She spun Zun around and sent him racing past Turalyon and the Forsaken, into the grateful arms of the waiting orc. At last she gazed up at Alleria, and the whispers grew louder, more insistent, all but deafening Alleria with their certainty.
Her, her, her.
“She is the one,” Alleria said coldly, just for Turalyon. “I will speak with her privately.”
“Alleria, wait—” Turning to Celosel, Turalyon motioned to the captive refugees. “See that everyone remains calm. Give them food and drink if you must. I must speak to her ladyship briefly, captain.”
Celosel saluted and took a place at the head of the crowd.
“Leave us in peace!” Alleria heard the Forsaken shout as she and Turalyon retreated down the hill until the voices dimmed and they stood more or less alone under the veiled moonlight.
Turalyon sighed and passed his hand over his face, his eyes fixed on the scene playing out up the hill. “How do you think we should proceed?”
“However we must,” Alleria replied at once. The dream that had come to her while they rode through the Arathi Highlands returned to her, a chill running through her body that felt like the very fingers of death trailing up her spine. “The mother knows something. You were too quick to offer them food, we might have bartered for information. The king was quite clear—our orders are to find Sylvanas at any cost; her dark rangers will lead us to her.”
Turalyon nodded, grim. Something dark, something like doubt, flickered in his eyes. “The Light compels me to have mercy, Alleria, but I hear you. I do. I also heard what you said to that young boy. Is this us at our very worst?”
She sighed, staring straight ahead. “I see visions, Turalyon. So many visions. A thousand futures in which we fail to stop Sylvanas. Each one more monstrous than the last, and I would become more than my worst self to stop it.”
“Yet the Void often lies,” Turalyon pointed out.
“Of course it does, I do not blindly believe—I question and I wonder what the Void seeks to tell me, what wisdom is buried in the deceit. And after peeling away the layers of horror and destruction, I have come to a single conclusion: that no matter what, complacency and inaction will be our doom. We have our orders. It gives me no pleasure to interrogate civilians, Turalyon, but what choice do we have?”
“Let me talk with her, please. Give me a chance to pursue this the right way. Though time be short and our task dire, let us not forget who we are, what principles separate us from Sylvanas and her ilk.”
He reached out toward her, and Alleria felt him close the distance between them, in word and bond, and she relented. Were she in void form, that touch would have burned him like a brand. In that moment, it felt like a balm. “Very well. Speak with the mother.”
Turalyon managed a vanishing smile, then marched back toward the orc mother, crouching, his back to Alleria as he began speaking to her. Moving a little closer, Alleria pretended to inspect the perimeter, instead listening intently to their exchange, though it proved not to be a discussion at all, but rather Turalyon beating his head against a stubborn brick wall.
“Tell me your name, please,” he said gently. “You may have mine first. I am Turalyon, Lord Commander of the Alliance. But you need not fear me, or any of us; we have no desire for bloodshed, only information. Now, please, madam, your name?”
The orc hesitated for a long time, then muttered something Alleria couldn’t hear.
“Thank you. May I ask you some questions?”
“Ask,” was all she said.
Turalyon did. Several times. Nicely, more directly, then with growing impatience. He tried bribing her with an escort, volunteering to give her safe passage to wherever she and her family pleased. Nothing. He called over Senn, having her take the mother a measure of wine and fruit from the soldiers’ supply. The orc refused to talk, avoiding even his most mundane questions. She drank her wine and munched her fruit, and stared at Turalyon as if he were dimmer than a kobold candle. Irritated, Turalyon reminded her that the Alliance would be gone and stop bothering them the moment she chose to cooperate. The orc had nothing but a shrug for him. When nearly an hour had passed with no change or improvement in the orc’s attitude, Alleria watched Turalyon rise, knees creaking, and then return to her. He looked as if those fifty minutes had aged him as many years.
“Her mouth’s clamped shut tighter than a darkwater clam.”
“I noticed,” Alleria muttered. “What do we do?”
Alleria knew what she wanted to do—no, what needed to be done—but she had to hear it from Turalyon, too. He glanced at her from under his lashes, rubbing his stubbled jaw.
“It’s easy to say, ‘what we must,’ but that is not so, is it?”
“Turalyon…How many more hours should we waste? It is her. Her stubbornness only proves it. She refuses to speak because she knows she will incriminate herself or the others.” Alleria gestured broadly to the troops still watching over the Horde refugees.
“We could question the others,” he scrambled to say. “Or…”
“Or take the information we need,” Alleria replied. “Take it now.”
He glanced at her askew again. “Is this who we have become?”
Under different circumstances, under a different moon, his words might have wounded her, but Alleria shook them off without hesitation.
“My sister has not known a worthy adversary for a time now,” Alleria whispered. “She has outsmarted, outplayed, and outwitted us because she is not shackled by good or evil, she is freed by her own willingness to pursue the mission, no matter the cost.”
“Was that admiration I heard in your voice just now?”
Alleria sighed distantly. “There is nothing left of my sister to admire. Were she here now I would fill her head with visions of terror until it burst like a boil.”
That settled it for Turalyon. He turned and began the plodding journey back up the slope. “Whatever the cost, then,” he said.
“Whatever the cost.”
The refugees had been given a few horse blankets and hunks of bread by the time they returned to the camp, but the soldiers maintained a tight perimeter, torches flaring, illuminating the ten nervous faces of the refugees. They smelled strongly of unwashed bodies and smoke, but Alleria quashed her pity, approaching the orc mother and looming over her.
“What is your name?” Alleria demanded.
She handed a small piece of black bread to her boy and then shooed him away. The Forsaken apothecary hurried over, glowering, taking the babe from the orc’s arms and sheltering the young boy behind his robes.
“Hmph,” the orc refused to reply, sitting cross-legged at Alleria’s feet.
“Her name is Gowzis,” Turalyon informed her.
“Tell me what you know about the dark ranger that traveled with you recently,” Alleria said, feeling a rush of dark energy flood from her toes to her fingers. The Void called; it wanted her to ferret out the secrets. It wanted her to poke and pry and do so with her Void-given powers.
Gowzis grunted and glanced away, but her knee bounced erratically, betraying her. “What would a dark ranger want with us?”
“An excellent question,” Alleria replied. “What did she want with you? And where is she now? Answer us and we will be on our way.”
Gowzis growled again and spat on the ground, narrowly missing the tip of Alleria’s pointed boot.
“Wrong answer.”
The Void invaded the orc’s mind easily, readily, commanded by Alleria’s experienced hands, guided by her knowledge of its capabilities. The Old Ones could use the smallest thought to drive a person mad, to wrench any information they wanted from an unwilling, tormented subject. Gowzis clutched the sides of her head, gasping, her eyes snapping open, suddenly glowing with eerie light.
“Hold her,” Alleria whispered.
Turalyon did as she as
ked, reaching out with one gloved hand. Golden cuffs, glittering with the Light wrapped tightly around the orc’s wrists and ankles, chains bursting forth and securing her to the earth.
The world fell away, leaving Alleria within the orc’s mind. She sifted through memories and thoughts like fingers combing through sand, each second that passed plunging the woman into greater agony.
This is the cost, this is the cost…
It would haunt her forever, but that was the cost. Alleria didn’t know if it was her thinking such things or the Void that seethed within.
A pair of red eyes caught her attention, a clear memory of a pale-skinned woman with curling blue hair and red flowers tattooed around her eyes. A kaldorei twisted by her sister’s undead touch. Teldrassil had burned, and then the kaldorei rangers had died trying to defend it, and then they were not even allowed the dignity of peace.
No, they were raised to serve a monster.
The orc woman shrieked, tears pouring down her face, her back bending at strange angles as she fought the pain tunneling through her mind.
“Stop! Stop it! For pity’s sake, let her go! I will tell you of the dark ranger. I swore an oath of silence, we all did, the ranger demanded it, but I will tell you whatever you wish to know!”
Alleria stumbled backward, ripped away from the work and the woman, her breath coming in short, fast blasts as she regained her own sight, and the shadows slipped away. A comforting hand grazed her lower back. Turalyon. Catching her breath, she whirled on the Forsaken with the beard, the one who had interrupted.
Gowzis collapsed in a heap, her young son running to tug on her sleeve.
“She traveled not half a day with us a week past,” he hurried on, throwing concerned glances at the trembling orc. He still held the woman’s babe. It had ceased crying, snuffling into the armpit of his robe. “Please, do not hurt her again. I will tell you anything. Anything!”
“Just the truth,” Alleria said coolly, collecting herself.
“Where did she happen upon you?” Turalyon demanded.
The Forsaken pointed to the north. “Off the road near Stromgarde, she was coming from Hillsbrad, or so she told us. Had some trouble with her steed; it threw her and she hurt her wrist badly, then the raptors tried to have a nibble.” He reached into his robes, and every soldier in the vicinity touched their weapons. But he only drew out a small, red pouch. “I’m a healer, you see. An apothecary. Apothecary Cotley, I look after these people you see here, and I looked after her.”
Alleria nodded; this was good. This was progress. “Go on. What happened after you healed her? Did she say anything?”
“A woman of few words, but I set the bone and wrapped it, and then she was on her way,” he explained. “Had to go south, she said, and quick-like. Faldir’s Cove. She was chartering a boat.”
“Any names?” Alleria could hear the excitement in Turalyon’s voice. She felt the same. This was a solid lead if the apothecary was telling the truth, and she sensed no deception in him, only fear.
Apothecary Cotley frowned and rubbed at the bald skull on the back of his head. He bounced the baby in his right arm absentmindedly. “Only hers. Vis-something. Vis…Visrynn.”
“Thank you,” Turalyon told him, inclining his head respectfully. “You have been most helpful, apothecary.”
They turned away, and as soon as they did, the Forsaken rushed to the orc woman, kneeling and feeling for a pulse. She groaned and thrashed, babbling incoherently. Her body would mend at once, and her mind would recover in time, but the process would be slow and uncomfortable. There would be scars. Alleria had no room left in her heart for regrets, yet somehow it wormed its way in, cold and steady, paining her every step.
Captain Celosel approached, his torch bathing them in heat. “Your orders?”
“Give them more food and blankets, whatever water we can spare,” Alleria replied, beginning the short walk back to their mounts. “Urge them to find somewhere else to go; the Witherbark will find and raid them otherwise.”
“And the apothecary?” Celosel called after them.
“Take him to Stormwind. He may know more, and we cannot afford to miss a single detail.”
CHAPTER TEN
Nazmir
Apari lit the final stick of incense, wafting the fragrant smoke toward her face and breathing deep. Her lungs ached, but the pain was part of her ritual.
The deep throb in her right leg was constant now. Nothing eased her suffering, but she let it fuel her, just as the blood of traitors would fuel her magic. Tayo swore she knew a vulpera sawbones talented enough to remove the leg cleanly at the knee, but Apari refused. Instead, she let it wither and grow mottled with dark blotches, a reminder that time was short, that not a single moment could be wasted.
How much longer she could walk on it, she could not say.
“Is everything ready?”
Tayo’s voice cut clearly through the winds whistling above Prisoner’s Pass. The tar pits bubbling below stank, but the incense mellowed the reek. Apari struggled to her feet, ignoring the stubborn pain in her leg. No help came from Tayo, for she knew Apari would reject any assistance she offered. The followers of the Widow’s Bite gathered around them in a loose circle, and they could not be allowed to witness their leader’s weakness.
“I stand ready,” Apari told the taller troll, Tayo’s hair painted as black as the tar pits. “Our assassination failed, Tayo; the Horde will come looking for answers. We attacked the queen on their soil, but we cannot allow them on ours. Their numbers are too great, and they will overwhelm us and the pale rider before our justice is had.”
“The storm will keep them at bay, Apari; this magic is old, old as the empire itself,” Tayo assured her. “We will not fail. All is not lost.”
Apari snorted. “When the pale rider sees this, he will not doubt us again. He thinks he is powerful, he knows nothing of our real power. This…this will stop all of his complainin’, and show the reach of the Widow’s Bite.”
Then Apari gazed around at her assembled rebels. Their numbers grew each day, slowly but surely more of the Zandalari in Dazar’alor and the surrounding villages leaving homes behind to join their ranks. News spread of their attack on the palace. Talanji had made an appearance in the marketplace afterward, quelling rumors that she had been killed in the assassination attempt, but many reported she looked unwell.
If the Widow’s Bite could threaten the queen herself, then they were not just an upstart insurrection but a true danger to the crown. They could not allow her to gather any allies to her side. Zandalar must be cut off, isolated, made vulnerable so that it could again be made strong.
“We all stand ready.” Apari raised her arms, and the members of the Widow’s Bite grew silent with awe. “It will take all of our power—all of our considerable might—to shake the seas and command the clouds!”
Before her, a nobleman from the palace lay on a flat, polished piece of black rock. He squirmed. Daz, Apari’s dreadtick, perched on his chest, fangs chattering. The old troll, his eyes big and round as moons, had been tightly gagged, and his muffled protests were drowned by Apari’s voice. They had taken his fine robes and jewels to trade with passing merchants for food and weapons.
“Chant with me now, brothers and sisters, I need your voices! Let the heavens hear ya, let your will be known!”
Thirty or so trolls sat perched in that circle around Apari, their backs to the vultures circling over the pass. The moon flashed bright and red, drenched in blood as if it had predicted their purpose. Her followers wore loose black tunics and loincloths slashed with white stripes to mimic a spider’s many legs; some wore carved talismans, and others fearlessly allowed fat, furry tarantulas to crawl freely over their shoulders.
The chanting began slowly, Apari conducting her followers with broad sweeps of her arms. Tayo walked the circle painted on the dark,
flat stones, the narrow plateau above the pass serving as their ritual altar. Not far below, hewing closely to the rocks, they had made a temporary camp, pushed out of their swamp caves by increasingly paranoid royal patrols.
She beheld her faithful followers, hungry, tired, hunted from one end of Zandalar to the other. Many had eaten only bone broth and paper-thin bat wings for days now. It did not matter. They would not stop. Their starved bellies made them wild and reckless, and that suited Apari just fine. The pale rider Nathanos would join them soon with his rangers to plan the final blow against Talanji and her cursed loa, and then there would be no escape for the traitor queen.
Even the seas would churn with the fury of the Widow’s Bite.
Apari limped to the old troll at the center of the white circle while Tayo lit the eight ritual torches. White flames blossomed like pale flowers, the acrid smoke mingling with the incense and the stink of sweat pouring off the noble. Apari paused, dagger at her side, wondering what the sacrifice must think of her. She knew him, knew his family, but that did not matter. Once, Apari had been just as rich and noble, as beautiful as the old troll’s young daughter, held to be even more desirable than Talanji herself. Her hair had spilled like a clear silver waterfall over one shoulder, braided intricately, pink flowers and beads winking out from between the strands. General Jakra’zet had often praised her smooth green skin and slender arms.
“Arms made for dancin’,” he would say, teasing her as she flitted down the palace halls.
But those comments, those smooth, slender arms and flowery braids felt like a cruel joke. Now she never washed that silver hair, her eyes hidden behind a half-mask. The wound in her leg festered and oozed, pungent with malodor. The infection was like nothing she or her physicians had seen, resistant to magic, and to poultices, a wound more of the heart and mind than the body, some shaman told her to her face, as if she were the one responsible for its refusal to heal. Only months had passed since her world was shattered, her future stolen from her, and her body broken, but those had been the truest months. The months that defined her. No more frivolities. No more games. The Widow’s Bite was her purpose now, her mother’s legacy her only concern.
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