In time, the door opened again and the burly man reappeared, this time accompanied by a sullen-looking Duncan. The young man looked drenched, as if he had just come in out of the rain, wearing a set of black trousers and a white shirt soaked right through.
Duncan stared at Maric in surprise, and then looked up at his father. “I don’t know this man. I didn’t do anything to him!” he said defensively.
“That’s enough!” His father pushed him into the shop.
Maric cleared his throat. “Actually, I would like to speak to him alone.”
“Alone?” The man looked angrily at Duncan, who rolled his eyes and sighed. Finally the man nodded at Maric. “As you wish.” With a warning glare at his son, the man turned and went back inside, closing the door firmly behind him.
Duncan folded his arms and stared challengingly at Maric, but said nothing. There was no sense in his eyes that he knew who he was looking at, not even a little. Maric cleared his throat. This might not be very easy. “I suppose you don’t remember me?”
The lad squinted his eyes. “Should I?”
“We haven’t known each other long.”
“You have me mistaken, I think.”
“No, I don’t.” Maric gestured to the shop around him. “I know this may be a bit hard to believe, but I don’t know how else to explain it to you. This isn’t real.”
“What? Of course it is!” Duncan stepped back, looking at him like he was insane. Maric wondered if maybe that wasn’t true. The whole idea of the Fade was incredible. How do you explain to someone that they were in a dream? What if someone had come up to him a year ago and suggested such a thing?
Sadly, a part of Maric wondered if he wouldn’t have simply felt relieved.
“No. This is a dream. This isn’t real.”
Duncan turned toward the door, but Maric caught his shoulder and spun him back. The lad was furious now, but there was also something else in his expression. Was it doubt? Maric seized upon that. “You know what I’m talking about,” he insisted. “You are a Grey Warden, Duncan. We are in the Fade, in a dream, sent here by the demon we encountered in the dwarven palace. Don’t you remember?”
Duncan pulled himself out of Maric’s grip, and backed up sharply enough to bang against one of the shop’s wooden walls. A nearby pile of chairs rattled loudly. “No!” he snarled, suddenly enraged. “That never happened! That … that was a dream!”
“This is the dream, Duncan.”
“No!” he shouted. He charged at Maric, fists flying, but Maric caught his wrists and together they fell onto the Marquise’s table in the center of the shop. The table went flying off the saw horses, crashing to the ground with an enormous racket as two of the legs broke off. Duncan was on top of Maric, struggling to free his fists as his face contorted into fury, and Maric barely fended him off. Finally he threw him back.
“Don’t be stupid!” Maric snapped. “You know it’s true! I can see it!”
Duncan fell back onto the floor, hitting his head against another chair and sending it flying outside into the rain. He sat there, stunned.
The door into the house flew open and Duncan’s father charged out with a carpenter’s hammer in one hand, his face filled with concern and fury. “What is going on here?” When he saw Maric lying on the damaged table, and Duncan not a foot away, he immediately charged at Maric. Those strong hands grabbed the neck of Maric’s breastplate, lifting him off the table as if he weighed nothing at all. That powerful face was just inches away from his own, red with rage. “Why have you brought trouble to my home? Get out of here!”
“Father, wait,” came Duncan’s quiet plea.
It was enough to make his father pause. Still holding Maric aloft, he turned and scowled at his son. “Did you cause this, then? Duncan, I thought I taught you better than that.”
The look that Duncan suddenly gave his father was at once so hopeless and so sad that Maric knew the lad realized the truth. “You did,” he said quietly. “You did teach me better.”
“And what is your excuse, then?”
“You died,” Duncan whispered. His eyes glistened brightly, and he wiped at them, turning away. His father’s fury dissolved instantly, and he lowered Maric back to the table on the floor as if he were little more than an afterthought.
“Son,” he said, his voice thick, “it doesn’t have to be like this.”
“It already is.”
The lad turned back to his father, his eyes bleary with tears, and the two of them stared at each other quietly for a moment. His father sighed sadly, and Duncan closed his eyes. And just like that the entire shop vanished. It was simply gone, replaced by an open plain and the island-filled sky of the Fade above.
Duncan barely seemed to notice. He was in his black leathers and his Grey Warden tunic once again, the twin daggers at his sides. He stared at the spot where his father had been, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I really thought—” His voice caught, and he swallowed hard. “I really thought it was them; I thought it had all been some nightmare.”
“I know.”
“I was so relieved. That I hadn’t been stuck, alone …”
“I know.”
Maric tensed as he saw Katriel approach from nearby. He had half assumed that she would simply be gone, that maybe her appearance had just been another dream. Yet there she was, striding toward them and regarding Duncan with an amused expression.
The lad frowned and followed his gaze, turning to spot her with a degree of surprise. He backed away warily, going for his daggers, but she held a hand to show she was unarmed. “A little young, aren’t you?” she asked with a slight grin. Duncan turned and looked incredulously at Maric.
“This is Katriel,” Maric told him with a sigh.
“You mean … ?”
“Yes, that Katriel.”
“But isn’t she … ?”
“Dead?” she answered for him, giving Maric a wary look. “That’s the rumor. I’ve come to help. If you prefer to think of me as something unpleasant, that’s fine. It would be no worse than what I was in life.”
Duncan seemed confused. “We can’t trust her!”
“She led me to you,” Maric told him. Then he turned to Katriel, trying not to meet her gaze. It was a torment to see her like this, to have memories dredged up that he had thought long-buried. “We need to find the others,” he told her.
She nodded, and gestured down a desolate path lined with tall statues. “There is another doorway in this direction. It will take you where you need to go.” Maric and Duncan stood in the Frostback Mountains. A wind rushed past them, cold and brisk. Maric looked up at the impressive snowcapped peaks looming high overhead. The snow on the ground was thick, almost coming to the top of their boots, and from the dark clouds it looked likely that a storm was to come.
“Oh, great,” Duncan mumbled. “More snow.”
Maric glanced at the lad but said nothing. He had left Katriel behind, as before. Either she couldn’t follow them or chose not to; Maric wasn’t certain. He found that his thoughts kept returning to her. If she was a product of his dream, how did she leave it? Why was she helping him against the demon that created her? Perhaps she was another demon, an enemy of the first? Or was he simply being misled? So far her information had been useful.
A part of him wondered if it was possible that she was actually Katriel. They said the dead passed through the Fade on their way to the Maker’s side, and sometimes lost their way. Perhaps she was a ghost. It was a dangerous and frightening thought, and he tried to push it out of his mind.
A steep path led up the side of the mountain and they followed it, shivering in the wind. The trees here were thick evergreens, crowding the path and forcing them to push many low-hanging branches out of their way.
When the path turned a corner, a vista opened up before them. These were the Frostbacks at their most breathtaking: great mountains reaching almost up to the sky, a vast forest in the valley below leading to a frozen lake that he could see with crystal clarity. Had the lake not been ice and snow, it would almost have been possible to leap into the water, so long as one didn’t mind bouncing on the crags a few times. And provided hitting the water from such a height didn’t simply kill one outright. Still, it was impressive.