As Duncan slowly scanned the area, he noticed that not only was the gate closed, but so were all the doors. All except one. A single innocuous building on the other side of the square had its door invitingly open. “Look there.” He pointed.
They all did, and paused. “That almost seems too convenient,” Genevieve muttered. Nobody argued with her, but quietly the group began crossing the square toward the door.
“Will Fiona be here?” Maric asked quietly. “Or just the demon?”
“I don’t know,” Kell admitted.
Genevieve motioned the Wardens to spread out. Kell and Utha went around one side of the great oak while she and Duncan went the other. Maric kept up behind them. Nobody said a word, the only sound the wind through the eaves overhead.
As the group crept through the door, Duncan paused. The hallway just inside wasn’t what he would have expected. It was wide, for one, and the walls were covered in the delicate paper he’d seen sometimes in the homes of the truly wealthy. Here it was decorated with petite roses, each one growing from a vine that stretched up to the peaked white ceiling overhead. The floors here were a polished wood, dark and rich and clean enough to eat off of.
“This can’t be the same place we just entered,” he muttered.
The others were looking around now, as well, their grips tightening on their weapons. “We went through a doorway, didn’t we?” Maric whispered. “We could be anywhere.”
“We are being led,” Genevieve declared. “This is a trap.”
“Do we have much choice?”
She had no answer for him. After a moment’s hesitation the group moved forward again. It became obvious that this was an estate, the home of some Orlesian aristocrat. They passed a luxuriously appointed sitting room, a hallway that seemed to go off into a servant’s wing, and even a conservatory complete with whitewashed doors that opened up onto a sunlit garden filled with flowered bushes.
All of it still had the same unreality that the alienage did, the feeling that everything wasn’t quite right. Duncan noticed, as well, that the estate was similarly abandoned. The hallways should have been teeming with servants and guards, an entire staff bustling about to run the house hold, and yet there was nothing but silence.
“Do you hear that?” Kell asked quietly.
The group stopped in the hall. Duncan cocked his head and ever so faintly heard the sound of a woman crying. It might have been Fiona; it was too far away to tell and would have been impossible to hear if it wasn’t otherwise so quiet. The hunter had good ears.
They moved on, Kell leading the way as he tried to find a path toward the sound. They passed through an open courtyard filled with verdant bushes and a marble statue of Andraste atop a burbling fountain. Opening a sliding window, Kell took them carefully into an empty kitchen. It was large, the sort that would have normally been filled with servants desperate to bake their bread and finish the evening meal, but there was no one. It didn’t even smell as if it had ever been used. The sounds of the whimpering woman were definitely louder, however, and as the hunter brought them to the back of the kitchen they found a narrow flight of stairs leading downward into darkness.
The cries were coming from below.
“Do we go down?” Maric asked nobody in par tic u lar.
There was no answer. They had no way back into the waking world, no way to free themselves from what ever spell the demon had placed upon them. If this was truly a trap, then they had to walk into it with their eyes open and hope that they came out the other side.
Duncan felt growing dread as they descended single file. The stairs creaked ominously beneath their weight, and the air turned chill the farther down they got. His heart began to beat rapidly, and he had to force himself to keep moving. The stones around them changed, becoming natural rock. They entered a dank cave, the sound of the crying ahead echoing past stagnant pools.
This was no natural place, he thought. This was a memory, something so terrible that to Fiona it had become a dark cave filled with terror. He could feel it clawing at his senses, and could see the others feeling the same. Sweat poured down their foreheads, their eyes wide as they pushed ahead in the shadows. Fiona wasn’t trapped in a dream filled with her fondest hopes—she was trapped in her worst nightmare.
A faint light appeared ahead of them, the cave opening up into a small cavern. It was bare except for a candelabrum of wrought iron standing in the center, the candles flickering and sending shadows jumping about the rocky floor. A man stood next to it with his back turned, his grey hair pulled into a genteel ponytail. He was dressed in the embroidered velvet jacket and high leather boots typical of an Orlesian nobleman, and carried a long leather whip curled in one hand.
What he was using the whip on was obvious. Fiona lay prone on the stone floor, facing away from them with her arms raised above her head and chained to the wall. Her head hung down limply, and the back of her robe was ripped open from so many whiplashes across her back that her skin was red with blood. Duncan would have thought her dead were it not for the quavering of her shoulders and her racking sobs.
“Did you think”—the nobleman sneered at Fiona beneath him—“that I was going to let the Chantry take you away from me? Whisk you off to the Circle of Magi, hmm?”
“I’m sorry, master,” Fiona pleaded. Her head still hung down, almost touching the floor. Her voice was reduced to a broken whisper, and she continued to cry.
“You forget my connections! I can ensure they forget about some little elven harlot! The mage who found you was mistaken, as simple as that!”
“Yes, master …”
“It’s not as if I need you for any foul magical gift you possess, do I?”
“Yes, master …”
Although Duncan couldn’t see the man’s face, his rage was obvious. He unfurled the leather whip and cracked it loudly. “You’re not listening to me, foolish girl! I have had enough of your insolence! Enough!” He raised the whip up high, preparing to lash Fiona once again.
“Stop!” Genevieve ordered him. She moved into the small cavern, her greatsword raised cautiously before her. The others followed suit, keeping their distance from the nobleman and spreading out. There was no way of knowing what to expect from him.
He paused, not landing his blow, and instead turned to look at them. The nobleman was arrogantly handsome. His eyes were lined with black kohl, in Orlesian custom, but, far more noticeable, they glowed with a sinister purplish hue. He smiled, as if pleased. “Ah! And here they are at last. Found your way out of your dreams, did you? Well, throw away a gift if you will; I won’t give you another.”
“We do not need your gifts,” Genevieve said, her tone deadly. She lowered her sword at him. “You will release Fiona, and you will release us. Do it.”
He chuckled lightly. “Release my precious girl? I don’t think so! I bought her fair and square! I have spent years raising her; I’m not about to waste all of that!”
“We know what you are, demon. There is no need to pretend.”
He clucked his tongue reproachfully. “Do you think you are actually here? Do you think those are actual weapons that you have pointed at me? Who do you think is the master of this realm, and who the dreamer?” With a wave of his hand, Genevieve was thrown back with terrible force. She grunted as she slammed hard into the stone wall of the cavern, her sword clattering to the ground. He raised his hand, grinning, and she rose as if carried by the throat, kicking her legs and clutching at her neck as she choked.
Kell unleashed an arrow, and it lodged into the neck of the nobleman with little effect. Utha charged at him, Maric right behind her with his sword raised high, and the nobleman merely waved with his other hand and sent the two of them tumbling back along the floor. Kell shot two more arrows, both of them striking the demon harmlessly, before he took out his flail and charged as well.