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The True Tale Of The Fifth Blight	By : Serena_Hawke-Theirin Category: +A through F > Dragon Age (all) > Dragon Age (all) Views: 13108 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age or the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Alistair was extremely irritated when he left Solona, not with her, but with the entire situation in general. It wasn’t his intention to be cross with the mage, but he definitely didn’t want to answer her question about Cailan. How would he even begin to tell her about his family and the secret he kept hidden from nearly everyone he knew? What would she say if she ever found out the truth?

The young Warden climbed a set of stairs leading to a more secluded part of the ruin and found a relatively quiet spot to sit where he could be away from prying eyes. He pressed his shoulders to the stone at his back and closed his lids with a heavy sigh. The glacial blast of a Ferelden winter wind fluttered through his sandy blonde hair, carrying with it flurries of fat snowflakes which stuck to his lashes and eyebrows. He ran his tongue over his lips and inhaled a deep breath which burned in his lungs so badly, he thought they might burst. As excruciating as it was, at least it took some of the pain from his head.

After only a few brief moments, his peace was disrupted by a tap on his shoulder. Alistair opened one eye just enough to be greeted by the sight of a skittish elf dressed in rags sporting flaming red hair. The young man fidgeted with his tunic as he endeavored a hesitant smile.

“E…excuse me, s…ser Warden?” he stammered. “I…I don’t mean to b…bother you, ser, but I have a message for you.”

The warrior’s brow creased in confusion. “For me? Who in the void is looking for me?”

Alistair knew Duncan wanted to meet with him and his other two companions, but Solona and Sithig both needed to be fitted for their uniforms first. He thought he would be able to at least have a few moments to himself. Maybe Solona was finished with her meeting with the garment maker and was looking for him.

The elf held out a rolled up piece of parchment for the Warden to take. “I was just told to find you and give you this.”

“Are you sure you have the right person?” Alistair asked.

“Y…you are Alistair…aren’t you?” he inquired. His hand trembled so badly, the Warden thought the elf was going to lose his grip on the missive to be carried off on the breeze.

“I am,” the warrior answered. He forced the most cordial smile he could muster in attempt to put the young man at ease. “And you are?”

“P…Pick, ser,” he stuttered.

“Well, Pick,” Alistair said as he took the vellum from the elf’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He peered down at the parchment before addressing the other man again. “And who was it that gave you this message to deliver to me?”

“Why…the king, ser Warden.”

What the fuck? He probably wants to bitch at me away from the prying ears of his men.

Alistair grimaced as he broke the unadorned seal on the parchment. His tongue raked across his lips as he unfurled the scroll. Scratched into the vellum in haphazard scrawl were only three short sentences.

Meet me in my tent. It’s important. Come alone and don’t let anyone see you enter.

The warrior was infuriated. How dare Cailan order him about like that? He wasn’t some mindless soldier there to follow his brother’s every whim and command. He was a Grey Warden, dammit.

Alistair crumpled the paper in his fist and drew back his arm to hurl it past the columns to his right, but Pick leapt in front of him. “If you please, ser. I’ll take that for you.”

Trying to hide the evidence, eh brother?

“Fine,” the Warden snapped as he threw the wadded up scroll to the ground at his feet and stomped away.

Normally, Alistair would have felt guilty about treating an elf that way. About treating anybody that way, but he was too angry for contrition at that moment. If it was Cailan’s intention to berate him, Alistair was going to give it back to his brother tenfold. He held his temper when the king insulted both of his companions, but he was going to have it out with the man now that he decided to press the issue.

When he reached Cailan’s tent, he found the two guards stationed outside had their backs to the entrance. After taking a quick look around to ensure no one was watching, Alistair threw back the flap and barged inside. He was surprised by the king’s contrite smile as he took a tentative step forward.

“I’m glad you’re here, brother” Cailan said in a sincere tone. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you hadn’t come after I made such an ass of myself earlier.”

Alistair’s brow arched in bewilderment. “What do you want?” he asked, his words sounding far less harsh than he meant them to be.

“How have you been?” he asked.

The younger man licked his lips and exhaled a long, slow breath. “You can skip the pleasantries, Cailan. We may have the same father, but we’ve never spoken once in our entire lives. The only other time we even laid eyes on each other, you ignored me to go play with Eamon’s sword collection. So why don’t we cut the bullshit and just tell me why I’m here?”

The king nodded. “I understand why you’re angry. I don’t blame you. The way father just dumped you in Redcliffe…”

Alistair felt a sharp pain erupt in his guts. The memories of his childhood were things better left forgotten. He only wished it were that simple. From the time he could remember until the age of ten, he slept on the hayloft floor of the stables at Castle Redcliffe.

Arl Eamon was charged with the care of the young prince when he was still a baby. That care came in the form of apathy and neglect. Sure, the arl arranged for him to be fed and clothed, but the food more often than not came in the form of gruel, stale biscuits, and substandard pieces of meat, and the clothes little more than tattered rags. Baths were reserved for only two or three times a year in the late spring and summer months when the stench of horseshit on his clothes and skin would get so bad that the stablemaster started to complain. He was forever plagued by lice and fleas, and he felt the sting of his overseer’s riding crop on a daily basis for the most minor of offenses. So many nights as a young boy, he cried himself to sleep knowing that no one loved or even cared about him. He was always unwanted and alone.

The closest thing he ever had to a friend was Jenna Cousland, who delighted in beating him every chance she got until he begged for mercy. Jenna was a few years older than Alistair, and each time her family would visit Castle Redcliffe, she made it a point to seek the young stable boy out and thrash him mercilessly. It wasn’t until a few days before he was shipped off to Bournshire monastery that she finally treated him like a person instead of a punching bag. Even then she ended up breaking his nose when he attempted to kiss her, which accounted for the permanent crook to the right along the bridge to the tip.

Alistair glared at his older brother. How dare he say he understood what the younger man went through? Cailan couldn’t even fathom the anguish and abuses he suffered. The Warden folded his arms over his chest and ran his tongue across his lips before biting down on the lower one. He blinked against the sting of tears forming in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” the king apologized. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m fine,” Alistair managed in a hoarse whisper.

Cailan sighed. “The reason I called you here was to warn you. As you are probably aware, Loghain was father’s best friend and my father by marriage, but I am afraid I have raised his ire. My marriage to Anora was always political, nothing more. She knows it, I know it, and Loghain certainly knows it, so the man holds no love toward me in that capacity.”

The king began to pace as he continued. “This Blight…I’m afraid we have no hope of winning against these creatures without outside help. Oh, I’m very good at putting on a show for my troops, telling them that we’re beating back the spawn in droves. The reality is, the numbers don’t lie. We are losing men by the dozens with every single battle, and twice that have been wounded. I’ve called for aid from every southern nation in Thedas, but so far, the only one who has given any response is Orlais.”

Alistair’s anger was forgotten upon hearing his brother’s words. Their father and Loghain were instrumental in driving the Orlesians out of the country at the beginning of the age. Was Cailan really willing to risk an alliance with them?

“But couldn’t that lead to another occupation?” he questioned.

“That’s what Loghain believes,” the king replied. “And he’s fit to be tied about it, but I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want another occupation any more than anyone else…which is why I have been in negotiations with Celene…to arrange a marriage between the two of us.”

The space between the Warden’s brows disappeared. “But you’re already married.”

Cailan nodded. “Yes, but as I said, it’s a marriage born of politics. Anora and I have been married for seven years and we have as yet to produce an heir. According to Ferelden law, if a queen has not bore a child by the fifth year of marriage, the king may divorce her in favor of a more suitable and fertile spouse.”

Lovely way to speak of your wife. Like she’s some kind of brood sow. Prat.

“Don’t you understand, brother?” the king asked, his steel blue eyes pleading. “I have to do something, or Ferelden will be lost. If that means I must marry Celene to cement an alliance so that I might gain the Orlesian forces, then that’s what I must do.”

Alistair shrugged. “Fine, but what does any of this have to do with me?”

“I believe your life is in danger, just as much as mine, maybe more so,” he explained. “Because of my negotiations with Orlais, I believe Loghain is staging a coup.” Cailan’s expression became pensive and sad. “I just received word by raven this morning that Arl Howe of Amaranthine took his men to Highever and slaughtered the entire Cousland family, save Fergus who is here at Ostagar.”

The Warden’s breath caught in his throat at that tidbit of news. He could see by the look on his brother’s face that he knew the truth of a lie perpetrated by good men who put the political health of the country above the happiness of their family. Years before, when Alistair was thirteen, Jenna came to visit him at the monastery and revealed to him a secret he swore he would never tell. At sixteen, she was pregnant with Cailan’s child, and her father was forcing her to go with her brother and his wife to live with relatives in Antiva until after the baby was born. When Jenna, Fergus, and Oriana returned, Jenna had no child, but Oriana announced she had given birth to a baby boy with steel blue eyes.

“Does Fergus know?” questioned the Warden.

The lines in Cailan’s face deepened, making him appear much older than his twenty-five years. “Loghain sent Fergus and some of his men out into the Wilds around dusk yesterday evening to scout out the position of the darkspawn. They never came back. I fear Fergus is lost.”

“So everyone who might have known about Jenna’s child is missing or dead?”

“Yes,” the king affirmed.

It was horrible news. All of it. Although Jenna was cruel to him for most of his childhood, on her last visit to Redcliffe, they spent nearly a week being friendly to each other for once. She brought him meals to the stable every day at lunch then they would spend the remainder of the afternoon talking. It wasn’t until the final day of their stay that she broke his nose. Alistair often wondered if her kindness was brought about by the knowledge that he was going to be sent to the monastery the day after his father and the nobles left the castle.

The memory of Jenna and the compassion she showed to him finally forced a tear down Alistair’s cheek. He sniffled before running his tongue over his lips. Before he could speak again, he was impelled to clear the lump from his throat with a cough.

“You still haven’t told me where I come into all this,” he managed.

“It is my belief that Loghain is trying to destroy the Theirin bloodline. If I die, without another Theirin to take the throne, the crown will automatically go to Anora. Our father and grandmother fought too hard to allow that to happen. We must ensure Calenhad’s line doesn’t end with me. With us.”

Alistair waggled his head. “I don’t want to be bloody king.” He donned a sardonic expression. “Oh wait. That’s right. I was told it was never going to happen. Perhaps I should remind you of that little tidbit of information. It’s. Never. Going. To. Happen.”

“You may not have a choice, brother,” Cailan said.

The younger man could feel his anger beginning to boil again. “How about this instead. You don’t die and I get to spend the rest of my shortened life as a Grey Warden?”

The king exhaled a long breath, obviously fed up with his brother’s poor attitude. “I have no intention of dying this night or any other. Not until I’m an old man lying in my own comfortable bed. I just wanted to warn you. I don’t trust Loghain and neither should you. I don’t know if he has yet realized who you are, but just in case, I urge you to be cautious.”

“Noted,” Alistair retorted. “Now, if there’s nothing else, brother, I have duties to return to.”

Cailan’s face altered to a mask of indifference, reminding the Warden of Solona. As much as Alistair hated the guise on her, it was certainly more preferable to the king’s. The younger man spun on the ball of his left foot to head for the exit, but a hand on his shoulder stopped his progression.

“Wait,” Cailan said as he pulled a silver chain from around his neck. At the end dangled a large, key of the same metal. “I want you to take this…just in case.”

Alistair examined the object for a moment before giving his brother a questioning grimace. “What’s it for?”

The king pointed to a trunk sitting against the back wall of the tent. “It’s a key to the royal arms chest. I have already placed father’s sword inside. If something should happen to me, I don’t want Loghain or his men to get their hands on it. It belongs in the family. If the worst occurs, it will be yours.”

Alistair wanted to tell Cailan that he would rather get his foot chewed off by a rabid mabari than touch that sword. He wanted to tell his brother to fuck off and go to the void. But he didn’t. He simply bobbed his head and pulled the chain over his neck then tucked the key inside his tunic.

“Thank you,” the king said. “Now, I will exit first. Wait a few minutes, check through the flaps to make sure no one is watching, then leave.”

Cailan didn’t wait for a response, but blew past the Warden to the canvas doorway. Once he was gone, Alistair removed the key from his shirt and stared at it for a long moment.

What in the Maker’s name have you gotten yourself into now, jackass?

It was true that little Oren was Jenna and Cailan’s son, but Fergus always loved him as his own. When he was finally found some months later, the news of the death of his son hurt him more than anything else. Of course he mourned the loss of the rest of his family, but Oren’s death hit him hardest. I hated seeing him like that. Fergus was my best childhood friend, a brother.

Alistair was probably unfair to Cailan, but when he was overly angry it was difficult for him to calm down enough to see reason. It wasn’t Cailan’s fault that Alistair endured such a troubled childhood, but to Alistair, the king represented everything he hated about royalty and nobility and the way they valued politics over family.

Looking back, Alistair realized Cailan was preparing for his own death. Otherwise, he would never have given his younger brother that key. When he returned to Ostagar after the battle, Alistair retrieved his father's blade, but it was one he never wielded. Instead , it was put on display in the throne room right next to Calenhad's.

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The True Tale Of The Fifth Blight