David Gaider - The Calling

“Yes, I know,” she said sadly. Katriel sighed and walked up to him, patting him softly on the cheek. “I couldn’t offer you happiness. Not before and not now. So instead I will help you do this, if this is what you really want.”

He felt torn. “What I want,” he said resolutely, “is to get out of here.”

“Out of the Fade.” She nodded. The elf turned and gestured toward the terrain around them, and Maric realized she was indicating the various doorways that dotted the landscape. “There are ways out all over the place, Maric. Unfortunately they won’t help you much. You’re being kept here unnaturally.”

“By the demon.”

Katriel began striding purposefully toward one of the disembodied doorways. Uncertain what to do, Maric followed behind her. He glanced at the barren field around him. What ever Katriel really was, she was right about one thing. At best he would have wandered the Fade, hoping to stumble across something useful.

She reached the door and stood beside it, facing him. He stopped, wondering what it was she planned. He kept his sword out, just in case.

“Let me make this simple,” she said. She twisted the door’s handle and opened it. There was nothing. It was an empty doorway, and Katriel even stuck her hand through it to emphasize that fact. “This doesn’t lead anywhere. Unless you want it to.” She closed the door again and then opened it … and this time Maric fell back as the doorway led to a verdant forest. He could see blue sky, sunshine, even hear the birds. It was a portal carved into thin air.

Katriel closed the door again. “It’s not a door,” she stated, getting his attention with her hand. “It’s a transition, a symbol. It could be a transition to the real world, where you would suddenly wake up and start to forget all about this, but you can’t go there. Not while the demon holds you.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

She sighed, and smiled at him, but ignored his question. “You need to confront the demon. Only a part of it crosses the Veil into the real world, just as only a part of you is here.” She waved at the door. “You can reach the demon, if you want to badly enough.”

“Is it asleep?”

“No. This is its realm. It still has power, enough to kill you.” At Maric’s questioning look, her gaze hardened. “This was your plan, Maric. I didn’t say it was a good one. I’m simply helping you however I can.”

“By sending me to my death.”

“Isn’t that what I do?” Katriel’s tone was bitter, and she looked away from him, staring off into the distance. For a moment she looked vulnerable, broken. This was as Maric remembered her, and his heart ached. He wanted nothing more than to reach out and comfort her. When she glanced back at him, however, the hardness returned. “You can locate your companions the same way,” she offered. “They are trapped in a dream, as you were.”

“Won’t they break out of it?”

“Not everyone is as willing to deny themselves what they want as you are, Maric.” There was pity in her green eyes, he saw, and suddenly he doubted. He didn’t know everything that could be; nobody did. A part of him wanted desperately for her to leave him, to return back to the dream that he had left behind. But an even larger part wanted her to stay. Perhaps he hadn’t truly left her behind at all.

“I’ll try,” he muttered.

It might have been a foolish thing to do. If Katriel was deceiving him, if she was really some spirit trying to send him back into the demon’s clutches or even to his death, then so be it. He couldn’t stand there and call Katriel a liar. Not after what he had done to her. He would rather be nowhere at all.

He turned the handle. The street was much like any busy street in the poorer quarters of Denerim, Maric thought, though he was certain this was nowhere in Ferelden. Orlais, he suspected, from the snippets of conversation he picked up from the passing crowds. The shops were packed closely together here, the plaster over the brick cracked and fading, and the signs of poverty were everywhere. The rain came down lightly from the grey skies overhead, enough to stir up the dust in the cobbled streets and bring with it a wet, musty odor that assaulted his nostrils.

Was he still in the Fade? It seemed that he was, even though the change had been abrupt. This was a place just like his palace chambers had been, a figment or even a dream.

He nodded at several old washerwomen busily collecting rumpled linens from their lines. They stared at his armor, scandalized that he would go about so openly armed and obviously considering calling for the city watch. Maric had no idea what that would entail in this dream world and he didn’t want to find out, so he quickly hurried on.

There was one shop in par tic u lar that seemed somehow more present than the others. Its plaster was less faded, and there was color there whereas every other part of the street seemed muddy and grey. He noticed a box of carefully tended herbs in the windowsill, and light blue curtains that fluttered in the breeze. The door to the building was painted a sharp red, and closed, but a pair of barn-style doors stood wide open to a workman’s shop within.

He could hear the sound of hammering, and surmised that the place belonged to a carpenter. It was easy enough to see with all the sawdust on the ground, and saw horses standing next to a pair of unvarnished chairs. They were well-made, too, sturdy and thick. More furniture lay just inside the doors, including an upended table and a half-painted dresser. This was a busy place.

The hammering stopped. “Duncan! Bring in everything before it gets rained on, for Andraste’s sake!” The voice was deep and strong, the sort Maric associated with a large man. It also had no trace of the Orlesian accent. In fact, if he didn’t know better he would have said it was Fereldan.

“Blast it, boy!” the voice thundered again. “Where have you gone off to?” As Maric approached the shop, the source of the voice suddenly appeared at the entrance. It was a giant of a man, pale-skinned with a thick beard and dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. He wore a large smock covered in sawdust and old streaks of paint. Grimacing, the man snatched up a chair in each hand before he noticed Maric.

“Oh! Sorry, my lord,” he said, eyeing Maric uncertainly. “Were you looking to buy something? I was just bringing this in out of the rain.”

“It looks like fine furniture. You’re a master of your craft.”

The man bobbed his head, smiling a bit bashfully. “Thank you, my lord. You’re from home, I see. We don’t get many Fereldans here, especially not in this part of the city.”

“You’re from Ferelden?”

“From Highever, in fact. My son still misses it a great deal, as do I.” The man then noticed the slowly increasing rate of rainfall and suddenly looked abashed. “And here I am keeping you out in the rain! Please, my lord! Come in!” He retreated into the shop, carrying the large chairs with him as if they weighed little more than feathers, and Maric followed. He suspected a man that big could probably have hefted a half dozen more, perhaps on one shoulder.

The shop was small, with more chairs and other assorted bits of furniture piled up around the wall than it could feasibly contain. There was space enough for a workbench, covered with bits of wood and shavings and a wide assortment of metal tools, as well as a large table turned upside down on a pair of saw horses. It would be a fine piece, the legs curved and gently inlaid with the fine floral carvings Maric had seen on similar Orlesian pieces. It was the sort of table that would be welcome in any noble estate.

The carpenter noticed where Maric was looking and his grin broadened. It was a grin that Maric had seen on Duncan, come to think of it. “For the Marquise,” he said proudly. “Special commission.”