He swallowed noisily again and glanced at his feet. “What’s the gift?”
“Can’t tell you that. But I can tell ya this: ’Tis a vision of death. A vision ya will be wantin’ to see. How about a gift for a gift?” Bwonsamdi’s skeletal grin chilled Zekhan to the bone. “Take this vision of death from me; in return, ya make sure one thing happens.”
“If I have to give you something in return that’s not a gift,” Zekhan muttered.
“Do ya want it or not, boy?” Bwonsamdi thundered. The corridor shook, the meeting inside the chamber silent, as if they too had heard the loa’s outburst.
“W-what do I have to do?” Zekhan asked. For the second time in as many days he found himself thinking: Do I have a choice?
“The Zandalari must remain with the Horde. She must sit on the council. Use all ya considerable charms, boy, and make her see that this is the only way. It be best for Zandalar, and even better, best for me,” the loa said, nodding slowly as if hoping to fool the troll into nodding along with him.
Maybe it wasn’t a trick after all. Zekhan was in Zuldazar for exactly that reason, to watch Talanji and hopefully sway her into trusting the Horde. It seemed, he thought with a grimace, too easy. A vision of death…Who would it be? His father, Hekazi, or maybe his mentor, Saurfang? Both were tempting.
“Why can’t you convince her?” Zekhan pressed.
With a sneer the loa floated away, glancing at the flowers that had wilted from his proximity. “The queen doesn’t like to take advice from old Bwonsamdi just now. But she might listen to you, mm?”
Inhaling deeply, he hoped his granny couldn’t see him from the beyond, or she would be deeply disappointed to hear him say, “Show me this vision.”
Bwonsamdi grinned, and the world went dark.
Is this death? Did he kill me?
For a long moment all was quiet, and he squirmed helplessly in a void that stretched indefinitely around him. Something cool and damp tickled the backs of his arms and his nape, and then in a blinding blink the sun appeared, detonating like goblin dynamite, blowing a hole in the inky nothingness above. The muted sounds of somber voices and clanging spears came and went, and then all was the comforting din of nature. Insects whirred, wings clicking delicately against a sea of grass as vast as the formless void it had replaced.
Standing, Zekhan reached out to brush his palm over the coarse, tall grass, finding it was not his hand at all, but one much larger, stronger, and scarred from war. Ahead of him, a smattering of mountains grew out of the ground, then settled, and across the horizon a herd of talbuk scattered, startled by something…someone…
“Father! That was an easy shot. Don’t tell me age has made you soft!”
A tanned orc with a shock of black hair jogged up to meet him, his golden eyes wrinkled at the corners from smiling. His face, while that of an orc in his prime, was terribly familiar to him. Wonderfully familiar.
“Dranosh…”
The orc reached for another arrow in the leather quiver slung over his shoulder. “Wake up; another herd approaches. Mother will have our hides if we return empty-handed.”
“Mother, Dranosh…” Memories flooded him, not his own, not Zekhan’s, but Varok Saurfang’s. These plains—each rock, each divot in the earth and hidden pool—were as known to him as the grip of his favorite axe. Home. He had come home.
“Remda,” he whispered, his chest flooded with pain that flared and then ebbed, turning sweet. His wife. Saurfang’s. They would be reunited, and beside the glow of a laden table and hearth, he would touch her face and run his thumb over lips long missed and almost forgotten.
“Father?” His son waited, eyeing him as if he might be wounded or dull.
“Yes. I’m ready, Dranosh, lead on.”
Father and son turned toward the orange sun half eaten by the horizon, bows drawn, strides matched, the hunt awaiting them on the broken plains of Draenor.
That same sun blinded him again, devouring his vision, plunging Zekhan back into the shapeless void that had held him before. It thumped with a heartbeat, lazy but rhythmic, and then with a nauseating snap he felt the stone tiles of the palace slam into his feet. Reeling, Zekhan touched his own face, finding it troll-shaped once more, and feeling tears there that he hadn’t known were falling. To return to his body, to the realm of the living, felt like a warm embrace. Relief overcame him, and he leaned back gratefully against the chamber door, Bwonsamdi staring at him with the palpable impatience of a prisoner awaiting the judge’s verdict.
“Will it be like that for me?” he finally asked. “Will my fa’da be waiting for me?”
Bwonsamdi wagged a bony finger at him. “Now that would ruin the surprise. Did ya see what ya needed to see?”
Zekhan nodded. “I…think I did.”
And in accepting the vision he had also taken Bwonsamdi’s deal. Zekhan shuddered.
Chuckling, the loa gave him a theatrical bow. “Little Zekhan, walkin’ in the footsteps of giants. But keep ya eyes up, eh? Even giants trip.”
CHAPTER NINE
Arathi Highlands
“I know it’s you, sister, do not hide. Sylvanas. Do not try to escape me, not this time. Not this time.”
Blazing red eyes skewered the shadows, hunting Alleria Windrunner. She wandered a sickly forest, withered trees with broken branches scratching at her cloak, scraping her cheek, breaking skin and drawing blood. She had thought herself the huntress, at last sensing the presence of her ignominious sister and following her trail, but now she was not so sure.
Now she had come to see that she was the hunted.
Thick tendrils of purple smoke curled at the edge of Alleria’s vision. The forest, her sister—her own blighted vision—fought her. Yet she persisted, dodging from tree to tree with precise leaps, catching a glimpse of a cloak hem ahead. How many times had they played this game as children, giggling their way into the silver forests of Quel’Thalas with their sister Vereesa, all of them eager to play the huntress. All of them eager to prove their wit and their stealth.
“Close, now,” she heard Sylvanas whispering to her through the knotted snarl of the brambles and trees. Her voice was little more than a silken thread leading her onward. “So very close, sister…”
“I will not stop hunting you,” Alleria murmured. “I will never stop.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Her voice filled Alleria’s head like a clap of thunder. Sylvanas no longer raced ahead of her through the forest, but appeared directly behind her. Whatever foul magic she had used to win the mak’gora she utilized once more. Her Forsaken sister screamed, shadows pouring from her mouth, filling the woods, twisting around Alleria, smothering her with an icy grip.
“The whispers were right,” Alleria managed to say. The shadows squeezed, robbing her of air. Every breath felt like sucking down shards of glass. “The Void, it told me to kill you. I should have done it. I should have listened.”
Sylvanas stepped away, just a calm, scarred face framed by darkness. “You could never best me, sister. The end will come quickly now, you’ll see.”
Death crept nearer, and the Void called out to Alleria, begging her to give over her soul entirely and become a manifestation of power even greater than her sister. It was tempting. Oh, it was tempting.
Abandon your flesh, came the whispers. Abandon your flesh.
She gasped, desperate for one last breath to make her decision. That chance was stolen from her. In agony, two figures emerged from the shadows wreathing Sylvanas. One, lithe and blonde, shared Alleria’s same small nose and pointed chin, a half-elf with long, golden hair, and eyes like the sun. The other was a human man, broad and bronzed as a paladin’s shield.
“Arator! Turalyon!” If these were her last words, at least they were the names of those she loved most.
Half-elf and man didn’t
see her at all, staring straight ahead, their eyes glazed over with terror. Black veins spidered up their necks and across their faces, their skin going gray and ashen, their eyes hollowing until they were nothing but empty pits. Once hale bodies shriveled until their armor swallowed the pitiable skeletons, and then, in a blink, they were dust.
The shadows surrounding Alleria tightened until her eyes bulged. There would be no victory over this, no thrill of the hunt.
Sylvanas. There was only Sylvanas and the cruel delight dancing in her scarlet eyes.
“Did your little whispers tell you this, Alleria?” her sister taunted, stepping away, disappearing into the night. “Did they warn you that this would be the cost of standing against me?”
“NO!”
Alleria screamed herself awake, jerking hard to the right in her saddle, startling a neigh from her horse. A strong hand steadied her, clasping her shoulder, and Alleria shook off the delirium of her dream. Turalyon. His touch was soothing, and for an instant the terror of the dream dissipated. They walked separate paths—his of the Light, hers void-touched and dark. Their lives had grown only more complicated when N’Zoth the Corruptor invaded Azeroth, his efforts to spoil the planet for his own ends narrowly thwarted. Many mistrusted her even more now, and Alleria could not blame them. Turalyon doubtless had his concerns, but he was there, alive despite the nightmare’s lies. He watched her closely, understandably grimacing with alarm.
“We’ve been riding all night,” he told her. “You fell asleep in the saddle, Alleria. You were so quiet that I did not notice until now. That must have been some nightmare.”
She sighed, wishing she could tell him more, knowing neither of them was ready for it. “You have no idea.”
“We should stop soon,” Turalyon said, gazing ahead. His skin seemed to absorb the moonlight that filtered through the midnight clouds, giving him a pleasant glow. They had just returned to the Thandol Span, having combed the highlands with two dozen soldiers searching for Horde travelers fleeing Stromgarde Keep. As they journeyed, she and Turalyon slept in separate tents, Alleria lying awake at night measuring the space between them, finding that when they were apart she missed him, but now that he was near she had no idea what to do with him. She had once wondered if the legacy of the Windrunners was death, but with Turalyon she had created new life, and she would always hold that like a shield against encroaching doubts.
He didn’t acknowledge her sudden faraway look. “The men are exhausted, and a brief rest will lift their spirits. I could use a moment’s stillness myself.”
“No,” Alleria replied, stony. “They can rest after we find these refugees.”
“Alleria—”
“We ride on.” She tossed a glance in his direction, and whatever Turalyon saw in her gaze convinced him to drop it. That was why their love had even a chance of enduring, that he could see the darkness in her and accept it. Many would consider their relationship an impossibility—Turalyon, forged in the exalted light of the naaru Xe’ra, and Alleria, imbued with the void energy of L’ura, were for all appearances too different to coexist peacefully. But Alleria saw the poetry in it. There was no Light without the Shadow, and a bond like theirs, fashioned in the fires of tragedy and strife, was not easily sundered.
“My lady! My lord!” The void elf captain Celosel Nightgiver appeared out of a spatial rift just down the road, accompanied by one of Turalyon’s loyal lieutenants, a Light-forged draenei of uncommon beauty who simply went by Senn. She kept her distance from Nightgiver and shuddered with disgust as she quickly left the rift behind; the Light-forged probably thought that it would never spit her back out again.
“What have you found?” Alleria demanded, spurring her horse to meet them. The riders at her back joined, but more slowly, no doubt weary from nearly eight hours of patrol.
The purple light of the rift still clung to Celosel and Senn as she met them in the middle of the road. He gestured to a rise of hills north of the span. When Alleria squinted into the night, she noticed a thin ribbon of smoke rising toward the moons.
“Just as Trollbane instructed.” She heard Turalyon canter up to her side.
“Are they on the move?” Alleria asked.
The draenei, her pearlescent hair swept into a crown of braids behind her horns, strode back toward the column of riders, seeking out her mount. “No, they look entrenched. Not much of a watch set, mostly women and children. These are not soldiers, my lady.”
“Then we take them now, before they can scuttle into the hills.”
“Should we not be careful?” Turalyon pressed, matching her speed as she spurred her horse into a gallop. The wind tore at his voice as he called to her above the rising din of hooves. “If there truly is a dark ranger among them…”
“A dark ranger would know to hide better,” Alleria called back. “And if by some chance she is among them, then we must strike and strike hard, before she can run.”
The strike was swift but not hard. They stormed north, veering along the edge of the hills until they came upon a shallow clearing. There they found a ramshackle encampment of tents and dugouts nestled against a mountain, cleverly hidden from the road and the span but near enough to fresh water to be useful. Sagefish and meager raptor haunches dried on a makeshift rack, mounds of hare bones all that remained of a paltry supper.
Captain Celosel overcame the one sleepy troll on watch, a precise, focused frost shard striking him in the chest, incapacitating the troll but not doing any real harm. These were, as their scouts assured them, farmers and families, not a trained fighter among them. Half of the Alliance detachment dismounted while the other half formed a tight circle around the camp, cutting off any avenues of escape while Turalyon, Alleria, and the draenei Senn approached the central fire, recently out and visibly smoking.
“None of you will be harmed so long as you remain calm and answer our questions,” Alleria shouted over the shrieks of fear. She watched a robed Forsaken man stand guard in front of a family of frightened orcs, mother and child, the baby wailing inconsolably. A toddler crouched beside the orc mother, a boy with most of his teeth yet to come in. Their eyes were wide, sunken with hunger.
Alleria fell quiet, letting the refugees whisper among themselves for a moment while Turalyon stood beside her, his weight to one side, left hand resting on his sword hilt.
“This may be a dead end,” he said in a low tone.
She shook her head, resolute. “Danath Trollbane assured me his outriders spotted a cloaked woman, red eyes, armed. She was with a group of civilians.” Subtly so the refugees could not see, she pointed to the southwest. “The Alliance spies washed up not far from here, and Trollbane’s riders glimpsed what sounds remarkably like a dark ranger in the region…”
“Yes. It would be one hell of a coincidence.”
“One of them knows something,” Alleria stated, swiveling to examine the nervous faces spread out before her. “One of them will talk.”
“Alliance dogs!” The Forsaken in heavy black robes shuffled forward. He had once been a tall, large man, but the curse of the undead and time had put a pronounced bend in his spine. The remnants of a black beard clung to his exposed jaw. “Where is your compassion? These are innocents, homeless and starving, just pawns in your endless war.”
“You speak for all, then?” Alleria asked, her gaze sharpening on the Forsaken. She noticed flecks of herbs sticking to his collar, his bony fingers discolored by some sort of green paste.
The whispers began, as they always did, cold and hissing, as ephemeral as shadow.
Twist his brittle bones until he speaks. Crack them open, find the marrow, spill his secrets…
“I speak, that is all,” the Forsaken grumbled. “If someone must stand up, it will be me.”
“We have no intention of shedding blood here this night,” Turalyon told him, calm but firm. “Give us the information we
seek, and we will send you on your way with what blankets and provisions we can spare from our packs.”
At that, the assembled civilians exchanged looks, some of them hopeful, others suspicious.
As Turalyon dealt with the mouthy Forsaken, Alleria’s gaze fell again on the mother orc and her children, drawn there by some tendril of curiosity. The Void often guided her in this way, always seeking deception, always on the hunt for the darkness every creature harbored within. At first she had only seen the woman’s hunger, but now she saw something else. The orc huddled close to the ground, rocking back and forth, never daring to glance at any of the soldiers surrounding her. Furtive. Nervous.
Distracted, Alleria almost didn’t see the little orc boy jump up in his loincloth, a thin blanket around his shoulders flapping like a cape as he dashed toward them, tiny tusks bared in a warrior’s roar.
“Zun! No!” the mother cried.
Turalyon knelt, grabbing the orc around the waist and swinging him around, depositing him back on the grass with a low chuckle.
“Not today, boy.”
“Spare him! Please!” The orc mother squeezed her infant, weeping into his wrappings.
Alleria crouched and placed both hands on the orc child, steadying him, waiting until his big brown eyes snapped to hers. He was afraid, certainly, but imbued with a wild and young courage.
“Can you understand me?” she asked.
The boy, Zun, gave a single nod.
“I will tell you, Zun, what I told my own son when he picked up his first blade and played at being a soldier,” Alleria said gently. She remembered the moment as if it were happening all over again—the frosty winter day, the shards of pale sun brightening the courtyard in Stormwind Keep, Arator’s mischievous smile as he swung the wooden sword high over his head, aiming for a frog but swinging into a pillar instead. Another woman’s heart might have swelled with pride, but Alleria had felt only sadness. “Whatever your elders have told you, war is not glory. War is seeing people at their very worst and choosing to protect them anyway. Go back to your mother, and do not forget what I told you.”
Shadows Rising (World of Warcraft: Shadowlands) Page 8