Author's note: Thanks once again to the ever-excellent clafount for all of her dedication to this story. Nearly halfway there!
Warmth bathed the Warden as the great doors closed behind her, contrasting to the snowy chill of the snow-blanketed Frostbacks in Firstfall, and after a few moments, she realised that the very floor beneath her feet was lowering almost too smoothly to notice. The more comfortable air was little compensation for the subtle twinge in her blood that she'd come to notice more and more strongly over the past month, which only increased the further she and her companions descended into Orzammar. She'd first noticed it around the other Wardens-a slight buzzing at the back of her mind, an inkling through a fog of dissonance-but as the stone settled beneath her feet and another pair of enormous doors opened in front, the sensation became impossible to ignore.
"It's the 'spawn, Beth," the Commander gruffed, glancing up at her. As always, she used the familiar term from their childhood spent together, while the recruit hadn't even thought of the elf's proper name since that day in the courtyard. "You get used to it...eventually."
Bethany merely nodded, suppressing an urge to shiver, both from the crawling in her veins and the notion that the Commander might have been able to steal a glimpse at her very thoughts. It wasn't the first time that the elf had made her wonder; in the weeks since the Commander's proper welcome, she and Bethany had spent many hours together, acquainting the junior Warden with the power contained within her blood. It had shocked her at first to learn that Anders was a blood mage, having been presented with the same choice at the Commander's hands. She couldn't help recalling how he'd recriminated Merrill almost ceaselessly, and likely still did, for indulging in the practice. Yet Bethany's own qualms, which were still numerous, could not outweigh the necessity of taking every advantage in her struggle against the darkspawn.
The Hall of Heroes was just as impressive to the junior Warden as it had been when she'd stepped foot here last, after that terrifying, nearly-endless journey through Roads beneath the Waking Sea. In all, more than a month had passed between entering the Deep Roads in the Vimmark Mountains and emerging again in the Frostbacks...and as much time could pass before she saw the surface yet again. Bethany still wasn't certain exactly why they'd come; she only knew that the Commander had required Wardens Oghren and Nathaniel and Bethany herself, along with Barcus, to venture with the elf to Orzammar and the Deep Roads beyond.
Oghren paused to spit at the feet of one of the great statues within the hall, to the general outrage of several surrounding dwarves, but neither the guards nor the commoners looked to take the issue to violence...the dwarven Warden's distinctive armour, and even more his well-armed companions, likely made the difference.
The Commander barked a laugh when the dwarf aimed a solid kick at the statue's shin, for which he had to aim so high that he nearly lost his balance. "You done?"
"Aye," the red-bearded dwarf sighed, stumbling back to his feet, and he led the way into Orzammar proper.
The Wardens didn't get very far, however. A sallow-faced dwarf with short black hair and a close-cropped beard stood at the head of a wedge of soldiers, all armed and armoured. Bethany's heart skipped within her chest, but she relaxed when the man broke into a shadowed smile. "King Behlen grants his welcome to the Grey Wardens," he greeted them in a graveled baritone. "He will receive you in his chambers at your earliest convenience."
The Commander closed the gap between the two lines, giving the dwarf a firm handshake. "Thank you, Vartag," she intoned, more than a hint of gravel in her own voice, as usual. "We'll see the king now."
"Splendid," the greeting dwarf replied. At his signal, the dozen-or-so dwarves at his back split to form an escort and honour guard for their guests, keeping the crowds of the Commons well back as they made their way through.
Stroud had spent precisely enough time in Orzammar to walk from the mines to the Hall of Heroes, with only a brief stop to supply his squad with sufficient rations for the overland trip to Redcliffe, and so Bethany had not really encountered dwarven society on her previous visit. Even now, she didn't have time to fully comprehend the merchants hawking wares from stone-cut booths, backlit by the ever-present glow of the great magma river that cut through the city, before the Wardens were swept up to the so-called Diamond Quarter. The thought struck Bethany that Orzammar and Kirkwall were fairly similar; both were city-states segregated vertically, with the poorest of the poor in the deepest reaches, while the wealthy commanded the heights.
Tittering gossip and exclamations of awe chased the Grey Wardens all the way to the royal palace, and by the time they were ushered into King Behlen's private audience chamber, Bethany had some idea of the esteem in which the dwarves of Orzammar held her newfound brethren and sistren. The king himself sat behind a stone-hewn table, wearing the most garish crown that the junior Warden could ever imagine. It rested on the royal dwarf's head like a castle forged from gold and bronze, resembling a helmet...though not a terribly practical one. "Commander," the king called jovially. "It has been two years too long since last we spoke! I see you've got some new recruits."
Bethany shivered when the man's gaze inspected her, and she got the distinct impression that he could imagine what lay beneath her blue-and-silver armour all too well. She knew better than to acknowledge the glance, or even to speak unless directly addressed. "The darkspawn rest for neither dwarves nor Wardens, Your Majesty," the Commander replied, her tone a shade darker than usual. "I hear you've managed to reclaim your ancestral thaig."
Behlen's grin turned saccharine as he regarded the elf. "It is amazing what we may accomplish when unshackled by the follies of the past," he boasted. "Though the ancestors' wisdom is dear to my heart...which is the reason I petitioned you on the young Lord Dace's behalf."
The Commander inclined her head. "Your letter mentioned that Jerrik's brother Brogan has gone missing in the Deeps?"
A chill settled in Bethany's intestines; she'd expected the Deep Roads as their true destination, but having her prediction confirmed did not exactly please her. The king was unmindful of the junior Warden's discomfort, however. "On an expedition to rediscover Amgarrak Thaig," he informed them. "Jerrik's been granted permission by his lord father to return Brogan, either to Orzammar or to the Stone."
"What were the brother after, Your Majesty?" The Commander asked, putting voice to Bethany's curiosity, as well.
The king's eyes darted from the Wardens to the guards on his walls and back again. "The Memories speak of certain knowledge that Amgarrak might contain," he allowed. "Brogan Dace was meant to investigate, while the Deep Roads were still recovering from the Blight. Jerrik will have more information-he awaits you at your new compound, Commander."
The junior Warden thought she could hear the subtle suspicion in the Commander's voice. "I don't remember petitioning for a compound, Your Majesty," she commented.
Behlen chuckled. "My dear Commander," he sighed, "it was a time-honoured tradition for many generations, until the misfortune that fell upon the Fereldan Wardens two centuries ago. After your order was banished from the surface, Warden traffic in Orzammar mainly consisted of those undertaking the Calling."
Bethany's throat ran dry at the king's casual mention of her death sentence; the Commander had mentioned it in passing, that Grey Wardens eventually succumbed to the taint in their blood just like civilians, and would venture to the Deep Roads to seek out one final battle with the darkspawn. Most Wardens could expect thirty years after taking the Joining, though the Commander had told her in confidence that the Fereldan Wardens might expect a few more. The Commander hadn't offered details, and Bethany had not asked, but it was little consolation to the junior Warden just the same.
"And you happened to have a vacant noble's estate to refit for the purpose," the Commander said, after a moment's consideration.
Behlen's crown slid halfway down his forehead when he nodded, but he re-seated the bucket of metal without missing a beat. "The traitorous Harrowmonts have been extinguished, root and branch," he conceded. The name stuck in Bethany's memory, and she recalled that she and her brother had aided a dwarf named Renvil Harrowmont on the docks in Kirkwall, who was attempting to flee dwarven assassins sent by none other than King Behlen himself. She remembered watching him board a ship to Rivain, or possibly Antiva. The junior Warden bit her tongue on the correction, however; even if the exiled dwarf still lived, he wasn't worth King Behlen's ire...or, more importantly, the Commander's. The dwarven king looked far too pleased with himself as he went on. "All of Orzammar would be honoured for you to be the first official Wardens-in-residence in nearly two hundred years."
A heartbeat passed, and Bethany felt the air grow a bit thicker around them, but the Commander settled it with a barked laugh. "As would we, Your Majesty," she assured him. "Some rest and supplies would be most welcome, before we set out."
"Excellent!" Behlen enthused. "Now, if there is nothing else...?" As though he'd only grudgingly granted them an audience, rather than dragged them in from the gates of the city . When no issues came forth, the king dismissed them with a gesture. "My Second will see you to the compound. May solid stone ever be beneath your feet, Wardens."
A handful of minutes later, Vartag and his men had marched them down the main thoroughfare halfway to where they'd entered it, stopping at the edifice of an estate completely indistinguishable from those to either side. A steward greeted the party at the door, dressed in Grey Warden colours, and informed them that a meal was already prepared.
Nathaniel spoke up for the first time since waking that morning, at the foot of the Frostbacks. "I could start to look forward to coming here."
The Commander spared him a glance-also the first of the day that Bethany had noticed, despite Anders' mention that the two were close-and grunted a laugh. "Just as long as you remember what became of the last people to own this house."
Jerrik Dace met the party in the estate's dining room. He was tall, at least for a dwarf, and very solidly-built. He also had an enormous beast at his side, with thick grey skin and a stubbed horn atop its muzzle. Bethany recalled having to help slay a very similar creature in the Deep Roads, and Barcus must have sensed her unease, for he rumbled a growl at the monster.
"Easy, Snug," the dwarf cautioned, laying a hand on the creature's flank. Tentatively, Bethany gripped Barcus' new spiked collar, and the hound calmed considerably. "He's harmless," the dwarf went on. "Unless you're a darkspawn, that is."
The Commander looked from one pet to another, and the junior Warden caught sight of her smirk. "Those two should get on well, then," she observed. "Now let's eat, and you can tell us what we need to know about this expedition of your brother's."
Bethany still hadn't gotten used to her increased appetite, or the sheer pleasure that eating a solid meal could give her; between that and the nagging in her blood, the junior Warden didn't wind up paying as close attention as she should have to the exchange between Jerrik and the other Wardens. The dwarf was confident that his brother was alive, even though their father had already held a memorial for Brogan. The missing dwarf had sought to recover the lost art of making golems, those living stone statues with which the dwarves had fought the darkspawn to a near-standstill after the Fourth Blight. Jerrik had a notion to find his brother and help complete that mission, and where two-dozen dwarves had apparently failed, four Wardens and a couple of battle-hardened beasts might just prove to be enough.
"We'll set out tomorrow with enough supplies for a month," the Commander announced, after her and her companions had eaten their fill. She turned to the attending steward. "Are the tunnels in here wide enough for Snug to get to any of the quarters?"
The older dwarf nodded. "The bronto might be a tight fit," he observed, "but we can give Lord Dace a fitting chamber for the night."
"I don't call him 'Snug' for nothing," Jerrik pointed out with a long-suffering glance at the beast.
The steward hesitated by the door. "I have prepared four rooms during dinner," he informed them. "Shall I have baths drawn in them while I prepare a fifth for Lord Dace?"
The Commander shook her head. "Don't bother with the extra room," she pronounced, her blood-coloured eyes landing heavily on the junior Warden. "Warden Bethany and I will share." Her glance cut to Oghren, who'd begun to guffaw at her. "And you will hold your tongue if you want Adron to hear his name from your mouth," she warned, though her lips danced just beneath a smile.
"You're the boss," Oghren allowed, and he occupied himself with a pull off of his aleskin. Nathaniel snickered into his own mug, but made no further comment.
The steward gave them directions to the chamber wing of the estate and then disappeared. Bethany found that she couldn't breathe properly, even as Jerrik and the other Wardens stood up from the stone table, and she numbly followed the Commander and her lieutenants as they made their way through the estate's corridors. Without having to discuss it, the civilian dwarf took the first chamber with his bronto in tow, while Nathaniel and Oghren broke off in their turn, which left the last room for Bethany and the Commander. Once inside, the junior Warden saw that a pair of stone basins steamed beside a fairly large straw-covered bed.
The Commander surveyed the room in silence for a few moments. "I'm not really going to cut Oghren's tongue out," she admitted, lightly. "Yours, either." The elf's scarred cheek dimpled with her smirk.
Bethany sucked in a breath. "I never wanted this," she husked, before she could catch herself. Then she glanced away, ashamed at the admission.
"Neither did I, Beth," the Commander replied. "For either of us." She turned, undoing her weapons and armour with practiced motions. The lyrium-veined greatblade called Starfang was placed reverently on the top row of a weapons' rack, while the elf's swordbelt was tied around a middle rung.
Wordlessly, Bethany moved to copy the Commander. Her staff no longer felt too heavy in her hands as she placed it beneath Starfang; after the Commander's truncation of the magical weapon, the human smith Mikhael had worked with Bethany to hollow out much of the shaft and fill it with lyrium-laced steel. The lower third of the staff was taken up by a serrated blade, ideal for stabbing and slicing. The weapon was as much hers as it had ever been Cethlenn's or her fathers, now, if not even more so.
After a few minutes' work, both Wardens stood bereft of steel and leather. The Commander retrieved the daggers from her swordbelt before she approached one of the tubs, and Bethany considered following her example, but some lingering resentment stayed her hand; if tonight was to have another study in crimson, she could use one of the elf's blades to begin it. Even so, the junior Warden stepped out of her shift and smallclothes, sinking into the still-warm water of the nearer basin after the Commander had selected her own.
"You've been in the Deeps before," the Commander noted, after a few breaths of lingering silence. "As a civilian, and after Stroud took you in."
"Yes," Bethany admitted, feeling her throat creak from lack of use over the past few days.
The Commander nodded, but her mouth turned down. "You found them nearly empty, as I did, when I first set foot there." The strength of the elf's glance kept Bethany from protesting. "Where we head, starting tomorrow, the 'spawn will swarm in their hundreds." The junior Warden had no answer to that, other than a shudder, which seemed to reverse the Commander's frown. "Where'd you learn to fight, before you came to us?"
Bethany blinked, trying to settle her fluttering pulse with a deep breath. "I did a little bit of combat with Father, and with Ceth, after..." After he died, she nearly said, but choked on the words. "When Carver and I made it to Kirkwall, we had to join a gang of mercenaries called the Red Iron, so I suppose that's where I really learnt."
The Commander's gaze shifted from the junior Warden to the armour rack. "That why you coloured your staff red?"
Bethany nodded slightly. "I...tried to change it back, afterward. But the stain was too deep in the wood." But she was used to it, now. "I asked the captain, after our first year, why it was called 'the Red Iron'," the human mage ventured. "He said it was because the blood never washed out."
"That's true enough," the Commander commented with a chuckle. Her eyes fell heavily on Bethany once more, even as the elf worked the grime from her skin. "But that captain taught his men to fight in a line, I expect, and got you to stand well back of it to toss your spells."
"Right," Bethany admitted. "I had a dagger in case anyone got too close, but I always had at least a bit of distance."
The Commander gave her a nearly sympathetic look. "My Wardens don't fight like that," she allowed. "We can't afford to. Take a look at that rack of weapons and tell me what you don't see...what you've not seen once since Stroud took you away."
The junior Warden looked again at the place where their arms and armour hung, her brows knitting as she thought back. "Shields," came her answer, after a few heartbeats. "I haven't seen any Grey Wardens with shields."
"And you won't," the Commander assured her. "Leastwise not under my command. Men fight in lines, with shields pushed together in a wall, except for the few warriors brave enough to take up a two-hander." The elf paused, a distant look in her eye. "But darkspawn don't fight in lines," she went on. "They come in knots and mobs, and when you line up against them, they keep hammering until they split your line into two, and then you die ." The Commander's eyes came into focus as she regarded Bethany. "So we don't give them that chance. We'll always be outnumbered, Beth. We'll always need to kill twenty of the bastards apiece just to make it out alive."
Bethany recalled the vision of Anders with his staff-modified not too differently from her own, now-cutting his way into groups of darkspawn, felling as many with the blade as with his spells. In her training so far in Redcliffe, Bethany supposed she'd been learning to do the same, though she hadn't realised it at the time. "When that genlock struck me down," she mused, closing her eyes against the memory, "I thought I was going to die."
"You wouldn't've, at least if Anders hadn't been with you," the Commander informed her in a low voice. "It were trying to take you to breed." Bethany saw that the elf's face was even more stone-like than normal as she went on. "That's why there aren't many women in the Wardens...the darkspawn use us to make more of them. Broodmothers, we call them...the great mindless mountains of flesh that spit out darkspawn day and night." Her eyes narrowed at Bethany's horror. "You thought the Maker sprouted them from the ground?"
The junior Warden's lips worked soundlessly, and she remembered that Anders had only insisted in venturing below ground after she couldn't be persuaded to stay back. "So...he would've tried to kill me? If Barcus hadn't..."
"Anders?" The Commander ventured, and then she inclined her head. "Aye, if he's the same man I remember. He'd rather see you dead himself than turned into...that." She shook her head. "As would I, and Nathaniel, and Oghren. That's why you've got to take up the blood, Beth. So that you're never unarmed, as long as your heart's beating...and so you don't get tempted by a demon's offer when the darkspawn are dragging you away."
The water in Bethany's tub felt suddenly hot, in contrast to the chill that the elf's words had generated within her. Her cheeks grew wet as another wave of resentment hit her, at this life she'd never dreamt of. "I...understand, Commander," the woman managed, after she'd swallowed her bitterness. She could even see the cold logic in the other Warden's pronouncement.
In response, the Commander looked away from the junior Warden, down at her own hand. She seemed to consider the ring there for a long moment. "You may call me by name, when we're alone," Athadra allowed. "Never in front of anyone else," she cautioned, still considering her hand as it clenched into a fist.
"Is...anything wrong?" Bethany's heart skipped when her tongue tasted the name of her old friend again. "Athadra?" The elf in the other stone basin took a deep breath, and for a split second, the human Warden thought she saw a frisson of doubt and pain cross Athadra's features.
But the moment passed, and the elf rose from her tub. "No," she breathed, glancing over her shoulder to the large bed. "It looks like we'll have to share," Athadra observed. "Will that be a problem?"
Bethany tried not to look too closely at the rivulets that coursed down Athadra's scarred torso, or at the subtle curves which were still hinted at beneath the chorded muscle of the elf's frame...until Athadra turned, and Bethany caught an uncharacteristic longing in the other woman's eyes that was almost enough to distract her from the buzzing in her blood. "I..." The junior Warden's breath caught, and suddenly the water around her felt much too cold. "I don't think so, Athadra."