Prologue

Duncan came upon it in the woods.

Fire devoured the forest surrounding it, and smoke on top of that, and the pines crumpled and fell and the destruction was all-encompassing. Spawn of the Void clambered from the hole, their boney, charred fingers clutching at the womb's edge and pulling themselves up and into the world. Though he stood miles away he could still hear their screaming. It echoed through the trees, indistinguishable from a murder of crows.

When he could tear his eyes away from the horror to turn behind him, he found himself faced with a creature, its laboured breath melding with his own. Its eyes were hazy, pale and ice-blue. Its skin blackened and peeled and charred. But when Duncan blinked, it was just a man. His shock sent him tumbling backwards, falling, falling over the cliff.

Before he snapped his neck on the swampy ground, he woke.

The Fade gave way to countless plaguing nightmares of late. None had been so vivid as this one, not even with the poison that corrupted his blood. He would tell the King of this. They should send scouting parties into the Wilds. The new camp was not safe, not until they knew these woods as the Chasind did. The Wilds were not kind to outsiders. The Wardens had lived here once, true. But that was many ages ago, and all that remained were ruins.

He swung his feet over his rickety cot and moved to slip on his boots. As he pushed his heel into place and leaned down to fasten the leather buckles, the ringing returned-not in his ears or head, but under his very skin. The pain deafened all else. Though it was a familiar tune, it sounded no sweeter to him than it had that first time. He squeezed his eyes tight and prayed for it to leave him. The sound of a cleared throat came from the outside his tent.

"Um, Sir, are you awake?"

Duncan's breath came to him all at once, and he found himself chuckling, in spite of himself.

"Yes, Alistair. Come in. What is it?"

The flap opened and the boy—who was now, Duncan supposed, in every right a man—poked his head through.

"No rush, Sir, I just…well, before you leave today, I wanted to go over a few things with you. Assignments, patrol schedules and the like."

"Over breakfast, Alistair. Give an old man some time to get out of bed." Already he could smell the eggs and burnt potatoes and herbs over the fire. His stomach cried out something fierce. Appetite was a Warden's greatest enemy, Walt had said. The fool boy, who could barely grow a beard, had been overcome by the spawn on Duncan's first descent into the Deep Roads. So, alas, he had been wrong, but his point was not moot.

"Yes sir, absolutely. Not that you're old. You're not old. But I mean to say I understand. Only that…never mind. I'm leaving, now."

A nervous smile graced his face as Duncan did his best to return a kind one and a nod, and Alistair left seeming pleased. His was the same smile, same voice, same face that Duncan had known an age ago. Was it so long now? The days of his youth had always seemed so uncomfortably familiar to him. Too close and too recent for him to sleep without pain or regret. But he had known men—great men—who longed for their youth more than they longed for purpose, or for the touch of a woman, or for the weight of a child in their arms, and he was glad to not be counted among them.

Protect him, a voice said, warm and lovely and firm. And he had done what that duty demanded, had he not? Was it protection he had given the child, or an early grave? Another voice, very separate and distinct from the first but one all too familiar, said that it was a curse. They were all cursed. The Wardens offered only death to protect from death. Suffering to protect from suffering. It was all a grand circle and they were in the middle of it, little mice on a wheel running from their own shadow.

He couldn't believe it. He wouldn't. The Wardens had saved him from a life of petty crime and meaninglessness and given him direction. Alistair felt the same, and was grateful to him, as he had always been. And he loved Duncan as he would a father. Duncan had kept his promise, the only way he knew how. And from it, he had gained a son.

Now that haunting song finally rang in his blood, like a growth he could not remove; a disease there was no cure for. It called to him just as she had said it would. It would call for them all, sooner or later. He was old, and it was his time. But he feared the day it called for Alistair. At twenty, Alistair had accepted the burdens of a Warden with too much ease and too much certainty, and for that Duncan was frightened. Frightened of when the boy would be forty, or fifty, and realize that he had been tricked. Hatred was also a thing that came easy for Alistair, and Duncan knew too well that it only came easier with age. If the Maker cared any for the troubles of old men, it would only do to pray that Alistair would never count Duncan among those who had betrayed him.

Strange, that he had become so self-important in his twilight hours that what he found himself fearing most was not death, but obscurity. Perhaps that was what Genevieve had feared, too, when she saw the boy he had once been drive a knife through her lover's heart. Perhaps that was why she had cursed him, and kept him, though surely never truly forgiven him. Everyone needed someone, after all.

Though he doubted very much that the Maker heard him. When darkspawn rose from the ground and fires burned at the edge of the world, he doubted the Maker turned his gaze on the troubles of old men. Duncan emerged from his tent to look upon the early morning moon before it left the sky. As he glanced at the stars, the ringing returned, and he gripped his wrist tight. Briefly and in great weakness, as it subsided, he thought of death, and he thought of youth.

A/N:

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