But he did start. Aram let it come pouring out, but only what he knew wouldn’t frighten her too much or make her cry. He told her a lot about Hackle, and Murky, and how Makasa had started out as a foe and become a dear friend, a sister, even. And he described the Wavestrider, and Thalyss. He told her about taking the acorn into their care, and how, of course, even after Thalyss’s clear warning, he still managed to get it wet. And that led to Drella. Aram babbled on and on about the dryad, about her smile and her laugh, and the way their travels in the sun had covered her face in freckles the color of spring grass. He knew he sounded foolish, but maybe, just maybe, that would make his worried mother smile.
Aram left out Greydon’s death and their many brushes with danger. He didn’t mention the arenas they had battled in, or the shards, or Thalyss’s death, or Makasa nearly being carried off by a drake. Part of him wanted to avoid talking about Greydon, not just to spare his mother, but to spare himself. His hand shook over the page as he pictured his father’s face. Time did not heal all wounds. Even if that one had begun to heal, just thinking too much about Greydon made the scab easy to break. Skirting around Greydon’s whereabouts and death, he closed it with a promise.
I don’t know when I’ll be back, Mom, but I will return. Adventure is one thing, but Lakeshire is home. Tell Robertson and Selya I miss them, and Robb, too. Give Soot a big hug and an extra bone for me, all right? I love you, Mom, don’t worry about me; I’ve got good friends by my side and I know they’ll do everything they can to help me make it back to you.
That part was absolutely true. Aram tucked the letter back into his sketchbook, not knowing if or when he would send it. Then he glanced at his sister, Makasa, snoring away, her hands wrapped around her chain weapon even as she slept. He blew out the candle and settled down into the cozy mattress, listening to the wisps weave through the mountainous trees, their song like the whisper in the wind just before rain.
At first, it seemed as if Aram roamed the Charred Vale once more. Flames crept steadily at his feet, then grew, but soon the silence gave way to the shriek of splintering wood and the even harsher screams of men and women. Above him, a mast pierced through the smoke, the sail dancing with gouts of red flame. A ship. He was on a ship. Even feeling the tilted sway of a dream world around him, Aram’s heart raced. The Wavestrider and the rhythm of its hull over the waves remained a vivid memory, but now it was being eaten alive by fire.
Aram plunged into the disarray, watching figures emerge as they sought to fight the blaze.
“Water here! A bucket now, man! I need water!”
“We’re taking on too much water! We’re going down …”
The voices soared above the crack and pop of the fire. Aram shielded his eyes, tumbling from the captain’s quarters onto the main deck. He tried to make out faces of the crew, to see if this was a twisted vision of a memory or something more. Shadows flickered across the blaze that ate along the edges of the deck and then ignited the ropes secured to the mast. They snapped, whipping over Aram’s head as the shadows resolved into bodies.
Cannons boomed, echoing across the water. He heard the sneering, haughty call he knew so well. Malus. Captain Malus and his vicious crew were attacking. But then Aram watched the sail above float down, still glowing with cinders, and he felt, even in the dream, his mouth run dry. Those were not the colors of the Wavestrider. Did he know this ship? The bodies moving fretfully about the deck were small, he realized, too small … Goblins.
This was not the Wavestrider, then, but the Crustacean, the ship that had departed Gadgetzan, believed by Baron Noggenfogger to hold Aram and his friends. The misinformation had tricked Malus, leading him on a fool’s errand, chasing Aram on a ship he had never been aboard. But if this dream was real, if this was a true vision, then Malus had found the ship, and the Crustacean … Stars, it was doomed. Aram reached as a reflex for the crystal shard hilt he carried, forgetting that the blade was not yet complete. He was without a weapon. Helpless. Stunned. But the dream felt so real. He could all but taste the ash in his mouth …
The ship shuddered, thrown side to side by a sudden impact. The crew scrambled with buckets, and then, swords.
“To arms!” He heard the call go up. “We’re being boarded! Cut their ropes! Don’t let them take us!”
The Crustacean, prickly with still-burning fire arrows, lurched, beginning to sink, but not before Malus appeared, leaping aboard, jumping through the smoke and flames as if he were utterly impervious, a fire elemental made man. His vessel, a darkly menacing elven destroyer, must have found the Crustacean and set it ablaze to smoke out Aram and his friends. His cruel eyes gleamed, and he stroked the lapel of his coat, cutting down the nearest goblin with a casual swing of his sword. The boards under Aram’s feet shook, a pair of ogre sailors stomping by, hammers raised in defense of the Crustacean. Crossbow bolts from the boarding ship stopped them short, and Malus took a large step over one of their bodies, heading toward Aram as if Malus sensed him through the hazy reality of the dream.
Aram took a step back, but found himself surrounded by the hot and licking flames.
“Malus, Throgg fight for Hidden. Fight trolls and elves and humans. Not fight ogres. Not after Dire Maul. Not again.”
The voice, loud as the crack of the ships hitting together, sent Aram reeling back another few paces. Throgg, large as four men, with a gruesome horn jutting from his forehead and a spiked mace attached to his stump arm, batted aside a charging goblin as he stared down at the fallen ogres.
“Calm yourself,” Malus told the seething ogre. “We just need the compass and the sword hilt, then we can leave this wreck at the bottom of the ocean and be about our way.”
Aram watched Throgg toe one of the ogres onto her back and growl. He didn’t look pleased.
Crew from the Inevitable swarmed, chaos darkening the deck. Aram could hardly see through the haze of gray and blinding flash of the flames. Malus stalked closer, headed toward the cabins, but a sudden burst of fire sent him tumbling backward. He recovered, putting up a hand against a shower of glowing wood splinters. One caught in his hair, and he extinguished it with a curse.
“Where are they?” he muttered, eyes sweeping the ship. “If I chased this forsaken ship halfway across the sea for nothing …”
His crew reemerged from the cabins below and the captain’s quarters. The vision began to break apart, as if the fire had spread to Aram’s mind, burning away the sight of it all. In the end, he heard Malus screaming his frustration as the Crustacean sank, its crew lost to ash and fire or the merciless blades of the attacking crew.
“Not here. Not here.” Malus sounded half-mad, or perhaps completely mad.
But it wasn’t long before Aram couldn’t see him at all, and the red and gray of the massacre bled away, completely dark, and then unbearably bright. Light flashed so suddenly in front of Aram’s eyes that he feared he would be completely blinded.
And then he heard a voice, a familiar voice, one that had whispered into his dreams before. It filled him with warmth and resolve, but also a dread that couldn’t be named. It was a force of power he couldn’t quite understand, and so he couldn’t help but fear it, too.
It was the Light. It called to him.
“Fate has other plans for you,” the Voice of the Light said, gentle and resonant. “You have no need to fear.”
* * *
Makasa Flintwill was not the kind to sleep in. Even wounded, exhausted, and confused, that morning was no exception. She ate a bit of hard rations from her own pack and greeted the sun as it rose, tending to her weapons by a fire in the middle of the protected hilltop outpost. As she oiled her jerkin and sharpened her blades, she didn’t see any of it. Not really. Her mind was elsewhere, preoccupied with a dream of her own. One that had speared through her deep, dark sleep like a flashing blade.
A voice. A beautiful, terrible voice. In all her seventeen years, she had never heard anything like it. It was simultaneously as familiar and comforting as the w
ay her hammock rocked on the Makemba when she was just a child and still sailing with the Blackwater Raiders. When her siblings still surrounded her. When she didn’t think life was any more complicated than a sturdy set of boards under her feet and salt breeze in her hair. But the voice … it was also as cold as winter rain, as a sudden wound, as the crack of lightning over a stormy sea.
Above all, she didn’t trust it, and she didn’t like that it was speaking to her. Let Aram and Drella deal with all the upsetting mumbo jumbo of magic. It never appealed to her. There was power enough in a cunning eye and a trained sword arm. But now … Now she felt like the taint of magic had spread to her somehow. The voice wasn’t natural, and it spoke to her of things that felt true but also, not yet real.
Turn toward the Light, Makasa. The Diamond Blade. Aram is on the path, though you walk it with him. The shards must be reunited. Seven must become One. Look, Makasa, look into the Light.
Makasa had resisted, as if there was any hope of struggling against the voice. She suspected it was the same voice that had visited Aram in his visions, the Voice of the Light. Anything called the Voice of the Light ought to be a good thing, she reasoned, but somehow her heart quavered whenever she thought of it. But she knew who it was. And she knew what the Diamond Blade and the shards meant. When she relented, when she indeed turned toward the Light, she saw images, one after another, places she didn’t recognize and could barely even remember. Even as she sat by the fire, sharpening her blades, it gave her a raging headache to try and recall the places.
“Lot of help you are,” she muttered. “Can’t you just send me a map? A dream map?”
“Hi!”
Makasa started, dropping a small boot dagger and then catching it, nimbly, by the blade with two fingers. She spun it, glaring at Drella, who had bounded toward the fire with her usual glee radiating like sunbeams from every pore. The young dryad swung her arms from side to side, then stuck her pinky between her lips.
“Good morning,” Makasa finally bit out.
“You seem angry,” Drella observed, trotting closer and examining her weapons. Something about the way Drella so clearly admired Makasa’s chain and harpoon made her soften a little. Maybe it was time to trust, even just a little, since Drella had shown her ability to help the group and make them stronger. Makasa had worked on a ship crew, and trust—comradery—mattered.
“I am angry. I had … dreams. Bad ones. No, strange ones.”
“Want to talk about it? Thalyss always said it was better to get your feelings out in the open than to leave them twisted up inside. We could talk.” The dryad did a quick lap around the fire and then settled in beside her. “I am very good at talking.”
We noticed.
“Not right now, Drella, but … thank you. For the offer.”
It never hurt to be diplomatic, and while Drella certainly wasn’t Makasa’s favorite person on Azeroth, she knew it might not be long before they parted ways with her. Soon, Aram and Drella’s bond would be broken, and Drella would remain with the druids while the rest of them journeyed on to find the shards and complete the Diamond Blade. Certainly, Makasa could slap on a smile for the dryad until then.
Commotion at the front of the inn drew her attention away from Drella, and Makasa swiveled to find the tauren, Galena, all but sprinting toward them, braids flying, her smile overtaking every other part of her face. Behind her, left behind in a dust cloud of enthusiasm, was Aram, stumbling down the steps, groggy, a pastry in one hand, the heel of his other rubbing at his eyes.
“Good morning, Galena!” Drella cried. “You look so beautiful today. Does she not look beautiful, Makasa?”
“Sure.”
“You look lovely, too,” Drella added, leaning down to pat Makasa on the shoulder, a gesture that would’ve earned anyone else a swift slash of the blade. Instead, Makasa just flinched and stood to collect Aram. “And your blades are lovely, also! You always keep them so shiny; it really is admirable.”
“Good morning, Makasa,” the tauren girl said, waving. “And good morning, Drella. Are you ready to start our chores? Master Thal’darah needs at least a full basket of wild steelbloom blossoms for the first ritual.”
“Oh, how perfect! A morning spent in nature’s glory, is there anything better?”
Galena and Drella subsided into laughter, and Makasa sheathed her weapons, then not-so-gently took the tauren by the arm. Galena might have been taller, but she cowered, staring down into Makasa’s eyes with a trembling lower lip.
“You keep a sharp eye on her,” Makasa warned. “Wandering around in the woods? Just the two of you? I’ll have your hide if anything happens to Drella before the rituals are completed.”
“O-Of course,” Galena stammered. “I’m with the Cenarion Circle, Makasa, and I’m sworn to protect her already. Dryads are sacred to us. I w-won’t let anything happen to her. Besides, the guards will be close.”
“Good,” Makasa said. “That’s good. You make sure they’re close.”
Looking haunted, Aram reached the fire pit just as Galena and Drella departed. The two girls didn’t seem to notice him, but he definitely noticed them, his eyes trailing after Drella.
“I know you two are good friends,” Makasa said. “But your bond will be broken soon. Maybe you should keep some distance, make it easier on yourself.”
“And good morning to you, too,” he replied, ruffling his own hair and trying to pat it down into a reasonable state.
“It could just be rough on you,” Makasa said. “That’s all I meant.”
“Thanks. I mean, you’re probably right.”
She smiled wearily at that.
“You look tired. Bad night’s sleep?” he asked. “Couldn’t be worse than mine. My dreams lately have been so vivid. Too vivid.”
“Me too.” She nodded. “Dreams. Weird ones. Bad ones. Or … it was this voice, good and bad at the same time. It was like it made my teeth hurt or something, so powerful it was talking through me,” she explained. Normally, she would never divulge that such a thing had happened, but she knew strange things happened around Aram all the time, and more often than not he woke from dreams in a panic, as if they were as real as the pastry she had just stolen from his hand.
Aram squinted, shuffling toward a log near the fire. Aiyell’s owl soared overhead, calling out, then dipped to rip a field mouse off the dirt near the inn.
“What did the voice say?” he asked.
Makasa stood over him. “It spoke of the Diamond Blade. It tried to show me places, locations of the other shards perhaps, but it happened too quickly. It sounds like the visions you have.”
“Yeah,” Aram murmured. He looked … not afraid, but pouty. “It sounds like the Voice of the Light that talks to me, too. I didn’t think—” He shook his head for a moment, then met Makasa’s eyes. “I think it’s great. It must mean we’re on the right track. We just have to keep following the compass and find the remaining shards.”
She shrugged. “Right now we need to focus on finishing up here. Do you think we could go soon, leave Drella with them while they sever the bond?”
Aram shook his head, still working the inside of his cheek, put out. “No, Galena was telling me on the way down this morning they need both of us here for the ritual.”
“Splendid.” Makasa sighed. “Well, what can we do in the meantime, while they prepare the ritual?”
After a moment of staring into the fire, Aram pulled the sketchbook from the pack slung over his right shoulder and opened it. Makasa didn’t normally snoop, but she noticed a letter tucked inside. A letter.
“Are you planning on sending a letter? You know that’s dangerous, right? It could be intercepted, Aram.”
“It’s for my mother,” he said with a sigh. “She has to be so worried about me. I can’t leave her in the dark like this, Makasa; it just doesn’t seem fair. Besides, this is an outpost on the edge of a war. They must have a safe way to send messages. And if they do …” Aram trailed off for a moment; then
his eyes popped open. “Then maybe I could write to someone about my uncle. If he’s really alive, he might be able to help us.”
“That sounds risky.” Makasa shook her head, running her hand nervously over the hilt of her cutlass.
“You’re probably right, again. And where would I find him? I don’t even know where to start looking,” Aram finished the thought for her. Impressive, for a groggy twelve-year-old. “Besides, how long would it take to get a response? If we want to be out of here as quickly as possible, then I don’t think we can rely on some long shot like that.”
“Definitely not worth the risk,” Makasa said at once, feeling deflated by their lack of options. “Any advice on how to get that strange voice out of my head?”
Aram snorted and shook his head, then took up his pencil, turning to a clean page. “Sorry, sister, it’s not always fun to be the chosen one.”
Things were moving too fast. He already had enough on his mind with the unbinding ceremony approaching, and now he had to suffer visions of the Crustacean’s demise, and Makasa was receiving her own dream messages.
And then an idea, like a thorn, lodged itself in Aram’s mind. A thorn in a Thorne, he thought, turning his sketchbook to a clean page. Why had the Light been talking to Makasa? Had it lost all faith in him? Was that also why it had shown him the horrible vision of the Crustacean, to show him his failure? Would it sever its bond with him the same way he was about to be cleaved from Drella?
As these thoughts and more swirled about, he lifted his pencil. He desperately needed a way to clear his head.
He let his torrent of reflections sit for a spell, listening to the comforting crackle of the fire while he decided what to draw. His initial inclination was to sketch the outside of the Overlook, but that didn’t strike him as all that exciting. There was his copy of Common Birds of Azeroth, thanks to Charnas, and he briefly considered trying to re-create one of the many creatures within, but that idea fell flat, too.
The Shining Blade Page 4