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V
The stairway at the back of the bar room was old, oaken, and dark. A series of dead electric lights lined the walls as I made my way up. The hallway at the top was long and dark as well; a single, stubby, wilted candle sat burning on a table at the far end, under a mirror and another pair of dead lights. I walked towards it. My reflection bobbed and weaved, in the mirror, horribly distorted but growing clearer as I neared it.
I stared at myself. I looked surprisingly together, I thought. More together than I felt. I shook my head.
I turned and put my hand on the knob of the door whose number (8) matched my key. I moved to put the key in the lock, but the door eased ajar. I cocked my head at it and pushed it all the way open.
The room was small. I glanced around it suspiciously. There was a small closet behind a small door in the corner, and a bed which would be too short for me. There was an unlit candle and a pack of matches on a small table next to it. I fumbled with the matches for a moment before striking one and lighting the candle.
I poked my head suspiciously in the closet. It was empty, but for a few hangers.
I walked to the window and looked out. The canvas windbreak stood ten short feet from the building. Even on the second story, I could barely see over it. The break through which I had entered Crossroads was off to the right. A flickering torch passed by outside it – a watchman on his beat.
The cold night air bit into my nose, but it cleared my head of the stuffy air in the bar below. I inhaled deeply.
I left the window open and sat down on the bed, letting my pack fall to the floor. I leaned over and pulled it open, removing the white cat carrier and setting it next to me. I peered inside, and Ajax blinked his golden eyes sleepily at me. He stretched luxuriously and strolled out onto the bed.
“Hey, kiddo,” I said. He glanced around the room, then stepped gingerly up onto my lap. He sat down and stared expectantly up at me, and I scritched behind his ears. He purred.
“You’re not hiding anything, right, buddy?” I said to him. “You’re not plotting against me or moving my world around without asking me, right? You’re just a cat.” I smiled at him in spite of myself. “Punk cat,” I said. He purred louder.
How had my life fallen apart that the only constant friend, the only one without secrets and plans, the only one that I was even sure was a friend, was sitting on my lap and purring? I sighed heavily. I wondered idly where Tidus was, whether he had made it back to Orcmar, whether he had been there when it burned. Through no fault of mine!, I thought. There had been a few fireballs in the sky. Those people had set their own houses on fire.
I sighed and shook my head. What pathetic reasoning.
I had stopped petting Ajax. He meowed, staring up at me. “Sorry,” I said, and recommenced scritching. “You don’t mind,” I said. You don’t mind anything, so long as I’m scritching behind your ears. I sighed again. This is too big for me, I thought. Right or wrong, it’s too big.
“Hi!” said a gnome.
“Gah!” I said. Ajax leapt off my lap, looking scandalized.
The gnome, gray-haired, gray-bearded and gray-mustached, was standing by the door to the closet. His thumbs were hooked through a pair of black suspenders, and he was grinning widely at me.
“Who are you?” I cried. “What are you doing here?”
“Translating for him,” said the gnome, pointing over my shoulder.
I turned. Sitting on the windowsill was a familiar-looking, tiny red dragon. It screeched in what I assumed was a greeting, then flapped rambunctiously past me and landed atop the open closet door.
“I know you!” I said. I looked back at the gnome. “Is that the Whelp? From Orcmar. I know too you!” I said. “You’re his gnome! I met you once! You used to be famous.” He beamed, and snapped his suspenders.
The red whelp screeched. I glanced at him.
“He says Matt the Gnome will always be famous, and don’t you forget it,” said the gnome.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Does he have a name?” I added. Orcmar had always referred to him simply as The Whelp.
The whelp screeched shortly.
I stared at the gnome, who nodded.
“That’s his name?” I said.
“Yeah,” said the gnome. He screeched in imitation.
“Yynyx?” I repeated.
The whelp bobbed his head and screeched. “Close enough,” laughed the gnome.
The whelp screeched again.
“Yynyx,” screeched the gnome, “would like to know whether you are a fan of continuing with being alive, or whether you prefer sudden and painful death.”
I stared.
“You’re on the run from some fairly dangerous people,” continued the gnome, translating as the whelp spoke, “and you’re only not on the run from other, far more dangerous people because they haven’t tracked you down yet. We’re sure you’re aware of your danger, and the need for circumspection, and yet you sit down in a strange bar in a strange town and spill your guts to a pair of complete strangers!” he cried in channeled exasperation. “Lucky for you they’re upstanding.”
“I didn’t spill my guts!” I protested. “I didn’t tell them… everything….” About my shape shifting, I thought.
“Yeah, real circumspect,” said the gnome sardonically. “You said you were at the battle of Ironforge. Did you see a lot of Tauren at the battle of Ironforge? What about bears?”
I grimaced. They were right.
“That’s the kind of thing you really need to work on not telling everyone,” continued the gnome and the whelp. “If everything goes according to plan, you’re going to start popping up in all sorts of unexplainable places, and the less you give the bad guys the dots to connect, the better off you are.”
What plan? I thought. Not my plan. No matter what greater cause they might be working for, they could damn well ask my opinion before planning my life. The sudden urge to punt the gnome overwhelmed me.
“I have to hide?” I said crossly. “Everyone knows M.”
The whelp snuffed and shook his small head, peering down at me. He screeched again.
“M can kick major ass,” translated the gnome. “You couldn’t kick a can if it were tied to your hoof. At least, not yet.” I glowered at the whelp. The urge to punt the gnome resurfaced. I inhaled and stayed it.
The whelp screeched. “You can’t stay here,” said the gnome. “You can’t sleep alone in well-traveled places, not for a long time to come.”
“Forget it!” I said, stepping forward. I was tired. I hadn’t said a proper goodbye to the dwarf and the gnome downstairs, either. “I didn’t ask for this,” I added accusingly, pointing up at the whelp. “Fang made me do it, made me run away, made me say what I said.”
“Who?” said the gnome. The whelp screeched. The gnome grimaced. “Fine,” he muttered.
The whelp peered unblinkingly down at me. I sighed. Whoever’s fault it was, dangerous people that were after me, I thought. They might find me here, if I stayed too long.
“One night,” I said, plaintively, annoyed at them, and myself, and the whole world. I hadn’t asked for this at all. Right now, I thought, it’s not that it’s all too big for me, and it’s not that I’m scared. I just want to sleep in a damn bed, and think about the things I needed to think about.
The whelp flew back over to the window and perched on the sill. He glanced over at me. “Go have a look,” said the gnome.
Puzzled, I walked to the window. I looked out into the darkness, following the whelp’s gaze.
He screeched shortly. “Watch,” said the gnome.
The whelp inhaled deeply. There was a strange rasp, and then what sounded like flames crackling to life. The back of the whelp’s teeth, his tongue, the entire inside of his mouth lit up with orange light, and with a powerful battlescreech he spat a gob of fire into the darkness. I followed it with my widened eyes: a split second before it impacted, I saw a pair of eyes in the darkness, and then there was a stifled cry of surprise and pain as the fireball landed home on a black-clad figure who had been hiding in the shadows beneath the canvas wall. He hastily extinguished the flames and then disappeared, away from the inn and into the shadows.
He had tracked me down, I thought. Without any apparent effort at all. I had gone to the window and thrown it wide, stuck my head out into the night darkness – he knew what room I was in.
I turned back around. The gnome was holding up my backpack, open. “I took the liberty of packing your cat,” he said.
The whelp screeched. “Oh right,” said the gnome. He pulled a hefty loaf of bread out of a pocket and dropped it in the bag. “Yynyx requests that you kindly stop giving your food away.”
I furrowed my brow in final annoyance. “How do you know everything I’ve been doing?” I said crossly. The Law, of course.
The whelp screeched, and the gnome smiled. “Sarvavidh,” he said keenly.
“What?” I said stupidly.
“Don’t worry about it,” said the gnome. The whelp was silent again. I sighed.
I sat down heavily on the bed. “Where am I supposed to go?” I said, dejectedly.
The whelp hopped about on the windowsill, and stared at me, blinking his film eyelids slowly across his black pinprick eyes. He screeched.
“Where you were already heading,” said the gnome quietly.
I stared at him dumbly for a moment. Then, Home, I thought. This whole time, I’ve been heading home. The word sounded foreign as I thought it.
The gnome closed my bag and held it up to me. I took it.
“May we suggest the window?” said the gnome, smiling and gesturing like a host offering a seat to his guests. “The front door is being watched.”
* * *
The guards wandered on, watching for armies or marauders and missing it entirely as a single stealthy, horned wildcat slipped past them, out of Crossroads’ plaza and into the abandoned city. I prowled through its barren streets, around south and back out onto the plains. The Turnpike ran off toward the horizon here, across the wide, cold, brown grasslands. Over that horizon, I thought, was my destination.
The gnome had been right, I thought. Since I’d run from Orcmar, heading south and west, I’d felt it pulling me onward, step by step, towards the west where the brown barrens turned to the green plains of my childhood. It was January, and they would be lush: winter was Mulgore’s rainy season. My heart swelled with a sudden longing for the smell of the great plain, the feel of the sod springy under my hooves after a rainstorm. I don’t want to see anybody, I thought. I just want to run the plains. I inhaled, stretched my legs out and galloped off, on down the road.
Miles of road flashed below me, and dry, cold, night wind whipping through my gray mane and tail, biting my eyes and sharpening my tired mind. The white moon, waning now, shone through the whispering clouds behind me and to the east. The blue moon, still full, shone in the sky to the west. To either side of the worn cobblestone road, the dry barren plains stretched off far into the moonlit darkness. From time to time, great layered hills and mountains rose up from the silver-lit grasslands: silver hills in the moonlight against the gray-black sky.
The wind shifted for a moment, gusting from the west. It smelled fresher, just a bit alive, a bit wetter, less barren. I tossed my head and inhaled, staring off into the darkness. There was a high peak there, nearer the road than the others, and I recognized it as the Ridge of the Fallen Warrior, overlooking the Last Oasis, fed by a small, clear stream which issued from the Caverns of Broken Promises. I shook my head and whinnied as the names and their stories came back to me from years-unused corners of my mind.
The barrens, so said the locals, had once been lush and green – greener even than Mulgore, they would hasten to point out. Lush and green had faced to grasslands, which in turn had faded to barren grasslands, with only small, scattered oases left of the land’s former beauty. Eventually, only this one had survived.
A prophecy, remembered fervently and bitterly by the locals, spoke of a disturbance, some evil deep within the Caverns which was causing the slow death of the land. If the evil was defeated, it promised, the land would return to its former fertility. Countless adventurers heard the same prophecy, said the locals, and countless ventured into the caverns to do battle with whatever beasts and fiends made their quiet lives below. Some returned victorious, it was told, but none ever fulfilled the prophecy. Eventually, the adventurers gave up, and the caverns were renamed.
I didn’t much believe in prophecies. You make your own prophecies, and then you go and fulfill them, if you can.
The word “Nemesis” floated into my mind. Others can make them for you too, I thought.
The wind shifted again, and the cold dry winter air returned. I galloped on.
The petulant self-pity and anger to which I had clung since reawakening two days earlier – two days! I thought – had been replaced with miserable guilt. To the guilt had been added fear, and then, without dissipating in the slightest, it had all been overlaid with a burning curiosity, more powerful even than I had felt in Fang’s dark Storm City office so many months before. I had to know if I was right, if I’d put all the pieces together with the help of a hyperactive, eyepatched gnome.
But first… I had to go home. Its wordless pull was inexorable. I ran on.
The curiosity was slowly replaced by the returning fatigue. The whelp’s injunction against sleeping in obvious places weighed on my mind, and I reluctantly passed several sturdy abandoned huts along the road. Finally, as I was sure my slender legs would buckle beneath me if I took another step, I turned off the road a quarter mile and cantered into the cold grasslands. I spotted the shadow of a tree, one of the alien, wide-trunked and scraggly-branched ones that dotted the land, and trotted towards it. I pulled my body apart and back together as a bull, and sat down, lay my head on my pack and went to sleep.
When I awoke, the half-hidden sun was climbing the sky. I devoured half the loaf of bread I’d gotten from Matt the Gnome and then, stiff and cold, I took back off down the road.
By noon, the hills to the west had disappeared from the horizon, and I turned off the road. The hard-packed earth puffed dust as I galloped over it. A giraffe wandered by.
And then, between two shallow ridges and beyond a shallow crest of land, the clouds faded from harsh to misty, the trees faded from alien to familiar pointy evergreens, the grass faded from thin and brown to lush, and before me spread the wild green plains of my childhood. My breath caught in my throat. I cantered to a stop, and turned back into myself.
Sudden doubt lashed through me. What did I expect to find here? I had been barely out of calfhood when I’d left. No one here had ever even known me as “Horse”. Surely no one would remember me at all.
Except my mother, I thought. Except my poor mother, whom I had left alone. My father had died, years before, and we’d grown apart – through no fault of my own!, I thought, but I shook the thought away. It was useless. No matter the fault: I, her only child, had left her alone. Why? I thought. Why did I run? No good reason, came the answer.
Unsure of where I was heading, or of what I was doing, and utterly unsure of myself, I inhaled, and stepped onward.
* * *
A heavy mist fell over the green waves of grass. I’d found the road again, narrower here and less well-maintained. I stood at a fork – to the left, a mile down the road, was Bloodhoof, the village I’d grown up in. To the right, miles and miles to the north, stood Thunder Bluff, a ring of high plateaus which rose up out of the great plains. Camps dotted the top of the bluffs, and for a time it had been our capital.
I stood at the fork, staring west along the left fork, willing myself to step forward, but unable to.
Shuffling footfalls came from ahead. I started, ready to run, afraid that whoever it was was after me, or would remember me, or, worse, wouldn’t.
But instead of a black-clad assassin, or a dread lord or a dread lord's minion, a short, scaled, cerulean figure emerged from the mist. It was Fang. I stared at him as he approached.
He stopped a few paces from me, staring back. We stood, silent, for a moment, and then, “Follow me,” he said simply. He turned, northwest, between the two forks, and walked off into the grass. I watched him for a moment, recessing into the mist, and then I followed.
VI
(Discuss chapter)
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