David Gaider - The Calling

“No. He slept here, however, so clearly made it this far without meeting the darkspawn.”

“Is that possible?” she asked, troubled. “They would have sensed him. A lone Grey Warden moving through the Deep Roads should draw darkspawn like flies.”

“Nevertheless, here he was.”

Maric stepped forward. “Are you certain it was darkspawn that captured him? Or that he’s even been captured? You said he was alive, and maybe he is, but I don’t see the darkspawn trying to take any prisoners.”

Genevieve spun on the King, and for a moment Duncan thought she was going to attack him. Her rage slowly died down, however, and she turned back to stare at the gutted campfire. Her eyes became hollow and haunted. “No,” she finally admitted. “I don’t know that for certain.”

For a long minute the group remained quiet. There was not a single sound in the dark cavern, and only the faintest musty breeze—air that was brought in through what ever masterpiece of dwarven engineering remained in this place, Duncan assumed. He wondered what other sorts of creatures could be down here that might have captured a Grey Warden, and why they might do so. And if it was darkspawn, why would they suddenly start acting in a way they never had before?

Genevieve cast about in all directions, looking far off into the cavern. What she was searching for, he really couldn’t tell. A clue? A feeling, anything? So much of the thaig was shrouded in shadow, she likely couldn’t see very much. The skeletons of buildings hovered around them, silhouettes of sturdy statues and the tattered estates of what had surely once been great dwarven families. They didn’t have time to search it all.

“There,” she stated firmly, pointing off into the distance.

Duncan looked to where she was pointing: In the shadow-filled end of the thaig, barely seen at the edge of their light, was the remnant of a great palace that had been carved into the rock. It might have been beautiful once, pillars and promenades leading up to a set of grandiose gates that towered high over any visitors, but now it was little more than a husk, a series of broken steps and debris and gaping holes carved into the wall that led deep within. The old palace was covered in strands of old ash and dirt, and who knew what lay inside that dark warren of tunnels?

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he muttered under his breath.

“But why there?” Kell asked carefully.

“Because that is where he would go,” she stated with certainty. “If he came here, that is where he would head.” Without saying another word she began to march in that direction. The others looked at each other uncertainly, but one by one they followed her. There was little choice, really.

“We’re stumbling around blindly,” Fiona whispered, scowling. Duncan glanced at her but didn’t comment. They weren’t blind, really. They were following Genevieve’s vision, but it felt more and more like they were stumbling after a ghost. He wondered if their commander really knew where she was going anymore, and he suspected the others wondered the same thing. It took them several hours to make their way up finally to the palace ruins. The land sloped upward the nearer they got, and yet the amount of debris became so thick it was impossible to remain on the roads. Entire buildings had collapsed here, choking the paths and forcing them actually to climb over the piles of masonry rather than trying to go around them.

As they reached the foot of the main steps leading up into the palace, Duncan began to realize just how enormous it truly was. The stairs alone towered high above them, requiring a climb of over a hundred feet, much of it on steps that had long ago cracked and crumbled away. They were littered with pieces of stone that had fallen from above and bits of bone and rusted metal that might have once been bodies.

One of the intact pillars lining the stairs was easily hundreds of feet high, almost reaching the top of the cavern. Its surface was a spiderweb of thick cracks, and he wondered whether if it crumbled, the palace’s vaulted ceiling would come crashing down on top of them. The ceiling might once have held breathtaking frescoes. Now it was stained and burned, with only a hint of the beauty that it had once had.

Several of the other pillars were already crumbled, and at least one enormous section of a pillar lay in their path. Clearly when that had come crashing down, it had caused great destruction and created a giant crater in what was once a marble landing in front of the gigantic palace doors.

Only one of those doors still remained, and it lay open and askew as if it was just barely hanging on before it, too, tumbled to the ground. It might have been bronze, Duncan thought. Now it was stained with an ugly green patina, and covered with coarse lichen that completely obscured what ever fancy inscriptions and carvings decorated its surface long ago.

Beyond it lay only shadows. He saw hints of giant webs; gossamer strands of it now hung from the ceiling. The group exchanged wary glances when they saw a blackened husk just inside the door, and only upon coming closer did they see it was one of the giant spiders about which Maric had told them, its legs curled in close to its body like a twisted rib cage. How long it had lain there they couldn’t say, but it was long enough to be as covered with dust as everything else at the entrance.

“Perhaps you got them all,” Duncan breathed, still staring in horror at the spider.

“We didn’t think so,” Maric said. “We heard them moving the next day. Or at least we thought it was them.”

Genevieve poked the husk with her sword, and with a hard push rolled it over. Its head became visible, and Duncan saw that its mandibles were easily large enough to cut off a man’s head. Thankfully its many eyes had long ago shriveled up and been covered by dust. He didn’t want to see them. “You thought the spiders kept their nest in this palace?” she asked the King.

“We never came up here to see.”

“We haven’t seen any live spiders since our arrival,” she said thoughtfully, more to herself than to anyone.

Kell knelt down, running his hand through the layer of dust on the ground and then rubbing it between his fingers. “Someone has been through here recently,” he murmured.

“Was it my brother?” Genevieve demanded.

“I do not know.” His brow furrowed with confusion. “The trail is odd. It was definitely just a single creature, either the man we seek or a darkspawn. Only …”

“It is enough. We go inside.” She began to pass through the doorway, her sword held out cautiously in front of her as she looked up and around at the hanging web strands.

“Wait, I don’t …”

“Come,” she ordered. Duncan ran to catch up to her, and he heard the others following. His heart thundered in his ears, sweat dripping down his face as they slowly moved into the depths of the dwarven palace. He didn’t know what they would find inside, but the fear that gripped him claimed it would be nothing good.

Somehow he had imagined that the webs would just get thicker and thicker until they reached the heart of some nest, with some great monstrous spider queen to greet them. But it wasn’t like that at all. The webs began to disappear not long after the entrance, and while they found a few more shriveled spider corpses, those, too, ended. The shadows closed in around them, the air getting thicker and thicker. The sounds of their labored breath and the echoes of their slow footsteps on the stone were all he could hear.

They entered an enormous gallery, lined with dwarven statues and large paintings that had blackened and fallen apart from the passage of time. The staff’s light only revealed a small part of it, but it seemed like it went on forever, great marble pillars shooting up to a ceiling he couldn’t even see.