A/N: Thank you, lisakodysam, for the beta assistance and the wonderful Lumpy love song!
Thank you, Enaid, for not only being the 600th reviewer, but also for the inspired 'morning' idea.
I can't begin to express how thankful I am, and how amazed I am, that this story has exceeded 600 reviews. Thank you to all who are reading and reviewing and lurking!
Taint Misbehavin'
Guessing it was morning, Joss rose and began to pack her gear. She couldn't be sure it was morning because the sun didn't seem able to penetrate the mountain they were inside. How, she wondered yet again, did the dwarves know what time of day it was? Or what the weather was like? Not that she minded being out of the rain, but she wouldn't mind a bit of sunshine.
She had missed the perfect opportunity to fill Teagan in on her plans. At least that way, she could have avoided the fight that would ensue once he heard he was not going into the Deep Roads with her to find a paragon or dance with the darkspawn. She couldn't imagine he would be happy about that. At. All. Telling him while he was several sheets to the wind would have been the sensible thing to do. Which was probably why she hadn't. She and sense rarely traveled the same path. They were, in fact, strangers in the night. Or day. Probably both.
Glancing around their spacious room, she spied a partition, behind which was a miracle. A large stone tub sat on clawed feet. Set into the wall above one end of it were two spigots: one marked with a blue dot and the other with a red dot. They were tempting her, like treats tempted a child, and she reached out, turning them. Water began to flow into the tub; hot and cold running water. Amazing! She could learn to like the strange land of the dwarves, or at least at bath time.
After her bath, she set about making a decoction for Teagan. It was then she heard the noise. Stone walls, much to her surprise, did not block out nearly as much sound as she would have guessed. She wasn't sure whether the muffled noises, consisting mostly of moans, coming through the rock were of Fergus trying to recover from a surfeit of dwarven ale, or if it they were the sounds of a man enjoying a surfeit of Antivan assassin. If it was the latter, it gave a whole new meaning to the morning-after headache.
Stifling her laughter was extremely difficult; trying to do the same with her imagination was impossible. Whatever was going on next door, she decided she wouldn't ask, especially since her hands were full trying to alleviate Teagan's suffering. And, Maker's twisted liver, he was suffering. She smiled, easing a mild spell of rejuvenation into his prostrate form.
He had spent much of the night with one foot planted firmly on the floor, complaining that the bed was shimmying and the room spinning. Had someone complained of those problems in the Tower they would be headless for fear they were possessed by a demon. As it was, the only thing Teagan was possessed of was a screaming hangover, from the sound of it.
He let out a hiss of pain as he opened his eyes, wincing at the bright light, which consisted of a tiny spell wisp and a small fire in the brazier. "Maker's breath," he moaned, covering his eyes with his pillow. "Aren't we supposed to be inside a mountain? Shouldn't it be dark?" he groaned, hugging his pillow.
"How dastardly of the dwarves to force all that ale down your throat and then turn up the lights until they became as brilliant as a hundred burning candles," she agreed, moving back to the brazier and the decoction that would save Teagan's head from exploding.
She added a pinch of winter-spice and a splash of water to the mixture. Lucian Caravel's guaranteed hangover remedy was the last potion he ever taught her and it had saved her many a headache in her time. She finished warming it over the small brazier that apparently gave off entirely too much light for Teagan's poor eyes.
Taking the cup, she moved quietly to stand beside the bed, holding it out to him. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, the moaning next door reached a crescendo and Joss gave in to her laughter, sloshing a bit of the decoction over the edge of the mug.
"Maker's breath! What is that racket?" Teagan hissed, refusing to remove the pillow.
"I suspect it is the Antivan remedy for an aching head," Joss replied with a grin that was wasted on the pillow-hugging bann.
"Nnggh – I think I'm in need of a similar remedy," he moaned pitifully. He turned loose the pillow and sat up, clutching at his head.
Joss was more than willing to offer that type of remedy, but she felt fairly certain his head wouldn't really be in the game as he was an intriguing shade of lichen green. As if to prove her point, his eyes flew open, panic in their blue depths. No doubt his stomach was just as unhappy with him as his head was. She set the mug down and then held her hands out, touching his head to let her meager healing spell trickle into him.
"I'm not sure you're ready for an Antivan anything at the moment, Teagan. Maybe when you're feeling better? I think a nice bath in the dwarven bathtub hidden behind that partition will do the trick," she suggested, pointing to the tall, artfully crafted divider and trying to instill more sympathy and less humor in her voice.
"This won't hurt either," she added, indicating the mug.
With truculence and little grace, he grabbed the cup and drank the contents, a great shudder wracking him. What was it, Joss wondered, that made grown men become ill-tempered little boys when they weren't feeling well? She had often seen that happen in the Tower, and to witness her noble and even-tempered betrothed behaving as fractious as a spoiled child made her roll her eyes.
A great shout of laughter erupted from the other side of the wall and Teagan gave the stone a surly glare as she helped him to the awaiting bathtub. No doubt the wall quailed at such a ferocious frown.
She had already emptied and refilled the large stone tub and she watched, lips twitching into a smile, as Teagan tried to undress himself. He was having a great deal of trouble unlacing his knotted breeches, and Joss had similarly failed in her attempt to remove them the night before.
"I've decided that of all the dwarven ingenuity I've seen since our arrival this is their most brilliant. Look at these spigots, Teagan. Hot and cold water flows into the tub when you turn them. Ingenious! I suppose installing something like this in our home would require lava tubes and some sort of piping, but it really is a marvel."
Teagan grunted and sank into the hot water, shuddering, but looking decidedly less green, and much more likely to survive his ordeal with the ale. She sat on the edge of the tub, reached for a bar of soap, and lathered up a small square of fabric.
He leaned forward, bringing his knees up and resting his head on them. "Have I made a complete imbecile of myself, do you suppose?" he asked, looking absurdly guilty.
Joss snickered, remembering his performance on stage. "Not at all. The patrons of Tapsters seemed quite anxious that you return for an encore tonight."
A groan crept out of him as she began to wash his back. His color was returning and he seemed less an obstreperous boy and more good-natured bann as the bath progressed. In fact, he was almost his normal, charming self.
"I sang, didn't I?" he finally asked, shaking his head. She watched to make sure the motion didn't upset the delicate balance of his stomach.
"A captivating ballad of a woman's love for her blacksmith's hammer."
"Maker's mercy. Josslyn, my dear…" he began before trailing off. "I blame Fergus. He's always been a bad influence," he added, sounding endearingly apologetic and embarrassed. And sober and no longer queasy, which was a boon, as far as Joss was concerned. Her stomach was performing various acrobatic feats at the thought of telling him where she was going later that day. She pushed the thought away, but it just kept pushing right back. The bastard.
She leaned down to bestow a kiss on the top of his head, smiling. "I don't know how you'll be able to keep your head erect after this," she agreed with a sympathetic smile. Or it would have been if she hadn't tacked on a snicker at the end of it.
A wry laugh escaped Teagan and he sat up, reaching for her. His eyes held an impish light and he pulled her into the tub with him, splashing water in every direction. Apparently an erect head was not going to be an issue for him after all.
~~~oOo~~~
Joss finally understood what Teagan had found so fascinating about Lumpy, all those weeks ago in Denerim. She found her eyes continually drawn to the magnificent bump gracing Fergus's forehead. It was awe-inspiring and she found it impossible to resist. Catching her eyes locked on it yet again, Fergus shrugged ruefully, and reached up to rearrange his hair, covering the enormous purple bulge.
"It shall be named Knotty, accursed one," she intoned, before continuing with a grin, "You can hide it, but once seen, it can't be unseen. Poor Lumpy. She searched high and low for a mate during her tenure on my forehead and to no avail. Had she but known the future, she may have stayed long enough to forge a union with such an impressive fellow lump."
The others were laughing, and, as soon as Zevran explained the nature of their teasing, Fergus joined in.
"Now I have an image of Lumpy and Knotty, running after a bunch of little baby bumps," Jowan snorted. Well, that wasn't a scary picture. At. All. She had often wondered what went on in Jowan's mind, and, now that she knew, she wished she didn't. "What? I'm not the only one to think that, am I?"
"Maker, I hope so," Cathair replied with a shiver. She wasn't the only one with that hope, judging from the looks being thrown Jowan's way.
Without being asked, he went around the table to stand by the teyrn, chanting softly. The pale blue light flowed from his hands to Fergus's lump and Joss could almost see it shrinking. There had to be a joke in there somewhere about shrinking knotty lumps, but Josslyn's mind flitted back to the fight she was sure was imminent.
Breakfast was just a bad memory of lichen-infused nug surprise and brackish black liquid that pretended to be tea. It sat in her stomach like a lump, which made her glance over at the recovering teyrn. Knotty was already beginning to disappear. Rather than announce her plans, which would have been the right thing to do, Joss found herself leaning closer to Fergus.
"Tell me, Teyrn Fergus, did you wake up with a throbbing head this morning?" Joss asked quietly, giving him her best wide-eyed, sympathetic smile.
Fergus grinned his most boyish grin. "Zevran and Teagan were right about you. You are a saucy little minx." Which, while flattering, didn't answer her question.
Probably best to let that sleeping dog lie, she decided and was just about to launch a retaliatory strike on Zev and Teagan when the door to the common room was flung open and a short red-headed man stumped in.
Before she could recover from the surprise, he bellowed, "Time to go, Warden!"
Joss blinked, her stomach now refusing to stop its incessant complaining. The news was about to be delivered by the dwarf…what was his name? Orville? Oden? Ogler? "Good morning, Ogden," she greeted, almost positive that was the dwarf's name.
"That's Oghren. Now get your keister outta that chair."
Joss shook her head, violently. Her stomach pitched and swayed. "Wait outside. Or better yet, go have breakfast at Tapsters and we'll meet you there, Orgden" she said but the damage, of course, was already done.
"We aren't seriously going into the Deep Roads," Jowan said in a choked voice.
"We most certainly are not," Teagan agreed, standing to tower over Joss as she sat in her toy chair.
"Do you see any Paragons hangin' around here?" the dwarf asked belligerently but added a loud guffaw at the end when Jowan looked around the nearly-deserted room.
Joss sighed. So much for her romantic notions of marriage and life with a bann. And really, when she thought about it, the betrothal had lasted far longer than she'd thought it would. She had hoped there would be more time to explain her decision to Teagan in private, but their private time had been eaten up by other activities. She really needed to start thinking with other parts of her anatomy once in awhile.
"Jowan, Cathair, grab your gear and take Shorty outside. Let Shale know on your way out."
Shale had not made it past the main entryway because the doorway that had attacked Fergus was too small for the golem to fit through and the stony giant had remained in the lobby all night.
"Who you calling Shorty, Sparkie?" the dwarf challenged and then let out a roar of laughter as she aimed a lightning bolt at him. He was still rubbing his backside as he made his way out of the common room. "I like a woman with spunk."
Lovely, just what she'd always wanted…to be liked by a very strange and not altogether sober little man.
"Is there a reason you didn't order the three of us to gather our gear?" Teagan asked, waving his arm to include Zev and Fergus. His voice was a perfect imitation of winter.
Andraste's dimpled butt-cheeks! Did he think she wanted to go traipsing around the tainted brick roads? She searched her pockets for a smile and discovered she was out of them.
"You three need to prepare Orzammar for a new – and most likely unexpected – king. I can't imagine anyone's ever considered Denek Helmi for King before now. You need to be here for Alistair and the other Wardens," she replied.
There, that was reasonably spoken and with nary a quiver in sight. She continued searching for a smile, but Teagan's next words sent any that may have been lurking right back into the shadows.
"I have watched you pull some bone-headed moves, Josslyn, but you are sadly mistaken if you think I'll stand by and watch you go into the Deep Roads without me."
"Perhaps we could have this discussion in private?" she suggested hopefully.
"Oh no, my lovely Warden, this I will not allow," Zevran said, his scowl sitting with great relish on his face. Had she ever seen him scowl before? Ever? She couldn't think of a time.
Joss's temper began an assault on her calm, not that she had a great deal of calm to start with. "You do know that I have the power to put you all into a deep sleep and then ward your arses inside your room, right?" she was horrified to hear herself say.
Maker's bloomers! What was wrong with her? But the anger, once there, just continued to grow and with it, her need to cry, throw things, and crawl under a rock. Well, except that last part, since she was technically already under a rock.
"This is not some stroll in the park with darkspawn. It's the Deep Roads, or, as one guard mentioned yesterday, the Tainted Brick Roads. Taint. Something that Jowan, Cathair and I are intimately familiar with. We can't be tainted because we already are. Shale can't be tainted because it's a golem. And dwarves have a resistance to the taint or they'd long ago have succumbed, I suspect."
"You don't trust us to watch out for ourselves?" Teagan demanded. Maker, he looked as angry as she felt. Good-bye Josslyn Guerrin, hello Josslyn Alone Again. Naturally. She'd been a complete nincompoop to believe otherwise.
"I trust you to watch out for yourselves. I don't, however, trust the darkspawn to behave. In fact, the taint tends to make them misbehave. And there's a veritable horde of them in the Deep Roads, lest you have forgotten," she added, hands on hips. Please don't make me say it, Teagan. Please don't make me say it. "The odds of my surviving the Deep Roads are extremely high. The odds of your surviving are grim to not at all."
"All the more reason for us to accompany you on this mad quest to find a paragon," Teagan argued.
"This is a mad quest? Maker's painted pitchfork! This entire trek around Ferelden has been one mad quest after another. Why should this be any different?" she snorted, her anger soaring to new heights. And, oh bravo, who had turned on her waterworks? Did she have a spigot hidden on her somewhere?
"She's right, Teagan. We shouldn't go," Fergus said with such authority that even Joss couldn't argue with him, not that she wanted to since his tone forestalled the tumble of words pressing against her lips.
Silence fell into the room like an eavesdropper caught listening at the door. Joss was tempted to hug the big bear of a man except he didn't look all that happy with his admission. Zevran gave her one more scowl before slowly nodding his head. She turned her gaze on Teagan, whose face could have been made of the stone that surrounded them. Except for the bright splotches of color in his cheeks signifying he was still angry. Lovely.
"Out," Teagan growled. Joss gladly started for the door, relieved that the fight was over.
"I do not believe he means you, my lovely Warden."
A girl could wish, couldn't she? She watched as Fergus and Zevran stepped out of the room and closed the door behind them. Her stomach was doing the Remigold and her hands were chasing each other like chickens running from the butcher. Maker's unholy breath, she was wringing her hands…actually wringing her hands. Her tears wanted to start all over again. She consigned them to the Fade. They didn't stay there, the traitors.
"Why, Josslyn?"
"We need the dwarven army and they aren't coming with us until a king orders them to. I'm not about to put that little despot Bhelen on the throne, nor that weak-willed, weak-chinned Harrowmont fellow. But anyone else will be laughed out of the chamber. A paragon will solve the dispute once and for all. As Ogful mentioned, there aren't any just hanging around but there is one hanging around in the Deep Roads."
"You know very well that's not what I meant."
"Right. But what you want me to say isn't necessarily what I want to say and just saying it might make you say something I don't want you to say and then we'll both be saying things that we don't want to say or the other person to say or …" she began, still wringing her fingers like a virgin on her wedding night, but Teagan's lips stopped her as he gathered her close enough to cut off all circulation except to those parts of her that thrived on his closeness.
"Just promise me you'll come back, and that you won't do anything foolish or noble."
"Have you met me? I don't have a noble bone in my body!" she exclaimed with a squeak of disbelief. She laughed self-consciously, or at least she was fairly certain she was laughing, she just wasn't sure why her cheeks were damp.
"I'll be back as quickly as possible…just zip in, grab the paragon, and out again lickety-split," she assured him once her voice had stabilized. She decided they needed more kissing and less talking. Teagan didn't seem to disagree.
"I'm going to go speak with this Oghren fellow and make sure he understands the importance of keeping you alive," Teagan told her once they'd finished assuring each other that their lips were in working order.
As soon as he had departed, Zevran returned. "You are determined to finish my assignment to kill you without any help from me," he commented, eyes boring into her.
"Well, what are friends for?" she replied with a grin that probably looked as natural as a Revered Mother in a house of ill-repute. She took his hands and squeezed them in her own. "I have a favor or two to ask," she continued.
"Of course! I feel as though I owe you a favor, since you are intent on killing yourself, thus saving me the trouble, my dear woman."
No sarcasm in that remark. At. All. "If we don't return within ten days, I want you to put your elite skills to work and assassinate Bhelen and Harrowmont. We don't have time to fiddle around waiting while Ferelden burns because these two jackanapes can't get their excrement gathered into one pile."
Zevran threw his head back and laughed. "The irony of actually being at the whim of a deadly sex goddess is a moment I shall always treasure," he replied, and then his smile faded. "And should you not return within ten days, I will do this, if you promise to return on the eleventh day."
"Done and done."
Of course, nothing they did was ever easy. As they made their way to the huge barrier doors, their dwarven friend stopped. "Don't suppose anyone has a map of the Deep Roads handy?" he rumbled around a belch.
Joss rolled her eyes and stared at the row of merchants that were plying their trade just a few feet away. "Surely one of them sells maps?" she retorted and went from merchant to merchant. She finally found one at a merchant who sold little golem dolls with the word "Orzammar" engraved on them - which she thought Alistair would love - as well as various other dwarven gewgaws similarly engraved.
The map was basic but the merchant, eager to earn a small tip, explained, "Just follow the tainted brick road."
Another merchant leaned close and whispered in a wise voice, "Follow the tainted brick road."
Before they could escape Merchant's Row, every merchant was chanting, "Follow the tainted brick road," as if it was the holiest of phrases. It seemed to Joss that the inhabitants of Orzammar were crazy, insane or addled. Many appeared to be all three at once.
They came to the Great Barrier Door and Joss took her pack from Teagan, who held on to it, pulling her in for another kiss. "Come back, Josslyn, or, by the Maker, I'll go in there after you."
She thought she ought to make some formal speech, standing there with her group solemnly staring at her, but speeches had never been her strong suit. "Stay out of Tapsters, sing on key if you go in, and make sure nobody sleeps with Morrigan if I don't come back," she announced and then grinned.
"I'll be back before you know it," she added, with more wistfulness in her voice than she would have liked. She slipped her pack on and then turned, head held high to sally forth.
It was then that she learned that a land of dwarves was not the place to hold one's head high. Her chest collided with a well-armored guard, knocking her completely off her feet. Styx bounded over to her, licking her face and howling mournfully for his fallen mistress. She took Teagan's proffered hand and stood up, her cheeks as hot as a forge and that thought made her remember Teagan's song and she was laughing as she shook herself off.
"Once more unto the Deeps, dear friends, once more," she announced with a rueful smile.
She stopped on the threshold and looked back at Teagan, Fergus and Zev, who were all watching her with varying degrees of concern in their expressions. How very reassuring…or, you know, not.
Taking a deep breath, because she'd read somewhere that it gave one courage, Joss stepped into the Deep Roads, where her taint immediately went into a frenzy like misbehaving children after too many sweets. The door slammed shut with a reverberating shudder of protesting steel. She knew just how it felt. And why hadn't someone thought to mention the conditions in the Deep Roads? Did she have to do all the thinking?
"Andraste's hind tit! Anyone have a light?"