The group reassembled around the small fire, not much more than a flicker of embers at this point. The rest they had taken had been completely negated by the earthquake and the darkspawn battle. Ren wasn't sure she felt up to going on, and Dorian looked wiped out. Even his mustache was drooping, or so she imagined. It was hard to see in the very small light.
"Any more of those things around?" the Iron Bull asked testily.
"It's impossible to say," Valta told him. "I mean, yes, there are, because there always are, but whether there are any about to attack? I have no idea."
"Too bad we don't have a Grey Warden with us," Lieutenant Renn said. "I hear they can sense the darkspawn, something in the blood."
Ren thought of Blackwall, gone to Weisshaupt to be a real Warden at last. She wondered if he had made it, if he was happy, if it was everything he had always hoped it would be—or if it was the penance he had always thought he deserved.
"All the more reason to keep going and finish this task quickly." Dorian stood up. When no one else moved, he asked impatiently, "Are you coming?"
"Right." Lieutenant Renn got to his feet, reaching out a hand for Valta and helping her up.
Sighing, Ren pushed herself up as well, swaying a little in the process. Dorian caught her. "Are you all right?"
"Fine. Just tired. And …" She looked around in the darkness, nearly complete now that someone had put out the fire. "I don't like it down here very much."
"It's not precisely what we're used to," Dorian agreed.
From somewhere she heard the strike of a taper and saw a torch flare to light, her eyes immediately drawn to the brightness of the flame. And then another torch. Cassandra's pale face came into focus behind one. "I agree with Dorian. If it must be done, and it seems that it must, we should finish it quickly. Valta, which way are we to go?"
Valta knew the answer—she was standing off to one side, near what looked like the entrance to a tunnel. It looked to Ren almost as if the dwarf was quivering with expectation. She almost understood—she had felt the same way arriving at the Storm Coast, being within sight and sound of the waves again. Perhaps the dwarves weren't so different after all; maybe it was just that the surroundings were so opposite that made this Stone, the Stone sense, the endless dark tunnels all seem so foreign. Ren wondered what it was like in Orzammar, was it this dark and cold and narrow and choking?
"It's a lot bigger," said the Iron Bull, unexpectedly next to her, and she jumped, having been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn't noticed him approaching.
"What is?"
"Orzammar."
"How did you—" She cut herself off. Of course he had known what she was thinking. He always knew what she was thinking. Their whole relationship had been predicated on that assumption for a long time.
"Orzammar?" Lieutenant Renn asked. "Yes, Valta, I see you. We're coming," he said impatiently, although Ren hadn't heard Valta speak. Maybe he always knew what Valta was thinking. He fell into step next to Ren. With the lieutenant on one side of her and the Iron Bull on the other, she almost felt safe, and even something approaching confident, for the first time down here.
Dorian and Cassandra were right behind them, Valta ahead, and Cole appeared to be trailing, although Ren worried about him far less down here than she might have on the surface.
"Orzammar's a good place to get away from," Lieutenant Renn continued as though there had never been a break in his thoughts. "If you're of a high enough caste, you live in big palaces with a lot of rich food and fussy fabrics, but you're governed by a strict code of conduct. And when they call the politics of Orzammar's noble caste cutthroat, it's not just a metaphor."
"Metaphor?" Valta's amused voice floated back to them from farther down the passage. "I didn't know you knew such big words, Renn."
He laughed. "I pick up a few here and there, stick 'em in conversation to sound fancy."
Ren smiled, the affectionate banter familiar. Then she felt the silent presence of the man at her side, the conspicuous absence of the remarks he should have been making right now, and the smile faded.
"So you do not envy the nobles their lifestyle?" Cassandra asked.
"Nope. Just their money. And the lower castes have their own rigid rules of conduct, in addition to having to scrounge for food and sell your children for a place to live and eventually ending up a thief—or worse. At least in the Legion, you're fighting honestly, against things that deserve killing."
"You wouldn't go back, then?"
"Not for any reason."
"What about you, Valta?" Ren asked.
"Oh, I can't go back. I … got in a bit of an argument with the Shaperate. They wanted to erase part of the Memories, because a noble was paying for it to be done. Minor, really—one of King Bhelen's childhood friends had ancestral ties to the Carta, and he wanted those ties erased—but I stood up and said I thought the Memories were to be preserved no matter what, not altered whenever someone with coin wanted them to be, and that was when the Shaperate suggested to me that I would do better exploring, searching for older Memories, than in Orzammar tending the existing ones."
"They were right, too," Lieutenant Renn said loyally.
"Thank yo—Wait, what's this?" Valta's voice was excited, and they all hurried to catch up with her.
She stood in a large cavern, made of hewn stones carefully laid. The tiles were old, many of them broken, but once they had been beautiful—that much even Ren could see. A half-wall circled the cavern, emptiness lurking beyond it, cool and black and vast. And in front of them was a lift, much like the one they had just come from.
"Did you build this?" Ren asked. "The Legion?"
Valta was walking the stones, her gauntleted hand hovering just above them as though she could feel something emanating from them, her face lit with a smile. Lieutenant Renn was watching her, and Ren had to repeat her question before he heard her.
"Oh. No, not us. This … seems old. Older than old."
"Ancient," Valta said. "I'd say … maybe a thousand years old."
"Really." Dorian went to stand next to her, looking up at the lintel of stones above the entrance to the lift. "Amazing, that the craftsmanship could hold up that long."
Cassandra reached out to touch the stone of the wall. "Many of the Tevinter structures are as carefully made. Without the work of sun and wind and rain upon them, who's to say they would not have lasted as long?"
"Perhaps. Knowing my countrymen in their current form, it's hard to imagine them being able to agree, and keep their minds on their work, long enough to create something as long-lasting as this, but I suppose some of us managed, once upon a time."
"Do you have any idea who built it?" Ren asked Valta.
Valta frowned. "This thaig is on top of a lyrium mine. According to the Memories, the mine was destroyed in some kind of unexplained disaster."
"An earthquake?" The Iron Bull stepped closer, eyeing the lift skeptically. He appeared to be measuring his horns against the lintel. It would be a close fit.
"Possibly." Valta patted the stones, studying the structure. "The miners must have used this lift to reach the lower levels."
Ren moved to the edge, looking down into the fathomless blackness. She sighed. "If there is such a thing as a Titan, and it's causing these earthquakes, it's more likely to be farther down than anything else."
Behind her, she could hear the Iron Bull's very soft drawn-out, "Fuucck." She heartily agreed; farther down was the last place she wanted to go. But, as Cassandra and Dorian had said, the sooner they got done, the sooner they were out of here.
"'Our kingdom trembled at the Titan's hymn,'" Valta said reverently.
"Fairy tales," Lieutenant Renn growled.
"Memories," Valta corrected.
The Iron Bull said thoughtfully, "So we think a quake may have destroyed that lyrium mine?"
Valta nodded. "It's a possibility."
"Well, there haven't been constant quakes for a thousand years. If the quakes stopped, either this Titan stopped making them because it got what it wanted, or the people who lived here then found a way to make them stop."
"Good point," Lieutenant Renn said approvingly.
"Then it appears we have no choice." Cassandra put a foot carefully onto the lift, and then stepped on entirely. Dust flew up at the movement of her feet, but the lift itself held perfectly steady.
"Do you really think it still works?" Dorian asked.
"I have no reason to think otherwise. Many things in the Deep Roads are found after centuries still in working condition," Valta told him.
Lieutenant Renn grinned. "We dwarves do nice work." Shouldering his pack, he moved onto the lift as well. Dorian followed him.
"In for a copper, in for a sovereign," Ren said with a sigh, and stepped on as well. It seemed firm beneath her feet. She wasn't entirely sure she believed that this was going to work, and even less sure if she wanted it to.
Valta got on as well, and then Cole, who looked down and around and over the side with interest. "It gets darker as you go deeper. Don't you think so, The Iron Bull?"
"Stay out of my head, kid," he growled. Ducking his horns under the lintel—and scraping the tip of one anyway—he was the last one onto the lift. Ren thought she felt it give a faint shudder as his bulk added to the weight already on it, but then Lieutenant Renn pulled the lever, which moved remarkably smoothly for something so old and unused, not even a creaking sound, and the lift was descending.
"Well," Lieutenant Renn said, "I don't know where this leads, but it looks like we're about to find out the hard way."
Ren looked up, but all she could see was the ceiling of the lift. Would it be able to bring them back up again? Would they be alive to even try to return? She had always prided herself on her bravery, but moving farther and farther into the dark unknown depths below her, she had to admit—she was terrified.