Chapter Text
Denzil Amell had quite the task ahead of him. King Alistair and Queen Anora had just awarded him the Terynir of Gwaren for his services during the Blight. As the man who had defeated Uldred at Kinloch Hold and led the mages during the Final Battle, many thought him justified of this honour, but there were those who thought that a mage could not be trusted to hold the title. This meeting of the Privy Council, plus a few other important persons, would be to determine the extent of his power and whether he could legally rule his Teyrnir from Gwaren itself, instead of returning to the Circle.
“But what if he somehow hoodwinks all of his household and gives them the slip? We could have an apostate on our hands!” Cried someone. Denzil thought it might have been the Bann of Portsmouth, but all these old men looked the same to him. Long, grey hair, wrinkled skin, a typical Fereldan look to them, and Robes of State that had seen better days.
“Don’t be ridiculous, he is a personal friend!” The King burst out over the growing ruckus. “Now, I liked the idea of a Templar accompanying Amell to Gwaren and acting as part of his bodyguard in addition to the two we’ve already got. And need I remind you that dwarves are resistant to magic so they can’t be hoodwinked by a demon!”
Denzil thought this was stretching the truth quite a bit, but stayed silent as he had for the entire meeting. He had quite clearly witnessed several of his dwarven friends be taken into the Fade by the Sloth demon back at the Circle, and wanted to start some research into dwarves’ resistance to magic and how much it protects them from various magical effects. One of the benefits of becoming a Teyrn was that he’d have the funds to buy all sorts of books on magical theory, he supposed.
Finally, it was decided that three templars would be sent to make up a guard of five, and providing that the most senior of these templars saw only good behaviour, they would reduce the templar guard to two after a year. He had no idea how the King had managed to whittle down the number of templars from two dozen to three, but then Alistair had become a lot more skilled at negotiating since he put forward his claim to the throne.
“So, there is a contingent of templars already here from the coronation, so really Amell can leave whenever he wishes. If that’s all, we can wrap this up and deal with ordinary Kingdom business tomorrow. Thank you everyone,” the Speaker concluded, and with that, everyone started to stand up and file out of the room, all in various states of hurrying. Denzil stood up and shook out the new robes he had received from the Master of the Wardrobe, as a gift from the King in token of his new token of a Teyrn. When he arrived at Gwaren, he would have his Master of the Wardrobe make him up a set of robes that were more comfortable and were more like the clothes he wore at the Circle, although maybe in some softer fabrics.
Making his way back to his suite of rooms, he was joined by his best friend Caoileann, who fell in behind him and put on her best scowl, which wasn’t very impressive. When Denzil turned around to close the door behind them, he caught sight of her expression and suppressed the urge to laugh; it would only make her self-conscious and undo all the hard work her wife had done in bringing her out of her self-imposed shell.
“You really don’t have to act like my bodyguard, it’s all just an excuse to have company. And besides, I haven’t even left the palace yet, I’m hardly in any danger!”
“I suppose so, your Lordship,” she answered, with an impish grin breaking out on her face afterwards to show how silly it was. “It helps reinforce the pretence though, and Leoflæd might have been watching and I need to practise if she isn’t going to beat her lessons into me!”
“Well, will you stay for a bite to eat, or have you got plans with Leoflæd?”
“She said she’d be done with her training by the time you’d be out of the meeting, and it went on a lot longer than it should have, so I’d expect she’ll be along in a while- Oh hello, my love!” Leoflæd burst into the room with all her usual careless grace, heading straight for the sofa Caoileann was sitting on, and draped herself around her wife. Denzil was always impressed with her ability to do that, considering she was a dwarf, but he thought it might have something to do with the fact that she was a rogue, and a skilled one at that. They shared a chaste kiss, before Caoileann’s stomach rumbled and all three of them laughed, with Denzil insisting they all tuck into the food that had been left on the table in the middle of the room for when he returned to his rooms.
“So, when do you plan on leaving?” Leoflæd managed around a mouthful of mashed potato.
“Well, I have a little work to do before I leave, and packing will take a while – especially given the sheer number of things I’m supposed to be taking with me. Why I need three mahogany desks is beyond me, but there we go. I would imagine we can start on the road in maybe 5 days? I’ll also have to pick out some suitable mounts for both of you, since neither of you know anything about horses!”
“Well that isn’t our fault, I hadn’t seen the surface until a year ago, and Caoileann only has experience with halla,” the dwarf protested with a laugh.
“I’m sure I could learn quickly, after all how different can horses and halla be?” The elf said earnestly.
Denzil gave a little chuckle and explained to her that horses were bred to do different jobs than halla, and were a lot bigger. Caoileann blushed and repeated that she was a quick learner, but Leoflæd silenced her by saying that it really didn’t matter.
The mage finished his pheasant pie quickly when he saw that the two women were clearly desperate to be alone in each other’s company, and excused himself. They had their own quarters that they shared, but they were cramped and there was no guarantee of privacy. Here in his own suite, no one would disturb him (or them) given the late hour, and he had no intention of doing anything but digging his nose into a book on the intricacies of electricity. It wasn’t written by a mage or from a magical perspective, but rather a scholar who had conducted experiments and was trying to determine the exact of nature of the phenomenon. It fascinated him, and his rationale was that different perspectives often spotted important things that would have been missed otherwise. Hopefully, the book would help him to improve his own mage-craft, but more importantly it would help him to write his thesis on the link between naturally occurring phenomena, like lightning in a storm, and mage-created lightning.
He finished his day with a quick wash after making some headway into the book, and tucked himself into the massive four-poster bed with a cup of hot cocoa and a hot water bottle to guard his feet against the chill that found him even beneath the layers of blankets and furs on the bed. He thought it was going to be hard to rule the Teyrnir, especially given the already present mage prejudice, but he relished the thought of an intellectual challenge, and was planning on showing the local population that not every mage was hell-bent on scary, offensive magics, but that some were more scholars than mages, and dedicated to improving the world around them, not destroying it.