The Calling

10

Bregan opened his eyes.

Something had changed while he slept. How long had it been? It was pitch dark in his cell, just as it had been when he had closed his eyes what seemed an eon ago. The Deep Roads were a single night that stretched on into infinity.

Somehow he suspected that a great deal of time had passed, however. The burning under his flesh had ebbed, to be replaced by a strange iciness. He poked his skin and found it heavy and sluggish, and wondered whether, if he poked hard enough, if the resulting dent might simply remain. His limbs felt detached, as if they didn’t quite belong to him.

So, too, had the humming lessened. Then, as he listened to it there in the blackness, he realized that wasn’t quite true. It was stronger. The far-off chorus had become a powerful symphony, a great swell of beautiful music that no longer pounded to get inside his head but instead tickled at the edges of his thoughts. It was far easier to ignore, but now he found it distracting. He found himself losing his train of thought whenever he listened.

He shook his head, refusing to be enticed, and sat up. The furs on which he had lain had been changed at some point. How, he wondered? They were thicker now, coarser. Feeling around in the dark, he also found some clothes folded neatly nearby. They were not his. They were made of a rough, scratchy material he didn’t recognize, perhaps dwarven. That made him wonder if they would even fit.

He stood up slowly, wincing at the aches he felt throughout his body. There was little pain, however. Running his hands over his bare skin, he noted that most of the bandages and poultices were gone. He was whole. His flesh was rough, however, as if he were covered in thick scars. Strangely, it also felt like he was touching someone else’s skin. It was as if he was numb. And cold, too, even if he did not shiver.

Carefully feeling through the clothing pile, he picked out what seemed to be a pair of trousers. That would do for now. They fit well enough even though, as he had suspected, they were indeed too short in the legs.

Where had the glowstone gone? He remembered that it had not been present when he returned to the cell, but not why. In fact, he remembered very little about returning to his cell at all. He had come alone, that much he knew, but what had happened with the Architect? He had a vague recollection that they had spoken, but his impressions were distant. Had it done something to his mind?

The idea should have alarmed him more, but it didn’t. He supposed it was possible that this, too, could be the result of magical meddling. But he doubted it. If the Architect had wanted to erase his memories or otherwise use magic to alter his mind, there had been far better opportunities for it to do so.

No, he had come back here willingly, to sleep. He had been exhausted. His limbs had been weighing him down like lead, and the incessant humming had nearly driven him mad. He remembered these things, and the slumber reaching up to drag him into oblivion almost before he touched the ground …

… and then nothing. No dreams, for perhaps the first time in his life. Grey Wardens always dreamed, the price of sharing the fringes of the darkspawn group consciousness. Yet now, nothing. Blissful unconsciousness.

Bregan waited for a time. He felt around a bit more on the floor and discovered no weapon, nor any armor. Perhaps he was still not trusted? It didn’t matter, really. The habit of keeping a weapon with him was something born of a lifetime spent as a warrior, a lifetime of preparation for a war he would never get to fight.

It was a lifetime he had despised.

How glorious simply to realize that. He wanted to leap around and shout it out loud. Certainly there was nothing stopping him—but who would care? Let his sword rot wherever it had ended up.

After what seemed like an hour spent pacing around the small chamber, he realized that he was waiting for the Architect to appear. It was an odd thing to discover. The darkspawn was not his friend, after all. He had chosen to remain, yes, but he still wasn’t certain why. Ostensibly he thought it was important to end the Blights, but the same part of him that had always hated being a Grey Warden wondered why he even cared about that. What did it matter to him now? Was he not the walking dead, his own suicide postponed by the Architect’s plan?

These thoughts made him strangely impatient. He found himself listening to that far-off music, the calling that reached in and cradled him each time he began to pay attention to it. It almost made him swoon, and each time he felt forced to shake it off. There were more important matters to deal with.

Bregan walked to the metal door and discovered it unlocked. It creaked open loudly, the sound reverberating throughout the hush that permeated the place. He almost expected a hue and cry to begin, and darkspawn to come rushing to restrain him, but none did. The quiet returned, punctuated only by the rise and fall of the distant chorus.

As he edged out into the hall, he realized that things were coming slowly into focus. He was making out the rough edges of the wall in front of him, and he could almost see the door he had just opened. It was as if he was walking in a deep forest, his eyes only just now becoming accustomed to the faint moonlight sifting in through the branches and revealing a shrouded world of trees and roots and rocks. Here there were only ancient stone walls and debris, however, and no light at all to which he might become accustomed. How was he able to see anything?

As he blinked and stared into the slowly receding shadows, Bregan realized that something was approaching. He froze, terror racing through him, and cursed the fact that his ability to sense darkspawn appeared to have fled him completely. It was a shriek, one of the tall and lanky creatures that the Grey Wardens had always considered the assassins of the darkspawn. They used stealth to their advantage, striking from the shadows and rending an opponent to ribbons with wickedly long claws. Their battle cry was a terrifying shriek—hence the name—that he had heard only once before in his life, and even then it was only in the distance as a lone one of these creatures stalked a forest, picking off any Warden it could find in the darkness.

The thing hunched down as soon as it spotted him, baring its long fangs in a threatening grimace. It hissed, brandishing those signature claws, but did not advance. Bregan tensed, a lone bead of sweat making its way inexorably down his brow. The shriek then calmed. Perhaps it had decided it was not about to be attacked? Bregan could not be certain. What ever the reason, it cautiously loped its way past him in the hall, keeping its dead eyes trained on him as it did so.

And then it was gone, disappeared back into the shadows. He waited, his heart racing, and wondered if it would return now and strike him from behind. But there was no surprise attack. It had simply passed him by. Bregan was alien enough to have caused it suspicion and even alarm, but not enough to be considered a threat.

He shuddered. He felt chilled, and the strangeness of his skin made him wooden. For a moment he was almost overcome by the desire to claw at his flesh, and to keep clawing at it until he peeled it back and scraped his way past what ever sludge had made its home just under the surface. And then that moment passed. His fear ebbed, and a sense of detachment returned.

If he could see, even poorly, perhaps this was a good time to explore.

It felt strange, walking around the remains of the dwarven fortress. The encroachment of the darkspawn corruption was enough that some areas were either completely impassable or impossible to determine what their function might once have been, but others seemed remarkably untouched. He found what might have been a kitchen, with a fire pit now encrusted with black moss and dirt surrounded by rusted pans and even knives. He recognized a counter and assorted barrels and cabinets all tossed about, as if some great calamity had turned the entire kitchen upside down and then simply left it to be overtaken by dust and time and the taint.

Indeed, that’s very likely what had happened here. What use would the darkspawn have for a kitchen, after all? Nothing the Grey Wardens had ever found gave them reason to think the darkspawn ate anything. The taint sustained them.

That thought brought to mind the fact that his own hunger had vanished. He had eaten nothing for days, and yet now he felt … full. Not sated, precisely, but unpleasantly filled with something that precluded actual hunger. The idea was disturbing, and he tried to turn his mind away from it.

He wondered where the dwarven bodies were. Had it been so long that even their skeletons had turned to dust? Had the darkspawn removed them? Had the dwarves all fled before the darkspawn had taken over this part of the Deep Roads? It occurred to him at the same time that he had no idea what the darkspawn did with their dead. There were no bones to be seen, yet he imagined they had to perish from natural causes like any other living creature. If they lived here, then where did they die?

Perhaps lived was too strong a word. There was no evidence that the darkspawn occupied the ruin in the same sense that humans or dwarves might have. There were no sleeping quarters, no places where they kept belongings. He knew that they were capable of forging equipment and building structures when they needed to, but if they did such things, they certainly didn’t do them here. Darkspawn clearly passed through and patrolled the ruin, but otherwise it felt very empty indeed.

As Bregan moved about the abandoned halls, he slowly realized that he could hear a new sound over the chorus. It was a strange, insistent scratching. He couldn’t place what it might be, only that it felt out of place amid the shadows and the gloom. Curiosity slowly overcame his apprehension. Cocking his head to listen, he felt his way around the halls and searched for a way to zero in on where it was coming from.

It didn’t take long to find. The light he noticed before anything else, a bright beacon shining through a far-off doorway that immediately hurt his eyes even though he was only seeing it from a distance. He had to put up his hands and blink through tears before he acclimated enough to approach. The closer he got, the more the dazzling light pained him. The sound became clearer, however—it was someone writing, as if with a quill. Interesting that he was able to pick that up from so far away. Fighting through his discomfort, he made his way to the doorway and looked inside.

It was difficult to see through the glare, but even what Bregan could see shocked him. The room he looked into was a library, not corrupted in any way and filled beyond capacity with books. There were great, wooden shelves lining the walls, each of them bursting with haphazardly stacked tomes. The books did not restrict themselves to the shelves, however. They littered the floor in tall piles that looked as if they might teeter over at any moment. Some lay open, others were leaned against the wall, still more formed a mountain of texts on an elaborate stone desk that took up much of the central chamber. The entire scene would not have looked out of place in some cultured dwarven nobleman’s estate in Orzammar, were it not for the disorganized chaos.

The Architect sat at the stone desk, an ornate lacquered chair rising high behind him. Bregan could see a quill pen in the creature’s hand, the feather busily twirling about as it wrote in a large, leather-bound ledger. The source of the blinding light was the glowstone, now hanging from the Architect’s chair and filling the library with flickering shadows. He didn’t remember the stone being so incredibly bright, certainly not enough to hurt his eyes.

The darkspawn noticed him standing in the door and paused in its writing. It appeared surprised to see Bregan, raising what might have been eyebrows had it had any hair in the desiccated flesh on its head. As soon as it realized his discomfort, it glanced at the glowstone and made the connection. With a wave of its gnarled hand, the stone’s radiance dimmed—enough to elicit a sigh of relief from Bregan. The pain was gone, and he could now see clearly into the room.

“My apologies,” the Architect offered.

“I woke up and you did not come.”

It nodded. “You have been asleep. I had no way of knowing for how long. I took the glowstone so I could write, and because I knew you would become more … sensitive when you awoke.”

Bregan frowned in confusion. He stepped gingerly into the library, marveling at the array of shelves along the wall. A tall stone ladder was hooked up to a runner that went the entire length around the room, allowing one to reach up to the very top of any of the shelves. A dwarven contraption, surely, but, unlike everything else he’d seen in this ruin, it was in excellent shape. “I don’t understand,” he finally said. “How long was I asleep? A day? More?”

“I do not know what a ‘day’ is.”

“You don’t?” Bregan waved absently at the shelves. “It doesn’t explain that in one of these books somewhere? I got the impression you read them.”

The darkspawn sat back in its chair, steepling its fingers as it watched him with great interest. Bregan somehow got the feeling that he had intruded on this creature’s sanctum, and yet it retained its polite and cultured air. Those eyes widened with alarm every time his hands came close to touching one of the books, however. Was there something there it didn’t want him to see? Or was it possessive of its treasures?

On closer examination, Bregan noted that most of the books were yellowed and falling apart. Many of them had been poorly rebound and repaired, probably by the Architect itself. No doubt its concern was that he would damage them accidentally.

Had these ancient tomes been here all along? Or did the emissary collect them from throughout the Deep Roads? He tried to imagine this creature voyaging to ruined thaig after ruined thaig, sifting through rubble for dwarven books that hadn’t completely disintegrated in the passing centuries. There couldn’t have been many. The few with legible text left on the binding were written in dwarven, and thus beyond Bregan’s ability to decipher. What topics would interest such a creature, he wondered?

“I have read them,” the Architect replied. “Some of them I have read many times. There are many things they speak of that I do not understand.”

“A day is one of the ways we measure time. The sun falls and it becomes night, and when the sun comes up again a day has passed, twenty-four hours in total.”

“Ah.” It seemed pleased. “I have read of these things, but I had no way of knowing of their connection. Thank you for providing me this information.”

“You’re welcome.” Bregan walked up to the great stone desk, carefully navigating his way between the stacks of books scattered on the floor. Several of the tomes were quite large, he noticed, and one leaning against the desk was almost as wide as the desk itself. Its pages were cracked and so tarnished yellow that the delicate writing was almost indecipherable. It wasn’t dwarven but rather Tevinter, the language of the ancient magisters. Arcane writing. “You said I would be more sensitive when I awoke. Did you mean to the light? Why would I be more sensitive?”

The darkspawn studied him quietly for a moment, cocking its head to the side as if confused. “Do you not remember?”

“Not well, no. But something has changed.”

“You complained that the calling of the Old Gods was driving you mad. I offered to speed up the progression of the taint within you, and you agreed.”

Bregan froze. The chill of his skin, the change in the buzzing, the strange sensations … what had been done to him? “What do you mean, I agreed?” The alarm in his voice made the Architect stiffen. It regarded him with concern, but did not move from its chair.

“I was not entirely certain that I would be able to,” it explained. “But you insisted. I will admit to a certain fascination with the idea. The possibility that your change could be accelerated, and the changes that would incur. Some I could guess.” It gestured to the glowstone still hanging on the chair, now giving off only a dim orange glimmer. “It was no brighter than previously. It is your tolerance that has altered.”

Bregan stood there, stunned. He had asked for this? Slowly it dawned on him that for all the strangeness, the constant humming was no longer driving him mad. It had become something beautiful and strange now instead, and it was he that had transformed into something alien. He felt it. He felt the change under his skin.

He held his hands up in front of his face. The dark stains he had seen on his flesh previously had spread. They had spread until his skin was little more than mottled and dark with it, the areas where it had changed now withered and rough, much like the darkspawn’s flesh was. His nails were long and black, almost talons.

Shuddering in horror, he allowed his hands to drop. “I want to see my face.”

The darkspawn cocked its head again. “How do you wish to do that?”

“A mirror. Give me a mirror.”

“I know of no such device.”

He slammed a fist down on the desk, sending several of the more precariously stacked books tumbling off. “Something reflective! I need to see myself!” he shouted furiously.

It seemed nonplussed and slowly gathered its brown robes and stood up from the chair. Without a word it turned and left the room, leaving Bregan standing where he was. He felt foolish. He felt angry. What had he done? Was the emissary simply leaving him, offended at his behavior?

Did he really think the creature had done this to him without permission? No. No, he didn’t. If it had wished to experiment on him, it could easily have done so before. He had asked for this, and even as he considered the idea a vague recollection of it swam across his mind. He had been in pain. The humming had been everywhere, even inside him. He had wanted it gone.

It took several minutes before the Architect returned. It held up what appeared to be a round, steel shield. A thing of dwarven make, yet so covered in the dark tendrils of corruption it would be impossible to see anything in it. He glanced in confusion at the emissary, yet it ignored him. With a gesture of its hand a great black flame burst into being upon the metal.

Waves of heat emanated from it, making Bregan realize just how chilled he actually was. He was standing in the chamber with only a pair of trousers on, yet it was not the temperature that made him cold. He knew that.

He watched as the black fire crawled its way along the shield’s surface, scouring it clean. Within moments the brilliant sheen of the metal on its inside surface had been revealed. It wasn’t quite a mirror, but it would probably do. The Architect unceremoniously handed it over.

Bregan expected the shield to be burning hot, but it wasn’t. It was barely even warm. Enchanted, he assumed. Not that it should be a surprise—who knew how many treasures the dwarves had left in these tunnels when their kingdoms had crumbled? All an enterprising darkspawn had to do was find them.

He held the shield up and looked into it. The minute details were indistinct, but the condition of his overall face was obvious: The taint now covered it all. His white hair had fallen out in clumps, and now there were only scattered strands and wisps of it left amid the withered and blackened flesh. His lips also seemed to have peeled back from his teeth, leaving him with a permanent skeletal grimace.

The rest of it could not be made out, and perhaps that was for the best. Bregan let the shield drop, a numbness coming over him. He had seen ghouls like this. Infected people that had survived long enough for their bodies to be ravaged by the course of the taint. Now it had finally caught up with him, as well. Strange that he didn’t feel more upset. The shock had worn off, leaving only a sense of inevitability.

“You are angered?” the Architect asked him carefully.

“No.”

“There is another chair behind you, against the wall, if you wish to sit.” Bregan turned and found that, sure enough, a simpler stone chair was where the emissary indicated. It was buried under a mound of rolled-up scrolls and weathered tomes. He walked over and cleared it off before sitting, discarding the shield on the floor. The aged stone protested under his weight. It was almost too small for him, built for a dwarf, but he didn’t care.

“I want to talk about your plan,” he stated.

The darkspawn sighed, but appeared unsurprised. It walked back around its desk and settled into its chair. The light of the glowstone wavered as if in acknowledgement of its presence. “Yes, it is time,” it finally said.

Questions percolated through Bregan’s head. He had been too crazed and exhausted to ask the Architect about his plan when he’d returned earlier, or at least he assumed that had been the case. There was nothing more he could do about his physical condition, after all. Really, he owed the Architect thanks for sparing him a long and agonizing process—one that the Grey Wardens had started when they inducted him into the order long ago. It was finished. He should feel relieved, if anything.

“You plan on unleashing the taint on the surface?”

“Those that survive,” it began slowly, “will become immune to the taint, as the Grey Wardens are. This is an immunity they would pass on to their offspring.”

“But they would be tainted. Like I am now.”

The creature nodded, as if this was something it had already considered and that didn’t bother it in the slightest. “That is so. I told you earlier that darkspawn and humanity would need to find a middle ground. That is humanity’s part. Your people would endure a great change.”

Bregan sat in the chair for a minute, mulling this over. It should have bothered him more, the idea of initiating such genocide on such a scale. But this would be protecting them, too, would it not? He was doing as he had originally been tasked, as all the Grey Wardens had been tasked: End the Blights. Save the world. So long as that was what was happening here, he couldn’t ignore the result simply because of the cost. When he considered the loss of life during the First Blight alone—in fact, was he not sitting in a ruin that was evidence of all that had been lost? What sacrifice was too great for the sake of survival?

If it were possible to end the Blights.

“So you need my help. To bring about this change in humanity.”

The Architect spread its hands. “Not at all.”

Bregan was floored. He almost jumped out of his chair, and only calmed himself as he noted the tension in the darkspawn as it watched him. He took a deep breath and settled back into the stone seat. “But why did you bring me here, then? I assumed you needed to know what I know. Now you’re saying you don’t?”

“I do need to know what you know,” it said, clearly pleased that Bregan had managed to restrain himself, “but it has nothing to do with humanity. That part of my plan will proceed without your assistance.” It tapped its chin thoughtfully. “I know little of your kind, and often your reactions are surprising to me, but I had surmised that even though a Grey Warden might wish to end the Blights as much as I, you would hesitate to strike such a blow against your own kind to do it.” It peered at him, suddenly fascinated. “Am I wrong?”

“You aren’t wrong.” Bregan noticed the way the darkspawn looked at him, the way it wrung its hands and leaned forward in its seat. Was it excited? Normally the creature seemed so cultured and passive, the idea that it might be emotional about anything was odd. “So I assume you need my help with the other part of your plan. Dealing with the darkspawn.”

“That is so.”

“Are you planning genocide against your own kind, as well?”

It nodded. “What I intend will inevitably lead to such, yes.”

Now Bregan was intrigued. Somehow he had assumed that the Architect’s plan for the darkspawn would be more lenient than his plan for humanity. “But there’s more to it than that?”

“My kind are subject to the call of the Old Gods.” It leaned back in its chair, looking off into the distance as it spoke. There was almost a religious fervor to its words, a belief in its holy mission that came across very strongly. The fact that Bregan could find such belief here, in the shadows of the Deep Roads, was at the same time both intriguing and a little frightening. “So long as the call continues, it does not matter if our numbers are depleted. They have been depleted before, and yet each time we have rebuilt and each time we have done it with only one purpose in mind: finding the prisons of the remaining Old Gods to free them.”

A slow realization began to dawn on Bregan. “So you mean to …”

“To find and kill the remaining Old Gods, yes.” The creature smiled, an expression that turned into more of a toothy grin on its puckered and twisted face. It looked positively demonic when it did that. “And you know where they are.”

Bregan didn’t bother trying to hide the fact that it was true. He’d surmised that this was what the darkspawn sought back when he’d made his first attempt to escape. What else could he provide that this creature didn’t already know or already have access to?

To have it admitted, however, made him squirm. There were only a few within the order that knew the locations of the ancient prisons. He didn’t even know how that information had been acquired, or of what use it might be. Knowing the location of the prisons didn’t mean that the Grey Wardens knew how to reach them, after all. Those destinations were far beyond the reach of men.

“How do you even know that?” he finally asked.

“You are not the first Grey Warden to enter the Deep Roads.”

That made Bregan pause. Of course there would have been others. The Calling had been a tradition within the order since the First Blight. In the years after the first darkspawn invasion of the surface, fewer Grey Wardens died in battle. They lived longer lives and realized at the same time that their vaunted immunity had a time limit. Somehow he had assumed that he had been the first to have been captured, though there was no reason to.

How long had this been going on?

“These other Grey Wardens … they told you this? Willingly?”

The Architect stared at him, its animation gone as it considered its words. At least, that was what Bregan assumed it was doing. “Most of your kind that enter the Deep Roads die, even though I attempted for a long time to prevent that. The darkspawn do not always do my bidding, as you have seen, and even if they did, it is not always possible to take a Grey Warden alive.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“There has only been one, one that I was able to find and who spoke to me in time. It was he who told me of the Joining, and he who told me of the knowledge that one such as yourself might possess.”

“And where is this Grey Warden?”

“He is dead.” The Architect’s tone was flat, perhaps even sad. Bregan considered the possibility that this man it spoke of had been a friend of some kind. Was that possible? It seemed perhaps it was. “By his own choice. He could not endure the transformation as you have. It was beyond his tolerance.”

“Ah.”

“I knew that one day you would come.” Now the darkspawn’s fervor returned, and it stared at Bregan intensely with its milky eyes. “And I knew that when you came, I would be able to bring you here, and that you would see the true purpose that lies before us.”

“You knew it?”

“I had a vision.”

Bregan shuddered, and he found himself growing even colder than he had felt before. Vigorously he rubbed his arms in the chair. Darkspawn dreaming seemed bizarre indeed. Was the Architect speaking of a prophecy? Did it believe in the Maker? He was almost frightened to ask, but the more he thought of the implications, the more agitated he grew.

Yet the thought of ending the Blights … according to the Chantry, it had all begun with the Maker. Mankind had intruded into heaven and destroyed it with his sin, and the Maker had thrown those men back to earth to become darkspawn. So was it not fitting that visions, the very handiwork of the Maker, be involved in the Blights’ end? Perhaps the Maker had forgiven mankind at last?

The very idea … could it be true? It made his heart beat quickly, made him nervously tap his foot on the floor.

“And, let us say I considered telling you where the remaining Old Gods were,” he said slowly. “How do I know this isn’t just some ruse for the darkspawn to do what you yourself say they are compelled to do: Find the Old Gods?”

“That is an excellent question. I do not know how it might be possible to convince you of this, but my intent is not to awaken the Old Gods. My intent is to slay them. Their call must come to an end.”

Bregan sat back in his chair, letting out his breath slowly. Kill the remaining Old Gods? Prevent another Blight from ever occurring? Set the darkspawn free from their compulsion? Were these things even possible? He didn’t know. Yet in his heart he knew he had already made his decision, when he had turned back into the Deep Roads with the Architect instead of escaping to the surface.

He didn’t even need to say it. The emissary watched him closely and was silent; he knew that Bregan was going to help him. Perhaps his vision had told him this and he’d known all along. Bregan knew a little of visions. He knew of the Fade, and what it meant to walk its roads. He knew that sometimes the Maker worked in mysterious ways. More mysterious than Bregan could ever have guessed, if there was truly some purpose to him being where he was and having suffered as he had.

“If we are to do this thing,” he sighed, “then there is something you should know. I believe my sister is coming. With other Grey Wardens. I think she knows I am still alive.”

The darkspawn didn’t ask how he knew. It merely nodded. “Yes, I am aware.”

“You are?”

“I am.” It leaned forward in its chair, staring at Bregan intensely. “We will need to prepare for their arrival.” It didn’t take long for Maric to discover what the murmur they’d heard at the underground lake had actually been. The sound arose again behind them as the group passed through a long and narrow cavern lined with stalagmites. Now that it wasn’t coupled with the echoes of dripping water it was much clearer, and sounded almost as if there were people hidden in the shadows whispering to each other under their breath.

“What is that?” he asked, stopping to look behind them. All he could see, however, was more impenetrable darkness and more rocks. The sound stopped immediately, as if reacting to the sudden scrutiny. He tried to peer into the darkness, half expecting to see bodies scurrying out of sight. But there was nothing.

Kell paused beside him, also turning to look. Maric wondered if the hunter’s strange eyes saw more than his did. Hafter stopped at the same time, sniffing experimentally at the air and uttering a low and menacing growl. Finally Kell pointed at one of the stalagmites just on the edges of the light given off by Fiona’s staff.

Maric watched, but didn’t see anything unusual about it. Just as he was about to ask, he suddenly noticed movement. The “stalagmite” unfolded, revealing a serpentine creature with a long and wormlike neck that ended in a maw full of sharp teeth. Its mottled skin was almost perfectly camouflaged to match the stone around it. It spun on them and hissed threateningly from afar, and then bounded off into the shadows with alarming speed.

Hafter growled again, eager to chase after the creature. The hunter restrained it with a small gesture. “The dwarves call them deep stalkers,” he whispered. “Were we fewer, or they more numerous, they would have already ambushed us.” He pointed to several other stalagmites nearby, and now Maric began to see the subtle differences. He noticed where the creature’s limbs folded up under its carapace, where it tucked its long neck under its body. Hidden in plain sight, the disguise was almost perfect. He could have reached out and poked them, they were so close.

“They’re just going to let us pass?”

“They will follow, for a time, hoping for one of us to stray. The sound you hear is them communicating to each other, telling of intruders to their domain.”

“We heard that back at the lake.”

The hunter looked at him with amusement. “Then you’re lucky you did not remain there longer. No doubt they were calling for more.”

“Lucky,” Maric repeated. Duncan had sat there by himself next to that lake, no doubt presenting an enviable target to these deep stalkers. He was the lucky one, probably.

They continued on in silence. A pall hung over the group now, and they all seemed eager to find their way back to the Deep Roads, if such a route existed. Utha stopped as soon as they left the cavern, kneeling and putting her hand to the ground. She had done this several times already, closing her eyes as if she could feel something within the stone that none of the others could. Dwarven stone-sense, Maric suspected, though he had never actually seen anyone use it before.

When she stood, she made a signal to Genevieve and led them down a new passage confidently. The Commander did not question her, and had said little of consequence since they’d left the lake. Nicolas, too, had been sullen and withdrawn, stumbling along without even a hint of preparedness should they need to fight. Duncan kept far away from the man, remaining miserably to the rear of the party, which Maric figured was probably smart of him.

He allowed himself to fall back to where the lad walked, and for a while they traveled together silently. Duncan refused to look at Maric, and though Fiona shot Maric a dangerous look of warning, he remained where he was.

“How are you feeling?” he finally asked.

Duncan seemed puzzled. “How should I be feeling?”

“I don’t know. That was quite the impressive outburst back at the cavern.”

“Yes, well.” Duncan shrugged, obviously hoping that Maric would simply let the conversation drop.

“You remind me a little of myself, you know.”

“Really? Maybe I should have myself fitted for a crown, then?”

Maric ignored the sharpness in his words. “When I fought in the rebellion, I wasn’t much older than you are now. I was never sure of myself, always questioning whether I was good enough or strong enough to be king. Every loss was agonizing because I was the one who caused it.”

Duncan snorted. “Seems like you made out well enough.”

“I know they call me Maric the Savior. I don’t know who started that. Probably Rowan, come to think of it. She always encouraged the adoration of the people, because she believed it was important.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“My wife, the Queen.” He tried to keep his voice flat. From Duncan’s curious glance, he suspected he wasn’t very successful. “She died. Three years ago, now.”

“I’m sorry,” Duncan said earnestly. “Did you love her?”

“I did. I do.” Maric cleared his throat, studiously looking ahead. “There was another woman before her, however. An elven woman by the name of Katriel, the very one who led us to Ortan thaig when I was in the Deep Roads. She saved my life, but when I found out she was a spy and had cost us the battle at West Hill, I killed her. I ran her through.”

Maric could feel the lad’s speculative look, and was suddenly glad for the dim light as he was sure his color was rising. Why he was suddenly talking about this, he wasn’t certain. He had never talked about it to anyone before, not since it had happened. Perhaps he was being foolish.

“I’d heard about that,” Duncan said carefully. “Some of it, anyway.”

“No doubt. Loghain made sure word got out, so everyone knew that justice had been done.” He turned and looked at Duncan directly. “My point is that it wasn’t justice. I was furious and felt betrayed. I felt responsible for all the people who had died because I was the one who trusted her. I couldn’t forgive her. I murdered her, and I never regretted anything more in my life.”

“Oh.”

“We all make mistakes, Duncan. Some of them are going to cost others dearly. What’s important is that your intentions were good, and that you learn from what you’ve done.” He attempted a wan smile. “I wish I’d known that a long time ago.”

They walked side by side for a time, both of them staring off into the shadows in awkward silence. Finally the lad looked at him, and for a moment Maric could have sworn the lad actually looked bashful. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

Maric nodded and smiled. There was nothing more he could say.

“Hold!” Genevieve suddenly shouted from the front.

They all stopped, Kell drawing his bow and nocking an arrow almost instantly. Utha was ahead of them and gestured to the others to join her. They moved up, and as Fiona cautiously brightened the white glow from her staff, what the dwarf had found was revealed.

An entire section of the cave ahead of them had collapsed, and was almost impassable. What was far more important, however, was that past the hole in the cavern wall appeared to be a section of the Deep Roads. It would require them to climb up the rubble and squeeze through a fairly narrow aperture, but the signs of dwarven architecture beyond were unmistakable.

“It’s a way back,” Fiona breathed.

“I thought it seemed like we were headed up,” Duncan said, and Utha nodded her head in agreement.

“Are there darkspawn up there?” Maric asked.

“No,” Fiona offered, the faraway look in her eyes telling him that she was casting out her Grey Warden senses. “Not nearby, anyhow.” The elf tapped the onyx brooch attached to her chain shirt. “It looks like the gifts from the Circle are proving their worth. We’ve lost them for the moment.”

Genevieve seemed unconvinced. “Perhaps,” she frowned, “though it is odd. Normally they swarm like a horde of bees when disturbed.” She drew her greatsword, the blade flashing in the staff’s glare, and approached the rubble cautiously with it in hand. Waving for the others to follow her, she began her ascent.

It was a slow pro cess to get through the hole in the wall. In the end, they needed to clear some of the rocks at the top of the pile to make room for those with bulkier armor. Utha was the first through, and she gave the all clear from the other side.

It was good to be back in the dwarven passages, Maric thought. He noticed almost immediately, however, that the signs of darkspawn corruption had returned. There was an almost marked transition from the natural caves they had just left. Why was that? Was there something about the Deep Roads that made them more susceptible to this strange infestation? There he saw the familiar trails of black filth and the clusters of fleshy sacs lining the walls. The crumbling statues, too, looked much like every other part of the Deep Roads they had been to. They could be anywhere.

Genevieve looked about grimly. “Do you recognize anything?” she asked Maric.

He shook his head.

“Then we proceed.”

They traveled for hours, Genevieve pushing them mercilessly, as if she expected an attack from the darkspawn at any moment. The other Wardens, however, seemed content that this was unlikely. They had slipped the noose, as it were, and if the darkspawn were searching for them anywhere it was back in the network of caverns they had just left. This appeared to bring no comfort to their commander, who became more tense the longer they traveled.

Twice they passed tunnels that branched off from the main route, the entrances marked with great stone archways. Utha signed that these were abandoned thaigs, though any indication of which ones they had been was now scoured away by time and the encroachment of darkspawn corruption. The dwarf stood at the entrances and stared sadly into the shadows beyond, clenching and unclenching her fists. Maric had to wonder what it must be like for her, to know your people once ruled a great empire that had been reduced to a shadow of its former self.

Much later they came upon a section of the Deep Roads that had mostly collapsed into the caverns below, leaving a gaping chasm filled with little more than cobwebs and darkness. The wall on one side remained intact, along with a narrow ledge at its foot just barely wide enough to walk along. They eyed it with suspicion, but Utha seemed convinced that it was well enough supported that they could cross it one at a time, if there was anywhere to reach. The light from Fiona’s staff was not enough to extend all the way to the other side. They could only assume that there even was another side.

Genevieve went first, overriding objections by saying her armor was the heaviest present. If they couldn’t get her across now, they wouldn’t be able to do so later. Kell tied a length of rope around her, but Maric doubted the rope would even hold her properly if the stone on the path gave way. It offered little more than peace of mind.

Still, she went across without a moment’s hesitation, flattening herself against the wall and sliding slowly along the ledge until she disappeared into the shadows. The rope represented their only indication that she had not fallen. Quiet minutes passed as they watched the rope carefully and Kell slowly let more and more of it out. Just when it looked like they were about to run out of rope, it jerked sharply. Twice. She was across.

Maric was one of the last to go, and it was an experience he was not likely to want ever to repeat. Slowly sliding along the narrow ledge, one barely got any indication that there was even a floor beneath. In that darkness it felt like he was suspended, and that he would pitch forward into the vast pit before him at any moment. He couldn’t see how deep it went, but he could feel it. He needed to stop once, pressing his head against the wall and closing his eyes to keep the world from spinning around him. Only the insistent tugging of the rope kept him moving, inching on toward the pinpoint of light on the other side.

When he finally stumbled off the ledge, he was sweating and trembling. Kell grabbed him and Fiona ran up. The warm glow of her staff was probably the most welcome sight he could possibly imagine.

“Are you all right?” she asked, concerned.

“I didn’t fall in,” he chuckled.

The elf frowned severely at him. “Is that a yes?”

“Err … I suppose so, yes.”

She snorted derisively and turned on her heel, walking away. Maric glanced askance at Kell and the hunter merely shrugged. He couldn’t explain it, either.

They pressed on, entering a new portion of the Deep Roads with tunnels that looked higher than he remembered. They trudged through portions that were flooded with shallow, brackish water and others that were so thick with the corruption they needed to cut a path through the black film. Maric’s sword was particularly suited for this, its runes glowing brightly as he forced the foulness to part before him. At one point they passed a hall lined with dwarven statues, most of them crumbled or covered in lichen and moss to the point of being unrecognizable.

Just when Maric felt like he was about to collapse from fatigue, he noticed a set of runes on one of the walls almost covered by dust and debris. “Wait!” he called out.

Genevieve ordered a halt and turned, concerned. He ran up to the wall, scraping it clear with his gauntlet, and smiled as he recognized a number of the markings. It had been years since he’d seen them, but he remembered them clearly. “I know these,” he exclaimed. “We passed by these! I mean, I did, when I was here before … we came this way!”

“Are you sure?” Genevieve asked skeptically.

“They could just look similar,” Duncan added.

Utha stepped forward and inspected the runes carefully. She made a series of motions at the others, and he didn’t need a translation.

“It doesn’t say anything about Ortan, right? It mentions another thaig?” At the dwarf’s cautious nod, he turned around and studied the tunnel carefully. There was more overgrowth and corruption here, but that had been the case ever since they’d entered the Deep Roads. The layout tweaked his memory, but he couldn’t tell if that was because he actually remembered this place or because so many of the passages were similar to each other. “If I’m right, there should be a crossroads ahead, with even more runes on the walls.”

The Grey Wardens blinked at each other, uncertain what to make of Maric’s pronouncement. Without another word they turned and began marching ahead. Within minutes, they reached the crossroads he remembered. There were lava flows here, channels in the walls carved by the dwarves and at one time filled with glowing lava to provide light. The area was covered in random debris, much of the roof having collapsed, and, as he had predicted, more large runes were carved into the walls.

Maric smiled broadly. “See? Just like I said!”

The exhausted relief on the faces of the others was obvious. The idea that they might not have simply been wandering aimlessly all this time was a welcome one. Only Genevieve seemed more disturbed by their luck than reassured. She eyed the pillar suspiciously and regarded Maric with a raised brow. “Do you know the way to Ortan thaig from here?”

It took only a moment of thought. “That way.” He pointed. “I remember we came the other way, and then Katriel … we saw those runes. That’s how we knew where we were going.”

She pondered carefully. “How long?” she finally asked.

“Less than a day.”

With a curt nod, she unshouldered her pack, tossing it to the ground. “Then we rest here.” When the others hesitated, staring at her in disbelief that she didn’t intend to push on, she shrugged. “For what ever reason, the darkspawn are not near. We must take advantage, while we can. Don’t bother setting up tents. We won’t remain long.”

Considering he was ready to collapse, Maric didn’t offer an argument.