The relationship of dreamers to the Fade is complex. Even when entering the Fade through the use of lyrium, mortals are not able to control or affect it. The spirits who dwell there, however, can, and as the Chantry teaches us, the great flaw of the spirits is that they have neither imagination nor ambition. They create what they see through their sleeping visitors, building elaborate copies of our cities, people, and events, which, like the reflections in a mirror, ultimately lack context or life of their own. Even the most powerful demons merely plagiarize the worst thoughts and fears of mortals, and build their realms with no other ambition than to taste life.
—From Tranquility and the Role of the Fade in Human Culture, by First Enchanter Josephus.
The Fade
"This is a strange place," Natia Brosca said aloud, and her words rippled through the green mist as she had tossed a pebble on water. The landscape twisted with her words, and suddenly she could see the Dragonbone Wastes as they had been many Ages ago, with dragons of all sizes lying down to die. Their corpses withered and faded away into skeletons and the land changed, earth swelling around them, clinging to the skeletons and creating deep swells and trenches as if it were the sea. The Eluvian stood unchanged as time warped its surroundings.
They had thought the Tevinters had brought the Eluvian here, to use the power left behind by the deaths of dragons. Clearly they were wrong; except, of course, this was the Fade, and anything was possible here. The dreamer controls the dream, Natia thought, and found herself in Dust Town once more, standing in the ruins that had once been her mother's house. Inexplicably the table remained, still covered with empty glass bottles and scraps of parchment with her and Rica's plans to improve the house, if they ever had the spare time and coin and willing hands to help. Kalah was not there, because dwarves did not dream, did not belong in the Fade, but something lifted a bottle of lichen ale to invisible lips and drank until it was empty, then flung the bottle at the wall where it thumped off and landed next to another.
Natia could almost hear her mother's drunken complaints. You're worthless, she'd say. The only thing a woman has of worth is between her legs, and you don't even have that. At least your sister does her duty. Another casteless whore. That's all you're good for, whoring yourself out to those in the upper castes who don't need another heir.
"You have no power over me anymore, Kalah," she said, and turned to pick her way through the rubble left behind after the riots of Frostfall 9:31. "I am a Warden now, mother, not that you ever gave a shit about anything other than that sodding ale. I am not worthless. I am a warrior in my own right—didn't I win the Proving? Didn't I prove to all the sodding deep-lords that I was better than their best?"
She aimed a kick at a small stone and watched with some astonishment when it sailed out of sight. "I want out of here," she said, and the scene changed again: now she stood on one end of the bridge at Ostagar, with see-through archers firing scores of arrows into a great horde below and the Tower of Ishal a solemn guard on the other end. An insubstantial Alistair and Elyssa ran through her, neither looking as though they felt the urgency that would come when they realized what awaited them in the Tower. A stone catapulted from below hit the bridge with an impact that made them all (except their Fade visitor) fall flat.
"But I wasn't up here," she said, turning to look at the armies about to clash before her eyes. "I fought with the army down there—" and then she was there, wielding two plain steel axes and wearing simple leathers, the same set she'd been given by Beraht when she'd started working for him as an enforcer. All around her humans struggled and heaved against the vast darkspawn horde; three more appeared when one was cut down. On her left fought the lone elf Darrian Tabris, darting and slashing with his long daggers, who she hadn't known yet for more than a day; on her right the solid bear of a man named Grigor who had died on this day. A few feet away from them, Duran Aeducan swung his axe in wide, cleaving half-circles, clearing three darkspawn at once.
She hadn't let herself think very often of this day. It wasn't her finest moment. When it had become clear that most of the Wardens were dead and Loghain's army would not come, she had run as fast and as far as she could. She was a survivor, would always be a survivor: things like honor and glory meant nothing to a duster. Darrian had run with her; she'd had enough strength of character to stop and help him when he went sprawling over a shuddering man whose dying hands had clutched convulsively at Darrian's ankles. The soldier whose name she would never know died under Darrian before he got to his feet, and she would never forget the look on his face as they stumbled on to the Korcari Wilds. Duran had run behind them, defending them from the nearest darkspawn with great vicious swings of his two-handed battle-axe, the most experienced out of all of them in fighting darkspawn.
The horror of this day had given them all nightmares, until the horrors of werewolves and the walking dead and the Deep Roads had replaced them.
There they went: and now she could see the massive ogre that stormed the battlefield, heading unerringly for King Cailan. Valiant and brave, the human lord did not turn from his foe even as the ogre picked him up in one mighty hand, roared loud enough to be heard over the sounds of battle, and crushed him. And then the King fell, and—yes, Duncan ran to avenge him, and managed it, in the process losing his weapons.
Brosca hadn't seen his death the first time around. She couldn't make herself watch it this time. She fell to her knees and squeezed her eyes shut, clutching her ears, trying to block out the sounds of battle: death and gore and the screams of wounded and dying men and women and the shrieks of sharlocks and the murderous laughter of darkspawn and the bellow of an ogre—and was that the roar of a dragon?
She stood up, uncovering her ears, on a rise overlooking the battlefield, Loghain's army tensed to charge behind her as they watched the darkspawn overwhelm Cailan's forces. A tired old General shook his head, his mouth set in grim lines. Across the field, the Tower of Ishal burst into flame, too late for his army to do anything other than die themselves.
"Sound the retreat," he said, and his army turned away from the killing ground below. Seeing it from his perspective for the first time, she could almost understand: he had waited as long as he could for the signal to come, but when it did, it was too late. If he had sent them in, the darkspawn would have overwhelmed them just as easily.
It was a dragon, Brosca saw, circling lazily overhead, but not the Archdemon: this was Flemeth in her dragon form, diving at the Tower of Ishal, striking out with her feet—she rose, clutching a limp form in each foot, and turned towards the Korcari Wilds.
Below her, the darkspawn overran the Ferelden army at last, and a few straggling survivors ran as fast as their tired feet could carry them away from the monsters who stopped to feed on the dying men's flesh.
"Awaken!" a voice like thunder roared; the ghosts of Ostagar faded away and she fell into true sleep at last.
"You have been dreaming for far too long, Miss Brosca," came a voice that was unfamiliar in its courtesy, and her eyes snapped open. She reacted automatically, tensing and reaching for weapons that were not there, before realizing her own weakness and remembering how far she had come since Ostagar.
Brosca lay on a simple bedroll far too big for her, bundled in a blanket that smelled of horse. Dawn looked about to break; red tinted the edges of the darkness above, which she could barely see through the canopy of trees, and the stars were fading. She blinked and turned her head towards the source of heat she could feel: a campfire grumbled in the middle of a firepit, nearly down to ash and embers. A horse, probably the owner of the blanket, dozed with his back leg half-cocked and his head lowered, unpicketed; a human with long grey hair and beard sat on a stump next to her, smoking from a long pipe, a pointy hat with a bent tip atop his head. As she watched, he blew out three perfect smoke rings, and then a ship made of smoke which sailed through the rings and up into the night sky.
"That's a neat trick," she said, or tried to, and ended up coughing instead. The human stooped and picked up a waterskin to hand to her. It was half-filled and she drank greedily, guzzling as much as she could, spilling water that tasted better than any she had drunk before over her chin and down onto the blanket. Remembering that this might be the only water they had, she stopped herself before she finished it, capping it and handing it back to him. "Who're you, and how did I get here, and where is here?"
*"Many are my names in many countries: Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Dwarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not." The elderly man peered at her closely, eyes bright blue under bushy white brows. "You may call me Gandalf, or Tharkûn if you prefer: I am a Wizard."
"Never heard of that before," she said, falling back from where she had been supporting herself on trembling elbows. "Is that a sort of mage? I've met plenty of those. You sort of look like Irving. Are you with the Circle in Tevinter? You don't look like one of those...magis...mag...blood mages, Mister Tharkûn. Are you an 'postate? But we can't be in Tevin'er...cause there's no sodding orcs there, leastways I don't think there are...Necr'mancers, those there are, but we faced a few in fair Ferelden in our time. Us, the Grey, the azure and argent, it's argent you know not silver, there's a difference, Senn...Seneshull tol' me so."
The Wizard looked mildly taken aback by this stream of words, and Brosca realized she was babbling. She never babbled. It was not in her nature. "You drugged me," she accused; everything was turning grey and fuzzy, even the horse, which had woken and was now nosing hopefully at the saddlebags propped against the stump Gandalf sat upon. "Sodding mages, all alike, Neria tried to drug me once too but I was a duster then an' didn't trust any damn suntouched surfacer..." Her words trailed off in a murmur as her voice failed her.
"You need a true sleep," Gandalf started to say, but the grey turned to black before he could finish the sentence.
Brosca did not dream again, and when she next awoke she still lay upon the bedroll. Gandalf had gone, but his horse still grazed in their little clearing, still untethered and content to remain here. She lay still for a time, assessing herself for injuries: the arm which hadn't healed perfectly straight was a solid ache, warning of a storm to come; her back was one massive bruise; her hunger, of course, was ever-present.
The fire had burned down to mere embers, casting very little light. For a dwarf who had known the darkness of the deep underground, beyond the warmth and light of the magma rivers which flowed along the Deep Roads, it mattered little; the stars overhead were not hidden by clouds and thus provided enough illumination for her to see by. The moon was barely visible, a thin crescent which could be waning to a new moon or waxing to a full—she couldn't tell. Perhaps it was the fact that she'd never made a habit of looking at the stars, but she didn't recognize these ones, could find no familiar constellations.
The horse stepped forward a bit to reach another patch of grass and one hoof snapped a twig. Brosca jerked in surprise and realized that it hurt much less than she had anticipated to move. Carefully she pushed herself up onto her elbows. That was easy enough. She forced herself farther, until she sat up completely, all her muscles shaking with the effort. She couldn't sit up like this for long—maybe if she went over to that tree stump, she might rest her back against it. Now that she was free of Dol Goldur, Brosca wanted to enjoy it, breathe in fresh air and—Stone she stank, she needed a bath right away. She'd gotten far too used to modern conveniences, living in castles and the Warden quarters in Orzammar. In Dust Town she'd never bothered about bathing; everyone there smelled the same and only noble hunters bothered to clean the dirt from their skin.
She started pulling herself to the stump on her arms, not trusting her legs; she did not make it. Halfway there her arms gave out and she collapsed onto her belly, knocking her air out. The effort made her pass out again. She stirred slightly when Gandalf returned and fed her some broth, then she fell asleep again and did not stir until the jostling of the horse underneath her woke her fully.
They had moved on from the campsite sometime during her exhausted sleep. Now they both sat on the back of the horse; Gandalf had somehow managed to get both of them onto the saddle without waking her up, and she sat slumped against him, her legs dangling on either side of the horse and the wizard's surprisingly strong arms keeping her upright as they cantered along, her head pillowed on something soft. Rain fell from the treetops above them in an unsteady pitter-patter; luckily, Gandalf's hat was wide enough to protect them both from the worst of it.
"Where're...where're we?" she mumbled blearily. A particularly large droplet hit her on the house, having gathered from the brim of Gandalf's pointy blue hat, and she jerked. The horse, used to the goings-on of Wizards, did not let that bother him.
"We are on the Old Forest Road in Eryn Galen," said Gandalf, his voice coming from just above her head. She realized that the softness that had been cushioning her was actually his beard, as long as any dwarf's, and attempted to sit up without much success. How long has my own beard grown? she wondered. It was customary for a dwarf in mourning to keep their beard shorn for as long as they mourned, and then let it grow out again; if they cut it short again, it was anathema. "Far from Dol Goldur, where you were held captive, Miss Brosca."
"You know my...Oh, yes, I did tell you," she remembered, nodding, settling back into his chest. For an old man, he had a solid chest, not the soft stomach that often came from those who spent their lives in sedentary lifestyles, as most mages did. He was surely an apostate, then. She set aside the beard issue for later. "The Old Forest Road? Never heard of it. Then again, I've never been in a forest before, really. Are you a friend of the Dalish elves, then? Is this the Brecilian Forest?"
"No, indeed it is not," said Gandalf. "It has long been called the Greenwood, though lately it is rather more murky than green, and some have begun to call it Mirkwood. It is the realm of King Thranduil of the wood-elves, who is not a friend to dwarf-kind. I would rather not tarry overlong."
"King? of elves? Well, this is surely not Tevinter," said Brosca, her eyebrows shooting up. "I was sure of it. I was sure only in Tevinter there could be a Necromancer of such power. By the Ancestors, where am I?"
"I have just told you," said the Wizard, looking down at her with brow furrowed. "In Greenwood the Great, realm of King Thranduil, son of King Oropher who was slain in the Battle of Dagorlad. This is the Woodland Realm, home to the Sindarin Elves. It is a great forest, and we have far to go still to reach the Misty Mountains."
"Never heard of 'em," she said. "Are we near Tevinter at all? I'm from Orzammar myself, that's in the Frostback Mountains, on the border of Orlais and Ferelden, in the south. I've never heard of Dagorlad or Greenwood—any of it. Where on Thedas are we?"
"I have travelled Middle-earth for many a year and never have I heard mention of those places," said he, and glanced about briefly, slowing the horse to a walk. "Are you hungry? I have some food—you weren't awake to eat breakfast, only a bit of broth."
"I'm a Warden and a dwarf; I'm always hungry." She grimaced. Her stomach had shrunk terribly in her long imprisonment, and it ached at the thought of eating. "Middle-earth? How odd. I thought the world was called Thedas. That's what I always heard from the Shapers, anyway. Maybe you surfacers call it som'at different, and only this continent Thedas. Lessee...there's Ferelden and Orlais to the south, and north over the Waking Sea there's the Free Marches, and farther north'n that is the Tevinter Imperium an' Par Vollen an' Seheron, where the Qunari and the Tevinters are always fightin' over som'at."
"Here, take small bites and eat slowly," he said, and pulled a small cake wrapped in leaves out of one saddlebag, breaking off a piece to give to her. The inside was a creamy color, to contrast the brown outside. He rummaged about a bit and added a bit of hard cheese. "This is lembas: elven bread. A single bite would be enough for a Man, but you are a dwarf, so eat—carefully—until you are full. I have a skin of water as well, should you thirst. I do not know any of the lands you mentioned, nor the people. Are they Man, Dwarf, or Elf?"
"Orzammar's a dwarven thaig, I thought everyone knew of it," Brosca said. She nibbled at the cheese for some time, then asked for water, which he obligingly passed over. She drank deeply and returned it to him and explained about the Tevinters and their slavery, alienages, the Dalish elves, and the scarcity of surface dwarva. "Why don't you know this? Are you a hermit or som'at?"
"I shall have to consult a few maps when we reach our destination," he said after a thoughtful pause. "I believed I knew every land on Middle-earth, but clearly there is more to it."
"And where is that? Where're we going?" She took a bite of the bread, which was very light and sweet and melted on her tongue. Sten would love this. So would Neria, for that matter. Morrigan would scorn it.
Then she recalled how she'd arrived, which she had successfully managed to block from her mind hitherto: the Eluvian, which had sent her through all space—an artifact of Arlathan, which had sent her through all space and—Morrigan, who had said the Eluvian had one journey left, and she'd gone through anyway. There was an elven king here. When had the elves last had a King of their own? "Oh, by the sodding Ancestors. That sodding suntouched rock-licking mud splasher. Fucking Stone. Arlathan. Arlathan. Somehow I've come to Arlathan. It went wrong and that bloody Eluvian sent me here instead of wherever that cloudgazer Witch of the Wilds went—" she went on to curse Morrigan, her mother, her mother's tryst with a bronto and three greased nugs, and Morrigan's warnings of 'things to come.' "What year is it?"
"Those are some interesting epithets," said Gandalf, eyebrows raised. "We are headed to the Last Homely House of Imladris, or Rivendell in the common tongue, where Elrond Peredhel rules. Arlathan...I think I may have heard that word before. We will consult Lord Elrond's maps and library, and Erestor—he is a veritable fount of knowledge. It is the year 2850 of the Third Age."
"By the sodding Stone," Brosca said again, and then fell silent. While they had been eating, the horse had slowed to an ambling walk that did not jostle her at all; now the wizard urged him on to a much faster pace.
They galloped on through the rest of the day and the night that followed, a pace that no horse in Ferelden that Brosca had ever met could sustain without killing itself. Perhaps the Wizard used a spell to keep his horse at this hard pace; Wynne had done that often enough for them, clearing the false-oxygen from their muscles and soothing their pounding hearts until they were able to run all day wearing armour without tiring and then fight darkspawn that tried to startle them. She didn't ask—it wasn't important.
Through the night Gandalf held his staff up to light their way, slowing his horse just enough to keep him from fouling in unseen holes. Brosca fell asleep multiple times, but the horse's movement seemed to constantly wake her up. Towards dawn they slowed again as the trees thinned, and just as the sun crested the horizon they came out of the treeline and Brosca could see tall mountains rising ahead of them, more magnificent than the Frostbacks.
"We are clear of the Woodland Realm now," said Gandalf, sounding quite grim indeed. "But now we must be careful: there are Orcs about, and they dislike Wizards even more than they dislike Dwarves."
"That means no fire, I suppose." Brosca sighed, glum. "Got any more of that lembas stuff? It tasted delicious."
"I do indeed." The light on his staff dimmed to darkness and he stopped a few paces away from the bank of a river. It sang ahead of them, before a broad stretch of valley between them and the mountains, wide and fast-flowing. "That is the Anduin River, which flows from the northern Misty Mountains all the way to the Bay of Belfalas, in the Great Sea, Belegaer. It is the longest river in Middle-earth, and quite treacherous. We shall cross it at the Old Ford, and from there make our way to the High Pass in the Misty Mountains."
He dismounted, and Brosca almost slid off herself before managing with the barest strength the cheese and lembas had given her to hold on to the horse's tangled black mane, leaning heavily on his neck. The horse, startled, threw back its head and danced sideways a step. Gandalf caught his bridle with one hand and pulled his head down, murmuring to him in a melodious tongue that Brosca had never heard before. He calmed, and the Wizard helped her dismount as well.
"I should have introduced you earlier, but you are awake now," he said, still holding the bridle in one hand. This close, Brosca could tell his bridle had no bit, unlike the few horses she'd seen in the Ferelden bannorn. She imagined the Dalish had something similar for their halla, the deer that pulled their aravels. The horse was a dark bay with black points, which she had already noticed; he had a small white off-centre snip that she hadn't seen before. "Miss Brosca, this is Nórima, who has borne me well for nigh on seven years. Nórima, this is Miss Brosca, my companion to Imladris."
Brosca felt silly talking to a horse, but clearly he meant a lot to Gandalf, so she inclined her head gravely and said, "Atrast vala, Nórima. Thank you for carrying us so swiftly this far." The horse nickered and lipped at her hair. She ducked away, scowling, and overbalanced, nearly falling in the river; instead she landed with a painful thud on her bottom on the grassy bank.
"Ow! My ass—sodding horse, that hurt." She glared up at the bay, who looked down at her with an expression of pure surprise, as if to say Why are you all the way down there?
Gandalf, the bugger, chuckled softly. "I think he would like his own supper, Miss Brosca, and perhaps a drink, if you could move out of his way."
"Sodding wizards."
*direct quote from The Two Towers
lembas: Sindarin for 'waybread'; a single bite is enough to fill a Man's stomach for an entire day. However Brosca is a Warden as well as a dwarf, and so she needs more.