With that he turned and walked off into the snow, leaving them behind. The dwarven woman let him go, and if the others stared after him they said nothing. He no longer cared if the elven mage was satisfied by his answers. Let her despise him. It wasn’t as if what she accused him of was untrue.
It was dark away from the camp, and Maric found himself trudging through shadowed drifts. The moon finally came out from behind the clouds, its silvery radiance against the starkness of the snow more than enough to light his way. When he crested a rocky hill, he found his breath taken away by the sight—the entire valley seemed to stretch in front of him, a field of soft white crowned by a sky full of glittering stars.
It was magnificent. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, his breath coming out in plumes as he watched the expanse. It seemed to go on forever, broken only by the occasional group of pine trees. Why was it he couldn’t remember the last time he had looked out over something so beautiful?
This is my kingdom, he thought sadly. And I don’t even know her any longer.
The sound of quietly crunching snow signaled someone approaching Maric from behind, and he stiffened. “Leave me alone,” he muttered without turning around. “Haven’t you people questioned me enough already?”
“I apologize if my Wardens have been rude, Maric.” It was Genevieve. He shivered in the chill and realized that she must have left her perch to follow him. Perhaps she intended to finish what the others started? “That is no way to address a king. I will remind them of their manners.”
“Don’t bother,” he sighed. He wrapped his fur cloak around him as he turned away from the view. The Commander stood not far away, her white hair fluttering in the wind. He found the hard edge of her appraising gaze unnerving. “I told you all to treat me like a regular person, so I shouldn’t be surprised when that’s what you do.”
Genevieve said nothing, though from her look he knew that she had more on her mind than his discomfort. She gave a curt nod, as if she had come to a decision. “Perhaps it would be better if you returned to your palace, Maric. We would not be able to escort you, I’m afraid, but I suspect you would be safer than if you accompanied us into the Deep Roads.”
“You’ve changed your mind?”
She arched a pale eyebrow. “Have you not changed yours?”
He wasn’t sure what to say to that, and for a moment the silence stretched into awkwardness. “I do not blame you if you do not believe in my visions,” she finally said, gently enough that Maric was tempted to believe her. “Not even all of the Grey Wardens do. I was told by some that my brother is dead, and that there was nothing that could be done even if that was not the case.”
She shrugged and slowly walked toward Maric, standing beside him and looking out over the same valley he had been admiring moments before. Her eyes softened as she scanned the horizon. “It was difficult to let my brother go, when the time came for his Calling. I think, for so many years, we assumed that when it came it would come for us both at the same time. I journeyed with him to Orzammar, toasted to his honor with the dwarves, and in the end I stood at the seal and watched him walk out into the shadows.” Her voice took on an edge of bitterness. “My brother has always been as much a part of me as my arms. To have him wrenched away from me … it was unbearable.” She glanced at Maric then, her eyes bright and cold. “But I was the one who counseled him to accept his fate. I stayed. When the first vision came, it felt as if he had reached back across those shadows and touched my heart. I felt him as surely as I feel my arms. I know that it was real.”
Maric frowned. A new gust of wind rushed between them. Far off in the distance wolves howled, a lonely sound that only seemed to punctuate the emptiness of the land. “So why didn’t you say anything about this?”
Genevieve laughed mirthlessly. “And what would you have said?” She stared at him, her tone completely serious. “I am intent on reaching my brother to prevent the darkspawn from learning what they must not. If it must be, I will kill him myself to prevent that from happening. This is not a rescue mission, Maric. I am not running to my brother’s side; I am attempting to prevent a calamity.”
She shrugged and looked back over the valley with a sigh. “And if there are those who do not believe as I do, then I will be forced to act without their aid. I do need your help, desperately so. But if you cannot lead us in the Deep Roads, then go … return to your son, Maric. No one will blame you for doing so, least of all I.”
With that, the Grey Warden commander spun about and marched off. There was no appeal, no farewell. She was gone into the haze of snow within moments, and Maric knew that there would be no further question if he simply picked up his gear and returned to Kinloch Hold. He could be back in Denerim within a couple of days, calling off what ever alarm Loghain was undoubtedly already sounding and seeing his son again as Genevieve had advised.
The thought of Cailan made him pause. Everyone said that the lad looked just like his father, and he supposed that was probably true. The same blond hair, the same nose, and the same smile. But he had his mother’s eyes. What would he say, looking into those eyes that would be full of so many questions, asking why he’d left in the first place?
He could imagine what Loghain would say. He would be relieved, and cover it up with irritation at all the trouble Maric had put everyone through.
It was far more difficult to imagine what Rowan would have said. He remembered her best as a warrior, a woman who had helped lead the rebellion to take back the kingdom from the Orlesians. She’d had an indomitable spirit until the sickness had taken her, and in many ways he had always considered her far stronger than him. They’d restored the kingdom together, but it had always been she who knew immediately when something was worth doing or needed abandoning.
He tried to imagine that Rowan would have urged him to return to their son. As a mother, surely she would have considered Cailan more important than any other consideration. Trouble was, he just couldn’t believe it. He could picture her sitting in her favorite chair by the window in their chambers, brown curls cascading around her pale skin. She would have put down her book and looked at him, puzzled.
“You’re back?” she’d have asked him, more accepting than surprised.
“Yes, I’m back.”
“Didn’t you think going was important?”
“Our son is more important than saving the kingdom, Rowan.”
And then she’d have smiled at him with amusement, tilting her head in that way that told him she expected him to know better. “I wasn’t talking about saving the kingdom, you silly little man.” Her tone was full of affection, something that had grown over the years of their marriage and yet which he had never felt particularly worthy of. She held out her hand from her chair and he walked to take it …
… and then the image fled, and Maric was left with nothing but moonlight and blowing snow once again. His heart ached. It seemed to him like it had been forever since he had been able to remember what Rowan looked like. His memories had become maddeningly fleeting over the last few years, replaced by impressions and smells and snippets of conversation. Just then, however, she had seemed so real.
Much like a vision.
He smirked at the irony of the thought, especially considering the fact that he wasn’t even asleep. Unless, of course, he was asleep, having fallen into some deep snowbank after wandering away from the camp, and was currently freezing to death while blissfully dreaming away. The Grey Wardens would maybe search for him come morning, and then look at each other and shrug, assuming that he’d decided to return to Denerim without a good-bye. They’d enter the Deep Roads, and come spring some travelers would perhaps find his remains half hidden in the mud. Probably steal his boots, too.