Having acquired Dumat's Spine, our trio (plus Dog) have decided to quest for the missing dar'misu called Dumat's Claw. Let us follow their route northward: Bold Ariane is skittish, despite herself, as they pass through Redcliffe, and ends up sleeping on the castle ramparts instead of in her room. Finn gazes over Lake Calenhad toward the Circle Tower, his face unreadable. Dog frolics in the snow of the Frostback Mountains, enthusiastically attempting to catch snowballs with his mouth. An entire tavern in Halamshiral is laid to waste when the locals unwisely taunt the Dalish women into a fistfight. Finn gently squeezes Vashti's lips while she glares at him, trying to correctly pronounce an Orlesian phrase. An argument at the docks over the armed Dalish is resolved with a bag of coins, and, as the sails of the small ferry pull taut in the breeze, our merry band looks across this narrow finger of the Waking Sea to the distant domes and spires of the Grand Cathedral of Val Royeaux.

"This is preposterous," Finn repeated as he carefully sidled down the gangplank. "Ludicrous, even!"

"We found the Urn working from older and more piecemeal sources, didn't we?" Ariane asked.

"Older and more dignified sources! How am I supposed to look people in the eye and say, 'Based on the twenty-second stanza of 'The Black Fox and the Magister,' we feel certain that the Claw never left Orlais'? They'll laugh me off the floor. It's... popular balladry! Half of it - more than half! - is entirely fictitious!" The mage was so worked up he failed to notice he'd reached the end of the walkway. His next step came up short and he stumbled, arms pinwheeling. "Whoa!"

Behind him, Vashti caught a handful of robe to steady him. He whipped briefly from side to side, once his forward motion was checked, but finally found his balance. "Don't suppose anyone would believe I meant to do that?" he asked, rubbing his brow.

"What first?" Vashti asked, stepping off the gangplank. Dog brushed past her, barking at some seabirds further down the pier.

"Well, we're quite the motley crew," Finn acknowledged. "I should alert the local templars to my presence, before they take me for an apostate. And we should seek some sort of acknowledgement from the Grey Wardens for you. Ariane..."

"Is with the two of you," the Dalish warrior replied firmly. "Surely in such august company, I can be trusted not to go berserk and start sacrificing human babies."

"Surely," Vashti agreed drily. "And here come the templars." A pair of men in the Chantry's distinctive armor who'd been watching the dockside were homing in on Finn's staff. He straightened, brushed at a few nonexistent wrinkles in his immaculate robes, and settled a pleasant smile on his face.

"Welcome to Val Royeaux, Enchanter," one said formally. That was all Ariane got before the Orlesian passed into sentences beyond the helpful phrases Finn had taught them. Finn replied almost cheerfully, and produced a piece of parchment from a pouch. That would be his permit from the First Enchanter, the one that let him continue his research outside of the Tower. He handed it to the templar, who read it carefully and returned it.

"Very good," he said, another phrase she knew. She tensed as he started pointing at Vashti and herself, asking questions.

Before Finn could reply, Vashti was pointing to herself with her thumb. "Warden-Commander Vashti Mahariel," she said, slowly and clearly. The templars glanced at each other, then at the double-headed griffon gilded on Vashti's Dalish leather armor. "I killed the Archdemon." She'd insisted on learning the sentence in Orlesian.

The templars looked to Finn, who merely shrugged. "Oui."

There was some more muttering, but the templars apparently decided that wild Dalish on the streets of Val Royeaux were, unless they were wild Dalish mages, not their problem. They turned to go before the second one stopped. Frowning, he pointed back at Finn - specifically, at something on Finn's chest. "What is that?" he asked.

Finn looked down, eyes wide with surprise. "It must've fallen out when I stumbled," he muttered darkly. Ariane had glimpsed the silver pendant before, but the mage usually kept it under his robes. She's assumed it was a personal token, but apparently the templars saw something sinister in it. Looking at it now, Ariane almost had to agree. The sinuous curving lines of the thing looked predatory, somehow. It was silver, but with that blueish sheen that meant it was alloyed with lyrium - but the iridescence seemed to ripple or pulse when she wasn't looking straight at it.

A tense little conversation followed. Finn, grinning desperately, talked at high speed and, at one point, attempted to reference his notebook. The anonymous templar helmets shook from side to side, and one reached for the pendant - but stopped, a casual question emerging from within. Finn blinked in surprise, then hurriedly agreed, digging two vials of lyrium potion from his pouch and handing them over. The templars departed.

The mage indignantly stuffed his amulet back into his robes. "Why, I never! A licensing fee? Outright extortion, that's what that was."

"Explain, please," Vashti said.

"My pendant. It's a replica of an old Tevinter amulet. One that... happens to be the sigil of an Old God. They were commonly worn in the heyday of the Empire!" he said defensively. "Apotropaically, in this case."

Vasthi tapped a foot. "Which means...?"

"Um... defensively? Asking the god to turn aside his attention. This is the sigil of Zazikel, the god of chaos."

Ariane laughed. "You? You? Are wearing the sign of a god of chaos? Finn, you press the wrinkles out of your smallclothes. You are the least chaotic person I have ever met!"

"Yes, well," Finn bridled, "I said apotropaically. And not even seriously! I don't worship the Old Gods. Anyway, I've enchanted the thing a good bit over the years, and I'd be quite put out if some templar decided it was a dark and dangerous pagan artifact and took it. Which they clearly realized. I suppose I should be thankful," he sighed. "At least I had some lyrium to give them."

Down at the edge of the pier, the dog barked impatiently. "We're coming!" Ariane called. "Relax already." She looked at Finn. "So where are we going? 'Grey Warden headquarters,' I know, but which way?"

"Ehem..." Finn squinted into the middle distance, as he frequently did when recalling facts. "Head for the Grand Cathedral and we'll work from there. I suspect we'll end up there anyway."

"Why's that?" Vashti prompted him.

"Well, in..." and he paused to sigh heavily, "...in 'The Black Fox and the Divine,' which directly follows 'The Black Fox and the Grey Wardens'... well, one can infer that ordering, since he steals Dumat's Claw from the Commander of the Grey (who is the brother of his archenemy) in the latter, and is seen using it in battle in the former... in 'The Divine,' Remi and Karolis fight the Lord du Chevin's men in the choir loft of the Grand Cathedral, and Karolis is specifically mentioned as having the Claw. And that's the last time it's referenced, until it's confirmed missing in 'The Black Fox and the Magister,' which since it also takes place in Val Royeaux, I tentatively place after 'The Divine.'"

Vashti considered all this. "Dar'misu last seen in cathedral."

"Right."

"Why didn't you just say that?"

"I did!"

They lapsed into silence as they moved away from the docks. Finn walked slowly, pausing frequently to look up and marvel at one thing or another, here in what was generally acknowledged to be the grandest city in Thedas. The two Dalish unconsciously drifted closer to each other, taking positions for close-quarters combat. Because these were the closest quarters Ariane had ever seen.

The biggest human settlement she had been in, prior to this trip, was the Lake Calenhad Docks, and that was just a handful of buildings. Redcliffe, with its bustling market and crowded palace, had been unnerving, but that had been nothing compared to Jader and Halamshiral. In the cities, the buildings had loomed tall on either side of narrow alleys; humans and animals thronged the streets and plazas in a great cacaphony of shouts and bellows and squawks. The smell was not to be believed! The dark tunnels and thick stone of the Deep Roads didn't bother her at all, but the noisy, smelly, pushy crowds made her feel unaccountably trapped.

But Jader and Halamshiral were quaint, quiet encampments compared to Val Royeaux.

Men with bales of cloth on their heads pushed past women with baskets of fish. A man on a donkey cart alternately whipped his stubborn beast and the people too slow to get out of its way. Brass horns trumpeted somewhere ahead of them and up as the guards who patrolled the city walls changed shift. Merchants shouted from their stalls, children shrieked and laughed, and street performers sang and tumbled on the cobblestones. Flat ears followed many of the humans, although some were going about their own business. There were even dwarves here and there, promising goods from Orzammar and world over.

But Mythal had dropped her cloak over them. Not even the flat-eared pickpockets dared to come close, once they caught sight of either Finn's staff or the elves' vallaslin. Nobody wanted to anger a mage, and they wanted to anger one with a pair of Dalish guards even less. The crowd melted slightly away from them wherever they went, leaving a few blessedly empty feet of space around their group.

Finally, they rounded the corner of a four-story tenement and were suddenly in the presence of the Grand Cathedral.

The Andrastan sun actually shone over its doors, the great wooden beams covered with plates of gold. Its twin spires, namesakes of the Tower Age, reached up to dizzying heights that challenged Ferelden's Kinloch Hold for ambitious reach. All about the plaza where it stood, chanters in their rose-colored robes recited canticles to passerby, a prose counterpoint to the haunting sung Chant that echoed from the cathedral windows.

"That's... that's beautiful," Finn whispered, staring in awe. "We don't sing it much in Ferelden, and when we do... it doesn't sound like that."

They sang the Chant in its original, barbarian tongue, the one still spoken in Ferelden:

These truths the Maker has revealed to me:
As there is but one world,
One life, one death, there is
But one god, and He is our Maker.
They are sinners, who have given their love
To false gods.

"For you, maybe," Ariane grumbled quietly, thoughts of the Creators and the Long Sleep coming to mind. Next to her, Vashti, looking down, was also saying something under her breath, but the Grey Warden was starting to speak up. "...my teachings; remember the Vir Tanadhal: The Way of Three Trees that I have given you."

The hunter's dark head came up and she took a deep breath, as if she intended to recite the Charge of Andruil for all to hear. To her own surprise, Ariane put a hand on Vashti's shoulder and gave a small shake. "Come on. This is their great temple. We can be courteous."

"Please, please don't get us arrested by the templars. Please," Finn put in desperately. "Because I'm fairly certain that praying to, um, other gods is an arresting offense."

Vashti growled in the back of her throat and turned a simmering glare on the cathedral. "In honor of Andraste, great hero and martyr, I will show respect," she finally said grudgingly. "But let us go from here."

"Yes, absolutely. If I remember the map correctly - and I do - the Warden headquarters should be four blocks east of - Maker's breath, what's that about?"

To their left, a horse-drawn carriage had emerged from another street that fed into this plaza. The frothing beasts were being driven to a run by a frenetic driver, and pilgrims and chanters alike scattered before its approach. It rattled its way over the cobblestones when suddenly, the plunging horses veered to one side, driving the carriage right at them!

Isn't that always the way with drivers in foreign cities? See how our quartet handle the situation in our next installment: Reflexes!