The Stolen Throne

She finished wringing out the stained cloth and then returned to wiping his face. The water was cool and refreshing, and so Maric closed his eyes and allowed her to minister to him. When she finally stopped, he touched her hand. “How long have I . . . ?”

She paused, studying him with those weary gray eyes. There was compassion there, he saw, but also suspicion. “Most of the day,” she finally answered. Then she smiled reassuringly and stroked the hair from his forehead. “Not to worry, lad. Whatever you’ve done, you’re safe enough here for now.”

“And where is here, exactly?”

“Loghain didn’t tell you?” She sighed and soaked the cloth again, creating an impressive bloom of scarlet in the water. “No, he wouldn’t have, would he? It would take a dragon to pull more than two sentences in a row out of that boy. He’s his father’s son.” The amused look she gave him seemed to say that should be all the explanation required.

“These are the Southron Hills, just outside of the Wilds . . . though I expect you’ve gathered that much.” She gingerly wiped the back of his head, prompting a new jolt of pain to lance through him. The source of his throbbing headache, he assumed, and tried not to think too closely about how badly he might have hurt himself. “There’s no name for this place. It’s where we’ve settled for the moment, nothing more. The people in the camp have slowly banded together over time, out of necessity. Mostly they’re just trying to survive.”

“Sounds familiar,” Maric muttered. He wondered, however, how much his life really compared to theirs. Even on the run, he and his mother had decent accommodations wherever they hid. Remote castles, abbeys tucked away in the mountains . . . There was always some nobleman willing to take them in, or someone willing to provide a spacious tent on the march. He always complained about it bitterly, about the limits he endured, the boredom and the lack of freedom. Judging from the squalor he saw here on his arrival, these people would probably consider him privileged. He probably was.

“It’s Gareth that we follow. He keeps us safe, and with each passing year there seem to be more and more of us. There is never any shortage of desperate souls with nowhere else to turn, it seems.” She dabbed at his head again, frowning with concern. “That’s Loghain’s father, if you haven’t met him.”

“I haven’t.”

“You will.” She wrung the cloth out again; this time the swirls were dark and ominous. Maric wondered if his head looked as much of a mess as it felt. “I am Sister Ailis.”

“Hyram.”

“Yes, so I hear.” The sister nodded toward his hands. “You’ll want to wash those.”

Maric glanced at his hands and saw that they were still filthy, stained practically up to his elbows with dried blood and dirt. He accepted the wet rag without comment.

“That is a great deal of blood on your hands,” she said pointedly.

“It’s not mine. Mostly.”

Her gaze was even, calculating. “And how do you feel about that?”

He wiped his hands slowly, keeping his own eyes firmly on the task. He knew what she was asking. His first instinct back in the forest had been to keep his identity secret, and it was probably the correct one. After all, Sister Ailis had said it herself: these people were desperate. Maric had no idea what the usurper would pay for him, but it was probably more than these people had ever known. You didn’t have to be poor to know that the promise of wealth could corrupt anyone. He wondered how many gold sovereigns it had taken to put that sword through his mother’s gut.

“He attacked me. I was defending myself.” His voice sounded hollow and fake, even to himself. “They killed my mother.”

Saying it out loud didn’t make it feel any more real.

The sister watched him a moment longer, her eyes sharp. “Maker watch over her,” she intoned, relenting.

Maric hesitated. “Maker watch over her,” he repeated, his voice husky with grief. Sister Ailis placed her hands on his, a gesture of understanding. He jerked his hands away more roughly than he intended, but she said nothing. For a long, awkward pause he stared at his half-cleaned hands. She took the bloodied rag from him and soaked it again.

Lamely, he changed the subject. “So if you are a priest, what are you doing here?”

The sister smiled, nodding as if this were a question she had heard many times before. “When the Maker returned to the world, He chose for Himself a bride that would be His prophet. He could have looked to the great Imperium, with its wealth and its powerful mages. He could have looked to the civilized lands of the west, or the cities of the northern coasts. But instead He looked to a barbarian people on the very edge of Thedas.”