The Shadow and the Flame-Chapter One Part 2

[communi_kate]

Alistair circled slowly, searching for an opening. All he could see was more Ser Palamon. He swung at Palamon's side, but the other initiate pivoted and blocked the move easily. Alistair knew that he would lose a hacking match based solely on strength. He'd have to use skill to beat Palamon.

I'm doomed, Alistair thought as he thrust again. Palamon deflected that blow, too. Alistair's mouth was dry. His clothes felt cold and clammy on his body. The damp cotton tickled relentlessly between his shoulder blades. Alistair shook his head and worked his shoulders, trying unsuccessfully to scratch. Too late, he felt the tang of magic in the air.

Alistair had been expecting Palamon to attack with Righteous Strike, but he recognized the spell that crawled uncomfortably across his body as Cleanse Area. It was a spell the Templars used rarely in training. As it did not batter him to the ground, Alistair ignored it. He did not use magic himself. Magic required concentration, and right now Alistair's concentration was being slowly eroded away by the strength of Palamon's sword.

Alistair stopped thinking and let his body take over. Palamon hacked away as if he was splitting wood and he didn't seem to tire. Seconds later Alistair felt the tingle of magic again. Palamon roared and brought his sword crashing down. His blade struck sparks from Alistair's sword. Alistair gritted his teeth and turned Palamon's blade aside. The echoes of the cleanse spell still hung in the air and he wondered for the first time why his opponent had bothered.

Seconds later, he had his answer. Palamon hadn't been attacking with the cleanse magic. He'd been ensuring that Alistair couldn't use Templar techniques against him. And this time he did use Righteous Strike.

The blow sent Alistair to his knees. It was too late to turn Palamon's blade away, so he countered it on the flat. Palamon drew his arm back for another blow and Alistair wished he had a shield. He could have used it to punch Palamon in the face. Or, given his position, his knees. He expected Palamon to step in and press home his advantage, but instead the knight bowed again and stepped away, giving Alistair the chance to get to his feet.

I hate you, Alistair thought. He managed a half-hearted bow in reply before Palamon attacked again. Alistair’s shoulders ached. His stomach ached. In fact, his whole body ached. He was tiring fast.

However, there was one Templar technique Palamon hadn't tried. And the cleanse spell Palamon had cast had almost worn off.

I need a distraction, Alistair thought. He knew he couldn't distract Palamon with his blade, so he fell back on his last and most effective weapon, his tongue.

"Hey, Palamon?"

His opponent's eyes narrowed. "Why do you waste time on words?" He swung his sword again in a wide arc that Alistair barely deflected. "Save your breath for blows."

Alistair sought for a topic that would cause the knight to lose his temper. He didn't have to look far. They'd trained together for two years now, and, for better or for worse, all the Templar initiates knew each other well. "I was just wondering?"

"Wondering what?" Palamon's voice held more than a touch of exasperation.

"I was wondering why you were sent to the Chantry. Because I heard that they just wanted you out of the way so you didn't screw up the succession."

As insults went, it was a poor one, but it was the best Alistair could do at short notice. His attention span, divided as it was between Palamon, Palamon's heavy and extremely pointy sword, and the magic he was attempting to summon without Palamon noticing, was short.

Palamon sighed and swung again. The heavy blow that nearly took Alistair's head off. "You heard wrongly. My family has a long and illustrious history of serving with the Templars." He looked at Alistair down his nose. "Something which you would know nothing about, bastard."

Alistair winced. The conversation wasn't exactly going the way that he had planned. "Ouch." He feinted to the side. Palamon didn't fall for it. He fell back on tried and trusted insults. "So you know my mother wasn't noble. No matter. At least she wasn't an Orlesian traitor."

He watched as the insult struck home. Palamon was notoriously touchy about his half-Orlesian heritage.

"You will kindly not..." Palamon punctuated his conversation with shattering blows. “...insult...my...mother!"

Several things happened at once. Alistair's sword snapped under the force of Palamon's blows. The tip of the blade spun to one side and buried itself inch-deep in the soil. Alistair held up the hilt in useless defense as Palamon growled and drew his sword back for another blow, focused in and felt the magic spiral up through him. It wasn't as strong as it could have been-the lyrium that would have lent the enchantment potency was reserved only for full Templars- but it was strong enough.

"Holy Smite!"

The spell burst forth from the hilt of Alistair's useless sword like an avalanche. It hit Palamon in mid-swing and licked over his breastplate like bright fire. It knocked him from his feet and carried him clear out of the practice ring with a noise like a hundred saucepans falling from a wagon.

Alistair dropped his broken sword and collapsed on hands and knees. There was a sudden silence, punctuated only by the hymns drifting from the Chantry and the sound of Ser Mark's slow clapping.

"Very good, Alistair."

Alistair was too exhausted to bask in the rare praise. Ser Mark crossed over to where Palamon lay, blinking owlishly up at the sky. He stretched out his hand and helped Palamon to his feet. "Let this be a lesson to you all," the Templar said, looking around at the frozen duelists, who had without exception stopped their own practice bouts to wonder loudly what all the fuss was about. "It is tempting to focus entirely on swordplay during these matches. Forget the Templar skills and you forget who we are! You forget what we are!" He pointed at Palamon. The initiate leaned on his sword with a dazed expression on his face. "And you lose!"
Alistair struggled to his feet. He wiped sweat from his face ineffectively with the back of his mailed gauntlet and picked up the broken pieces of his sword. His arms hurt like hell.
Ser Mark strolled over to him. "Well done, Alistair.' He looked Alistair up and down, as if it were a test. If it was Alistair got the feeling that he had just failed, but he got that feeling from Ser Mark all the time. "Perhaps you are not entirely useless after all."
Alistair bowed as best he could.
Ser Mark raised his voice. "Well done, initiates. We shall continue this lesson another time. Meditate on what you have just learned. Ser Palamon, you will have removed the dents from your armor by the next time you arrive on this practice field. Ser Alistair?"

"Yes, ser?"

"Don't think that I've forgotten about the scriptures. I want them on my desk by evening. All relevant passages. Understand?"

Alistair, who had been hoping that Ser Mark had indeed forgotten, nodded. "Yes, ser."

The templar sergeant nodded. "Dismissed."

Alistair left the field as quickly as he could. He evaded both his friends, who wished to congratulate him, and Palamon's cronies, who darted evil looks at him like arrows. He skirted around the dormitories where the rest of the initiates would be at rest and he slunk off to the Chantry to find a quill and some parchment. One of the more sympathetic Sisters gave him some much-used scraps of paper. Alistair sanded the scraps clean and spent the rest of the afternoon copying lines from the library's extremely thick edition of Justinian's sermons. He was unsure which passages were relevant so he copied them all, as he suspected Ser Mark had intended. His right arm ached by the time that he had finished and his handwriting was all but illegible, but the work was complete. Ser Mark had only asked him to copy the scriptures; he hadn’t specified that they be legible.

At least I've finished the damned thing, Alistair thought as he headed for Ser Mark's study to hand the papers in.

As he pushed open the door, he had the first piece of luck that day. The study was empty. Alistair congratulated himself on his timing. He left the papers on the sergeant's desk and fled, wondering as he went how such a pointless task would make him a better Templar.

Because when I meet some maleficar out in the woods, I'm sure an encyclopedic knowledge of bloody scripture is going to help.

He considered returning to the dormitory and rejected it out of hand. Aleyne would probably be there, but so would Palamon. Denerim was out of bounds. There was always the Chantry, but Alistair had had all the sermons he could take for one day.

Besides, I don't think the Maker's likely to answer my prayers for a way out of His holy orders.

That left only one place to go.

Alistair hurried to the back of the Chantry, hoping nobody noticed him. Nobody did. Tucked away in the far western corner was an overgrown and forgotten graveyard. It was rarely used; cremation having replaced burial as the funeral method of choice for all good Andrastians over the last fifty years. The gravestones were crumbling and ancient. Their inscriptions were indecipherable.

Alistair sank down behind the tallest stone in the most overgrown corner of the courtyard. He shook out his cramped right hand, flopped on his back and stared up at the sky. The walls of the Chantry and the rooftops of Denerim ringed his view. The sight of the town usually reminded Alistair that there was more to life than the Chantry, but this time it failed to lift his spirits. He could see his life stretching out before him, filled with war and duty and an early death in battle.

If I'd chosen this life, then things would be different, he thought.

Nobody in their right mind would actually choose to be a Templar, but then most of the Templar initiates hadn't been chosen as much as sent. Some of them came from families with a tradition of sending excess sons to the Chantry. The remainder hailed from common families in Denerim. Maybe the rest of the initiates were as unhappy with their lot as he was, but if that was true then they hid it damn well. Maybe they actually looked forwards to a lifetime of hunting down half-trained mages.

Or maybe it's just me. I was unhappy at Redcliffe. I'm unhappy here, and I'll probably be unhappy somewhere else in the future.

Great.

Alistair knew that there were good points about the Chantry. It offered shelter, discipline, food and all the scripture you could swallow. Right now it was hard for him to think of more. He toyed with possibilities in his mind. I could run away. Return to Redcliffe. Join the Crimson Oars. Or the Crows. I could smuggle lyrium or become a famous knight.

Of course, with my luck, I'd probably end up dead in a ditch.

Great Maker's breath! I can't do this anymore. There must be more to life than this.

He sighed, pulled his knees up to his chest and let his gaze roam over the Chantry grounds. A tall palisade of rough logs separated the monastery from the sisters' quarters. It blocked most of the sounds and all of the light, but if Alistair concentrated, he could just make out the voices of female initiates on the other side of the wall. They seemed to be having slightly more fun than Alistair was, although he was too far away to make out any of the specifics.

He found the sound of their chatter unsettling. The last woman he'd had anything to do with had been Isolde, and she had hated him. It had been eight years ago, but the memories still smarted.

He could still remember the tightening of her lips every time she looked at him, the wrinkles that appeared between her eyes as she frowned, trying to work out whether Alistair was really Eamon's bastard or not. She'd never come straight out and said it-that would have been unspeakably rude-, but she'd gone out of her way to make things hard for him. His dreams of returning home were as unlikely as his fantasies of becoming a pirate or a knight.

No, I can't go back. There's no place for me at Redcliffe. I have to stay here and learn to make the best of things.

Alistair pushed the cloud of self-pity away from him like a cloak and looked up at the sky. The light had already begun to fade. He'd be expected back in the Chantry for evening prayers before too long.

Alistair got to his feet. He brushed earth from his breeches and groaned at the aches and pains in his back. Wrapped in thought, he failed to notice the small group of initiates walking down the tiny path that ringed the graveyard. He was already on the path before he even noticed them.

By the time he did, it was far too late.