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DRAGON AGE: THE CALLING 21 страница

Kell held his hand out to Genevieve. "I apologize, Commander. He-"

The hunter didn't dodge the second punch. She struck him across the face hard, shouting in fury, and he stumbled back. Hafter barked loudly, outraged by the fact he wasn't being allowed to protect his master. Genevieve jumped up and ran at Kell, but this time Maric and Duncan were able to stop her. They tackled her from behind, and in her berserk rage she was almost able to get away from them. Her bare fist was pulled back to strike Kell, who stood stunned only a foot away, yet Duncan held it back.

And that was when Fiona saw it. All along the Commander's hand, and continuing down into her wrist and likely farther, was an ugly stain. The very sort of stain that Duncan had told her about earlier. It wasn't a bruise, or anything natural. It looked as if her flesh were rotting.

She gasped in shock.

Utha saw it, too. Then Maric and Duncan saw it clearly in the light. Genevieve noticed what they were doing and followed their gaze to her hand, and saw that its corrupted flesh was plainly visible. The fight simply drained out of her. She let her hand drop and went limp, and both Maric and Duncan stepped carefully away from her.

"What is that?" Maric asked, staring at her hand in horror.

Genevieve grimaced. She walked over to where the gauntlet lay and picked it up. For a moment she said nothing, simply wiped off the hound's spittle and ignored the fact that Hafter growled at her viciously from nearby."It is the darkspawn taint," she said, almost too quietly to be heard.

"But..."

"It catches up with us all eventually, Maric."

Kell stepped forward, rubbing his chin where Genevieve's fist had connected. He seemed chagrined but not angry. With a gesture and a serious look, the hunter quieted Hafter, and then tugged one of his own leather gauntlets off and held up his hand. A stain was visible all along his forearm, much smaller than Genevieve's but still prominent. "I have it as well," he said flatly.

Utha rolled up a sleeve of her brown robe. A series of darkstains traveled up much the length of her arm. She made several gestures and Kell nodded. "It began when we came into the Deep Roads," he said, "along with the dreams."

Genevieve looked disturbed, her brow furrowing as she glanced from Kell to Utha. "I thought it was just me," she muttered.

"If you had spoken to us, we would have told you."

There was little she could say in response to that. She stood there, looking lost and uncomfortable as a long moment of silence passed. Fiona shot Duncan a quizzical look and he shook his head vigorously. He didn't have the same stains, then. Neither did she, that she knew of. Yet.

"Why is this happening?" Fiona asked, breaking the silence. "Is it because we're so close to the darkspawn?"

Genevieve chewed on the idea. "There is no record of Grey Wardens being affected this way. I thought my time had simply come. Perhaps there is something else at work."

"Such as?"

The Commander said nothing, merely staring at the ground. Kell replaced his gauntlet and was similarly quiet. Utha merely frowned. They didn't know, she realized. It wasn't a comforting thought.

"Then perhaps there isn't a Blight at all," Duncan suggested. As the others looked at him, he nodded at the idea. "We don't know for sure that the darkspawn are behind this. They're just here in the Deep Roads. This could be something else entirely, you said so yourself."

Genevieve nodded hesitantly. "Still," she said, "something is very wrong here."

"But we do not know it involves the darkspawn," Kell murmured, "or the Blight. Surely our only mission is to prevent a Blight from occurring. If that is not what is happening..." He let the thought hang in the air, and the Grey Wardens exchanged disturbed glances.

"But there is a Blight," Maric announced.

Fiona looked at the man, and saw him shy away from the curious looks of the others. "I didn't want to tell you this," he said hesitantly, "but there is a reason I gave you an audience when you came to Denerim. There is a reason I believed you."

"And here I thought it was the Commander's charm," Duncan quipped.

Maric ignored him."After my mother died, Loghain and I were lost in the Korcari Wilds trying to get away from the Orlesians," he began, his voice solemn. "We met an old woman, a witch who saved us. She gave me a warning. She told me that a Blight was coming to Ferelden." There was something more to his story, Fiona could see it. But he stopped there, snapping his mouth shut.

Genevieve pondered the tale, and looked at Maric curiously. "A witch hiding in the Wilds? And you believe what she said?"

"There were... other things she said that were true."

"Magic cannot see the future, Maric," Fiona told him.

"But there are visions. Mages can see them; you said so yourself."

He let out a long, ragged breath. "I don't know if I trust her. I paid a high price for the witch's words, however, and it just seems like too much of a coincidence if it isn't true."

Fiona saw the shadow behind the man's eyes. She didn't know the full story of this witch, but she could see that its implications disturbed him. And he believed in what he had been told. But that was not so incredible, was it? Fiona believed in Genevieve's vision. They all did. It was not difficult to believe that at the root of these visions lay the Blight, warnings against the coming disaster.

Genevieve nodded firmly. Her conviction had returned redoubled; Fiona could see the zeal burning in her eyes. "This is no coincidence," she declared. "We proceed with the mission. Carefully." The last she said with a sour glance at Kell.

He shook his head, frowning."We are exhausted, Commander. You are exhausted. We have been through a great deal. Let us take a rest before we head below."

"But we are here! We must press on, quickly!"

"The brooches continue to hide us from the darkspawn," Kell said, pointing at the onyx brooch on his vest. "And we will need our strength. We rest here."

Genevieve stared at him as if he had gone mad, but finally she relented. "If you insist," she said stiffly. Without another word, she marched over to the nearest wall and unslung her pack.

It seemed they were stopping after all.

The dream, when it came, was similar to the hundreds of dreams Fiona had suffered since she'd become a Grey Warden. Before, however, it had always felt as if she was looking on the dream from afar, hazy and easy to forget. Now it was crystal clear.

Fiona stood on a battlefield littered with dead men. All of them were soldiers in heavy armor, knights wearing the griffon standard of the order. Each had been brutally slaughtered. The smell of blood and decay hung thick and cloying in the air, the buzzing sound of flies nipping at her senses.

Overhead, the sky filled with an endless, roiling black cloud. It looked like ink spreading slowly in water, a great stain that blotted out the horizon. She had been told about this. The first sign of the Blight, said the Grey Wardens, is found in the clouds. When the mighty dragon rises, its corruption touches the world and spreads.

She was alone on that field of corpses. All alone. The wind picked up, a sickly breeze that carried with it the stench of carrion. A gloom fell upon her, and she stumbled as she watched something rise from out of the field of bodies nearby. It was enormous. A great, black thing that was as cold and terrible as anything she could have imagined.

Fear pulsed through her. Her heart raced, and she looked away. She didn't want to see it. She threw her hands up in front of her eyes not to see it. Yet still she felt it coming. Her foot caught between two corpses and made her fall back on top of them. Dead flesh pressed against her and still she covered her eyes. Still she felt the darkness surging ever closer to her.

It was coming. And it was coming for her.

Fiona screamed in terror-

-and then awoke. It took her a moment at first to realize where she was, and that the darkness was expected. The campfire had died down to small flames, offering only the faintest illumination. She could see someone lying on the other side of the fire, facing away from her and shrouded in shadow. Perhaps it was Kell? Hafter lay nearby, easily identifiable by his mound of fur and his heavy breathing. Otherwise the silence was almost oppressive, as if it forced in around her from all sides.

"Are you all right?" a voice whispered behind her. It made her jump, and a gentle hand touched her shoulder to calm her down.

"I'm sorry. I just heard you thrashing."

It was Maric. Her heart beat a little too fast for her liking and she sat up. Sweat covered her face and had soaked into the padding under her chain, making it uncomfortable and itchy. The man looked up at her from beside the fire, his eyes bleary with sleep and his blond hair askew. His normally silvery armor was now dull with dried blood and grime. "I'm fine," she whispered back. "I apologize for waking you," she added as an afterthought, and heard him settle back to sleep.

Fiona stared into the fire. Utha was also nearby, sleeping quietly, as was Duncan. Genevieve was obviously on watch, no doubt out there in the thick shadows that lurked not a foot away. The group seemed so few now. She clutched her arms around herself and shivered. She hadn't thought it was so cold down here before. Perhaps Duncan's complaints were finally getting to her.

She picked up her staff and very quietly stood, not wanting to disturb the others. Utha stirred in her slumber, shivering and pawing her hands at some invisible enemy. Fiona could sympathize. What the others were going through, she couldn't even imagine. As they had retired, she had carefully inspected herself as well as she could without completely removing her armor and her skirt. She found no traces of the corruption on her skin, and that was a relief. Really, there shouldn't be any.

She had been a Grey Warden only a little longer than Duncan - her Calling was so far away she shouldn't even have to think about such things. Yet in Genevieve's own words, some other force was at work here.

With a bit of concentration she willed her staff to glow. Not so brightly as to wake the others, but enough so she could see where she was stepping. She didn't want to travel far, just enough to get some breathing room. The dream awaited her if she went back to sleep, or perhaps other nightmares even worse. It was better to walk.

She stopped at the edge of the cluster of rubble that lay strewn over the ground in the crumbled passage. Farther on there was only more of the moist darkspawn filth, and she didn't want to touch that again. She had seen enough of the corruption to last a lifetime, and somewhere off in the far distance was that strange sound, the beautiful whispering. She didn't want to listen to it, but couldn't help herself. She closed her eyes and tried to pick out what the whisper was saying.

Was it a song? Was it a name? It almost seemed that it was calling out to her, stroking her soul ever so softly....

Fiona heard someone approaching behind her and she jumped. She turned around to see Maric approaching cautiously."You can't sleep either, I see," he whispered.

"I thought you could."

"No," he said. Then, more emphatically: "No, not at all."

"I wish I hadn't tried."

Maric removed his fur cloak and spread it on a part of the ground where the rubble was mostly absent. He seated himself on the edge, leaning against the wall and issuing a tired sigh. Then he looked over at her and offered her a seat on the other side. She hesitated only briefly, propping her staff up against the wall. She didn't need to maintain direct contact to keep it lit, after all.

They sat in silence for a time. Finally Maric turned to speak to her, but before he could say anything she interrupted him. "Thank you," she blurted out.

Maric paused, tilting his head a little to the side as if she had caught him completely off guard. "What for?"

"For coming to get me. Duncan tells me that you were the first one to break out of the trap, and that you insisted on finding me."

It was a bit difficult for her to get the words out, considering how rude she had been to the man on several occasions now. If he would simply stop staring at her, this would be much easier. "How did you do it?" she asked him.

He shook his head as if clearing it, and stared at her in confusion. "How did I do what? Find you?"

"How did you break out of your dream?"

"Ah." He nodded soberly. "I promised you that I would repay you."

"And you always keep your promises?"

"I try. It was enough to remind me that I couldn't stay where I was, even if I wanted to. I knew I had to try to help you, if I could."

His sincerity was enough to move her. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she wiped them away quickly, feeling even more foolish.

She had completely misjudged the man, it seemed. All the expectations she had laid on him for being this king and this figure of legend, and it turned out he was simply a good man. How unexpected.

Maric glanced away, allowing her a moment to compose herself.

"Thank you, then," she repeated."I...didn't expect you to repay me this way, or any way, but it means a great deal."

He nodded slowly, and then turned back toward her. His demeanor was completely serious, and his gaze intense. "I wanted to speak to you," he said, "to tell you something. That man from your dream. I am not him. I know what you think of me, but I am not like that."

"I know."

"I don't know what he did to you, but..."

"I was a slave," she answered, as easily as she could. "The Count bought me from slavers when I was seven years old, and I was his pet until I was fourteen." The words came out in a rush, and she felt the flush crawl up her cheeks. She had never spoken of this to anyone. It was a part of her life she had buried, pushed down into shadows never to be thought of again. Yet she felt like she had to tell him. "What you saw, that was my life until I finally murdered him and escaped to the Circle."

Maric's eyes were wide with horror. "I don't know what to say."

"What is there to say?" She shrugged. "Slavery is illegal in the Empire, but it still goes on. Nobody pays attention if an elf disappears here or there. Nobody cares what happens to us in the alienage. Wealthy, powerful men like the Count get to do whatever they like, to whomever they like, so long as nobody cares."

"I'm sorry."

"No need to apologize. I was lucky. I had the talent for magic, a curse for every other person and yet for me it meant freedom. It meant an escape to the Circle, the lone elf in the tower, uneducated and frightened of anyone who even came near me." She grimaced at the memory."The mages were just men, I discovered. Capricious and sad and bigoted just like everywhere else. I swore I wouldn't let them keep me, and I escaped them, too."

"To the Grey Wardens."

She nodded. "Some people look on becoming a Grey Warden as a duty. Maybe even a punishment. Duncan had to be forced. I begged to be recruited." The memory was an unpleasant one. The Joining ritual that had followed it was even less so. Drink the blood of darkspawn, they said, and if you survive it will only be for a time. You will be a Grey Warden until the Calling comes at last. And she had drunk it gladly. And she hadn't looked back.

They sat there on the cloak, staring out together into the shadows.

Finally it was Maric who spoke. "My mother was killed in front of me," he said quietly. "I had to become the leader of her rebellion, something I felt completely unprepared for."

"You don't need to tell me this," she murmured.

"No, I do." He looked at her, his expression grim."There was an elven woman named Katriel. A spy from Orlais that I fell in love with, and she with me. She saved my life, and yet when I found out what she was, I didn't give her a chance. I killed her."

"I didn't know about that."

He chuckled ruefully. "You must be the only one."

"Was she... the one in your dream?"

He nodded. "I would have done anything to take back that day. Yet I couldn't. I had to go on, because Ferelden needed me. I married a woman who was in love with my best friend, because Ferelden needed me. And when she died I kept going, despite the fact that everything in my life felt empty, because Ferelden needed me."

He looked at her again, his eyes sad. "Everything was because Ferelden needed me."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Everyone has nightmares, Fiona."

She felt Maric take her hand, and he squeezed it. She was drawn to him almost magnetically, and found herself leaning to give him a tentative kiss. She pulled away only a fraction afterwards. He looked as surprised as she did, though not displeased. Then she leaned in again, more urgently, and their kiss had passion. She felt him breathing against her, and accepted his arms as they closed around her.

She wanted this. She wanted to be with a good man, and forget for just a moment about where they were, and what had happened to them. She needed a moment's solace, and she suspected he did, too. Pulling away from the heat of his touch, she tugged desperately at her chain mail, undoing the leather straps that held it down. She pulled at the padded undershirt, sighing with relief as she finally got it off.

Maric hesitated. "Fiona, I... perhaps we shouldn't..."

She ignored him, reaching over and undoing the straps that held his breastplate in place. He seemed pained, struggling with himself despite his obvious desire. "But what about the others?"

"I don't care."

"But... here?"

"Forget where we are." She pulled the breastplate over his head and he let her, staring helplessly. When it was done, she starting working on the straps for his pauldrons, and after a moment's hesitation he began to help. They tugged and pulled and twisted until slowly they got his bulky, heavy armor off.

She untied his stained and soiled undershirt and removed it, unveiling bare skin. He was covered in bruises and cuts, as no doubt was she. His blue eyes were locked on her with an intensity that threatened to burn her up. The King was a handsome man; she had to give him that. But not all handsome men were also bad men.

"Are you certain?" he whispered, his breathing husky. "There are... bad memories for me down here. I don't know if..."

"Shhhhh," Fiona hushed him quietly, putting a finger to his lips. He stopped and looked at her with such an ache of loneliness it almost broke her heart. She slowly stroked his cheek."I am tired of pain. So tired. Aren't you?"

His answer came as he leaned in, his kiss gentle as if he thought her fragile. And then another followed, and then another.

Damned be the darkness, she thought.

She let the light of the staff extinguish.

And so we burned. We raised nations, we waged wars,

We dreamed up false gods, great demons

Who could cross the Veil into the waking world,

Turned our devotion upon them, and forgot you.

-Canticle of Threnodies 1:8

Genevieve moved alone through the underground tunnels. She used a torch to light her way initially, but as she progressed farther into darkspawn territory she found that more and more of the tunnels were lit by the phosphorescent lichen that lined the walls like mold. For all she knew, it could even be mold. Perhaps the corruption that coated the stone like slick bile had its own growths, its own process of decay. Whatever the source, the sickly green light in the tunnels was eventually strong enough that she could extinguish the torch and move through the shadows without it. She could save it for later.

If later came at all.

This was likely to be a one-way trip. That truth had been staring her in the face for some time now, but she had refused to acknowledge it. Abandoning the others was the right thing to do. Bregan was her brother, and it was she who insisted that he was alive. This was her responsibility. The talents of the others had been useful, but it was better if she did the rest on her own.

Kell would wake up to find her gone, and rightfully judge that it was better to abandon the mission and return to the surface. It would be a difficult ascent for the others, but Genevieve was confident they could do it. She was less confident that she would succeed in reaching her own goal.

But she had to believe. She felt Bregan out there, felt him just the same as she felt the darkspawn. Every now and again she would turn a corner in the tunnels and would feel her brother's presence on the edge of her senses, almost as if his scent had been carried to her somehow on an invisible wind. Why she felt him now when she had only dreamed of him before, she didn't know. Perhaps it was because she was so close. It burned under her skin, the knowledge that he was near enough to touch.

Dizziness overcame Genevieve and she paused, leaning against the rough- hewn stone walls for support. The dark mucus there smeared on the shoulder of her armor, but she barely noticed. That infernal song! The more she concentrated on trying to feel where her brother was, the louder it became, the more it infused itself inside her very mind. It was maddening, and yet she steeled herself against it. She could not let it overcome her now.

She had begun to hear it weeks ago, before they even arrived in Ferelden. The faintest whispers at first, an odd humming that she assumed was a residue of the powerful dreams. And then she realized what it was. Her time had come, just as it had come for Bregan.

They had taken their Joining together, so she had known that it would not be long in coming, but somehow she had assumed she would have more time. The Grey Wardens had elevated her to her brother's rank knowing that it was a temporary measure, something sure to last less than a year or two at best, yet still she had been determined to prove them wrong. All those years of living in her brother's shadow and finally her time had come, and then the whispers had come and ended even that.

She hadn't told anyone. The Grey Wardens had ignored her warnings about Bregan, at best suggesting that the order would need to prepare itself if what she said proved to be true. The possibility of preventing the calamity didn't even enter into their minds. Such fools. If she had told them of the whispers, then they would have leaped upon it as an excuse to send her into the Deep Roads - alone, and to die.

Genevieve wiped the sweat from her brow. She stared at her steel gauntlet and watched it shake. She felt weaker than she had in ages, like there was a thick poison loose in her blood. It made her skin itch and she wanted nothing more than to strip off her armor and scratch until she stripped the flesh from her bones.

There was no stopping now, however.

Banishing the fear that curled like a serpent in the pit of her stomach, she pushed herself away from the wall and began to walk. Her balance wavered, but by pure force of concentration she made herself place one foot in front of the other. I have come this far, she thought. I will not be denied now. I will stop the Blight.

For what seemed like endless hours she trudged through corruption and the mire, the dim greenish light of the lichen sometimes becoming a glare that sickened her and at other times becoming so faint that she was tempted to relight her torch. She moved through the shadows, stopping at every junction of the tunnels to listen and see if the feeling of Bregan would return again. She pressed her mind outward, feeling for anything, and yet all she heard now was that alluring song off in the distance.

Where were the darkspawn? At one point the creatures had been hounding their every step, and her Grey Warden senses could tell they lay in every direction even when they weren't actively on top of them. Then they lost them in the lower caverns and, what? They had simply vanished.

She found it difficult to believe. No matter how effective the brooches given to them by the First Enchanter were, that shouldn't change how darkspawn behaved. As soon as the creatures got a hint of their intrusion, the activity should have built until the Deep Roads were buzzing like an angry beehive. Losing their prey should have only increased their exertions. The idea that the darkspawn might be looking in completely the wrong direction, and only there, was too bizarre.

Something was not as it should be. She felt frustration as she realized she was missing an important piece of the puzzle. What was making the darkspawn act so strangely? Assuming Bregan had indeed been taken captive, why do that now when they had never once done so in all the centuries the Grey Wardens had sent elder members of their order to the Calling?

Unless they had. Those who went to their Calling were never heard from again. What if they had been sent into the darkspawn's arms, and not to their deaths at all? Yet the order claimed it knew, and she had to believe.

The rocky passage opened up slowly, and she noticed smoother walls now. Architecture. Dwarven handiwork. The tunnels had circled around to an older part of the Deep Roads, then. Here the statues seemed to be absent, the craftsmanship less precise, the lava flows missing. What was it, then? The Deeper Roads? She had never heard of such a thing.

Almost without warning, she received a sense of darkspawn approaching. She tightened her grip on her greatsword and waited. Why hadn't she detected them sooner? Had they found some way to mask themselves from Grey Warden senses, just as the brooches masked the group from them? A sobering thought, to be certain.

As she inched forward, sweat beading down her forehead, and her eyes trying vainly to pierce the shadows as she watched for an attack, she realized that there was only a single creature coming. Alone stray, then? A forager, perhaps, unable to sense her through the brooch's cloaking?

She had to kill it quickly. Slay it before it became aware of her and she might be able to avoid alerting the horde that inevitably lay in wait.

Genevieve moved to the side of the tunnel, pressing against the wall behind a stone support pillar. It was hardly large enough truly to hide her, but the darkness shrouded her here. These creatures could see far better in the dark than humans could, but they were not immune to it.

Her heart thundered in her chest as she waited. She peered around the pillar, waiting for the darkspawn to show itself. The minutes passed. Sweat dripped off her forehead and ran into her eyes, but she ignored it.

Soon her patience paid off. A figure appeared in the distance, just barely discernible against the green haze of the lichen. It shuffled toward her, its raspy breathing clear in the vast and empty silence. A hurlock, then, she noted from its size. She readied her sword. Even a hurlock could be killed in a single blow if she was quick.

She pressed as flat against the wall as she could, stifling her own breathing and listening for the faint sounds of the creature's steps. It came closer... and closer. The crunch of a piece of nearby stone underneath its foot signaled the moment to attack. She stepped out from behind the pillar, preparing for the silent swing-

"Genevieve."

It was Bregan. He stood there in front of her, and she knew it was him even though he wore a black suit of darkspawn armor and was so covered with diseased flesh he could very well have passed for one of the creatures. His white hair was gone, and his eyes had reddened until they were the color of blood, but it was him.

She stopped in midswing, howling in dismay. Andraste's mercy, what had happened to him?

"Bregan?" she asked, disbelieving.

He nodded. He seemed calm, and those bloodred eyes flicked to her sword with interest. Genevieve lowered the blade and then dropped it to the ground. It landed with a dull clatter. Should she kill him? The knowledge he possessed needed to die with him, but what if he had already given it away? What if there was something he could tell her?

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