“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.