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DRAGON AGE: THE CALLING 16 страница

He rubbed his arms, feeling suddenly cold, and Fiona shot him a dark look. She held her staff at the ready, alertly watching for signs of attack. They all were. The only sound they could hear besides their muffled steps in the dust was Hafter's growling. The hound's hackles were raised, and he appeared to find every building they passed worthy of staring down.

Only Maric didn't seem ready for combat. He held his longsword loosely at his side, walking among the others and staring up at the walls around them with wide, sad eyes. He'd told them of the spiders, yes, but what else had happened here? Was he thinking of the elven woman, the one he'd loved? Was he thinking of his wife?

They passed a stone arch, one where the wall around it had collapsed, leaving only the cracked and dusty curve of the arch standing alone. Large runes had been carved along the top, and Utha stopped and stared up at them, her face grim and unreadable.

"What is it?" Kell asked her quietly, walking up behind her.

She made several gestures, most of which Duncan couldn't understand. But he recognized one of them: family. This must have belonged to the house she came from, he realized, a part of her family's legacy. Kell nodded in understanding and patted her shoulder. She continued to stare up at that arch, quiet determination in her eyes.

They entered what looked like it had once been an outdoor amphitheater, the steps now falling apart and the stage now littered with darkspawn bones yellowed with age. There were so many strewn amid the debris that Duncan marveled at them.

As they passed through a narrow alleyway, Nicolas found a crevice in one of the walls that led into an old armory. It was huge, the stone forges still upright and looking almost as if someone could walk up and stoke the fires even now to get them going again.

The rest of it was in ruins, barrels falling apart and metal tools rusting on the ground. There were pieces of things that might have been used for forging metal, and impressive-looking weapons, now pitted and tarnished, still hanging on the walls.

One of the forges was excessively tall, reaching all the way up to the stone ceiling and covered in runes all down the side of its chimney. It looked more like a giant oven, Duncan thought, with strange holes perforating its side at regular intervals.

"It's for dragonbone," Maric mentioned behind him. "They get the bone so hot they need to pour water through the holes to cool it off. You see where it goes through the floor there? That goes down to a lava pit." He grinned at Duncan. "Or so King Endrin called it when he showed me the one in Orzammar. He said it hadn't been used in centuries."

Duncan peered into one of the holes. He saw nothing but darkness, and no obvious mechanism for opening up the forge. "Maybe your sword was made here."

"Maybe it was."

They moved through the armory and forced open the rusted doors, discovering what must have once been some kind of central square just outside. The staff 's light revealed evidence of a battle from long ago, one that the passage of time had not completely eradicated. Some of the barricades still existed, slabs of stone and benches and other large items that had been dragged to close off access from the nearby lanes. Most of these had fallen apart. Or the walls around them had disintegrated. Or they had been torn down by whatever force had attacked the people here.

For here they remained. Even amid all the dirt and dust, Duncan could see the shards of bones and pieces of rusted armor and weapons - and none of it was darkspawn. There was a stone fountain in the middle of the square, the statue of a horn-blowing dwarf still standing in its middle. It was overgrown with lichen and thick black moss, much of which had died when what ever water had been within the fountain had disappeared ages ago. The concentration of bones was thickest around there. A last stand, perhaps, the defenders forced to put their backs against the fountain as they fought the darkspawn invaders to the bitter end.

It was a sad scene. Duncan tried not to picture the desperation that these dwarves must have felt, abandoned to their fate. They had fallen here, and whatever injured or survivors there had been had no doubt been taken away by the darkspawn, while the others just remained where they fell. They decayed here as the years passed and the dust settled, the fountain went dry, and nobody at all marked that they had died.

Utha stepped toward one of the barricade piles and began pulling at one of the larger flat slabs of stone at its base. It refused to budge and so she pulled harder, putting her back into it, and this was when Duncan realized she was crying. Silent tears were streaming down her face as she attempted to pull the slab free, her frustration mounting.

Nicolas went to assist her, and the dwarf stopped as soon as he got close. He gave her a compassionate look and bent down to help, and after composing herself she continued her task. Kell joined them and within moments the trio had worked the slab free. Genevieve watched quietly, not objecting to this strange practice but still eager to move on.

They slowly dragged the slab to the fountain and together lifted it upright so it leaned against the stone. Sweating with effort, Utha removed her black cloak and threw it over the top of the slab. It settled there, and she stared up at it silently.

They all did. It was a poor marker, perhaps, but it was better than nothing.

Utha wiped at her tears and shook off her grief. If she offered up a prayer to her Paragon ancestors, she could only mouth them to herself. Duncan would have been tempted to say a prayer to the Maker, but he didn't have King Maric's facility for such things. He didn't know a single line of the Chant of Light, and besides that he had no idea whether the dead dwarves would have even appreciated such a tribute.

They moved on. In time, Kell led them to an abandoned campfire. How he found it, Duncan hadn't a clue, but as they got near he pointed it out. A small campfire at the base of a tall obelisk, completely undamaged by the passage of time. The obelisk shot up like a finger in the dark, completely smooth on all sides, the top of it obscured in shadows.

Genevieve ran over, eagerly searching around the campfire for anything left behind. There was nothing, though from the way the dust was disturbed it looked like someone had slept on a bedroll there very recently. She turned and motioned to Kell, although he was already running over to join her.

After a moment of kneeling by the fire, he looked up at her and nodded. "He was here. This camp is recent."

"Is there any indication of where he went?"

"No. He slept here, however, so clearly made it this far without meeting the darkspawn."

"Is that possible?" she asked, troubled. "They would have sensed him. A lone Grey Warden moving through the Deep Roads should draw darkspawn like flies."

"Nevertheless, here he was."

Maric stepped forward. "Are you certain it was darkspawn that captured him? Or that he's even been captured? You said he was alive, and maybe he is, but I don't see the darkspawn trying to take any prisoners."

Genevieve spun on the King, and for a moment Duncan thought she was going to attack him. Her rage slowly died down, however, and she turned back to stare at the gutted campfire. Her eyes became hollow and haunted. "No," she finally admitted. "I don't know that for certain."

For a long minute the group remained quiet. There was not a single sound in the dark cavern, and only the faintest musty breeze - air that was brought in through whatever masterpiece of dwarven engineering remained in this place, Duncan assumed. He wondered what other sorts of creatures could be down here that might have captured a Grey Warden, and why they might do so. And if it was darkspawn, why would they suddenly start acting in a way they never had before?

Genevieve cast about in all directions, looking far off into the cavern. What she was searching for, he really couldn't tell. A clue? A feeling, anything? So much of the thaig was shrouded in shadow, she likely couldn't see very much. The skeletons of buildings hovered around them, silhouettes of sturdy statues and the tattered estates of what had surely once been great dwarven families. They didn't have time to search it all.

"There," she stated firmly, pointing off into the distance.

Duncan looked to where she was pointing: In the shadow-filled end of the thaig, barely seen at the edge of their light, was the remnant of a great palace that had been carved into the rock. It might have been beautiful once, pillars and promenades leading up to a set of grandiose gates that towered high over any visitors, but now it was little more than a husk, a series of broken steps and debris and gaping holes carved into the wall that led deep within. The old palace was covered in strands of old ash and dirt, and who knew what lay inside that dark warren of tunnels?

"You've got to be kidding," he muttered under his breath.

"But why there?" Kell asked carefully.

"Because that is where he would go," she stated with certainty. "If he came here, that is where he would head." Without saying another word she began to march in that direction. The others looked at each other uncertainly, but one by one they followed her. There was little choice, really.

"We're stumbling around blindly," Fiona whispered, scowling.

Duncan glanced at her but didn't comment. They weren't blind, really. They were following Genevieve's vision, but it felt more and more like they were stumbling after a ghost. He wondered if their commander really knew where she was going anymore, and he suspected the others wondered the same thing.

It took them several hours to make their way up finally to the palace ruins. The land sloped upward the nearer they got, and yet the amount of debris became so thick it was impossible to remain on the roads. Entire buildings had collapsed here, choking the paths and forcing them actually to climb over the piles of masonry rather than trying to go around them.

As they reached the foot of the main steps leading up into the palace, Duncan began to realize just how enormous it truly was. The stairs alone towered high above them, requiring a climb of over a hundred feet, much of it on steps that had long ago cracked and crumbled away. They were littered with pieces of stone that had fallen from above and bits of bone and rusted metal that might have once been bodies.

One of the intact pillars lining the stairs was easily hundreds of feet high, almost reaching the top of the cavern. Its surface was a spiderweb of thick cracks, and he wondered whether if it crumbled, the palace's vaulted ceiling would come crashing down on top of them. The ceiling might once have held breathtaking frescoes. Now it was stained and burned, with only a hint of the beauty that it had once had.

Several of the other pillars were already crumbled, and at least one enormous section of a pillar lay in their path. Clearly when that had come crashing down, it had caused great destruction and created a giant crater in what was once a marble landing in front of the gigantic palace doors.

Only one of those doors still remained, and it lay open and askew as if it was just barely hanging on before it, too, tumbled to the ground. It might have been bronze, Duncan thought. Now it was stained with an ugly green patina, and covered with coarse lichen that completely obscured whatever fancy inscriptions and carvings decorated its surface long ago.

Beyond it lay only shadows. He saw hints of giant webs; gossamer strands of it now hung from the ceiling. The group exchanged wary glances when they saw a blackened husk just inside the door, and only upon coming closer did they see it was one of the giant spiders about which Maric had told them, its legs curled in close to its body like a twisted rib cage. How long it had lain there they couldn't say, but it was long enough to be as covered with dust as everything else at the entrance.

"Perhaps you got them all," Duncan breathed, still staring in horror at the spider.

"We didn't think so," Maric said. "We heard them moving the next day. Or at least we thought it was them."

Genevieve poked the husk with her sword, and with a hard push rolled it over. Its head became visible, and Duncan saw that its mandibles were easily large enough to cut off a man's head. Thankfully its many eyes had long ago shriveled up and been covered by dust. He didn't want to see them. "You thought the spiders kept their nest in this palace?" she asked the King.

"We never came up here to see."

"We haven't seen any live spiders since our arrival," she said thoughtfully, more to herself than to anyone.

Kell knelt down, running his hand through the layer of dust on the ground and then rubbing it between his fingers. "Someone has been through here recently," he murmured.

"Was it my brother?" Genevieve demanded.

"I do not know." His brow furrowed with confusion. "The trail is odd. It was definitely just a single creature, either the man we seek or a darkspawn. Only..."

"It is enough. We go inside." She began to pass through the doorway, her sword held out cautiously in front of her as she looked up and around at the hanging web strands.

"Wait, I don't..."

"Come," she ordered. Duncan ran to catch up to her, and he heard the others following. His heart thundered in his ears, sweat dripping down his face as they slowly moved into the depths of the dwarven palace. He didn't know what they would find inside, but the fear that gripped him claimed it would be nothing good. Somehow he had imagined that the webs would just get thicker and thicker until they reached the heart of some nest, with some great monstrous spider queen to greet them. But it wasn't like that at all. The webs began to disappear not long after the entrance, and while they found a few more shriveled spider corpses, those, too, ended. The shadows closed in around them, the air getting thicker and thicker. The sounds of their labored breath and the echoes of their slow footsteps on the stone were all he could hear.

They entered an enormous gallery, lined with dwarven statues and large paintings that had blackened and fallen apart from the passage of time. The staff 's light only revealed a small part of it, but it seemed like it went on forever, great marble pillars shooting up to a ceiling he couldn't even see. The sound of their footsteps changed suddenly. It became aloud crunching noise, as if they were crushing gravel underfoot.

"Look," Kell said.

Duncan looked down. The floor of the gallery was all but covered in a sea of bones. Darkspawn bones. Many of the skeletons were still intact, the corrupted flesh long since dried up until it was a leathery sheath. They still wore their blackened breastplates and weapons, as well. A great battle had occurred here, these darkspawn pressing inward toward... what, exactly? And what had killed them all?

Their numbers grew greater the farther in they walked. It was possible to pick a path among the bones, but not easy. Duncan began to identify dwarven skeletons among the darkspawn. They had been outnumbered. Dozens and dozens of darkspawn for every defender. He saw one dwarven corpse still in its rusted armor, surrounded by a pile of darkspawn bones in a way that made it look as if they had all died while the creatures had been tearing the dwarf apart. All at once. That couldn't be right, could it?

"This is bizarre," Maric said beside him, mirroring his thoughts as he looked around. Duncan simply nodded. "And her brother came through here?"

"There is a trail," Kell commented from nearby.

"But is it his?"

The hunter looked at Maric with his pale eyes and said nothing, the answer in them clear: He didn't know. Genevieve was not letting that stop her, however. If anything, she was speeding up as she moved through the gallery, almost as if she fully expected to find her brother on the other side.

Duncan had his doubts. Could anything be alive in here other than them? If Genevieve's brother was here, how could he not have heard their approach? Their crunching steps were echoing loudly in the gallery, a cacophony that seemed violently at odds with the serenity of this graveyard. He had heard stories of skeletons possessed by demons that would get up and lash out at anything living - he half expected these bones to do just that, rising to silence the intruders in their silent domain.

A pair of giant stone doors loomed ahead of them, appearing out of the gloom like twin monoliths towering over the bones below. The doors had been battered inward by some great force, and it was easy to see what that was. There were huge darkspawn corpses in front of the doors, massive things that must have once been twelve feet tall with great, curved horns protruding from their skulls. They were called ogres, if he remembered, but he'd never actually seen a living one.

Their battering rams lay next to their corpses, wicked-looking hunks of metal that they must have used to force in those doors. How long that had taken, one could only imagine. Days, probably.

There were all sorts of debris on the other side of the doors, some massive barricade that the darkspawn had finally broken their way through and poured past, dying by the hundreds as they did so.

Genevieve approached the doors cautiously, her eyes wide as she strained to peer beyond them. With a wave of her gauntlet to Nicolas, she sent him around the other side of the ogre corpses.

Nothing stirred.

"More light," she ordered Fiona.

The mage frowned, and with concentration her staff suddenly flared into brilliance. Duncan squinted and covered his eyes. Suddenly he could see all the dead skeletons in the gallery, stretching out for hundreds and hundreds of feet behind him. An entire army. He could make out the runes carved into the pillars, and the great beams still crisscrossing the ceiling a hundred feet overhead.

Beyond the doors lay a round, domed chamber. The first thing Duncan noticed was the throne that sat on a stone dais in the center of it. The second thing was the sea of skeletons. They were dwarves, all of them, a layer of bones so thick it was impossible to see the floor. The dais itself was bare, but one lone skeleton sat on that throne. A single, silent witness to the carnage, now covered in a layer of dust.

One by one, the group moved into the chamber. They picked their footing carefully among the fallen bodies, staring around with wonder. The hush was palpable. It was as if they were stepping foot into something dark and terrible, where the light from Fiona's staff seemed harsh and unwelcome.

"Look at them all," Fiona said in awe.

The skeletons in the room were thickest near the doors. At first his assumption had been simply that the dwarves had been fighting the darkspawn as they'd burst through the doors, the last ditch defense of their dwarven ruler. But where were the darkspawn corpses inside the throne room? There were none.

Utha made a gesture, her eyes wide. Kell nodded. "I agree. This is too strange."

"We should go," Maric said quietly.

"No," Genevieve snapped. Sword out, she began to move closer to the throne. "There is something here. I can feel it."

"Something, yes," Maric shouted after her."But not your brother!"

She ignored him.

Duncan walked to the corpses that were right next to the door, kneeling down to get a closer look. Fiona was behind him, also intrigued. He noticed that only some of them still had weapons, now rusted and useless. The rest of them had nothing. Outside in the gallery, the skeletons were all still holding their blades, or their blades were nearby, but in here the weapons were just somewhere on the floor.

Fiona breathed in sharply. "Look on the doors!"

In the light he could see it clearly: The inside of the doors were covered in scratches. Long, shallow scratches everywhere. Some of the skeletons still reached up with their limbs, still clawed at the door. It was the same on the wall by the doors. Some of the fingerbones were worn down to the knuckles.

These dwarves hadn't been fighting the darkspawn. They had been trying to get out even as the darkspawn were battering their way in. Something had frightened them so terribly they had tried to claw their way out with their bare hands. And then they had died. All of them, at once. And the darkspawn had died with them.

What had happened here?

Something was terribly, terribly wrong. Duncan turned around and saw Genevieve stepping up onto the dais, with Maric and the others just behind her. She seemed transfixed by the single dwarven skeleton that sat on that throne. It seemed to recline there, in a stone chair that was far larger than it was, as if it had simply fallen asleep with its arms still on the rests. It wore an elaborate black helmet, with small horns and an iron face guard, and black chain armor still draped across its bones. And there was not a single other corpse within thirty feet of it.

The dwarves had been trying to get away from the throne.

"Wait!" Duncan called out.

Genevieve stopped and turned back, curious, and he watched in horror as the skeleton on the throne beside her suddenly moved. It lifted its head, its eye sockets alight with a red, sinister glow. A thick power swelled in the shadows around them, a susurrus of voices in their ears as an old magic took form.

The Commander wheeled on the skeleton, her eyes wide with terror, and held out her sword threateningly. "Get back! Get back!" she shouted to the others. Utha and Kell backed up slowly, the hunter with his bow drawn. Hafter stayed at his side, growling menacingly. Maric and Nicolas remained at Genevieve's back,drawing their weapons.

*YOU HAVE COME.* The voice both came from the skeleton on the dais as well as rang out in Duncan's head. He could feel it slithering into his mind like an eel, like something that left a disgusting trail behind it that made him shiver. *I HAVE WAITED, AND AT LAST YOU HAVE COME.*

Nicolas roared in rage and charged at the skeleton, his shield up and his mace high over his head. The skeleton waved a hand at him and a surge of power sent him flying off the dais, crashing hard to the ground amid the skeletons.

"Nicolas!" Genevieve shouted.

*WHEN THE DWARVEN PRINCE CALLED TO ME, I GRANTED WHAT HE DESIRED. AND I HAVE WAITED IN THE DARKNESS FOR ONE TO TAKE ME BACK INTO THE LIGHT, AND YOU HAVE COME.*

"Never!" Genevieve shouted again. "I will never!"

Duncan raced toward the dais, pulling out his daggers, with Fiona running at his side. Already she was gathering a corona of power around the head of her staff, whispering words under her breath. Magic was filling the entire chamber, but he wasn't sure it was all hers. The light was dark and greenish, prickling at his skin and filling his body with a strange heaviness.

*NOT YOU.* The skeleton turned now and pointed at Fiona, extending a long and bony finger out at her. She skidded to a halt, gasping out loud as a liquid blackness enveloped her. *IT IS YOU.*

The staff dropped from her hands, its white glow winking out completely, her eyes widening in shock. Maric rushed at the skeleton and it lashed out with its other hand, sending a bolt of lightning that threw him back, forcing him to jerk and spasm on the ground as electrical energies sparked over his entire body. He screamed in agony.

Two arrows sped at the skeleton, lodging in its bones uselessly.

Genevieve lifted her sword up high. "Attack it! Destroy it!" She rushed at the creature, leaping over Maric on the ground, with Utha immediately behind her. Duncan turned to help Fiona, reaching out to try to free her from the black power that had her in its thrall, but it was so freezing cold that it burned his hand. He recoiled, hissing in sudden pain.

*I KNOW WHAT YOU DESIRE.* The skeleton lifted both its hands now and the greenish glow in the room intensified. Duncan felt it affecting him, draining his energy. He stumbled to one knee, his head suddenly full of cotton like he had just woken up from a deep sleep. On the dais, Genevieve and Utha also stumbled to their knees. Kell dropped his bow, wavering, and Hafter whined in confusion. *I LURED YOU HERE WITH THE PROMISE OF THAT DESIRE, AND YOU CAME. AT LAST I SHALL BE FREE OF THE DARKNESS.*

It was all Duncan could do to keep from collapsing to the ground. Sweat beaded his forehead and he dropped both his daggers. His vision swam. He saw Maric trying valiantly to pull himself along the ground toward the skeleton, gritting his teeth with effort. Utha fell, unconscious, and Genevieve was not far behind her.

Dismay filled Duncan as he saw something rise up out of the skeleton, like gossamer wisps of smoke that lifted up from its bones and swam across the air to sink into Fiona. The elf threw back her head and let out a horrible, keening wail. Her entire body tensed, her hands flying out at her sides. Her skin became a pale white, and then began to change. It bulged, and twisted. Her body grew, and took on a hideous form, her head becoming something gnarled and fanged even as she shrieked in torment.

And then the transformation was done. A demonic abomination now stood where Fiona once had, a thing of rent flesh and claws, its gender no longer even apparent. The thing's eyes glowed with menace, and it regarded Duncan with amusement. It waved a hand at him.

*SLEEP.*

The world became grey and fuzzy, and the ground rushed up to greet him. He slept. Despite every fiber of his being fighting against it, still he slept.

They all did.

Though all before me is shadow,

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.

- Canticle of Trials 1:14

Sunshine poured through an open window, the yellow silk cur tains ruffling gently in the breeze. It took Maric a moment to realize he was in the palace at Denerim. He inhaled deeply, amazed at how wonderful that air smelled, how warm the feeling of sun on his bare skin was. It was so easy to forget about these simple pleasures when you were miles underground in the Deep Roads....

The Deep Roads. The thought rankled, and suddenly he wondered why he was at the palace at all. Shouldn't he be with the Grey Wardens? The memory slipped away like quicksilver the more he tried to focus on it. Had he been dreaming?

He was in his own bed in the royal chambers, wearing only crisp linen sheets and not heavy silverite plate armor. The mahogany vanity that had been a gift from the Antivan royal family dominated the wall. His grandfather's dwarven-made spectacles sat on the small desk, retrieved at great expense from an Orlesian nobleman in Nevarra, and next to them was the cumbersome tome on King Calenhad that he had been slowly making his way through for the last year. He had no talent for reading, and the scholar's language was dense enough to make the effort difficult. Maric was stubborn, however.

He was where he was supposed to be. Why did he think he had traveled off on some adventure, chasing after an ancient order that didn't even exist in Ferelden any longer? The entire idea was ludicrous.

Someone shifted in the bed next to him and he froze. Rowan was dead. There shouldn't be anyone-

"Maric?" came a muffled, sleepy voice.

Panic gripped him, and his heart began beating rapidly. He stared with wide eyes as the woman lifted her head from her pillows. The honeyed curls were just as he remembered them, tousled and not quite covering her elven ears. Wide emerald eyes blinked at him as she smiled. "You're a strange one to look at me so," she chuckled. "Did you have a bad dream?"

Katriel. It was Katriel, the elven spy he had killed eight years before.

"I... don't know," he choked. "Maybe I did."

She made a moue and reached up with one hand, brushing his hair away from his eyes. The gesture was like something out of his distant memory, and yet so strikingly familiar. He took her hand and held it firmly against his cheek. She even smelled the same. How had he forgotten that? Tears welled up in his eyes.

"Oh, Maric," she said, her concern suddenly real. "You did have a bad dream! Oh, my darling man. Always the sensitive one, tsk."

He held her hand to his face a moment longer, frightened that if he let it go she would slip away. But finally he fought down his tears and looked at her. "How did you get here? I don't understand."

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