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Part Four - The Lightless Land
XIX
I spent the night, back against the rocks, staring
out over the cliff. The wind continued unabated; eventually, it faded
to background noise, a hum against my consciousness. The seabirds had
gone to sleep in their cliff roosts. Across the shallow sea, the
southland glittered under its moonlight. The light fell off the land,
into the ocean, sparkling across the surface for a ways before sinking
helplessly into the dark, inky ocean. That was half a mile away. Here,
my side of the divide, felt like hadn’t seen moonlight in hundreds of
years.
Allyndil had found me, still kneeling in the
clearing, eyes squeezed shut, trying to think and failing. He led me
gently back to camp, settled me in and gave me some warm tea to drink.
In my pained frenzy earlier, I hadn’t been aware of scents, but coming
out of the evil woods and into the cliff’s stiff sea breeze was like
stepping into a refrigerator on a hot, smelly Storm City day.
I’d come back to the fire, silent, slowly trying to
process what had happened. Madoran had watched me warily, perhaps
unsure if I was still myself, or unsure if my unhappy silence portended
some deeper betrayal. Then he went to bed. The elf stayed awake, back
against a rock a few paces west along the cliff, watching the same dark
ocean as I.
My years of foolish abandon in Orcmar were catching
up to me, and I was being tested by the Law: tested, apparently, with my
life. To what end? What had he meant, I couldn’t try to save anyone?
Who was I going to lose? I looked back and forth at my two traveling
companions. Madoran, the political dwarf, whom I liked very much and
did not want to see dead, was lying with his back to the dying fire and
the sea, breathing shallowly. The pale elf, whose magic of song had
healed me twice (or thrice) now, sat, stoic as always, staring
unblinkingly into the distance. I certainly didn’t want him to die
either.
And if they died, who would I have? The sea wind
whistled lonesomely up our cliff.
I stood up from my spot on the cliff and crossed
the fire to my backpack. I pulled out the cat carrier, and unlatched
it. Ajax blinked sleepily out at me, and I reached in and pulled him
out. I returned to my spot at the edge of the campfire’s shrinking ring
of light, with a sleepy cat snuggled into my shoulder.
“I’d control what he eats in this land,” said
Allyndil. “Its plague twists things, and eating the twisted evil
poisons your body and mind in ways that I can’t fix.”
I glanced over at him. He hadn’t moved to speak:
he was still staring lidlessly at the distance.
“What are we going to eat, then?” I said. “And why
were the rabbits safe?”
“There are things that are untouched. The plague
spreads slowly, by being eaten, and there are webs of plants and
creatures that have avoided it. Luckily, plagued creatures are easy to
spot. Unluckily, our supply of healthy food will dwindle as we head
into the north.”
“North to what?” I said. Ajax frantically nuzzled
one of my horns.
“Our destination,” said the elf lightly. A shade of
a smile flickered across his face. I sighed.
I nodded, closing my eyes for a moment, and then it
was the next day. I was stiff, but immediately and easily awake. The
previous night had faded into accessible memories, and didn’t overwhelm
me when I tried to think through them.
Ajax trotted up from somewhere with a skinny tail
dangling from his mouth. I leapt at him in a panic, prying whatever it
was out of his mouth. I held the dead field mouse up to Allyndil, who
laughed.
“It’s clean,” he said.
“How do you know?” I said.
“It looks clean,” he said patiently. “When you see
your first plagued creature, you’ll know. It’s not pleasant.”
I looked at the mouse suspiciously for another
moment, then shrugged and dangled it back in front of Ajax. He
snagged it with a claw and put it back in his mouth, looking
scandalized.
We packed, and shouldered our bags, and, bidding
the free air goodbye, slumped into the twisted forest.
This time, I was fully in my head and aware of my
surroundings. The air immediately closed in about us, and, while not
quite rotten, it smelled distinctly of wet death. The trees were
uniformly twisted: their trunks grew straight and proud to nearly my eye
level, at which point they began warping horribly, putting out brown and
scabbed leaves and oozing a dark green sap through sores in their bark.
“They catch the plague at that age,” said Allyndil. “Their roots hit
the water table. Smaller plants, drinking the rain, have the chance
to stay clean, thankfully for our food supplies.”
We passed a tree which the previous night had been
etched with a strange and strangely understood symbol. I stared at it
as we passed, brow creased. The bark was blank.
* * *
As we made our way farther north, the trees and
dank underbrush twisted together tighter and tighter, slowing our
progress steadily until we were making almost none at all. Allyndil, in
front, had unsheathed a dagger from somewhere and was cutting through
the underbrush; Madoran had a short-sword out aiding the progress. I
contented myself at the back of the group, bashing away with my mace at
low-hanging branches which the others walked under with ease. Our
journey carried us on in silence: the forest quelled our urges to
converse.
Allyndil led us steadily north. Time crawled on
with no reference to the sun, which hid behind the gray-brown clouds.
Several hours on, towards what felt like noon, we stopped for a hasty,
cold lunch.
“There is a spring ahead and to the west,” said
Allyndil casually between bites of cold, salted boar-meat. Our water
supplies were getting a bit stagnant, and I perked up. “It’s a plague
spring,” he continued. “They all are in this land.”
I wilted. “At least I get to see what one looks
like,” I muttered.
“We’re going as far around it as we can,” said
Allyndil shortly.
“Plenty o’ plague-springs an' creep an' death to see
up north, lad,” added Madoran. “Best avoid it
while we can.” It was the first he’d spoken to me directly since the
previous night’s incident.
“What’s up north?” I said.
“Our destination,” said Madoran sharply, glancing
at me from the corner of his eye.
I’d been here before, I thought, being kept
intentionally in the dark. I didn’t like it. “Where’s our
destination?” I pressed.
Madoran paused for a beat. Allyndil was putting
his provisions away – I followed suit – but his pointed ears were
perked.
“What happened last night?” said Madoran, after
another beat. “What’d you see?”
Honesty is the best policy, I thought, especially
with dwarves who’ve shown nothing but trust to you. “I can’t say,” I
said, honestly.
Madoran paused. “Fair enough,” he said. Then,
“Let’s go.” He shouldered his pack.
“Ye’ve told me yer position,” said Madoran over his
shoulder, once we were under way, “an’ so I shall tell ye mine.
Yesterday, we passed into a land well known for its nocturnal horrors,
and as the sun sets on our first evening in that land, you run screaming
into the darkness for no apparent reason, as though possessed. A
strange and momentous occasion to leave utterly unexplained for upwards
o’ half a day, don’t ye think?” He glanced back at me through the
dangling branches. “The nature and purpose of our destination is
not a thing which any of us,” and he accented the word, “wish to
be widely known. Therefore, until we arrive or I hear a satisfying
explanation of why you acted out of yer mind, I’m afraid I’m not in a
position to disclose our destination to you.”
I gritted my teeth. It sucked, but it was fair. I wished for a
moment that I’d found out where we were going before I'd fallen into
disfavor, but I hadn’t. It can wait, I thought. Then I smiled, just
slightly and just for a moment: I’d managed to think a bit quickly after
all.
* * *
Hours later, the branches overhead had begun
twisting together tighter, and more and more of the shrubs we passed
seeped their own green pussy sap. Suddenly, a creature skittered under
my hooves. I jumped in fright: not at its presence, but at the
half-glimpse I’d gotten of it before it disappeared back into the deep
undergrowth. It had been a field mouse, I was sure, a darker, skinnier
cousin of the one digesting in Ajax’s stomach. But I was certain I’d
seen glowing eyes on the thing, and instead of a tail, it had had a dark red stump.
Allyndil glanced back at me. “Whatever it was,” he
said, “don’t feed it to your cat.”
* * *
True to Allyndil’s prediction, there was no sunset
that night, just a slow deepening of the gray pall overhead, until it
was too dark to cut our way forward any further.
We backtracked slightly, to an area in the
woodlands where no roots broke the flat ground for a few feet in each
direction. Allyndil and Madoran sat down, leaning against trees and
unpacking supplies. Madoran tossed me a small loaf of bread.
“No cooking?” I said, taken aback.
“Campfires attract unwanted attention,” said the
dwarf.
“From what?” I said, glancing apprehensively over
my shoulder into the dusky forest.
“Whatever’s out there,” said the elf firmly, as
though it was all he knew on the subject, and all he needed to know. He
finished his sparse meal, threw his blanket down and casually stretched
out to sleep.
I munched on the loaf of bread, then pulled some
lean boar jerky from my pack and munched on that. Then, feeling wholly
unsatisfied, I lay down on my travel blanket and closed my eyes.
Madoran remained where he sat, stroking his hammer.
Night fell about us, quieting for a few minutes.
Then, slowly but unmistakably, a nocturnal orchestra awakened, inhuman
shrieking and snarling, at first a great distance, then crescendoing and
closing in around we three diurnal invaders until the very trees around
us were abuzz with the noises of the northern night. I shifted
uncomfortably.
“Get used to it,” muttered Allyndil to me. Madoran
humphed. A moment later, he swung his hammer at something, which
squelched unpleasantly and scampered back off into the total darkness.
* * *
I rolled over the next morning, still tired and
bleary. Allyndil had traded places with Madoran, now sitting, back
against a tree. He fiddled with his long dagger, which was covered to
the hilt in a vague, noxious, pale-green goo.
I shook my head clear and stood slowly up. Madoran
rolled over and muttered. Allyndil stood up as well, casually packing
his backpack. “We’re being followed,” he muttered.
Madoran sat bolt upright, and I swore. Allyndil
shook his head slightly, and we set out, as though nothing were wrong.
The ground became steadily more rocky as we
progressed: what had at first been periodic boulders now popped
regularly out of the undergrowth. They looked quite non-native, and
when I questioned Allyndil, he confirmed it.
“What are they from, then?” I said.
“You’ll see,” he said, smiling slightly.
A few minutes more, and suddenly the forest’s
oppressive ceiling of plagued branches broke, and we could see beyond it
again: and above us and immediately ahead was a great, towering stone
wall, standing proudly above the woodlands below, its heights jagged and
crumbling. A moment later, we broke free of the woods. The thirty feet
or so between us and the wall was treeless and littered with huge
boulders, and I glanced up, worried that another might smite us down at
any moment.
“Thoradin’s Wall,” said Allyndil grimly. “A
testament to the fallen strength of Man, if there ever was one.”
“At least here,” I felt obliged to say, having
spent the last three years of my life in a city built by the strength of
Man. Then I wondered how it was doing.
“We’re not even sure if it was built by men,” said
Madoran scholarly. “Much of the history of Lordaeron was lost when it
was overrun.”
I shivered.
“Oh, get over it,” muttered the dwarf icily.
“You’ve been in the place for going on two days and you haven’t yet been
accosted by zombies.”
Zombie field-mice, though, I thought.
We picked our way through the boulder field towards
a solid stone archway off to our right. The wall was thick, and despite
the evidence littered about outside, appeared well-built enough to
withstand the ages, or at least most of them.
Our emergence at the wall’s far side revealed,
depressingly, a thirty-foot stretch of boulders and another wall of
twisted forest. We plunged into it, but within a minute, Allyndil held
up his dagger-hand. We halted.
“Walk backwards, and hard to the left,” he ordered
quietly.
We re-emerged from the woods, a distance from where
we had entered. “Quickly, now,” said the elf, and we scampered between
the boulders towards it. Here, there was a staircase carved haphazardly
into this side of the wall, clearly not by the original architects. We
ran up it. It crested the wide wall, and we crossed to between jagged
gaps where boulders had once sat. At the wall’s far side, Allyndil
motioned us to lie flat. We peeked out over the dark, endlessly
brown-green forest. We hardly dared to breathe at the elf’s urgency.
Then, off to our left, where we had first come upon
the wall, four figures emerged from the forest. They were too far to
see clearly, but one was short; two, leading a pair of what appeared to
be bloodhounds, were human-sized and stocky; and one was enormous.
“That one’s an ogre,” whispered Madoran. “Why the hell are they
following us?”
I closed my eyes for a moment, torn. Then, I
whispered, “They’re following me.”
“What?” said Madoran sharply. Allyndil, watching
the progress of the distant foursome, hissed at him to be quiet.
“I owe them money from a long time ago,” I
continued quietly. “I’d lost them years ago, but they picked up the
trail again in Ironforge.”
Madoran narrowed his eyes at me. The sympathy, and
the worry, had all been replaced with quiet anger. “Listen carefully,”
said the dwarf, accent gone. “The only reason you’re here is that
Fang the Murloc said you were the one who would make our mission here a
success. This mission is not a little quest for some Storm City cult.
It’s possible that we are seeking to secure the key to releasing the
greatest evil the world has seen in six hundred long years. If you are
the direct cause of our mission’s failure, I will cut you loose in this
twisted land, and I will hunt down Fang the Murloc and sandpaper his
amphibian head until he explains why his prize bull caused us to fail.”
I stared, jaw slackened. I couldn’t help but feel
slighted. The dwarf had become uncharacteristically on edge, I was
sure, since we’d come to the northlands. He held my gaze fiercely.
“Understood?” he said.
I nodded dumbly.
“Peace,” said the elf.
The distant foursome had passed through the
archway, and we moved to the other side of the wall. They disappeared
into the woods, following our trail.
“What happens when they find our backtrack and
follow us here?” I said querulously.
“We fight,” said Allyndil, “and pray.”
There was no need. Some ten minutes later,
Allyndil closed his eyes, concentrating on the land ahead, and declared,
“They’ve moved on.” He opened his eyes.
“The hunter becomes the hunted?” I said hopefully.
“Maybe,” said the elf darkly, “maybe not.”
XX
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