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XXIV
We set up camp that night in the shadow of a round,
crumbled stone edifice. “Windmill,” Allyndil had declared. The moon
rose behind us, leaking through the thin brown haze which still cloaked
the land. In its light, we sat up chatting in pairs or threes.
Norin walked away from a close-headed meeting with
Grimble. He came over and sat down on the ground next to me. “What was
that about?” I said, trying to sound merely curious.
“Jayksen’s almost out of brandy,” Norin said.
“We’re trying to convince Grimble to sell us the rest of his supply.”
“The rest?” I said. “Jayksen said he’d bought it
all.”
“Yeh, well,” said Norin. “Grimble’s a goblin,
isn’t he?” I grinned. “We’re all pitching in a few copper, even Anduin.
You wanna help?”
“Sure,” I said, reaching into my pack for my
coinpurse. “I thought Anduin didn’t like him drinking.”
“Ha!” Norin laughed. “He just says that to make
him do it more.” The young dwarf leaned conspiratorially in. “Jayk
fights better when he’s drunk.”
Rayn and Jayksen were across the camp, sitting next
to each other, passing the flask back and forth and talking. “Comfort
in shared loss,” said Norin, nodding at them. “James and Rayn were good
friends.”
“What about Sacara?” I said. I looked around. She
was sitting alone, staring off into the woods.
“No idea,” said Norin. “She and James arrived
together, and they were always together. Best friends, like. She’s
inconsolable. Anduin says she needs our compassion, that it’s an easy
lesson for me in it, too.”
“Lesson?” I said, genuinely curious this time.
“Yeah,” said the other. “Compassion is the third
of the three virtues. The first one is Respect – Anduin says you have
to start off with that, that nothing but a good upbringing can teach
you. The second is Tenacity, that’s what I’m on now. Anduin says this
mission will be a good lesson for me.” He grinned, and I returned it.
* * *
I had no watch that night, and slept soundly. The
next day, after consulting a map with Madoran and Rayn, Anduin announced
that we would reach our destination within a few hours’ march. Rayn and
Jayksen moved to the head of the line, behind the leaders, and Norin
fell in beside me. We chatted on as we marched, though at an injunction
from John we did so quietly.
The sky cleared and the land got rockier as we
progressed. We were now heading almost due north. The temperature
dropped, and a wind began to rise ahead of us, subconsciously at first
and then unmistakably – it smelled salty and fresh, washing away the
fungal smells of the Plaguewood. Here and there, a few low shrubs began
to reappear, twisted and plagued to be sure, but at least looking
vaguely as plants ought to.
The sun rose in the brown sky, clear and cold now.
It peaked over our heads, and we came, at last, to Land’s Edge: the
world dropped away beneath us, hundreds of feet into the slate-gray
ocean below. The ocean wind whipped up the cliff, stinging our
faces with salt spray. I felt alive.
Far in the distance to the north was a massive wall
of black clouds, with rain pouring out of them, lashing the ocean and
whipping up great waves which crashed against our cliff. It was the
first real weather I’d seen in a week, and it seemed to be inching
ominously closer to us.
Anduin, Allyndil, Rayn and Jayksen stood at the
edge of the cliff, their heads close together. Anduin turned to the
rest of us, sitting on our packs and munching lunch. “The cave which is
our destination is an hour’s walk to the east,” he said, pointing. “We
must not be seen. We will walk half an hour’s walk west, and set up
camp there.”
“Weather permitting,” grunted Mark, nodding towards
the distant storm clouds.
“Weather irrespective,” said Anduin, smiling. “Be
glad it’s not yet winter.”
We finished lunch, and then hiked off along the
wind-beaten cliff to the west. Half an hour on, we turned inland.
Allyndil led us to a dell he remembered from years before, surrounded by
mushroom trees and stands of thick, twisted undergrowth. We set a fire
in the daylight, at the dell’s center. We sat around it, our hands and
feet chilled by the ocean wind. Norin pulled a cast iron pan and a slab
of salted boar meat out of his pack, and I helped him chop it up with
some vegetables and herbs which Allyndil procured from his own. Soon,
we had a fairly rich stew simmering, and we spooned everyone a helping.
It was the first hot food we’d had in days, and it did wonders to the
party’s flagging mood.
When the late lunch had finished, Anduin summoned
me over to the eastern edge of the camp where he had been talking with
Allyndil and Madoran. Rayn, Jayksen and Sacara joined us a moment
later.
“What now?” I said. “We can’t just sit around
waiting for something to happen.”
“Indeed,” said Anduin matter-of-factly. “The six
of us are going scouting.” And with that, we set out, leaving our
packs at the camp.
We worked our way back to the cliff. The storm
clouds had moved unmistakably closer. Jayksen’s brandy supply had
apparently been restored, and he snuck me a sip of it. It warded off
the chill of the ocean wind, and I handed it back to him gratefully.
As we trekked eastward in silence, the land began
to fall, until we were no longer walking at the top of a cliff, but
along the edge of a hundred-foot-wide tidal plain, just deep enough into
the undergrowth so as to be invisible to watching eyes. The tide was
out, but waves crashed menacingly, and the storm clouds inched closer.
Three quarters of an hour on, the sun had
disappeared, and Anduin held up his hand and halted. He turned to us.
“We need to know more about what we are facing,” he said. “Anything we
can learn will be of use. Their habits, their leadership, anything you
can overhear. Time may be of the essence, but secrecy is more so – once
we are there, we must not be seen.” He looked intently at us, and we
nodded as one. “Rayn, Jayksen, you have been here and we have not.
Secrecy is our objective: how should we proceed?”
“The place from which we observed them most closely
is ahead and to our left,” replied Rayn. “There is a path up the face
of the cliff, coming from the south, to our right: that is where they
pass when they are coming or going. We should stake out the base of the
cliff under their cave: you can hear them from there, and if they speak
loudly you can understand them.”
The old man nodded. We set off again, picking our
way east through the underbrush. Another ten slow minutes on, and a
cliff rose ahead of us. The land rose to our right, meeting the cliff’s
top in the distance, and from there a ridge angled across the cliff’s
face, running as far as directly in front of us, and just visible over
its lip at the peak was a cavern, flickering red with torchlight. Smoke
trickled out of it and up into the sky, and from it I could hear the
distant sounds of people living, though none were visible. Rayn had
been right: even at our distance, the place smelled faintly metallic and
acrid, like how I imagined evil magic might smell.
Below us, the tide plain stretched out around the
base of the cliff, narrowing until, in the distance, the cliff rose
straight out of the ocean, rocky and absolute. Above it, at that
distant point, standing over the dark ocean, stood a dark, wholly intact
tower silhouetted against the sky. Allyndil pointed. “The Scarlet
Watchtower,” he said. “The Scarlet Crusade’s monastery is up there as
well: long since abandoned, covered in dust, but pristine as the day it
was built. Few remember it, and fewer have been inside: no one at all
knows why it hasn’t crumbled with the ages.”
“Scarlet…” I muttered. “Any relation to the
Scarlet Resurrection?”
“The Resurrection thought so,” said Madoran,
laughing derisively.
* * *
On Rayn’s advice and Anduin’s orders, we spread out
in a wide semicircle around the base of the cliff. He stayed where he
was, with Allyndil, while Sacara and Madoran spread to the south.
Jayksen, now visibly intoxicated, slumped into the bushes to Anduin’s
left; Rayn hid behind a tree a hundred paces farther along; and I stood
on the rocky flood plain itself, kneeling on seaweed and pebbles behind
a large triangular stone formation, my back to the crashing waves,
staring up at the cave. A thick raindrop splashed against my shoulder,
and I looked up. The sky had gone nearly black.
High above, at edge of the cave’s ridge, I suddenly
saw a thick, four-legged figure standing against the darkening sky. It
could have been nerves or paranoia, but I was sure for a moment that it
was watching me. The hair along my neck stood on end, and I shivered,
flashing back for a moment to the first time I had seen Fang, staring
down at me out his window, high above my hiding place. I ducked behind
the rock formation, forcing myself to breathe calmly.
Whatever it was, it had disappeared by the time I
looked back. I held my breath, but I could hear nothing out of the
ordinary.
Then, suddenly, from the other side of the rock
formation, a glowing green orb popped around in front of me. Behind it
trailed a phosphorescent tail, and staring right at me was what appeared
to be—
A pupil. In a panic, I bashed at the thing with my
mace, and it puffed into wisps of thin, acrid smoke. I leapt up
and ran, falling to all fours and pounding up the tidal plain through
the now-intense rain, into the underbrush, startling Rayn and Jayksen as
I passed them, and coming to a stop in front of a bemused Anduin and
Allyndil. “They know we’re here,” I gasped.
“How?” said Anduin evenly.
“There was an eye, a green eyeball and it floated
over and looked at me….” It sounded stupid now that I said it, but
Anduin nodded and Allyndil swore.
“Spread the word to Rayn and Jayksen,” said the old
man, before setting off to the south. I bounded back the way I’d come.
I told Jayksen to move on to Rayn’s position, and to tell him to prepare
for a fight. The dwarf nodded and stumbled off into the underbrush,
towards the ocean.
A minute later, a blood-curdling scream came from
the direction he had run off in. I charged off in the direction of the
sound, past Jayksen’s abandoned post, past Rayn’s, across the tidal
plain to the rocky formation at the bottom of the cliff. Rayn and
Jayksen were there, Rayn on his knees and Jayksen on all fours. He had
vomited. His eyes were closed, face drooping towards the ground, rain
streaming off it. Half of his jerkin was burned off, and his battle
hammer lay beside him.
And across from them, at the edge of the brush and
beneath the high cliff, stood three figures in billowing black cloaks: a
man, a pale elf, and a gnome. From their hands leapt three beams of
negative, almost purple light, stabbing into the center of Rayn’s chest,
from which a ribbon of smoke and steam snaked upwards towards his flared
nostrils. He moaned, this huge man whom I was sure had never reacted to
in pain in his life, and as the three warlocks grimaced and intensified
their magic, he let out another scream. I stood, rooted to the spot,
horrified.
The blood elf stared into Rayn’s eyes, as though
trying to read his soul. “I don’t know,” Rayn sobbed, “please, I don’t
know...”
The other man gritted his teeth, and pulled on his
stream of negative light. Rayn choked, his body arching backwards and
his great dark face turned sightless to the sky. A rippling sucking
sound emitted from his throat.
Three slices of beauty, glowing a perfect, dazzling
white light in the pouring rain, burst out of his chest. They were
wrenched free, and floated along the streams of light towards each dark
wizard, growing darker, uglier, and by the time they reached the hands
of the wizards they were glowing the same negative light as their
spells. The shards flashed blindingly for a moment, then dissolved into
the fingertips of each of the three mismatched wizards. The twisted
looks on their faces spelled delicious, evil power.
The shadow beams winked out, and with a sickening
squelch, Rayn’s breathing ceased. His corpse collapsed backwards onto
the drenched seaweed. His eyes stared sightlessly up into the sky, sunk
deep into their sockets, as though sucked inward by his soul vacating
the space behind them.
Jayksen shook his head at the sound of Rayn
collapsing. He looked up, pain in his eyes. “No,” he slurred, “not you
too…” and he seized his hammer from the ground and rose to his feet.
The gnome turned towards him, and the same shadowy light leapt from his
hands and stabbed at the dwarf. He cried out fell back to his knees,
and I started forward, intent on helping.
At that moment, Allyndil and Sacara burst out of
the underbrush behind them, and the evil human and the blood elf whirled
to face their counterparts. Allyndil halted, muttering an incantation.
Sacara ran at the human, her yellow hair streaming out behind her, the
Light ablaze in her eyes and fury on her face. “Traitor!” cried
Allyndil, and the elf wizard screamed, clawing at his face. A powerful
flash of white light smote him, and then another, and he fell backwards,
dead. Sacara leaped at the human, her hammer swinging. He ducked
wildly, stumbling backwards, landing hard on the wet ground, and stared
dumbly up at her. He backed away, his eyes locked on her face, a look
of shock in his. Then he stumbled to his feet, turned and fled. She
watched him go, her eyes narrowed.
Jayksen moaned in pain for a moment more, and then,
through gritted teeth, struggled to emit a word: “I,” he stuttered
weakly, and then stood, struggling with all his will, grasping his
hammer, taking a deep breath, “I,” he repeated, and pushed forward,
against the beam of light stabbing him in the chest, then, stronger, “I
Hate,” his voice rising, “GNOMES!” he bellowed. He wrenched out of the
shadow spell and threw himself at the tiny wizard. The gnome looked
terrified as his spell winked out, and he turned and ran.
Jayksen hefted his hammer, and, with a battle-cry
of wrath, hurled it through the pouring rain. It struck the back of the
gnome’s head, and he collapsed, unconscious.
“Runner felled,” spat the dwarf, and he stumbled
over to the gnome’s body to retrieve his hammer.
I looked up. At the top of the hill, against the
darkening sky, the four-legged figure had reappeared. It looked down,
and, I imagined, shook its head in disappointment. It turned, and
disappeared into the cave.
Anduin and Madoran burst onto the tidal plain. “We
have to get out of here,” said the old man urgently. “Horse, can you
carry the gnome?” I nodded, and hefted him easily onto my shoulders.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Leave Rayn. The sea will give him a better
burial than we could.”
I looked back at the huge, dark-skinned man. His
eye sockets had filled with water and began overflowing, giving the
impression that the man had mirrors for eyes and that great floods of
freshwater tears were washing down his face, washing away the grime of
the long journey.
* * *
We traveled silently, lost in our thoughts.
Jayksen had abandoned all pretense and began sobbing openly. Sacara’s
eyes were still narrowed in what looked like elemental hatred.
Anduin moved to talk to her quietly, as the storm moved inland and the
sky lightened ahead of us to the west, and her face softened as they
exchanged words. I wondered what wisdom the old man was bestowing.
For myself, I wallowed in miserable guilt. I had
frozen, in the heat of battle, stood and stared as a man I barely knew
but respected had his soul ripped from his chest. What could I have
done? I thought. Rayn might have held his own against one or two of the
wizards: could I have saved him?
And the words that a blue-clad dwarf had spoken to
me a week ago floated up in my memory: “An unfortunate part of the plan
is that even given the opportunity, you can’t try to save anyone, got
it?”
Why not? I thought. What the hell good does it do
the Law, that I had not save Rayn’s life? “Why!” I yelled at the
ocean’s wind.
“He died in service of the Light,” said Anduin,
answering a different question. “You carry the results. I pray that
it’s what we need.”
* * *
By the time we reached the dell where we had
camped, the sun had set and dusk was fading. Madoran and I tied the
gnome hurriedly to one of the plague trees at the edge of the camp.
Behind us, Anduin and Jayksen were spreading the news of Rayn’s death,
each in their own style. Jayksen’s spread the news faster, and Anduin
sighed and returned to us. He faced the unconscious gnome, and nodded
to Madoran, who slapped the gnome across the face a couple of times.
The gnome shook his head groggily, and looked
around. Then his eyes focused, and he grunted, glaring up at us.
“Why are you here?” said Anduin commandingly.
“None of your bees-wax,” spat the gnome, his voice
thin and reedy.
“Where is the book?” growled Madoran.
“Why, don’t you know?” replied the gnome mockingly,
turning towards him. “We don’t have it yet, if that’s what you mean.
But we’re moving on it soon. Tomorrow, maybe, they say.”
“Who’s they?” said Anduin evenly.
“Our leader here, and Varimathras himself,” gritted
the gnome.
“Varimathras is imprisoned in a tomb of ice at the
top of the world,” growled Madoran. “He is in no position to be
ordering anyone to do anything.”
The gnome smiled nastily, but didn’t respond. My
stomachs twisted in unease.
“You know where the book is, then,” said Anduin
after a moment.
“Of course,” said the gnome.
“Then where?”
“Like I’d tell you,” said the gnome, a look of
disdain on his face.
I stepped forward menacingly. He flinched away,
and cried “I don’t know!” instinctively. Then, “They don’t tell us all
the details.”
Madoran stared hard at the gnome. “He’s telling
the truth about that, at least,” he said after a beat. “We’ll get no
more out of him tonight.”
The rain had fallen off to a light drizzle. We lit
a pair of torches for light, and gathered in the center of the dell to
draw lots. I drew the midnight watch, with Allyndil. We prayed the
Order’s thrice-daily prayer, then sang a mournful dirge for Rayn, and
then we went to sleep.
* * *
Jayksen nudged me awake for guard duty, and then
disappeared into the moonlit camp to sleep. It was still drizzling. I
got up, and Allyndil was already awake, sitting on a stump and staring
at the sleeping gnome.
I sighed, and paced the perimeter of the camp
once. There was nothing in the darkness that I could hear, and I paused
back at Allyndil’s post.
“Where are you from?” I said to him
conversationally, after a few moments more of uneventful silence.
“The north,” he said, "and far east of here. We
lived there for centuries before the Scourge destroyed us.” He spoke
bitterly. That explains what he’d lost to that war, I thought: he lost
his home. “We retook a small enclave from the plague when the war was
over, and rebuilt there. It’s not large enough to support our people,
but a few, the leaders and the elderly, live there. We wander the
world, and return, if we can, once every ten years and when our children
are ready to be born. The Scourge destroyed our home and scattered us
to the winds, but we have reclaimed that, at least.”
I nodded. “That’s kind of like a home,” I said.
“I didn’t think the blood elves had one at all.”
Allyndil’s eyes flashed. “Do not mistake me for
those blood traitors,” he said with sudden chill. I looked at him in
surprise.
“I’m sorry,” I said, confused. “I don’t know
what…”
“I am highborn of Quel’Thalas,” he continued.
“Hundreds of years ago, the blood elves chose their addiction to magic
over their honor and their people, and by that choice they severed their
ties to us forever.”
Oh, I thought.
He sat in silence, as though contemplating things
about which I had no business asking. I nodded, and shuffled back off
around the camp.
* * *
When I returned, he had cocked his ear towards the
forest, urgently. He put a finger to his lips. I looked at him
curiously.
“Something’s coming,” he whispered, “something
undead. Only one.” He stood, and crept silently into the darkness,
motioning me to follow. We loosened our weapons.
The elf pulled me suddenly behind a tree, and we
stood, holding our breath and waiting.
For a minute, I could hear nothing but the soft
rainfall in the undergrowth. Then, unmistakably, soft footfalls drifted
from beyond us in the fetid darkness: they were moving closer, and then
whatever it was was nearly upon us.
As it drew even with us, it paused for a moment, as
though it sensed us. Allyndil and I held our breath: then, with no
warning, the elf cried out and leapt from our hiding spot. I leapt out
after him, my mace held high and ready, but I looked at the creature and
my cry died on my lips –
“Rhy?” I said. Allyndil froze. Oh my god, I
thought.
“Horse!” she said urgently, almost relieved,
looking up at me.
It was my best friend, the skinny mage girl I'd
known for years, who had disappeared from Storm City without
explanation, whom I’d never seen less than fully covered in robes but
who now wore nothing but rags. Her familiar, unchanged, gaunt face
perched above impossibly skinny shoulders, and her arms and legs were
exposed bone, glowing white in the pale moonlight. “Oh god,” I
breathed, and in a flood of revulsion I realized that everything I’d
always known about this girl, this thing, this creature, must have been
a lie. “What are you?” I said.
“I am forsaken,” she croaked.
XXV
(Discuss chapter)
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