CHOICES

ONE

Sigrun wasn't the only warden involved in the operation – but she was the only one who knew all the details. As warden commander for the past six years she had been a close confident of the king and the queen and they had all discussed what would happen when this time came.

The joining ritual and its side effects were still secret – no one outside the wardens knew about their truncated life span – or the exact methodology involved in killing an archdemon. Alistair had wisely decided that the Ferelden people didn't need to know their king had a finite time on the throne – the possibilities for political unrest as he neared his fiftieth year were too great.

"And to be honest I might not even make it that far," he'd said to her. "Zevran tells me the Antivans and the Orlesians have started probing the assassins for contracts on me, and there are always accidents. Why I know that my great great grandfather, King... whatsisname..... died from eating a rotten potato on his twenty-eighth birthday. There are always rotten potatoes lying about."

It was his talk of accidents that gave Zevran the idea in the first place. The king and queen were frequent travellers from Denerim – Alistair liked to think he was a hands on ruler, although Sigrun suspected he just took every chance possible to get away from court life. There were bandits on the roads. The occasional lost darkspawn. Bears.

So it came to pass that in the twenty-fourth year of his reign, King Alistair Theirin and Queen Miranda Cousland were waylaid by bandits in a pass near the Brescillian woods. Although the bandits were killed – the royal carriage was too damaged to repair and the soldiers accompanying the King and Queen could not protect them. They fell defending their rulers and the King and Queen were lost. Their bodies were brought in state back to Denerim and given a royal burial. Their son, Duncan, only eighteen years old, wept openly at the funeral before taking up his duties as king. Although still young, he was surrounded by the carefully picked advisors his father had surrounded himself with in the early years of his reign. The transfer of power was smooth and while Ferelden mourned the loss of her king and her hero, there was a certain poetry about their final moments. Bards wrote songs and tales of the two battling back to back in their last moments together – as they had against the darkspawn horde and the archdemon twenty-four years ago.

Sigrun accompanied them to the deep roads. She returned frequently – usually with new recruits seeking their vials of blood, but this time she was alone with them. Miranda she had always been comfortable with, but Alistair was something of an enigma for her. In his years as king he had little to do with Sigrun directly – preferring to leave the administration of the wardens to his wife "She knows what she wants, Sigrun – better ask her," and his human humour sometimes grated on her nerves.

On the trip to Orzammar, though, she found he was a different person. He was more relaxed – the jokes seemed less forced. There was a lightness around the two of them that she'd not seen before, despite the film that covered Miranda's eyes – the shadows under them.

Her dark hair was streaked with white now. It had started greying after the third miscarriage – around the time she'd given up her warden commander duties. The pressure on Alistair to marry again or at least take a consort capable of bearing a child wore her down, Sigrun knew that. When Duncan had been born she'd been so much happier – but she'd been less inclined to join in training exercises – more willing to let Sigrun and Anders test out the new recruits. She didn't like spending time away from Alistair and Duncan went everywhere with her – strapped to her in a sling.

There were no more children. Duncan had been coddled for his first few tenuous years – those years when many children were lost to disease. Alistair had recalled Wynne's son from the tower to be their personal physician. He knew how important it was that this child survived.

The situation had been explained to Duncan. He knew he had to lose his parents, knew how important it was that the rest of Ferelden not know the reason. His tears at the funeral had been genuine. He was never going to see them again and chances were they would really be dead within weeks.

The deep dwarves didn't recognise the king and queen. Sigrun was still considered dead to them – even the legion ignored her now with her new status, but she was a familiar figure, even though the two wardens who accompanied her were older than her usual new recruits. Bhelen had been assassinated four years before – the new king wasn't interested in meeting every grey warden who travelled through Orzammar to the deep roads – there was a steady, slow stream of them despite the depletion of Ostagar. They went down, they didn't come back.

The retaken Thaig still felt dangerous to Sigrun – the taint, the darkspawn were too close. She wondered if it affected the families who lived there. There were supposedly no casteless any more, but the inhabitants of this thaig were the new underclass. The close you lived to the taint, the less money you had. They ignored the wardens.

They set up camp just at the entrance to the deep roads. Sigrun knew she'd have to leave them soon. Alistair was already looking away from civilisation, his eyes had taken on a serious expression unlike him. The web of lines around them had deepened, even in the few days since leaving Denerim. Sigrun had heard the two of them at night, waking every hour or so, comforting each other. The nightmares were getting stronger the closer they got to the roads.

During the day, though, they were happy. Laughing together. Telling stories about their time on the road:

"Remember when Shale used to watch us at night..."

"Wynne and your socks.."

"Morrigan's nose!"

Sigrun felt left out. She wondered why she travelled with them. Perhaps it was because there was a very real chance she'd be heading the same way – in a few years, maybe five if she was lucky. She didn't feel old, but looking at the two of them, Miranda so changed from the first time she'd seen her, determined and strong on the deep roads..... she found, when the time came, she was glad to leave.