“I think that best,” Thrall said. As they came closer, he could see the small form better. He could not see her face, but her body was huddled tight, legs clasped to chest, red head bent over them. Every line of her screamed pain and devastation.
The bronze dragon landed some distance away, crouching so that Thrall could dismount.
“Come here when you are ready to depart,” she told Thrall.
“My hope is that Alexstrasza and I will be departing together,” Thrall reminded her.
Tick looked at him somberly. “Come here when you are ready to depart,” she repeated, and leaped skyward.
Thrall sighed, and glanced up at the peak, and began to climb.
“I hear you, orc,” she said before he had gotten halfway to where she sat alone. Her voice was beautiful but shattered, like a precious glass sculpture smashed by a careless hand: still glittering, still lovely, but in pieces.
“It was not my intention to sneak up on you,” Thrall replied.
She said nothing further. He finished the climb and sat down beside her on the hard stone. She did not even favor him with a glance, much less a word.
After a while, he said, “I know who you are, Life-Binder. I—”
She whirled on him then, her tanned, exquisite face furious, her teeth bared in a snarl. “You will not call me that! Ever! I bind no life, not anymore.”
Her outburst startled but did not surprise him. He nodded. “As you wish. I am Thrall, once the warchief of the Horde, now a member of the Earthen Ring.”
“I know who you are.”
Thrall was slightly taken aback, but continued. “And whatever name I call you by, it is you I have been sent to find.”
“By whom?” she said, her voice and face becoming dull again as she turned away to regard the empty, ugly landscape.
“By Ysera, in part, and by Nozdormu.”
The barest flicker of interest crossed her features, like something half glimpsed in deep water. “He has returned?”
“I sought and found him, as I sought and found you,” Thrall said. “There is much he has learned—much that he believes you need to hear.”
She didn’t reply. Hot air lifted her dark red locks and toyed with them. Thrall wasn’t certain how to proceed. He had been prepared for grief and anger, but this dull, deathly despair—
He told her what had happened until this point, trying to make it sound like a story. If he could rouse some interest, some curiosity—anything other than that horrible stone-still, pallid death mask expression she bore—he would feel heartened. He spoke of Ysera, and the fire elemental who had tried to destroy the ancients. The wind blew, hot and cruel, and still Alexstrasza sat as unmoving as if she had been carved from stone.
“The ancients spoke,” Thrall continued. “Their memories are becoming confused. Someone was damaging the timeways.”
“I know this,” she replied bluntly. “I know the bronzes are concerned about it, and they are enlisting the aid of mortals to correct it. You tell me nothing new, Thrall, and certainly nothing to inspire me to return.”
Her words and voice both were venomous. There was hate in them—but hate, Thrall knew, that wasn’t directed at him. It was directed at Alexstrasza herself.
He pressed on. “Nozdormu believes that many things are connected. They are not separate occurrences. All the terrible events the Aspects have suffered—the mysterious attacks of the infinite dragonflight, the Emerald Nightmare, even the madness of Deathwing and Malygos—Nozdormu senses a pattern in it all, a pattern of attack hammering at the Aspects and their flights. An attack designed to wear them down and defeat them—perhaps even cause them to turn on one another.”
A soft murmur. “Who would wish such a thing, even if it were true?”
Thrall was encouraged by even this faint sign of curiosity. “Nozdormu needs more time to figure it all out,” he answered. “For now, he suspects the infinite dragonflight is at least somewhat involved.”
A silence. “I see.”
“He asked me to find you. To—to help you. Help you heal.” It was difficult, and humbling, to believe that he, a simple orcish shaman, was in a position to heal the Life-Binder herself—perhaps the greatest healer there had ever been. He half expected her to scorn the offer and dismiss it, but she remained silent. He continued.
“If you can recover, many other things will be healed as well. Together we can go to the Nexus, speak with the blues, and help them find clarity. Then—”
“Why?”
The question, asked simply and bluntly, left him without words for a moment.
“Because … it will help them.”
“I ask again: Why?”
“If they are helped, then they can join with us, and we can find out what’s going on. And once we understand that, we can set it right. We can fight the Twilight’s Hammer cultists and defeat them. Figure out what the infinite dragonflight’s motives are. Stop Deathwing once and for all … and save this world, which even now is being ripped to pieces.”
She stared at him, her eyes boring right through him. For a long time she said nothing.
“You do not see,” she said at last.
“What don’t I see, Alexstrasza?” he asked very gently.
“That none of this matters.”
“What do you mean? We have information; we know this is part of a huge, complex plan that has been going on perhaps for millennia! We might be able to stop it!”
Alexstrasza shook her head slowly. “No. It doesn’t matter. None of it. It doesn’t matter if everything is interconnected. It doesn’t matter how long this has been going on. It doesn’t even matter if we can stop it.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending.
“The children,” she said flatly, “are dead. Korialstrasz is dead. I am dead in all ways but one, and that will soon happen. There is no hope. There is nothing. Nothing matters.”
Thrall suddenly felt the heat of anger. He still felt the loss of Taretha as a quiet ache in his heart. Her loss was a necessary one, if all was to be as it should be. But he would miss her, now and always. He thought of how she burned to make a difference, to matter. She had felt there was little she could do, but she had done all she could. The Life-Binder could make differences on a scale that Taretha could not even comprehend, yet she preferred to stay here and insist that nothing mattered.
Things did matter. Taretha mattered. Azeroth mattered. Despite what she endured, Alexstrasza did not have the luxury to wallow in her pain.
He pushed back his anger and tempered it with the compassion he truly did feel for her. “I am sorry for the loss of the eggs,” he said. “To have lost most of a generation—truly, I cannot imagine your pain. And I am sorry for the loss of your mate, especially in such a manner. But … I cannot believe that you would turn your back on those who need you,” he said, anger creeping into his voice. “You are an Aspect, for ancestors’ sake. This is what you were made for. You—”
She sprang from a sitting position straight up into the air with a speed that was almost faster than his eye could follow. A heartbeat later, a giant red dragon hovered over him. The fine gray dust of the dead land was stirred up and covered Thrall’s skin and robe, causing his eyes to water. He leaped to his feet and stepped back quickly, wondering what would happen next.
“Yes, I was made,” Alexstrasza said, her voice deeper, harsher, and full of anger and a blistering bitterness. “Made into the Life-Binder without truly understanding what was being asked of me. And what is being asked of me is no longer bearable. I have sacrificed, and given, and aided, and fought, and my reward is more pain, more demands, and the death of all I hold dear. I do not wish to kill, but I will, orc, if you trouble me further. Nothing matters! Nothing! GO!”
He tried one more time. “Please,” he said, “please consider the innocents who—”
“GO!”
Alexstrasza reared back, beating her wings to keep herself aloft and opening her enormous, sharp-toothed maw, and Thrall f
led. A sheet of billowing orange-red flame charred the stone where he had been sitting. He heard her drawing breath again and half ran, half fell down the side of the jutting peak.
A roar filled the heavy air. It was a mixture of anger and anguish, and Thrall’s heart ached for the grieving Aspect. He wished he had been able to find some way to reach her. The thought of her dying here, alone, from lack of food and water and most of all from a broken heart, pained him. He regretfully imagined travelers one day coming across her bones, bleached and old like the other skeletons that dotted this landscape.
He slipped and slid the rest of the way and, bruised and with a heavy spirit, trudged to where Tick had said to meet her. The dragon wheeled above him for a moment, then landed and regarded him sadly.
“Where shall I bear you, Thrall?” she asked quietly.
“We go to the Nexus, just as we planned,” Thrall said, his voice ragged. “We go to convince the blues to unite with the other flights, as Nozdormu asked.”
“And … we go alone.”
Thrall nodded. “Alone.” He glanced back at the shape of a great red dragon, her wings beating erratically, her body contorted as she threw back her horned head. Perhaps, if she saw what the others were doing, her heart might yet be moved. “For now.”
Yet even as they flew northward, over the sound of Tick’s beating wings, Thrall could hear the bitter, roaring grief of a broken Life-Binder.
Like a shadow stretching out across the land at twilight, something dark lifted up from the hollow in which he had concealed himself. Far enough away so that he would likely not be seen, but close enough to keep the quarry within range, King Aedelas Blackmoore, perched atop a twilight dragon, followed.
The wind blew back his long, black hair. His face was, if cruel, not unhandsome. A neatly trimmed black goatee framed thin lips, and his blue eyes snapped beneath elegant black brows.
After the first effort, Blackmoore had decided not to follow Thrall through the timeways. It was too tricky; the odds of his prey eluding him and leading him on a futile chase were too high.
Better to wait, and bide his time, and be where he knew Thrall would eventually have to appear.
Thrall. He had heard enough about Thrall to want to dismember the orc with a paring knife. Thrall, who had slain him, whose mere existence had caused Blackmoore to continue down the path of a pathetic, drunken coward. Thrall, who had led an army of orcs against Durnholde. No, it was quite the joy that lay before him. The victory would be even sweeter, given what a challenge the greenskin actually was.
Fly away, orc, he mused, his thin lips curling in a smile. Fly, but you cannot flee.
I will find you, and I will slay you. And then I will help destroy your world.
THIRTEEN
Thrall had to admit to himself that he was uneasy about approaching the blue dragonflight in its own lair. Exposure to the great leviathans had in no way lessened their majesty in his eyes. Indeed, the more he learned of dragons, the more impressed he became. Green, bronze, the mighty yet heartbroken Life-Binder, who was arguably the most powerful dragon in all of Azeroth—even the least of them could destroy him with a single tail swipe or crush him beneath a clawed foot.
They had impressed him more than physically as well. Their minds were not those of the “shorter-lived” races, as they termed them. They thought on a larger scale, and no matter how long he lived, Thrall knew he could only grasp the merest fraction of their complexity: Ysera’s dreaminess even as the Awakened, seeing things no other being had or ever could; the weaving of a life in Nozdormu’s scales; the aching pain of one who held the world’s compassion in her heart. …
Now Thrall and Tick were heading directly for the dragonflight that had recently caused so much harm—whose Aspect had been chosen to be the guardian of arcane magic in the world. Malygos had gone mad, and then, fearfully sane, had done worse things than he had ever done in the grasp of his insanity. Thrall had not walked in the Emerald Dream, but he had exchanged jokes with Desharin. He had done his best to help Alexstrasza, huddled and broken. He had been able to enlighten the Timeless One.
But the blues …
No love of the “lesser races” had they, this flight—masters of arcane magic, living in climates as blue and white and cold as they themselves were said to be.
He chuckled ruefully as he anticipated the meeting. “Perhaps I should have just stayed home,” he said to Tick.
“Had you done so,” Tick mused, “then this timeway would have been altered even more, and you would have created yet more work for my brethren.”
It took Thrall a moment to realize that while in a way the bronze was serious, she was also attempting humor. Thrall laughed.
The blue-gray of the frigid ocean beneath them, which was all Thrall had been able to see for much of the journey, gave way to white and gray cliffs. Thrall had seen many impressive sights in his day, but the Nexus came close to topping them all.
Blue, it was all blue, with shades of silver and white here and there. Several flat disks hovered in the air, spaced around the Nexus itself. As Tick flew closer, Thrall could see that these disks were platforms. Their flooring was ornamented with glowing, inlaid sigils, and on a few of them were beautiful crystalline trees, their branches seemingly made of ice and leafed with frost.
The Nexus itself seemed to comprise many levels, each one connected to the one above by magical strands of arcane energy. It was, all in all, one of the most beautiful things Thrall had seen. Several dragons were lazily circling, their bodies in all shades of cerulean, aquamarine, or cobalt.
Thrall and Tick were spotted almost at once, of course, and four blue dragons broke away from their brethren and approached. Their challenge was not issued to the orc but rather to the mighty bronze dragon. Thrall was, for the moment, utterly ignored.
“We greet our bronze sister,” one of them said as they flew in an apparently casual but nonetheless intimidating loose circle around Tick. “But the Nexus is not a timeway for you to explore. Why have you come to our sanctuary? No one invited you here.”
“It is not I who come to you but this orc whom I bear,” Tick said. “Nor is it I who send him this way. He was sent first by Ysera the Awakened, and then by Nozdormu the Timeless One, to this place. His name is Thrall.”
The blues exchanged glances. “For a short-lived being, he comes heralded,” one said.
“Thrall,” another said, as if trying to recall. “The warchief of the Horde.”
“No longer,” Thrall said. “I am but a shaman working with the Earthen Ring now, in an attempt to help heal a world brutally wounded by Deathwing.”
For an instant he wondered if that was the wrong thing to say. Instantly the blues looked angry, and one of them darted off and wheeled before returning, visibly needing to calm himself.
“That traitor would have seen all of our flight destroyed,” one of them growled, his voice as cold as the blue ice he so resembled. “We will bring word of your coming to the others. Tarry here until we bid you approach closer or order you to leave.”
The blues dove off, azure shapes against a dark blue and lavender sky. To Thrall’s surprise, they did not alight on one of the floating tiers of the Nexus but instead flew downward, to the ice and snow below.
* * *
Kalecgos sighed. Here we go again, he thought, gazing at the icy ceiling that arched above this cavernous meeting hall.
The blue flight had done a great deal of talking, and more arrived daily at the Nexus to augment their meager number, but he did not feel that any solid conclusion had been reached.
Most agreed that the timing of the conjunction between the two moons was auspicious, if nothing else. One or two had dug up ancient spells they had wanted to try that, upon further investigation, had been proved inadequate. So far, it did seem that the blues were more than content with “anointing” one of their number during what was sure to be a visually stirring astronomical moment, but there was no real emotion behind it, no real sense
that this was the single right thing to do.
Arygos was holding forth on his bloodline and how being the son of Malygos really did mean that, all things considered, he was the best choice. Kalec had heard this before, and was too disheartened to interrupt. He glanced out as two more blues approached, and frowned, his interest piqued.
These were not more newcomers to the Nexus but rather two of the Nexus’s protectors. They landed beside Arygos, interrupting that dragon in his speech, and spoke quietly to him.
Arygos looked angry. “Under no circumstances!” he said harshly.
“Narygos,” Kalec called, “what is it?”
“Stay out of this,” Arygos said quickly. To Narygos he said bluntly, “Kill him.”
“Kill whom?” demanded Kalec, ignoring the implied warning and moving quickly to Arygos and the others. “Narygos, what has happened?”
Narygos glanced from Arygos to Kalec, then said, “There is a stranger who comes to speak with us. He is one of the lesser races. An orc, once warchief of what is known as the Horde: Thrall. He and the bronze dragon who bears him insist that both Ysera and Nozdormu have sent him to us.”
Kalec’s ears pricked up. “Nozdormu? He has returned?”
“So it would seem,” said Narygos. Kalec turned a stunned gaze to Arygos.
“Kill him?” Kalecgos repeated, loudly and disbelievingly. “One whom two Aspects have sent to us? Borne atop a willing dragon?”
They were attracting attention from others now, and Arygos scowled.
“Very well, then, do not harm him,” said Arygos. “But a member of the lesser races has no purpose here. I will not see him.”
Angry, Kalec turned to Narygos. “I will,” he said. “Bring him.”
“I would not care if the titans themselves brought him to us. I will see no short-lived being in our private refuge!”
Arygos was livid. He stalked back and forth, his huge tail twitching, his wings furling and unfurling in his agitation. Others had overheard the argument between the two and began to chime in.
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