Border Crossing

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"You're late." Baralai Fairchild despised the rain, almost as much as he despised mages. He was waiting at one of the bridges that crossed the river that in turn divided the two largest kingdoms in their land. It was the same bridge where he had waited countless times. Templar or no, gold was gold, and this gold also got rid of troublesome mages.
"You want the gold or not?" A black clad man snarled as he jumped down gracefully from his equally black steed.
Baralai muttered something rather unbecoming of a Templar, then held a gloved hand out. "Gold first, then the cargo. Try anything..." He words were cut off as the mage he was transporting broke free of his restraints. It all happened so quickly that he didn't see the flash of lightning and the proud Templar was crashing into the raging river below.
Six months. It had been six months and the fallen Templar still woke in a cold sweat after dreaming of that night. The mage had rendered him immobile, though wide awake when he had plunged into the river, his heavy armour weighing him down until a pig farmer had dragged him from the river several miles away. It had taken months to get back to health and pay back the farmer for his kindness. In that time word had gotten out that Fairchild the Templar was a deserter.

Alice Gormanghast was scowling into the mirror. She hated this world she had been born into, even now as her maid pulled tightly on the laces of her dress she thought of nothing but a way to escape. Her brother's were all war heroes, famous to everyone in the kingdom for their brave deeds and triumph in defeating several of the dragons. But Alice... All she was known for was to be the prize her father handed over to the man he deemed brave enough to end the war altogether. She was the proverbial Princess in the tower, useful only for luring in prospective suitors. The young brunette didn't even realise her rose coloured lips were quirked into a slight smile 'if only they knew'. Indeed, her father would have a literal heart attack if he knew his prized daughter had secretly been learning how to shoot a bow and handle a sword. She lost herself for hours at an end in books that told of the thieves guild, and their mysterious leader who was sometimes known to have a higher moral code than the knights of their kingdom.

"Alright, we can do this your way." The woman snarled. They were given little warning before a wicked looking dagger was suddenly lodged between Baralai's ribs. "I hope you're very happy." she remarked, motioning for her men to pack everything up.

"I don't need help to make it happen. Unless you forget, I was running away before you involved yourself." Alice remarked rather bitterly.

"I thought...you bitch...you said he was valuable..." Yena went down with the enormous man, unable to hold him up no matter how hard she tried. "What's wrong with you?!"

"Being a dragon speaker, you wouldn't make it far. You must know this." Anaris said softly, turning back to her. "I can provide you with something no one else can. But you must trust me and...you must help me first..."

"And I thought you didn't care?" The woman replied simply. "You should probably run before I decide you are worth the trouble and take you anyway."

"I'll help you, but no one will know what I am... unless you tell them." Alice pointed out.

Yena's fingers were glowing against the wound in Baralai's side. He would feel warmth and a sense of extreme calm. The little elf was glaring at the woman making a face. "You don't scare me." The set of guards she had originally controlled stumbled in her diretion, yanking out their swords whether they wanted to or not.

Anaris nodded his head, smiling. "Good. I will make you into a new person and you can take that person with you and leave the princess and wife of an elf king behind. With this woman you can be whoever you'd like. Not even your brothers can find you."

Baralai was still insisting on trying to handle this himself. He was trying to sit up, grabbing for his sword and missing by a while. "I'll make sure everyone knows about you, woman! You wont have anyone selling to you ever again!"

"I would still be a woman you made me." Alice replied rather contrarily. "What is it you say you're going to ask of me? You make it sound like something that I wouldn't want to give."

Yena showed then just how big a mistake the woman had made by not simply taking her when she had the chance. She placed both hands on the large man and disappeared with him. Baralai would wake days later in the bed he'd had for months, the old pig farmer tending to his wounds.

"I want you to help me free a dragon and save Ferelden mages who are being forced into slavery." Anaris said, quietly. "I'll understand if you don't wish to help."

Baralai woke with a start, Yena's name passing his lips as he tried to sit up. When he saw the farmer and familiar surrounding, he even began to wonder if it had all been a dream.

"You want me to start a war?" Alice breathed uncertainly, knowing her father would not give up without a fight.

"Not to worry. I sold the little upstart to the first set of traders that passed through here." The old man said, nodding when he saw the former Templar could sit on his own. "Just appeared in my home she did. Yelling about blood and slavers and dragons. Little thing was completely out of her mind. I locked her in the barn the moment she fell asleep." He went about making tea and handed the younger man a cup. "I knew something bad had happened when those pigs came wandering in my yard during the storm. You'd never have steered me wrong. I knew it was an elf and a bloody mage no less." 

"I want you to help me." Anaris said. He could see by the look in her eyes he'd given her too much information too quickly. "But...we'll worry about that tomorrow. There's still a little night left and you need to rest. Trust me, child. You will be safe here. My people know what you mean to me." 
He turned to leave, scooping up his shirt off the floor. He was going to need a cold dip in the pool after this night. The dread wolf bless him by holding his head underwater.

The golden haired Templar refused the tea and tried to stand, only for his ribs to remind him that wasn't wise to do so quickly. "No. She saved me." Baralai insisted. "I owe her freedom, if nothing else. She could have left me to die... Should have after everything I did and said to her."

Alice's sad gaze watched Anaris walk away for a lingering moment before she directed her sight out the window. He always called her child, like a constant reminder that she would never be anything more. Not to him, anyway. "Your people make fun of me." She muttered, getting up to go and sit by the window.

"You have been gone for a month, boy. Who knows what that little elf was doing to you. She swore she was only healing you. Talked of fever and near death. I should have stuck my blade in her. I'm not sure she was worth the bags of gold they gave me. I saved some for you. Enough to return you to Templar order the elf said." The old man was muttering, shaking his head as he put the tea aside.

Anaris left Alice to her own devices for several days after tht, letting her find her own way around his holdings. His people were kind to her but didn't share information readily. The king himself had all but disappeared, leaving her in the care of the two elder elves.

"A month?" Baralai echoed, though he was already shaking his head. "How is that possible?" He was frowning, trying to recall everything he and Yena had done, and he still came up several weeks short. "How long was I back for?"

Alice had quickly learned not to try and find information from these people. Every question had been met with another question, or a rather evasive answer. She spent a lot of time in the woods around her 'husband's' home, trying to teach herself proficiency with a bow. It had gone well at first, but she was quickly hitting a wall.

"About a week." The old man said, looking toward the place where he'd stored the money. He didn't plan to give the Templar half as much as he'd promised the elven woman he would. "I don't know what happened in the rest of the time." 

"Alice?" Anaris found his wife in the wooded area, ducking at the last moment as an arrow came flying over his head. "Are you all right?" Reglan said you've been out here all day. It's starting to snow." He kept talking as if he hadn't almost met a terrible fate, his eyes never leaving her. She was so lovely. Even a few days away seemed like too long.

"It might be too long..." Baralai murmured, again trying to stand up. "I can still track her... It isn't too late." He was talking to himself really, not the old man he had misplaced trust in. "I can take the money, buy a horse and track her faster." He was pacing now, hammering out the details in his head. He would find Yena, free her, and then his debt to would be repaid.

"Just peachy." Alice replied, though she didn't look at Anaris. "Did you need something?" She added, her tone as cold as the air in the forest that day. The Princess looked much different than she had wearing the long gowns she always did in her father's palace. She wore black pants and brown leather riding boots along with a leather breastplate that bore her new husband's crest on the front. The only thing that hadn't changed was the free flowing waves of her long ebony hair. Alice could easily have been mistaken for a rogue of the thieves guild and not the royalty she was.

The old man hobbled over to sit on the trunk, shaking his head. "Some men from your order are on their way here
 They will be here tomorrow. If you are hell bent on leaving, boy...do it with them." He instructed.

The elf king's bright green eyes were filled with worry as he watched her. He'd seen her from a distance nearly every day but hadn't spoken to her. He wasn't sure he wanted to believe that her attitude was changing with her appearance. "I was hoping you'd have dinner with me tonight."

"I'd say my debt to you was paid long ago, old man." Baralai told the elder man rather thinly. "My life is not worth the service I gave you, or the protection I offered from barbarians!"

Alice had been so lonely these past few days. She was in a strange place with people she didn't know, and Anaris had seemingly abandoned her. "Why?" She asked, now simply staring down at the bow in her hand to keep form meeting his gaze. "Why tonight?"

"I do not understand why you are so upset. I was only doing what the little witch asked. I contacted your people and told them a mage had been keeping you captive. They agreed to come and finish your healing. Give that...lyrium...that's what she said you needed..."

"We are celebrating the full moon. I thought you might want to take part. You seem to feel more comfortable when you are with me." Anaris said gently, holding out his hand for her. "Plus I'm going to miss you when you are gone."

"She does not speak for me!" Baralai insisted. "I do not need lyrium... not now." He added, though he was stumbling for the doorway. "She could have left me for dead, but she didn't. Mage or no, she deserves payment."

Alice glanced ever so slightly at the hand offered out to her. "You, yes. But I don't want to spend time with your people. They think I am doing something to you, they don't approve of you marrying me... Whatever your true intentions may have been."

"I gave her payment. I sold her like a dog. She deserved nothing less." The old man said bitterly. "Should have seen her. Scroungy like that dog we put down last spring."
.
"They do not control me. I control myself." Her husband said firmly. "My people don't bother me. Why do you let them bother you? Didn't your father teach you that you were above them?"

Baralai forced himself to stand to his full height without leaning on the doorframe and glared down at the old man. "Good luck slaughtering the pigs by yourself. You'll be dead by winter, old fool." He warned.

Alice finally looked up at Anaris, her eyes betraying just how her father had taught her quite the opposite. "He made it quite clear I was only there to be paraded before the men he thought he could use me to buy an alliance with."

"And you will be dead when the Templars get their hands on you." The old man hissed, not moving from the trunk. "Be gone with you then." 

"Your father is a terrible man. I was only too happy to take you away from him." Anaris told her. He dropped his hand, feeling like she was rejecting him. "Come if you'd like. I will not force you."

Baralai stumbled out of the small farm house, all of his belongings still in the trunk. He wasn't exactly acting like himself, but for some reason he felt he had to find that small mage.

Alice nodded her head, though she was again not looking at Anaris. The young princess felt just as trapped here as she had in her father's court. She had no use, even less than she had there. Alice had wanted her freedom simply so she could prove she was not the pathetic bubble headed woman she was expected to be.

Yena had given up her hope in everything. She felt like a puppet, dancing when she was told, performing magic when she was ordered to. The men who kept her were cruel and not just to her but she barely noticed. She locked herself in hee memories of Baralai and remained there.

Anaris returned to the celebrations and put on a happy face. This was the start of a war. None of these peop)e knew they probably weren't going to survive to the next night. It would be monstrous of him to tell them.

"How do you do it?" All the mages were locked in a room together each night, forced to sleep wherever they could find the space. "It seems like none of this bothers you..." There was a male mage named Evan sitting beside Yena who had been spending each night talking to her.

Alice had spend a little more time in the woods, wondering why everything she did seemed to turn out wrong. Eventually she gave up and returned to her room. There she put on an elaborate dress once more, tamed her hair and joined her husband at the celebration. The young woman couldn't pretend to be as happy as Anaris was though, it weighed on her that she was going to be the one to bring war to these people.

Yena's fire colored eyes had gone dull. Baralai would have trouble recognizing them. "I turn it off. Go into the only time in my life that i...I was happy." Her voice was so soft it was barely a whisper. 

Anaris danced with Reglan, allowing the elder woman to chide him for not letting her check the wounds. He simply laughed at her. It was clear he adored her. Some of the party goers were whispering that their king should have married her and not some strange little girl who didn't even try to socialize among them.

"Who was he?" The other mage asked gently, thinking he understood the look. "He must have meant a lot to you."

Alice had watched the two of them dance, and realised that sick feeling in her stomach wasn't because of what she knew was coming; it was jealousy. She wanted to be adored the way Reglan clearly was. The young princess seemed like she simply wanted to be invisible when she listened to the whispering behind her back.

"Someone I made up." Yena whispered. "No one cares where I am. They never have."

Anaris pressed a kiss to Reglan's cheek, thinking of her as nothing more than a sister. It was not seen that way.

"Seems pretty vivid for someone you made up..." Evan breathed. "You don't have to hide it, having someone to remember is a blessing."

Alice turned away and began pushing her way through the crowds of people all watching their king, and the woman they wished was their Queen, as they danced. The young woman only stopped for breath when she arrived back at the place Anaris had found her practicing her archery that morning.

"He doesn't remember me. He...I used him." Yena confessed ashamed of herself. "I made him love me." 

Anaris followed her, wishing he understood her. He didn't see the way the crowd was looking at him.

"Made him?" Evan echoed, frowning a little. "No magic can do that, no matter how many mages have tried."

Alice had climbed up into one of the trees, though the flowing fabric of her dress could easily be seen where it hung down.

"That's not true." Yena protested, thinking she knew better. "He lost his memory. He was so sick. He told me I was beautiful. Before...he called me piglet...mud nug...worthless knife ear..." she sniffed softly. "His kiss...the way he touched me...it was all so...different after my spell. You can't tell me it was his doing."

"You're back here." The king said with a soft sigh. He leaned against the tree trunk, looking into the dark forest below her. "You didn't stay long. I was hoping for a dance. I thought you said I could have one."