When Thráin heard Nar's recounting of what had become of his father and that an Orc ruled their ancestral home, he wept and tore his beard, and then fell silent. For seven days he sat and said no word. Then on the seventh day he stood up and declared, "This cannot be borne!" These words were the beginning of the War of the Dwarves and Orcs.
Winter's end, Dol Goldur, in Mirkwood:
A great and terrible Shadow loomed over her, taller than Kinloch Hold and as Tainted as the Archdemon Himself, and she felt like an ant about to be stepped on by a great heel. Long-taloned fingers of black fire, cold as ice, reached for her chin, forcing her to look directly at him. She closed her eyes and saw the great lidless Eye, turning the insides of her eyelids as red as the sun did on bright days. Terror clouded her thoughts. Was he going to torture her as he had yesterday? The icy fingers dropped her chin and gripped her head instead, piercing the skin and lancing white-hot rods of pain directly into her brain. If she screamed, she couldn't hear it through the roaring in her ears. Her sight went dark.
"You are worse than Urthemiel," she whispered, and it was the truth. Darkspawn were mindless, driven by the Old Gods to Taint everything they touched. Even when an Archdemon rose, the Blight was not malicious, though it was a conquering horde: the Tainted Gods had far more intelligence than the base darkspawn, but thought only to spread their terror and pain. No, this was deliberate, thinking cruelty, and she would tell this Necromancer nothing. "Nothing, nothing, I will tell you nothing."
"Khamûna, khamûna, astî lo ya hû,"[1] said Thráin, and his dwarven words brought her out of the nightmare. She opened her eyes to see his face leaning over hers. His bruises had faded to green, his eyes were no longer swollen and his teeth had settled back in their proper places.
She lay curled, her splinted arm folded awkwardly across her chest. For days now they had been coming for her, though not every day, just often enough to keep her jumping at every sound. At first they had asked if she knew Thráin, what her connection to him was, how she had planned to get him out. If there was an army coming after her. If there was a smaller company coming after her. Who her master was.
Days blurred together, even as nights grew longer and the weather turned sharp and frigid. Deep beneath the surface, the temperature was always the same, but the Necromancer insisted on having them brought up to him at his slightest whim, on the highest floor of the tower. He did not often question them himself. Most of the time, he seemed satisfied to look East with a burning hunger, or West with a terrible anger, while the ice on the stone bit into her skin and the winds buffeted her and he asked questions with his voice like shattered metal.
"Who is Urthemiel?" the Necromancer rasped, and despite herself the memory of the first time she'd seen the Archdemon over its army in the Deep Roads flashed to the forefront of her mind. The great and mighty Urthemiel, the Tevinter God of Beauty, the Tainted God who would decimate all of Thedas if he could—(Urthemiel landed atop the battlements in Denerim, wings spread wide, far larger than the dragon Flemeth had turned into, roaring, his Song beautifully and terribly endless in the recesses of her mind)
"What is Thedas?" the Necromancer asked, and involuntarily she recalled a map she'd seen once, spread out on the wall in Arl Eamon's study. Ferelden and Orlais, the Waking Sea, the Free Marches and Tevinter, Seheron and Par Vollen— this brought an image to mind of Sten, the hornless kossith that she'd travelled with. The ease with which he tore his enemies apart, the weeks he'd spent without food or drink standing in that cage, waiting for death, the massive two-handed sword he had called his soul. Deliberately, she tore her thoughts from the months she'd spent travelling with him and the rest, gathering armies to stop the Blight, and focused her thoughts instead on the Void she had fallen through. The emptiness between the stars, vast and stretching on in every direction without end, the pinpricks of light from the stars, the feeling of the magic she had flown on. There is an eternity between worlds, and I have seen it.
"Thedas is far away, farther than you can ever go," she said, and tried to work up enough saliva to spit on his boots. The talons dug deeper in her mind, and she remembered the pain of the terrible shrieking cry of the varterral—how had Ariane described it? rock and tree, wind and rain, given form to protect her people—
The shadowy figure recoiled from her memory of the creature. "An elven creation? Which of their gods made it?"
"I don't know," she answered, but she did know—Dirthamen, Keeper of Secrets—
"An unfamiliar name," the Necromancer mused, turning away from her.
"Far from here," Natia muttered. "Far from here. Safe from you. Far from here." How long had she been gone now? Had Finn and Ariane returned to their homes? Did they stop in Orzammar to give the news to Rica? She hoped so. It didn't appear that she could return. Had Rica fostered out her son yet? She'd said she would. There had been at least one House to show interest in fostering the Heir-Apparent, Endrin son of Bhelen. Had Orzammar fallen apart in her absence? She wouldn't bet against it. It wasn't as though she cared, really. The deeplords could all rot. But Rica, Little Endrin, Leske—hell, she'd even grown fond of those Wardens under her command.
"Khamûna, khamûna, astî lo ya hû,"[1] said Thráin once more, and she focused long enough to see his worried face before falling back into a blessedly dreamless sleep. When she awoke, he had curled in on himself in the far corner of the cell, fiddling with something small and metallic and muttering to himself too quietly for her to hear.
Thráin grew more incoherent each time they took him, which was far more frequently than they took her. They remembered to feed her, though not often, and she lost what little fat she'd gained from her time of plenty. Her arm healed slightly crookedly from the imperfect splinting; it ached when it snowed, which was often.
The Necromancer stopped asking her anything new. He enjoyed watching her pain, she knew from the first, and enjoyed the way she screamed when the orcs hurt her. They didn't break bones, but they came very close. Several times they came close to violating her, only for the Necromancer to stop them at the last moment, warning them that he didn't want her broken quite yet. The torture stretched on for hours at a time, and often she passed out only to wake screaming from nightmares in the bowels of the dungeon, with Thráin too far gone in his own mind to help her.
She knew she had to escape before they tired of their entertainment. She just didn't know how.
Winter grew to fullness and the outer world turned white and silver with snow and ice. Frost crept down into the depths of the cells, though they nailed the upper opening shut before the snow could fall and freeze the two dwarves to death. They stopped coming for Thráin once he stopped responding in anything other than broken Dwarvish, and stopped taking her more often than once a week after it turned truly cold. Night and day now he tossed and turned, half awake and half asleep, muttering "Rurukmi mat, mat...dashatê, dashatê, kunh dashatê? Dashatê, kunh astû?" [2]
The dwarven King healed in body, after weeks of being left alone, but he did not heal in mind. Even the few times he awoke with clear eyes, he did not see her with any recognition, and he spoke only that dwarven tongue. He raved constantly, repeating the same few words: rurukmi mat, dashatê, and kunh astû?[2] Natia recalled to mind some of the verse he had sung that first night, the few words he could remember, and could sometimes entice him to join her in singing what he had called Durin's Song. This settled him for a bit, and often lulled him back to sleep, which was always better for him than being awake in the depths of Dol Goldur.
She slept as much as she could herself. There wasn't much else she could do, with her Warden metabolism burning off her meagre rations very quickly. They didn't bother feeding them, most days, and she grew gaunt and pale, and Thráin turned skeletal. The cold didn't help; they constantly shivered, burning off everything they ate just to keep themselves warm.
Somehow they survived the seemingly endless winter. The Necromancer seemed more and more preoccupied with something to the East, and eventually stopped bothering with Natia, too. That didn't stop the orcs from having fun with her, but they were careful not to break her, as they had Thráin.
The nights drew shorter and spring arrived slowly, with a constant rain that warmed enough only to melt the frost that still came with depressing regularity. The orcs, bad-tempered and foul-mouthed, took out their edginess more on themselves then on the two dwarves, and one day most of them left. The few that remained were terse, sullen, and alert for danger. More than once Natia overheard mutterings about elves, who apparently had flowers for blood.
A storm blew off part of the cover far above them, and none of the orcs bothered to replace it. Thrain felt well enough one day that he dragged himself to sit in the patch of sunlight. Spring had grown to fullness at last, leaving behind constant rain for cloudless skies and heat. Natia, who had become very weak from lack of food and clean water, huddled in their bundled rags and shuddered, half-delirious herself, clutching her much-worn pack to her chest. She had long given up on conversing with the mad king.
Presently there came a commotion above. Another fight between orcs, no doubt, she thought miserably. I wonder if they'll fall through and land in the dungeon with us. I wonder if they would die if they fell so far. I'm lucky I didn't, I'm sure.
A voice roaring in a decidedly human voice made her struggle in an attempt to sit up, but she soon sagged back, not wanting to let go of her pack in order to do so. The orcs would probably kill him. If not, he would get out of there as soon as he could, if he knew what was good for him.
A shadow fell across Thrain's face, and the dwarf made a mumble of complaint, shifting in place. He was completely unrecognizable to anyone who had known him before, his beard and hair wild and tangled and far more white than black. In the sun he looked pale and thin as a skeleton, with the loose skin of one who'd lost a great deal of weight very suddenly. He had no bruises left, but his many scars and crooked nose told the tale of one who had been beaten many times.
"Master Dwarf," said a voice, far above, with an urgency that made Natia try again to sit up, this time using only one hand to hold her pack and the other to push herself backwards. Thrain didn't respond, and the man switched languages. "Sait! Ikhillit, zirak khuzd!" [3]
The shadow moved off of Thrain's face. He didn't seem to understand that someone had spoken to him in his own tongue, only enjoying the sun on his face once more. His eyes closed in peaceful repose.
I think he's dying. Natia felt detached as she watched him breathe deeply of sunlight and what little fresh spring air made its way down in the depths of Dol Goldur. He seemed relaxed, content even, to simply lie there with his limbs akimbo, wearing only a ragged pair of trousers and shirt that had probably once been a colour other than brownish grey. If that man saw him, perhaps he's coming down here, after all. That thought made her renew her struggle. Slowly she managed to pull herself back so that she sat with the wall at her back. It was easier that way. Her pack fell off her lap and she yanked it back. It held only her axes, wrapped securely in her Warden armour, and empty potion vials; she had worn her much-battered plain leathers until they fell apart, and used the scraps to keep her feet wrapped up over the freezing winter nights. Her health poultices had all gone to healing herself and Thráin from torture sessions the first few days she had been in Dol Goldur.
A door opened far above, echoing loudly, and then another, closer, and a third, just beyond their bank of cells. A tall human mage wearing grey robes and a pointed hat, clutching a brightly lit staff in his right hand, hurried around the corner. He had long grey hair and a long grey beard tucked into his belt. He muttered a word that Nat didn't understand; the light on the staff changed colour, and the cell door wrenched off its hinges, peeling sideways as if great strong hands bent it in a direction it wasn't meant to go.
The mage didn't seem to see her, sitting in the shadows; all his attention was on Thráin, whose sunken eyes saw nothing that was truly there. At least he had stopped muttering. He stepped into the cell, bending to avoid knocking his hat against the low ceiling, and knelt by the elder dwarf's side. He put one hand on Thrain's brow and said urgently, "Ikhillit, zirak khuzd!"[3]
"Mat...mat...rurukmi mat..." The dwarf's eyes fluttered open and shut, then snapped open and focused intensely on the mage's aged face. "Dashatê! kunh dashatê?" [2]
"Birashagammi, ma katabmi dashatzu kunh,"[4] said the mage. "Kulhu takhrâmzu, zirak khuzd?" [5]
"Takhrâmê? Ma katabmi...takhrâmê...takhrâmê...Thráin Throrul."[6] Thrain trailed off and closed his eyes. For a moment he was still and silent, and Natia feared the worst had come at last; then he came to with a wild start and focused unerringly on the mage's worried face. "Tharkûn! Hû astû. Astû ikhjimruki mat dashatê! Astû mat! Mahignit!" [7]
"Mahmagniti, Thráin Throrul. Hedan?" [8]the mage asked, and Thrain reached with difficulty into his ragged shirt. From a hidden inner pocket he pulled an aged parchment folded around something small and metallic. The wrapped thing changed hands before Natia could get a good look at it, but from the size of it she imagined it could be a key. She hadn't seen it before—wait—perhaps she had? Had this been the small glinting thing he'd fiddled with before? Thus satisfied, Thráin sagged back, his eyes closing again.
"Give them to my son, zabirasakhjami," [9]he said, and then as his breathing slowed, "I am at peace. Mukhuh targzu satarrigi sigin. Khamûna, Mahal tadnani astî, sanzigil tamkhihi astî."[10]
"Khamûna?" the mage muttered, stroking Thrain's forehead. "I am no khamûna, Master Thráin."
"He's talking about me," Natia said, her voice a mere rasp. "He hasn't been this lucid in a long time. What did he say to you?"
The mage spun, obviously startled, raising his staff to throw light on her face. The brightness made her cringe and turn away, raising trembling hands to try and block it out. "Who are you?"
"M'name's Brosca. Who're you?" she said, when the spots had cleared from her vision. But the excitement was too much on top of months of malnourishment and the head-cold that had set in with the last frost and hadn't ever quite cleared up; she passed into a foggy half-sleep, head lolling back against the wall. He picked her up with gentle hands.
"I am Gandalf," he said, and mumbled something very unkind about orcs and their mothers. "You are far too light, Miss Brosca."
"My things!" she cried, and the mage mumbled something and bent again, slipping the straps of her pack over her arms. Then she was flying, bouncing up and down, cool air rushing past her and clogging her ears, her pack bouncing against her back.
"You will not stand in my way!" she heard the mage cry, a long way away, blue blue sky blinding in its brightness above her all around her.
Orcs shouted battle-cries and the world whirled around madly, dizzyingly; the mage spun around and slammed the butt of his staff into the head of the closest orc; it went down sprawling, tripping up the three who ran up right behind it. In the ensuing chaos the mage whirled about and ran like mad, clutching her to his chest as if she were a small child—and to him she probably was. He was taller than any human she'd ever met, though not quite so tall as the kossith, the race of horned giants to the north that adhered to a strict philosophy known as the Qun.
"Hold on a bit longer, Miss Brosca," he said in her ear, and jumped, and then they really were flying, floating like leaves on a suddenly strong wind. No, not like a leaf; they didn't twist and turn, but held a steady course, more like an arrow shot unerringly from a longbow. Her eyes teared up from the air rushing past, and she closed them, blocking out the searing bright of the sun and the biting cold of the wind.
There came the distant, challenging bellow of a dragon; the mage muttered something very uncomplimentary under his breath about someone named Smaug, and her eyes snapped back open. Her head reeled. She was in no shape to fight a dragon; her war-axes had not been cleaned or sharpened for months, and even if they had been, she had not the muscle to wield them nor even to stand on her own feet. Her thoughts felt clogged and heavy, as if pouring molasses through a soup-strainer, and she twitched feebly, trying to see what was going on. She saw only the glaring sun overhead, the mage's long grey hair, and the pointed hat he wore atop it. She had never seen such a hat. Was she falling or was it just getting smaller as she watched?
The light dimmed abruptly and she realized that she was no longer cradled in the mage's arm. Instead she lay on her back in a swirling greenish mist, strange shapes floating above her. She sat up without effort; apparently she was back to her full strength. And I'm back in my Warden armour, she thought, glancing over herself. The set I wore in the Final Battle. The set she'd had adjusted from the Grey Warden vault in Denerim. It had all the wounds she'd taken still: tears across her ribs where a genlock rogue had very nearly gutted her, punctures through her left shoulder where arrows had left that arm useless until Wynne had caught up with them.
Somewhere along the way she'd lost one boot, and she'd never found it again. It hadn't mattered very much at the time. Now the toes on her unshod foot squished uncomfortably in the ground, which felt like soggy forest loam. Something green and mostly wet oozed between her big toe and the next one; she stood up and shook the muck off her foot with a little moue of distaste. She'd always worn boots when not indoors; you never knew what could be on the ground in Dust Town, and on the surface there were tons of tiny little bugs called insects. In Orzammar there were no insects, only lichens and fungi and carnivorous tezpadam.
The green mist hadn't gone away when she stood. It swirled around her ankles in a wind she did not feel, blocking out her view of the ground, feeling not like regular fog at all. She turned slowly and saw the strange landscape stretched on in every direction. The sky above was a similar shade of green, though—was that a city, floating up there?
"On dhea,"[11] said someone from behind her. Brosca turned to see the speaker lift a hand in greeting: an elf, taller than most of the elves she'd known before, most likely an apostate mage due to the simple staff he carried in his other hand and the homely clothes he wore. He had no hair, which was odd to see on someone as young as he—except, was he young? She couldn't quite tell. He lowered his hand, looking concerned, when she didn't reply. "Thu ea?" [11]
"Sorry," she said, and coughed; though her body was as well as it had been when she'd last been in Thedas, her voice, apparently, was not. "I don't speak Elvish. Who're you?"
"My apologies," said the elf. "My name is Solas*. I have not met any dwarves in the Fade before."
"So this is the Fade." She looked at the Black City again. "Never thought I'd see it for myself."
"May I ask what you are doing here?" Solas asked politely. He folded both hands over the top of his staff and looked at her with a curious gaze. "It is a rare thing indeed to find a child of the stone here in the Fade."
"You can ask," Nat said, paused, then shrugged. "I don't know, really. I have been held captive by a foul shadow these past few months—could you tell me the date? It was nearly Firstfall, last I knew, but winter has come and gone again. Is it Guardian yet?"
"A foul shadow?" Solas murmured, his brow creasing in thought. As an afterthought, he added, "It is Cloudreach of the year 9:35 Dragon."
His grey eyes were penetrating and inscrutable, and she couldn't meet that gaze for long. 9:35? So long? She turned to survey the Fade-scape around them and discovered the Eluvian stood upon a nearby swell of land. Green tendrils of mist floated around it, but did not touch it directly.
"I came through that," she said, and pointed. "I was following—well, it was a mistake, I know that now, and I didn't really intend to I suppose. It just happened. Paragon Aeducan, the Hero of Ferelden, she could have saved him and she didn't."
Solas' eyes lit up when he saw the Eluvian. "An Eluvian! Please, continue."
"She—Morrigan, the woman I was following all those months—she told me that Flemeth wasn't even human, and she had to go prepare for 'what is to come.' She wouldn't tell me more. Then she touched the glass and stepped through it and I followed." She recalled the void between stars and shuddered. She couldn't begin to describe that place. "I don't think I went into the Fade then...she did say that the Eluvian could only take one more journey before it lost its enchantment, or something, so perhaps that's part of it; I rode the tail of her journey and came out somewhere completely different. It must be the other side of the world. The...The Necromancer has held me captive for...I thought it only a few months but it must have been five years."
She glanced back and saw that she was talking to nobody: the apostate had vanished. The Fade seemed suddenly dark and frightening, and Brosca felt very alone.
Neo-Khuzdul taken from the Dwarrow Scholar's excellent dictionary and support documents and put together by my own inelegant skills. Elvhen taken from fenxshiral's Project Elvhen.
[1]Khamûna, khamûna, astî lo ya hû. Youth-lady, youth-lady, you are not with him.
[2]Rurukmi mat, mat...dashatê, dashatê, kunh dashatê? Dashatê, kunh astû? I must keep it secret, (I) must...my son, my son, where (is) my son? My son, where (are) you?
[3]Sait! Ikhillit, zirak khuzd! Psst! Continue to hold on/grasp, master dwarf!
[4]Birashagammi, ma katabmi dashatzu kunh
[5]Kulhu takhrâmzu, zirak khuzd? What (is) your outer name, master dwarf?
[6]Takhrâmê? Ma katabmi...takhrâmê...takhrâmê...Thráin Throrul. My outer name? I know not...my outer name...my outer name...Thrain Thror's son.
[7]Tharkûn! Hû astû. Astû ikhjimruki mat dashatê! Astû mat! Mahignit! Gandalf! It (is) you. You must give this object to my son! You must! Promise!
[8]Mahmagniti, Thráin Throrul. Hedan? I promise, Thráin Thror's son. (The) key?
[9]zabirasakhjami Please. (Asking someone to do something formally - literally "would you grant?")
[10]Mukhuh targzu satarrigi sigin. Khamûna, Mahal tadnani astî, sanzigil tamkhihi astî. May your beard continue to grow longer. (A traditional dwarven blessing.) Youth-lady, Mahal guide and mithril find you. ("good luck" - often used as a farewell)
[11]On dhea. Thu ea? Good morning. How are you?