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XXI
The other building, across the path from the
barracks, turned out to be the compound’s meeting hall. The three of us
pushed open the hall’s doors for breakfast the next dreary morning, and
eight of the room’s nine heads swiveled to examine us: Anduin we had
already met, sitting at the head of the room’s single, long, half-full
table. I also recognized the man who had let us in the previous night,
sitting farther down amongst his comrades: three other humans and a pair
of dwarves, all dressed in the Silver Hand’s uniform white robes.
Several of them nodded greetings at Madoran or the elf. Sitting across
from each other at the nearest end of the table was a pair that looked
out of place: a smarmy-looking green goblin, with a long, pointy nose and
long pointy ears, and a muscular orc, wearing simple peasant’s clothes. The orc
alone hadn’t looked up at our entrance: he continued staring at his
plate, a haunted look on his thick face.
Anduin stood slowly. “Good morning,” he said.
“Guests on their first day sit at the head of the table,” and he
gestured us to the three empty place settings flanking him. “That is
all the hospitality we can offer in this dead land: after today, you
must pull your load to the best of your ability, or leave.” He spoke
formally, and there were silent nods from the six other Silver Hands.
The goblin smiled graciously at the old man, nodding slightly. The orc
remained unresponsive.
We walked to our settings, and sat down. The
others resumed eating silently. Each of our plates was heaped high with
scrambled eggs and sausage links. A basket of sliced brown bread sat at
the middle of the table, and Madoran stretched over to help himself. I
followed suit, then began eating ravenously.
When we’d all finished, the younger of the two
dwarves, clean-shaven and short-haired, got up and began stacking
plates. Anduin stood up, closed his eyes and bowed his head. The
others did as well, and I joined them. Anduin’s voice rang out, strong,
in the silence: “Thank you, Lightbringer, for blessing us with health
and safety in the midst of these dead lands. Give us the strength this
day to carry out the will of the Light, and may we live to serve you
again tomorrow.” There were murmurs of “Amen” from around the table.
The young dwarf returned to his seat. Anduin sat
down, and prompted for introductions. The humans were Mark Andrews, the
man who had escorted us in the previous night; Lucas Umberto, a short
man who wore spectacles; Sacara Mathews, who smiled pleasantly as she
introduced herself; and John Jacobs, a dour-looking man who merely
nodded and recited his name. The younger dwarf was named Norin
Ironbottom, and the older one, also wearing spectacles, introduced
himself as Thistle Stoutlager. “And four more of our number are out on
reconnaissance,” finished Anduin: “the dwarves Jennoa Goldsmith and
Jayksen Stonehammer, and the humans Bounro Rayn and James Matthews, who
is Sacara’s brother.”
“My name’s Grimble Bassbait,” said the goblin
easily. “Arrived yesterday. This is my orcservant Krull.”
“Who doesn’t speak, apparently,” said Madoran.
“Nope,” grunted the goblin. “Seen some stuff in
these lands he wished he hadn’t, I reckon.”
Madoran narrowed his eyes, glancing from the goblin
to me, but whatever was on his mind stayed there.
“We know Allyndil the elf,” continued Anduin,
nodding to him, “who brings us good health and better cheer every few
years when he makes it this far north,” and everyone nodded in
appreciation, “and of course we are eternally indebted to the generosity
of Thane Madoran, who surely would be a warrior of the Light were he not
fully occupied as the new King of Ironforge.” There were admiring
murmurs from around the table at this declaration.
“I am a warrior for the Light, although I wear
other vestments and don’t pray thrice daily,” said Madoran, smiling, to
generally appreciative laughter.
“Which leaves us the young tauren,” finished Anduin.
“Care to introduce yourself?”
I nodded, but Madoran took over for me. “This is
Horse,” he said, “long-time resident of Khaz Modan. He’s come north at
my request to help us in our current search.”
I nodded at him, hiding my confusion. Then I
glanced to the end of the table, where the goblin had looked down, eyes
narrowed, looking confused himself. It clicked: had my Orcmar bounty
hunters gotten ahead of us, minus two members? I wondered if an ogre
with his eyes sucked in had been what Krull had seen that had terrified
him so. If these were indeed them, then Madoran seemed to have deftly
seeded confusion which might save me long enough for us to be sure.
* * *
I spent the morning avoiding the goblin and aiding
Allyndil. The elf toured the small compound, visiting each of the
members of the Hand as they worked, hearing whatever ailments they had
recently developed and prescribing treatments. I helped mash together
ingredients from his pack, and watched carefully whenever he laid hands
and song upon someone. “You’ve got a healer’s ear,” he said to me after
I began humming one of his spells to myself. I smiled.
Despite being surrounded by high walls, a barren
cliff, and the thick, brown clouds which covered the sky here as
everywhere, the Order of the Silver Hand bustled about its business with
a refreshing verve for life. The two dwarves, Norin and Thistle, worked
opposite each other in the vegetable garden at the base of the hill,
plucking peas and tomatoes from the dark earth. Mark and Sacara walked
buckets back and forth from the rainwater cisterns to the gardeners,
pausing at the small red rose bushes that adorned the place, pouring
just enough over their roots to sustain them. (“The Tomb Roses,” Sacara
called them, smiling down at the small bush in front of her. “They
sprouted where the blood of Uther touched the ground when he fell. We wouldn’t waste precious water on anything
decorative, of course, but these are sacred.”) The two humans were
aided cheerily by Grimble.
Lucas Umberto (“Call me Luke,” he’d said)
had disappeared with John Jacobs into the barracks, and we found them
upstairs in what turned out to be the Order’s surprisingly large
library. Luke read aloud over his spectacles from a sacred text, while
John, still looking dour, scribed commentary into a new, empty volume.
The pair erupted frequently into heated discussion over the layers of
meaning of this or that phrase: in fact, the only thing they seemed to
agree on was that Uther had in fact founded their religion.
Chickens pecked about at the bottom of the hill,
foraging for grubs and grass. A pair of pigs rooted about within the
small barn, and a quartet of milking goats bleated in untrained
harmony. Indeed, the only sign that we were on anything like a vital,
dangerous mission was the absence of Madoran and Anduin: they had
cloistered themselves in another room upstairs in the barracks after
breakfast, and did not emerge until noon. “Don’t worry about them,”
advised Allyndil. “They’ve got enough worry without your help.”
We didn’t sit down for the midday meal. Instead,
round about noon, Norin stepped jovially out of the meeting hall with a
basket of bread and a jug of warm goat’s milk. He seized the hall’s
bell’s rope and clanged it back and forth, and within a couple of
minutes the whole of the monastery had dropped what they were doing and
lined up for handouts of small loaves and a mug each of milk. I waited
my place in line, received my handout from Norin, and munched and drank
as we filed up the path towards the hill’s marble temple, which had
remained empty throughout the morning.
We filed through the temple’s columned antechamber,
and into its single, round room. The room was taken up almost entirely
by the statue I had caught sight of the previous night: A bearded man,
on his right knee, holding a hammer aloft in his right hand and
clutching a great holy book in his left, looking powerfully to the
north, as though pointing the way home for these people, or their
ancestors. He knelt on a square pedestal, engraved on each face with a
flowing “L” symbol with a sword through it. The statue was surrounded
with three shallow, concentric, ascending stairs, and at its front,
facing the entrance, was a short plaque, engraved with writing in an old
language and worn to near illegibility.
The temple’s roof was a dome, and the dome’s peak
was a five-sided glass skylight. I looked up through it, to the dark
brown sky above, almost wishing that it had been closed off.
Around the statue ran a low banister, and outside
the banister, on the stone floor, lay red, velvet kneeling pads. Each
of us settled onto one. I knelt between Norin and Luke, on the north
side of the temple, nearest the entrance, setting my empty mug on the
stone floor.
Anduin, alone, stood, out of sight on the far side
of the statue. He began muttering an incantation in a language which I
didn’t understand. It echoed around me, muttered in time by the other
members of the Order. I glanced at Madoran, several places to my left,
and was surprised to see him speaking it as well. Norin, to my right,
stumbled on a few of the words, and glanced nervously about to catch
up. The incantation ended, and there was a moment of peace.
Then, in the silence, Anduin’s strong voice burst
forth with a single, wordless note. He was joined a moment later by
John, then Thistle and the other humans joined in on different notes,
creating a concordant harmony, and then Allyndil and Grimble and Madoran
joined in. I felt a wind begin to blow.
Norin leaned over towards me. “Help us out,” he
said excitedly, “just pick one!” Then he, too, began intoning, and I
sang too, on his note.
Anduin had stopped singing, and, across the
sounding temple space I heard him begin to cast a spell. The wind
picked up, feeding from outside and from us and rushing inward and
upwards, through the skylight and up into the sky, and a moment later a
spear of white light stabbed down from the clouds, through the skylight
and onto the statue, lighting the temple up. It so shocked my eyes and
my mind that my voice dropped for a moment. Norin elbowed me to keep
singing.
I hadn’t seen it in days, and so it took me a
moment to realize that the holy white light descending onto us from the
heavens was nothing more than the noonday sun. It lit the statue, and
spread on the power of the wind of our voices and Anduin’s spell, and
began flooding in from the marble entrance behind me; and I glanced over
my shoulder, and in a few moments more, the entire monastery was flooded
and cleansed with white sunlight: the grass shown green, and the low
rose bushes shown red, and the marble temple glowed white. The brown
world beyond – dull, dead – held no dominion here.
The singing stopped. The sunlight stayed on.
Norin was breathless and grinning. “Once a day,” he said to me. “Helps
the tomatoes,” he added, whispering. John, at his other side, shushed
him.
Anduin repeated the simple prayer he had recited at
breakfast, and we all muttered a hearty “Amen”. Then we all stood up,
in much higher spirits, and returned to the grounds of the compound, now
an island of sunlight in the dead northlands.
* * *
The sunlight lasted for almost an hour into the
afternoon. Each member of the Order swapped partners and duties for
their afternoon chores, with Grimble continuing to haul water.
I realized that we hadn’t seen the orc Krull since
breakfast, and mentioned it to Allyndil. He paused at the mention, then
looked at me concernedly. “Horse,” he said, as though trying to break
difficult news, “while it’s not certain, and there is more traffic
through these lands than you would think, Madoran and I have confronted
the possibility that Grimble and Krull are the remnants of the gang of
bounty hunters tracking you three days ago.”
I nodded. “I thought so too,” I said. “I’ve been
working on my life’s story in Sunny Khaz Modan in case anyone asked.”
I’d been born in Storm City, I’d decided, and moved north with my family
as manual labor when I was five.
The elf smiled, mildly relieved. “Good bull,” he
said approvingly. “Madoran tells me that he talked to Anduin about the
situation, but Anduin refuses to act against hospitality unless we’re
sure.”
I sighed. “Fair enough. It wouldn’t be right to
kick a good-hearted goblin out into the plaguelands on a hunch.”
“Indeed,” said the elf, and we both grunted
slightly at the idea of a good-hearted goblin.
“What about the orc?” I said, after a moment.
“Let’s go find him,” said the elf.
He was lying, face up, eyes wide, on his bed in the
barracks. His door stood open, and we entered.
“Hello,” said the elf.
The orc stared at the ceiling, saying nothing.
“Do you like it here?” said the elf.
The orc’s eyes twitched slightly, but he remained
impassive.
Grimble popped his head in, having apparently
followed us. “Nothing to see here,” he said. “Let my orc rest, if you
don’t mind.” He stared at us until we left, then he entered the room
and shut the door.
Madoran met us in the hallway. “Horse,” he said,
“Anduin and I would like a word with you.”
The dwarf led me up the stairs to the barrack’s
second floor, past the library where an animated discourse between
Thistle and Sacara could be heard, to a narrow, dusty room at the end of
the hallway. A single window looked north, with the monastery’s barn
and gate visible to the left and the dead lands visible to the right.
The hole we had punched in the northland clouds was beginning to crust
over, and the sunlight was fading.
A desk sat in front of the window, covered with
papers and books and an unlit candle and a great white feather pen in
ink. Anduin sat at the desk, staring at a map which I recognized as one
of the two Madoran had taken from the secret library in Ironforge, the
one he hadn’t had me memorize.
The old man looked up from the map and turned
around. “Well,” he said, “welcome to the Plaguelands. As we have
discussed your strange behavior three nights past and decided that you
remain trustworthy, we should begin discussing why you and Madoran are
here.”
“I’d hoped we could stay here a little longer
before missioning again,” I said, smiling.
Anduin returned the smile. “All things must come
to an end, I’m afraid, some sooner than others.” He took a breath.
“Madoran tells me he’s informed you of the vague outlines of your
mission here, and I’m afraid that's still all we’ve really got.”
Madoran nodded. “As I’ve said, there is an ancient
black book, originally reported on Northrend at the time of
Varimathras’s imprisonment. We have reason to believe –” and he pointed
at the map – “that it was written by Prince Arthas himself, before his
ascension as the Lich King of the Scourge, and that it contained all the
knowledge he had gleaned at that time about the nature and workings of
the frozen tomb in which we imprisoned Varimathras. The writing on the
back of this old map, which I was right to believe could be read by
Anduin, here, speaks of a similar-looking book with that content being
spirited from Northrend to Lordaeron’s capital city by parties unknown,
though apparently parties with some ill will towards Varimathras
himself.”
“Needless to say,” said Anduin, “given how little
we knew about it, the book never gave us much concern.”
“Until recently,” continued Madoran. “About a
month and a half ago, an innkeeper in eastern Khaz Modan, whom the
Argent Dawn have a standing relationship with, slipped us word that a
shadowy group of men had assembled at his bar and moved north, with the
intention of seeking the book out. I immediately sent word north with Luke Umberto, who was doing research in Ironforge at
the time, and went south to consult with a hastily-assembled meeting of
the Dawn, which you were present at.”
Anduin smiled slightly. “I haven’t been to the
mansion in long years,” he said.
I looked back and forth between the two. “So… is
the Silver Hand part of the Dawn? Is everyone here a member?” I said.
“No,” said Madoran seriously, “no more than every
dwarf in Ironforge is a member because its king is.” I nodded.
“However, having a close relationship with a monastic order, dedicated
to keeping the Light alive in the northlands, has served the purposes of
the Dawn more than once in its history.”
“And vice versa,” said Anduin to Madoran, bowing
slightly. “And currently, we believe their purposes are one and the
same.”
“Aye,” continued Madoran. “The Dawn concluded
that, in all likelihood, the men were searching for the book in order to
make an attempt at freeing Varimathras. Fang the Murloc, who has never
failed us before and whom I have no reason to believe has failed us now,
volunteered to find us a team of adventurers to undertake a mission to
find and stop the men. That’s how we came by you.” He nodded to me.
“The Druid, as you know too well, was supposed to be at your side, and
myself and Allyndil will be poor replacements, but we must make do.”
We stood a moment in silence. Anduin bowed his
head sadly: apparently he, too, had known Katy M. It seemed everyone
had.
“Since then, we’ve as good as confirmed that the
men who seek the book are tied to Varimathras,” said Anduin, pulling
himself out of his reverie.
“Aye, you saw it yourself,” said Madoran. “The
ogre we found yesterday was killed by an ancient shadow spell: magical
power from the demon realm, and magic used only by those in the service
of or in league with Varimathras’s kind.
“Ye’ve seen me a bit more stressed than I like to
appear,” he continued, his friendly accent returning for a beat, “and
I’ve apologized to ye for it. However, we cannot afford to fail here:
we can’t afford the risk that this book contains the knowledge necessary
to free Varimathras from his tomb, and that it will fall into the wrong
hands. That, of course, would undo the work of centuries of blood and
sacrifice by the Dawn and the Hand, among many others.”
“Not to mention releasing the last ruler of the
Undead Scourge back on the world, in an unknown condition,” said Anduin.
“We can hope that he has weakened in the past six hundred years, but we
can’t know.”
“And we’d rather not find out,” finished Madoran
lightly.
Suddenly, a panicked shout from out the window drew
our attention. We looked out, and Mark and John were
running to the front gate. Anduin squinted into the plaguewoods beyond
the monastery’s walls, and then turned and hurried out of the room. We
followed.
The shouting below crescendoed into panicked
yells. When we emerged from the barracks, Mark and John had thrown the
gates wide. A short, thick, black-bearded dwarf in full plate armor
stumbled in, dragging the unconscious body of another armored dwarf, a
red-haired woman with a swollen, greenish wound across her face. A
tall, fully-armored, man brought up the rear, firing thick, barbed
arrows from an enormous bow back into the plaguewoods.
And behind him, coming towards us out of the
surreal woods, scuffling and dragging legs and limbs and uttering urgent
and hateful guttural grunts, clicks and groans, dressed in an
indiscriminate, chaotic assembly of clothes and armor, and running at us
faster than their hunched forms should have been able to, was a few,
then a dozen, then a fast-approaching wall of living dead.
“Rayn, come on,” shouted the armored dwarf, “come
on!” The tall man fired a last arrow into the midst of the oncoming
creatures, and then they were inside the walls and Mark and Sacara
were pushing the gates shut.
“What happened?” shouted Anduin. “Where’s James?”
shouted Sacara, sounding panicked. “What in the Holy Light are those
things?” shouted someone, echoing all of our thoughts.
“The Scourge,” said Rayn, his deep voice carrying
sonorously from within his helm.
“Impossible,” muttered the bespectacled Luke.
And as he said it, the gate shook as bodies threw
themselves against it from the other side. “The gate will hold. Back to
the hall!” called Anduin commandingly. In our panicked confusion, we
obeyed.
XXII
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