Brehan circled the shems, coming to stand next to the other Dalish. Tamlen grinned at him. "You're just in time. I found these... humans lurking in the bushes. Bandits, no doubt."

One of the shemlen held up pleading hands. "We aren't bandits, I swear! Please don't hurt us!"

Tamlen and Brehan exchanged an amused eyeroll. "You shemlen are pathetic. It's hard to believe you ever drove us from our homeland," Tamlen said, shifting the point of his arrow towards the man who had spoken."

Another of the hunters gulped. "W-we've never done nothing to you Dalish! We didn't even know this forest was yours!"

"This forest isn't ours, fool." Tamlen tapped his forefinger against the arrow shaft. "You've stumbled too close to our camp. You shems are like vermin - - we can't trust you not to make mischief." He shot a look at Brehan. "What do you say, lethallan? What should we do with them?"

Brehan smirked. "Kill them -" He sniffed, then raised an eyebrow at Tamlen. Tamlen's lips twitched as he flicked his eyes towards the third hunter. Brehan noted wetness spreading across the man's pants. "What do I care? The others will never know."

"I like the sound of that." Tamlem's voice betrayed his amusement. "Anything to say in your defense, shems?"

"L-look, we didn't come here to be trouble. We just found a cave." The man who had wet himself pointed towards a game trail.

"Yes, a cave! With ruins like I've never even seen! We thought there might be, uh..."

"Treasure. So you're more akin to thieves than actual bandits," Tamlen gave Brehan a sidelong glance. Brehan gave him the barest of nods. The shems were practically groveling.

"If you've been there, you should have treasure to prove it." Brehan adjusted his aim, marking each man in turn.

"I... I have proof!" one said, reaching desperately into his pocket. He pulled out a small stone tablet. "Here... we found this just inside the entrance."

Tamlen glanced at Brehan, then let down his bow and stepped forward to take the tablet while Brehan kept the men covered. He looked down at the item, and his eyes widened. He held it for Brehan to see. "This stone has carvings... Is this elfish? Written elfish?"

"There's more in the ruins!" the hunter said eagerly, pointing again towards the game trail. "We didn't get very far though..."

"Why not?" Brehan asked, but didn't let down his bow.

"There was a demon! It was huge, with black eyes! Thank the Maker we were able to out-run it!"

Tamlen scoffed. "A demon? Where is this cave?"

"Just off to the west, I think. There's a cave in the rock face, and a huge hole just inside."

"Well? Do you trust them?" Tamlen asked Brehan. He flicked his eyes to the hunters and his lips twitched slightly. "Shall we let them go?"

Brehan gave the men a hard look, and was rewarded by renewed terror on their faces. He counted a few seconds, his bow aimed. "You've frightened them enough. They won't bother us."

"Run along then, shems... and don't come back until we Dalish have moved on."

"Of course! Thank you! Thank you!" The men practically tripped over each other in their hurry to be out of the way.

Tamlen and Brehan exchanged a look, then they both started laughing. Tamlen waved the stone tablet. "Well, shall we see if there's any truth to their story? These carvings make me curious."

He let down the bow then replaced the arrow in his quiver before returning the bow to its sling. By the time the hunters reached their village, he and Tamlen would have grown into an army of Dalish, if not into monstrous beasts of the forest. "Sounds like a good idea."

"And if we find anything, the keeper will want to know." Tamlen's smile was broad as he headed up the game trail.

#

"Did that shem actually wet himself?" Tamlen asked as he ducked beneath a tree branch.

"It certainly smelled that way," Brehan replied. "That was better than the time the shem tried to flee so fast he knocked himself out on the tree branch."

"That was great," Tamlen said, his laughter almost rendering his words unintelligible. He stopped suddenly. "This must be the cave. I don't recall seeing this before, do you?"

Brehan narrowed his eyes at the rent in the earth. "No, I don't." He sniffed at the air. There was something, an odor he didn't recognize, among the stale scent of long buried tomb. "Let's check it out."

"My thoughts exactly." Tamlen moved cautiously towards the entrance, then smiled broadly back at Brehan. "With luck, we'll find something that will make us clan heroes!"

Brehan held aside the vines over the entrance then followed his friend inside.

#

They stepped over the bones of someone that had been dead long enough for time to strip away all flesh, leaving only a coat of dust to cover the skeleton. Brehan heard Tamlen gasp. "I can't believe this. You recognize this statue, don't you?"

Brehan took a closer look. "It's worn, but it looks vaguely familiar..."

"Back when our people lived in Arlathan, statues like these honored the Creators. When the shems enslaved us, much of that lore was lost. This looks like human architecture... with a statue of our people." Tamlen turned in a slow circle before looking back at him. "Can these ruins date back to the time of Arlathan?"

He let his fingers trail over the edges of the statue, and wished he'd thought to bring something to make a rubbing. "It's interesting. So much of our past is lost to us."

"I'd never have guessed that ancient elves might have lived here! With humans!" Tamlen started to point at something else then both men reached for their bows as one of the bodies strewn around the place stood up and started shambling towards them. They loosed simultaneously, and both arrows struck their mark as other corpses started to stand up.

Brehan heard a moaning sound from behind them, and turned to see more corpses moving. He gave Tamlen a nod, and then they shifted to stand back to back, drawing and firing as quickly as they could.

Tamlen's last arrow caught the last corpse in the eye, and it fell to the ground. Brehan looked around, but no other bodies got up. He began retrieving his arrows. Tamlen did the same. "Were those walking corpses? This place is haunted!" Tamlen said.

"I think we got them all," Brehan said. He elbowed Tamlen lightly. "One for the stories, eh?"

Tamlen laughed. "When you tell it around the fire later, make sure you let Merrill know about that last shot of mine."

"Lethallan, if you were any more obvious, you'd actively be drooling on her."

#

Brehan took the lead as they moved further into the cave. Behind him, Tamlen gave a low whistle. "This place makes me nervous."

"So talk, if that will calm you down," Brehan said. He bent to brush aside some dust and get a closer look at the carvings along one wall.

"I suppose so..." Tamlen said slowly. Then he kicked Brehan lightly in the calf. "Hey, weren't you supposed to be assisting Master Varathorn today? How did you end up coming with me?"

He shrugged. "I got out of it. I prefer to hunt."

"Me too, even if you are a better hunter than I am."

"What do you think all this is?" Brehan wiped away the dust from another relief. It was so faded he had trouble telling carving from natural stone.

"I'm not sure. This looks like a very old human place. Why did they build this? And why would elven artifacts be here? Maybe some of our ancestors lived here, in caves like the dwarves." Tamlen shook his head. "I'll stick to roaming the land, myself."

He grinned up at his friend. "Why did you want to come down here so badly?"

"Aren't you curious? We could be discovering our history. Minstrels will write songs about us!"

"I am curious." He stepped over a broken piece of stone. This carving was a little more intact, but he had difficult figuring out what it was supposed to represent. Part looked to resemble a dragon, but he couldn't tell if the figures representing people were fighting it or... could they be worshiping it?

Behind him, Tamlen was still talking. "If I were to bring some valuable ancestral artifact back to the keeper, she might forgive me for..." Tamlen trailed off, and then shrugged. "Well, you know."

Brehan felt the tips of his ears redden slightly. He'd rather not think about that particular incident. "Thanks for covering for me, by the way."

"Of course. You know I'd do anything for you." Something about Tamlen's tone made him worry about what future favor his friend was going to extract. "At any rate, I was expecting this place to... feel quite like this. Maybe this wasn't the best idea..." Tamlen fingered one of the arrows in his quiver.

"How'd you know all about the statue?"

Tamlen shrugged. "I saw a picture of it in one of those old books the keeper never lets anyone touch. It was one of the old gods. The keeper called him a 'friend of the dead'."

"'Friend of the dead'?" Brehan frowned, and mentally ran through his lore. He came up blank. "What does that mean?"

"He was a guide that took people across the spirit land to their final rest in the Beyond."

Brehan nodded. The keeper must have meant Falon'din. "Maybe this was a place of worship."

"Yet these are human ruins, remember?" Tamlen glanced back towards the statue. "Why would they worship an elven god?"

"Perhaps this place is a tomb." If it was an honored resting place of their dead, maybe trapsing about wasn't a good idea after all.

Tamlen shook his head in rejection of that idea. "An elven tomb built by shems? I doubt it. It's said that the old ones never truly died; they just went somewhere and... slept forever. And this god would come to guide their sprits away. But he wasn't an evil god, not like Fen'Harel - the Great Wolf. It doesn't seem right that a place so... wrong... would be his."

"How could walking corpses be here?" Brehan glanced around the corner before continuing on. He was starting to feel uneasy about this whole thing. The part of him that wanted to turn back began to argue with the part of him that wanted to keep exploring, to see what lore of the People he could uncover.

"Hahren Paivel once said that in places where many people died, it can become setheneran- a land of waking dreams. The Veil becomes weak and spirits slip into our world. Then they possess corpses and walk around." Tamlen shudder.

"Maybe this is the 'demon' the humans saw," Brehan said. Ignorant shems could easily mistake the shambling dead for a full on demon.

"It's hard to imagine anything else could live here with these... creatures. Still, worse things may be ahead. This place reeks of something... wrong. Can you feel it?" They exchanged a look. Tamlen unslung his bow, and Brehan did the same. "Let's press on... I want to know how our people were involved with this."

#

Brehan threw himself to the side as the monstrous bearlike creature charged at him. Tamlen shot an arrow into it's side, but it simply whirled back and went for the archer. Brehan rolled to his feet and fired off two arrows in rapid succession. The bear roared, then turned towards him. Immediately, Tamlen fired again, and the two men took turns distracting and firing until the thing collapsed. Brehan moved towards it, drew back his bowstring, and fired a last arrow directly into the thing's skull before allowing himself to breathe a sigh of relief.

Tamlen shot him a triumphant look, then his eyes widened as he caught sight of something behind Brehan. Brehan turned to look, and saw the strangely glowing mirror. He exchanged a look with Tamlen, and the two walked towards it slowly.

Wonder filled Tamlen's voice. "It's beautiful, isn't it? I wonder what the writing says."

"The keeper might be able to translate it," Brehan said. He couldn't wait to let her know what they had found. An artifact like this more than rivaled any he'd seen before.

"Maybe, but she's not here to help us. Odd that it isn't broken like everything else, especially with that bear lumbering around in here. I wonder what this writing is for?" He bent to get a closer look. "Maybe this isn't -" He jumped back as if startled. "Hey, did you see that? I think something moved inside the mirror."

Brehan moved closer. "Inside the mirror? Let me see." He narrowed his eyes. There was something, on the edge of his vision, but it seemed to vanish every time he tried to focus.

"Look! Don't you see it? There is is again! Can you feel that? I think it knows we're here. I just need to take a closer look... It's... showing me places. I can see... some kind of city... underground? And..." Slowly, Tamlen's voice began to change from wonder to dread. "There's a great blackness... It... it saw me! Help! I can't look away!"

Panic filled Tamlen's voice, and Brehan grabbed at him. Something seemed to claw at the edges of his eyes, and then pain filled him. He thought he was falling, tumbling off the edge of some great chasm. Someone was screaming, and then, darkness.

#

"Are you sure we are still going the right way?" Lenore asked. "This doesn't look like much of a road."

"I have traveled this path before," Duncan assured her. He glanced at the others. Brosca kept stopping to look at leaves and then hurrying to catch back up with them. Saitada, for her part, acted like a walk through the woods was just another daily activity for her. She caught his eye and winked, and he had to hide a smile. Lenore, however, was starting to lean heavily on her staff, and it took him a moment to realize that somewhere along the line, Jerath had taken her pack and was carrying it in addition to his own. The young elf hadn't said more than a half dozen words since they had left Denerim, but even carrying two backpacks he kept up easily. "We should reach a village in time for dinner."

"Good," Lenore said. "I could... do with a bath, I think." She held her robes up as she stepped over a fallen log. He blinked, and realized that she was also wearing Jerath's boots. He glanced back at the elf, who seemed to be having no problem with walking barefoot through the woods. Duncan sighed, and made a mental note to make some adjustments when they stopped for the night.

They hadn't gone more than a hundred paces more when something pinged lightly at the edge of his senses. He held up a hand, stopping their forward motion. Brosca and Lenore gave him curious looks, but both Saitada and Jareth laid hands on their blades as their eyes scanned the woods. Duncan drew his own blade, and moved in carefully.

Near the edge of a small cave lay an unconscious man in Dalish leather armor. Duncan moved closer. He could feel the darkness seeped into the skin of the young man. His eyes went to the mouth of the cave before going back to the elf. Standing, he would have been tall for a Dalish. His light brown hair held spiderwebs, and his hands were filthy, as though he'd crawled out of the cave. Duncan put his age at around twenty.

"Dalish?" Saitada asked, as she came to stand next to him.

"His caravan is probably nearby," Duncan said. He looked up at her. "Follow the trail, and take the others ahead to the village. If we come to the caravan in force, we may make them nervous."

Saitada nodded. Jerath looked a bit reluctant, but followed her lead. For a moment, Duncan thought about inviting the elf to come with, but decided against it. He picked up the unconscious Dalish and started carrying him back in the direction it appeared the Dalish had come.

The Dalish opened his eyes for a moment. Duncan looked down. "Can you hear me? I am..." Duncan hesitated a moment. He could feel the taint in the young man's blood. The situation was already beyond any hope. "Very sorry." The Dalish starred a moment, his green tinged brown eyes focusing on Duncan's face for a heartbeat. Then he passed out again.