"This is madness," Fenris said through clenched teeth as they followed the Architect through tunnels long lost to the darkspawn. He wondered if even the fabled dwarven shaperate – the long memory of the dwarven people – remembered these lost paths.
It had been one thing to contemplate asking this creature for help in the abstract, but now that they were following its inhuman glide through tunnels where neither it nor Utha and the Messenger needed light to navigate, he knew that it was a demon's deal he should never have allowed more than a passing thought.
"Buddy, you don't even know the half of it," Oghren rumbled, clouting him in the small of the back in what was likely supposed to be a friendly gesture. "You can't feel 'em out there."
"What does that mean?" Fenris looked over to Anders for an answer, but his expression was clamped down tight and gave no response.
"He means," said Nathaniel from behind them, "that you aren't a warden and for that you should be grateful. There are darkspawn all around us."
"Nathaniel," Dal slowed his stride to let the others pass, allowing him to fall into step with Nathaniel while Zevran dropped back to take up the rear guard. "Haven't you learned to have more faith in me than that."
"In you?" Nathaniel asked. "Always. But I also have faith in darkspawn to know nothing of honor. How can they?"
Fenris kept his eyes fixed on the Architect, though his ears almost twitched with his effort to hear every word that passed between Nathaniel and Dal.
"We'll get out of this," Dal assured Nathaniel, making Fenris wonder just how the man could be so confident. He supposed if a man had slain an archdemon, he might be justified in his confidence, but there had been several armies at his back then. Now it was just the six of them and two mabari, and being chained together did tend to hobble Fenris' and Anders' capabilities in a fight.
Dal and Nathaniel dropped their voices still more, exchanging words in a low murmur Fenris could not decipher despite his attempts to eavesdrop.
Finally Dal raised his voice again, "It's all going to work out," and Fenris felt as though that message for all of them, the Architect included.
He left Nathaniel at the back of the group and caught up with Fenris and Anders, walking at Anders' side. "Justice never hated it down here."
"I'm not just Justice," Anders said, tension thrumming in his voice as he swiped a hand over his face. "Bring on the darkspawn. I'm not going to run screaming like a little girl."
On Fenris' side, Oghren chuckled. "I remember that one time we got chased out of the Crown and Lion, you in your smalls. You were screaming like a little girl then."
"I had just seen you naked, you were drunk, and told me I had a pretty mouth," Anders retorted, forcing a smile. "That's enough to make any man run screaming."
"Don't want to be mistaken for a girl, don't dress like a girl," Oghren said, grinning for all the world as though they were on a nice stroll to get a drink.
"You should all be silent now," the Architect cautioned. "My brethren are aware of your presence."
Beside him Utha drew her sword, her attention on something beyond the mages' light. Zevran jogged back out of the darkness to rejoin Dal, the two of them moving to the front of the group once more.
"I shall endeavor to restrain them, but that will be facilitated if you do not draw your weapons or make any hostile moves," the Architect cautioned before moving ahead of Utha. Apparently her hostile move did not count, but the taint had spread so far that perhaps the darkspawn saw her as closer to one of their kind than not.
It raised its hand into the air and Fenris felt a chill trace the lyrium in his skin as an aura coalesced around that upraised hand. It was the center of an expanding corona of something Fenris could only describe as an anti-radiance. He felt as though he could see straight through to the Architect's bones in that not-light.
Anders hissed and Fenris glimpsed a flicker of blue in his eyes before he closed them and took a deep breath, steadying himself. A glance toward Dal showed the other mage's shoulders stiff and almost hunched while Zevran brushed his fingertips over his forearm. Even Walter and Brutal reacted, hackles raising on their necks and down their backs in hostile ridges.
Past the Architect, there was movement, all grays and blacks, armor not-gleaming, weapons not-shining in the negative radiance. Darkspawn packed the tunnel ahead. They shrank back from the touch of the Architect's magic one step at a time until one broke and ran, followed by more and more until the tunnel was devoid of movement.
"Quickly," the Architect said, dropping his hand. Utha immediately returned to his side as he moved more swiftly down the tunnel with the Messenger at his back.
Following them, Fenris' nostrils flared at the lingering reek of darkspawn, so thick that it almost seemed as though he could be tainted by the very air.
The tunnel forked ahead, one fork sloping gently downward into utter darkness, the other ending in another of the dwarves' incongruously large doors.
Without a word from the Architect, the Messenger loped down the tunnel, disappearing once he left the light. The Architect put out a hand and splayed it on the door's surface before pushing it open, allowing a sickly yellow glow to spill out of the entrance.
"My brethren will not violate my sanctum," the Architect said while Utha slipped past him into the space beyond. "We will conduct our," it paused, almost puzzling out the next word, "business within."
It held out a long, spidery arm in a parody of a gracious host escorting guests into a salon. Fenris expected something as ghastly as some of the refuges of blood mages he and Anders had seen in Kirkwall with Hawke. What awaited him in the Architect's sanctum was instead a room filled floor to ceiling with bookshelves and books. They were stacked haphazardly on the shelves, on the floor, and on a great stone desk and high-backed chair that stood in the middle of the chamber. Even the desk was not spared the deluge of books, with piles stacked over much of its surface, leaving barely enough room for a writing set and a single large tome easily as tall as the length of Fenris' arm from elbow to fingertips. The only bare space on the walls was a door on the wall opposite the entrance.
The room was lit by a single glowing orb suspended over the desk. The yellowish light it cast made his companions look ill and turned the Architect's already sickly gray complexion skin putrescent. Fenris could not imagine trying to read by this light without eventually growing too nauseated to see the pages.
"I have a book," the Architect said, following Nathaniel in and closing the door, "that has the same runes as in your notes." It glided past them to one of the high shelves and chose a book from one of the seemingly random stacks. "I apologize that I have no seats to offer you, but I so rarely receive guests."
Anders shifted restlessly beside him while Fenris tried to imagine the Architect receiving any guests.
Apparently Dal shared Fenris' difficulty. "What kind of guests do you receive?" he asked. "I thought you had trouble with your brethren." The last word sounded forced, as though Dal would rather have said something else. Perhaps "murderous monster horde."
The Architect brought the book he had chosen to the desk and settled into the chair. The chair was high-backed and ornate and proportioned for someone larger than a dwarf. Fleetingly Fenris wondered where the Architect had come by something like that so far from the surface. Utha came to stand behind him, watchful as some Chantry gargoyle.
"There are occasional traders who will deal with us," the Architect replied. He opened the book he had chosen and set the pages from Kirkwall where he could refer to them as he paged through the book. "You may remember Armaas from our first meeting."
Oghren snorted. "Is that what you call it?"
Dal shot him a look that quelled any further outbursts. "I remember Armaas. Do you often deal with Tal'Vashoth?"
The Architect turned a page. "I do not get so many merchants willing to brave the dark that I can be particular," he responded. "I must apologize again, but if I am to find a means to free your companions, I must focus. If you will not touch the books, you and they may rest here until I am ready."
"Of course." Dal ushered the others to a corner relatively clear of piled books, taking a water flask when Zevran offered it to him.
"Do not let your guard down for a moment," he cautioned them in a low voice. "And keep the route we took here in mind. We might have to backtrack in a hurry."
Zevran's murmur was barely audible. "I have taken the liberty of leaving a few surprises in the tunnels we traveled to get here. Should we need to, shall we say, take an expeditious farewell, stay close to the tunnel walls, do not run up the middle. It would be most unfortunate if any of you were to deny the darkspawn the presents I prepared with such care."
Dal passed the water flask back to Zevran. "Eat a little, drink a little, try to rest if you can stand it. If this doesn't end in a fight I'll eat Oghren's smalls."
Anders groaned dramatically. "Maker, now he's going to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy just to get out of getting anywhere near Oghren's smalls."
Fenris wanted to prowl, to pace, to loose some of his pent up energy in movement, but thought that Anders would be contrary and want to find a place to sit or stand to watch the Architect.
To his surprise, Anders shook himself out of his silence. "I can't sit still."
Together they walked the perimeter of the room, avoiding the stacks of books. Occasionally Anders would ask him to stop while he examined one book or another without touching it. Some of the spines were marked, and Anders seemed to recognize occasional titles.
Oghren sidled over to Utha after a time, grinning queasily. "So," Fenris heard him say, "bet it's been a long time since you've seen another dwarf."
She said nothing.
"You know, even a lady as gray as yourself's got to have needs."
Anders groaned.
Utha stared at him with her flat, dead fish eyes.
"What do you say, you and me…"
"Oghren!"Dal's crisp reproof swung the dwarf around.
"What? I was just trying to improve relations," Oghren protested. "If you know what I mean."
"Oghren," Dal said in a tone that promised he was teetering on the brink of freezing Oghren's family ore, "get over here and leave her alone."
"And stop drinking that nug piss for a few hours," Anders added. "It's rotted the last bit of your brain."
"That's bronto piss you soft, nug brained, flower-sniffing, good for nothing—"
"Both of you," Dal interrupted, "shut up. Now."
Anders shut his mouth with a snap and Oghren, grumbling, rejoined the others where they waited.
Nathaniel shook his head. "Only you, my friend," he said with a faint smile down at Oghren.
"A man's got needs," Oghren said, sounding petulant.
"My dear Oghren," Zevran interjected. "I have seen your choices in women, and with the exception of the lovely Felsi, you have rather undiscriminating tastes. Which I can admire in a man, but when even one such as I tells you that there should be limits? It is time for you to pay heed."
Dal did something that Fenris did not see, but which made Zevran give a tiny yelp. "I think I could be insulted by that."
It was all almost light-hearted on the surface, but Fenris thought he could hear the sounds of whistling past the graveyard.
• • •
They all came alert when the Architect finally pushed itself back from the desk and rose, closing the book on the pages he had been studying and taking notes on before he picked it up. Oghren woke with a snort and wiped drool off his beard when Nathaniel nudged him with a boot.
"I have your answer," the Architect told them. "We can see this matter concluded if you will but follow me."
Dal started forward with Zevran at his side, but the Architect held up a hand to stop them. "Only these two. The energies that will be released in the ritual will be dangerous to those outside its bounds. You will stay here with Utha."
It moved to the only other door out of the room and opened it, allowing a purple luminescence to spill out to merge with the yellow from the glow globe.
"We will be in my laboratory. Doubtless you will be able to come to your companions' aid if they call for you, but I cannot proceed if my conditions are not met."
Dal looked to Anders and Fenris. "It's your decision."
Anders shrugged. "If all I wanted was a vacation filled with terror and the promise of death, I could have stayed in Kirkwall with Hawke."
Fenris caught Anders' eye and nodded. "Let this be done for good or ill."
They left their companions and followed the Architect through the door.