David Gaider - The Calling

“Don’t you have a young son?” she asked.

“Cailan. He is five years old, yes.”

“Isn’t he without a mother? Perhaps we hear it wrong in Orlais, but my understanding is that the Queen of Ferelden is dead.”

He was silent for a long minute, and noticed none of the others offered to change the subject or intervene. Perhaps they wondered the same thing. The thought of Cailan touched a painful place inside him. Like a coward, he’d left Loghain to tell the boy that his father was gone. Cailan would never have understood. His mother had disappeared, and now his father, too? If Maric had gone to tell him, however, he would never have come at all.

“She is,” he admitted quietly. “Three years, now.”

Fiona’s lips pressed together in outrage. “And you feel no shame at depriving him of a father now, as well?”

Maric felt the wash of grief tug at him, but he clamped down hard on the feeling. He would rather stick a fork in his eye than give this elven woman with her dark, angry eyes the satisfaction of seeing the pain she was dredging up inside him. “He hasn’t had a father for some time now,” he answered. His voice sounded flat and hollow, even to himself. “My staying in Denerim wouldn’t have changed that.”

“So you give up? This is Maric the Savior, the great King of Ferelden?”

Anger flooded through him. He’d thought to halt the witch’s prophecy, to act rather than to sit back and wait for it to come true. He thought that perhaps her warning had meant he was supposed to be here, but he hadn’t expected this. To be harassed and judged by this brash mage was simply too much. He shot up from the log, wheeling on her. She glared at him defiantly, as if she had every right to ask what she did, and that only served to intensify his rage.

“Maric the Savior,” he repeated, spitting the words with contempt. “You know what people call me, so you think you know everything about me? You know how I should feel? You want to tell me what kind of king I should be, and what a terrible father I am?”

Her demeanor softened, but only for a moment. “Why don’t you tell me what kind of father you are, then, King Maric?” she asked.

He turned from the fire and stormed several steps away. A blast of icy wind stopped him in his tracks. He let it wash over his skin, closing his eyes. The pounding of his heart slowly subsided, replaced by a familiar silence. It reminded him of those nights when the bustle of the court receded and he retreated to his quarters in the palace, only to be surrounded by a melancholy emptiness that threatened to swallow him whole. So many days spent surrounded by finery and servants and all the things befitting a king, but none of it touched him anymore.

How was he supposed to explain that to anyone?

“The truth,” he mumbled into the wind, not even caring if those behind him could hear, “is that I haven’t been a father to my son since his mother died. Every time I look at him, I’m reminded of her, of all the might-haves and the should-have-beens. He deserves better than that. He deserves a father who can look him in the eyes.”

Another gust of wind lashed across Maric’s face, making him numb. Numbness was good. He felt a tentative hand touch his elbow, a gesture that startled him a little. He opened his eyes and turned, and saw the dwarven woman standing there gazing up at him. Her eyes were full of sympathy, and she silently patted his arm.

“Maric the Savior is just a name, something they call me because they say I saved the kingdom,” he told the mage. She remained seated by the fire behind him, not looking his way. “But the truth is, I’ve never been able to save anyone.”

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.”