|
XX
We saw no one – not even a beast – for the rest of
the day. Allyndil, with keener eyes than mine, observed the four
tracks wandering on ahead of us for a while before meandering
off to the west. "They may be behind us again," he said, "or they may have
gone on to other destinations."
We forged ahead in the remaining hours of light,
ending our trek as we had the night before, stretched unceremoniously
out on the cold ground. We seemed to have passed through the area
plagued by the spring Allyndil had guided us around, and the nocturnal
cacophony which had plagued my dreams the night before was mercifully
distant.
* * *
The next day, about noon by my reckoning, we broke
out of the woods, out under the low, dry clouds and into a wide stretch
of dead, rocky, open land. Through the middle of it and at the bottom
of a deep gulch flowed a wide stream: although "crept" was probably a
better word for it. Filling the ancient rocky stream bed was not water,
but a creeping green gelatinous slime.
"Ichor of undeath," said Madoran calmly, "the blood
of this place. It's draining south from the Plaguelands, and it’s thick
enough here to kill living plant life."
"Don't drink it," said Allyndil.
"We're not in plaguelands?" I said incredulously.
Allyndil began picking his way upstream, to our right, through the rocky
wastes, and we followed.
Madoran laughed. "Hardly," he said. "The
Plaguelands were the seat of power for the scourge army for years before
they took the rest of Lordaeron, and they were chased back out before
long. Too late to save the place, of course. But no," he finished,
"you have not yet experienced plaguelands."
"Are they our destination?" I asked.
"Their outskirts, aye," he said calmly.
Madoran turned back to me after a few minutes of
silence. We were still paces behind the elf. “About what I said at ye
yesterday, atop the wall,” he began, “I won’t apologize for it.” He
lowered his head and continued conspiratorially. “There are reasons the
Dawn tasked a member as powerful as Fang to select reinforcements to
send north to help on this mission: We do believe it may be the most
important mission the Dawn has undertaken in centuries. We’d been
expecting something of a crack team from the Murloc, but he only
selected two, one of which has now left us. Therefore our hopes, we
believe, rest on you. Please don’t disappoint us.” He looked at me,
brow furrowed.
I was unsure of what to say, so I said nothing.
“That havin’ been said, though,” he continued, “I
am sorry for snappin’ at ye, and I will not leave ye stranded in these
lands. And even if I did, I’ve known ye long enough to believe ye’d
survive, ye big brute,” and he slapped my arm good-naturedly. I smiled
in spite of myself.
* * *
A few hours and miles passed under us. Ahead, and
to the right, a lonely mountain rose over the forest and into the
clouds. As high up it as we could see, it was choked with the
brownish-green forest that covered the rest of the land. Madoran stared
up at the mountain with a pained look on his face.
“Aerie Peak,” he said. “The homeland of the
griffins. We trained them there, grew them up from chicks to great
fighters and fliers, and they flew between every city and outpost in the
eastern world.”
“What happened?” I said.
Madoran was silent. A moment later, he began
singing, filling the dead land we walked through with sonorous baritone
music. The melody was sad, and the words were Dwarvish. After a pair
of verses, Allyndil leapt in with a tenor refrain, and Madoran continued
on the counterpoint: it was strong, still sad but frantic as well,
terrified, and then bitter. I felt the song’s keen loss without needing
to understand its words.
The song ended.
“It was overrun, of course,” said Madoran after a
moment. “An evil blow, and the first of our northland outposts to
fall.” He paused, then continued rhythmically, translating and
reciting the song. “Out of the clear morning sky flew a wing of
skeleton dragons, the most twisted creation of the Lich King Ner’zul.
They breathed fire and plague, and our best griffins and fighters fell
before they’d even awoken and broken their fast. There was no need for
an army to conquer Aerie Peak: our dead brothers got up from the spots
where they fell and began battling us from within. In terror we fled to
the south, bringing tidings of death, and begging forgiveness from the
souls of our birds and our fallen companions.” He breathed. “The
Scourge took us by storm, and glory and honor died with the land.” Then
he fell silent again.
“Not as many griffins these days,” said Allyndil
sadly.
“The undead destroy beauty, and can do nothing
else,” said Madoran coldly, staring at the world in front of his feet
with creased forehead and clenched jaw.
A hatred burned in his eyes that chilled me.
Though no one alive had ever seen them – there were nothing left of them
but rumors – everyone knew of zombies, the
Scourge, the undead. They were the shadow of the terror of Lordaeron,
the most wretched and hateful things that had ever walked the earth,
infecting their fallen enemies with their disease, their hatred of life
itself. Every living, thinking being in the world knew at least vaguely
to fear them, but I had never seen it burn in the eyes of a being whose
ancestors had lost to them so personally.
I glanced at the stoic elf, remembering the pained
look that had passed over his face days before when Madoran had told the
story of the fall of the Thandol Span. The elf had lost something, too,
in that war, and I wondered what it was.
* * *
We made faster progress on the open ground along
the green stream than we had in the thick forest, and had covered many
miles by the time the low-slung sky began fading towards black.
Allyndil turned back towards the twisted forest.
“We don’t want to be out in the open tonight,” he explained. “Evil
things come to drink at the stream.”
I glanced back at it, then did a double take. “Is
it—” I started. The stream’s thick green ichor, which looked
distasteful enough during the day, was glowing dimly in the dusk,
casting a sick green pallor over its gulch.
“Sure is,” said Madoran.
I wrinkled my nose. “What manner of evil glows
green?” I muttered.
“Unnatural evil,” said Allyndil. “Evil which, by
all rights, shouldn’t exist, but it does, and it has shown no sign of
dissipating in six hundred years.”
We plunged into the woods, until Allyndil was
satisfied that we could sleep safely. “Relatively safely,” muttered
Madoran. The dwarf and I stretched out on our blankets; Allyndil sat
guard.
The land’s night rage which had been mercifully
absent the night before returned with a vengeance, closing in about us,
and the sounds of rustling and screeching sounded larger than they had
two nights ago. We had gone three days without seeing another creature
in the woods, and my imagination created great, ugly, hulking forms for
them in my mind’s shadows. In the total darkness, I strained to keep an
ear on the breathing of my companions to keep from panicking entirely.
It was, or it felt like, many slow hours before I fell into sleep.
* * *
The sky was still dim the next morning when
Allyndil poked me with his foot. I rolled over and grunted.
“We can make it to our destination tonight if we
push through. If we don’t, we’ll be sleeping in the Plaguelands
tonight,” said the elf. I got up.
We pushed our way back to the stream. In the
waxing daylight, its dull glow had subsided, though I thought I could
still make it out if I looked hard enough.
Despite dragging fatigue, we made good time all
morning. The walk stretched out my legs and back. It woke us up to the
point where we were singing jauntily – but quietly – by noon, rebelling
against the dreary sky and the dead forest and the creeping green stream
to our left.
As we carried on, the land about us began to change
subtly. Plants began to spring up in the dead land between the forest
and the stream: plants which looked like nothing I had ever seen
before. They were low and round and speckled. They had green bits, but
few of them displayed anything like a leaf. The ground between the
rocks was becoming brown and progressively spongier. The forest
was changing as well, creeping slowly inward towards the gulch, slowing
our progress again. The twisted trees were dying off, as was the
relatively healthy undergrowth, being replaced with strange things: they
had bulbous rings rising up their barkless trunks, ugly growths coming
out at odd angles: they looked less like trees and more and more like
surreal mushrooms.
A creature scurried out of the forest a hundred
yards ahead of us. It looked like a bloodhound, at a distance, but
something was wrong about its head. I squinted, then shuttered with
revulsion. Half its face had rotted off, exposing its jaw and teeth,
its black tongue lolling listlessly out between them. The thing’s eyes
glowed. As we approached, it skulked back into the woods.
We stopped for lunch, and Allyndil turned to me
before sitting. “We are nearing the Plaguelands,” he began.
“I figured,” I grunted.
“From this point forward, we can eat and drink
nothing that has not been sealed in our backpacks since yesterday or
fallen, untouched, from the sky. Although they are not aggressive here,
we must avoid contact with beasts at all costs, and if you cut your
skin, stay away from the plants as well.”
I nodded. We began gingerly eating from our packs.
“From this point forward,” he continued, mouth full
but deadly serious, “the plants, the animals, the water and the very air
are contaminated with the plague.” He swallowed. “If you or the dwarf
become infected with it, I will not hesitate to kill you, and I expect
nothing less in return. Understood?”
I nodded bravely, or at least more bravely than I
felt.
The mood had dulled as we began making our way
north again, and we marched in silence.
Suddenly, Allyndil held up his hand and halted.
Madoran brought himself up short in front of me. “What is it?” he said
to the elf.
“Two tracks,” he said, pointing at the spongiform
ground. I could faintly make out what looked like a path of shallow
footfalls. “Coming out of the woods. They were running.”
“What from?” wondered Madoran aloud.
“We’d do well to know,” said the elf, turning into
the woods and taking off at a jog. We followed.
He halted short a few moments later, and pointed
ahead of us. Between the surreal trees, I could make out a form lying
on the bare, spongy ground. We approached it.
It was the ogre that had been tracking us, that
we’d seen from atop Thoradin’s wall two days prior. He was lying on his
back, dead. His face was frozen, his eyelids held wide in pain.
Beneath them, his eyes had sunken sickeningly into his skull, as though
sucked inward by something vacating the space behind them. He wore a
crude woolen shirt, and at the center of his chest it was burned away in
a perfectly round circle. The flesh beneath was pressed unpleasantly
inward, and it, too, was scorched. My stomachs turned at the sight, and
I looked away.
Madoran knelt to examine the body. “Shadow magic,”
he muttered to himself, prodding the hole in the ogre’s chest. Then he
stood up. “We have to hurry,” he said. Without further explanation, he
ran off into the plaguewoods, back the way we’d come.
We forged on north along the stream, more urgently
than before. The land began rising faster and the strange forest closed
in about us, and an hour later the forest ended suddenly at the shore of
the stream’s source: a lake of the foul-smelling green goo. Far out
across its surface, there was a sickening splash, as some ichor-dwelling
creature came up for air and then resubmurged.
The lake’s ichor flowed heavily around a line of
boulders at the head of the stream. Allyndil pointed us across them,
and lithely led the way. Madoran followed, a bit less gracefully, and I
nervously brought up the rear. Safely across, we struck off into the
weird forest again, on the far side of the stream and farther from
anything I knew to call civilization.
Darkness fell about us, and the night noises
began. The inhuman screeching from previous nights returned, echoing in
my mind. Beneath it, periodically, sounded a deep, reverberant thrum,
like air being expelled from a creature made of one huge lung. Nearer
at hand, for a minute or more, came the sound of scuffling and dragging,
and a guttural series of clicks and groans which sounded nearly human
before they faded back into the night. Somewhere, off in the dark
distance, came what sounded like the baying of bloodhounds. The three
of us clutched our weapons nervously.
A full hour past dark, a light flickered between
the thick trees ahead of us for just a moment. I stopped as it
disappeared, staring at where it had been. “Hurry up,” hissed Madoran,
unseen in front of me. I began moving again.
The light reappeared up ahead, showing for a moment
between the trees, and then there was another, and soon there were
flickering shadows falling across the ground, and real firelight
streaming past us into the blackness from two square stone lanterns.
They stood at the base of a hill, in front of a tall, white stone wall,
flanking a sturdy looking, blank-faced wooden gate. I breathed,
relieved to be in light again.
Madoran strode boldly up to the gate and knocked.
There was the grunt of someone jerking awake on the other side, and then
an uncertain, “Who’s there? Jayksen?”
“Friends,” said Madoran simply.
There was a pause. “There are no friends in the
northlands,” said the voice inside.
“There won’t be if you don’t let us in out of the
northlands night,” said the dwarf crossly. Allyndil smiled. I glanced
nervously over my shoulder into the darkness.
There was an uncertain pause, and then a click and
the sound of wood scraping against metal. A moment later, the door
cracked open. A short man wearing white robes, light brown skinned and
balding, peeked out warily. His face broke into a relieved smile when
he saw the dwarf and the elf, and he pushed the door open to let us in.
He was thickly-muscled, and hefted a battle-hammer, looking past us into
the dark. “Follow me,” he said.
We passed through the thick gate, which the man
swung shut and locked behind us. There was a low wooden guardhouse to
the left of the gate. A path ran up a rise in front of us, flanked by
more of the stone column lanterns. At the base of each lantern was a
small green bush covered in red roses. On either side of the path was
what appeared in the firelight to be green, healthy, neatly-trimmed
grass. To the left, beyond the guardhouse, where the wall bent around
and up the hill, there was a low barn built into the bent wall’s elbow.
The smells and night-sounds of healthy, wholly living livestock drifted
out from it. To our right was a vegetables garden, and what looked like
a cistern for catching rainwater. The wall climbed the hill to our
right, beyond the garden, as well.
The man, taller than he’d seemed at first but
stooped, led us up the path. Half way up the hill, there were another
pair of wooden buildings, one off to either side of us. The left one
was a door and two floors of small windows which looked like a barracks;
the one on the right had a pair of high windows flanking a large double
door, and a bell on a rope out front. A path ran between the buildings,
across ours, and was lit by cruder wooden torches. Our silent guide
turned left, towards the barracks.
As we turned to follow, I glanced up the hill. It
rose to the bottom of a jagged cliff, and against the cliff, at the
path’s terminus, was a simple, marble building. Marble columns held up
a shallow pointed marble roof over an open marble hallway, receding from
the torchlight to a dark, round room. In the flickering torchlight from
outside, I thought I could make out a pedestal and a statue of a man,
kneeling and raising his hand and face to the heavens.
We reached the wooden building’s front door, and
the man turned around. “Wait here,” he said. He opened the door and
entered the building, closing the door behind him.
A minute later, it opened again.
Our escort reemerged, bowed, and walked back down the hill to his post.
An old man, pale and wrinkled with short-cropped white hair and a
short-cropped white beard, stepped out after him into the night air. He
wore white robes like the guard had, but his had thin gold trim.
Madoran stepped forward. “We’ve traveled hard
today, Anduin.”
Anduin put his right fist over his heart and bowed
slightly. Madoran returned the salute. As the old man lowered his
hand, I caught the glimmer of a silver ring on his middle finger: its
seal was deep purple, surrounding a silver starburst.
“Hello, Prince,” said the old man. He bent down,
and they embraced.
“King, now,” said Madoran.
“Then we have much to talk about,” said the old
man. He turned to Allyndil. “Welcome back, friend of the Hand.” The
elf smiled and nodded. Then Anduin turned to me. “Welcome to the tomb
of Uther Lightbringer, and the Order of the Silver Hand, followers of
the One True Light.” He bowed to me. I returned the bow.
Then he turned back to Madoran. “Where are the
rest?” he said.
“We three are it,” answered Madoran carefully.
The old man glanced inscrutably at us. “Then we
indeed have much to talk about,” he said, grimly. Madoran nodded.
The old man led us inside. He led Allyndil and I
to adjacent, ground-floor rooms. “This place is safe,” he said to me,
“so sleep well.” He and Madoran walked back down the floor’s sparse
hallway and ascended the stairs at its far end, already locked in quiet
conversation.
The room was sparse as well. A bed with white
sheets stood against the wall opposite the door, under a window facing
out into the compound’s courtyard. The torches outside cast dancing
shadows on the wall and ceiling. There were no curtains, and the only
source of light in the room was an unlit candle sitting on a plain
wooden nightstand.
I latched the door and hefted my backpack onto the
bed. I let Ajax out to stretch, and pulled off my boots and travel
clothes. I lay down on the human-sized bed, which was unexpectedly
soft. Ajax took a moment to explore the room to his satisfaction, and
then hopped up on the bed next to me. He curled up and was asleep in
seconds. Minutes later, so was I.
XXI
|
