But no. He had survived, watching her with his unsettling, faintly glowing eyes, a bemused smile pulling at the remaining flesh on his cheeks. His hood had fallen back, revealing a surprisingly robust mop of dark hair. But that was about all of him that could be described as robust.
“Thanks for popping by,” he said with a deepening smirk. “In a spot of trouble.”
Makasa crossed her arms over her chest, sticking out one hip. Galena cowered behind her, half covering her eyes. “You’re gonna stay in that spot, too.”
Valdread sighed, glancing about, perhaps trying to locate the parts of him that had landed farthest from the site of impact.
“Go back up the hill,” Makasa told the tauren. “I can deal with this alone.”
But Galena took a step right up next to Makasa and squared her shoulders, taking her hands away from her face, looking down at Valdread with clear eyes. “N-No. I was too afraid to do much of anything in the fight. I have to be braver now. I’ll stay with you.”
A little impressed, Makasa nodded, and down on the ground, still tangled in a bush, Valdread groaned and rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, this is all very touching, but I am, as you can see, in pieces. Tragic. And inconvenient. Oddly itchy, too. Would you mind lending a hand?” He chuckled, nodding toward his forearm, heaped in a puddle a few feet away. “Or two?”
Could he be serious? Makasa hardly believed the nerve of the man.
“No. Not today, Valdread; you’re not going anywhere,” she said.
Galena cleared her throat softly, drawing Makasa’s attention. “He did try to stop Malus from killing Taryndrella, did he not?”
Makasa squinted.
“And look what he got for his trouble,” Galena went on. “He didn’t need to say anything.”
It was Valdread’s turn to clear his throat. His eyes flicked away from them, and then back up to Makasa. His stare made her go cold all over. “And there is the small matter of me having one of the crystal shards. It fell out of your boy’s compass after it broke.”
Growling, Makasa darted forward, putting a foot over one of Valdread’s detached bones, threatening to snap it with her boot. “Where is it?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know? Go ahead, break it. Or you could take your foot off my femur, and we could be civilized. You know, come to an understanding.”
“Where. Is. The. Shard? Where is my brother?”
“Makasa …” Galena shook her head, slowly. But what did the druid know? She hadn’t been part of the group for very long, and even if she showed a real dedication to Drella, what did it matter? It hadn’t saved the dryad. Makasa wasn’t beholden to the tauren; she wasn’t really beholden to anyone but her brother. And she would be getting Aram back, no matter what.
“If you have a weak stomach, you can go back up the hill,” Makasa said icily.
Galena took a few steps toward the path, hands knit together with worry. Her eyes were so glossy, so nervous … Not strong enough for what has to be done, Makasa thought. They weren’t dealing with some weak-willed henchman. Valdread was dangerous, and treating him like a wounded bird just because he had taken a bad tumble was risky. Too risky.
“You fancy yourself a real tough one, right?” Valdread piped up. He no longer smiled, but regarded Makasa coolly, observing her like one might a butterfly pinned to a collector’s table. “Everyone else is just a little weaker, a little more naïve. They don’t see the world like you do. No, no, you’re the real deal, mmm? A real leader? Well, let me let you in on a secret I learned in SI:7. Assets are assets. No matter the unexpected places they come from. A good leader knows that.”
“A lecture? Bold choice.” But Makasa was more interested than she let on. SI:7 in particular was interesting. It wasn’t just Stormwind’s most elite covert force, but part of a memory that shimmered up to meet her from the long-ago past. Her mother had told her tales of the agents, told her that she had even gotten to know someone in the force, befriended him.
Valdread continued studying her, and now his sly way with words made even more sense. He was indeed dangerous, and no doubt calculating just what to say to change her mind. Curse him. It was working.
“Go ahead, girl,” he drawled, shrugging armless shoulders. “Walk away. Turn your back on an advantage and make the chances of failure just that much greater. Someone else will be along eventually, and they can put me back together. I’ve got nothing but time.”
His knowing smile turned her stomach.
“Unless I kill you,” she replied.
“Good luck with that. Truly. Come, this display is getting tiresome. Accept my help, and the shard, or walk away. Malus has the boy. I don’t know where he will take Aramar, but I do know how to fight him. And while you waste your time with me, the Hidden will not be so slow to act.”
Damn him. Makasa tossed up her hands, knowing she needed that shard. Knowing, deep in her gut, that Valdread was an asset. If nothing else, he knew the Hidden inside and out, and his insights could prove invaluable. Then there was his old SI:7 training. And his near invulnerability. It all stacked up in one direction, and Makasa swallowed her pride, and her disgust, bending down to pick up the femur she had been so ready to snap.
“Galena, help me gather these pieces up. Don’t let them touch. We’ll accept your help, Valdread, but on our terms.”
Urum should have been there, but they needed to put Drhla under the big tree in the valley, and soon. So said Mrksa, and everyone listened to her. Murky followed them down the long and winding path as the afternoon changed into evening. They had to move quickly, because Mrksa wanted to be back on the road to the Overlook before night came on. Murky wanted to help carry Drhla, but he wasn’t strong enough, and so he walked alongside the big piece of tent they had used to make a kind of bed, and he put one hand on it as they brought it down the hill to the pretty tree in the valley.
They all stood in a shape like the moon while Ukle and Mrksa lowered Drhla into the ground. It had taken Mrksa and Gluna almost two hours to make the hole, and they were dirty and tired, but still helped carry Drhla all that way. They were strong, he thought, and good frunds. Only good frunds would do something like that, work all day at making a big hole and still find the strength to do more.
For a while, nobody said anything. They all looked at one another, and Murky wondered what his frunds were thinking. In a way, he didn’t even know what he was thinking. Confusing. There was another hole, a hole in his heart, a space that he didn’t know how to fill. In his village, there were losses all the time. Nasty birds swooped in and carried off tadpoles. Sometimes humans attacked, or gnolls. That sadness was different. Looking at Drhla in the ground, watching as they poured dirt over her, Murky felt his eyes well with tears again.
Drhla had always been kind. Always listened. Not everyone listened to Murky. He was small and probably sounded strange to them, but he ought to be listened to. He ought to be …
Gluna stepped forward, then knelt. She took in a shaky breath and then put her big hands on the fresh mound of turned earth.
“I did not know you long, Taryndrella, daughter of Cenarius, but I’ll never forget you. You were my friend and my teacher. Earth Mother light your path.” She sprinkled something on the dirt and then stood, rubbing at her face.
Again, nobody spoke. Night was coming. Murky glanced around at his frunds and then took a long step forward, puffing out his chest.
“Drhla was one of the first dry skins to understand me,” Murky began, wishing it was easier to get it all out. “She always listened. I know I make some of you laugh, even when I don’t mean to, but Drhla didn’t laugh at me that way. She shared her fruit with me, even if I hated it. She sang me songs. She even knew murloc songs, but I’m not sure how. ‘Fish in the Stream,’ she sang that to me, and ‘My Favorite Pearl.’ Now who will talk to Murky?” He couldn’t say much more. He was going to cry again. “Now who will listen?”
Mrksa prodded Ukle, and the gnoll quickly nodded. “He say Drella good friend,
always listen and never laugh at him. He say she sing him special songs and he miss her. Hackle miss her, too.”
Close enough. Murky joined the others, and then felt Gluna put her big furry hand on his shoulder. He let it stay there; it even felt nice. Maybe Gluna would listen. Maybe Murky was not so alone after all.
Mrksa went to kneel by the mound of dirt, putting her palms on it. She didn’t say anything that Murky could hear, but he knew she was thinking hard, and that was just like saying something, only it was just for Drhla to hear. Murky hoped Drhla, no doubt mending her nets and eating a fish feast at the feet of the great tide gods, would hear what Mrksa wanted to tell her. It was only good things, he decided, because nobody could think bad things about their frund Drhla. Not even the strange dry skin in bits, who was their frund now, too, apparently.
When the afternoon was well and truly gone, and the air turned moist and the ground turned cold, they collected their things and started on the road toward the Overlook. The tauren dry skin had to wear the man in bits, Vldrrd, on her back, and that made Murky happy. He had never seen a dry skin adult carried that way, the way murloc tadpoles were transported when they were very young and useless.
Murky collected his mangled nets, determined to fix them at the Overlook. A murloc was nobody without their trusty nets.
He walked next to Mrksa, who was their leader, and sometimes mean. Maybe, he thought, if he was brave enough and protected her from the spiders on the path, then he would get to lead, too. Or at least, she would listen. They walked in silence away from the sight of so much terrible loss and pain, but it was hard to go. It was hardest to leave Drhla behind. When they were rounding the corner, about to lose sight of the camp and the grave, he paused, turning to look once more.
“Mrksa! Mrksa!”
She stopped, looking down at Murky as he grabbed her shirt and pulled, pointing and pointing with his spear. A beautiful tree grew, a new one, taller and more beautiful than the one just next to it, where they had buried Drhla.
“She heard us,” Murky told her. “She heard us speaking to her in her home among the tides!”
Ukle translated without being asked. “He say she hear us.”
They stood in a moon shape again, all of them in wonder, watching the stunning pink-and-purple tree grow and spread before their very eyes. Murky would never forget it, or the way those new, shimmering leaves started to fill the big hole in his heart.
Mrksa touched his shoulder this time, giving him a strange smile that he didn’t quite understand. “Mrgle, mrgle,” she told him. “I think she heard us, too.”
Traveling in a cramped leather pack on the back of a tauren druid was not exactly what Reigol Valdread had in mind when he bargained with the Flintwill girl. Humiliating. Untenable.
“Would you mind not bumping me so much? Blast, it’s worse than riding a kodo.”
“When did you chance to ride a kodo?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him.
Valdread snorted. “I served with Stormwind’s finest. I’ve done and seen much. Why, there was the time I came upon a tauren patrol in the moonlight …”
The druid listened intently while he launched into a story. Much of it was fabricated for her benefit, intentionally so—she was an easy target. Wide-eyed and desperate to make herself useful. He had heard her wailing over the dead dryad from his spot down in the valley, and listened to her berate herself for not doing more. It was almost moving, as was the quaint little ceremony they had done for the dryad, and the frog creature speechifying with as much pride as any priest of the Light. He had to admit, the vast tree that sprang like magic from her grave was rather impressive, a sight he would not soon forget.
He did truly regret the dryad’s passing. His intervention had not been mere theater. Even if she found him unnatural and dreadful (and really, who could blame her?), he enjoyed the chaos she brought to things. The unpredictability. There was no reason for her to throw herself in front of Ssarbik’s magic and save him, but she had. If nothing else, she amused him, and the world was darker and more cynical without her. A pity.
The druid, carrying him like some ridiculous baby, proved intriguing, too. She meditated by night to sense the best campsite, and feverishly consulted a pamphlet that hitched a ride in the same pack as him. Yet her slavish devotion to the book paid off. Their fire that night when they camped was warm and unwavering, and no creatures dared come near. Valdread, having no need for sleep or food, had decided to keep watch all night long.
The next morning, they continued toward Thal’darah Overlook unharmed, the roads mercifully clear, the weather sunny and dry. That was good. The last thing he wanted was to be humiliated and sopping wet. Or attached to a sopping wet tauren, of all things. Thankfully, the druid was far less pungent than other horned and furred tauren he had the displeasure of knowing.
“Is this to be my fate forever?” he asked the Flintwill girl as they climbed the hill east of Cliffwalker Post. “To be … luggage?”
“Patience,” she chided, smilingly smug. She was enjoying his predicament a little too much, he decided. “You gave us the shard, sure, but that’s just one step.”
“Difficult to take another step without legs.”
The shard, as it happened, had been lodged in the tread of his boot. It was a stroke of luck, or, if he were a more sentimental type, fate, that had led the glowing treasure to become stuck in the mud on his shoe as he tried to dissuade Malus from killing the dryad. Once Flintwill’s troop had collected up all of his parts, he told them to check the muddy tread of his right shoe, and like magic, the shard was there. The Flintwill girl kept it in her pocket, and he noticed her compulsively checking on it every few steps of their journey.
“We can regroup at the Overlook,” Makasa told him. “And we’ll figure out what to do with you there.”
“Splendid. I’ll just relax and enjoy the view until then.”
“Don’t be annoying,” she muttered.
“I’m far better company when I’m more man and less puzzle.”
The girl just rolled her eyes. “Yeah. I doubt that.”
Everything about her was irritatingly familiar. From her confident bearing to her deadly way with weapons. It reminded him of a woman he had dueled on the Makemba, that much he had told the girl, but it was more than that. He hadn’t just admired the woman for her skill in battle; she was also beautiful. Apparently the fierce woman had found him charming, too, though their companionship had lasted no more than a fortnight before she had moved on and he was forced to return to his duties.
He told the girl nothing. Trust was a two-way street, and he would need to play his cards carefully to get his parts back and attached to his body. He was under no obligation to remain with this motley assortment of adventurers, though he felt certain they would lead him to Captain Malus and Ssarbik, to the revenge that he so desperately craved.
* * *
Makasa hadn’t realized how exhausted she was until they reached Thal’darah Overlook. Galena would have to explain to the druid master what had happened at the base camp, and why they had returned in the company of a dismembered, sentient corpse. It was a task she didn’t envy, and even alone in the room she had shared with Aramar at the inn, Makasa could feel the change that settled over the place once the news was heard. The march back from the base to the Overlook had taken days. Long, hard days. Makasa drew a bath and kept to herself, trusting that Murky and Hackle would keep watch over their prisoner—or, new traveler—while she got a quick rest in.
“Hackle club,” the gnoll had told her when she had Galena put Valdread down in his sack, resting him against a bench in the inn. “Dead man tell us all. Hackle club until he talk. No trust. He no friend. Hackle make talk.”
“No, Hackle,” Makasa had explained, waving her hands. “He gave us the shard. He’s not our friend, sure, but he’s … Well, he’s valuable. Don’t just club him over the head; he might be useful.”
And a small, stupid voice in the back of her
head insisted that there was much more than that. Personally much more. How had he known about the Makemba? Had he really dueled her mother? If so, Valdread would be interrogated, but not by Hackle and not with a war club.
“We need him alive,” Makasa told him finally. “For now.”
“Mrgle, mrgle!” The murloc had heard her loud and clear, taking his spear and standing guard, much to the amusement of Valdread, who eyed the frog creature with open curiosity and a wrinkled nose, perhaps due to the light fishy scent that followed Murky wherever he went.
Not that Makasa smelled any better after constant travel and conflict. An hour later, after settling her companions at the inn, she sat in the hot water of a bathtub, eyes closed, listening to the guards set their watch. As dusk fell, they began singing an eerie dirge that made the hairs on her arms stand up. Their sad, high voices filled the air, mourning Drella’s passing as wisps and fireflies filled the clearing. Makasa watched the glow bugs flicker outside the window, then dropped her head into her hands.
What should they do now? Everyone was waiting on her to decide. But all she wanted to do was go to Master Thal’darah and beg him to fix everything. She couldn’t, of course, and what, really, could he do? They didn’t have the means to re-form the Diamond Blade, and they didn’t have Aram, or even Drella. The scope of what they had to do, the vastness of it, made her want to crumble.
All the impossible decisions fell to her now. Not that it had been any different before—she was the oldest and most experienced of the group—but there was more pressure now. They were running out of time. How long would Malus keep Aram alive? What did he plan to do with him and the hilt of the Diamond Blade?
A light flickering on her bed drew Makasa’s eye. The shard. She left the tub and dried herself off, sitting on her cot in a warm sheet, holding the shard in her palm. It was warm to the touch, glowing faintly. That and Aram’s bag were all that remained of him. She set down the shard and picked up his things, riffling through until she found his beloved sketchbook. Opening it, a folded piece of parchment immediately tumbled into her lap. She read it, hands shaking with frustration as she reached the conclusion.
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