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XXVIIWe marched hard, through the dark forest.
The undergrowth which had covered the ground closer to the ocean
disappeared, and we returned to surreal plague woodlands, filled with
huge strange mushrooms and open, spongy-brown ground.
Rhy led the way south and west, flanked and
slightly trailed by myself and Madoran. Luke Umberto brought up
the rear, holding onto the gnome’s thick leash. The gnome
scampered in front of Luke, running to keep up with us. He still
looked wholly unfazed by his predicament.
As we marched through the night, the enormity of
what we were doing began to sink in, and with it grew the feeling that
there was no possible way we could succeed, or, even, survive.
What had I done? I thought. I could have broken away, I could have
gone back with the others, to less-certain death. Ordinn had
instructed me to get to Lordaeron, that the end-point of this absurd,
mysterious test I was taking lay there. I had felt brave enough to
volunteer for the task of making sure the all-important black book
stayed safe, but the Law dwarf’s reassurance that I would probably
survive was of no comfort to me now.
I looked up at Rhy, leading us on. My
stomachs still lurched every time I caught sight of her bone legs,
fleshless from thigh to ankle. She had come out for me, risking
everything to warn me that I was in mortal danger. Gratitude
swelled in me for a moment. That, of course, was why I’d come
along, why I hadn’t let her talk me out of the mission.
The warm feeling shrank as quickly as it had
arrived, though, as I considered her subsequent turn-about: where
before, she’d resigned herself to never returning to the Forsaken, she
now led us into the heart of their city. I stretched my stride a
bit and pulled even with her.
“Rhy,” I said, “why are you doing this?
You’re risking your life, walking right back to the Forsaken with proof
that you broke your oath to them.”
“Yeah, well, all four of us are risking our lives,”
she said.
“But we all knew that setting out. What about
you? You don’t have to do this, you haven’t once suggested that
you and me just run away to Kali and never look back.”
She smiled for a moment, but it was fleeting.
“It’s not obvious?” she said. She shook her head. “The
Scourge, it’s been gone for six hundred years, so no one but scholars
and storytellers remember it. But it was the worst thing that ever
happened to this world. It destroyed entire kingdoms, tearing
cities and families apart from the inside – your brother is battling at
your side one minute, and the next minute his eyes start glowing, and
he’s slathering at you with this hungry look on his face, and…”
She trailed off. She sounded like she was on the verge of tears.
But she brought herself back under control. “Can you imagine it?”
she said.
I shook my head. I couldn’t: I’d been an only
calf, and I hadn’t had a family in ten years. I had no idea how
terrible it must be to have your closest suddenly turn into a mindless
zombie. I looked back at Rhy.
“That’s why,” she continued. “That’s why we
have to keep the book safe, keep it out of the hands of these evil
wizards. If they get it, if they free Varimathras, he’ll sit on
his throne at the top of the world and command a new Scourge. The
plague zombies, which have been reduced to mindlessly gnawing on
anything that moves, will have a renewed will, a guiding purpose – his
will, Varimathras’s. And he’ll lead the most terrible army of
darkness in living memory. That’s what’s worth risking my life
for, and yours, and all of ours: to keep the world safe from that evil.”
“What’s in it, then?” said Madoran, who had pulled
even with us as well. “What do you know about this book that we
don’t? We only know what was written on the back of an obscure
map, that Arthas wrote the book before he became the Lich King, and that
it contains the secret to releasing Varimathras from his frozen tomb.”
Rhy nodded. “The book was written by Arthas,
his collected knowledge about many evil things, including the block of
ice you call the frozen tomb. Its other dark knowledge gave
Varimathras great power when he had freedom and access to it. When
he was defeated by the Argent Dawn, its Forsaken members discovered
Arthas’s book, and with the help of the Nerubians, transported it back
to the Under City, where we’re going now.”
“Wait a minute,” said the dwarf, “so we’re clear:
did you just say that the Argent Dawn had Forsaken members?”
“Still does,” Rhy muttered in response, then looked
fearfully at Madoran, afraid she’d said too much.
“What!” said Madoran. “Undead in the Dawn?”
I looked sharply at Madoran. “Remember…” I
started, then I shook my head, trying to remember. “Remember the
meeting I was at, in Storm City? The guy who led it, he was skinny
and pale.”
“His eyes!” said Madoran. “Yours too!
They glow!”
Rhy looked at him and smiled. “It was a great
victory for the Forsaken when we convinced the world that some people
just happen to have glowy eyes.”
Madoran and I fell into shocked silence at this
revelation. I thought back to my years in Storm City, and in
Orcmar before that. Memories floated up – not many, but more than
a few – of pale, skinny shop-keepers or men and women on the streets,
with glowing yellow eyes. “All of them are Forsaken?” I said
softly.
Rhy nodded. “They say Night elf eyes glowed,
too, but they’re ancient history now.”
I shook my head. “You’re everywhere,” I said.
Rhy nodded again. “Any of us that want to can
go into the outside world, as long as our bodies are together enough to
be able to pass as living. We get trained, heavily, to blend in,
and to not infect anyone – I trained for a whole year before they let me
go. There aren’t actually that many of us, not nearly as many as
there are humans or dwarves or tauren, but yeah, we are everywhere.
Some of us are proper agents, in every major city in the world, trained
to watch for signs of the reemergence of shadow magic, what’s going on
now. The warlocks have been in hiding since the end of the Scourge War
– the Dark Lady knew that their reemergence was inevitable, and that
their reemergence would signal a play for the book. It’s why she
had the map you spoke of drawn up, hundreds of years ago, with clues
about the book written in the language of Arthas’ fathers, and delivered
to the Dawn.” Madoran grunted at this, surprised but unfazed.
“And it’s why we’re returning from all over the world now – the warlocks
have declared themselves, and we’re returning to protect our people and
the world.”
“The flying skull!” I said, suddenly understanding.
“What?” said Rhy.
“Tidus told me that you left right after you saw a
flying skull spell thing. It was the shadow magic you’d been
trained to look for.”
“Oh,” she said, suddenly happy, “you saw Tidus?
Was he okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He left Storm City,” I
continued, “went west, back towards his homeland, he said.”
Rhy smiled. “Good,” she said. “Maybe
we’ll see him again, once this whole drama with the book is over.”
Madoran grunted. “Why didn’t your queen just
destroy the damn thing when she got it?” he grumbled.
Rhy shrugged. “I don’t know,” she sighed.
“The foibles of a betrayed lover, I suppose.”
“Oh,” said Madoran. He paused. “Ew,” he
said.
* * *
As we marched on, the sky to the east began
lightening, and then the whole sky, and then the ghost of the sun rose
above the far distant mountain range, which we’d crossed two days
earlier.
We broke suddenly out of the plague woods and into
a wide band of open land, a hundred yards or more across, between us and
another north-facing cliff. To the west, to our right, stood the
round crumbled foundation of a stone tower, like the one we’d used as a
lookout at Andorhal. In front of it, through the middle of the
open land, ran the stony remnants of an old road, which went east for a
ways before curving away south. There, on the other side of it,
stood the high ruins, the walls and parapets of an ancient city.
“The ruins of Lordaeron,” said Rhy reverently. “Our city is under
it, and we guard it jealously. Its main entrance, though,” and she
pointed south, towards the cliff, “is there.”
With Rhy leading the way, the five of us ran across
the open land. “Hurry your short legs up,” snapped Luke at the
gnome, who complied as well as he could. We passed the road, and
the land inclined upwards towards the cliff. As we drew near it, I
saw our destination: a small, non-descript cave tucked into it at the
bottom, hidden behind a small outcrop of natural rock. The ground
was worn thin here, as with heavy foot traffic.
We approached the cave. A musty smell, like
dry death, drifted from within. I wrinkled my nose as Rhy led us
forward.
As she stepped over the cave’s threshold, she began
clicking and moaning and grunting, speaking loudly in Gutterspeak.
The cave itself was deep and narrow, barely high enough for me to stand
straight, and its walls were jagged. We descended into the
darkness, and Rhy continued speaking into it.
Suddenly, she said, “Stop,” quietly. We
halted, and she listened into the eerie silence.
After a moment, another voice, from the darkness
ahead of us, began clicking and moaning. Rhy responded, and a
torch flickered to life. Holding it was the source of the
second voice: another Forsaken, male, once human. His clothes were
ragged, his arm and leg bones exposed like Rhy’s, and a black studded
band of metal ran across his face, holding it together.
He blinked at us in the torchlight. Then, he
began speaking, loudly, over his shoulder, and several voices responded
from deeper in the cave, coming towards us. I glanced uncertainly
at Rhy.
She responded urgently to him, pointing at us.
“Show him the gnome,” she said, and Luke pushed him forward. Rhy
pointed to him and clicked.
The other Forsaken stared at the gnome, at all of
us, and narrowed his eyes. He replied to Rhy. Then, four
more guards, heavily armed and armored, appeared behind him, as though
spawned by our very presence. Rhy turned to us. “They’re
taking us in,” she said querulously.
“Is that good?” I said.
“It means we’re not dead yet,” said Madoran.
Two of the rotting guards moved past Rhy and around
us, and the rest of us clumped instinctually together, even the gnome,
drawn together by the commonality of a still-beating heart. Two of the
guards lined up behind us, and two flanked Rhy. They hissed and
clicked, and Rhy glanced over her shoulder at us. “Stay together,” she
said. “They’re not going to hurt us until Sylvannas passes judgment on
us. On me,” she added nervously.
“Where are they taking us?” said Luke.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Where’s the book?” said Madoran.
Rhy whirled on him. “Our survival here is
predicated on the belief that we are here to help a certain book stay
safe, not to find it and steal it,” she hissed at him. The dwarf
gritted his teeth.
She forced a look of calm over her face. She
turned back to her captors, and nodded. The two guards flanking her
seized her bony wrists with their bony hands, and the trio marched
forward. We followed, down the dark tunnel, feeling quite helpless.
As we descended, sickly green light began to glow
ahead of us in the darkness. Around a bend, the tunnel widened suddenly
into a small domed cavern. Jutting into it ahead and below us was a
wide metal pipe, out of which dripped the green ichor of undeath, that
we’d learned to fear, into a wide pool of the stuff. Where it drained
to from there, I couldn’t tell.
The cavern was lit from below by this ichor pool’s
otherworldly glow. For a moment I forgot that it was a plague
materialized, that a single drop of it could suffer all of us the worst
possible fate a living being could suffer, and for a moment it seemed
beautiful to me.
On the other side of the pool and to the right of
the pipe, a dim, orange light flickered out of a short, carved, sharply
pointed stone archway. Our captors led us around the ichor pool – Rhy’s
left-hand captor wading through its shallows, the rest of us avoiding it
like the plague – and towards the arch. We passed through the ominous
portico and into the narrow tunnel beyond. This tunnel was no natural
cavern, but instead had been carefully and lovingly carved from the
solid bedrock. Its walls were smooth, and veins of some
lighter-colored, foreign mineral ran through the rock, giving it the
appearance of carefully laid bricks. The passage’s corners were sharp.
It bulged outwards to about my head level, then came together to a sharp
point overhead, high enough that I could walk comfortably. Every
fifteen paces or so, the passageway was lit with flickering firelight
from a dim, square, artistically crafted lantern, hanging from what
looked like a bone support and decorated with a kind of bony spiral.
“No electricity?” I whispered up to Rhy.
“The goblins don’t know about us either,” she
whispered back.
We followed the stone passageway down, through
several more carved archways. It opened up, suddenly, and then just as
suddenly, and forked. To our left, the passage rose sharply before
ending in a wall of rubble. We turned right, away from the blocked
passage, towards another, identical one which descended still further
into the earth. The air was cool, and bone dry.
Thirty paces and another lantern later, the passage
turned left again, then, still descending into the depths of the earth,
right. Ahead, it bent left again, and another lantern hung from the
wall in front of us. I studied it as we approached, marveling at the
craftsmanship that had gone into it. Rhy’s two guards, still grasping
her tightly by the wrists, led us left, where the passage suddenly
squared and leveled out. I followed them around the corner, glancing
away from the lantern and ahead of us past Rhy, and my breath caught in
my throat.
Through the archway ahead of us was an enormous,
green-glowing cavern. Lanterns, like the ones in this passage but
larger, hung mournfully at the end of long, dark rusted chains. Beyond
them, a pair of enormous, fanged, carved skulls faced each other within
a huge, angular archway, their mouths stretched open as though laughing
hatefully at some cruel joke, or at us, or at death itself. Flanking
the archway were two enormous hanging drapes, one blue and one green,
tattered and faded towards the bottom but as solid as the day they were
woven higher up. We passed out of the tunnel and onto a narrow balcony,
with stairs descending to either side. The walls rose, until they
reached a point high above us where they curved inwards to become the
cavern’s pointed ceiling. The cavern, actually more like an giant’s
passageway, curved symmetrically away from us, off in either direction.
It was segmented periodically by thin walls pierced with enormous,
pointed arches. Each arch was capped with another huge, carved skull,
jawless this time, with enormous obsidian eyes staring accusingly down
at us. Above each skull stood, a bony-looking spiral figure, the same
one that adorned the lanterns. Hanging in each arch was more lanterns,
and studded with more skulls. I couldn’t be sure at a distance, but
these skulls didn’t look carved.
Down the center of the cavernous passage’s wide
stone floor, through each huge stone arch, flowed the source of the
cavern’s green light: a river of glowing green ichor, flowing through a
carved riverbed like some twisted parody of Storm City’s beautiful
canals.
My stomachs clenched at the sight. This place was
beautiful in its own way, I thought, but it had been designed to remind
its inhabitants that death was a fact of life. I shivered. “Welcome to
Under City,” said Rhy, proudly.
Along the promenades on either side of the ichor
canal, the undead denizens of Under City were going about their morning
business. They walked with a universal slouch and shuffle, their
clothes were tattered but otherwise normal-looking, and some of them
were missing appendages. Bones stuck out everywhere. Not a smile could
be seen on the lot of them, yet they went on, slumping along the city’s
canal or walking towards us out of the laughing-skulls archway.
Armored guards stood about, as well: a pair stood
at the bottom of each of the staircases off our balcony, and four stood
across the canal from us, watching us with veiling dispassion. The thin
segmenting walls were also pierced, on either side of the central arch,
by two smaller, person-sized archways, allowing passage. A guard stood
at each of these, as well.
The smaller archway to our right, down the stairs
on our side of the ichor canal, was blocked off by a wall of carefully
laid and mortared stones. I pointed to it, and Rhy answered, “Security.
The Throne Room and Royal Library are beyond it. Before we withdrew
from the world, we suffered more than one attack which made it all the
way into the queen’s chambers. It means,” she continued, “if we’re
going to see the Dark Lady, we have to go that way, across a bridge and
back that way.” She pointed to the promenade across the canal from us.
As we stepped onto the stone balcony, our guards
called down to the guards on the promenade below, exchanging words.
Five of them ambled up the stairs towards us, armor clanking. One of
them, wearing a dark purple insignia on his shoulder, caught sight of
Rhy and stopped, shocked. They conversed rapidly, and she spoke
imploringly. After a minute, he nodded.
She turned to us, breathing a sigh of relief.
“This is Jackson,” she said, “an old friend of mine. He’s going to take
us to Sylvannas.”
A distant, Gutterspeak shout echoed from up the
tunnel. The four Forsaken that had brought us this far nodded sharply
to Jackson and his guards, then turned back up the tunnel. I looked
down at the bound gnome. He looked serene again. It worried me.
Jackson led us down the stairs to our left, and
immediately through another of the city’s ubiquitous pointed archways.
Across the canal were what looked like vendor stalls, where corpses
stood and gossiped and haggled over prices. The promenade extended on
ahead of us, curving always to the right in the distance. Madoran asked
Rhy about it.
“This whole place is laid out like a wheel,” she
explained, over her shoulder. “We’re on the outer circuit now. The
Trade District is its hub. We’re in the War District now,” she
continued, “where we learn to fight.” As she spoke, the cavern’s wall
on our left opened up, forming a wide, high chamber. At its center
stood a gross ziggurat, surrounded by four menacing ivory spikes,
angling upward. The thing was capped with a huge carved skull, and out
of its gaping mouth poured more of the green ichor, flowing under the
promenade and feeding the canal.
Nearer to us in the cavern stood three rows of
battered practice dummies. A pair of trainees wielding wooden swords
danced among them, practicing maneuvers on multiple enemies. A drill
sergeant walked about, shouting at them.
He caught sight of us, and his shouting trailed
off, staring, jaw slackened. The two trainees glanced at him and then
at us, shock forming on their faces as well.
I looked about, uncomfortable. The inhabitants of
the City were all staring at us. As Jackson and his guards (each
staring at us distrustingly) moved us forward, past the skull ziggurat,
the civilians moved hurriedly out of our way, pressing themselves
against walls to avoid coming near us. There was fear in their eyes. I
shook my head in wonder.
We arrived at a stone bridge, arcing up over the
canal. Stairs led up to it from the side, with skulls carved in their
stonework, and we mounted them, then turned right across the bridge. I
looked nervously at the poison ichor flowing on either side of us as we
crossed. Back to our right, past the high wall and through the great
archway, I could see the tunnel we’d entered the City through.
Suddenly, distant crash echoed out of it. We
halted, half way across the bridge, and our guards looked back towards
the tunnel, glowing eyes narrowed, listening. Rhy glanced nervously
back at me.
A moment later, from deep within the city, a great,
sonorous bell toll rang out. The city’s civilians looked away from us
at the noise, and, calmly but urgently, and began moving off. “The
attack bells,” grimaced Rhy. “They signal the guard to form up, such as
it is, and the rest of us to get to our quarters and hunker down. It
could be a drill.”
I looked down at the gnome. His face was a mask of
serenity. He glanced up at me, and in the moment that our eyes locked,
I saw a moment of ill-contained triumph flicker across his face.
“It’s not a drill,” I said urgently, “it’s them.”
“Are you sure?” said Madoran.
I grimaced, and nodded to the gnome, and said,
“He’s sure.”
Rhy made a noise in the back of her throat, and it
took me a moment to realize that she had just sworn in her native
language.
Another crash, and another Gutterspeak shout, and
Jackson clicked to our other four guards. They nodded, and turned and
ran back towards the city’s entrance. Rhy shook her head. “This is all
going wrong,” she muttered.
A death scream echoed from behind us. Rhy swore.
A nasty grin split the gnome’s face. “Who’s short now?” he cackled.
We all looked down at him. “Are you kidding?” I
said incredulously.
“Tha’s the crappest reason ah’ve ever heard fer
turnin’ evil,” growled Madoran. Luke tugged sharply on his rope, and
the gnome’s arms jerked painfully upwards. He glared hatred up at the
human.
Jackson led us hurriedly across the bridge, and
then halted, turning to Rhy. He pointed at us, moaning and grunting,
and gestured for us to stay put. Still speaking, he pointed at the
gnome, then gestured off to our left, towards the War District. His
face twisted cruelly, and I could imagine what foul methods of
interrogation awaited the tiny wizard there.
Rhy shook her head and replied vehemently, pointing
back towards the way we’d come. Jackson returned the gesture. “There
isn’t enough time!” Rhy shouted, loudly, in Common. She realized her
mistake, and shook her head sharply.
But Jackson grimaced, as though pulling
long-disused knowledge up from the bowels of his mind. He formed his
white lips carefully. “Fine,” he said. He unsheathed an evil-looking
dagger from his leather belt, grabbed the gnome from Luke, and coolly
slit his throat.
I sucked air in shock, and choked back a surge of
bile. Luke shut his eyes and muttered what might have been a prayer.
Rhy’s flew wide and she stifled a reflexive scream. Madoran grunted.
The gnome collapsed to the stone floor, a look of surprise frozen on his
tiny face.
“Problem solved,” Jackson spat. He clicked parting
words at Rhy, and ran back towards the tunnel's crescendoing battle.
XXVIII
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