He remembered these hills. If they pressed far enough north to reach the coast, they would find themselves near the fortress of West Hill. There he had suffered the worst defeat of the war, one that had very nearly cost him the rebellion entirely. Hundreds of men who had followed him lost their lives there, all because he had been a trusting fool. It had been a sobering lesson to learn.
None of them had spoken a word for hours, now. Genevieve wanted to make up for lost time, and so each of them buried their faces into their cloaks and endured the weather as silently as they could. The roads and peaceful farming hamlets now covered by a blanket of snow slowly gave way to rocky crags, a skyline dotted with tall trees and sharp cliffs that were all but uninhabited.
Poor Duncan walked beside him, more miserable than ever. Maric wasn’t certain what the lad’s exact heritage was, but perhaps a lack of resistance to the cold was simply in his blood. Clearly he would have gladly stayed behind at Kinloch Hold if that were an option, which was saying a lot considering how most people felt about mages.
Genevieve had been quite eager to get him out of there, however. Something had passed between her and Duncan, and Maric wasn’t certain what. The Grey Warden’s commander had finally grown impatient after enduring the First Enchanter’s ceremony for much of the afternoon, cutting the man off in midsentence as she spun about to go in search of her missing young thief.
To tell the truth, Maric hadn’t been aware up to that point that Duncan was even absent. Eventually, Genevieve had returned with him in tow. Rather than being furious, however, the woman’s expression had been more awkward mortification. She refused to comment on what the lad had been up to when Maric asked her, clamping her jaw shut and actually blushing. Duncan stood behind her, ashen faced and looking like he wanted to do nothing more than crawl under a rock somewhere and die.
So the lad’s misery was due to far more than the weather. Since they’d left the tower, the white-haired Commander had barely spoken to him. Whenever she did, she stared at him incredulously with those hard eyes of hers, and Duncan withered under the disapproval. Maric would have stood up for him, but for all he knew the lad had done something completely reprehensible.
For his own part, Maric didn’t feel truly cold even in the blizzard, not until they spotted the doorway, a great slab of dark granite easily twice a man’s height set into the side of a ridge and almost covered in a drift of snow. It would have been simple to miss, had he not known exactly where it was. It came into sight slowly amid the wind and the snow, and they approached cautiously. The closer they got, the larger it loomed and the more the chill seeped into Maric’s heart.
This was the entrance into the Deep Roads that he had used eight years earlier, a desperate gamble to reach Gwaren without encountering the Orlesian usurper’s army on the surface. It had only been through sheer luck that he had survived. In fact, he survived by luck on a number of occasions back then. The people of Ferelden who worshipped him now wouldn’t believe the truth even if he told them, that their heroic king had managed to free them more through fortune than through skill or good decisions.
They would simply tell him that the Maker had watched over him, that through the Maker’s grace Ferelden had been freed. And perhaps that was so. Still, his mind inevitably was drawn to the two women who had accompanied him into those dark depths. One had become his wife and the mother of his son, while the other …
He grimaced. He didn’t want to think of Katriel.
It was she who had led them to this remote location the first time, calling on her mastery of history and lore. Once upon a time this doorway had been a way for the dwarves to ascend to the surface, no doubt to collect the resources that they needed, but since the darkspawn had overtaken the dwarven kingdoms it had become little more than an open sore long forgotten. Forgotten by anyone but people like Katriel, he amended silently.
Back then, they had found the entrance lying open, its great doors ravaged by time. When he visited Orzammar years later, he had asked the dwarves to repair the entrance and seal it. Loghain had worried that the darkspawn might use it to raid the surface, even though they clearly had not done so in centuries. Still, one could never be too careful.
It had never occurred to Maric that he would one day be returning here.
Another powerful gust picked up a pile of snow from the rocks and blew it in their faces. Genevieve shrugged it off and marched ahead to the entrance. Her thick white cape fluttered madly as she reached out with a hand to touch the dark stone, running her fingers along its surface. It seemed like she was feeling around for something.
“What is she doing?” Maric asked Duncan quietly.
The lad shrugged, not even willing to raise his face from the furs.
Finally Genevieve turned back and walked directly toward Maric. “You are able to open it, yes?”
“The dwarves gave me a key.”
She nodded. “Then we camp here until morning.”
“What?” Duncan spluttered with indignation. “Can’t we go in now? Where it’s warmer?”
The Commander turned a level gaze toward him, and he immediately shrank back from her. “We have no way of knowing whether there are darkspawn behind that door,” she said tersely. “Just because the King did not find any there eight years ago does not mean the situation will have remained the same.”
“Can’t you detect them?” Maric asked. “Isn’t that what Grey Wardens do?”
“I tried. I felt … a strange presence, very faint. I cannot tell if it is because the darkspawn are far below or because the doorway is simply too thick.” Without waiting for a response, she turned and snapped to one of the large warriors standing nearby, “Julien, tell the others to spread out and find someplace close with shelter. I want to keep an eye on this doorway to night.”
It wasn’t long before the Grey Wardens had efficiently set up a camp just over the next rise. Snow was piled high on top of it, but at least it offered relief from the sharp winds, and that was better than they’d had all day. Maric felt a bit useless as the others bustled around, setting up tents.
Kell gathered a small pile of frozen wood, and before Maric could ask how he planned on turning that into a fire the hunter produced a small flask from his pack. He poured out a bit of the contents, a bright yellow liquid that began to sizzle as soon as it touched the wood, and within moments a healthy blaze materialized.
“Impressive,” Maric commented.
Kell grinned. “It works on darkspawn, as well. Sadly, we only have a little.”
Before long, dusk gave way to night. Darkness pressed in around them, driven back only by the flames of the campfire. Above the hills, a black sky filled with clouds seemed to go on forever, lit by a moon that never quite seemed to show itself. The blizzard thankfully ended, though the wind continued to lash across the landscape, scouring the fields of snow smooth.
Within the camp, tension filled the air. Maric could see from the grim faces of the Grey Wardens that they didn’t look forward to the morning any more than he did. At least they knew what they were likely to encounter in the Deep Roads. When he first came here, he hadn’t had a clue.
Once the tents were set up, Kell headed off with Duncan and his warhound to hunt. Genevieve strode to the top of the bluff, as from there she could keep an eye on the doorway. The warrior stood up there, one leg propped on the rocks and her cloak billowing behind her in the wind as she kept her watch. It was an intimidating pose, Maric thought. She seemed even more intense than before, if that were possible, as if she expected the doors to burst open at any moment.
He turned to the dwarven woman with the coppery braid, Utha, who shared the frozen log they had dragged next to the campfire. Her face was pretty, he thought. Most of the dwarves he had ever seen looked as if they were hewn from stone, all hardness and rough edges. This one, however, seemed almost soft. She stared into the blaze with an unsettling serenity, and was so very … still.