Chapter 48: The Dead Trenches
Silently Marian heads for the base of the bridge. As she rounds the last boulder, she stops. There are dwarves here, more than a few, fighting off a steady stream of darkspawn with skill and a fearlessness that she envies. She catches one of the big ones in a trap before her staff is even in her hand, as the others come around the corner. With their help, soon enough this half of the bridge is cleared of darkspawn. There are more at the other end, but they're keeping their distance, for now.
One of the dwarves approaches them, looking them over carefully. Oghren he dismisses, but Shale comes in for a bit of admiring scrutiny, if Marian's not mistaken. He has the facial tattoos that some of the low-caste dwarves have, but underneath he's very serious, and something tells Marian that he's both in charge and worthy of it. "Atrast vala, Grey Wardens," he says. "I've never seen one of your kind in the Deep Roads." His eyes are wary. It's hard to blame him.
His name is Kardol, and he tells her that they're the local outpost of the Legion of the Dead. They're holding the line against the darkspawn here, waiting for new orders from the Assembly.
They haven't seen Branka. They haven't seen anyone, only darkspawn.
"We have to go further in," she says to Kardol. "Any advice?"
"Turn back, Grey Warden," he says, still and solemn. "You're as likely to find a dozen Paragons as one. The darkspawn's birthing grounds lay beyond this point. Only the suicides go down there."
As hard as she presses him, he won't say anything more about that. Defeated by dwarven stoicism, she offers to trade for food and maps to any clean water that might exist past the bridge; as she thought, the Legion soldiers are excited at the prospect of reasonably fresh elfroot and crystal grace. They give her far too much, to her mind, and she presses more on them in return.
Crossing the bridge is mostly an exercise in restraint. If they push too fast, going through the darkspawn, they'll be overwhelmed; Marian sincerely doubts that the Legion will come to their rescue. She glances over her shoulder in a moment between killing. The dwarves are watching, ever ready in case the darkspawn slip by her little party, but they're still and silent.
That's what she thought.
When they approach the end of the bridge, her steps falter. There's so many darkspawn down there, all with longbows or crossbows. They're not firing yet, but slight movements in their ranks tells her that they're about to. At the head of the phalanx is another ogre. Her fingers move without conscious thought, caging it in pain to buy them a little bit of time and some breathing room.
The longbows can reach them from here, but the crossbows have less range, so those darkspawn are going to have to move to reach them... And indeed they explode into action almost as soon as Marian reaches for her staff. Alistair's shield is in his hand already, as if by magic. The archers aim for him, at first, but that changes – Shale is too large and tempting a target. It has natural armor, which at this range is nearly impervious to arrows save for an extremely lucky shot.
The archers with crossbows stop at the end of the bridge and loose as one. This is more dangerous – Marian's got Cú close by her, crouching over him with her fingers in his collar, and Alistair puts himself and his shield between her and the crossbow bolts. She can't help her shoulders tightening as she waits, keeping her terror at bay by counting. One, one thousand, two, one – A bolt shatters against Alistair's shield, the splinters ricocheting off the stone beneath her feet. He grunts at the impact. She counts the bolts as they land: two, three, was that four skittering over the edge of the bridge? Five, six – then only the softer whuds of the longbows.
Now's their chance. The crossbows must be spanned before they may fire again, and even the quickest and strongest must use two hands to span a crossbow. This leaves them a window of opportunity. Alistair is already gone, running flat-out as fast as he can in armor – and it's not a bad turn of speed, Marian notices – with Oghren after him. Shale, having no fear of crossbow bolts, is in the midst of the longbowmen, almost more effective there as a distraction than as a fighter. Almost.
Alistair takes one's head off at speed, his sword licking out faster than thought, and Oghren literally barrels into the next two, sending them flying them with his body. Marian freezes the fourth and flings stone at the fifth, knocking it over onto its arse. Cú is on the last, his huge teeth snapping at the darkspawn, doing his level best to rip its throat out.
She leaves Oghren and Alistair to finish them off. Her cage should be wearing off soon... She glances at the place where she'd left the ogre.
It's not there anymore. Instead it's coming at her in a bounding run, small, beady eyes fixed on her with a frightening and malevolent rage. She draws deep on the Fade, but that's not a well she can tap forever. She feels the exhaustion already. The ogre bends its head down to charge, presenting Marian with the spikes upon which it intends to spit her –
She takes a deep breath – this has to work – and casts her winter spell, slamming the butt of her staff on the ground for the satisfaction of an ending. And just like that, it's frozen solid, immobile, trapped, safe. It's stuck there for the next little while. Marian moves out of the line of its charge for prudence's sake, heals Shale, and then does her level best to kill it before it thaws. With any luck... But luck's been in short supply, these last months.
She keeps a weather eye on the others, who are cutting down the rest of the archers where they stand. The ogre is looking worse and worse, its skin greying as she watches. She waits, and waits – surely the next spell will finish it off. Or the next. But it won't stay frozen forever. Marian finds herself taking a step backward. She's still on the bridge, with its narrow confines. It's the perfect corridor for the ogre to put its head down and charge at her. The only way to get off the bridge without getting skewered is to run with superhuman speed back to where the Legion waits, or to throw herself over the side to fall down into the deep crevasse which the bridge spans. Her heart's in her throat. She hopes against hope that this last spell will do it –
The ogre shudders, the hoarfrost sheeting over his skin crackling, shards of ice falling to the ground all around him. Its head jerks sharply to the side with a crack that echoes. Its eyes lock onto her. It takes one slow, ponderous step, dragging its monstrous foot against the stone, and then another. Faster and faster it lumbers toward her, leaving a trail of ice in its wake. Marian takes a breath to ground herself and tries to freeze it again.
It doesn't work.
She dives out of the way, rolling all the way to the opposite side of the bridge, fetching up against the parapet so hard that it hurts. She scrambles up, and so does the ogre, spinning to face her with inhuman speed. It roars when it catches sight of her and reaches out with one impossibly long arm to snatch her up. It picks her up without effort, holding her so tight she can hardly breathe, and brings her closer to its face to squint at her. Marian screams; she can't help it. She remembers Ostagar, and the ogre there, and the quick, effortless way it had ripped off that soldier's head – She fights like a madman to get loose, riding the edge of panic, deathly afraid and nearly beyond reason. The ogre tightens its grip, only looking annoyed by all her best efforts, and lifts its other hand in an immense, threatening fist. Try as she might, she can't get free, and in the last surge of desperation she looks deep, hoping beyond hope that there might be some remains of magic she hasn't scraped loose yet –
The ogre bellows, bowing backward at the waist. Its hand opens and drops Marian to land on her hip and shoulder. The pain roars through her, steals every bit of breath from her body, but still she doesn't miss the twisted life drain from the ogre's eyes. It falls forward, narrowly missing her, to reveal Alistair already heading in her direction.
"Are you all right?" he says, sheathing his gory sword and crouching next to her. He's going to have to clean that out later, Marian thinks, apropos of nothing. She's a little dazed. She lifts a hand and feels her way around her scalp; there's a spot above her temple, hot to the touch, growing more painful every second. She must have hit her head in the confusion.
"Mostly," she answers. She laughs, like something's funny, but that hurts at the moment. She winces and closes her eyes.
Alistair tucks a stray bit of hair behind her ear. "Hang on," he says. She loves the way he touches her, with care and concern, like he's making sure she's still there. "Shale's bringing the potions."
"I don't need potions," Marian insists, opening her eyes. She is the healer right now, after all. She can heal herself. She doesn't need anyone's help. Where's her staff? Did she drop it? She sits up, narrowly avoiding a collision with Alistair's breastplate. Her staff is on the other side of the bridge. She doesn't technically need it, but things are easier with it. It's a magical conduit that allows her to refine her energy usage.
"Hey, take it easy," Alistair says; there's a thread of laughter in his voice, though he still sounds a little worried. He puts a restraining hand on her shoulder. His hand's so heavy with all that armor. He must get tired of wearing it. "That's got to hurt."
Now that he mentions it... Pain blooms deep in her head, bright and sullen in turns, pounding with the beat of her heart. The rest of her doesn't feel too great, either. She groans. Everything hurts. What is she doing?
"Just hang on." Alistair leans in and kisses her gently on the forehead, lingering for an endless, warm moment. She closes her eyes and tries to just feel him, not the pain or the shivery remnants of panic. "You'll be fine."
She believes him.
Now that they've cleared the far side of the bridge, the Legion trots up behind them to hold what they've taken. Marian feels fairly secure in the assumption that they'd help if the darkspawn attack, instead of standing around with their thumbs up their arse, so they elect to camp here for the night and press on in the morning.
She steals Alistair away for a little private time before they sleep. It's the only time she feels normal anymore. He's marvelously distracting. He makes her forget the press of the earth over her head, the malaise that weighs on her more and more every step they take away into darkspawn lands, the ever-present ache of hunger. She clings to him and some of her desperation must communicate itself to him, because he drags her closer and kisses her hard, harder, until she can't think, can hardly breathe.
It's getting harder to stop when he's not comfortable with doing more. Her hand isn't enough anymore. She's going to have to have a talk with him about this. Later.
Beyond the bridge is an intricate and very old dwarven hall. The Legion has co-opted parts of it for mausoleums, rooms full of sarcophagi and the tales of long-dead heroes. The darkspawn are there en masse, too, in a huge encampment to the south, and also packs of shrieks and skeletons and magic-users. They've claimed the rest of this place for their own.
The northern half is not as crowded, but it's more unsettling. There's something here, something that the darkspawn left, that reminds her of the egg sacs in the Tower, but these are made of – Marian swallows. It looks like meat. Some of them move a little, too, as she watches, something crawling underneath a film of skin. The smell is vile. They hurry through the first rooms, but there's more everywhere they look.
They're not paying the closest of attention to what they're doing; it startles her when the whispers come out of bare rock.
"First day they come and catch everyone."
Marian stops dead in her tracks. It's a woman's voice, curiously flat and lacking in affect. But there's no one here but them. She looks at Alistair, and Oghren, and she's relieved to see that they're looking around; they heard it, too. It's not a demon, at least. "Was that one of you?" she asks in the scant hope that maybe Oghren has a secret talent as a mimic, dashed when he shakes his head. There's not really anywhere for someone to hide, not here, unless she's inside one of the sarcophagi.
Marian checks each one, just to be sure.
There's a turn into the next cavern ahead, but when she takes a look through, there's no one there, either.
"Hello?" she calls out. Her voice echoes down the cavern, going further than she expected - there's more caverns beyond the one in front of them, that's clear to her.
There's no answer.
What did the voice say? First day they come and catch everyone. The darkspawn? Catch who? It's rhythmic, like a song, or poetry, but it's not one that she knows, nor Oghren; though he admits that he's not the best dwarf to ask.
Carefully they continue through the tunnels, watching every step they take, on the lookout for... anything. She has no idea what to watch for because she has no idea what is happening.
"Second day, they beat us, and eat some for meat."
The one whose voice they hear is still nowhere to be seen. In these caverns, that's impressive, to be sure, but it's so damned unsettling. Where is she? Inside the walls? Eat some for meat... Marian shivers. It reminds her of some of the tales the younger apprentices would whisper at night, of ghosts and werewolves and mad cannibals in the wilds of Ferelden's forests. But down here... it's probably darkspawn. Everything is tainted here.
Oghren has no idea what's happening. Spirits who haunt the Deep Roads he's heard of, but they're children's stories, something to tell around the campfire late at night. They're nothing like this. "I know that voice from somewhere," he says, his bushy eyebrows furrowed. "But it's changed. Wrong."
"Third day, the men are all gnawed on again."
It's so, so tempting to just turn around. Kardol of the Legion thinks that Branka is dead, long since food for the darkspawn. The easy route, the coward's way, would be to give up here, to turn back empty-handed; if they did, the Assembly would be forced to do something... wouldn't they?
It's that niggling doubt that drives her onward, even now. Even listening to this. Marian's not so much of an optimist that she thinks that the Assembly would take their collective thumbs out if she can't deliver a living, breathing Paragon.
"Fourth day, we wait and fear for our fate."
Another damned dead end. Marian slaps the stone in frustration. Shaking the sting out of her hand, she looks down the corridor at Shale, who has had similar luck. They can't find the opening in the tunnel that has to exist. She's afraid to move forward, because that's when the verse starts again. In every new hallway, that voice has something new to say. It sounds like she's telling her story, but why won't she come out and talk to them? No matter what they do, they can't find her, the source of the whispers that come from the dark.
The hair on the back of Marian's neck is standing up. There's something uncanny about her voice.
"Fifth day, they return and it's another girl's turn."
Why is it just the women who are taken and not the men? She wraps her arms around her waist, holding herself tightly in.
They've backtracked and criss-crossed and scoured these tunnels. There's no one here but them. She hates this. She just wants it to stop. The apprehension is killing her. She feels like the woman is building to a crescendo, something horrible that she won't be able to forget.
"Sixth day, her screams we hear in our dreams."
Marian feels almost crazed, on edge with free-floating tension, waiting for something to happen. Anything would be better than this. And Maker, that poor girl, whoever she is, or was –
"Seventh day, she grew as in her mouth they spew."
She exchanges horrified glances with Alistair. She feels like she's going to be ill.
"Eighth day, we hated as she is violated." Then, quick as a hammer-blow, the next line: "Ninth day, she grins and devours her kin." Marian grips Cú's short, scrubby fur in a tight grip, wishing she wasn't wearing a glove. She needs the comfort of touch. This is... She takes a shuddering breath.
There's a door here. She's afraid to open it.
"Now she does feast, as she's become the beast."
Oghren, impatient, shoulders Marian out of the way and opens the door. There's nothing to fight in this room, but there is a woman, hunting through some of the revolting flesh sacs on the ground. She's short, a dwarf. She's muttering to herself. As they come closer, drawn by reluctant curiosity, they can make it out: it's the verse, the one that's haunted them through what feels like half of the Deep Roads.
How did she manage to make herself heard a mile away?
Marian dares to move a little closer, but she stops when the woman stands, slowly unfolding like a paper accordion. She has the taint. The splotches cover most of her face, and her eyes are striated silver and black. But she still speaks. She still has her mind, or what's left of it.
"We heard you through the walls," Marian says, quietly. She doesn't want to startle her. The woman won't look up, so Marian crouches, trying to see into her eyes. There's almost nothing there, like she's far, far away, but then something shifts in her face, a flicker of personality shoving its way to the surface. "What are you trying to tell us?"
The dwarven woman sways a little, holding onto herself like it's comforting. "It's what I've seen," she says. Her voice is still a shock. "What I will become. I force it into verse so it is fantasy, unreal. That's the only place I can hide, because they make me..." She takes a breath. "They make me eat. And then... All I could do was wish Laryn went first." A new note, a lilting touch of incredulity, something of the person she must once have been comes into her voice. "I wished it upon her so that I would be spared. But I had to watch. I had to see the change." She looks at Marian then. Marian rears back like she's been struck. There's more in her eyes now than Marian can bear. "How do you endure that?"
Marian doesn't have an answer to that. She wishes she did. She thinks that she might need that before this is done. "Who are you?" she asks, her heart in her throat.
"Who," she says, shaping it with her mouth; it's clear from the way she says it that she's echoing Marian. Her eyes wander away, and then back, clinging to Marian's face. "Hespith."
"You're Hespith?"
She nods slowly, just once, a dip of her chin.
"Stone me, girl, you're Hespith?" Oghren exclaims. "She's one of Branka's," he says in an aside to Marian.
"Branka!" Hespith cries. Suddenly she's there, present, fear and hatred and anguish in a haunted, painful maelstrom. "Do not talk of Branka, of what she did. Ancestors preserve us, forgive me. I was her captain and I didn't stop her. Her lover, and I could not turn her. Forgive her..." This she gives some thought to, swaying gently, like a plant in gentle currents. "No, she cannot be forgiven. Not for what she did. Not for what she has become." She covers her face with her hands; it's like she's trying to hide from her own memories.
"Please, where is Branka?" Marian asks, gently, gently. This woman has been through... She's suffered more than enough.
Hespith drops her hands and spits at Marian's feet. Marian tries to scramble backward, shocked at the sudden vitriol, but crouching as she was, Marian lands on her arse instead. "I will not speak of her! Of what she did, of what we have become! I will not turn! I will not become what I have seen! Not Laryn! Not Branka!"
Hespith races away, out of the door and beyond their sight. Alistair follows immediately, hot on her trail, and Marian struggles to her feet to join them; but before she can take more than a step or two, Alistair reappears at the door, shaking his head. "She's gone," he says. He looks shaken, and pale under his tan. "It's like she disappeared into thin air."
"What the fuck is going on here?" Marian asks; she is distressed, and very close to tears. She doesn't understand what Hespith was talking about, or maybe it's that she doesn't want to understand.
"I don't know," Alistair says. He looks around, at the rubbish strewn around the chamber and the piles and piles of meat that it's difficult to see as anything other than dwarf remains at this point, corrupted by filth. "What was done to these people?" he asks, softly, like he's talking to himself. "There's worse to come?"
"Is it certain we need to be here?" Shale asks. Marian turns, ready to tear into it before she registers that Shale is sounding more afraid than she's ever seen it. And... Marian can understand that impulse to snap; she doesn't want to be here either. She bites her lip and gestures them out of the exit, the door that Hespith escaped through, taking just a moment to look around the room before shaking her head and following them out. There's nothing there but death.
Alistair kills two ogres in their path nearly single-handed, but they're not even close to the most frightening thing here; Hespith is gone without a trace, nowhere to be seen, but still she speaks to them, of Branka and her all-consuming absorption with the Anvil. The darkspawn captured her train of people, her house, all the dwarves Branka brought to the Deep Roads, and...
"They took Laryn," Hespith whispers. It's still impossible to tell if she's speaking to them or to herself, or even where she is. Her words are just there, poisoning the very air. "They made her eat the others, our friends. She tore off her husband's face and drank his blood. And while she ate, she grew. She swelled and turned gray and she smelled like them. They remade her in their image. Then she made more of them."
No. Oh, Maker, no. Oh no. Now she does feast, as she's become the beast. Marian swallows, her mouth gone dry as a bone.
"Broodmother..." Hespith whispers, and then goes silent.
Maker, please. Anything, anything but this.
Only inertia keeps her moving, the long weeks of practice keeping one foot in front of the other. The tunnel is small, carved out of bare rock. The ground is hidden beneath pools of blood, both new and old, staining the ground and every part of them that touches it. The smell is indescribably foul, rotting meat and the Blight mixed with mold and underneath, something rich and fatty that makes her gag.
She turns the corner. There she stops. She has to stop. The broodmother – for that is the only thing it can be – sits on a mound of meat and waste. It's huge and round and grossly fecund, a twisted, perverted, tainted idol to fertility.
This is Laryn, said Hespith. This is what the darkspawn made of her.
She screams when she sees them, her voice deeper than it's any right to be, leaning forward as much as she's able, tiny arms groping at the air between them. Tentacles burst out of the very rock, quicker than thought, all over the chamber. The tentacles reach for them; one is nearly on top of her when it erupts. Marian ducks away, the others following. The tentacle tracks her movement, reaching after her, moving faster than ought to be possible.
The broodmother screams, inhuman in her rage. It sends a chill down Marian's spine.
Marian dodges another tentacle from the other side, rolling forward, gagging as she's covered in the filth and blood and waste on the ground. It's all over her now, sinking into her skin –
Marian forces herself to ignore it. The others are fighting the tentacles, chopping them to pieces or ripping them out of the ground entire, but they just keep coming, like the broodmother is only the smallest part they can see, the tip of the iceberg, and the rest of her is an endless mass of tentacles roiling under the surface they stand on.
They could kill themselves fighting these things, or they could take the chance that killing her will end this.
With one sharp whistle, Marian catches their attention and points at the broodmother. They're a well-oiled team at this point, and that's all it takes. Shale flattens anything standing in their way, and then they descend on the broodmother. Marian hangs back to keep an eye on them. Maker, she's never wished for anything as much as she wishes Wynne were here right now.
The broodmother attacks them with tentacles, with a disgusting acid spit that burns through armor and skin alike, and when that doesn't deter them, she summons darkspawn from deeper in the cave system to come to her aid. It's a long, grueling fight; Marian runs out of magic more than once. Shale falls when the darkspawn make a special point of overwhelming it from all directions.
But even after they lose Shale, they're winning. The broodmother is bleeding more and more. Oghren's nearly hacked a hole in her stomach, and Alistair is methodically cutting the tentacles away from her body with solid strokes. But Oghren gets too close, too slow, and the broodmother snatches him up, her tiny hand choking him at the neck with inhuman strength. He drops his ax, tearing at her hands, but he can't get any purchase. Marian heals him once before the broodmother spits at her and she has to roll away, and then roll again when a tentacle snatches at her torso, and when she gets up again the broodmother is throwing away Oghren's limp body.
Alistair sets his shield and holds the broodmother's attention long enough for Marian to scramble to Oghren's side. He's still breathing – just. She can't give him the care he needs right now, so instead she orders Cú to drag him to the cave wall and leave him there. Hopefully the darkspawn will ignore him and go after more active targets.
When she looks up again, Alistair is bruised and bleeding, but still standing. The broodmother is bleeding so heavily that Marian can't believe she's still upright. She's down to the dregs of her magic again. She could heal Alistair, or she could take the chance, go on the offensive and hope that it's enough to finally kill the thing once and for all.
Normally she's averse to this kind of gamble, but heartsick fury and anger and horror are driving her now. She needs this. She calls magic to her hands and throws lightning at the broodmother, over and over and over until she's screaming with effort and wordless rage. The cave blurs around her. The broodmother is all she can see.
"Hey!" Alistair takes her hands and forces them down, risking his life in the process. "It's dead." She looks past him. The broodmother is slumped over, fixed in place, a blackened and smoking ruin of its former self. Marian watches it for a full minute, and at the end when it's still not moving, she swallows and lets Alistair take her hands. She takes a breath, and then another, but it's not helping. Her breathing is speeding up, contrary to all reason, the gorge rising in her throat, tears prickling in her eyes.
She spins away just in time, vomiting onto the fouled ground. She vomits again, shaking with the force of it, but she can't stop; she knows who it was she just killed, and what happened to her, and what still might happen to Hespith. Is this what's in store for her? Is this why there are so very few female Wardens?
Alistair holds her steady until her stomach is empty. He gives her water and wipes her face with a shirt that's only a little dirty. She lets him.
When she can stand, Marian forces herself to examine the broodmother's corpse. Once that was a dwarf, a woman named Laryn. The darkspawn took her, and tortured her and raped her and corrupted her into something evil. Marian hopes that Laryn's essence has returned to the Stone in the way of her people.
"Promise me something," she says, only to Alistair, low and demanding. It spills out of her, something she can't push back and doesn't want to. She doesn't recognize her own voice; her throat is so sore, her voice scrapes on something coming out, turning harsh and deep. "Promise me you'll kill me first."
The silence echoes until Marian turns her head to look at him. He's gone green under the blood and bruising, horror-struck, staring at her like he's never seen her before in his life. Looking at him was a mistake, makes it real. Impatiently she brushes welling tears from her eyes. "Please." She's not begging, not yet, but she will if she has to.
Alistair puts his hand around the back of her neck and draws her to him. He kisses her forehead, despite what she's been rolling in this last hour and what she must smell like. He's none too fresh either, but – She closes her eyes. Her mouth trembles before she presses her lips tightly together.
"I promise," he says, muffled against her forehead. It hurts him to say it, she can hear that laid out plain in his voice, but still he promises – for her.
She's not stupid; she knows that she's loved Alistair for ages. But it's important to her that she isn't ruled by her emotions. It's important to her that love is her choice. She chooses him now. She loves him.
She has to tell him. Not now, not here, but it feels like lying to keep this inside. Soon.
Marian's the one to pull away, a little reluctant, but Shale and Oghren need their attention. She gives Shale the trickle of her magic that's come back to her. She's never been sure whether any other kind of healing works on a golem, with a body that runs and is made entirely of magic. Oghren is still breathing, which is good, but he's also unconscious. They'll have to wait for him to wake up before they can pour potions down his throat; if they don't, he might choke and drown on what's meant to heal him. She has to force Alistair to take one of the potions. Their stock is limited, it's true, but what's the point of having the potions at all if they don't use them when they need them?
The broodmother's body must be burnt; normally Marian would take care of that, but she's feeling raw and scraped inside where her magic usually is. She's overextended. They have a few acid flasks, but they won't even begin to take care of it. She and Alistair talk over options, of which they have very few; but they have to do something. They can't just leave the corpse there. Who knows what the darkspawn could do with it? Who knows what it could do to the cave as it rots?
With a theatrical, put-upon sigh, Shale heaves itself to its feet and trudges back the way they came, disappearing almost immediately around the bend in the tunnel. Marian stares after it, nonplussed.
"I'll go," Alistair says, and suits action to word. That leaves Marian alone in this filthy cave, with the broodmother's corpse, an unconscious dwarf and her mabari to keep her company. She avoids looking at the corpse. She doesn't want to think about it anymore. She doesn't want to think about anything. The fog around the edges of her mind is back, and this time she's grateful for it. She embraces it. She wants to forget.
Oghren stirs and opens his eyes a little while later. What she can see of his neck around the beard is angry red, with black bruising already beginning to form; she gives him potions until he pushes her hands away and clambers to his feet, moving slow and obviously still in pain. He tries to talk, but discovers that his voice is gone. He grunts, clearly annoyed.
"My magic is spent," she says. "I just need to rest. Then I'll finish the job." She catches him up on what he missed, but that doesn't take long, and still they're waiting for the others to return. She's tired now, more tired than she was when she sat down. She could sleep for a year.
Alistair would have come back if Shale was leaving them, or if it was doing something quick. It must be important and something he agrees with.
It's near an hour before Shale comes back around the bend carrying two small barrels. Alistair is behind her. He has one, too, the barrel cradled in his arms like a baby.
"This ought to do it," he tells her, staving in the lid with his gauntlet. "It's like lamp oil. The Legion keeps it for just this sort of thing." Marian looks into the barrel; it's a liquid, something cloudy and dark with an amber sheen, but the sharp and acrid fumes make her cough and back away. "It burns," Alistair says, raising his eyebrows as a sort of punctuation. "It'll burn and keep burning until there's nothing left."
That really does sound like exactly what they need. "How did you know about this?" she asks Shale, who's been very quiet. "Or did you just ask for help?" That doesn't particularly sound like it, though it would have been smart, and something Marian should have thought of herself.
Shale is silent for a long moment. "It was there," it says, finally. "Must it enquire further?" It says this with flat finality that forbids anything else being said on the subject, carrying the barrels over to the broodmother's corpse.
Marian recognizes a conversational impasse when she sees one.
Shale crushes the barrel lids and douses it in oil, and Alistair takes his barrel and joins in; at the end he's standing half on the corpse at the back, at the same time trying to soak the last bit of the broodmother and trying to touch as little of it as possible. Marian and Oghren drag the rest of the darkspawn corpses into a pile at the base of the makeshift pyre.
"Kardol said we shouldn't breathe in the smoke," Alistair says. He looks around and makes a face. "And smelling this lot isn't high on my list of priorities."
If she's careful and precise, she can light the pyre with one quick burst of magic from the exit and then they can run as far as they need to. She only hopes Oghren is up to the task; he's moving better, but running at their pace is difficult for him at the best of times.
They're at the exit when her voice comes out of midair. "That's where they come from," Hespith says, measured, steady, and remote. Marian spins on her heel, and wonder of wonders, this time she spots Hespith straightaway. She stands in a tiny opening set into the wall, high above the cave's floor, looking over the battleground. "That's why they hate us. That's why they need us."
Maker, she'd give anything if only to make Hespith stop. She can't take much more of this.
Then Hespith turns her head, just a little, and locks eyes with Marian. The silver in her eyes swirls around and around, hypnotic, the first outward sign of the Taint and strangely beautiful. "That's why they take us," she says, directly to Marian. It's like she knows they have something in common. "That's why they feed us."
She can't look away. There's something between them, two women at opposite ends of the path, and she's helpless against that part of her that empathizes so deeply and imagines such a fate. Is she imagining the warning she hears? She's only distantly aware of taking a step forward.
"But the true abomination is not that it occurred, but that it was allowed. Branka... my love..." Hespith closes her eyes, releasing Marian from the compelling weight of her eyes. Marian rocks back on her heels. "The Stone has punished me, dream-friend. I am dying of something worse than death." The breath she takes is almost a sob, and the first true sign of emotion Hespith has given since they met. "Betrayal."
And then she walks off the edge of the hole and falls, quite silent. There's no sound of Hespith hitting the ground. Marian races over, followed by Alistair and Shale, but there's nothing there but a crevice in the ground, one that seems to disappear into the cold, silent rock. There's no bottom. Hespith is nowhere to be seen.
There was no saving her, but this...
There is nothing here in the Deep Roads but horror and death and pain. She wants so badly never to have come here in the first place.
"Move," she says, turning her back on the hole and her thoughts and everything about this situation. There's nothing to be done. There's nothing at all. The sharp order galvanizes the others, but Alistair looks at her carefully, his eyes lingering on her face for longer than she thinks warranted.
She sets the corpse afire with one sharp gesture. The oil ignites explosively, a shock wave of light and heat and air pressure slapping her in the face, sending her stumbling backward several paces. She wants to stay and watch; the only things that stop her are Kardol's warning and Alistair's hand on her arm.
They turn and race into the darkness of the Deep Roads.