The Stolen Throne

Rowan glanced at the rot on the walls, looking nauseated. “Should we be worried . . . about disease? The darkspawn spread some kind of sickness, don’t they?”

“They taint the land around them with their very touch,” Katriel spoke in a hushed voice. “We’re seeing it now, on the wall and everything else here. We are in their domain.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Maric said lightly. “All we need is a dragon to come along now, to really top off our day.”

Loghain snorted. “You insisted on coming down here.”

“So now it’s my fault, is it?”

“I know whose fault it isn’t.”

“Great!” Maric shrugged. “Just throw me at the darkspawn, then, whenever they show up. The rest of you can get a head start while they gobble me up.”

Loghain hid his amused smile. “Nice of you to offer. You have been getting a little chubby these last months. There’s more of you to eat, I’ll wager.”

“Chubby, he says.” Maric laughed lightly, looking toward Katriel. “If they ate him, they’d choke on the bile.”

“Hey, now,” Loghain complained without heat.

“There is no ‘hey, now.’ You started it.”

Rowan sighed. “You two are like such little boys sometimes, I swear.”

“I was just offering up a very reasonable—” His words were cut off as a new sound came from far ahead in the passages, a soft and unnatural rasping sound. Like many things awakening in the darkness, like many things slithering gently over the rocks. They all spun and stared ahead into the shadows, rooted to the spot.

The sound was gone as quickly as it began, and they shuddered.

“On second thought,” Maric muttered, “don’t throw me to them.”

Their weapons out and ready, they edged forward carefully. It was not long before they came to an area where much of the passage walls had collapsed, revealing caves beyond. There were more underground passages than the ones they walked in, it seemed. Everything was coated in black fungus, and the smell grew increasingly more potent, more rancid. Dead maggots littered the floor amid bones and pieces of armor.

The skeleton of a dwarf lay against the wall. He still wore a rusty breastplate and a large helmet that covered most of his skull. It seemed as if he had merely sat down to rest, or to contemplate his death in these roads so far from his home.

“What’s that?” Maric said curiously, approaching the skeleton. These were the first bones they had seen so far that actually indicated that anything other than monsters had once moved through these passages. Katriel wondered why the body would have been left undisturbed, if it had died here. There seemed to be no shortage of creatures in these parts willing to feed on corpses. Or that was her assumption.

“Be careful,” Katriel warned him. “The Veil is thin in places like this, and it could attack you.” Wherever there had been a great deal of death the Veil became thin, allowing spirits and demons to cross over from their realm. They hungrily possessed anything alive, or that had once been alive. This was where tales of walking corpses and skeletons had come from, spirits driven mad to find themselves in a body devoid of the life they craved. She had never seen one herself, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

Maric slowed his approach and poked the skeleton’s helmet carefully, and exhaled in relief as it did nothing. Then, his eyes squinted curiously as he noticed something strange. He moved to look where the dwarf’s right hand was covered by several large rocks and gingerly stuck his own hands in between them and tried to pull something out.

“You need help?” Loghain offered.

“No, I think I—” Maric suddenly stumbled back as the rocks gave way. The skeleton toppled over, the helmet falling loose and rattling loudly on the ground, and most of the bones crumpled under the weight of the old armor. Maric fell backwards, his hands coming up with a longsword that he waved about while trying to get his balance.

Loghain darted forward, ducking under Maric’s inadvertent swing and catching him. “Careful, there,” he said with annoyance.

Maric was about to reply, but when he held up the longsword he had pried from the stones, he became enraptured with it instead. The entire weapon was a pale ivory hue, the hilt wrought with gentle curves and the blade inlaid with brightly glowing runes. It was untouched by rust, and the blue glow from the runes was almost brighter than the light from their torches. Maric swung it about gently, his eyes wide with awe.

“Andraste’s blood,” he swore under his breath. “It’s so light! Like it weighs nothing!”

“Dragonbone,” Katriel said without hesitation. She could tell from the hue, as well as from the fact that it contained so many runes. Enchanters claimed that certain metals held the magical runes far better than others, and dragonbone best of all. It was why the Nevarran dragon hunters were said to have hunted dragons nearly to extinction ages ago. The value of such a sword was incalculable.

Rowan’s brow furrowed. “And why was it just sitting there? Why wouldn’t these darkspawn have found and taken it?”