The Calling

5

With the first light of dawn, a bloom of pink and orange, barely peeking over the horizon, the Grey Wardens arrayed themselves in front of the Deep Roads entrance with weapons drawn. Duncan tensed as King Maric approached the door. Without fanfare, he produced a stone medallion shaped like an octagon and inserted it into a similarly shaped depression in the center of the door. A loud crack shattered the quiet, startling a small flock of ravens nearby into sudden flight.

He watched as a line formed in the middle of the door. It became a crack, and then widened as the door split. The King stepped back cautiously. Slowly, with the sound of stone grinding heavily against stone, it opened up to reveal the gaping maw of the tunnel beyond it. A faint stench of decay belched forth from the shadows.

They waited. Duncan almost expected a horde of monsters to come rushing out at them, but none materialized. There was only silence.

The group began to step into the cave, but paused as Julien spoke. “Wait,” he said softly. The dark-haired warrior crossed his hands in front of his chest and bowed his head, and several of the other Wardens followed suit. Duncan lowered his head and coughed. Prayer always made him nervous.

“Though all before me is shadow,” Julien intoned, “yet shall the Maker be my guide. I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond, for there is no darkness in the Maker’s Light and nothing He has wrought shall be lost.”

“Amen,” Maric whispered, and the others nodded.

Then they entered the Deep Roads.

There was a wide stairway that began not far within, and Duncan suppressed a shudder as they descended. It was warmer inside, he was thankful for that much, but the cold had been replaced by an unease that he just couldn’t shake. It was like slowly walking into a pool of filth, the stink of it filling your nostrils and turning your stomach so that you had to will yourself to take another step.

The other Grey Wardens could feel it, too. He could see it in their grave expressions and in the way their hands tightened on their weapons. All of them possessed the ability to sense the darkspawn, yet it seemed impossible that the creatures would stand out amid all the background corruption he sensed here. Genevieve reassured them quietly that it was still so, but Duncan remained unconvinced. Probably she was just trying to ensure they didn’t lose their nerve.

Only Maric couldn’t sense anything, yet he seemed more affected by their descent than anyone else. He became withdrawn, his eyes darting to every dark corner and his skin ashen in the flickering torchlight. Duncan was tempted to ask the man what had happened to him in the Deep Roads so long ago, but decided against it. Clearly it was nothing pleasant.

They followed the stairway for what seemed like hours when the first signs of corruption became visible along the stone walls of the passage: spidery tendrils of black rot, along with a shiny film that covered everything like oil. Duncan touched it, curious, and found that the film wasn’t actually wet. It was dry, with a texture like snakeskin.

Genevieve snatched his hand away with a harsh look and warned him not to touch anything again. That confused him a little. Were they not immune to the darkspawn taint? Was that not one of the few benefits they received for being Grey Wardens?

“We didn’t see it this early,” Maric said, examining the walls more closely. “Last time we were down here, I don’t think we saw anything like this until after Ortan thaig.”

“Then it has spread,” Genevieve pronounced.

Kell glanced around the passage with his unnaturally pale eyes. Duncan knew he was even more sensitive to the darkspawn than the rest of them. To him this must be like walking into sewage, and yet he gave no indication that it bothered him. “Almost to the surface?” he asked. “What does that mean?”

“It means we should be careful.” With that, she drew her sword and continued down the stairs. The others shared uncomfortable looks but followed after.

It seemed to take forever before they hit the bottom, or at least what Duncan assumed to be the bottom. The feel of the weight pressing down from above and the oppressive darkness pressing in from all sides made him want to gasp for air. He felt trapped under fetid water, desperately clawing for the surface.

Fiona, walking next to him, regarded him with a concerned look. “Are you going to be all right? You look a bit sickly,” she whispered.

He gulped a few times and forced himself to breathe. It wasn’t exactly pleasant. “I feel like I’m going to vomit.”

“Well, there’s a pleasant thought.”

“I’m serious! Can’t you feel that?”

“We can all feel it. Well, most of us can.” Her tone hinted at annoyance, and Duncan realized that she was talking about Maric. The man was walking up ahead next to Utha, oblivious to the scathing glare he was receiving from behind.

He smirked. “I heard you had it out with the King last night at the camp.”

“I asked him a simple question.”

“It didn’t sound simple from what Genevieve said,” he chuckled. “I’m just glad she was mad at somebody other than me for once.”

Fiona sighed irritably. Raising her staff, she closed her eyes and murmured something under her breath. Duncan could feel the prickle of power surging through the air, and immediately the small globe on top of the staff began to glow. The light was strong and warm, stretching throughout the corridor and driving back the shadows just a little.

The others turned and looked at the mage curiously. “Don’t waste your power,” Genevieve said, but her words lacked her usual crispness. Even she was probably relieved to have the shadows driven back a little farther, he imagined.

“There.” Fiona smiled at Duncan, pleased with herself. “Better?”

“Sure, except for the blinding light in my eyes.”

“Now you’re just being a child.”

With the added light from Fiona’s staff, Duncan could make out impressions in the wall behind the rot and decay. Runes, he suspected. Dwarven runes, though to what purpose he couldn’t really guess. He’d been told once that the dwarves held a reverence for stone. Perhaps the words they carved into the walls of the Deep Roads were prayers? Prayers now tainted by filth; it had a certain symmetry, didn’t it?

He could feel the darkspawn out there now. Genevieve was right. It just took some time to become acclimated. They were at the edge of his consciousness, lurking in the shadows far out of sight. It was that same feeling when someone was standing behind you, and you didn’t hear them or sense them in any way; you just knew.

Could they feel the Grey Wardens in return? According to the First Enchanter, the onyx brooches they’d been given would render them invisible to the darkspawn senses, but Duncan wasn’t so certain. His was pinned to his leather jerkin, and he turned it about to examine it more closely in the light. There were iridescent colors that slowly flowed just beneath the surface like a liquid. It was also cold, like touching a frosty lamppost in the dead of winter. He let it go, rubbing warmth back into his fingers absently.

“So did Genevieve make you apologize?” he asked Fiona.

The mage looked at him, puzzled. Her mind had clearly been elsewhere, but when she realized he was referring to King Maric, she rolled her eyes in annoyance. She had pretty eyes for an elf, he thought. Most elves Duncan had known always possessed such eerie eyes—light greens and purples, impossible hues that somehow made them seem alien. Fiona’s eyes were dark and expressive. Soulful, his mother might have said. She’d always had a way with words.

“No, she didn’t,” the mage said curtly. “And I’ve no need to.”

“He’s not so bad, you know.”

“You can’t know that. You hardly know him any better than I do.”

“Is it an elven thing? I knew a lot of elves back in Val Royeaux, and every one of them had a chip on their shoulders. Even the ones that didn’t come from the alienage.”

She shot him an incredulous look. “It’s not as if we don’t have a good reason to be bitter, you know.”

“Yes, yes, I know. We terrible humans destroyed the Dales. One of the elves I knew fancied himself a Dalish elf, even painted up his face to look like them. I thought he’d finally gone off to the forests to search for one of their clans, but it turned out he’d gotten himself arrested. Anyway, he used to talk about the Dales all the time.”

She stopped, stamping her staff down onto the stone so that the globe flashed brightly for a moment. Her exasperation with him was obvious. “There’s more to it than that. Far more! Don’t you even know?”

“Know what? That your people were enslaved? Everyone knows that.”

“There was a time,” her eyes flashed crossly, “when elves lived forever. Did you know that, as well? We spoke our own language, built magnificent wonders across all of Thedas, had our own homeland—and this was long before the Dales ever existed.”

“And then you were enslaved.”

“By the magisters of the Tevinter Imperium, yes. Just one of their crimes, and probably not even their greatest.” Fiona turned away from Duncan and ran a slender hand across the corruption covering a nearby wall. “They took everything from us that was beautiful. They even made us forget what we once were. It wasn’t until the prophet Andraste released us that we even realized what we had lost.”

“And she was human, wasn’t she? We’re not all so bad.”

“Her own people burned her at the stake.”

“I meant the rest of us.”

She looked back at him, smiling gamely even though her eyes were tinged with sadness. “Andraste gave us the Dales, a new homeland to replace the old. But your people took that away from us, too, in the end. Now we either live in your cities as vermin or wander as outlaws, but either way we’re unwanted.”

Duncan smirked mockingly at her. “Aww. Poor elves.”

The mage swung her still-glowing staff at his head, but he danced aside, laughing merrily. The sound hung oddly in the gloom. “Not sympathetic enough, I suppose?” He grinned. “I grew up on the streets, so if you were looking for reassurance on how good us humans really are, you aren’t going to get it from me.”

“You did ask,” she reminded him.

“About the King I did.” He pointed at the others, who now had gotten ahead of them. Fiona noticed it, too, and began hurrying to catch up. He kept pace. “Those things you talked about … they happened so long ago hardly anybody who doesn’t keep their nose stuck in a book would even know half of them. Elves aren’t just slaves anymore.”

“You think so?” Her look was dark, her tone suddenly brittle. “Do you think slavery just up and disappeared that day for every one of us?”

“Even so, I’m pretty sure King Maric had nothing to do with any of it.”

She nodded, her eyes fixed on the blond king where he walked far up ahead. As if sensing the scrutiny, the man stopped and glanced back in puzzlement. She didn’t avert her gaze, and he sheepishly decided it was best to turn his attention elsewhere. “I know that.” She nodded. “Do you think I don’t know that?”

“You’re smart, so I’m guessing you know that?”

She sighed wearily. “He thinks his life is difficult.”

“Maybe it is. I sure wouldn’t want to be a king.”

“Why not?” Fiona frowned at Duncan, her anger rekindled. “Think of what you could do as king. You could do so much. You could change everything.”

He laughed derisively. “I was raised on the streets, and even I know that kings can’t do everything.” He began to walk ahead, and Fiona stayed where she was, watching him go. “I don’t know what it is you think he should be doing, but maybe you should tell him about it instead of me. Now I’m going to go and see if he needs anything. He’ll probably send me to fetch a chamber pot.”

“Has he sent you for a single one yet?” she laughed.

“He could start. If you keep glaring at him all the time, he’ll probably need one.” More hours passed as they pressed farther into the Deep Roads. The signs of darkspawn corruption gradually became worse. Pools of brackish water filled portions of the halls, and Kell warned them not to touch any of it. A quick command to Hafter and the hound backed off, wisely deciding against slaking his thirst. Duncan was inclined to agree. There were bones of … things … floating in those pools. Something moved in the water that might have been worms, but he didn’t want to think about it too closely.

The funguslike growths on the walls got thicker, as well. There were mounds of it, some looking like great misshapen beehives with dark tendrils radiating outward. The growths were covered in that same slick substance, like a putrid oil. Sometimes the stench of it got so thick it clouded the air and all but choked the torches. They gagged on it, and only at Maric’s urging did they continue on.

He seemed to think they were headed in the right direction. Several times they had passed branches, and only at the first had the king hesitated. It was not, Duncan noticed, to figure out where they were supposed to go. His eyes were far away, lost in some memory he didn’t speak of. When he finally spoke and pointed the way, he seemed quite certain.

Duncan wondered what lay in those other directions. One way looked much like the others here, and he wasn’t all that sure just how the king was telling them apart. Those memories of his must be quite clear. If so, then maybe Genevieve was right to insist he come. If they’d accidentally gone down one of those other passages, who knows where they might have ended up?

They had reached the remains of a dwarven way station when Genevieve called for a halt. There was little left of the building aside from a hint of mortar walls and some crumbling tools, but the rest of them knew the Commander hadn’t stopped them to admire the area.

They were getting closer to the darkspawn. The fact that they were also getting closer to Ortan thaig, according to Maric, wasn’t lost on them, either. Duncan could feel the teeming masses of them ahead, like they were slowly approaching a black pit full of eyes all trained on him. The very idea filled him with a fear that twisted up his insides into a knot. His experience with the darkspawn was minimal, and now he was willingly venturing into a place where he would encounter more of them than he ever wanted to. It was a terrifying notion.

The tents were put up without discussion, within the boundaries of where the way station once stood. Here the dwarves had probably once stopped travelers in the Deep Roads, inspecting their goods or perhaps taxing them. Or maybe the station was built to watch for invaders? He really had no idea. When the First Blight struck, it had hit the dwarves the hardest. The darkspawn had swallowed up the Deep Roads, and the dwarves had retreated all the way to Orzammar, sealing up all entrances to the tunnels and leaving everyone stuck on the other side of those seals to their fate.

What must it have been like, to have realized that there was no escape? To have the darkspawn wash over you like a tidal wave, drowning everything in their path and wiping out almost an entire culture? The dwarves apparently never doubted that the Blight could return again, and had always afforded the Grey Wardens far more respect than anyone else. His own people were less dependable, naturally. They tended to forget what wasn’t right in front of their faces.

Not that Duncan was better than the rest of humanity, judging them from his high perch. Far from it. He’d simply seen enough in his time that he could imagine with a fair degree of accuracy just what humanity was capable of. On most days he’d say that a Blight washing over the surface might not be such a bad thing, swallowing up humanity and perhaps belching and spitting it out for good mea sure.

Maybe he should sit down and make up a list of all the good things that would get destroyed at the same time—like cookies. The darkspawn would wipe out all cookies from the face of Thedas. That would be bad, and alone made this entire endeavor seem more worthwhile.

“Why are we stopping already?” Maric asked him, approaching quietly from behind. Duncan noticed that the man looked a bit feverish in the torchlight, sweaty and pale. The Deep Roads did not seem to be agreeing with him much. But then, who would they agree with, exactly?

“We’ll be on the darkspawn soon. A lot of them.”

“Really? I don’t—Oh.”

“We can sense them ahead,” Duncan reminded him. “I expect the next bit is going to get exciting.” He tried to sound braver than he felt. Genevieve paced at the edge of the camp relentlessly, and her tension slowly infected the rest of them. There was little talk, and after the others had eaten their meal of dried rations and flat wine they had huddled closely around the small campfire—something that the Commander had only reluctantly allowed. None of them wanted to admit that despite their exhaustion, the idea of closing their eyes while surrounded by that oppressive darkness was almost unbearable. The flames were warm and bright, and it was a little easier to pretend that they were not miles under the earth in their presence.

Even so, it didn’t take long for the gloom to settle over them like a pall.

Julien and Nicolas played an Orlesian game on a large rock, something that required ivory pieces moved around on a checkered board. Duncan had seen the wealthy playing it from time to time, but had no idea what the rules might be or what it was even called. It seemed to require intense concentration, the two warriors furrowing their brows a great deal and stroking their chins quietly.

It was a game that suited the pair, probably. Duncan had thought them brothers when he first joined the order, but it turned out they were just comrades that preferred each other’s company, and mostly kept to themselves. Duncan had rarely heard Julien speak more than a handful of words, and it was usually to calm Nicolas down. That was something Julien could do when almost nobody else could. There was a gentleness to his manner that contrasted sharply to Nicolas’s brusqueness and quick temper.

Kell sat across from Duncan, solemnly carving more arrows with his belt knife. His quiver was already full, yet still he applied himself to the task. No doubt he thought he’d need all the arrows he had and more soon—he was probably right. Hafter crouched next to his master, gazing up at him adoringly and probably wishing that he could somehow help with his task.

The rest of them just stared into the flames. Every time Genevieve paced past them, everyone froze. It wasn’t anything overt: Julien and Nicolas paused in their playing, deliberately not looking up from their board, and the others held their breath. Her steel gaze washed over them and then moved on. She didn’t say it outright, but it was obvious she thought it would be better simply to pick up the camp and keep traveling if no one was going to sleep.

It slowly became unbearable. Duncan’s body cried out for sleep, and he found himself nodding off several times only to jerk himself back up. The fire was blissfully warm, the only source of anything decent in this Maker-forsaken place. He wanted to pick it up and hug it close. Maybe that would warm him up and stop the shuddering, which was now almost constant.

“Are you all right?” Fiona asked him, the sound of her voice initially a shock. He turned and stared at her fuzzily, at first not quite absorbing what she had said, before he finally nodded. “Would you like to play a game?” she offered. “I have some cards in my pack; I could dig them out if you—”

“No.” He shuddered again, almost a spasm, and rubbed his hands vigorously next to the fire. The others stopped and stared at him, exchanging quiet looks.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! I’m sure!”

The quiet descended again, and Duncan almost regretted his refusal. He rubbed his hands even more by the flames, noting how remarkably pale they were. Funny, he thought. I spent half my life wishing I could be pale just like all the other children, and it turned out all I needed to do was freeze to death in the Deep Roads.

“Perhaps I should build the fire up more,” Kell offered.

“I’m fine!” Duncan snapped.

He could feel Fiona staring anxiously at him, though she hesitated to speak. So he wrapped his arms around himself and leaned close to the flames, trying not to look as miserable as he felt. From the awkwardness he felt around him, he doubted he was very successful.

“You know,” Maric suddenly spoke up, warming his hands in the fire beside Duncan, “back during the rebellion, we had a ritual the night before a battle. We would pass around some dwarven ale. See who could take the largest swig.”

Utha grinned and made a gesture with her hands. Kell paused in his whittling and looked bemused. “She says that’s not really ale.”

“You’re telling me! I think they make it from fungus. It’s black as pitch!”

Duncan groaned. “You drank that?”

The King winked at him and reached into his cloak, drawing forth a large silver flask. The dwarven rune emblazoned on the side of it was clear for everyone to see, and a few whistles of appreciation floated around the fire. Even Julien and Nicolas were interested now, grinning as Maric opened it up. The smell of something sickly sweet filled the air, like a skunk that had crawled under a shed to die and slowly rot in the heat.

Fiona laughed, covering her mouth with a hand. “Oh, that’s foul!”

“My mother started the tradition,” Maric said, lifting the flask to his nose and taking a sniff. He sighed in delight, as if the odor was wonderful and not putrid in the slightest. “She’d met up with a dwarf that had crossed the Orlesians. I think I was fifteen. I forget his name. Curliest beard I’d ever seen. Anyhow, he traveled with us for a time and he gave us an entire keg of dwarven ale as a gift.”

The man’s smile suddenly became fond, his eyes sad. Duncan had to think to remember that the mother the King spoke of had been murdered—right in front of him, so the story went. He wondered if that was true. “None of the men wanted it, but Mother was so stubborn she refused to waste anything, especially a gift. So the next night before battle, she brought out the keg and dunked a cup inside. Drank the entire thing in front of all her commanders, and then dared them to do the same.”

He laughed then, a hearty and joyous laugh that slowly became tinged with sadness as it trailed off. Hesitating only a second, he brought the flask to his lips and took a long swig. Duncan felt his nose crinkling in disgust as the King gulped not once but twice, and then stopped, grinning madly as he made a satisfied “Ahhhh!” sound.

Utha made an impressed gesture. “I agree,” said Nicolas.

“I was the last one to drink that first night.” Maric smiled, his voice strained as if the ale had stripped his throat raw. “I had one sip and I vomited all over the campfire.” He turned and offered the flask to Kell with a slight raise of his eyebrow.

The hunter regarded it dubiously, and then with the slightest sigh he put down his half-completed arrow and his belt knife and accepted the flask. He held it to his forehead and bowed in the king’s direction, a gesture of thanks.

“I trained with the Ash Warriors,” the hunter said. He stared into the flask as if he was certain that something was going to crawl out of it. “They believe it is necessary that one die before battle. If you cannot see your death and acknowledge it, it will take you unawares. Before my first battle, they bled me with shallow cuts and then salted my wounds until I finally screamed in agony.” He grinned suddenly. Duncan had never seen the solemn man actually smile before, now that he thought of it. “When I did, they all laughed. They had taken bets, you see, to see how long I would endure.”

Kell took a long swig, and merely wiped his mouth afterwards without any indication whether he liked the taste or not. “My lesson was not to do everything your comrades tell you to simply because they find it amusing. A lesson I obviously did not learn very well.” He winked at Utha and passed the flask to her.

The copper-haired dwarf examined the rune on the flask carefully. She made several hand gestures toward Maric.

“She says the rune is … I can’t decipher that, sorry,” Nicolas said, confused.

“It’s the mark of House Aeducan,” Maric stated. “King Endrin gave it to me.”

Utha appeared impressed. She took a long drink, gulping several times, and when she finished she lowered the flask and paused before letting out a long and completely unladylike belch that reverberated around the cavern.

Smiling proudly, she made gestures that Nicolas again translated. “I cannot taste it, of course, but I remember this foul brew well enough. My father loved it, and belched after every drink because he knew it annoyed my mother. He had to hide the bottles from her, and she would always send me to find them for her. I always did. He used to call me Little Spoilsport.”

Kell gave her a serious look. “You’ve never spoken of your parents.”

She nodded sadly. “They died. Darkspawn.”

With that, she passed the flask to Nicolas, who eyed it warily. “My parents threw me out of their home when I was barely a man. I lied to the seneschal at Fortalan to get him to accept me into one of the outlier units. The first time we headed into battle, I was so frightened I wet my tunic.”

Julien’s eyes went wide with delighted shock. “You didn’t!”

“I did. After the battle, I was called Puddle. The name stuck.” He took a swig and his face twisted with pure disgust. “That’s awful! Why would anyone drink that?” He quickly handed it to Julien.

The dark-eyed warrior frowned. “I have no amusing tale,” he said in his quiet voice. The man’s Orlesian accent was pronounced. Not for the first time, Duncan wondered if Julien was originally part of the Empire’s aristocracy. If so, he had to wonder just what had brought the man into the Grey Wardens. Duncan’s experience with Orlesian nobility told him that they rarely paid heed to such quaint notions as duty, but perhaps he shouldn’t paint them all with the same brush?

“Sure you do,” Nicolas teased him.

“No, I don’t.”

“What about that night in Val Mort? Before the darkspawn raid?”

Julien blushed, glancing at the others as if he wished he could crawl away somewhere. “That’s not an appropriate tale, Nicolas. And it wasn’t my doing.”

Nicolas roared with amused laughter. “The others bought him an elven whore!” He paused, looking at the mage across the fire. “Apologies, Fiona.”

She snorted. “What ever. Your mother was a whore.”

“So she was!” He looked back at Julien, taking great plea sure in his friend’s discomfort. “He’d made the mistake of telling us he’d never been with a woman, see. So we made sure to fix that before he faced darkspawn for the first time.”

Julien’s face was crimson. “She was a sweet girl.”

“She robbed him blind! Took all his coin and ran out the window.”

The quiet warrior grinned then, nodding even through his embarrassment. “She was still a sweet girl.” He took a long swig, shuddered at the evil taste, and then attempted to pass it to Fiona.

The mage declined. “I’m not drinking that.”

“Oh, come on,” Duncan urged her.

She grudgingly relented. Taking the flask, she held her nose and took the slightest sip. Immediately she gasped and began convulsing and making retching noises. Flailing with the flask, she tried to pawn it off on Duncan, and he took it from her while laughing. The elf fought hard not to vomit, and the others joined in the merriment.

“Oh, very kind,” she finally gasped, her voice raspy. “Thank you for finding it so bloody funny that I’ve been poisoned!”

“Poor Fiona,” Nicolas chided her. “Such a delicate flower.”

“Go hump your horse.” She giggled and wiped her mouth several times, as if that could remove the memory of the taste. “Ach! It’s like liquid death.”

Duncan smirked at her. “That was quite the show you put on there.”

“No show required. Taste it yourself and you’ll find out.”

“Uh-huh,” he said disbelievingly. He let the subject drop and turned his attention to the flask, giving it a prudent sniff. That was a bad idea. He flinched, his nose twitching like it had been set on fire. “I’m not sure I want to, now.”

“You have to,” Maric chuckled. “We all did.”

Not everyone. Duncan glanced over at Genevieve, who stood off at the edge of the ruined outpost. She leaned against one of the walls, her back toward them. She had to hear them laughing and carry ing on. Part of him wanted to call her over, invite her to join them. But she would refuse, naturally.

“I’ve never been in any big battle,” he said, “but there was this one night where we were preparing to rob the Marquis … oh, I forget his name now. Wealthy bastard, though. Lots of guards, too, which made robbing his manse very risky.”

Utha made a disapproving face.

“What?” he protested. “We were poor! He was rich! It was only fair.”

“Sounds fair to me,” Fiona laughed.

“So we were going to head out, all of us nervous and sweating like a bunch of elven whores in a chantry—”

“What is with all the elven whores?” Fiona complained.

“—and I remembered that I forgot my rope. So I ran down the steps to get it and I slipped. Fell down an entire flight of stairs and landed on a cat.”

“You landed on a cat.” Maric stared at him incredulously.

“A big cat. He was a local one, lived on the streets and chased dogs. We used to call him Rabbit.”

Kell cocked an eyebrow. “Why Rabbit?”

“It had big ears; I don’t know. Anyway, it scratched me so badly I was furious. I chased that thing down four city blocks, throwing stones at it. Little bastard was fast. Then I fell into a well.”

“A well,” Nicolas repeated.

Duncan shrugged. “I was a lot less graceful back then.” He smiled ruefully at the memory. “The others didn’t know where I’d gone, and I sat in that well for three days until a guardsman heard me yelling and pulled me up. Threw me in the gaol for the night, but at least I got a meal out of it.” He chuckled, and it trailed off into a sigh. “Stupid cat.”

“Didn’t the others come looking for you?” Fiona asked.

He shook his head. “They died. Somebody tipped the Marquis off and all his guards were waiting for them. I was lucky I wasn’t there, or at least I thought I was. Because only I survived, all the other guilders thought I was the one who’d tipped him off.” There was a subdued silence at that, but Duncan merely grinned and raised the flask to the others. “To lost friends.”

“To lost friends,” they chimed in. He braced himself and took a swallow of the dwarven ale. It was like choking back the leather sole of an old and sweaty shoe that had been pounded into paste until it was slightly watery and grey. The others stared as he tilted the flask back, and after a series of audible glugs he finished it off.

The others clapped, impressed. Duncan handed the King back his flask, suddenly feeling very ill and shaky.

“Brave lad,” Maric said.

“Thanks,” Duncan grunted. After a moment he lurched to his feet and ran off to the corner of the ruin to vomit everything in his stomach onto the stones. Then he heaved a bit more, as the others grinned with amusement.

When the heaving was finally done, he looked back and gave them a saucy grin and a victorious thumbs-up. They applauded him vigorously, and he had to admit he was pretty damned pleased with himself.

He noticed, too, the appreciative look that Fiona shot King Maric. The man just shrugged it off with a shy smile.

Genevieve left her spot by the wall and walked back to her tent, sitting down on a large rock just outside. Duncan watched as she began taking out her weapons and laying them out around her for cleaning. It was a ritual he had watched her do often in the months that he’d known her.

The Commander paused and ran a hand through her white hair, yawning. She looked exhausted, he thought—not just physically but emotionally. She seemed aged, too, like her years were rapidly catching up with her. He supposed the thought of following after her brother when she had already written him off as dead must be difficult.

Duncan had never met Bregan, having joined the order months after the man had left for his Calling. He knew plenty about the man by reputation, however. His presence had lingered among the Grey Wardens long after his departure. His sister mentioned him often. The others had spoken of him, as well, and far more enthusiastically. Duncan always had the impression that most felt Genevieve didn’t mea sure up to her brother as Commander, though it was never spoken of openly.

“Duncan,” Genevieve remarked wearily, noticing him staring at her. She rested her head in her hand. “What are you doing?”

He wandered over to her, leaving the others behind. He could hear them talking again, Kell noisily stoking the campfire to keep it going. “I just thought these dwarven ruins might like some of their ale more than I did,” he said with a wink.

She chuckled, and then took stock of some of the weapons she had laid out. The sword was the most impressive of the bunch, an elaborate two-handed blade that sparkled even though they were well away from the fire. Its magical runes were almost invisible, but one could make them out in the darkness. It had been her brother’s, she’d told him once, handed over when he left into the Deep Roads.

Then she paused, and it seemed as if she remembered something awkward. “Ah. About what happened back at the tower …”

“It was just a girl!” he protested, the blush already creeping into his cheeks. He just knew she would bring this up eventually, and already had a defense all planned. “Surely that isn’t against the Grey Warden’s rules as well, is it?”

Genevieve arched a brow, her look one of clear disbelief. “So you followed the girl up there, did you? In order to lie with her?”

“It’s what … young men do, right? Or so I hear.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“What? It could happen.”

She leaned back, folding her arms and fixing him with a level gaze. Duncan knew that look. It was the sort of look that could lead to things like getting one’s head smacked against walls. “So what were you actually doing up there, prior to your … run-in with the young woman?”

He sighed in exasperation. “Looking around for something to steal.”

Her eyes narrowed. “From the mages? Are you mad?”

“No risk, no reward. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyhow.”

Her face tensed, and it looked like she had a few things she was going to tell him herself. But then she waved them away with a flash of annoyance. He supposed it didn’t mean much where they were, especially well after the fact. “At least you weren’t caught,” she muttered. “Though the flagrant risks you take are completely unacceptable.”

“We’re all going to die, right?” He chuckled, but he was only half joking. “Whether I die now or later doesn’t seem all that risky to me.” Genevieve picked up on his tone right away, and her expression darkened. She said nothing and nodded gravely, her attention returning to her sword.

Duncan supposed it was a little unfair to throw that in her face. She was far closer to her Calling than he was, and no doubt acutely aware that what ever happened down here, she would be following the path of her brother soon enough. He turned to go.

“Wait,” Genevieve called after him. “I think it’s time to explain your duty to you.”

He paused. “My duty? Watching after the King? Is there more to it than that?”

Her mouth thinned into a grim line, and Duncan’s flippant mood evaporated. She was utterly serious now. He moved in a little closer and crouched down near where she sat. She barely noticed him, formulating the proper words in her head.

“It’s entirely possible,” she said slowly, “that what we do here will fail. You know what the Grey Wardens thought of all this. They don’t believe Bregan has been captured, none of it.”

“I believe it,” Duncan averred. He meant it, too. Genevieve could be many things, but in the short time he had known her, foolish and gullible were neither of those things. If those who had known her longer denied her visions for their own reasons, more fools they.

She nodded at him, her eyes showing a flash of gratitude. “The point is that we could die. There are only a few of us here, and despite what any of us believe, the chances of us actually finding Bregan before the darkspawn realize we are here and react is small.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“If something has truly changed within the darkspawn, the threat of a Blight occurring is great indeed. If we cannot stop them from taking that information from Bregan, my job will be to assess the likelihood of them using it. At that point, your job will be to get King Maric back to the surface.”

“By myself?”

She nodded. “You’re stealthy. The King far less so, but you know better than any of us how to move unseen. I’m counting on you to take him.”

“Don’t you mean Kell? He’s a hunter, he could—”

“I’m counting on you,” she reiterated.

He gulped. Tall order, that.

“His nation will need him,” she continued. Genevieve picked up her blade and balanced it lightly on her knee. She ran an admiring finger down its length, seemingly fascinated by the details etched into its steel. “They will need a leader who has seen the threat of the Blight firsthand, who believes in it. King Maric could help alert all of Thedas and bring the Grey Wardens great credibility in what ever follows.”

“But what if … ?” Duncan let his question hang, feeling guilty even for thinking it.

“There is also the possibility that I’m wrong,” Genevieve stated evenly, finishing his thought without any sense of accusation. She glanced up at Duncan, her eyes dangerous. “That Bregan is dead, and I’ve made a terrible error in bringing us here. Or something worse.”

“Worse?”

“If what King Maric learns could harm the Grey Wardens, could make us look like fools and prevent us from carrying out our duty, then you must make certain he never reaches the surface at all.”

Duncan gasped in disbelief. “You mean … ?”

She held her chin thoughtfully, her thoughts distant. “He may try to escape. What ever his reasons for joining us, however, the die is cast. If he must disappear down here in order for us to claim what ever story we wish on the surface, then that is what we must do.” Noticing Duncan’s wide-eyed look, she affixed him with a steely stare. “Consider the situation: There is a danger here, but I do not know what that danger encompasses, or what someone like Maric might learn in the pro cess. We have a higher duty, Duncan. The Grey Wardens protect the entire world, not just one small nation.”

He nodded slowly, his heart racing inside his chest. “I … I understand.”

Genevieve smiled compassionately, if sadly. She reached out and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I know you can do this. I am counting on you to see it through, if it comes to that.”

He nodded again, uncertain what he should say, if anything.

She let her hand drop. “Go. Get some sleep. Tomorrow we will have more immediate matters to think about, yes?”

Tomorrow they headed into the lion’s den.

Nodding breathlessly to the Commander, Duncan turned and left before she could say anything else. She trusted him, him, to watch the King in more senses than just the one. She wanted him to do it, and not Kell or Fiona or anyone else.

Probably because he was capable of murder, and she knew that. The thought settled coldly onto his heart. It didn’t repel him, however. He knew the Grey Wardens weren’t out to do anything more than defeat the darkspawn, no matter what it took. Sometimes that meant doing terrible things.

If it came to it, he would murder King Maric. He wondered if even Fiona, who expressed such dislike for the man, was capable of that. Probably not. For all her anger, she was a good person.

While he was not.