Ten kept the encounter with Lanaya to herself, finding the whole thing unsettling. She'd met people - elfin women specifically - who seemed to thrive on hearing about others' hardships, as though consuming someone else's trauma validated their own. There was something about the intensity in her eyes, though…. Then again, everything in this place was off. If she were lying about where she's from, how would she have known about my family? Eight boys, seven dark one ginger? That's specific. Maybe if Morrigan succeeds in getting me to the Fade with my wits about me, I can take a peek into her head as well.

She dreamed that night that she had risen from her tent and walked the lake's perimeter, staring at the island from several angles. It was centered around a monolith, moss making the carvings on the rock prominent even from a distance. The rock stood between two trees, which looked luminous and twisting in the strange light of her dream. She awoke in a cold sweat a little after dawn, realizing something she had not seen while awake. She crawled out of her tent and scampered down to the shore, not bothering with a 'good morning' to everyone already up about their daily tasks. Standing on the shore closest to their camp, looking out, she could see that the two trees on the island were not the pines that made up most of the woods nor the swamp maple and white oak dotted among the pines, but sycamores. Those are not native. They were planted. And, much as he had been, the Keeper sat between them, bare back to the shore. She filed that information away, and bade her comrades get ready for the day's journey.

The trip was a bit less surreal than the first one, mostly because of the ceaseless chatter overpowering the subtle forest noises that had lulled Ten into the state she'd been in previously. Morrigan decided she'd be a deer for this one - so she could lead them where she pleased without risking someone or something clocking that she probably did not belong there and attacking before she could escape back to her better-armed cohort.

It wasn't a bad journey, either. The ruins were on the far side of the lake they had observed the previous day and the path along the shore was well carved out. Occasionally, a dark shape would appear on the ridge above but never approached. The path curved downward, and it became apparent that the lake was not naturally occurring but manmade, a dam having been built where the river took a tumble into a broad valley to the southeast. In that hollow, the forest was sparser and crisscrossed with crumbling stone walls where at some time, likely a hundred or more years before, the woods had been clear-cut and fields defined. The occasional remnants of a stone chimney peeked between the trees, marking where a house had once stood.

"Well, I guess we know where the settlement was," Alistair remarked as the group took a breather in a clearing centered around one of them.

"Definitely haunted," Ten concluded. Nobody disagreed.

They had fully rounded the lake by noon. The ruin in question was surrounded by the remnants of a much higher stone wall. Still, it was crumbled to nothing in several places, and - if a glance at the lower walls behind them were to be believed - it had had help as enterprising settlers dismantled the architecture of their predecessors to suit their own needs. Stepping through one gap, they found themselves in the courtyard of what must once have been quite a complex. Set back about ten yards were double oaken doors

"Strange," Sten observed. "Usually, buildings of this scale are in urban centers. They are palaces or temples. Do you think there was a city around it that the settlers destroyed?"

"I do not think this was a temple or a palace," Lelianna said quietly. "This is a crypt."

"It is not Dalish," Zevran said. "The Dalish plant trees over the bodies of their dead."

"And they don't build," Ten added. "This is an original. I think we have found the River of the Grandmothers."

"They built a settlement on hallowed ground," Morrigan said, gesturing at the skeletons of houses and fields behind them. "No wonder bad things happened."

"Why, Morrigan, I am surprised at you!" Lelianna exclaimed, "You have never before shown any reverence for the sacred."

"Sacred! More like… dangerous. Even I know some things ought not be fucked with."

"Well, plenty has happened to wake the dead here," Ten said. She paused momentarily, imagining what nonsense lurked on the other side, and tried the door..

It complained only a little, which was surprising given its age, and swung open to reveal a central atrium. The ceiling in the center had collapsed long ago piles of rubble adorning the ground. However, the structure on all four sides, arcades around the perimeter of the building supported by arches that had withstood the wind and weather of millennia, were nearly intact.

Lelianna was also correct, for stacked ten deep from floor to ceiling were vaults, most of them bricked up with plaques beside them all too worn to read even if any of them could decipher ancient Elvish runes, presumably with the names of the deceased within. They could see no sign of anything moving, except the occasional gust of wind that would make the ivy growing up some of the columns whisper and shake.

"It's two stories up," Morrigan said, "On the side of the building facing the lake."

"Well, we're clear on the opposite side now," Ten said, "Left or right?"

"Right seems less creepy," Alistair offered.

"Less creepy it is," Ten concluded, and they took off to the right.

The vaults got older as they moved, evidently, the original inhabitants had begun their burials on the far end of the building and moved outwards. Ten could not tell whether those interred within were particularly important. Each vault was identical, and each hallway was identical. As they moved, Ten became cognizant of the shadows in the atrium shifting quickly, though she could not hear that the wind had picked up significantly. She also started feeling a hum beneath her feet, not the rumble of an earthquake, but more as though she were walking on top of an enormous wasps' nest. She looked around, but aside from the rapidly moving shadows, she could see nothing amiss.

And then the singing started.

"Oh… fuck no," she breathed as the group all paused, each trying to triangulate where the unearthly voice was coming from. It was the voice of a woman or a young boy, echoing through the empty vaults. Ten strained her ears for lyrics, but they were too far away.

"The tune's familiar," Alistair said.

"It is," Ten said. And it was. A dirge she'd heard a thousand times sung by an elf during a wake, when neighbors gathered in the front room of the deceased's closest family. The departed would be wrapped up in linen. If the family had money, they would cobble together a platform for the specific purpose, which would then form the base of a pyre. If they didn't, they would be laid out on the kitchen table. Neighbors would come by, pay their respects, drink a glass, and eventually, someone would go to the corner and sing one of a few songs. Those lucky enough to see their death coming might request one or the other. But this one was a favorite. If one did not understand the lyrics, one might have thought it a lullaby. But it was a funeral song. One of Ioan Vanalys's favorites. One he sang whenever Teneira was there to remind him of what he had lost and thus to mourn it.

They picked up their pace a bit and followed the music. Is it bad that a cult would be the best answer? I hope it's a cult. Or some other clan of Dalish come to place an honored community member where all the other ancestors sleep.

A break in the vaults showed through to an anteroom, large but seeming small in comparison to everything else, down a flight of stone stairs cut right into the bedrock below the forest.

"It seems to me not following the creepy disembodied voice into a strange underground chamber might be a wise course of action," Zevran suggested.

"Where's the fun in that?" Morrigan countered.

The stairs left them in a room lit by bright sunlight where the ceiling had collapsed in one corner, tree roots twisting down over the landslide, for they were indeed underground. The center of the room had a stone dais with a table. In one corner was a semicircular structure like Ten had seen in some chantries, intended to amplify the voice of the person singing the hymn or giving the sermon. It was significantly darker in there than in the galleries, the hole in this ceiling much smaller, but when Ten's eyes adjusted, she put one hand over her mouth to keep from squeaking. For there, standing facing the corner, was a dark, hooded figure. And around the table on the dais were six more.

Please be a cult. Please be a cult. Please be a cult.

"Those are the ones I saw," Morrigan said softly.

Ten shushed her, fearing they would notice the intruders. But they didn't. It was as though they were just going through the motions. The singer kept singing, and the mourners - that is what they were - began keening, their wails high and desperate. All in all, it seemed more sad than frightening.

"Are they…" Lelianna breathed.

"I don't think they can see us," Ten said, hoping that by saying it out loud, it might be true,

"So not… undead in the… attack-everything-living sense?" Alistair asked, though his right hand had been on the hilt of his sword since they had entered the place.

"Well, that was what I was afraid of," Morrigan said, "Bu they appear to be doing much of what I saw them do yesterday. If I'm not wrong, they will get up and walk the galleries next."

"Perhaps we should leave before they start," Zevran said, clearly on edge.

"Way ahead of you!" Oghren called from further down the hall. Given how calm he had been amid all the creepiness of the ruins of Bownammar, to say nothing of the rest of the Deep Roads, he was incredibly on edge in this one. Shrugging, the rest of the group jogged to join him. He had reached the far corner of the building, where the extra daylight indicated there was either another door, or another hole in the wall.

It turned out to be the latter. One of the columns out the outer perimeter of the arcade had collapsed with the stones around it. Though… it appeared that what had been just the consequence of age and weather had been helped along by hands of some variety, making a hole of a size that an average-sized human man could fit through. This meant that everyone in the group could, though Morrigan had to duck a little bit, and Sten a lot, and they found themselves looking over the lake from the southeast side. From this angle, the ruin was situated on a low cliff, probably less than fifteen feet, over the water, overshadowed by the remnants of a balcony above, still supported by weathered but sturdy-looking columns. There was about three feet of space between the columns and the cliff's edge. Ten walked out to see if there was any easy way up them.

"I thought you said it was a wall," Ten said, crossing her arms. The column looked as though it had been carved out of a single piece of granite who knew how many years ago, and the erosion of the centuries had done nothing to provide handholds. Add that to the damned thing being a good twenty feet tall, she had no idea how she was going to get up there. Indeed… she had no idea how the original creators had gotten up there, though she acknowledged that perhaps some of the rubble in the atrium had been staircases at some point.

"It looked like one from the sky!" Morrigan said, "But it is certainly up there. I know this view."

"There's no space for a running leap," Ten said, "And this thing has no handholds. Even if Sten held me over his head, there's nothing to grab, and I don't think I can jump that high. Can you like… levitate me or something?"

Morrigan looked at her pensively. "I could conjure a gust of wind… it might be unpredictable, though."

"He could throw you," Lelianna said.

"What? No!" Ten exclaimed.

"She is correct," Sten said, who had joined Ten on the ledge and was assessing the situation. If you were to jump from my shoulders, I could lend you additional momentum, and you would likely clear the railing. I do request that you remove your boots."

"And if I don't clear the railing?"

"It will be embarrassing but not fatal," Sten observed.

"Just be glad you've finally come around to wearing trousers," Lelianna said.

Ten rolled her eyes and started unlacing her boots. It was certainly not the most dignified of plans, but she had done worse.

"Well, there's our next book cover," Morrigan observed as Ten accepted a boost onto Sten's broad back, trying to be respectful as possible while essentially climbing him. She got one knee on his shoulder, then her other foot, and then stood, hand on the column for balance.

"You know, Morrigan, I think I may have misjudged you," Zevran observed.

"Don't finish that thought," the witch warned.

"All right. On three," Ten suggested, letting go of the side. She could see the lip of a wall around the balcony. She could at least get a grip on it if she didn't clear it.

She was not prepared for the force that a seven-foot-tall man could put underneath her. The closest she had come was the time when the favorite game of one summer was how far a team of two could hurl a payload of one off the easternmost dock, and Soris and Morran had decided without consulting her that Ten would be the payload. This time, though, the movement was upward rather than lateral, and a miscalculation would probably mean a broken arm at best. Fortunately she landed most of the way over, taking the brunt of the impact in the form of the rail across her abdomen, which knocked the wind out of her but otherwise did not hurt her. She managed to scramble all the way over to safety before lying back and hoping her lungs would remember how to work.

As it happened, they did. And she rose slowly to see that the balcony itself was in remarkably good condition, the only sign that it did not belong in an active hall of state the moss that grew out of every crevice between the flagstones. There were two doorways on the far side, though the doors were long gone, and they opened directly onto the second story of the arcade they had just walked through. Between them was an alcove like one that might house the statue of a martyr in a chantry building, but instead, set directly into the stonework, was a mirror, around two feet wide and six feet tall. At first glance, Ten could see her reflection in it, something she hadn't looked at in quite some time. Ugh, my dad would not appreciate me being dressed like this. Hips and buttocks usually swallowed up in full skirts were covered in surface but not in form by the deerskin trousers, and the leather waistcoat on top cared not for modesty, brazenly displaying where the lightning scar cut across her torso.

As she self-consciously re-tied her hair back, the reflection rippled as though on the surface of a pond, and she was looking into the dim light of a dusty attic. She wondered how Flemeth had gotten her hands on who knew how many of these devices. From what she had read, most were portable, creating a link between whatever two places one placed them, but this one seemed to be set right into the building, as though its creator could not even imagine a time when this was not an important place to go.

She took a breath as though she were about to jump into the river on a brisk autumn day and stepped into the mirror. She wasn't sure what she had anticipated, but she thought it would be something, perhaps a tugging on her body as it moved through the odd hole in the world or maybe the voice of the Maker in her ear telling her that this was definitely a sin. But it was nothing. It was like walking through a doorway. She had been on a balcony over a lake in the Brecilian Forest, she took a step, and she was the dusty and cluttered loft above a decrepit hut in the Korcari Wilds. She stayed still once both feet were on the floor, worrying that the crone herself was downstairs, doing whatever mysterious beings of dubious origin did with their spare time. However, the hut was silent except for the occasional gust of wind in the trees outside.

The chest Morrigan had referred to was, as promised, no more than a few feet away. Ten held her breath as she opened it slowly, visions of what horrors a witch of the wilds might keep there flooding her brain. But it looked to be mostly linens. A few winter cloaks, put away now that the weather was warming. And… stood up against the side, a leatherbound volume. Ten picked it up, examining the bindings and wondering if Morrigan had been serious about it being human skin or if she was just trying to be off-putting. She didn't see any tattoos or an errant ear or anything, though she supposed that a skilled tanner would not leave such a thing there. She close the chest, and clutching the tome close to her chest, stepped back through the eluvian.

Back on the balcony on the other side of the country, she stepped quickly to the side in case someone on the other end of the mirror could see her. Before she descended, she could not resist taking a peek.

The book was dusty, but not brittle. She flipped it open and found it was written in the common script, by a hand so ostentatious she could barely read the words for the flourishes. She flipped through, knowing full and damned well that nothing in there was for her, though she paused at a page in the middle that had a full-page illustration of an arch-demon surrounded by some sort of aura. She had mostly satisfied herself when she turned another page, and a piece of paper within fluttered to the ground. It had been marking a page or two after the archdemon's portrait. She thought to replace it, when a word on the paper jumped out at her. This was surprising, as the script was Elvish and she read it even more abysmally than she spoke it. But she knew this word, the first one she'd learned to write.

It was her name.

She squinted at the rest of the letters, putting together sounds but only a few of them coalescing into words with meanings in her mind. She folded the note quickly and tucked it into her top, securing it between the leather and her right breast where it would stay put and nobody woud find it without her knowledge. Then she headed for the edge.

"Found it!" she called. She leaned over the edge, half worried that in the five or so minutes she had lost sight of her companions, something truly stupid had happened. She was wrong… well, at least nothing stupid had happened in terms of having awoken some ancient magic which is what she was worried about. Morrigan appeared, quickly followed by Sten. She tossed the book to Morrigan, who grunted as she caught it, and started climbing gingerly over the railing, going hand over hand to the lowest possible handhold before dropping. Sten got her under both arms to ease her to the ground, and she was a little bit proud of how smoothly the whole thing had gone.

Indeed, when they went to return, taking the other way around this time, conscious of the creepy dirge singing, Ten was starting to get nervous that nothing had really gone sideways yet and simultaneously trying not to question her good fortune. That is, until they realized that the trip back was largely uphill and thus would probably take longer than the trip there, and they had to get a move on if they were going to beat the sunset. This made for a tense, silent trip back to camp, but they did arrive before the sun had entirely hidden itself. Morrigan retreated to her tent immediately, all but salivating at the thought of the secrets hidden in the mysterious book. Ten waited a few moments until she was sure the witch was gone, and she went in search of Lanaya, taking the note she had found in the book out so it was not conspicuously sweaty when she asked her to translate it.

She found Lanaya sitting by her fire, much in the same place she'd been the previous night. She looked up as Ten's shadow fell across her, and cocked her head to the side, "Can I help you?" she asked. Her voice sounded different. She'd had a faint but definitely-there Denerim accent the previous evening. Now her tone was entirely neutral.

"Can you… translate something for me?"

"Um… all right?" she said, a little confused, "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

Ten shook her head quickly, also confused, "It's Teneira. We definitely had a very long conversation here the other night. Are you feeling all right?"

"I am sorry, Miss, but no we did not. I only just returned from a visit to Clan Aialuri this afternoon. I was there for two weeks. You're the Grey Warden, right? Everyone's been talking about you."

"You are Lanaya, right?"

"I am."

"But… all right, nevermind. I'm sorry to bother you."

"No, no," she said, "I can take a look." Lanaya picked up a twig from the ground and stuck it her mouth. Ten handed her the note. The end of the twig glowed with enough light to read by and Lanaya held up the note, her dark eyes roaming over the few sentences three or four times.

"You said your name's Teneira?" she said, her voice muddled by the twig between her teeth.

"Yes."

"Well it's addressed to you."

"I gathered that much."

"The rest of it's in a classical form of Elvish, I'm not… very familiar with it, but it's something like, 'Teneira, I know my silly daughter has sent you to steal from me. You did not steal. This is a gift. I hope you enjoy the book. It may be useful."

"Is it signed?"

"No… but…" Lanaya said. She rose and stood next to Ten so she could point something out, "This here isn't writing. It's a… symbol of sorts. An old one. It's not used anymore but in bygone days this one marks devotees to the goddess Mythal."

"The mother," Ten said instinctively, not sure where she had been storing that bit of knowledge, "Well, the old woman has a sense of humor, I see. Thank you, Lanaya." She took the note and put it back where it came from, and turned to leave. I will not be telling Morrigan about this.

"Who's it from?"

"It was left for me," said Ten, "By a human woman, actually, which is what makes it all the stranger."

"Before you go," Lanaya said, "You acted like we had met before."

"I thought we had," Ten said.

"What happened?"

"I… was here, last night. I thought I recognized you from Denerim, when we were children. We spoke about that."

"I was born in Highever," she said, "And I spent last night fifteen miles from here under an aravel with a nephew of Clan Aialuri's keeper and, no offense, but he was better looking than you."

Ten chuckled, "Well, I hope you had fun. Keep an eye on your boss, yeah?"