Stargazer
Not for the first time, I wished my clan had lopped off my ears when they took me in. At least then I could cover my skin with paint and perhaps pass for a shemlen. Perhaps.
As it was, my damned ears had gotten me and Gunnir a place before the Avvar Mother, Tyrrda Bright-axe, and all of her court. The entire army had gathered into the hall of Skyhold, packed it full to witness their leader execute the alleged intruders. Of course, they didn’t think we were alleged, but with this chance to prove ourselves I meant to save my life, and Gunnir’s. What payment would it be to the people who raised me to have their only son murdered?
The guards had bound our hands with magic and rope, which scraped and burned my skin, and tossed us in front of the Avvar Mother like caught rams.
I looked up from the ground to see two wooden throne chairs before us. In one sat Tyrdda, a stark vision with ruddy skin, black and white face paint, and raven hair layered in intricate braids. She was at once beautiful and terrifying, and her gaze upon me was lined with curiosity. Beside her sat, to my surprise, a beautiful, bare-faced Elven woman. The second bare-faced elf I had seen in the span of a few hours. She wore no battle decoration save for paint around her eyes, and leaned almost lazily into her chair.
Flanking the Avvar Mother were her advisors, a host of burly guards and fierce-looking mages, and of course, the man who had insisted the guards bring us here for a formal hearing. His eyes didn’t leave me as I kneeled.
The crowd bustled, and then all fell silent as Tyrrda rose.
“Child of the Forest, Child under the Sky, why have you entered my hold? Are you spies sent from Thelm?” she asked, followed by booing and hissing from the crowd.
I struggled to stand, pushing through my bindings. “We are sorry for disturbing you, Avvar Mother. We are from Clan Wolfbrook, though they are unaware of our journey. We wish to fight for you in this war,” I said.
She regarded us for a moment, then looked to Gunnir. “And you, Child under the Sky, what have you to say? How did you come to travel with a Child of the Forest?”
Gunnir looked at me, then cleared his throat. “Elanna was raised by my family after we raided her Dalish tribe. She has been raised by our gods, and serves our gods. She is as a sister to me. We wish to prove ourselves to Hakkon,” he announced, and I smiled inwardly, thanking him silently.
Tyrrda stood up, then, and walked toward us. She was tall and foreboding, larger than most men, but still graceful as an August ram. “I believe you, Child under the Sky, and yet you have provided me with a difficult situation. How can our collective clan trust you if you do not have a proper pledge?” she asked aloud, pacing around us.
I looked around, hoping someone would pledge for us, but the looks on everyone’s faces were sneers of disgust…at me. No one would trust a Dalish.
“I’ll speak for them,” a smooth voice announced, and immediately I knew it was the mysterious elf. All eyes turned to him, including Tyrrda, as he stood with his chest raised and his eyes twinkling. “I would be quite interested in studying the effects an Avvar upbringing has had on a Dalish.”
“So you would have her as a pet?” Tyrrda asked, lips curled in an entertained smile.
“Not a pet, but perhaps a subject. I would imagine both are fierce warriors, by the look of them. Do you not think they will be of use to your army?” he replied, raising a brow.
This comment incensed the crowd, and they began to rally and shout.
“Godstrial! Godstrial! Godstrial!”
Gunnir grabbed my hand as well as he could through his bindings. A Godstrial could be anything, from a fight to the death to a poetry-reciting competition. I hoped it would be the latter.
Tyrdda turned to face her people. “I hear a call for a Godstrial!” she called out to raucous cheers. “Very well, then. The two intruders will complete the Test of the Lady against our finest clan-brothers and clan-sisters. If they win, the gods will have deemed them worthy to fight with us. If not, they will be exiled back to their clan,” she said.
I couldn’t help but smile. The Test of the Lady was my best trial; I held the record back home. Gunnir, on the other hand, was strong but not agile. I could only hope he would excel against whoever we were matched against.
The Test was simple. We were given a stone wall which we had to climb without aid. The first to the top was the winner. If one contestant had an advantage, they were handicapped with a bag of stones on their backs. I was looked over as being small and weak, while one of the clans-brothers was given a bag of five stones for his obvious strength.
We were unbound, and lined up before the rock wall with the entirety of Skyhold watching us, two at a time. Gunnir was up first, matched against a scarred and burly clans-brother. He looked at me and met my eyes with a sharp glare. I would have much to make up to my brother for this, but I prayed to the gods he excelled.
It was the elf woman, Tyrrda’s lover, who acted as Tester, a stand-in for the Lady of the Skies. She was swathed by a delicate dress that wrapped around her curves, and Tyrrda’s eyes would see nothing but her. Her name was Asha, we had learned, which I found odd as the Elven word asha simply meant “woman.”
The Test began, and Gunnir launched forward, quickly scaling the cliff like he had been born doing it. I beamed at him proudly as he looked down at the cheering crowd. The gods had deemed him worthy, and so the rest of the Avvar accepted him.
Now it was my turn. I took my place at the starting line, my opponent beside me, large and brawny with the stink of old soup. He sneered at me, baring a grin with missing teeth. “I’ve never seen a knife-ear climb a wall before,” he taunted.
I gritted my teeth. He would be in for a surprise.
Asha looked at us both, then nodded for us to begin. I leapt forward, ready to sprint for the walls, when I felt my legs fall from under me and I hit the ground with a thud. My opponent had grabbed my legs, throwing me back so he could gain a lead. My face covered by dirt, I spit on the ground and rushed forward again. I wouldn’t let him beat me. I couldn’t let him beat me.
And I could also play dirty.
As he crept toward the wall, I rushed to meet him. He was stronger, but I was faster. He had also left his bootstraps slightly untied. This was my chance. I lunged for his feet, grabbing the leather straps and quickly knotting his boots together. I finished by giving him a good knee-kick to the head before zipping past. In no time I had sprung up the wall while he was forced to hang back, his boots stuck together.
As I met Gunnir at the top of the wall, he put his hand against the small of my back, the barest of a smile on his face, though it might have been as much as I`d ever seen Gunnir smile. “Who’s that elf trickster god you talk about?” he murmured.
“Fen’Harel,” I replied.
“I think you invoked him tonight.”
Unlike the cheers from when Gunnir had won, my success only achieved a confused silence.
Tyrrda circled the man below, who was still struggling with his boots, and gave him a swift kick to get out of the way. She turned to the crowd. “The Lady has spoken. Please join me in welcoming our two newest recruits. Please, come back down,” she said, turning to us.
We scaled down the wall, and at Gunnir’s lead we knelt before her. She pressed her hand on each of our backs, then summoned her Augur, who held a pot of red paint.
“As the Lady is my witness, I hereby welcome you to my clan,” she said loudly, swiping two fingers into the pot of paint and smearing a diagonal line across each of our faces. When she touched my face, she leaned in to whisper in my ear. “You have Solas to thank for your life, Child of the Forest. I welcome you to our table to feast.”
I looked through the crowd to find the elf who had spoken up for me. Solas, she had called him. Pride, I thought. What a strange name for someone so soft-spoken and studious. He smirked at me one last time, then disappeared into the disbursing crowd.
***
We were free people now, initiated members of Tyrrda Bright-axe’s great army, and on our first night we were seated with the very leaders of the war council. There was Solas, whose every gaze sent a strange shiver down my spine, Asha, the Augur White Fang, whose face was painted like that of a skull, a stout dwarf with a thick, bushy beard, and Tyrrda herself.
Gunnir, though grateful for his life, refused to acknowledge that I’d done something well, and insisted my elven gods helped me through.
We feasted on seasoned meat and drank mead at a table set up in a private courtyard outside rather than within the hold. “We will spend our last night beneath the stars, not encased in stone,” Tyrrda explained, giving the dwarf, Hendir, an apologetic look.
“Don’t bother trying not to offend me. I’ll take the stars over stone any day,” he replied gruffly, holding his ram’s leg up to the stars. “Mountain air is so much fresher than my brothers’ farts in a sealed room,” he added, wiggling his eyebrows.
I quickly learned the group was not so fierce or serious as I had expected, that they were not all-seeing, all-knowing demi-gods. Tyrrda was a fierce warrior who had almost been swayed by Thelm the Golden into marriage, but had refused and decided to stay with Asha, her lover, and free the people of the Frostbacks from Thelm’s army. Asha was a brilliant mage herself, though not prone to much speech. She spent most of her time observing others while offering the occasional insight to a war plan. Magic circled around her, a power I had never felt before.
Then there was Solas. Though he had opted to camp with the rest of the clans, he was one of Tyrrda’s principal advisors, and had found Skyhold for her to use as her base. He was a…strange fellow. He was quiet and observant, his eyes constantly searching the expressions of the other members, seemingly memorizing their words and trying to discover their intentions.
After we feasted, attention turned to us, and the stares of every warlord and lady around the table made my cheeks flush. Gunnir patted my leg gingerly. He’d had quite a few mugs of mead and a smile I wasn’t used to had permanently crept onto his lips.
“Let’s hear more about our new recruits, shall we?” Tyrrda asked.
Usually I was the one who did most of the talking, but Gunnir surprised me by speaking up. “Clan Wolfbrook would have sent proper pledges, Lady, but my father is very sick, soon to return to the Sky, some say. Had I been in charge, I would have sent all our men to lend their blades!” he announced.
Tyrrda’s lips curled into a small smile, and out of the corer of my eye I noticed Solas eyeing me knowingly, amused.
“That is good to know, Gunnir. We will send word to your parents to give thanks to your pledge in their honor,” Tyrrda said.
“I want to know more about the little Dalish,” Asha said, leaning forward in her chair. Her position was almost feline, predatory and seductive at the same time.
“Elanna is no Dalish. She may have been born a knife-ear, but she was raised an Avvar through and through. She’s as fierce as any warrior I have ever known,” Gunnir stated loudly and proudly, much to my dismay.
My heart fluttered a bit and my eyes widened at his words. I smacked his arm before bowing my head in embarrassment. “Maybe not the right words,” I grunted, but he was beyond listening capacity.
“Tell me more, Wolfbrook,” Asha taunted, and though our hold-animal was wolf, I felt we were sheep surrounded by black wolves in war paint, each licking their lips to get a taste of us.
“When we were little, our clan came across some travelling Dalish in our area. We-we knew they would never surrender, and that they had a powerful mage,” Gunnir said, his words slurring together, his hands shaping the story around him. Gods, he’d had too much to drink.
He kept going, “We knew there was only one way to do it, you know, to win against them, so in the middle of the night some of the men of our clan snuck in and slit everyone’s throats.” His voice was filled with a glee I’d never seen before, and for the first time since I was a child, I remembered how cruel my first nights with Clan Wolfbrook were, how frightened I was, how much despair I felt knowing my entire family was dead.
“Perhaps that is enough,” Tyrrda began, but Gunnir continued.
“It wasn’t until the next day we found Elanna hiding amongst the charred ruins of the camp. She was all sooty, do you remember that? Sooty and crying, but strong overall. You fought our father with all your strength, even gave him a scar on his face. My parents decided to keep her, because the gods had spared her.”
I’d had enough. Flashbacks of that night filled my mind, the screams of my parents and sisters, the lick of hot flames, finding a place to hide until it was all over, the large, painted man who came to claim me. I never really had a choice.
“My apologies,” I whispered, then stood up, running out of the courtyard, away from Gunnir, away from the toothy grins of everyone who stared at me.
I didn’t stop running until I’d reached a patch of trees, a small bit of forest within the mountains, a small bit of home in this land.
And I stared at the stars until my skin was cold and my breath made wisps in the night.
“Da’len,” a smooth voice spoke. I was too cold to react, or attempt to protect myself.
“What do you want?” I whispered.
Solas walked up to me then, holding a thick fur. I didn’t react as he draped it over my freezing body, then lit a fire by my feet. I was lying on the ground, like I used to do as a child.
“I don’t think your brother meant to hurt you as he did,” he said, “the Avvar people often have difficulty with…subtlety,” he said, sitting down beside me. Warmth radiated from the fire, and my teeth chattered.
“He’s not really my brother,” I replied, “it was silly for me to think I would ever really fit in.”
“Perhaps not by blood, but it is not our blood which makes us who we are. It is our actions, what we choose to do with our lives, who we choose to help. It seems to me you have chosen to live nobly, and that choice is what sets you apart,” he said.
I sighed, refusing to look at him, though the heat was becoming welcome, preferable to the cold I’d wanted to permeate my body.
“But I will always be the little Dalish; I will never be a Child under the Sky.”
“So? You were not born Child under the Sky. You were born as you are, and nothing will change that. Reflecting on the shape you wish your ears were will not bring you peace, Da’len. And you have company. Asha may not be Dalish, but she is an elf surrounded by Avvar, just like you,” he said.
I turned over, grasping the fur around myself, and as I reached his gaze I noticed he wasn’t just sitting beside me, but lying beside me, his arms wrapped around the back of his neck, looking up at the same stars.
“What about you?” I asked.
He looked confused for a moment, then let out a knowing smile. “Ah, yes. I am of The People, though I do not let that define me. What matters is what I do, and I choose to fight with Tyrrda Bright-axe and restore some semblance of peace to this land.”
Everything he said was right, I knew that. I’d been fighting my entire life to prove myself to someone, to the gods, to find a place to call home.
And I knew it wouldn’t be easy, even if I wished otherwise.
“Will you stay with me, here, under the stars?” I asked after a moment of silence. I barely knew this man, but I felt some kind of solace in him.
He didn’t speak, just nodded while I ushered him under the furs, his body close to mine, heating me back up.
I knew, without saying anything, that he was hurting, too, that he was alone and scared as much as he didn’t want to admit it.
I fell asleep wrapped up in him, knowing this comfort was temporary, and that tomorrow I would once again be fighting for myself.