It was most of a day and a half's travel before they left the road and struck out through the forest toward the Deep Roads entrance that Dal had indicated would be closest to the Messenger's camp. They followed a rocky, near invisible path that led through sparse undergrowth, conifers rising high above them that filtered the sunlight to a green haze by the time it reached their small group. Their footsteps were muted by the carpet of needles shed by the tall trees.
Zevran ranged out ahead of the group while Nathaniel moved invisibly somewhere in the forest behind them. Walter and Brutal in turns disappeared into the forest on silent paws, describing circles around the group as they traveled. Oghren clomped alongside Dal, while Anders and Fenris walked behind them. There was no chatter among the group, each man alone with his thoughts.
Anders' mind skittered between thoughts of having to go into the Deep Roads and thoughts of Ser Pounce-a-lot. Ser Pounce-a-lot would have made this part more bearable, riding his pack and meowing at him and letting Anders pet him as the anxiety slowly rose from the pit of his stomach to his breastbone, from his breastbone to his throat. He had left Ser Pounce-a-lot at Vigil's Keep, though the decision made him ache with fear that he would never see his dearest friend again. But Ser Pounce-a-lot had always hated the Deep Roads, and time had at least blunted his selfishness enough to consider that when he made the choice to leave him behind.
Fenris was not brooding, he was fretting. Anders could see him checking his armor repeatedly as they left the road behind. The third time he flicked his cloak aside to check the leather, Anders could not resist a low murmur.
"It's black now, you can stop checking. You got every bit of pink with Herren's dye."
"Fuchsia," Fenris corrected him. "Herren called it fuchsia."
"Fuchsia," Anders conceded. "Which was essentially a fancy word for bright pink, but never you mind, you covered it all. There is no fuchsia left on your armor as a mating call to darkspawn. 'Look at me, I'm on the pull in my pretty pink armor.'"
Dal looked back at him and said one word. "Anders."
Anders subsided, feeling like a chastised child. Just for that he wasn't going to tell Fenris about the one tiny streak he had missed on one of his shoulder spikes.
Zevran slid out from behind a tree to fall in step beside Dal. Anders had to strain to hear his low words. "It is very quiet here, yes? I think you are right in thinking your darkspawn is near, even the birds do not wish to associate with such a creature."
That made the birds smarter than the men, to Anders' way of thinking.
Dal nodded. "Have you found it?"
"It is just up ahead, my dear warden. Have I mentioned how I enjoy seeing you like this, back in the field and in charge? When this is over you and I shall spend some quiet time in which I shall enumerate the ways in which it stirs me."
"When this is over," Dal agreed with a ghost of a smile. "I would tell you to stop flirting and get your head in the game, but…"
"But this is the game," Zevran finished for him. "And my head is always in it. It is one hundred yards ahead mostly screened at the entrance by heavy brush. A casual observer would easily miss it, but I am never casual in my observations. There were traps, but as you should expect, I have disarmed them." He buffed his nails on his armor before pulling on a pair of gloves crafted of leather so fine it reminded Anders more of silk. "Crude things. I am almost offended not to have been given a greater challenge."
"There will be other challenges," Dal said, his face settling into grim lines that Anders had always thought of as his warden face.
He raised a hand to call a halt and waited for Nathaniel to melt out of the forest to join them before speaking. "I will do the talking when we find the Messenger." He gave Fenris a hard look. "You will all keep your weapons sheathed—" Anders tried not to squirm when Dal pinned him with an equally hard look. "—and your magic contained unless I give the signal. Zev, Fenris, do you best to avoid contact with the darkspawn and if there is anything tainted in there – you'll know it when you see it – do not touch it. Anders I'm trusting you to guide Fenris on that."
Anders nodded, reminded of other times and other places. "I'll watch him, Commander."
"Oghren, I want you covering these two. They're both impaired and I don't want either of them getting killed."
"Guarding the skirt and the elf," Oghren grumbled. "Ain't as much fun as killing darkspawn."
"You'll have a chance to get your axe wet," Dal assured him. "But we will not strike the first blow unless I say so."
Oghren grunted and pounded his right fist into his left palm. "You say the word, Commander, and I'll kill it."
Dal gave him a half smile. "I know. Nathaniel, you know what to do. This is just a standard run unless I tell you otherwise. Zev and I will take the lead. I trust his enlightened self-interest to keep me from stepping in any traps."
"That is such a perfect way to express it," Zevran agreed. "Because my beloved warden is so cold to me when he is still healing after stepping in a bear trap, I have learned it from painful personal experience."
Anders slid a glance over to Fenris, but could read nothing from his impassive countenance.
"Let's get this over with," he urged when he could no longer stand the anticipation. Just a hundred yards down the path waited everything he hated about being a Gray Warden, and if he could not run away from it, the next best option was running to it.
The entrance had once had a great stone door taller than the height of two men. Sometime in the distant past, that door had been blasted to rubble by magic or siege engine. Zevran was correct in saying that brush screened the entrance, but some of the brush was twisted and blackened, describing a path through the growth back into the opening. Vines shrouded the upper half of the broken doorway, hanging down in twisted tendrils that made Anders duck instinctively when he passed under them, despite the fact that they were at least four feet out of his reach.
Watery gray light filtered in behind them, leaving the group to pause just inside the opening while their eyes adjusted. At a word from Dal, he took his staff in hand. This was familiar as well, he and Dal calling forth light from the heads of their staves to light the hall around them.
It still bore the hallmarks of dwarven construction – high, heavy ceilings; perfectly set flagstones; and carved panels in the walls that no doubt detailed some obscure Paragons being shining examples of dwarfiness. Anders thought that if he brushed away the grime crusted in the carvings, he would probably see an idealized dwarf crushing a darkspawn under one heel while quaffing ale with one hand and forging vast engines of destruction with the other.
"It is here," Nathaniel said, breaking his silence for the first time all day. "I can feel it."
"As it no doubt can feel us," Dal said.
Of the whole group, including the two mabari, it was likely that only the two elves could not sense the darkspawn that called itself the Messenger.
Anders could feel the Messenger, and could feel that there were no other darkspawn nearby. It should have been a comfort, but the intelligent darkspawn had more presence than the run of the mill genlocks and hurlocks; the "scratches" it left in his mind were deeper. He had asked other wardens how they sensed the darkspawn – Nathaniel and Oghren among them – and each expressed the sensation differently. None described it as pleasant.
"Get on with it," he muttered.
"Messenger!" Dal called, raising his voice until it echoed back at them. "You know me. I am Widald Amell, Warden Commander of Vigil's Keep and I would speak with you."
"Gray Wardens," hissed a voice that rebounded around the hall, confusing the ear as to its origin. Everyone tensed, searching the shadows and the depths of the hall for the source of the voice. The mabari growled but held their places at signals from Dal and Fenris. "Gray Wardens are not to be killing the Messenger."
"We are not here to kill you," Dal said. "I am the one who spared you in Amaranthine."
"The Messenger remembers." The darkspawn that called itself the Messenger revealed itself, sliding out of the shelter of a fallen boulder to take hesitant steps closer.
It wore a hooded cloak, the hood pushed back enough to reveal a face that was a parody of a dwarf's, elf's, or human's. Its indistinct, sibilant speech was explained by its lipless mouth filled with jagged teeth in a face where its nose was more like two open wounds. Its skin was a diseased gray save for a strip of crimson, twisted flesh that stretched above its eyes and disappeared up into the left side of its hood.
Anders – and Justice within him – hated reminders of what they had been party to in Amaranthine. He still remembered the screams that rose from the city as Dal and his companions turned away to return to Vigil's Keep while archers rained fire down on the city with no discernment between the darkspawn and the people trapped within. Those screams had returned in his nightmares on more than one night in the intervening years.
He shivered at the rasping voice and the memories it breathed back to life.
Beside him, Fenris stiffened and Anders tugged the chain between them to keep him from reflexively drawing his sword.
"What does the Warden want with the Messenger?" it asked.
Dal stepped forward, signaling his companions to stay in place as he moved closer to the hunched darkspawn.
"I want you to take me to the Architect," he said, tone implacable.
The Messenger shook its head vehemently and backed up. "No, no. The Architect is not to be found. The Gray Wardens are not to follow the Architect."
Dal followed its shuffling retreat step by step, keeping the distance between them steady. "Not the Gray Wardens. Me and my companions. You will take us to the Architect. He allied himself with me before and in return I killed the Mother for him. I say he owes me a debt and you will take me to him."
"No." The Messenger straightened as much as it could. "The Warden wanted the Mother's death, there is no debt. The Warden would have been killing her without the Architect because that is what the Warden does."
"If ever there was an opening for a threat…" Anders muttered, earning an unreadable glance from Nathaniel. He forced a broad grin for Nathaniel's sake and shrugged.
"The debt is between me and the Architect," Dal said, his voice dropping dangerously. "You do as the Architect tells you and I tell you that it is for the Architect to say to my face that there is no debt." He took a step forward and the light at the tip of his staff flared more brightly, leaving the Messenger to raise its hands to shield itself against its brilliance. "You will take us, and in return, I will allow you to live. Again."
"The way is dangerous," the Messenger said in a whine. "The warden is not to be blaming the Messenger for its brethren. Not all darkspawn are heeding the Architect and they do not listen to the Messenger."
Oghren grunted. "Leave that to us, Ugly. I ain't found a darkspawn yet that don't listen to an axe in its ear."