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The raven gave Ren warning of her approaching visitors, so she was waiting outside when they made the final climb up to her little round house.
Dorian was panting, although largely for show, Ren could tell. "My dear. What. A. Difficult. Climb. Do you perchance have a glass of wine for a man who has worked so hard to reach you?"
"At least." She hugged him hard, delighted to see him. The past several days had been desolate and lonely; the sight of Dorian's beloved face was almost enough to bring tears to her eyes.
Behind Dorian she saw Cassandra and Cole.
"Cole?" she said softly to Dorian.
"He showed up at Skyhold, said you and Bull needed him."
Ren frowned at the spirit boy, who was leaning far out over the edge of the cliff, looking down with curiosity. "He's creepy, but he's not wrong."
"You didn't tell us what happened," Cassandra said. She and Ren shook hands rather than hugging.
"Lost. A dark maze, a tangled web. Many exits, but none that satisfy him."
Nodding at Cole, Ren said, "That puts it in a nutshell."
"Maybe for you." Dorian waited expectantly, and Ren related everything that had happened since they'd arrived at the Storm Coast.
"He has to know that if I'd killed Gatt, I wouldn't have used my own blade. Among other things he ought to know," Ren finished bitterly.
"He may feel that it is a convenient excuse to draw himself away from you while he wrestles with his identity." The kindness in Cassandra's eyes softened the blunt words. "Many of us have been there."
"I always thought he took that break from the Qun too lightly."
"Did you?" Ren glanced at Dorian. "Some warning might have been nice."
He smiled at her. "Would you have listened?"
"Maybe not," Ren admitted unwillingly.
"Then there would have been little point."
"You had a great deal to think of; we all did," Cassandra said. "There was no time for such questions. But since the death of Corypheus, even with the distraction with the Avvar, I know I have given a great deal of thought to what I want to do with the rest of my life. Blackwall went to the Grey Wardens, Varric returned to Kirkwall, Vivienne chose to reform the Circles of Magi." She glanced at Dorian, who gave a small shake of the head. "Many of us are reconsidering our plans. Josephine is making preparations to marry Teyrn Fergus Cousland; the Inquisition will be looking for a new ambassador."
Ren sighed. She got Cassandra's point; she wished she didn't.
"Tumbling into space, nothing below, no certainty, only the rocks and the endless ocean," Cole said.
"Is that how he felt?" Ren asked. "Really? As though there were nothing beneath him." She groaned. "I've been so stupid."
"Not stupid, my dear, just …" Dorian shrugged. "You have never been in a relationship before, never learned to pay attention to another person, to anticipate their needs. I hadn't, either, before Robert, and I learned a great deal from it. But then, I wasn't the Inquisitor."
"So how do I get him back?" Ren looked from one to the other of them. A sharp, chilly wind blew past them, and she realized that none of them had even had a chance to sit down. "And here I go again making this all about me. Come inside, put your feet up, I'll get you some wine and something to eat. I hope you all like fish."
Dorian grimaced, Cassandra shrugged, and Cole looked eager. "The fish think the pan looks like the ocean, until they don't."
"Well, at least they go happy," Ren said philosophically.
Another tremor, deep as the last, shook the ground while Ren was preparing the fish, but mercifully before she'd begun frying them. They all braced themselves along the walls, watching the books fall of the shelves as the earth shook.
"Well, I see now why we are here," Cassandra noted when it was over. Her voice was calm, but Ren noticed a certain relief in her face when she sank into her chair again.
Dorian had kept hold of his wineglass. He drained it now and poured a fresh amount. "Orzammar doesn't know why this is happening?"
"Not that they've said. It could be that we'll get down there and find out they have the culprit and have just been waiting for us to go and fight someone." Ren stacked the books up on the floor next to the bed and went back to the fireplace, straightening the tripod and putting the pan back on it. "I'm hoping some crazy, greedy dwarf who wants all the lyrium for himself is blowing up the mines. We squash him and we're back up here the next day."
The silence that followed her words told her what the others thought of that optimistic scenario. She didn't believe in it, either, but she was determined to think positively about at least one aspect of her life.
Ren and Cassandra shared the bed that night; Cassandra slept deeply, her cold, bony feet on Ren's legs most of the time, but Ren lay awake listening to Dorian's light snore. She could hear nothing from the corner where Cole lay, and it occurred to her that maybe he didn't even sleep; maybe he was just lying there wide awake staring at her. The idea made her want to jump out of bed and run down the hill.
Eventually the long night passed. After a hasty breakfast, they collected their packs and Ren led the way to the lift site. Dennon was waiting for them, a smile on his handsome face when Ren came into sight. "Good morning!"
"Good morning." She wasn't feeling particularly cheerful this morning. But then she heard a familiar scuffing of feet in slouchy old boots behind her, and she forced a smile, stepping a little closer to Dennon.
The Iron Bull wasn't fooled by Morvoren's attempt at flirting with the lift's site foreman … but he didn't like it anyway. He wasn't sure if he was pissed at her for the blatant manipulation attempt or impressed by the fact that she was trying it. Dissembling wasn't usually her strong suit, and part of him was touched that she was trying it for him.
Ah, fuck, he thought, that was no road to go down. This trek into the Deep Roads was going to be hard enough without that.
Suddenly in front of him, like an apparition, Cole appeared, looking up at him from under his hat sorrowfully. "The Iron Bull," he said. "Only one way through, to charge like a bull, knocking aside barriers with the horns, but it isn't that way, and the horns get stuck."
"You better not mean my horns and those damn tunnels, kid," he roared. Cole blinked and looked confused. The Iron Bull knew better, naturally, but he wasn't going to let the kid into his head so soon—and he was actually a little worried about his horns getting stuck in tiny little tunnels down there.
"Iron Bull." Cassandra gave him a little nod. Dorian gave him an eyebrow-raise—Morvoren had told them her side of the story. Of course, she would never tell them that she had killed Gatt, and no doubt she had given them a convincing detail or two, like the idea that she wouldn't have used her own knife. The Iron Bull had thought of that, too, and tried to tell himself that it was a ploy, that she had used her own knife in order to throw him off, including the extra detail of having "lost" it previous to the attack.
That none of that fit her personality at all was a minor detail, he told himself.
Dennon was leading them to the edge of the big hole in the ground, and the rickety structure that had been built there. The Iron Bull stopped short, staring at it. That flimsy thing was supposed to carry them down into the depths of the fucking world? No way.
He even took a step backward, about to loudly refuse to go, when he caught Dorian's eye. The Vint was watching him, a little half-smile on his mustached face, as if he was daring the Iron Bull to be a coward and to back out of this expedition. Well. That wasn't going to happen.
"We going to take all day about this, or what?" he said loudly.
Dorian's smile was a full-on smirk now, and the Iron Bull pushed past the mage, ignoring him entirely.
Dennon said, "I haven't heard anything about darkspawn from our laborers, but … the earthquakes have been tough. We'd like to get you down there as quickly as we can before another one hits."
Ren leaned over and looked down. "Yes, I think we'd like that, too," she agreed. Her face was paler than usual; she was afraid to go down there, but was holding herself together like the Inquisitor she had been. Maybe that had been the problem all along, the Iron Bull thought. Maybe he should have found a way to make her stay on as the Inquisitor, and none of this would ever have happened. Ren straightened up. "We're supposed to be meeting with a Shaper Valta."
"Down below," Dennon said. "Orzammar dwarves can't come to the surface, so she's waiting for you at the bottom of the lift. I'll be up here if you need anything. There's a base camp down there being run by dwarves from the Legion of the Dead, and the Inquisition is sending along supplies as well."
"Thank you, Dennon." Ren faced the lift, taking a deep breath. "No time like the present," she said, and stepped onto it. It swayed a bit under her feet. She took a deep breath and offered them a game smile. "Next?"
Cole and Dorian stepped gingerly on as well. The Iron Bull looked at Dennon. "This thing going to hold all of us?" He meant, was it going to hold him, but he didn't want to come out and say it.
Dennon shrugged. "It should."
The Iron Bull had heard more comforting things in his life. Cassandra stepped onto the lift, and then they were all waiting for him.
"Try not to shift around," Dennon said. "And keep back from the edge. It's a long way down."
"Thanks," the Iron Bull muttered, and stepped onto the boards. The lift swayed underneath him and creaked with his added weight, and he felt nauseous at the sensation of hanging in the air with nothing beneath him.
Then it started to move, and that was even more nauseating. And it never seemed to end.
Dorian paced back and forth, looking below them, both of which the Iron Bull devoutly wished he would stop doing. "Is it just me, or is this the slowest lift ever constructed?"
"It's better than being the fastest lift ever constructed and crashing at the bottom," Ren said philosophically. "Or, you know, climbing down."
"Perhaps. Still … one longs for music. Possibly something with a flute." Dorian sighed impatiently and resumed his pacing.
Cole was watching the walls go by with a look of wonder on his face. As far as the Iron Bull could tell, this looked just like the Fade, or like the Fade had when they were trapped in it. Maybe the kid felt right at home.
At last—at very long last—they reached the bottom, and the Iron Bull wasn't the only one breathing a sigh of relief when they stepped off of swaying wood and onto solid rock.