He couldn’t imagine ever being like that. Even now his head was filled with worry—what was Loghain doing, for instance? He had left a note explaining his plan, but the man might assume it was fake. He might believe that Maric had been kidnapped, and probably had the army searching for him even now. Loghain rarely desisted when he was determined to have his way.
And then there was Cailan, his young son, now no doubt wondering where his father had gone. His mind immediately shied away from such thoughts. No, he wasn’t still at all.
Maric nudged the dwarf and pointed toward where Genevieve kept her vigil. “Is she always like that?” he asked. “Do you know?”
She regarded him with an impenetrable look, her brown eyes glittering in the firelight. She made several strange signals with her hands, and belatedly he remembered that she didn’t speak.
The two warriors sat on the other side of the fire from them, and stopped their quiet whispering to each other as they noticed Maric’s confusion. Nicolas, the blond and more talkative of the two by far, leaned toward him. “Utha tells you that it is love that drives our commander.” The man’s Orlesian accent was cultured and warm.
“Love? You mean love for her brother?”
He nodded. “They were very close.”
“Can you tell me about him? I barely know anything about him. How was he captured? How can you even be certain he’s still alive?”
The brown-haired man, Julien, picked up a long stick he had been using to tend the fire and began shifting several of the logs. Sparks flew, and when Nicolas glanced at his companion they shared a guarded and wary look. Maric had heard perhaps three words in total from Julien since they had left Denerim, and all of them had been directed at Nicolas. Still, the man’s dark eyes said plenty. They said right now that Nicolas shouldn’t be telling Maric any more than was necessary. More Grey Warden secrecy.
Utha frowned, raising a hand and agitatedly gesturing at the men. The fluttering of her fingers seemed to punctuate her words firmly. Nicolas scowled in response and reluctantly nodded. Julien said nothing, his eyes only darkening with concern.
“What did she say?”
“She says we have no right not to tell you more,” Nicolas muttered.
The dwarven woman continued to sign at Maric, and then waited patiently as Nicolas translated. “His name is Bregan, and until one year ago he was Commander of the Grey in Orlais, leader of the order within the Empire. He held that position for a very long time.”
“Did he quit?”
“He did not. He left the order for his Calling. It is a rite where a Grey Warden enters the Deep Roads alone.”
“Alone!” Maric exclaimed. “Why would someone do that?”
“To die,” Utha signed. “A far better fate than to allow the darkspawn taint to overtake our aging bodies. Every Grey Warden knows when their time for the Calling comes, and every one of them who has entered the Deep Roads for their Calling has died, until now.”
Maric pondered this for a moment. Duncan had already explained to him how the Grey Wardens drank darkspawn blood in a ritual they called the Joining, taking the taint into their own bodies in order to effectively combat the creatures. They were more than simply skilled at fighting darkspawn; they knew them intimately. They sensed their presence, sometimes even gleaned their intent. This information was not something many people knew, and Genevieve had only grudgingly allowed the lad to impart it to him.
He wondered if it was the same taint that he had encountered in the Deep Roads years ago. He remembered it well, covering everything in the underground passages like a vile, black fungus. Maric had been fortunate not to contract the darkspawn’s plague during his time there, and had always wondered if Rowan had. No one had ever been able to determine the nature of her illness, and though Maric had tried everything to help her, he had been forced to watch her wither away before his eyes.
It had been painful. Rowan had been a vital woman, and the slow sapping of her strength had galled her. Toward the end she had become a shadow, wanting nothing more than for the pain to simply stop. Maric had held her skeletal hand and felt his heart break as she had begged him in a cracked and hollow voice for release.
No, perhaps it wasn’t so difficult to imagine why the Grey Wardens might prefer to go on this Calling of theirs.
The idea that anyone would make such a sacrifice, however … that they would subject themselves to a corruption that would slowly eat away at their bodies solely to combat a menace that hadn’t threatened Thedas since the last Blight centuries ago?
But that was why they were here, wasn’t it? If the darkspawn were able to use the captured Grey Warden to find their Old God, then a new Blight would begin. Their threat would suddenly become very real. Provided Genevieve and the others were telling him the truth.
The warning of the witch came to mind again, but along with it came Loghain’s words as well. It would be easy to believe that the witch meant this event, that she was warning him this would lead to the Blight. But what if she hadn’t meant that? What if she had been lying? He had nothing but doubts now, and that made him feel uneasy.
“How do you know her brother is even alive?” he asked. “If he went out into the Deep Roads, there’s no way you can tell what’s happened to him. Or can Grey Wardens sense that, too?”
Julien remained fixed on the flames, clenching his jaw in disapproval. Nicolas, meanwhile, wrung his hands and glanced nervously to where Genevieve stood on the ridge. She ignored them utterly, watching the cave entrance with her arms crossed and a fiery will shining out of her eyes. Yes, Maric could see why the others might be hesitant to anger their white-haired commander. There was no way to know whether she could actually hear them from where she stood, but he wouldn’t put it past her. Obviously neither would they.
“The Commander and her brother were very close,” Nicolas whispered. Utha nodded solemnly as if to confirm his words. “During all the time that I have known them, they were seldom far apart. They joined the order together, trained together, practically spent every waking moment together. I think she would have followed him into the Deep Roads, had it also been her time. In fact, I think she might have followed him anyhow, had her duties not held her here.”
“So is she chasing false hope, then?”
“She is certain. She has had dreams.”
Maric paused, not quite certain he’d heard the man say what he did. “Dreams,” he repeated, keeping his voice deliberately neutral. Nicolas nodded, as did the dwarf. Julien shook his head in dismay, frowning. “You’re aware of how mad that sounds, surely?”
“We’re not mad.” Fiona materialized out of the blowing snow, the elf’s blue skirts whipping wildly about as she approached the fire carry ing a large pack. She put it down next to the log, frowning at Maric coolly. “And neither is Genevieve. Dreams are not always merely dreams.”
“And what are they when they’re not dreams, then?”
She tapped her chin thoughtfully, perhaps pondering just how she might explain it to him. Or perhaps considering whether she should. That smoldering anger still burned within her dark eyes, just as it had when Maric had spoken to her last. “You’ve heard of the Fade, I hope?”
He nodded, though not with any confidence. The Fade was the realm of dreams, that place where men were said to go when they slept. It was where spirits and demons roamed, separated from the waking world by something the mages called the Veil. Maric couldn’t say that he believed much in the entire concept. He dreamed, like any man, and if those dreams were really his memories of time spent in that realm, as the mages claimed, then he would have to take their word for it.
“There is no geography in the Fade,” Fiona continued. “Place and time are far less important than are concepts and symbols. The spirits shape their realm to resemble the things they see in the minds of dreamers because that is what they believe our world is like, and they want desperately to be part of it. So they emulate a landscape that is based more on our perceptions and our feelings than on reality, drawing us in.”