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V
Now, you have to understand the effect of saying
“Welcome to the Argent Dawn” has on someone. It would be sort of like
closing your eyes, and then opening them, and having someone say
“Welcome to the moon!” when you quite clearly hadn’t gone anywhere. The
Argent Dawn was an army of the light, formed more than six hundred years
ago, to combat undead evil in the northlands. It had performed its duty,
at first quietly, and then crescendoing, enlisting volunteers and
mercenaries from every race and nation in the world. Evil couldn’t boast
those kinds of numbers, and eventually, and spectacularly, the Dawn
prevailed. (How long “eventually” took I didn’t know; my Eastern History
had never been that sharp. But it wasn’t quick, or easy, and there were
rumors and rumors of evil things stirring in the northlands, always.)
The idea of building an army of people from all the nations of the
world, who all hated each other, was apparently too unstable to survive,
and the Dawn had fragmented and faded from view. Since then, it had
become a symbol of lost glory, used by politicians and demagogues to
invoke the names of Good and Power, the ideals of cooperation towards a
common goal. It was a powerful symbol, but it had been nothing but a
dusty symbol for hundreds of years.
In the intervening centuries, racial tensions had
given way to splintered kingdoms, city-states too busy or lazy to be
proud of their heritage. It might have been a good thing that a tauren
walking around Storm City wasn’t given a second glance, but it certainly
didn’t feel as glorious as the Good Old Days had sounded. That’s the way
with good old days, though, I often though: you remember the power and
the glory, but not the race wars and the vicious hatred. I had never
made up my mind if peace was better, or if pride was. I had never made
up my mind, but I had certainly voted, I thought: I had run away from my
people, a decade ago, a fact of which I thought rarely and talked about
less. When I thought about it, though, it wasn’t something I was proud
of.
* * *
The heavy doors swung open in front of Fang. On the
other side of the stone archway, I could see a vast, red, round
amphitheater room. The floor was flat and covered in thick red carpet,
and at a distance, a curved wall rose up to eye level. Above and behind
the wall was seating, and the first two rows were filled. Women and men,
humans, primarily, but orcs and goblins and gnomes and dwarves as well,
all dressed regally. I followed Fang slowly into the center of the grand
room – the ceiling was the great glass dome I had seen from outside –
and the seated aristocracy, or royalty, or whatever they were, sat in a
full circle around the lower section I stood in with the Tooth. I felt
like I’d been cast into a gladiatorial arena. I turned around to look at
everyone. There were even a few trolls about, several pale elves, and a
pair of naga, sitting to my left. To the right, almost all the way
around the seats to where I came in, sat a single man-sized, black,
glittering spider.
“Fang Tooth of the Murlocs and of Storm City, whom
do you present to the Dawn?” said a voice behind me. I turned back
around, and, standing opposite the door was a tall, thin human, wearing
a black robe and black hood. The hood came down over his pale forehead,
and ended just above his glowing, yellow eyes. His face was bone white
and gaunt. He held a simple, silver scepter. To put it simply, he gave
me the creeps.
Fang glanced up at me, and responded to the pale
human. He spoke loudly and clearly. “This tauren’s name is Crazy Horse,
and he calls nowhere his home." I'd never quite thought of it that way
before. "He lives in Storm City, and has shown me his willingness to
help me in my time of need.”
There was muttering around the auditorium. “Ye did
twist his arm a bit,” said a familiar voice. I looked to my left, where
the dwarf from the Panda Pub was seated. I hadn’t recognized him
immediately. I smiled and made to wave, relieved to see a familiar face
of any kind, but Fang put a clammy fin on my arm.
“Do you trust him?” said the man in the black robe.
“No,” said Fang. I looked down at him in alarm. So
did the rest of the auditorium. “But he has not yet given me any reason
to actively distrust him. I continue to test him, and I believe that he
will be found trust-worthy.”
The angry murmuring rose again, and I heard some
loud hissing behind me. I didn’t turn around to see whether it was the
naga or the spider.
“You test his trust with the existence of our
order,” said the man in black. “Quite a risk.”
“I know quite well what I’m risking,” said the
Murloc icily.
“You’d better,” said one of the orcs. The man in
black bowed his head to Fang, though, and said, “Of course, we know to
trust your judgment.” There was no sarcasm in his voice.
He sat down. “Thank you for bringing Crazy Horse of
No Kingdom before us,” he said.
Fang bowed to the man, then turned to me and said,
with his voice lowered, “Stay here. Don’t speak until you are spoken to.
Don’t go until you are dismissed.” He grabbed my arm again, with his
clammy fin. “Don’t ask any questions,” he hissed. Then he walked back
out the door, leaving me alone and defenseless in the arena.
“So, Fang Tooth believes that this tauren is the
man for the job,” said one of the blood elves, behind me. I turned to
look. He was dressed in green velvet robes. “I don’t question his
judgment, but perhaps we are right to question him about this decision.”
“Not with Horse here,” said Fang, having come back
in by a door above in the seating. He sat down. “But, he is certainly
the bull for the job.” The elf muttered something I didn’t catch. The
elves seated around him muttered as well.
“Have you told him anything about the job?” said
the orc who had spoken previously.
I grunted. Inside, I had screamed, “No!” at the top
of my lungs, and then hurled invectives at Fang until my nose turned
blue. Then I had suppressed the whole urge, and all that made it out was
a little grunt. No one noticed.
“No,” said Fang. I ground my teeth. “There are
people here that can explain it better than I can.” Fang looked directly
at me as he said it, and there was a twinkle in his red eyes that made
his words ring of irony, though of what sort I wasn’t sure.
The man in the black robe stood up again. He was
still holding his silver scepter. “If there are no objections?”
“None that will be heard with the tauren present,”
said the blood elf, and his compatriots muttered in agreement.
“Very well,” said the man in black heavily. “Crazy
Horse,” he turned and spoke directly to me for the first time. Fang had
told me not to speak until I was spoken to; now, technically, I could
say what I wanted. For some reason, I didn’t. “You have been selected by
a Murloc to serve an organization you did not know existed. We would
rather have a known quantity to work with, but most of us trust that
Fang had reasons to choose you. He is a trusted member of this order,”
he said pointedly, at the elves, who had begun to mutter again. “Crazy
Horse, we need you to travel north, across the known lands, across the
shallow sea and into the north continent.” I paled a little. “There is a
book which we require, and it is believed to survive somewhere in the
ancient city of Lordaeron.” I nodded. “Fang will fill you in on the
details before you leave.” He looked at the Murloc. “I assume that you
will not be going alone, but I am personally comfortable with leaving it
up to Fang to decide who will accompany you.”
The elves behind me exploded. “The Dawn does not
recognize Fang as its sole decision-maker!” said one of them, to the
right of the one in velvet, heatedly. “Is whoever is accompanying this
tauren,” and it was spoken with scorn, “to Lordaeron, on sensitive
business of the Argent Dawn, known to you? Or were you planning on
picking someone off the streets of Storm City tonight on your way out?”
“I’m sending him with Katy M, who is well known to
this body,” said Fang. There were murmurs from around the hall.
“The Druid,” said the elf, with deep respect. He
sat down. “Please continue.”
I can do druid things, I wanted to say. Watch me, I
can turn into a horse! But Fang was looking at me, and he shook his head
slightly.
“Crazy Horse,” said the nameless man in black, “We
of course have to hear it from yourself and yourself alone. You are
sworn to secrecy, and we will not pretend that it will be easy. Are you
willing to perform this service for the Argent Dawn?”
For lack of a better thing to do, I nodded.
“Do you have any questions for the Dawn?” said the
nameless man in black.
I looked up at Fang, who held my eyes. “No,” I
said.
“Horse,” said Fang. “You are dismissed.”
* * *
I walked to the double door through which I had
come, seeming hours ago, and pushed them open. Katy M was waiting for me
in the hallway. “Hello,” she growled. There was a little bit of a smile
on her face, and I was sure she knew what I just been through.
“Who?” I exploded. “Why? What book? We’re going,
alone, to the northern continent? Nobody lives there. Nobody goes
there!” I quivered with bottled emotions, only one of which was anger.
“Patience,” said the other, and the small, ironic
smile was playing on her face again. I felt a muscle twitch at the edge
of my left eye. “Follow me. Quietly.” With no further ceremony, or
communication, we returned to the carved stone room with the beds and my
bags. A huge plate of roast quail was on the desk, still hot, and I
remembered how hungry I was. With no ceremony, I dug in. When I looked
up, sated, minutes later, M had disappeared.
I sat down on the green bed, and reached up and
over to the dangling light bulb. I pulled the cord, and the room
immediately plunged into pitch, heart of the mountain blackness. I lay
back, and pulled the quilt over me, and settled into the too-short,
too-hard bed. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was more comfortable than I
needed. I fell into a deep, pitch-black sleep.
* * *
I don’t quite know how long I slept for, but I woke
up some hours later. There was a dim glow coming from across the room,
and I sat up groggily. Fang Tooth was sitting at the desk, again, with
piles upon piles of paper, scratching away at one of them with his pen.
“Hi,” I said, by way of letting him know I was
awake. The glow was coming from a little bauble that was sitting next
to him on the desk. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“No reason to wake you,” said the Murloc, without
turning around. “Not the least tiring experience you’ve ever had, I
bet.”
“No kidding,” I said. Stupid amphibian. Are you
my best friend again, or are you buttering me up for another “just trust
me” trip through the ringer? I was feeling grumpy. It must not have
been that good a sleep.
“No questions?” he said, glancing over his shoulder
at me. His face fell into shadow, and the one eye that he had turned
towards me glinted slightly in the dark. “I was certain you’d have
questions.”
“Millions,” I growled. “I couldn’t decide what to
ask first.” I was waking up.
“Alright,” said Fang, “then I’ll give you an answer
unasked. Yes, that was the real Argent Dawn. After the Old Scourge was
defeated, many of its members thought it had served its purpose, and
dissipated. The order’s leadership, though, knew that the magic of the
Scourge was not something that could be destroyed, only dissipated.
Having been created, it was an insoluble toxic waste that would continue
to poison the lands where it had accumulated, essentially forever. Even
with no guiding will behind it, the evil that was the scourge has lived
on, twisting everything that grows in the North, making it evil and
unfit for civilization.”
I nodded slowly. “That explains why Lordaeron is a
dead continent.” I stopped nodding, and shook my head. “Forever? The
world is going to have a big, evil continent, forever?”
“Two of them,” said Fang.
“Two continents? Lordaeron and who?”
Fang shook his head and was silent, as though he
had said too much. He hissed to himself for a beat, and then began
talking again. “More recently we have seeking ways to break down this
evil, but experiments are proceeding slowly at best. For the moment, I
think it’s prudent to assume that when one says forever, one means
exactly that.”
“So that’s why the Argent Dawn is still around,” I
said. “Still fighting the same evil it was formed to. It’s like it
never won, and never will.” Still inspiring, I supposed, but certainly
the truth of the matter made for a different kind of symbol than the
popular belief.
Fang narrowed his eyes, in what I thought was the
murloc equivalent of a furrowed brow. “Every night that Azeroth sleeps
safe from evil is a victory for the Dawn.”
Oh. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t mean to
minimize your–”
He interrupted me with a wave of a fin. “Not
'my',” he said, “and not your fault. Of course, we shouldn’t minimize
the Dawn’s accomplishments in the Scourge War, either. Among other
things, it united the whole world under one banner for a time, something
that has only happened twice in written history. It also defeated the
strongest will this world has ever seen.”
“And since then…” I was sitting, rapt, at the
foot of my bed, just bleeding curiosity. I had forgotten that I had
ever been sleepy.
“Since then,” he said, “the Dawn has been fighting
a different kind of war, a shadow war, against an enemy with no
leadership or purpose. A secret organization, made of some of the most
powerful people in the Eastern kingdoms, is perfectly capable of doing
so.”
“And now,” I said, mildly star-struck, “I’m working
for that organization.”
“For now,” said Fang, “that organization is meant
to think so.”
Feeding me another mystery was the wrong answer.
Sick and tired. Ripped away from my life, and friends, and job, and
blackmailed and dropped into a situation where the closest thing I had
to a friend was this sick, manipulative, mysterious little amphibian,
whose only weapons had been fear of the unknown. I snapped. I stood
up, hard, and knocked my head into the dangling light bulb. I reached
forward and grabbed Fang by his face and pulled him to his feet.
“Listen,” I said, through clenched teeth. “You don’t get to say, be
patient, any more.”
There was a blinding flash of light, and I flew
backwards. Transforming as I flew, I struck the wall as a thick-skinned,
slathering, angry, horned brown bear. Fang was standing on the chair,
and his hands and eyes were glowing with white light. I leapt at him
across the room, deadly paws outstretched. A brilliant flash smote me,
striking my face and side like a blade of fire. I staggered backwards,
clawing at my face. I gathered my wits, and bounded forward again,
knocking him off the chair onto the floor. He hit the ground under my
front paws with a sickeningly wet thud, and I pulled my body back into a
bull.
The door had opened. Katy M had appeared, more than
filling it. Her eyes were on fire. A roar built up in her chest, and a
whirling, glowing green mist began to swirl in around her hands. The
roar grew inside her, beginning to escape like pressured steam getting
ready to blow, and I realized I was staring at her in terror. The roar
finally escaped, and it was bestial, filling the room and my head and my
chest. The green mist in her hands condensed into a tiny, bright point,
too bright to look at, and then exploded out at me. It hit me as pure,
elemental fury, the wrath of nature, and it flung me to the floor.
“Attacking the Murloc angers the Tauren…” growled Katy M, as my
consciousness faded to blackness. “Ow,” said the Murloc dimly. “Heal
him, get both of you out of here, you know the drill.”
VI
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