“Let me go,” she said tenderly, twisting my hair around her finger.
“I cannot,” I moaned. “He’s wrong. He will always be wrong. I’m your sister. We belong together. Who am I without you?”
But she shook her head sadly, her childlike gaze full of memory. “You can’t take me with you.
It’s against the rules of this place,” she whispered softly.
I wept until there could be no more water in me. I held on to her as long as I could, even as I could feel Elomia’s cold blue hands pulling at the depths of me, pulling me back. No, we can’t part like this. This isn’t the right ending. This story is broken. It ends with everything put right again. It has to.
But it didn’t. Maybe it never could have.
I felt myself fading away. I felt snow falling through my soul from far off. I was not yet gone, but it already seemed as though I watched my sister’s body and mine from a long distance, flying back toward the sun and the moon and the mountaintop and the two grieving statues in the ice.
“He’s wrong. He will always be wrong. I’m your sister. We belong together. Who am I without you?”
No. I could not. Not like this.
I laughed. I forced myself. I would give her that. As it had been then, it could be now. Hollow, fractured, but laughter nonetheless. I kissed her nose. The moment broke like a promise. She shivered and shimmered, and then she was a sliver of crystal, sliding easily through my fingers and back onto the air, the heft of her gone, just a glimmer of silver again, darting and leaping back into the currents of the wind, back toward him, her keeper, running ahead of me again, always ahead, into the pale, ropy cloud-stream and down into the cavern of his waiting fist—
—as whatever of me had moved in the world beyond rushed back through the fabric of reality toward the heat and press of the living, dragged by a blue and frozen hand, I saw beneath me the spinning wastes of the irredeemable land, the endless nothing, the horrid red-gray broken desert of misery.
And wherever we had walked or run or knelt or fought or wept, from the edge of the tower to the end of us, wild white roses and glistening bloodthistle bloomed out of the barren, starving earth in a graceful, curling line like a long, deep river.
And when I woke, the bloodthistle was all that still hung in my heart. Wild, tangled, bright flowers striving against a land that did not want them. But where had I seen such a thing? I could not think. The rest floated into shadows and mist and away, leaving me alone, half-frozen and uncomprehending, leaning against the stone statue of some miserable horned woman, with only the shredded hem of a memory to cling to, growing thinner and more ragged all the time. Why had I come so far? For what? What could be so important that I would abandon the war of my people?
But all my heart answered was a dream-vision of bloodthistle, curling, crimson, eternal.
My numb, frost-blued fingers dragged in the graven letters of the statue’s name. I stared at it for a long time before shouldering my pack and heading back down the mountain toward summer and strength and the cause that needed me.
ACCEPTANCE.
he old nans and old grans who sat beside golden beds in the palace of Lordaeron liked this tale best for fussy princelings and princesses who refused to sleep until one more story was told. It is about forgetting and remembering, and that is what sleep is for—to forget what we think is true and to remember what our heart knows is truest.
The tale begins in Alonsus Chapel, with an ancient archbishop and his most devoted paladins. The bishop called all his best to the courtyard before the chapel and admired how their armor gleamed in the sun as though the Light itself was shining upon them. He told them, “Listen well, champions: our chapel stands tall and sturdy, but the Light challenges us to go beyond our familiar grounds. It is time for you to prove your resolve as paladins. By great deeds all noble warriors of the Light find their destiny. Journey far, be brave, return when you have proof of your valor.”
These instructions were indeed unclear, but the paladins, being paladins, understood what was required of them. Saidan Dathrohan was there, with his long fair hair and a sword the length of two men. And Turalyon stood beside him, golden in every way, a serious man with a serious face; he was wearing a cloak embroidered with suns. Tirion Fordring, with his excellent beard and tall pauldrons, waited behind his brothers-in-arms with Gavinrad the Dire, black of hair and beard but with kind and thoughtful eyes. Other paladins, too, had mustered in the courtyard to see off their exemplars, but for this tale, we are concerned with Uther.
Uther, a solid timber of a young man with a mane of fiery hair and eyes like a coming storm, stood ready for this challenge. Radiant with the purest love for the Light, he listened to the bishop’s words and nodded with their cadence. Send me to the ends of Azeroth, he thought. I will prove myself again and again, as many times as I must. Forge me in the fires of doubt and fear: I will overcome. For to train in the Light, to wield it, to become its weapon, was a worthy endeavor, though not an easy one. A soul must be tested—a hundred times, a thousand times—before truly understanding its path.
And now his path took him away from home, north through pastures and hills, through farmlands aglow with summer wheat. He rode with his fellow paladins to the edge of the kingdom, where they would scatter to the winds. Before they parted, Turalyon raised his voice to assuage his brothers’ fears. “Take heart and fear nothing. Trust in the Light, and we will all meet again at Alonsus Chapel, stronger and wiser.”
Uther was not discouraged and only grinned. While they were all men of wit and courage, there existed between them a brotherly rivalry, and such promises were expected. Saidan made his own boasts, and Gavinrad, too, though Tirion rode away without a word to any of them. Uther said only, “Be safe and well, brothers. I look forward to the day we are reunited. I sense greatness lies ahead.” He did not add, And great danger.
When the lands familiar to him fell away, with mountains at his back and forests ahead, Uther took his gallant black horse deeper into the wood. A summer storm came swiftly upon them, a clear sky turning to steel, a few fat drops of rain the only warning before the squall descended. The driving rain pelted tree and stone, and Uther rode blindly, soaked and chilled to the bone. A crack of lightning split the sky wide open, and his mount whickered and shied—then tossed, rearing with a scream onto her hind legs and dumping her rider.
“Forge me in the fires of doubt and fear: I will overcome.”
Uther thrashed, falling not onto wet ground, as he expected, but into a pool of water. He had not seen it there, the pool, yet it pulled him under, deep and strange and scalding. The knight prayed and looked for the way to the surface, but up was down and down up, and he could feel the water rushing into his lungs, choking him. This now was death, boiled and drowned in his own heavy plate armor.
His heart was pounding painfully, and he thought of his brothers and all whom he had failed. For all his devotion, he could not fulfill his Light-given charge. His eyes rolled back, and he went still—but death never came. Instead, he noticed a soft light flickering above him, playing and bouncing along the surface of the water. Uther reached for his last shreds of strength and swam, dragging leaden arms and legs, kicking, pulling, bringing himself at last to the sweet and life-giving air.
When he emerged, choking and gasping, the storm had passed as suddenly as it had come on. A trio of maidens bathed in the pool, a shimmer of frost on the ground all around them, a fringe of grass visible near the stones where the heat of the water had banished the cold. His arrival startled all but one lady, who sat very still and watchful while her companions dove for their blankets and cloaks to cover their nakedness. Uther hurled himself onto a rock, looking all around the pool for a horse that was not there. The woods themselves seemed changed, the trees low to the ground and wearing burdensome mantles of thick white snow. Every detail felt both surreal and muted.
It was not winter in Lordaeron, but here he could see the coiling white snakes of his breath upon t
he air.
“Where am I?” he asked the maiden, who sat on a flat stone, dangling her feet in the bubbling water. “What land is this?”
“Are you a wielder of magic, sir, that you can breathe in the water?” the young woman asked instead of answering his question. She was radiantly beautiful, with a long sheet of spun-gold hair that fell over her like a rich mantle. She wore a blazing silver necklace in the shape of a sword, with a gleaming sapphire set in the hilt. “What land are you from?”
Uther furrowed his brow and climbed from the pool, the frosty winter air attacking him as soon as he did. Huddling into his armor, he slicked the water from his face and hair. “From Stratholme, in Lordaeron to the south. And I am no mage, lady, nor can I forgo air in my lungs. I am but a man, a paladin, and a stalwart servant of the Light.” His gaze avoided the two frightened ladies whispering beneath their cloaks to each other. “Please, do not fear me.”
“I do not fear you,” the golden-haired woman said and stood.
Uther averted his eyes at once, though her beauty and her ice-blue eyes enchanted him.
“You came through the pool, so you must be here for a reason. How came you by it?”
“I fell,” Uther answered, still bewildered. Was it magic that had transported him, changing a forest pool into a gateway of unusual power? “A storm tossed me from my horse. I was sent to range far, to test myself in service of the Light, and now I am … here.”
The maiden laughed at him, then beckoned her companions forward. They brought the young woman a silver cloak, elegantly embroidered with beaded thorns and fur along the collar. “Quests are better performed when warm and dry,” she told him. “Come, join us—the palace is not far.”
Uther thanked the lady for her hospitality, and as they traversed the path through the frozen woods, he gave his name. “You may call me Uther.”
“I am called Miatharas, sometimes Lady Miatharas, or Revered Daughter of King Gilvin Artenes. These are my attendants, though you have given them both a fright. They shall soon recover.”
The lady’s cloak trailed along the crisp, frosted grass as she led them to a path winding through the wood. Above the treetops, castle towers—white as the snowy ground and slender as icicles—sat like a crown over the forest.
“Why are you not frightened?” Uther asked.
“Inevitability, I suppose,” Lady Miatharas replied. Her voice was richly melodic and as enrapturing as her fine hair and eyes. “Though, now you have come, and my heart is heavy.”
“Why is your heart heavy, lady? I mean you no distress,” Uther replied sincerely.
“You will want to fight in the tournament—all knights do. Our knights fight and die. Every year they fight and die, but the tournament goes on. I hate it, but as Revered Daughter, I must attend.”
They walked through the wood and came to the palace. It had high walls and a deep moat, and before it, he saw the tournament grounds ringed with dark-blue pennants. He felt warmer at the sight of it—now his purpose was clear. Uther would enter this tournament, and he would win it. The Light must surely be testing his might and his heart.
“Do not be sad, Lady Miatharas,” Uther told her and placed his hand on his armored chest. “I will win the tournament, but I will put no knights to death.”
“Oh, no.” She grasped at her arms as tears fell down her pink-tinged cheeks. “This tournament is like nothing you have encountered before: you will fight a terrible beast.” The maiden parted her cloak and lifted out the silver necklace shaped like a sword, the sapphire on it brilliant as a star in a clear night sky. “No one has ever won this prize because of it, and no one ever will.” A treasure fit for a quest. He would bring it to Alonsus Chapel as proof of his resolve.
“I will win it, lady,” he promised.
She shook her head, forlorn.
“The Light will not fail me—it has never failed me. Your fears are misplaced. Have you ever seen a paladin take to the field of battle?”
“I have not,” answered Lady Miatharas, guiding him past the tournament field, across an ice-slick bridge, and beneath the walls of the palace.
“Then you do not know what I am capable of, what the Light is capable of.”
Lady Miatharas let him take her arm, and she sighed. “You will not win,” she said, and that was that.
Uther was received with every desirable courtesy by the court of King Gilvin
Artenes. He was an old and hollow man, though he still had a healthy bloom on his cheeks. His gray hair fell in wisps from his head, crimped beneath a jagged silver crown. Servants filled the tables with basted stag meat and roasted turnips, with sauces and soups, with tankards of honeyed mead, tiny barbs of lavender floating in the foam. The warm hall blazed with blue fires, white wolves prowled the edges of the feasting, and a bard strummed his song. He sang of King Aslin Artenes, who had come before and died of treachery.
King of winter, just and bold,
Cruelly felled by one so cold.
The other knights of the tournament were there too, though Uther knew none of their names or deeds and found that strange. Where am I? he thought. What is this place? But the food and mead bolstered his spirits, and the dry cloak provided by the king kept him from illness, and so he did not think overmuch on the peculiarities of the place. King Artenes and his daughter proved to be generous hosts, and the knights all around him gave escalating accounts of their incredible and somewhat unbelievable feats. A soldier in green and gold had slain a spider the size of a house. A lady knight with flaming red hair had soared atop a mad gryphon before driving it into the sea. An old veteran in bronze and a fair-haired duelist had both conquered drakes, the size of which became a serious topic of debate.
All the while, Uther gazed at Lady Miatharas, though she hardly seemed to notice him. She looked unbearably sad and brightened only momentarily when the bard came to serenade her.
Uther was given a tent to rest in; it was striped red and black and located near the tournament field. He removed his armor and prayed, kneeling on a pile of furs and listening to the wolves howl outside. Before he could climb into bed and close his eyes, a figure appeared in the tent.
“Lady Miatharas!” He leaped to his feet.
“Oh, paladin.” She rushed to him and took his hands. Her fingers were like ice. “Do not enter the tourney. Do not fight. The beast cannot be killed, and to raise your sword against it is to court your doom.”
“The Light will protect me—it always has,” he promised her. “Let it bring you solace now.”
He called upon the Light then, to enfold them both in its warmth and protection. But the glow radiating from his chest frightened her, and Lady Miatharas cried out and ran from him. Uther scolded himself for alarming such a delicate creature and fell into a fitful slumber. If he was careless in this test, he would bring only shame back to Alonsus Chapel.
Gusts of wind rocked the tents and slapped against the high-flying pennants at the tournament the next day. Squires in their knights’ colors gathered by the gate, and the people of the strange and frozen land filled the benches with their bodies and their whoops of excitement. Uther had no squire and no horse, but the wrinkled veteran in bronze assured him he would not need them.
Short and broad with spikes bolted to his shield, the old man told him, “Your mount would just be more meat for the beast.”
Uther searched the stands for Lady Miatharas but found her absent. The fighting must trouble the lady too much, he decided. She is frail and seems so full of fear. He listened to the roar of the crowd as the old knight hefted his shield and entered the grounds, preparing to fight. Uther heard the beast before it came, the wind doubling in strength, wings beating the air before the dragon descended. He had never seen such a creature, breathing white ice fire, its scales pale blue and black, the ground cracking with frost wherever its clawed feet fell.
The veteran cried, “For the memory of our king!” and rushed at the beast and died. The dragon slashed him open from navel t
o neck and idly tossed his body somewhere into the woods outside the moat. The crowd groaned, and the fearsome lady with red hair pushed past Uther to enter the fight and went quickly to her demise.
A wave of fear and doubt crested powerfully enough to sweep him out to sea, but Uther stood anchored in his faith and determination. These were not unseasoned knights, yet the beast cut down all of them like brittle autumn grass. Soon there were none left except Uther, who stepped over the broken body of the boy in green and gold to confront the beast. Its face was long and slender, its teeth icicles that did not shatter when it crunched them down on bone. A gentle snow began to fall, though under the flat gray sky it looked more like ash.
Where are all your deeds now? What has your valor brought you? wondered Uther as he steadied his stance. The whispered warnings of Lady Miatharas returned to him. The beast cannot be killed, and to raise your sword against it is to court your doom.
Trust in the Light, Uther told himself. Trust in wisdom. I am meant to be here. I am meant for this test.
He was a stranger to that place, a stranger to the beast, and a stranger to all the customs of this land, but the lady had given him knowledge. Uther set down his great hammer and knelt, and he felt the deadly cold breath of the beast unfurl around him like a ghostly shroud. It seemed to smell him, and he felt his hair ruffled by the cleaving wind that hissed from its throat. He looked into the creature’s eyes and saw only pain and panic; he looked at the great cracked shackles on its legs and saw the welts from many cutting chains. Perhaps it was not justice, to let the thing live in such suffering. The fallen knights had chosen to fight, but what if this monster had been forced onto the field?
“I will not raise my weapon against you,” he said, holding his hand to his chest, feeling the Light swell within him and empathy without him.
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