She grabbed on to the nearest outcropping of the white structure, testing it to make sure it wasn’t going to collapse under her weight. It was surprisingly solid, and at the same time it felt vaguely coarse and slimy, as if its surface were made out of sandy sludge just short of dissolving entirely into goo. It left a pale, gritty residue on her fingers as well. She pulled herself slowly up, feeling the heels of her boots sink into the muck, and gingerly made her way to where Duncan was sitting.
“Be careful,” Maric called after her.
She knelt down next to Duncan, careful not to sit in the sludge as he was. It was plastered all over his leathers, she noticed, like he had been wallowing in it.
They didn’t speak for several minutes. Fiona just looked out over the green water as he did, admiring the play of the light upon the ceiling. The strange murmuring continued, ebbing and flowing just as the lake was. She noticed odd shadows moving beneath the water, as well. Fish, here? The source of the sounds, perhaps?
She reached out with her Grey Warden senses and felt nothing. Nothing at all. The thought that after so much corruption in the tunnels they would be here and it would be completely free of the taint was worrying, but she put it aside for now.
“I suppose I’ll need to go back?” he asked her.
“Not unless you think you can reach the surface on your own.”
“Probably not.”
With a sigh he stood up, wiping his hands on his tunic. She stood, too, and led him back to where Maric waited anxiously. Maric reached out and helped them both down, one after the other, and then turned to regard Duncan cautiously.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
The lad shrugged. “You know, I never wanted to become a Grey Warden. I probably shouldn’t have been one. Genevieve made a mistake in picking me, I think.”
Maric’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. “I think you mentioned that once before. Why didn’t you want to become a Grey Warden? You didn’t volunteer, you mean?”
“The Wardens have the Right of Conscription,” Fiona explained. “It dates back to the First Blight, a long time ago. Everyone was so grateful to the order for finally defeating the darkspawn that they gave them a number of powers, one of which was the right to recruit anyone they wished. If the order wants you, you’re recruited. End of story.”
“I hadn’t heard that.”
“It’s not a right they invoke much these days. It’s been so long since the last Blight that some people think the order isn’t important any longer, that the darkspawn will never return to the surface. The order has to be careful not to push anyone too far. That’s how we’ve become so few.”
Duncan dug out a cloth from his belt and wiped irritably at the white sludge that clung to his boots and his jerkin. She noticed that wherever he wiped it off, the black leather was stained to a murky green underneath. Suddenly she was relieved she hadn’t sat down in it.
“Genevieve pushed it with me,” he said. “I was going to be executed.”
“Executed?” Maric asked, surprised.
“I’d murdered someone.” The lad glanced away, shadows crossing behind his eyes. Fiona could see them, and wondered if Maric could see them, too. She knew what a hard life could drive someone to do. She knew only a little of what Duncan had been through, enough to feel sympathy for him. “I’d already been thrown in a dungeon to await my hanging when Genevieve came to see me. They let this armored woman into my cell, and the way she looked at me, I thought she was supposed to be my executioner. I thought maybe they’d decided to just have me beheaded right there.”
“That’d be an easy mistake to make. Your commander is a grim, grim woman.”
“But instead she sat me down and explained to me that she could take me out of there. She could make me a Grey Warden, and if I survived the Joining I’d be a warrior, I’d fight for a noble cause for once.”
“So you said yes.”
Duncan’s face became solemn. “I said no.”
“An odd choice, waiting to be hanged as you were.”
The lad squirmed, looking uncomfortable. For a long minute he didn’t say anything, but just when Fiona was about to call a halt to the conversation and suggest they return to the others, he sighed. “The man I killed was a Grey Warden.”
“Ah.”
“He caught me robbing his room at the inn. The owner had tipped me off, assuming the fellow was going to be gone for a while. I didn’t even know who or what he was. He pulled his sword and warned me to give back the ring I’d found, but I refused. It was valuable, I could tell, and I’d rightfully taken it.”
Maric grinned. “Rightfully being used in the loosest sense there?”
“I’d been starving. The winter had been hard.” He frowned thoughtfully. “I’d never killed anyone before. I wouldn’t have killed him then, either, but the fight was so long. He was so determined to get that ring back, he wouldn’t stop. I’d meant to just put my dagger to his throat, to force him to submit… .” He trailed off, sighing again.
Maric seemed confused. “Why did you care so much?”
“You think I should enjoy killing someone?”
“No.” The King looked puzzled. Fiona glared at him, warning him off this subject, but he ignored her. “The first man I ever killed was out of desperation. I bashed his head open on a rock. I didn’t enjoy it, either, but he’d left me no choice.”
“He thanked me.” Duncan’s voice became a whisper as he remembered the moment. “I’d cut his throat, and he was bleeding over everything. I was desperate and trying to cover the wound, trying to stop the blood, and he got this look on his face like he was grateful. Like he was at peace. He grabbed my shoulder and stopped me and I looked straight at him, and then he thanked me.” The lad ran a hand nervously through his black hair and turned away. “It … stuck with me. What kind of man would thank someone for murdering him? What kind of life must he have had? The watch burst in and arrested me. They dragged me in front of a judge and he was the one who told me the man had been a Grey Warden.”
“So Genevieve recruited someone who’d killed a member of her own order?”
“She said it was impressive, the fact that I’d managed it at all.”
“But you refused.”
He chuckled ruefully. “I just wondered if being a Grey Warden would make me like him. Or like her. Would I be thanking someone someday for cutting my throat? I couldn’t do it. I even told her what he’d said, and she just nodded and left my cell without saying a word.”
Maric looked at the lad incredulously, but said nothing. Duncan shrugged and cleared his throat, seemingly nonchalant. “It didn’t matter. She showed up at my execution the next day and told them she was invoking the Right of Conscription before they could get the noose around my neck. Boy, they didn’t like that.”
Fiona snorted. “No, they sure didn’t.” She remembered the controversy that had sparked, not just with the Lord Mayor but also within the order. They thought that Genevieve had gone mad. Recruiting the murderer of one of their own? And not only recruiting him, but against his will? The Commander had been typically adamant, however. She had gone to that cell to see what kind of man Duncan was, and had seen something in him that she had never explained to anyone.
Duncan had had a difficult time of it when she’d first brought him to the fortress at Montsimmard. None of the others had wanted to associate with him, so he took his meals alone in his cell. Kept mostly to himself. As the most junior member of the order, Fiona had been forced to see him through his Joining. She had initially refused to do it, but Genevieve hadn’t cared. In the end, Duncan had been a surprise. She had expected him to be a worthless criminal, and instead he’d turned out to be something quite different.