The days and nights that passed blurred into one another until Eleanor could hardly distinguish one from another. She was being drugged certainly, but she could not determine the source. Was it the food, the water, or the strange thick smoke in the tent at night? Was it a spell? Her head felt heavy and her senses were dull and slow.
During the days she was tied onto the wide back of a wooly ox and it was all she could do to remain upright as the animal plodded through the snow and ice. She and the witch woman, who rode ahead of her on another beast, were escorted by a half-dozen shadowy figures in thick fur cloaks. They were her honor guard, picked from the Chasind army that followed her to Ostagar. The men were silent and ever-present.
At night she was removed from the placid ox and carried to the same tent where she had first encountered the witch, where Cullen had lost his mind and his sight. She was laid on the same thin pallet and fed. The Chasind retreated and surrounded the tent. The witch woman still did not speak or explain; she only watched until Eleanor fell into a deep and dreamless sleep every night.
An almost dreamless sleep.
Duncan knew that time did not pass in the Fade as it did in the waking world. He tried to measure the number of nights that had gone by by counting the times he saw the same people as they slept and dreamed on consecutive nights.
He abandoned this method when he saw Arl Finn in seventeen different dreams and his cousin Colin in four in what seemed like the same span of time.
The Fade barriers that he had passed before with no resistance were suddenly closed to him. He circled the dream version of the palace in Denerim countless times. The paths he walked seemed to focus on it, returning him there again and again.
Duncan returned to the interior of the palace after extensive searches of the surrounding area. He had reached a point where he could not pass—the barrier of his prison, he assumed. He walked with his head down, eyes on his bare feet, not paying attention to where he went, when suddenly he was in the middle of a dream.
He froze. He had wandered into the main audience hall without realizing it. Brightly dressed nobles were gathered and talking amongst themselves. Music was playing, but like all things in the Fade it was distant and insubstantial.
Suddenly the doors at the far end of the hall slammed open and everyone turned to look. Duncan turned with them. He saw his father as a young man, dressed in gleaming armor and marching up the carpet to the dais at the head of the room. Close behind him followed his mother. He recognized the mage Wynne and the Orlesian bard Leliana, both of whom he and his sister had known. He assumed the others were also his parents' companions when they fought the Archdemon, though he knew them by their descriptions not by sight.
The group passed him and the assembled crowd and continued to the very front of the room. Duncan saw his father reach out and squeeze his mother's hand before climbing the steps to the throne and kneeling in front of the Revered Mother to receive her blessing.
"It seems like so long ago."
Duncan jumped as a voice spoke in his ear. He spun on his heel and stepped back, brushing through the immaterial outline of a noblewoman beside him. Her form dissipated like mist in the sunlight.
"I dream of this day often. It's a very happy memory for your mother and me." Alistair watched his dream-self addressing the people, holding his hand out to Charlotte, who took it and joined him on the dais.
Duncan swallowed several times before he tried to speak. "Father?"
"You know how sometimes you have a dream where you're in it, and sometimes you have a dream where you're watching from somewhere else? I think it's like that," Alistair said. He rubbed his chin, his eyes distant. "And I was thinking of you right before I fell asleep."
When he turned back to face his son, he had a much harder look on his face. "Do you know what's happened? With Eleanor?"
"Some of it." Duncan quickly explained what had happened the night he had been in his sister's dream.
"Maker's breath," Alistair muttered. He ran his fingers through his hair. "We're following them. I and another Grey Warden. I don't know where they're going, but we're pretty close behind." He paced in a small circle before continuing.
"I don't like this. Something's at work here. Something big and we're divided up. What about you, are you safe?"
Duncan shrugged. "Relatively. I don't think anything will harm me here. I'm just stuck. I don't think Mother will let the Chantry exorcise me or anything." He made a gesture with his hands that made Alistair smile, a flip of the palms that Charlotte often made and both children had picked up. "I'll figure it out eventually." He paused.
"I can hear her when she speaks to me," Duncan continued. His brows drew together over his Theirin nose.
"Your mother?"
"Yes. She said some mages from the Circle are on their way to the palace. She's also been in constant contact with the Wardens at Ostagar. How much time has passed since Eleanor was captured?"
Alistair told him and Duncan tried hard to keep his face blank and impassive. Even in the Fade where anyone could reshape reality to some extent his father looked tired and worried. It would not do to worry him further.
They stood in silence for a few minutes, watching the dream images of Alistair and Charlotte embrace and turn and then speak again.
Alistair said suddenly, "I'm waking up. Come here." He held out his arms to his son and Duncan stepped into them, hugging his father tightly. After a moment the lights and sounds around him faded and Alistair was gone, awake somewhere far south of the Grey Warden fortress and ready to continue on his missing daughter's trail.
Duncan let his arms drop back to his sides. He looked back over his shoulder at the washed-out Fade version of the familiar room in his home and then turned quickly to leave.