The Stolen Throne

They were inside the building, the dome barely visible high overhead. It was gutted, full of piles of rubble and stone that might have been crumbled walls or furniture that had fallen to dust. He could see long terraced steps that led down into the lower, center part of the chamber directly under the dome. Had this been a forum once? A theater? Maric had heard once that the dwarves held fighting matches called “provings,” matches where warriors battled for honor and glory. Perhaps this had been a proving ground? It didn’t seem large enough.

Katriel lay nearby, her shoulder bandaged. She was nearly coated with black dust, turning her blond curls oily and dark, though someone had clearly taken pains to wipe her face. They were all coated with the same dust, he noticed, and it seemed to be layered unevenly over any part of the room that was near the gaps in the walls or the windows. Outside it looked far worse, like a sea of blackness with dust hovering in the air like a cloud.

The quiet was near absolute, almost muffled like on the first day after a snowfall. All Maric could hear was the sound of trickling water somewhere nearby. He couldn’t place it due to the echo, but it was very clear.

“There is water in here, believe it or not,” Loghain commented. He seemed satisfied at the size of the fire and sat back, wiping the smears of soot on his face once again. “There is a large basin in the back,” he pointed toward an area on the far side of the room where the wall was more crumbled than elsewhere, “that seems to generate fresh water on its own. It was turned over, and had made a creek.”

“Magic, obviously,” Rowan offered. “But it’s fresh. Too bad we can’t take it with us.”

“How long has it been?” Maric croaked, pulling himself up to a seated position. Rowan reached out a hand to steady him, but relented when she realized he was fine. “How did we get here?”

“I was able to drag you in before it really started coming down.” Loghain grunted. “And then I passed out. I don’t know for how long. It’s impossible to tell time down here.”

“Those spiders could come back.” Rowan shivered.

“Yes, they could.” He turned away from the fire and faced Maric, his expression serious. “We shouldn’t stay here too long. If there’s a way to get back onto the road to Gwaren, we should find it. Soon. We’ll need to carry Katriel if we have to.”

“Or we could leave her,” Rowan said quietly, looking at no one.

“Rowan!” Maric said, shocked.

She glanced at Loghain, who grimaced and looked distinctly uncomfortable. But he did not turn away. Maric looked from one to the other, saw the way they were sitting together, facing him, a united front. They had been discussing this. While he had been unconscious, they had talked about leaving Katriel.

“Are you actually serious?” he asked, his shock slowly giving way to outrage. “Leave her? Because she’s injured?”

“No, it’s not that,” Rowan said firmly. She held up a hand to stop Loghain from joining in. He frowned but complied. “Maric, we don’t think it’s wise to trust her.”

“What are you saying?”

“We’re saying there’s a lot of things that don’t add up. You can’t say that this is the same woman who we found screaming for help in Gwaren.”

Loghain nodded. “I was willing to accept her as a messenger, even one of Arl Byron’s agents . . . but these skills she’s shown, the knowledge she possesses. This is no simple elven servant, Maric.”

Maric stiffened, feeling his anger growing. “And even if she isn’t, why is this a bad thing?”

“Maric . . . ,” Loghain said uneasily.

“She came to my defense,” Maric insisted, “when she could just as easily have helped those soldiers kill us. She’s offered her knowledge freely, when she could just as easily have led us into the usurper’s hands.” His eyes narrowed. “What is it, exactly, that you think she’s done?”

“I don’t know that she’s done anything,” Loghain said truthfully. “All I know is that she makes me uneasy.”

Rowan took a deep breath. “Consider that you may not be very objective about her, Maric,” she stated evenly.

Maric paused, taken aback. And then he saw the hurt pride in Rowan’s eyes. She was trying to hide it, but it was obvious even to him that she wanted to be anywhere other than here.

She knows, he realized. It made sense now. The day before they had embarked at Gwaren, the way she had looked at him so expectantly, and when he had asked her about it, she had stormed off. The anger. The slap.

“Oh,” he muttered, his anger quickly dissolving. He had practiced a hundred times how to tell Rowan about Katriel, and it figured that when it happened, it would be like none of those times. He had wanted to tell her. He had wanted to say that Katriel made him feel capable, he didn’t have to prove anything to her. But how would that sound? It wasn’t that he felt the need to prove himself to Rowan, exactly. She had known him as a child, she knew his every fault and his every mistake better than he did. He loved Rowan, it was simply . . . different.