Andraste's Key

Chapter 2: Nuraya

Chapter Two

Nuraya

Nuraya Amell, the Champion of Redcliffe, Hero of Ferelden and former Commander of the Grey was weeding her garden on a warm spring afternoon. It had taken her years to establish it behind the Dungarven smithy, but this year she hoped for a bumper crop. A viney vetch weed tangled itself amongst the elfroot and Nuraya busied herself on removing it without inflicting too much damage of the young leaves. This was the best part of the year, standing in the cool earth, barefoot and pulling weeds from the garden.

Five years had passed since she resigned from the Grey Wardens and left Amaranthine. After sending Anders to Kirkwall, she dispatched a note to the First Warden in Weisshaupt and formally resigned her commission as Commander of the Grey. She sent two names as potential replacements, recommending both with equal regard: Oghren and Nathaniel Howe. Instead, the First Commander sent a senior Warden from Orlais, Sasan Rastignac and accepted her retirement. Perhaps the senior Grey Warden in Denerim, Anora Theirin, was vying for the position, and the First Warden decided a neutral party would avoid more in-fighting. Wholeheartedly fed-up with politicking, she did not bother to investigate and left the Wardens to fight it out amongst themselves, supposing that without Darkspawn they had a tendency to turn upon each other.

After Amaranthine, she moved to her home village of Dungarven.

The only true reward she received from King Alistair was a written agreement between the Crown and the Chantry that permitted her to open a quiet healing clinic and allowed her to ostensibly, disappear from public life. Even though the country wanted a hero to be flaunted at every festival, no one really wanted to deal with the tension and the sense of anxiety she brought upon the clergy, and by extension, the nobility. A quiet life in the country was a win-win situation for all parties. Not surprisingly, the Chantry required only one condition of her resettlement--that she be appointed a templar steward to ensure she was not in fact, organizing an underground revolution with the intentions of turning every mage against the Chantry. Nuraya agreed, so long as the templar did not prevent her from attending to her patients. Nuraya was not sure how Alistair managed, but he sent an old acquaintance, whom he had known before the Blight and believed he had the right demeanour and temperament for Nuraya.

As soon as Nuraya’s father, Maldwyn, nailed the healing clinic sign over top the door, Ser Ruskin Kirch moved in to his post next door. Every month, he had to report her activities and any concerns to the local Chantry and from there, Nuraya was unsure where those reports went. Five years later, she was quite convinced that Ser Ruskin and Revered Mother Lindys met for tea and shared local gossip once a month.

With her hoe, she turned the soil in a patch of feverfew. A voice distracted her work. She snapped her head up and lost her straw hat in a patch of purple coneflower.

“Need a hand?”

She stepping out of the garden, wiping her bare feet in the grass. “Unless you can prevent a late frost, I think everything is under control, Ser Ruskin.” She scooped a ladle full of water from her bucket, drank the fresh spring water and then sat in a bench near an elderberry bush. 

With a click, the pushed on the wrought-iron latch and opened the garden gate. Waving, he wandered in, slowing as if he were deep in concentration. Ruskin had stopped wearing his armor two years ago, on account of its utter impracticality. He wore a surcoat with the templar emblem embroidered on the front. It was considerably cooler and he seemed to feel a need to blend in to his current posting. Their relationship was strictly professional. He seemed friendly enough, but kept a cool distance. Once over a beer at the local Inn, he admitted that he liked this posting enough that he did not want to be accused of fraternization. She appreciated his position and took his lead. She often encouraged Geordie, a journeyman smith who worked with her father, to take him to the Winking Moon Inn for Wicked Grace night, in hopes that he would fit in with the locals and offer assurances that she was just a small town healer. What he did with his own time, she did not ask.