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IV
I roared in rage and dove at the table, but there was nothing beneath it but legs. The legs’ owners stared into their drinks, suppressed smiles on their faces.
I leapt to my hooves and looked around. The gnome was standing on a stool at the bar, tossing coins onto it and balancing three enormous steins on her hands and head. I turned and stomped over. She leapt effortlessly off the bar, beer and all, and scampered away.
I made to follow her, but a little brown sack sitting on the bar caught my eye. It was my coin-purse. I picked it up and hefted it – it felt full.
“Did that gnome just pay you with –” I started, but the bartender cut me off with a grunt.
“Money’s money,” he said, staring at the glass he was needlessly polishing.
I grimaced, slid the sack into a pocket, and turned to scan the room. The gnome had sat down in the emptiest corner of the room, across from the orange-bearded, leather-clad dwarf I had seen alone earlier quaffing his ale. They were sitting across from each other, chatting amicably and sipping their beer as though they’d been that way for hours. I stormed over, snorting in indignation.
The dwarf looked up at me calmly from his barely-too-big chair. “Beer?” he said, gesturing to the third side of the table. The gnome’s third beer sat, waiting, chair- and quaffer-less.
“Are you serious?” I said.
“Yeh,” grunted the dwarf. “Sorry about the surprise hello. It’s how we meet people. Plus, bein’ entertainment endears us to the locals.”
“Have you thought of saying hi?” I growled menacingly. “I was trying to keep a low profile.”
“Overrated!” declared the dwarf.
“I just disappear whenever,” said the gnome conspiratorially.
I stared at them. Then I glanced around at the rest of the room. Everyone had returned to their beers and their conversations. My unwitting moment in the spotlight was over. I turned back around and huffed in irritation. With nothing else for it, I sat my backpack down, grabbed a too-small chair and picked up the beer.
“So, you’re incognito?” said the dwarf. “On the run from the law?”
I grunted. “Something like that,” I muttered into my beer.
“Ooh,” squeaked the gnome, “are you dangerous?”
I looked at her over the lip of my stein. “Very,” I said. She giggled.
I set my beer down. “You’re outsiders too?” I said.
“Sure are,” replied the dwarf, “though we’ve made enough friends to get ourselves fed.”
“I’m hungry!” said the gnome.
“Oh, me too,” I said, glancing at the bar. “I don’t have time to make friends – how much does the no-food-for-outsiders rule cost to break?”
The dwarf shook his head. “They like food more than they like money right now. You have made friends, though,” he added, nodding to himself and the gnome. “Useful friends, too. They like us because I help fix them up after the marauders come.”
“They like me because I’m funny!” piped the gnome.
“Hilarious,” I muttered, patting my pocket.
“Go get us some food,” grunted the dwarf in feigned annoyance.
The gnome hopped down from her chair. “All three of us?” she said.
The dwarf looked at me. “It’s on us,” he said, “since you bought the beer.” He grinned.
I grunted. “Yes please,” I said. “I’m famished and I’m out of rations.”
“No you’re not!” perked the gnome, and then bounced off.
I looked after her quizzically, then back at the dwarf. He shrugged. I looked down at my backpack, sitting next to my chair. I pulled it open.
On top of everything else sat a thick loaf of bread and a paper-wrapped package. I pulled the package out and unwrapped it. It was slabs of salmon: gutted, skinned and boned, cooked just enough to not go bad. “Oh, wow,” I said.
Unless the gnome had snuck it into my pack while robbing me, it had been put there by the murloc and the bull, restocking my bag while I’d been passed out. It annoyed me, for a moment, that as I ran from them they insisted on keeping me fed. It felt condescending. But I quickly decided that having food was preferable to not having food, and I tore off a chunk of fish and dug in. It was delicious.
“Unexpected?” said the dwarf.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said through a full mouth.
The gnome returned with three bowls of what looked like cabbage soup, and a thin, dry, crusty loaf. I looked guiltily down at my salmon and hearty bread. I slid them to the center of the table.
“Uther’s beard,” said the dwarf. “Ten thousand thanks - we haven’t had meat since we arrived.”
“Yeah!” said the gnome, grabbing a chunk of fish and cramming it into her mouth.
We ate in silence. “How long have you two been here?” I said after a minute, through mouthfuls of bread.
“Arrived six nights ago, from the north,” replied the dwarf, similarly.
I swallowed. “North Kali?” I said. “You mean, in the mountains?”
“Aye,” said the dwarf, “some in the mountains. Some at the shore, some crossin’ the ocean an’ back… we’ve seen more o’ this world than most, I warrant… been nowhere near news-tellers and -sellers, though.” He nodded to the gnome. “We’ve been out of the civilized world for a while, an’ when we saw the sky burn and the moons dance we decided we’d walk it again for a spell.”
“The woods were boring, but the furbolgs were neat!” piped up the gnome.
“You lived with furbolgs!” I exclaimed. They were a secretive group, and not fans of outsiders. “You have seen more of the world than most.”
The dwarf nodded. “Spent some time with them, aye. It’s easy gettin’ into groups ye wouldn’t otherwise when ye’ve healing to offer,” he grinned.
“You’re a healer?” I said, interested.
“Yeh,” grunted the dwarf. “Healer, walker of roads. My friend here is just a roguish reprobate.”
The gnome stuck her tongue out.
With half a grin, I said, “Does your friend have a name?”
“Do you?” returned the dwarf seriously.
I paused. “I guess no,” I said.
He winked. “So neither do we.”
I nodded. Fair enough.
“Well, we’ve told you the bare bones of our story,” said the dwarf, through another mouthful of bread, “so would ye care to tell us yours?”
No, I thought. “It’s long,” I said, “and mostly really boring.” And lately, really confusing. But mostly boring. I couldn’t imagine anyone actually wanting to hear my story.
“Long!” laughed the dwarf. “Yer young – it’ll get longer still, Light willing.”
I perked up. “Light,” I said, “with a capital L? I’ve heard of that.”
The dwarf raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Have ye? Not enough have, these days.”
I nodded. “D’you know Anduin, Silver Hand guy?” I said, grasping at straws.
The dwarf laughed. “O’course!” he said. “Not personally, mind you, but met him once. Anduin of the Silver Hand is the head of Uther’s order, and it’s him that gives us our priesthood – gives us our stripes, so to speak. How do you know him?”
“I was at his monastery,” I said, “visiting.” I faltered, unsure if I wanted to get into its fate just now. “I did some chores,” I said.
“Well,” said the dwarf, “a friend of the Light is a friend of the light-bringers,” and he put his hand on his chest.
I smiled. “Light-bringers, hmm,” I said. “How many more are there?” I said.
“A fair few,” replied the dwarf. “Not as many as there used to be. Anduin’s monastery is the only place in the world now where any of us live together. The rest of have our own wee parishes, or we wander. Do I know Anduin,” he laughed into his beard. “Tha’s like askin’ a dwarf if he knows Ordinn.”
“Ordinn,” I grunted.
“Works for the Stone King in Ironforge. I grew up there,” explained the dwarf.
“Me too!” said the gnome.
“No, I know who he is,” I said distastefully, remembering the last time I’d seen him. “He’s not in Ironforge any more. Neither is the Stone King.” Probably the successes in Ironforge were a better story to tell than the tragedies at Uther’s Tomb, I decided.
The dwarf looked at me with wonder. “Nooo kiddin’,” he breathed. “What happened?”
I told him what news I could without raising too many questions of how I knew what – that the Stone King had gone silent and Ordinn had disappeared; that the Herald of the Titans sect had taken over (the dwarf furrowed his brow in distaste at the news, and the gnome loudly declared, “Yech!”); that Madoran had returned with an army, that the gnomes had fought by our side as a mass (“Darn right we did!”). I regaled the pair with the story of the battle itself, holding them rapt as the wave of Heralds crashed against our fortification; they gasped as the griffins sniped us from above; they cheered as Madoran arrived with his populous army. I crescendoed as I boosted myself up on the top of the stone door, leaping off it over the fray—
I paused. “I landed on some guys,” I said lamely. “Hit them with my club. It was pretty cool.” Damnit, I thought, I suck at keeping secrets.
My momentum blunted, I hurried to the end of the story, with Madoran on the anvil in the middle of a throng of dwarves and gnomes and reclaiming his family’s throne.
The dwarf grinned breathlessly. “An’ you said yer story’s boring,” he laughed. “I would’ve sheared my beard clear off to’ve been there.”
“I woulda sheared his beard off too!” said the gnome excitedly. “I woulda stabbed some traitors in the kidney,” she growled.
“So Madoran is King now,” said the dwarf, shaking his head and smiling. “Tha’s good. Tha’s very good. He’s an upstanding dwarf, he is. When did all this happen?”
I realized with a jolt that I wasn’t sure. “What month is it?” I asked hesitantly.
“First of the year,” answered the dwarf, raising a bushy orange eyebrow. “Winter’s veil is on us.”
If it was January, I thought, and I’d left Storm City in late summer, I must’ve been in hibernation for –
“Months ago,” I said. “Last summer. Before the moons,” I added.
The dwarf nodded, apparently taking my amnesia at face value and moving on. “I suspected as much,” he said. “The Shadow Council in Orcmar disappeared about the same time. Ratchet, too. Storm City, too, if rumors are to be believed.”
I grunted noncommittally, pretending to think deeply on the subject. We lapsed into thoughtful silence.
The dwarf had all but declared that all those city governments had been connected. I had just nearly failed at hiding the simple fact that I could turn into a bear: I was afraid now that if the conversation turned to the Law, it would be painfully obvious that I knew more than I was telling.
But why not tell? I thought. I was running from the Law. I was trying to put as much distance between them and me as I could. Why keep their secrets?
I looked down at the hunk of bread I was holding, that I had pulled out of my backpack unwitting not five minutes earlier. I was running, but they were keeping up, I thought. Each time it occurred to me, it was more and more irksome. Screw it, I thought. I’m not their whipping boy any more.
A shape in the bread, where I had torn it off, caught my eye. The bread rose, subtly but unmistakably, in a half-circle, with a pair of lines cutting across it. I recognized the symbol. “Remember,” it said.
I crushed the bread in my fist. Remember what? I thought, grinding my teeth together.
“I’m sure we’ll find out what that’s about in due time,” muttered the dwarf darkly, oblivious to me. “Strange goings-on, these days.”
“What does it all meeeean?” said the gnome, eyes wide and looking at nobody in particular.
“And is there a connection?” continued the dwarf. “What’s the connection between an apocalyptic light-show and the sudden and simultaneous evacuation of power from all the major cities in the world?”
“Huh,” I said. I was saved from having to decide whether to betray the law or not, by simple ignorance. I realized that, despite how much more I knew about it than the rest of the world, I had no idea what the connection was. Maybe there isn’t one, I thought, but that seemed too unlikely.
Words spoken by Katy M, months ago, drifted back to me. I don’t know why, she’d said, but it serves the purpose of the Law. It wants chaos, or lawlessness, something. It must've, I thought: it had spent six hundred years pulling the old alliances, the old prides apart, weakening the kingdoms, weakening the world. And then chaos, and then Varimathras. And me, going along, playing the role of patsy to perfection. I shook for a moment in barely controlled rage.
It didn’t feel right, though. I felt an unshakable certainty that I was missing something, some puzzle-piece. I shook my head, and took a deep breath.
“I don’t believe that the heavens arbitrarily dictate the rhythms of the world,” the dwarf was saying. “I don’t believe in portents that do nothing but portend. But there was fire in the sky and then the white moon gave birth to a blue moon. That doesn’t just happen, you know? That can’t have been just a day like any other.”
“No kidding,” I muttered.
We each took a drink from our steins.
“Well,” declared the dwarf, “since we seem to know nothing, the most useful question isn’t what’s happened, but what’s going to come of it.”
“How do you mean?” I said.
“I mean,” replied the dwarf firmly, “that the whole world is suddenly a power vacuum, and there’s chaos in the streets and on the plains and in the mountains. I mean, what’s coming? Civil war? Open war? With what armies? There are none, now.”
“If it were the old days…” I said, thinking out loud.
“It isn’t the old days,” said the dwarf. “If it were the old days, the armies would already be formed, and everyone would just go invade each other. If this were the old days,” he continued, “there would be a dwarf city and a human city and an orc city, and the orcs would march out and kill the dwarves and vice versa, and then everyone would be dead and nobody would be happy.”
“No, but, they might bring their armies together,” I said hopefully, “like the Argent Dawn.” See? I thought. It’s happened before.
The dwarf shook his head. “Too tenuous. The Dawn needed a common enemy. Fell apart when it lost that.”
Sort of, I thought. Point taken, though. I sighed.
“Maybe there just won’t be any armies,” I said. “There are no more kingdoms, just little cities, and no more race armies. There’s nothing to be proud of, and there’s nothing to fight about.”
“You mean nothing pointless to fight about,” returned the dwarf. “Race armies? I’m a dwarf, so let’s kill all the orcs! Or even worse, I’m a Dark Iron dwarf, so let’s organize an army and kill all the Bronzebeards. Given the choice,” he declared, “I’ll take low-grade local chaos.”
I shook my head earnestly. “But,” I said lamely. “The world’s lost something for it. No one is proud of who they are any more.”
“I’m a gnome!” cried the gnome.
“The world’s been peaceful, for half a millennium!” declared the dwarf. “You’d trade that for the old pride? If it were the old days, we wouldn’t even be sitting at this table together.”
I shook my head. “I know,” I said. “But, I mean… pride.” I faltered. “Look. King Madoran’s speech at the end of the battle… it was amazing. Everyone cheered,” I said, suddenly intense, “and everyone sang together. I think it was the Dwarven national anthem or something.”
The dwarf hummed a few notes.
I shivered. “That’s the one,” I said. “It was amazing. It was the most powerful thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, those people had just fought together, some without armor even! For their home. For pride. You can’t tell me that that kind of pride is worth giving up for anything.” And yet I’d run away from home, I thought. My stomachs twisted inside me. “It’s gone,” I said. “That pride is gone from most of the world.”
“Wars are gone from the world, too. Armies running at each other for no good reason. Real suffering,” gritted the dwarf. “Maybe you haven’t held someone’s head in your lap, a warrior who fell in a battle over nothing, doing what you can to ease his pain as he dies because your art doesn’t know how to put internal organs back in. You haven’t looked into his eyes as they glazed over into complete, pointless oblivion. You haven’t seen his wife and children, his brother, finding out that he died and declaring another cycle of hatred, another generation-long bout of racial pride,” he spat.
The gnome’s face was somber. “I really liked him, too,” she said quietly.
I stared at them in mute shock. The question of pride versus peace had always been theoretical to me. I’d seen people die, but never in battle – not until Ironforge, when the victory had overwhelmed me. I shook my head.
“I’m sorry,” said the dwarf, heaving a sigh. “I shouldn’ta snapped at you. Bad form, snapping at new friends.”
I nodded. “I guess I never thought of it that way before.”
“Well,” said the dwarf. “Ye should. I’m no pacifist, an’ some conflicts have a blood cost that’s got to be paid. But senseless conflicts, racial pride conflicts? Tha’s just blood wasted.” He shook his head.
“I guess,” I said, disheartened. “But… I mean… shouldn’t there be some way to stand up and say, ‘I’m a bull,’ and be proud of it, without it inevitably turning into wanting to kill everyone else? Without looking down on everyone that isn’t a bull.” No pun intended, I thought.
“Aye,” said the dwarf. “Aye… in the best of all possible worlds, we could have pride and peace together.”
I nodded, thinking.
“‘I’m alive,’” I said slowly.
The dwarf cocked his head at me.
“‘I’m a living, thinking being,’” I continued. “‘I have control of my own life, and I’m proud of it, and of everyone else that can, too.’”
“Pride in sentience?” muttered the dwarf. “Well, now’s the time, isn’t it? No pride and no wars yet, no government.” I smiled.
There was a moment of silence. I slowly absorbed what we’d just said. Pan-sentient-ism, I thought. Everyone for everyone. It was a crazy idea, but I suddenly felt a burning desire to get up and go remake the world in its image. And it suddenly occurred to me that, whenever I’d had a moment to dream, that desire had always–
“It’d never work,” declared the gnome casually in the silence.
We both turned to look at her.
“Wouldn’t work,” she repeated, waving her small arms about. “Pride in sentience? Too tenuous. Needs a common enemy, other wise it’d never last.”
Our own words back at us.
The dwarf said something, and the gnome replied cheekily, but I wasn’t listening. My thoughts were racing. Needs a common enemy. “Oh,” I said quietly.
It was the piece I’d been missing, in front of me the whole time, the piece that explained my disquieted suspicion that I’d misjudged the bull and the murloc. My mind flashed back to Katy M, sitting around a campfire, months ago, professing faith in the Law’s design, then to her somber sadness at the fate of the refugees of Storm City, refugees by that same design. I thought to Fang’s strange and earnest words on the shore of the north seas, warning the Nerubians to flee for their lives as he marched us towards the same danger. How he’d refused to try to stop the summoning – But it’s the right thing to do, I’d protested. What do you mean by that word, ‘right’? he’d whispered challengingly in my mind. Even when they’d appeared at Under City and with no explanation delivered the evil black book into the hands of Hannathras himself – I shuddered at the memory – there had been a sadness, an earnestness in their eyes. They had faith, I was certain, that what they were doing was somehow for the good of the world.
And what could drive such a believer to seem to so shamelessly work for evil? I sat back in my chair, staring at the stone and mortar wall in front of me. Needs a common enemy, I thought. Six hundred years breaking up the old allegiances, the old prides, and then, suddenly: Varimathras. “Ohhh,” I breathed.
I shook my head. Couldn’t be. It would be too… right. Too perfect. It would be too much like something they’d know I’d want to be part of. That would be just like them, I thought.
* * *
“I have to go,” I said, standing suddenly.
“Where to?” chirped the gnome.
I paused. “I don’t know,” I said. I sat back down. I was suddenly exhausted. “Sleep, for now, I guess,” I said. I stood back up.
The dwarf nodded. “It is gettin’ late, we should think about tuckin ourselves in as well. Thanks for the beer,” he said, quaffing what remained of his and winking.
I nodded absently to the dwarf. “Thanks for the company. You’ll be around tomorrow morning, right?”
The dwarf smiled. “We’ll be around next month, unless this town suddenly needs no more healing.”
“Bye!” said the gnome, smiling cherubically again. “Nice chatting with you!”
I smiled back at her, and turned away. My smile turned to a frown. Damn gnome. Before she’d spoken up, I’d been so sure that running, at least, had been the right decision.
I walked slowly back over to the old woman at the desk.
“Room?” she croaked.
“Yes, please,” I replied.
She peered again at the book open in front of her. “How long?”
“Just the night,” I replied tiredly.
“Attack gnome?” she said, peering imperiously up at me. I glared at her. “Juuuust kidding,” she drawled.
V
(Discuss chapter)
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