Chapter Text
Honnleath
Nestled between the Frostback Mountains and the bogs of the Korcari Wilds, two of the most hostile and untamed topographical features in Thedas, Honnleath was a village that teetered on the edge of being interesting but never quite managed. Far from the reach of the seat of power in Denerim and the King’s army, and indeed quite out of reach of most forms of civilisation, Honnleath flourished in quiet isolation where the people were born, lived and died, often without hearing a word of news from the world outside the village boundaries. Many residents were still not sure if there was still a war with Orlais, and whether that made them Ferelden or Orlesian - neither really mattered in the long run.
The only people who ever came to Honnleath generally did not intend to. As a child, Cullen did not remember many visitors. Perhaps a dalish elf or two, and a couple of lost Chasind. Honnleath was left in peace for the most part, including where trade was concerned. Growing up in such a village presented two possible career paths - farmer or fisher. Cullen desperately needed to be neither of these things.
“And what is wrong with fishing, I’d like to know?” his father often demanded in those moments where attempting to cajole his young son to join him out on the lakes was met with a myriad of excuses. “Too good to follow in your old man’s footsteps are you?”
Cullen admired his father very much, but there was nothing less appealing than getting up too early in the morning to sit in a leaking boat for the best part of a day and then return home smelling like a dead fish. Farming was a little more tolerable, but Cullen still found that whenever his mother went down to the fields, she returned worn out and grumbling about the state of the harvest this year, and so it seemed that to be a farmer was to spend most days obsessing over the weather conditions, which were almost always wrong in a village like Honnleath.
“So what does his lordship wish to do?” his mother asked wearily, as she scrubbed a heap of turnips she had spent most of the year growing. As the only vegetable that thrived in their small scrap of the world, it was also the only vegetable they ever ate.
For the most part, the only twinge of interest Cullen had ever felt for a profession was when he saw Revered Mother Alice. The woman was the embodiment of wisdom and kindness, and spent her days either reading, ministering to her attentive Honnleath flock, or attacking her garden with a hoe and a spade. When she spoke to them from her puplit in their tiny village chantry, Cullen always listened enraptured while his siblings dozed or picked their noses. There was, as he suspected, more to the world than just Honnleath. Mother Alice confirmed as much. She led them in prayer and song, and told them the fascinating tales of Andraste and her crusades. The struggles, the opressions, the need to right wrongs… all these spoke to Cullen, and he knew that he could not simply sit on a lake until he died while someone like Andraste could simply decide one day to form an army and go on a march to bring enlightenment to the world with the power of her voice alone. There had to be more to life than simply surviving from one day to the next. It was not enough to simply live, but to impress a change upon the world around you, to make a difference and leave the world a different place than the one you entered.
There was a problem with this ambition, however.
“It’s wonderful you are interested in serving the Chantry,” the Revered Moth had told him warmly. “Unfortunately, men cannot take the same vows or lead the people in prayer.”
“Why not?” Cullen could not hide the dismay at his thwarted plans.
“It is the way it is,” Mother Alice told him gently. “It is not for us to question why Andraste chose to bestow the privilege of leading the Chant of Light on her fellow women alone, but that does not mean you cannot serve. You may, in time, become a Brother. For now, perhaps you would like to join the choir? You have such a sweet voice - if you cannot lead in the chant, you can certainly lead us in song.”
Somewhat dissatisfied, Cullen had agreed nontheless. Hobbies were hard to come by when you lived in the only fertile and temperate gap between a mountain and a marsh, and so he threw himself with nothing short of absolute dedication into Song. If it was the Maker’s will that he sit beside the Chantry fire and read songs all day instead of toiling with his mother and older brother in the water-logged fields, who was he to disobey?
He could not shake the feeling that Andraste would not have stopped short, simply because she had been told things simply were the way they were.
But then she had been burned at the stake.
The truly crucial epiphany came later when, in one of those rare instances, strangers arrived in the village of Honnleath who were neither lost nor simply on their way to other places.
Templars.
Cullen had heard of them, and Revered Mother Alice had mentioned them once or twice as possible occupations for men within the chantry, but it was another matter seeing one in person.
There were four of them that day, arriving on horseback in full plate armour like knights from a story. They were not so much mere men, but metal entities of embodied authority. The villagers deferred to them instantly, and upon politely being requested to show the way to the home of the mage called Wilhem, had obliged with speedy obedience. Cullen had watched them march through the village in awe, following at a fairly safe oggling distance. The light glinted off the angles and curves of their armour, transforming their silhouettes into imposing icons - warriors of the Chant. Guardians of the mages.
Cullen did not know much of mages. He knew there was one in the village, there at the sanction of his circle, which was apparently unusual although he seemed much like everyone else - except his house occasionaly let off the odd bang or belched purple smoke from the cellar windows. All Cullen knew was that he had a son named Matthias who was an insufferably smug bastard who made the other village kids do as he demanded by threatening to have his father turn them into slugs if they didn’t obey. Cullen had punched him in the stomach once, though he forgot why, and had yet to be turned into a slug. However, this might have been because Matthias was four years older and twice as large and had settled for stomping Cullen’s face into the turnip field instead.
Some of the villagers seemed a little concerned about the templars arrival, and for once there was a lull in the humdrum daily activity of the village, as people dawdled about the village square pretending (and failing) to look busy while keeping a close eye on Wilhelm’s house. The templars emerged after a time.
“We’ll be visiting again, ser,” one was saying. “The circle condones your research, but hopes you understand the need for oversight."
“I certainly understand interference when I see it, yes,” said Wilhelm, who didn’t look all too happy that day.
“It is for your own protection,” the templar continued. “Although the protection of the village is foremost in the Knight-Commander’s eyes.”
“Of course,” said Wilhelm with false alacrity, before slamming the door as politely as was possible.
When the templars began to head back to the fence where they had pitched their horses, Cullen seized his chance. He sidled up and set about changing his fate.
“What does the symbol on your armour mean?” he asked.
The templar looked down at him, though his face was obscured by the visor of his helmet. He was apparently used to being pestered by random peasant children. “It is the sword that killed the prophet Andraste, saving her from the flame. It is a symbol of mercy.”
“How heavy is your armour?”
“Very heavy.”
“Can I see your sword?”
“Another time.”
“How do you become a templar?”
“With many years of vigorous physical, mental, and spiritual training.”
“Can I be a templar?”
“Could you take a vow of silence?”
Cullen said nothing as he tried to figure out what this meant, which seemed to amuse the templar. He laughed as he swung himself onto his horse and signalled the others to ride. “It’s not a life I advise to be chosen on a whim. Go back to your parents, boy.”
And with that, he rode off. But the seed had been planted, and for the first time Cullen had absolute certainty he knew what he wanted to do with his life.
The templars visited once every few weeks after that. It turned out that Wilhelm had acquired some sort of golem servant - an old dwarven relic of stone that crunched about the mage’s house and was heard more often than it was ever seen. This was terrible. It only gave insufferable Matthias even more ammunition with which to threaten the other village boys, who now not only had to fear being turned into slugs, but also being crushed by the gigantic stone servant.
Wilhelm assured everyone, especially the templars whenever they arrived, that the servant was totally under control and was the source of a wealth of knowledge that stood to benefit his peers back at the circle. This was not entirely true it seemed, when one day there was quite a commotion about Wilhelm’s house and it came to light that the golem had crushed Wilhelm to death. Cullen didn’t have the honour of seeing this, but he was told by some very morbid boys that being ‘ground to a pulp’ was perhaps the most accurate description of what poor Wilhelm’s wife had found.
Matthias lost some of his bravado after that, and the village gained the permanent fixture of a petrified golem in the centre of the town square. It seemed to have broken down completely, and Wilhem’s wife had at once disposed of any possible means of reanimating the monster with some traders and that was that. When the templars returned, they didn’t even seem at all surprised.
“And no one else was hurt?” the Knight Commander asked Wilhelm’s wife.
“Well, the brute crushed some of my chickens as well,” said the wife, in a way that suggested she weighed this as equally devastating to the demise of her husband.
This would be the templars last visit to Honnleath, Cullen was sure of it. They watched over mages, and with no other mages in the village, their business was at an end. Cullen scampered up to them as they made their way back to their horses, and he thought he heard a faint groan from the knight-commander who was quite familiar with him by now.
“Take me with you,” he begged.
“We are not recruiters,” sighed the commander.
“But I want to be a templar! I would be a good templar!”
“Being a templar is not about dashing around being gallant with a sword.” The commander folded his arms, and gave the boy a stern look, determined to put an end to the matter once and for all. “It is a religious order. It is not for boys who wish to play soldier.”
“I don’t want to play anything - I want to be a templar!”
“You would have to learn the Chant of Light-”
“I already know the chant-”
“By heart?”
All those days by the hearth with the Revered Mother paid off. “At last did the Maker from the living world make men. Immutable, as the substance of the earth, with souls made of dream and idea, hope and fear, endless possibilities-”
The knight-commander interrupted him, lest he launch into any more verses. One could spend a whole day reciting verses from the Chant of Light and barely have covered the first chapter. “Did your parents teach you that?”
Cullen shook his head. “Revered Mother Alice did. She thinks I could be a templar too.”
“You probably should have led with that. How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
The templar studied him for a moment, almost literally measuring him up and wondering if there was a growth spurt due that would bring the boy up to standard. “And your parents are home now?”
Not only were his parents home, but so was his sister. When Mia opened the door to a trio of templars, her eyes flared wide before narrowing on her brother. “What did you do?” she hissed.
His family was not entirely unaware of his ambitions to become a templar. He had been insisting on becoming one since the first day they had set foot in the village and had taken to brandishing a tree branch and wearing a bucket on his head while attacking imaginary mages that usually came in the form of fence posts and fat farm geese. Mostly they had just rolled their eyes and assumed this was some sort of phase and that soon he would be pretending to ride griffons and proclaiming he was going to be a grey warden. They looked at him now in mingled surprise and dismay. It was one thing to play pretend… quite another to bring a Knight-Commander to the house who was now asking them deep, probing questions about the boy they had assumed was just a work-shy dreamer. They looked at their son as if they were seeing him for the first time.
“This is really what you want?” his mother asked him.
“This isn’t just something you can give up after a week and come home,” his father warned. “This is a commitment for life, Cullen.”
His parents could have vetoed it right then and there, thanked the Knight-Commander politely for humouring their troublesome son. And though they were not without love and affection for the boy, their eyes glinted with the opportunity presented to them. Four mouths to feed had always stretched them thin, and finding a husband and wife for the eldest of their children in such a small village had not been easy. But here was a man offering to take their youngest son, to educate him, house him, train him, and turn him into something worth mentioning in their letters to their intolerably smug cousins over in Redcliffe who had been bragging about their children getting jobs up at the castle for years.
Only Mia seemed genuinely upset at the thought that her only younger brother would be leaving them. “Who will play chess with me now?” she demanded. But that did not seem to be the real reason for her distress, and she tearfully begged him to write as often as he was able, before locking herself in her room and refusing to say goodbye because he simply ‘didn’t deserve it’. It would be years before Cullen could appreciate that she had been more than just a sister, but also his closest friend.
Cullen’s oldest siblings had been as pleasantly bemused as his parents. Catherine told him to behave and not let the family down by slacking off. Dunstan remarked that he had never heard of such a short templar, and had handed him an old Alamarri coin that he must have found while working in the field that very morning, claiming it was a good luck charm.
The templars had told him to bring nothing - the first challenge of templar training was to learn how to renounce worldly possessions and embrace the stark monastic lifestyle of discipline and prudence that were necessary to become a Brother of the Faith. But a little coin slipped easily inside the the hem of his coat, and in the space of twenty years, it had never left his person.
Summer in the Frostback mountains could still catch you unawares. Cullen coughed as the cold air caught in his lungs upon leaving the relative warmth of Skyhold’s main hall and stepped across the impacted ice beginning to form on the steps. The sun was setting, casting long shadows from the ramparts, though the courtyard was still bustling with activity - soldiers, farriers, servants, refugees, dignitaries, messengers, clerics. Had any of these people believed even a month ago that they would have ended up together in a place like this.
Even at this late hour, it wasn’t wise to dawdle. Plunging his hands into the lining of his coat, Cullen moved with speed and purpose across the courtyard, striding with intent towards the southern tower which he had called home for the last few weeks.
Invariably, this was a walk that would take him all of two minutes. But Cullen had spent the last hour in the war room wrangling with Josephine over the wisdom of telling some uppity Orlesian nobles to go hang themselves in response to complaints that the Inquisition had ‘stolen away’ a few heirs who were now learning how to apply poultices to injured soldiers in the lower courtyard. The ambassador had won that argument quite rightly, and so instead of a blistering diatribe, a pleasant note thanking the nobles for the service of their heirs was being written up. And in this last hour of dealing with this lone matter, several more matters had arrived that demanded attention. Cullen had barely made it to the bottom of the steps of Skyhold’s law than recruits were intercepting him.
“The report you wanted, Commander,” said the first man, handing over a thick wad of papers that could have been any one of a number of reports he had commissioned recently.
“Thank you,” Cullen said roughly, not breaking his stride. A small chapter of training templars in the yard paused and saluted him as he passed. He nodded a perfunctory response.
A hooded woman appeared at his elbow. “The Starkhaven engineer arrived half an hour ago, Commander. We’ve put him up in the tavern, as you requested.”
“Let him rest the night and bring him to my office tomorrow morning. He’ll want to inspect the trebuchets first, I imagine. Inform Lady Josephine to arrange payment, if you would.”
“He’s expensive,” the woman observed. “But he told me he could have those trebuchets firing with enough accuracy to strike the fleas off a mabari’s back from three miles away.”
“I look forward to that invasion force,” he muttered, and accepted two further notes, a care package from the kitchens, and four outpost status reports before he finally made it to the steps of his tower.
Knight-Captain Rylen - or just Ser Rylen now, he supposed - was descending the tower steps towards him, whistling faintly. “You look half frozen, Commander,” he said, “I’ve left the fire going. Some correspondence on your desk too.”
“Thank you, I’ll look it over-”
“Perhaps you should call it a night, sir,” Rylen interrupted, peering at him through the gathering gloom of the evening. “Everything’s in hand. And I’m half tempted to call the healer on you, the way you look.”
“I didn’t appoint you to flatter me, Rylen.”
“Oh, there’s no danger of that happening, sir.” Ser Rylen hesitated, as if there was more he wanted to say. Cullen clapped him on the shoulder with his free hand and attempted a smile that may have done more to alarm than reassure. “I am well. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix, fear not.”
“Good. I shouldn’t like to wake up and find myself Commander of the Inquisition’s standing army tomorrow.” The whistle resumed and Rylen continued on down the steps, leaving Cullen in peace.
The office was just as warm as promised, but it did nothing to soothe the bite of cold that had pervaded his extremities for months now, long before he’d ever come up into the cold mountains. Dropping the stack of reports on the desk, Cullen threw himself into the chair and picked up the pile of correspondence that had accumulated since he’d last sat here two hours before.
He should have gone to bed. He knew that. But he would refrain, as he did every night, until he was too exhausted not even the customary clench of fear and panic in his gut at the thought of falling asleep could keep him awake. He had yet to reach that point, even though his vision blurred and slid and his fingers fumbled as if his hands were suddenly too big and heavy for such a delicate task of opening the wax seals of the letters.
He rubbed his face slowly as he read the first message; a letter from an old colleague in Kirkwall, describing further developments in the recovery of the city state. By all accounts recovery was moving backwards - a typical result of yet another occupation battling for supremacy with the insurgents. The only reason Kirkwall had not flopped over and submitted at once was almost entirely down to the Guard Captain, Aveline. That tenacious Ferelden would have been a perfect addition to the Inquisition if not for the fact that Cullen knew she would never leave her adopted Kirkwall to the mercy of an unchallenged exalted march.
Not like he had.
The next letter hit him harder than a punch in the gut the second he recognised the handwriting. He was tempted to put the letter to one side, perhaps drop it on the floor - or in the fire - and pretend he had not seen it. She couldn’t blame him then. And he would not have to face up to the churning sensation in his chest that threatened to overwhelm… but that was not her fault. And it was already too late.
With a heavy sigh he snapped the seal and spread the letter flat on his desk.
Admonishments. He had expected that. She had thought him dead. For the third time. She asked him to imagine her surprise to find he was not only alive (yet again), but now Commander of the Inquisition, and still had not seen fit to inform her of either fact. Was it too much to ask? Did he not care? She’d had a new baby, by the way, which they had named after him when they had thought him to be dead (really dead this time). She told him she was now seriously considering changing its name.
The knot in Cullen’s stomach loosened a little, as his sister rambled on at greater length about the developments in her own life. The baby’s first tooth. The twins had gotten into a fight over Matthias’ daughter. She had gone back to Honnleath to lay flowers on the graves of their parents and Dunstan. She had already lost one brother. She didn’t want to lose another.
Signed Mia, with a small not beneath saying, ‘This took me all of fifteen minutes to write and I have three screaming children to feed. What’s your excuse?’
Cullen pushed the letter aside, resigned to the peculiar feeling his sister had managed to provoke just by contacting him. It was like that with any reminder of his old life. The guilt and the shame welled up from depths he had forgotten he even repressed, and at once he felt like he was back there… worthless and unworthy and unable to relate to his own flesh and blood. All those worried missives he had ignored during those first years, until ignoring them became its own source of guilt, and for a while just receiving a letter had triggered attacks of panic so sharp he had been left literally without breath.
The Revered Mother in Greenfall had told him it was grief - despair for a life he had lost and the death of the person his sister thought she was writing to. She had said the reason he could not write to his own sister to let her know he was even alive was because to do so felt like a deception, like an impersonation of the dead to prey on the living. Like a demon.
It was all in his head, she said. He would reconcile himself one day, when he found what he had lost. The reminders of his old life would always hurt until then.
He shook his head, attempting to clear it of the growing headache and the dour mood that had gripped him. “Don’t be a fool…” he whispered to himself. He wouldn’t be that man anymore. His sister deserved his attention, and like a good brother - and normal, functioning human being - he would write a response and allay all her fears.
He sat for the next hour over a blank piece of parchment. The ink had dried on his quill without committing a single word to paper, and he found himself staring instead at the fire, and the things he thought he saw moving between the flames. People long dead. Monsters since slain. But the screams could still be heard.
The door to his office creaked and he started. The sight of the Lavellan pulled him back from his memories and back into the present. “Inquisitor,” he began to rise. “Is there something you need?”
The small woman smiled gently with a slight tentative edge. “I did not mean to disturb you,” she said, her words soft and measured. The inquisitor never spoke as if she did not carefully consider the weight of each word. “I realise you may be off duty.”
He offered her a wry smile. “I believe there is no such thing in the Inquisition,” he said, gesturing to the pile of paperwork he had yet to sort through. He would have offered her a seat, but unless she wanted to perch on teetering piles of books, he was running short on chairs. “I apologise, I have not gotten round to organising this space yet-”
“It’s quite alright,” she said graciously, and moved towards the fire with the kind of grace that was unique to dalish women. He had known many elves in his time - the circle had always been fairly evenly split between human and elf mages - and while elves had always been credited with the stereotype of gracefulness and nimble movement, there was nothing quite like the way the dalish moved, as if each footstep would not even make an impression on the softest snow. All she did was stand and warm herself near the flames, yet her natural poise gave her movements the elegance of a practised dancer.
“I wanted to ask if you had received any news of my clan?” she asked quietly, her long fingers spreading and flexing against the fire’s light.
He thought for a moment. “Josephine’s people are still en route, I believe,” he said slowly. “It will take time. Soldiers would have been quicker but-”
“But my clan has had previous dealings with heavily armed humans in the past, and they don’t tend to end well,” Lavellan finished for him. “I thought to go to them myself, but…”
“You have obligations,” he reminded her gently.
She sighed, resting a hand to the stone mantlepiece. “As much as I would like to show my clan I am alive and well,” she said, not noticing how his gaze turned inward, “I fear my Keeper would refuse to let me leave again. She would not accept any such ‘obligation’ to saving humans.”
“We all share the same sky,” said Cullen. “The situation is dire for all peoples.”
“I think they believe the breach will suck up all humans and stop short of the dalish because they hold to different gods.” The inquisitor smiled at him, inviting him into her joke. “Is your family quite as bad as mine?”
Cullen’s fingertips brushed Mia’s letter and he stared somewhere past the Inquisitor’s head. “I’m sorry to say my family is afflicted by me, not the other way around.”
“We cannot help who we love,” she said gently, the soft glow of the fire playing across the delicate angles of her face.
Cullen coughed slightly and sank back into his seat. “I’m sure the ambassador will inform you the moment she hears any news. She would know how important it is to you.”
Lavellan looked at him sharply, those large clever eyes darting over him. “Are you alright?”
It was not a good night to entertain guests. Mia’s note had dredged up ancient pains, and combined them with more immediate ones. A draft of lyrium would ease both, but he shut that thought down and merely shook his head. “Tired, is all.”
The inquisitor nodded her understanding. “I won’t bother you anymore, Commander.”
As she slipped towards the door, he shot to his feet. “You don’t bother me, Inquisitor,” he told her quickly, alarmed to think he had given such an impression. “At all! I enjoy it, in fact! I mean.. which is to say… you may bother me any time you wish. If you like… It’s no bother.”
She had paused with her hand on the door, staring at him in mute surprise, which was quite understandable. He thought she might inch backwards out the door at this point, but after a moment a slow smile spread across her lips, dimpling her cheeks. “I will… bear that in mind,” she said, averting her eyes. “Good night, Commander.”
The moment she was gone, Cullen pressed his hands over his face.
Something about that woman always managed to make him feel like an awkward nineteen year old again. Odd how Mia’s reminder of his youth hurt to the point of nausea, but Lavellan… she made him remember the part of his youth that didn’t hurt.
He just wished it didn’t have to be the fist-gnawingly embarrassing part.