Traveler

by Greg Weisman

  They circled Aram, surrounded him. Each one—and more—holding up his or her sliver of crystal. The crystals began to glow. The glow moved to the center, above Aram’s head. The Light became blinding. The Voice of the Light said, “Aram, Aram, use this good magic to save me …”

  Shaken, Aram turned away and hid his head …

  Aram opened his eyes abruptly, feeling decidedly like a failure for having turned away from the Light. Thalyss was watching him intently. Under the night elf’s gaze, the dream itself receded quickly, but that feeling of defeat and unfulfilled promise remained. He looked around the camp. It was quieter now. Plenty of snoring, but no laughter or shouting. The three ogres were still on watch, and four more sat around the fire, feeding its flames with more wood. It felt as if he had dozed off for only a few minutes, but the first glimmer of dawn was visible on the horizon.

  The druid’s eyes were clearly asking the boy if he was all right.

  Aram whispered, “I’m fine. You can sleep now, if you want.”

  There was a rough jerk on the rope, and Aram felt a slap across the back of his head. Aram and Thalyss looked over at Broadback. The ogre’s eyes were still closed, but he muttered, “No talking or the sack.”

  With dawn approaching, Makasa was already putting some distance between herself and the Gordunni, so that she wouldn’t be spotted. But she was yet close enough to see Aram abused again and to tell herself she’d definitely like to kill that broad-backed ogre.

  Come morning, Broadback’s ogres and their captives continued their trek northward. By late afternoon, they were marching uphill along a ridge. The path was narrow; the ogres now had to travel single file, yet this offered no opportunity for Thalyss and Aram’s escape. On either side, the trail was surrounded by massive thickets of wooden spikes—“thorns” unlike any Aram had ever seen before. It was now clear where all the region’s trees had gone. The spikes came in sizes ranging from a foot long to ten. Some were only as thick as his twelve-year-old wrist; others, he noted, were the diameter of an ogre’s not insubstantial waistline. And each and every one was sharpened to a dangerous point.

  Soon, the ridge widened—allowing two ogres to walk abreast in what had become a corridor between two high walls of the spikes. In addition, tall wooden guard posts—each manned by a single ogre—loomed above the trail at intervals. Aram and Thalyss exchanged a glance. Neither saw how Makasa could follow.

  Half an hour later, they passed two more guard posts flanking a massive wood-and-iron gate. Without slowing or speaking, Broadback signaled with a wave, and the gate opened. The raiding party passed through and emerged in twilight above a small valley surrounded by still more spikes. Colossal ruins were everywhere. What Aram had seen of Isildien from a distance was dwarfed by what he now beheld at close range: huge stones, shattered columns, grand edifices, the construction of which all but defied his considerable imagination.

  Despite their predicament, it was a breathtaking sight, and Aram—momentarily forgetting the injunction to remain silent—whispered an awestruck, “Where are we?”

  Instead of punishing the boy for speaking, Broadback seemed pleased by Aram’s wonder, stating with simple pride, “This Dire Maul.”

  Aram wondered how many other humans had seen this place. Or lived to tell the tale. He wished then he could halt their march and pull out his sketchbook. In fact, his hand involuntarily reached toward his back pocket before he stopped himself.

  Thalyss saw this and shook his head sadly. In Dire Maul, he saw something quite different from what Broadback or even Aram saw. What Thalyss witnessed was night elf glory brought low, majesty lost to ruin, with idiot ogres squatting everywhere and wild hyenas skittering about the shadows. He stifled a mournful sigh.

  They descended into the high valley.

  The Gordunni ogres were spread out across the valley of Dire Maul among stone edifices, most adapted from ancient ruins, others more recently and crudely constructed. Off to the left, Aram spotted a large dome—easily twenty feet high—seemingly made entirely of thorns. (Not wooden spikes—but actual thorns, growing from massive thornbushes surrounding the base of the dome.) There were ogres everywhere. Trained now by his encounters with the gnolls, tauren, centaur, and quilboar, Aram saw the grand variation, adults and children, males and females. The smallest child was still as tall as Aram—and twice as wide. They passed one large male, sleeping and snoring across a good twelve feet of broken stone. Mostly, the ogres’ coloring ranged from a blushing peach to a deep burgundy red, though he saw one seven-foot female with skin of ashy blue. Most had two prominent lower tusks and a single horn centered on his or her forehead. But some had two horns, and one had two heads! All moved aside to allow Broadback’s party to pass as they approached what had once certainly been a great stone temple to some long-forgotten—or at least long-ignored—god.

  They walked up a pitted stone ramp and through an ominously cracked stone arch guarded by two eight-foot-tall ogres armed with fearsome axes. Huge bushes of weeds shot up through missing pavement stones. Thorny vines climbed up the walls.

  The prisoners and their captors entered the temple—or whatever it was now—to find more axe-wielding ogres and a few bold and drooling hyenas watching their silent procession. They turned right down a long corridor where a good portion of the roof had caved in. A path had been cleared beneath the open sky, but most of the fallen stones had been left just where they lay. Aram and Thalyss saw a huge hole in one wall leading out to open air. Each exchanged a quick glance to make sure the other had taken note of a possible escape route for later. But Broadback took note, too, and warned them off such thoughts with a low growl. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite as stupid as he looked.

  They approached a massive but makeshift wooden door, manned by an entire troop of ogres. Broadback nodded to an immense one-eyed hunchbacked ogre, who signaled to his fellows. They started cranking on a great wheel, and the wooden door rose noisily.

  During the journey, there had been little need for pushing and shoving the prisoners after the first few minutes of their captivity, but now, as they entered the temple’s central chamber, Broadback seemed more inclined to demonstrate Aram and Thalyss’s lowly status, first by shoving them forward and then by forcing them to their knees before Gordok, the ogre king.

  Gordok was immense, as wide as Broadback and—though seated on a throne carved out of an ancient altar—clearly taller than Throgg. He had a single white horn on his forehead and another directly behind it atop his bald head, plus so many piercings everywhere that though Aram tried several times to tally them all up, he always lost count. He ate walnuts out of a large quilboar skull held aloft by an ogre girl—small by ogre standards, yet still taller than Aram. Declaring she stood too far away, the king slapped her—for she was clearly not too far away to be punished—and reached into the skull for a few nuts. After shattering them in his thick fist, he shoved meat and shell alike into a huge maw that revealed serrated teeth, each sharpened to a point.

  Broadback stood behind his two prisoners and slammed a fist against his chest in greeting. He waited, while Gordok slowly chewed with his mouth open, looking down his broad, flat nose (pierced with a thick gold nose ring) at Aram and Thalyss, as bits of nut and shell dropped into his thick blue-black beard from between his pierced lips. The king regarded captor and captives alike with something akin to contempt—or maybe just boredom.

  Finally, Gordok nodded and said, “Wordok.” Aram soon realized it was Broadback’s actual name.

  “Wordok,” the king repeated. “Gordok not happy. Deese slaves not last. Not last minutes.”

  “Eh, no,” acknowledged Wordok sadly. Then, catching himself, he put a better face on himself and his haul. “But boy killed Kerskull. And elf change to great bear. So, fun, yeah?”

  I killed Kerskull? Aram and Thalyss exchanged a quick glance. Broadback/Wordok was certainly exaggerating their qualifications. The ogre knew Aram hadn’t killed anyone, while Thalyss had been knocked unconsci
ous before getting a chance to shift.

  Gordok considered this new information as he chewed. Despite the serrated teeth, Aram thought there was something cowlike about the way Gordok masticated.

  Finally, the king said, “Kerskull dead?”

  “Yeah. Bordok and Kronk, too.”

  “Wordok kill dem.” It seemed less of an accusation than a correction.

  “No,” Wordok assured his master. Then, doubling down on his lies: “Boy kill Kerskull. Bear kill Bordok and Kronk.”

  Gordok still seemed unconvinced. He stared down at Aram. “Boy puny. Not kill Kerskull.”

  Wordok pulled Aram’s cutlass from his belt. “Boy used this. Kerskull’s blood still there.”

  Aram and Gordok both squinted at the weapon. Sure enough there was a bit of blood on it, and Aram realized that as Wordok had taken out the weapon, he had wiped the flat of the blade against the small knife wound in his side that Aram had given him. Well, Aram thought, at least it’s true I drew the blood on that sword.

  “I killed him,” Aram said, hoping he’d earn more respect than punishment for killing one of the king’s clan. At any rate, his fib earned him a quick smile and nod from Wordok.

  Gordok continued to squint at the blade. Then he abruptly turned to Thalyss. “Elf kill Bordok and Kronk?”

  Thalyss actually yawned, then said dismissively, “Were those their names?”

  “Show me bear,” the king demanded.

  “Only at night,” the night elf replied calmly.

  Gordok grunted. He slapped the ogre girl, took some more nuts, and then looked up at the ceiling for thirty or forty seconds as he contemplated and chewed.

  Wordok ventured, “Better than murlocs …”

  Gordok laughed. “Yeah! Sick o’ dem murlocs for sure!”

  “So, fun, yeah?”

  “Gordok say if dey fun.” But Gordok glanced at the girl, who seemed to regard Wordok’s two prizes with interest. He took another look at them himself and nodded in a way that almost resembled approval. Clearly disposed now to keep a bit more of an open mind, he shrugged and said, “Toss dem in pit.”

  They were dragged from the temple and marched downhill in the general direction of the dome of thorns. From this angle, Aram could see it was situated about twenty or thirty yards from an empty pen surrounded by a wooden fence. Beside the pen was a large amphitheater with sandstone seats and a ringed arena, all carved right into the hillside. The sun was sinking now, and the way the afternoon light reflected off the stone floor of the arena made it appear blood red.

  Focused as he was on the amphitheater and what it might portend, Aram almost didn’t see his new lodging until he was literally right on top of it: a large, deep pit with smooth stone walls, again streaked with red. It was probably just the light, he thought. But he grew less certain. The low sun didn’t reach down to the bottom of the dark pit, but a single torch below illuminated a number of shadowy figures creeping across its depths.

  Wordok grunted at a pit guard, and in response a thick rope ladder was released and allowed to unroll down to the floor of the crater. Wordok pointed at the ladder, and Aram voluntarily descended, followed by Thalyss.

  Achieving the bottom, it took Aram some time for his eyes to adjust in the dim torchlight. Before he could see clearly, he heard a sniffing sound. He looked behind him and saw two glowing eyes staring at him from a slim, low fissure that had been dug into the wall of the pit. Aram stumbled back a step or two away from the small crevice, and the sniffing was replaced by a low growl. Suddenly, the glowing eyes leapt forward and a dark form tackled Aram to the ground.

  A terrified Aram, struggling in vain to throw off his attacker, saw the flash of teeth, which snapped shut just short of his nose. Then, almost as quickly as the attack began, it ended. Thalyss was there, wrenching Aram’s opponent off and tossing whatever it was aside. The thing rolled into the torchlight, and Aram saw it was a yellow, spotted gnoll, a small, starved, and skinny male, little more than a pup, which meant it was about Aram’s height when hunched over, but twice as broad in the shoulders.

  Aram was breathing heavily, trying to fight the urge to run back to the ladder and beg to be pulled back up. Then, in a flash, he thought of his father and the matriarch, and though a second earlier he had been desperate to be free of the creature, he now launched himself at the gnoll with gusto, shocking Thalyss, the gnoll, and himself.

  “Aram, stop! What are you doing?” shouted the night elf, as the two young “warriors” rolled about in the dirt. Aram elbowed his opponent in the gut and managed to shut his mouth once with an uppercut to the jaw. But in return, Aram felt the gnoll’s claws rake painfully across his back before the creature lifted him clear off his feet and threw him hard against the pit wall.

  Aram crumpled to the muddy floor in a bruised and bleeding heap. The hunched form of the gnoll loomed over Aram, panting and seething.

  Then Aramar Thorne threw his head back and laughed. The sound echoed off the sides of the pit. The gnoll bristled at being mocked; his lips parted to emit another low growl. Aramar stood and approached the gnoll. Aram slowly raised his hand; the gnoll flinched, and Aram slapped him hard on the shoulder, laughing again. The gnoll’s lips curled then, and he laughed his loud, raucous hyena-laugh and slapped Aram with considerable force on his bleeding back.

  Aram swallowed back the pain and spoke. “I am Aramar Thorne of Lakeshire.” He nodded toward the night elf. “This is the druid Thalyss.”

  The gnoll sniffed at Aram and then Thalyss. Apparently, their scents met with his approval, and he began bobbing up and down happily like a dog in hope of a treat. He pounded his chest with a thick paw and said, “Hackle of the Woodpaw gnolls.”

  “I hope we can all be friends, Hackle,” Aram said. “I suppose we’ll need friends down here.”

  At the repetition of the word friends, Hackle’s expression suddenly turned surly. He dropped down on all fours, and circling wide, slunk past Aram, returning to his fissure. As he crawled inside it, he grumbled, “No point making friends with those Hackle soon have to kill.”

  With a few scattered herbs taken from his pockets, the druid tended to Aram’s back. Aram didn’t know if the kaldorei was using magic or the simple skills common to any village healer or apothecary, but either way, the treatment soothed his torn skin.

  Thalyss glanced over at Hackle, or at all they could see of Hackle: his two glowing eyes staring back at them from the fissure he had dug for himself in the side of the pit.

  “How did you know to do that?” the night elf asked.

  “My father taught me.”

  “A valuable lesson. A wise man.”

  “Sometimes,” Aram said. He thought his voice sounded grudging and quickly changed the subject. “Thanks. That feels a lot better.”

  “Well, the bleeding has stopped. The scratches did not go deep. But there is not much I can do for this shirt.” It was shredded in strips and sticky with blood in back.

  Aram shrugged. He still had his mother’s dirty sweater and his father’s old coat tied around his waist, but it was too hot to wear either down in the pit, and he didn’t think he’d much care for the feeling of wool rubbing against his open wounds or leather sticking to them. He reached behind him and pulled the shirt away from his back. But something tugged the shirt forward …

  It was the compass! It jerked slightly underneath his shirt. Thalyss saw it, too. Aram pulled it out and checked it. The sliver-like crystal needle still glowed faintly, but now it pointed to the east, and the whole compass was gently tugging in that direction, too. Aram looked around quickly to see if anyone else was watching and saw the gnoll’s eyes upon him. “Stop it,” he muttered with desperate frustration—and the compass instantly ceased to move. He and the night elf exchanged another surprised glance as Aram tucked the compass back under what remained of his shirt.

  “Odder and odder,” said the kaldorei, and he tapped his upper lip with his tongue.

  “Disturbing, I’d call i
t.” It was an understatement. What lay to the east that was important enough for the compass to literally try to drag him in that direction? Gadgetzan and Lakeshire were to the southeast anyway! No. There was more going on here than his simple desire to return to hearth and home.

  After a considered and considerable pause, the night elf offered his own theories. “Perhaps the magic of that crystal is not sending you someplace but rather to find someone or something. Perhaps that someone or something was on the move, still east of us but heading north as we did. And perhaps you are closer now than you have been yet.”

  Aram’s mouth hung open. He wanted to question the kaldorei further. But other concerns forced such thoughts from his mind. He said, “We have bigger problems at the moment.”

  “Oh, you think so?” the elf said with a wry smile. “Do you think Makasa can even get past the barricades of spikes or the gate or the ogres—let alone find a way to help us escape from this pit?”

  “I think Makasa can do almost anything,” Aram said and meant it. “But we need to be ready. We need to find a way to make her job easier.”

  “Then let us educate ourselves, shall we?”

  They crossed the pit together and introduced themselves to their fellow captives. There weren’t many, just an old one-legged tauren and about a dozen murlocs.

  While Thalyss spoke with the murlocs, Aram sat down beside the tauren, who called himself Woolbeard, a name that so suited his appearance, Aram had to stop himself from facetiously commenting that if it was the tauren’s birth name, it was amazingly prophetic. He was soon glad he had held his tongue. “Woolbeard” was a name given to the tauren by the ogres as a sign of contempt. Aram asked his real name, but the old tauren just shook his head, saying, “Woolbeard’s the name I’ll die with. Might as well accept it.”

  Woolbeard, long ago broken by his slavery to the ogres, soon spelled out their current predicament. It was pretty much what Aram had pieced together, though it didn’t particularly please him to find his suspicions confirmed. Gordok amused himself nightly by pitting his slaves against each other as gladiators in his arena. Moreover, the ogre king was tired of watching murlocs fight, so the odds were good that the first combatants of the evening would be drawn from among Woolbeard, Hackle, Thalyss, and Aram.