glaze over. Anders did his best to remain calm while thinking of all the most appropriate lies and escape plans that might get him out of the situation, should it turn messy. The revered mother stepped around the corner a moment later and shut the door behind her.
“So, our mage is here in the city after all,” She said kindly. “I had wondered. You have been here longer than we expected, ser mage, yet I don’t think we have ever exchanged pleasantries. I am Revered Mother Dorothea, head of this chantry. You, as I understand, are known as Anders, and certain parties are very curious as to your whereabouts.”
“Certain parties?” Anders said, “Who? I don’t know anyone outside of the circle of magi and a few templars.”
“It makes sense then, that it is these who are looking for you.” Dorothea responded, smiling.
“If the Knight Commander at Kinloch Hold wished for my return, all he had to do was send his templars to collect me as he said he would.”
“Let the Revered Mother speak, mage,” Wesley growled.
“There is no need to defend my honor, Wesley, this man has done me no offense,” Dorothea said. “In fact, it is Kinloch Hold who is looking for you. They seemed to be under the impression that there would be no need to send templars to collect anyone until very recently, when a trip to Denerim proved most interesting.”
“To Denerim?” Anders asked, “I haven’t been to Denerim in years. I don’t know anyone who’s gone to Denerim in years. What could possibly be there-?”
“Somehow, information always finds its way to the big cities. People gather and rumors spread, and Denerim is a good place to keep things both open and hidden at the same time.” Dorothea went on. Wesley made a strange strangled sound in his throat, as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but he did not interrupt and Dorothea did not acknowledge his discomfort. “Knight Commander Greagoir and First Enchanter Irving of Kinloch hold send their regards as to your extraordinary health, even in the face of apparent death, and kindly request your returned presence, however belated, to the tower.”
“I don’t suppose I get any kind of choice,” Anders said, trying his best to keep his teeth from grinding as he spoke.
“Their letter did not make it seem as though that would be the case,” Dorothea replied. “I was able to convince the Knight Commander not to storm up here himself, however, but rather that we would convince you to set out yourself with proper accompaniment if we discovered you within the city’s walls. Wesley, you will be that accompaniment. Take this opportunity to spend some small time in Lothering as well during your return. Your station will not miss you so much as your wife.”
“Do I at least get to make good on the commissions on my work?” Anders asked. ‘What about the clients I have yet to tend to.”
“Most of your clients take rather immediate tending, as I understand, so there shouldn’t be too many in line. If you wish to, you may go with Wesley to collect any belongings you wish to take with you, and while out you may let any customers know that they will find you in the chantry tonight should they still wish your services. There is no need to set out until tomorrow.“
Anders didn’t trust himself to speak, so allowing his teeth to grind, he bowed to the Revered Mother and turned on his heel to walk quickly out the doors again, letting the templar tag along behind.
-
No one came to see Anders that night in the chantry, though he did place out a sign per Dorothea’s suggestion telling all potential customers where to find him. He kept hoping all night that someone coming to see him would give him some opportunity to run, but he had no such luck. He wasn’t even going to be able to bring Whiskers and Knight-Captain Cullsy (so named for the stiff manner in which he held his tail while running into walls) back with him. They were barely a year old, not even full cats yet. He could only hope that the other merchants would look after the two kittens.
They set off wordlessly the next morning. Wesley was a very early riser and shook Anders awake long before the morning fog had cleared the ground. Anders barely even had the time to say a last goodbye to the city. He certainly was never given the opportunity to give the tearful wake he would have liked to hold for his freedom.
The trip back to Kinloch Hold took three essentially wordless days. Every now and then, Anders would attempt to strike up some conversation with Wesley. He had found templars in Amaranthine to be agreeable for the most part when he was cooperative and holding his registration clearly in the sunlight, but whether he tried to talk about Wesley’s feelings on mages, why he became a templar, what he thought of Amaranthine or the wife that Dorothea had mentioned, Wesley would give a sentence, maybe two (“I’m married. She lives in the south” or “They exist, and we guard them. What more is there?”) and then refuse to say any more. By the third day, it was a struggle for Anders not to ask more impertinent questions, such as “How large was the rock they dropped on your head as a baby?” or “How many of your ancestors are qunari?” But by the time they could see Kinloch Hold in the distance, Anders didn’t much feel like talking any more either. The sight of the stone oppressed his breath and his mood, but he didn’t run. He probably could have run - or more likely just stopped moving - and Wesley might not have even realized it given how much attention he had been paying to Anders thus far, but something kept his feet moving. There was something in the tower that he dearly missed, after all. Someone whose ring he hadn’t removed in years.
As always, the thought of Karl could sustain Anders through just about anything, even Carroll’s sarcastic “finally tracked you down did they?” greeting at the other side of the lake, and the other templars’ escort straight up the stairs to the Knight Commander’s office without letting him set his things down first.
“That was by far your best effort yet,” Greagoir said. Anders noticed that, although Irving was in the room, he was standing towards the back of the Knight Commander’s office, not at his usual place by the desk. Then again, maybe things had changed after two and a half years. “I have no choice but to believe that you have been only very stupid and not actively acting against our order. Tavish’s story made sense, and what we have been able to track of you matches what he has told us. Do you know what became of Endrin?”
“I didn’t think he made it though the attack, Knight Commander,” Anders said. This was why he hadn’t wanted to return. The tenfold suspicion of a bandit attack would have fallen on him despite his inability to control the outcome. “He was on the other side of the camp from where I was, and I had only magic to defend myself. I didn’t join the larger fight for fear of harming the templars and I was overwhelmed.”
“So overwhelmed that a bandit who had been stabbed through the lung managed to somehow steal your clothing before you burned his face and hands,” Greagoir stated rather than asked. “Yes, you were very stupid. However, we also were somewhat stupid in deciding not only that we had not been tricked, but also that you would never travel to the very place that you had been given permission to go to. Your actions speak neither in your favor, nor do you great harm, so we have no choice but to accept you back into the tower, under the condition that you will never leave its walls again.”
“Never?” Anders balked.
“It is as much as most mages can expect. Do not think that some right of yours has been taken from you.” Greagoir said sternly.
“But Knight Commander, what did I do to deserve-“
“You ran away from the tower,” Greagoir said, “For the fourth time, I might add.”
Anders silently corrected this to fifth, forgetting that no one except for Carroll knew about the first.
“You did nothing actively wrong in Amaranthine by all reports, but you only were granted a three month stay. Yet you remained for thirty months, and would have remained longer had we not been able to track you effectively. And do not ask how we managed this. The answer should be clear to you already. We are templars. We track down apostate mages. Paperwork or not, after the third month, you did not turn yourself into the chantry and you became an apostate. Do not leave this tower again. You should probably leave my office though.”
Anders did not need to be told twice, but gathered up his things in his arms and prepared to go down the stairs.
“You will need to be shown to your quarters,” Irving said from behind him. “The old ones were not as well guarded this time as they have been in the past, I’m afraid, yet I do not think you will find the company too distasteful.”
Ten minutes later, Anders found himself rooming with Finn again. He dropped his things unceremoniously on the bed.
“Where’s Karl?”
“What?” Finn said, sounding both meek and tired and affronted at the same time, “No, ‘Hello, Finn!’ or ‘Good to see you’ or ‘What are you reading, Flora?’ Some manners you picked up outside the tower.”
“Where is he, Finn?” Anders asked again. Finn sighed, then set down his book and looked up at Anders. His eyes seemed defeated, somehow, like he was being held prisoner. Anders knew that feeling, but he had never known it with Finn. Finn, who had always loved the indoors and the books and the constant supervision; Finn, who had nightmares about finding himself out of doors, Finn looked trapped.
“Maker, I had hoped I wouldn’t have to be the one to tell you,” he said. “he stayed for a while, you know, he hoped- I don’t know what he hoped, but he would have been right to stay on. Karl… Karl isn’t as strong as you, Anders. None of us are, really, and after…”
“What do you mean, ‘he stayed for a while’,” Anders asked, and his heart leapt to his mouth while his gut became so heavy that his knees shook. “Finn?”
“He put in the transfer after a year,” Finn said, and his face glistened a little, and Anders suddenly noticed how red his nose was and how wet his eyes were. “He thought, we all thought- not even you can come back from the dead, Anderfels. We buried the body in the lake at Karl’s suggestion because he knew you loved the water, but- well, he sort of broke after that. He went north, I think. The templars don’t tell us anything you know, and I don’t think he was very particular about his request. He just wanted to be… away.”
Anders fell backwards onto his bed. He couldn’t cry. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see or hear or feel much, though he thought Finn might have moved over to his bed and be sitting beside him saying something. It didn’t matter right now. The bed shifted again. Finn was still talking, though Anders didn’t try to make out the words. The floorboards creaked and then the bed squished down again. Something small and cold was pressed into Anders hands, and the world came a little bit back into focus.
“…you know how the quartermaster gets odd things from time to time. Anyway, he said they made him think of you, but after a while he just couldn’t stand it. When he left, he left one of them with me, just in case, well, you came back after all.”
It was an earring. A small gold circle with a clasp for going through a piercing. He’d never gotten his ears pierced, of course, he’d never thought about it. He’d described earrings to Karl, who had laughed at the idea. He’d remembered after all that time…
And suddenly everything clicked into place. His phylactery. That was why they knew he was alive. That was why Rylock and Greagoir and Irving were so afraid of him going to Denerim. That was where he had to go. That was what he had to do. He had to find his phylactery, and Karl’s, too, if he could, and destroy them. Then he would find Karl.
And if he could, he’d get his ear pierced along they way.
-
The first challenge was getting out of the tower for a sixth time. Greagoir, perhaps wisely, no longer trusted the other templars concerning Anders and was resolved to keep an eye on him himself. The bad news for Anders was of course that the most dedicated, well-trained and watchful templar was now keeping an unrelenting eye on him. The good news was that everyone else trusted Greagoir to handle this job perfectly, so they all left Anders mostly to himself, while Greagoir ran himself haggard trying to keep a constant watchful eye on him. Anders got some slightly cruel pleasure in sneaking around the tower for no reason whatsoever, or glancing around suspiciously when on the way to the library. He knew it made Greagoir jumpy, and sometimes could even catch sight of the Knight Commander watching him from the shadows. Eventually, he knew, Greagoir would catch on that Anders was teasing him. Whether that would convince him to lay off or not, Anders had no idea. He would need a completely foolproof plan.
“This is madness,” Finn said in a high-pitched whisper later that night. “You’ve been here less than two weeks and you’re already thinking about leaving again?”
“I’m more than thinking about it, Finn,” Anders said, “I’m doing it. But I need help this time.”
“And you expect to get it from me? Just how insane are you? I happen to like it here. I happen to think that living in a library with people in giant suits of armor standing around to protect me from untrained mana a most delightful form of existence. You should meet some of the senior enchanters, too, they’re-”
“I’m not asking you to come along,” Ander cut in, “I need your help in getting past Greagoir. That’s all. Please, Finn.”
“You have no idea, do you?” Finn said, and there was much less quaver in his voice. “You have no idea how much pain you caused him. You caused all of us.”
“I wanted to write, or something. It was never you I was trying to get away from. I want to right what I did wrong. Finn, I-“
“I don’t want to hear excuses,” Finn said, “You left all of us with nothing to go on. We thought you were dead for two and a half years.”
“If there had been any way to get a message to you without alerting the templars, I would have done that, Finn. I missed you all, I missed him… miss him…” Anders couldn’t finish the sentence.
“No, you won’t get sympathy from me,” Finn said. “You’ll just have to try someone else. I’m not going to spend the next five years or more wondering whether you’re alive and on the run or dead in a gutter somewhere surrounded by kittens. Ask to follow him if he meant that much to you. Petition for a transfer-“
“They won’t tell me where he went,” Anders said, and Finn stopped trying to cut him off. “Do you think I didn’t ask? That was the first thing I did, and Greagoir… he said he wanted to keep an eye on me. That he didn’t trust any other templars. He’s been following me for days, and I can’t get the information out of anyone. It’s driving me mad, the way they all pretend that he never existed. It’s like once you leave this place, you stop living. Or maybe that’s what happens when you enter it. I don’t- I have to see him again.”
They were both quiet for a long time. Long enough for Anders to silently cry and then let his eyes become dry and irritated again. Long enough to hear two patrols of templars walk past their door.
“Kirkwall,” Finn said.
“What?”
“He went to Kirkwall,” Finn explained. “I never stopped asking the templars and, well, I finally annoyed Hadley so much that he told me. He said the mages down there have been having some trouble. The old first enchanter died and there’s no obvious replacement, so there’s been some in-fighting, and the templars have seized a little more control than they reasonably should. Karl wanted to do some good, so he was sent there, hopefully to calm things down. You know how Karl is, all soothing tones and reasoned arguments. They must have thought that- that he’d find some peace there, doing the Maker’s work.”
“Then that’s where I have to go. Thank you, Finn,” Anders said.
“That’s all I can give you, you understand?” Finn said, suddenly shaky again. “I won’t go against Greagoir and Irving, and I won’t break chantry rules.”
“Then I will stop asking you to do so,” Anders said, and Finn looked immensely relieved. “This is a great help, and it’s something that I couldn’t have found out otherwise. I won’t forget this. I promise.”
Finn nodded and returned to his own bed. He picked up his book and opened onto his lap, but stared at his feet rather than the pages. After a minute, Anders got up as quietly as he could and walked out the door. If he could get to Denerim, then getting to Highever would be easy and Kirkwall was a ferry ride away from there. He could show Karl the remains of his phylactery and by then they would be so close to Tevinter… Anders hadn’t ever really considered Tevinter as an option, but if he was going to be leaving the country anyway, it might not be a bad place to go. Mages were accepted there. Maybe he could do some good in Solas or Minrathous. Maybe they could live in peace together. If it was possible, Anders swore he would make it happen. He wouldn’t abandon Karl again.
He made his way down the stairs to the apprentice quarters as quickly as he could and slipped inside. It was astounding how few of the faces he recognized. Keres was not inside, although his bed - pushed as far away from the others as it could go and meticulously made so that the bedspread didn’t allow a clear view of what was underneath the bed, was unmistakable. Varrun was reading in the opposite corner and did not look up at the sound of the door. Jowan, however, sat up straighter and smiled at him. The other apprentices turned to him curiously.
“Who wants to make a couple sovereigns?” Anders said. A blonde boy near the front smiled widely.
-
It took maybe an hour after breakfast ended the next morning for Greagoir to decide that Anders was probably missing. He hadn’t seen the mage in any of his usual hiding places that day, nor had he noticed any suspicious behavior from his templars. This meant that all was going too smoothly, which meant that something had gone wrong. He went to the mage’s quarters and gave the courtesy of knocking before opening the door. Finn’s bed was well made and tidy and had eight large cooking books open on top of it, each turned to a different soup recipe. Greagoir chose to ignore this perfectly reasonable oddity, and opened the door further before stepping inside.
The mage was in bed, flat on his stomach, with his hair poking in all directions over the covers and his pillow.
“Hello Knight Commander,” Finn said from behind a very large pot, which was suspended over a fire by an even larger metal tripod that had surely come from the repository. “Can I help you?”
“You could tell me what’s happening,” Greagoir said, using his calm voice despite the circumstances. “Is he sick? If so, he should be tended to by the tranquil.”
“He thinks he’s sick,” Finn said, “and I’ve been wanting to try this, so it works well, really. What I do won’t hurt him and he won’t die of other things in the meantime, since it’s probably just the strain of returning to the tower that’s gotten to him. He hasn’t been taking it well.”
It was very hot in the room and Greagoir watched the blond head toss once on the pillow and bury its face further into the pillow with a low grunt before deciding that this was perhaps not worth his time or energy and that he would come back after lunch to take Anders to the tranquil if he was still in the bed. Something felt wrong about the situation, but Greagoir was far too tired and discomfited in his rapidly overheating templar armor to pay enough attention to what exactly was wrong. Finn rubbed a ring on his finger anxiously as the Knight Commander left the room again, and he heaved a sigh and started to clean up the mess around his bed. A real golden ring, etched with the city seal of Amaranthine, glittered on his finger.
It was well after lunch before Greagoir realized that he had been duped. He was so shocked that he completely forgot to punish Finn, who told him at the meal that he hadn’t seen Anders in hours and was “starting to get worried about him”. By that time, Anders had exchanged the apprentice’s robes, only slightly torn from climbing out the tower window in the fourth floor classroom, and mostly dry after the swim across the lake, for some common clothing. He was also nearly halfway to Denerim.
Six.
Mulit-Chapter, a bit long.
Rating: PG at max
Some implied pairings, but only Anders/Karl stands out. A few OC Wardens, who don't conflict with each other and don't play much role.
Ch. 6 - The Phylactery Attempt
30 Haring, 9:26 Dragon
Amaranthine was strangely unlike Denerim, and Anders knew which of the two he preferred. He had not yet had the courage to attempt travelling to Denerim, but as his third year in the city was getting close to the halfway-marker, he thought he might try to risk it soon. He had no idea how much longer the templars here would accept his registration. The good news was that they rotated in and out often. No one seemed to really enjoy living in Amaranthine. It was a place of transition that Anders had somehow become stuck in. Instead of moving from place to place to avoid repeated encounters with templars, Anders had simply stayed put in Amaranthine and let the templars move around him.
Eventually, however, people did start asking questions. Greagoir had been prudent enough to date the registration papers next to his signature and, while he had marked no end-date for Anders’ stay outside the circle, the chantry templars had begun to inquire about his extensive visit. Anders always answered that the Knight Commander would send word when it was time for him to return, which technically would have been true, had Greagoir thought to send word to a dead mage who had been travelling to Amaranthine for three months.
Anders assumed that Tavish would have reported him dead. He had made every effort to give that appearance in any case, and he doubted that Tavish would have even looked beyond the robes to see if it was his mage that lay burned on the ground. Had he been trying to fool a more clever templar, Anders would probably have just run, but he could trust Tavish to be too distraught to check the veracity of his report before giving it to the Knight Commander. There wasn’t anything too odd about bandits killing a mage and a templar, after all. A mage burning his own face and hands, however? That would have been unusual. Greagoir would have looked into that. So Anders had traveled to Amaranthine and stayed there for two reasons. First, if anyone came looking, he had registration and could say that he had gone exactly where he was supposed to go and done exactly what he was supposed to do (all of which was true in a very literal way), and second, he doubted whether Greagoir would ever consider the option that, given his freedom, he would go exactly where he had said he would. The Knight Commander had probably sent templars to Denerim to check on Tavish’s story. They would have come back reporting that he wasn’t there, of course, and so the Knight Commander would have no reason to think that Anders was still alive at all. So it was something of a surprise when a templar who had been at the chantry for two months suddenly asked to see his registration.
“You do have them on you, don’t you?” he asked.
“Well, yes, but you’ve already seen them, haven’t you? I mean, when you first got here-“
“What I’ve done in the past doesn’t matter,” the templar said over Anders’ sputtering. “As a mage residing outside of the Ferelden circle, you are required to have your registration papers on your person at all times and to present them whenever you are called upon to do so by those who are watching over you.”
Anders winced at the phrasing. Most of the time, the templars in Amaranthine didn’t so much watch over him in as distractedly glance in his direction once in a while. This templar was a little too dutiful for Anders’ tastes. He pulled the papers from his robes and the templar took them from his hands. He read through them quickly.
“Name?” the templar said sharply.
“Anders.”
“Full name, please,” he revised.
“Dunno,” Anders said, shrugging, “Anderfels, I guess? That’s all anyone calls me, and that what I assume the Knight Commander wrote on the papers.”
“Come with me then,” he said, and without checking to see if Anders would do what he said, he turned and began walking toward the chantry. Anders did follow, telling himself that he was doing so out of curiosity and not simply following templar orders.
The market district of Amaranthine was around the corner and down some stairs from the chantry, about a two minute walk away, so Anders didn’t have much time to wonder what was happening before the templar ahead of him pulled the doors open (he didn’t hold it for Anders, so he had to run the last few steps to catch it before it closed) and stomped inside.
“It’s him, Revered Mother. We have him, just as the letter said,” The templar announced, seemingly to the chantry as a whole.
“There’s no need to disturb the worshippers, Wesley,” a quiet voice from the back of the chantry said. “Lead him into my office, if you would be so kind, and I will meet you both there momentarily.”
Wesley sniffed and raised his chin, then walked up the aisle and a little to the right, Anders following behind him even though every fiber of his body was telling him to run. There were too many people in the chantry to get away without a fight, and they were all staring at him curiously. They knew he was a mage. One man kneeling in the left section had come in to have his arm healed last week after suffering a bad break. They knew him. Amaranthine was nothing like Denerim at all.
Wesley continued to ignore Anders even when they reached the Revered Mother’s study and sat down next to each other in plush chairs near her desk. He looked straight ahead, a sense of intense purpose making his eyes glaze over. Anders did his best to remain calm while thinking of all the most appropriate lies and escape plans that might get him out of the situation, should it turn messy. The revered mother stepped around the corner a moment later and shut the door behind her.
“So, our mage is here in the city after all,” She said kindly. “I had wondered. You have been here longer than we expected, ser mage, yet I don’t think we have ever exchanged pleasantries. I am Revered Mother Dorothea, head of this chantry. You, as I understand, are known as Anders, and certain parties are very curious as to your whereabouts.”
“Certain parties?” Anders said, “Who? I don’t know anyone outside of the circle of magi and a few templars.”
“It makes sense then, that it is these who are looking for you.” Dorothea responded, smiling.
“If the Knight Commander at Kinloch Hold wished for my return, all he had to do was send his templars to collect me as he said he would.”
“Let the Revered Mother speak, mage,” Wesley growled.
“There is no need to defend my honor, Wesley, this man has done me no offense,” Dorothea said. “In fact, it is Kinloch Hold who is looking for you. They seemed to be under the impression that there would be no need to send templars to collect anyone until very recently, when a trip to Denerim proved most interesting.”
“To Denerim?” Anders asked, “I haven’t been to Denerim in years. I don’t know anyone who’s gone to Denerim in years. What could possibly be there-?”
“Somehow, information always finds its way to the big cities. People gather and rumors spread, and Denerim is a good place to keep things both open and hidden at the same time.” Dorothea went on. Wesley made a strange strangled sound in his throat, as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but he did not interrupt and Dorothea did not acknowledge his discomfort. “Knight Commander Greagoir and First Enchanter Irving of Kinloch hold send their regards as to your extraordinary health, even in the face of apparent death, and kindly request your returned presence, however belated, to the tower.”
“I don’t suppose I get any kind of choice,” Anders said, trying his best to keep his teeth from grinding as he spoke.
“Their letter did not make it seem as though that would be the case,” Dorothea replied. “I was able to convince the Knight Commander not to storm up here himself, however, but rather that we would convince you to set out yourself with proper accompaniment if we discovered you within the city’s walls. Wesley, you will be that accompaniment. Take this opportunity to spend some small time in Lothering as well during your return. Your station will not miss you so much as your wife.”
“Do I at least get to make good on the commissions on my work?” Anders asked. ‘What about the clients I have yet to tend to.”
“Most of your clients take rather immediate tending, as I understand, so there shouldn’t be too many in line. If you wish to, you may go with Wesley to collect any belongings you wish to take with you, and while out you may let any customers know that they will find you in the chantry tonight should they still wish your services. There is no need to set out until tomorrow.“
Anders didn’t trust himself to speak, so allowing his teeth to grind, he bowed to the Revered Mother and turned on his heel to walk quickly out the doors again, letting the templar tag along behind.
-
No one came to see Anders that night in the chantry, though he did place out a sign per Dorothea’s suggestion telling all potential customers where to find him. He kept hoping all night that someone coming to see him would give him some opportunity to run, but he had no such luck. He wasn’t even going to be able to bring Whiskers and Knight-Captain Cullsy (so named for the stiff manner in which he held his tail while running into walls) back with him. They were barely a year old, not even full cats yet. He could only hope that the other merchants would look after the two kittens.
They set off wordlessly the next morning. Wesley was a very early riser and shook Anders awake long before the morning fog had cleared the ground. Anders barely even had the time to say a last goodbye to the city. He certainly was never given the opportunity to give the tearful wake he would have liked to hold for his freedom.
The trip back to Kinloch Hold took three essentially wordless days. Every now and then, Anders would attempt to strike up some conversation with Wesley. He had found templars in Amaranthine to be agreeable for the most part when he was cooperative and holding his registration clearly in the sunlight, but whether he tried to talk about Wesley’s feelings on mages, why he became a templar, what he thought of Amaranthine or the wife that Dorothea had mentioned, Wesley would give a sentence, maybe two (“I’m married. She lives in the south” or “They exist, and we guard them. What more is there?”) and then refuse to say any more. By the third day, it was a struggle for Anders not to ask more impertinent questions, such as “How large was the rock they dropped on your head as a baby?” or “How many of your ancestors are qunari?” But by the time they could see Kinloch Hold in the distance, Anders didn’t much feel like talking any more either. The sight of the stone oppressed his breath and his mood, but he didn’t run. He probably could have run - or more likely just stopped moving - and Wesley might not have even realized it given how much attention he had been paying to Anders thus far, but something kept his feet moving. There was something in the tower that he dearly missed, after all. Someone whose ring he hadn’t removed in years.
As always, the thought of Karl could sustain Anders through just about anything, even Carroll’s sarcastic “finally tracked you down did they?” greeting at the other side of the lake, and the other templars’ escort straight up the stairs to the Knight Commander’s office without letting him set his things down first.
“That was by far your best effort yet,” Greagoir said. Anders noticed that, although Irving was in the room, he was standing towards the back of the Knight Commander’s office, not at his usual place by the desk. Then again, maybe things had changed after two and a half years. “I have no choice but to believe that you have been only very stupid and not actively acting against our order. Tavish’s story made sense, and what we have been able to track of you matches what he has told us. Do you know what became of Endrin?”
“I didn’t think he made it though the attack, Knight Commander,” Anders said. This was why he hadn’t wanted to return. The tenfold suspicion of a bandit attack would have fallen on him despite his inability to control the outcome. “He was on the other side of the camp from where I was, and I had only magic to defend myself. I didn’t join the larger fight for fear of harming the templars and I was overwhelmed.”
“So overwhelmed that a bandit who had been stabbed through the lung managed to somehow steal your clothing before you burned his face and hands,” Greagoir stated rather than asked. “Yes, you were very stupid. However, we also were somewhat stupid in deciding not only that we had not been tricked, but also that you would never travel to the very place that you had been given permission to go to. Your actions speak neither in your favor, nor do you great harm, so we have no choice but to accept you back into the tower, under the condition that you will never leave its walls again.”
“Never?” Anders balked.
“It is as much as most mages can expect. Do not think that some right of yours has been taken from you.” Greagoir said sternly.
“But Knight Commander, what did I do to deserve-“
“You ran away from the tower,” Greagoir said, “For the fourth time, I might add.”
Anders silently corrected this to fifth, forgetting that no one except for Carroll knew about the first.
“You did nothing actively wrong in Amaranthine by all reports, but you only were granted a three month stay. Yet you remained for thirty months, and would have remained longer had we not been able to track you effectively. And do not ask how we managed this. The answer should be clear to you already. We are templars. We track down apostate mages. Paperwork or not, after the third month, you did not turn yourself into the chantry and you became an apostate. Do not leave this tower again. You should probably leave my office though.”
Anders did not need to be told twice, but gathered up his things in his arms and prepared to go down the stairs.
“You will need to be shown to your quarters,” Irving said from behind him. “The old ones were not as well guarded this time as they have been in the past, I’m afraid, yet I do not think you will find the company too distasteful.”
Ten minutes later, Anders found himself rooming with Finn again. He dropped his things unceremoniously on the bed.
“Where’s Karl?”
“What?” Finn said, sounding both meek and tired and affronted at the same time, “No, ‘Hello, Finn!’ or ‘Good to see you’ or ‘What are you reading, Flora?’ Some manners you picked up outside the tower.”
“Where is he, Finn?” Anders asked again. Finn sighed, then set down his book and looked up at Anders. His eyes seemed defeated, somehow, like he was being held prisoner. Anders knew that feeling, but he had never known it with Finn. Finn, who had always loved the indoors and the books and the constant supervision; Finn, who had nightmares about finding himself out of doors, Finn looked trapped.
“Maker, I had hoped I wouldn’t have to be the one to tell you,” he said. “he stayed for a while, you know, he hoped- I don’t know what he hoped, but he would have been right to stay on. Karl… Karl isn’t as strong as you, Anders. None of us are, really, and after…”
“What do you mean, ‘he stayed for a while’,” Anders asked, and his heart leapt to his mouth while his gut became so heavy that his knees shook. “Finn?”
“He put in the transfer after a year,” Finn said, and his face glistened a little, and Anders suddenly noticed how red his nose was and how wet his eyes were. “He thought, we all thought- not even you can come back from the dead, Anderfels. We buried the body in the lake at Karl’s suggestion because he knew you loved the water, but- well, he sort of broke after that. He went north, I think. The templars don’t tell us anything you know, and I don’t think he was very particular about his request. He just wanted to be… away.”
Anders fell backwards onto his bed. He couldn’t cry. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see or hear or feel much, though he thought Finn might have moved over to his bed and be sitting beside him saying something. It didn’t matter right now. The bed shifted again. Finn was still talking, though Anders didn’t try to make out the words. The floorboards creaked and then the bed squished down again. Something small and cold was pressed into Anders hands, and the world came a little bit back into focus.
“…you know how the quartermaster gets odd things from time to time. Anyway, he said they made him think of you, but after a while he just couldn’t stand it. When he left, he left one of them with me, just in case, well, you came back after all.”
It was an earring. A small gold circle with a clasp for going through a piercing. He’d never gotten his ears pierced, of course, he’d never thought about it. He’d described earrings to Karl, who had laughed at the idea. He’d remembered after all that time…
And suddenly everything clicked into place. His phylactery. That was why they knew he was alive. That was why Rylock and Greagoir and Irving were so afraid of him going to Denerim. That was where he had to go. That was what he had to do. He had to find his phylactery, and Karl’s, too, if he could, and destroy them. Then he would find Karl.
And if he could, he’d get his ear pierced along they way.
-
The first challenge was getting out of the tower for a sixth time. Greagoir, perhaps wisely, no longer trusted the other templars concerning Anders and was resolved to keep an eye on him himself. The bad news for Anders was of course that the most dedicated, well-trained and watchful templar was now keeping an unrelenting eye on him. The good news was that everyone else trusted Greagoir to handle this job perfectly, so they all left Anders mostly to himself, while Greagoir ran himself haggard trying to keep a constant watchful eye on him. Anders got some slightly cruel pleasure in sneaking around the tower for no reason whatsoever, or glancing around suspiciously when on the way to the library. He knew it made Greagoir jumpy, and sometimes could even catch sight of the Knight Commander watching him from the shadows. Eventually, he knew, Greagoir would catch on that Anders was teasing him. Whether that would convince him to lay off or not, Anders had no idea. He would need a completely foolproof plan.
“This is madness,” Finn said in a high-pitched whisper later that night. “You’ve been here less than two weeks and you’re already thinking about leaving again?”
“I’m more than thinking about it, Finn,” Anders said, “I’m doing it. But I need help this time.”
“And you expect to get it from me? Just how insane are you? I happen to like it here. I happen to think that living in a library with people in giant suits of armor standing around to protect me from untrained mana a most delightful form of existence. You should meet some of the senior enchanters, too, they’re-”
“I’m not asking you to come along,” Ander cut in, “I need your help in getting past Greagoir. That’s all. Please, Finn.”
“You have no idea, do you?” Finn said, and there was much less quaver in his voice. “You have no idea how much pain you caused him. You caused all of us.”
“I wanted to write, or something. It was never you I was trying to get away from. I want to right what I did wrong. Finn, I-“
“I don’t want to hear excuses,” Finn said, “You left all of us with nothing to go on. We thought you were dead for two and a half years.”
“If there had been any way to get a message to you without alerting the templars, I would have done that, Finn. I missed you all, I missed him… miss him…” Anders couldn’t finish the sentence.
“No, you won’t get sympathy from me,” Finn said. “You’ll just have to try someone else. I’m not going to spend the next five years or more wondering whether you’re alive and on the run or dead in a gutter somewhere surrounded by kittens. Ask to follow him if he meant that much to you. Petition for a transfer-“
“They won’t tell me where he went,” Anders said, and Finn stopped trying to cut him off. “Do you think I didn’t ask? That was the first thing I did, and Greagoir… he said he wanted to keep an eye on me. That he didn’t trust any other templars. He’s been following me for days, and I can’t get the information out of anyone. It’s driving me mad, the way they all pretend that he never existed. It’s like once you leave this place, you stop living. Or maybe that’s what happens when you enter it. I don’t- I have to see him again.”
They were both quiet for a long time. Long enough for Anders to silently cry and then let his eyes become dry and irritated again. Long enough to hear two patrols of templars walk past their door.
“Kirkwall,” Finn said.
“What?”
“He went to Kirkwall,” Finn explained. “I never stopped asking the templars and, well, I finally annoyed Hadley so much that he told me. He said the mages down there have been having some trouble. The old first enchanter died and there’s no obvious replacement, so there’s been some in-fighting, and the templars have seized a little more control than they reasonably should. Karl wanted to do some good, so he was sent there, hopefully to calm things down. You know how Karl is, all soothing tones and reasoned arguments. They must have thought that- that he’d find some peace there, doing the Maker’s work.”
“Then that’s where I have to go. Thank you, Finn,” Anders said.
“That’s all I can give you, you understand?” Finn said, suddenly shaky again. “I won’t go against Greagoir and Irving, and I won’t break chantry rules.”
“Then I will stop asking you to do so,” Anders said, and Finn looked immensely relieved. “This is a great help, and it’s something that I couldn’t have found out otherwise. I won’t forget this. I promise.”
Finn nodded and returned to his own bed. He picked up his book and opened onto his lap, but stared at his feet rather than the pages. After a minute, Anders got up as quietly as he could and walked out the door. If he could get to Denerim, then getting to Highever would be easy and Kirkwall was a ferry ride away from there. He could show Karl the remains of his phylactery and by then they would be so close to Tevinter… Anders hadn’t ever really considered Tevinter as an option, but if he was going to be leaving the country anyway, it might not be a bad place to go. Mages were accepted there. Maybe he could do some good in Solas or Minrathous. Maybe they could live in peace together. If it was possible, Anders swore he would make it happen. He wouldn’t abandon Karl again.
He made his way down the stairs to the apprentice quarters as quickly as he could and slipped inside. It was astounding how few of the faces he recognized. Keres was not inside, although his bed - pushed as far away from the others as it could go and meticulously made so that the bedspread didn’t allow a clear view of what was underneath the bed, was unmistakable. Varrun was reading in the opposite corner and did not look up at the sound of the door. Jowan, however, sat up straighter and smiled at him. The other apprentices turned to him curiously.
“Who wants to make a couple sovereigns?” Anders said. A blonde boy near the front smiled widely.
-
It took maybe an hour after breakfast ended the next morning for Greagoir to decide that Anders was probably missing. He hadn’t seen the mage in any of his usual hiding places that day, nor had he noticed any suspicious behavior from his templars. This meant that all was going too smoothly, which meant that something had gone wrong. He went to the mage’s quarters and gave the courtesy of knocking before opening the door. Finn’s bed was well made and tidy and had eight large cooking books open on top of it, each turned to a different soup recipe. Greagoir chose to ignore this perfectly reasonable oddity, and opened the door further before stepping inside.
The mage was in bed, flat on his stomach, with his hair poking in all directions over the covers and his pillow.
“Hello Knight Commander,” Finn said from behind a very large pot, which was suspended over a fire by an even larger metal tripod that had surely come from the repository. “Can I help you?”
“You could tell me what’s happening,” Greagoir said, using his calm voice despite the circumstances. “Is he sick? If so, he should be tended to by the tranquil.”
“He thinks he’s sick,” Finn said, “and I’ve been wanting to try this, so it works well, really. What I do won’t hurt him and he won’t die of other things in the meantime, since it’s probably just the strain of returning to the tower that’s gotten to him. He hasn’t been taking it well.”
It was very hot in the room and Greagoir watched the blond head toss once on the pillow and bury its face further into the pillow with a low grunt before deciding that this was perhaps not worth his time or energy and that he would come back after lunch to take Anders to the tranquil if he was still in the bed. Something felt wrong about the situation, but Greagoir was far too tired and discomfited in his rapidly overheating templar armor to pay enough attention to what exactly was wrong. Finn rubbed a ring on his finger anxiously as the Knight Commander left the room again, and he heaved a sigh and started to clean up the mess around his bed. A real golden ring, etched with the city seal of Amaranthine, glittered on his finger.
It was well after lunch before Greagoir realized that he had been duped. He was so shocked that he completely forgot to punish Finn, who told him at the meal that he hadn’t seen Anders in hours and was “starting to get worried about him”. By that time, Anders had exchanged the apprentice’s robes, only slightly torn from climbing out the tower window in the fourth floor classroom, and mostly dry after the swim across the lake, for some common clothing. He was also nearly halfway to Denerim.
Six.