Unknown - Dragon Age

“That’s not true.”

She felt the tears come in force, threatening to turn into sobbing, and she turned her face away from him. “It isn’t?” Her voice betrayed her emotion, and she cursed herself silently in dismay.

“One day,” he said bitterly, “he will see what he had all along. He will see a strong warrior, a beautiful woman, someone who is his equal and worthy of his utter devotion, and he will curse himself for being such a fool.” And then his voice became husky. “Trust me.”

With that, Loghain started to silently move away. She quickly turned and reached out with her hand, grabbing his forearm. He froze.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I didn’t mean—”

“Stay.”

He didn’t move.

“I’m not him,” he finally muttered, bitterness in his voice.

She took his hand and brought it slowly up to her face. His fingers cradled her cheek gently, fearfully, almost as if he expected she would vanish into a dream. Then he rushed forward, snatching her up in his arms and kissing her with an urgency that almost overwhelmed her.

He was burning hot in the chill cavern, and when their lips parted, he halted once more, holding her there fearfully, as if they stood on a precipice. Rowan reached up and gently touched his cheek as he had, and was surprised to feel tears there. “I don’t

want him,” she whispered, and realized it was true. “I’ve been a fool.”

And then Loghain leaned in and kissed Rowan again, slower this time. He laid her gingerly down on the rocks by a magical stream in a forgotten ruin with darkness all around them, and it was perfect.

14

Katriel awoke to darkness. There was a moment of terrorwhen she had no idea where she was, and the thought of being strung up in some giant spider’s cocoon almost overwhelmed her. It seemed as if there was no air, that she would suffocate wrapped up in spider silk and left to go mad as she felt unseen legs skittering over her flesh. Then she calmed herself as she realized that the only thing surrounding her were Maric’s arms.

He slept, curled into her as he held her protectively. She could hear his soft breathing against her neck, feel the beating of his heart through his chest. It was a comforting feeling, and Katriel relaxed and let her heart slow. It was seductive, the idea that they might be able to lie there in the shadows forever, that she would never need to tell Maric who she really was. The fact that they weren’t actually safe, that the giant spiders were undoubtedly still out there, was somehow easier to ignore when she was in his arms.

The spiders did not appear, but by the time they all began to stir, the faint clicking sounds had returned. Katriel shivered and fumbled about until she was able to light the campfire again, and this drew Loghain from the dark recesses at the back of the chamber where the water was. He emerged, the flickering firelight revealing his bare chest as well as her own lack of covering, Maric stirring beside her. Their eyes met, and then they looked away and began donning their armor.

When Maric awoke, he smiled warmly at Katriel and brushed his hand across her cheek. She clutched at that hand and held it there. All the things that were unsaid seemed like they were now forever beyond saying. It was too late.

None of them said anything, nor acknowledged what had happened during the night, if indeed night it was. It was as dark as when they had slept, the gloom around them as oppressive. All of them seemed much more interested in moving quickly than in talking, and quietly they packed up what little they had and left the camp. They needed to move fast if they were going to avoid another encounter.

Torches held aloft, they moved through the narrower paths between the remnants of the old buildings, stepping carefully among the ancient rubble. The shadows flickered around them, and each time they heard the distant clicking sounds, they stopped and warily stared into the darkness, waiting with swords ready for the spiders to rush out at them.

The dwarven ruins were now covered in black soot, scorched from one end of the cavern to the other. The dust still clung to the air, but most of the webbing that had covered the upper reaches of the thaig was now gone. The faint torchlight did not allow them to see up that far, but there were hints of what the dwarves who had once lived here might have seen: great stone buttresses carved with runes and enormous crumbling statues of dwarven kings staring down from the heights at their people.

The sight of those ancient statues filled Katriel with a sense of sadness. How must they have felt now, to see their people fled, their city fallen to pieces and covered in ash?

“Is it possible to get higher?” she asked. “If we could shine a bit more light on the roof, I could see more of the statues.”

Rowan stared at her incredulously. “Those statues are probably covered in the spiders’ nests. Do you really want that close a look at them?”

Katriel shuddered at that thought and reluctantly shook her head. Still, she couldn’t help but wish there was a way to convey this story to those who had no hint of the ancient lands that lay under their feet. As much as her bard training made her a spy, it also made her a storyteller. These ruins cried out to her, and it broke her heart that they needed to pass by it all so quickly.

The group moved through what might once have been a great promenade of the city. Once a palace had been carved into the face of the rock wall itself, and Katriel pictured beautiful archways and stairs leading from one gentle terrace to the next. She imagined merchants selling goods from their stalls on the colored cobblestones, with great fountains shooting columns of water in the air. Once there had been grandeur, but now there was little more than crumbling ruin and the husks of buildings so fallen apart, they could not even be approached for all the scattered rocks and collapsed floors.

The remnants of the palace now showed only as broken columns and worn holes that no doubt led into a veritable labyrinth of passages within the rock. The home of the spiders, Loghain pointed out. Indeed, as they passed through the promenade, it was easy to see that here the greatest amount of burnt webbing had collapsed from above. Great mounds of charred ash and sticky tendrils clung to everything, some of it several feet thick or worse.

As the webs had burned and collapsed, they had brought

down with them the charred remains of spiders, some of them still quivering lifelessly as they lay on their backs with hairy legs splayed. There were many bones, as well, black and burnt. Most were only small shards, while others seemed to be bigger and a few were even whole. Katriel noticed something odd amid the piles and fished it out. It was a skull, vaguely human but clearly monstrous. And large. The entire promenade was all but filled with bones just like it, like a great rat’s nest of a graveyard had been spilled over the entire ruin all at once.

“This must be what they eat,” Katriel said quietly.

“They eat darkspawn?” Maric asked, looking at the skull uncertainly.

There was no answer to give. None of them had ever seen a darkspawn before, and until they saw the bones, they had never seen anything that might have suggested the tales of the old wars, of times when the darkspawn had spilled onto the surface world in great events called Blights, might actually be true. But there they were.

“Those bones could be anything,” Rowan suggested.

Nobody could answer. If those bones didn’t belong to darkspawn, then they belonged to something else just as monstrous, something equally unknown.

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