They entered through the side aisle, past the quartermaster’s tent. The ruined temple lost most of it’s roof long ago. Pine grew through broken arches and vaulted ceiling segments, their trunks black against the darkening sky. Through the gaps between columns and trees, Emma could see a watchtower on the other side of the fortress, glowing with interior light.
“The more I hear about this Joining,” Jory said as they assembled in the circle, “the less I like it.”
“Are you blubbering again?” Daveth’s sharp tone sparked on density of the air.
“Why all these damned tests? Have I not earned my place?”
“Maybe it’s tradition,” Daveth said. “Maybe they’re just trying to annoy you.”
Duncan stood before them near a simple wooden stool. A silver chalice rested on it. The veil around it thinned and rippled.
“I only know,” Jory continued, “If they had warned me… it just doesn’t seem fair.”
Alistair stood next to Duncan. His eyes moved across each recruit, briefly lingering on her. She looked back at him and inclined her head toward the supernaturally precarious cup.
He looked away, idly shifting toward her by a fraction.
“Would you have come if they’d warned you?” Daveth asked. “Maybe that’s why they don’t. The Wardens do what they must, right?”
“Including sacrificing us?”
“I’d sacrifice a lot more if I knew it would end the Blight.”
“But we don’t know that,” she said.
Daveth turned to her, surprised. “Don’t we? The Grey Wardens have saved the world before. They know better than anyone what it takes.” He turned back at Jory. “Wouldn’t you die to protect your pretty wife from them?”
Jory’s hand settled on his sword hilt. “I’ve never faced a foe I couldn’t engage with my blade.”
“At last,” said Duncan, and the murmuring stopped, “we come to the Joining.”
“The Grey Wardens were founded during the First Blight, when humanity stood on the verge of annihilation.” His voice echoed from the crumbling stone, even now amplified by designs for ceremony. “So it was: they drank of darkspawn blood and mastered their taint.”
Daveth made a small, disbelieving sound.
Jory gaped. “We’re… going to drink the blood of those… those creatures?”
“As we did before you. This is the source of our power.”
Emma’s vision narrowed. Of course. The secrecy. The evasions. It had always pointed here.
“Those who survive,” Alistair said quietly, “become immune. We can sense the darkspawn. We can slay the archdemon.”
She had suspected. She shouldn’t have waited for confirmation, shouldn’t have followed them here. There were too many eyes on her now. It was too late.
“And if we’re not sure about this?” Emma asked. She wanted to run, to fight. She willed her hands stay loose.
Duncan’s non-expression didn’t change. “Since the beginning, the Grey Wardens have been charged with finding those who are strong enough to attempt the Joining, for the good of all.” He paused with priestly gravitas. “Not all who drink the blood will survive. Those who do are forever changed. This is why it is a secret. It is the price we pay.”
The feeling in her hands, her arms, left her.
“We speak only a few words,” he continued, “but these words have been said since the first. Alistair, if you would?”
Alistair’s voice became formal and rehearsed. Strange. “Join us, brothers and sisters. Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us as we carry the duty that cannot be forsworn.” He paused. “And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten. And that one day we shall join you.”
Duncan presented the cup. It smelled of rot and copper and something else, something wrong that made Emma’s sinuses scream.
“Daveth,” he said. “Step forward.”
Daveth obeyed. He took the chalice, glanced into it, and drank. He swallowed hard and steadied himself as he set the cup onto the stool.
He blinked. And almost smiled.
Then his face twisted, his eyes rolled back. He collapsed, back arching, seizing, fingers clawing at nothing as he choked. The sounds of death weren’t quite human.
Then nothing. Utterly still.
Emma was struck with contradictory impulses: Step forward to help him. Step away to flee. Her legs felt distant.
Nobody moved to help.
She looked to Duncan, watching patiently. Then Alistair, who’d paled to a pitiful expression.
“Is he—” she started.
“We shall know soon,” Duncan said, turning to the next man. “You, Jory, are next.”
“Maker’s breath!” Jory stumbled back. “This is madness,” His knuckles were white on his sword. “I have a wife. A child on the way. You can’t ask me to—”
“I’m not asking.”
Jory’s sword cleared half its sheath when Duncan moved to end him in one stoke, too fast to follow. Jory made a wet, surprised sound, looking down at the gash in him, then up at his murderer.
He dropped face-down onto the bloody temple floor.
“I am sorry,” Duncan said. “But the Joining is a secret we guard with our lives.”
Emma couldn’t help but to step away. Her hand shot to her staff. Duncan calmly glanced at her, then wiped and sheathed his blade. Unthreatened.
Daveth lay near on the ancient stone.
“I am sorry for Daveth, as well.” Duncan kneeled there next, checking. Then he stood, looking at her. “But the Joining is not yet complete.”
He offered her the chalice, gold interior reflecting the firelight. As she grasped it, time slowed. She counted twelve facets of the cup and base, eight ribs of the stem.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said.
The metal was cold. The blood was warm. That felt backwards, somehow. Everything about this felt backwards—poisoning dressed as honor, death as duty.
“I do,” Duncan said. “And so do you.”
She tipped it back.
It coated her throat, thick and foul. Her attempt to swallow aborted as her stomach lurched. She kept swallowing.
“From this moment forth, you are a Grey Warden.”
When she lowered the cup, Duncan was nodding.
Then the pain came like fire in her veins. Emma’s knees buckled. The world tilted. She felt herself make a sound, but couldn’t hear it.
The floor rushed up to meet her and vanished. She fell through broken stone arches into darkness. Into something vast and writhing and hungry. Thousands of voices, all calling, wanting, desperately reaching.
An Old God answered them, exhaling corruption through long and horrible fangs.
It was skeletal under layers of decay and barbed plating, neck overextended and serpentine, whipping back as it roared.
Then: drums. A heartbeat. Something else’s. Something enormous.
And one single, awful note. Old and terrible singing into the deepest places of the world.