“No, I understand, thank you.” Chen smiled. “It’s humbling to see yourself through someone else’s eyes. You’re right, of course. It’s just that I’ve never seen it as focus. I see it as fun, as a gift I am giving others. When I made tea for you and Lord Taran Zhu, I wanted to show my appreciation and to share some of me. By your reckoning, that meant I was sharing part of the world.”
“You did. Thank you.” She nodded as they slowly descended into a valley surrounded by a patchwork of distant villages and cultivated fields. “Your earlier statement suggests motivation for this journey beyond chasing the turtle or the desire to see your niece. Am I correct?”
“Yes.” Chen’s brow furrowed. “If I could identify it, I would not run from it. I’m not really running now. I just need . . .”
“. . . perspective.”
“That’s it.” He nodded quickly, liking that she’d pulled the word from his mind. “I have been seeing to the physical recovery of Vol’jin and Tyrathan Khort. They are healing. Bodily, anyway. But each still carries wounds. I cannot see . . .”
Yalia turned and laid a paw on his shoulder. “It is not your fault that you cannot see. What they hide, they hide well. And even if you could see, you could not make them see. Healing of that sort can be encouraged but not compelled, and sometimes it hurts the healer to have to wait.”
“You speak from experience?” Chen leaped over a small brook.
Yalia spritely picked her way over rocks. “An experience, yes. A very rare one. Most of our initiates are chosen through a series of trials, but this is not always so. Do you know how the other cubs, the very special cubs, come to be chosen, Master Stormstout?”
The brewmaster shook his head. “I never thought about it.”
“Legend has it that some cubs are not meant to undergo the Trial of the Red Blossoms. Their fates are decided in a very different way.”
As she spoke, her stare grew distant and her soft voice became even softer. “These cubs, wise beyond their years, some suggest, arrive as toddlers in form but ancient in spirit. Kind travelers give them aid, and legends suggest those travelers are the gods themselves. These cubs are accepted by the Shado-pan lord. They’re spoken of as the Guided Cubs.
“I was a Guided Cub. My home village, Zouchin, is there on the north coast. My father was a fisher. He owned his own boat and was prosperous. In our village, there were many proud families. As I grew up, I understood that I would be given in marriage to the son of another fisher. The difficulty was that there were two candidates, each a half dozen years older than I. They competed for my attention and for the whole village’s attention. The choice would guarantee the fortunes of one family, and sides were chosen quickly.”
Yalia glanced at him for a heartbeat. “You must understand, Master Stormstout, that I understood the way of the world. I understood that I was a prize and that this was my role in life. Perhaps, were I older, I would have resented being reduced to chattel. The reality I saw made that unimportant.”
“What did you see?”
“Yenki and Chinwa’s rivalry had begun with a benign nature. They are pandaren. Many antics, much noise and bustle, but no real hurts. Yet each did things that progressed. Their actions escalated, each egging the other on to do more. And, in their voices, hints of acrimony.”
She opened her paws. “I could see what others could not. This rivalry between friends would become enmity. And while it might never get to the point where one would strike another in anger, they would each do something to prove themselves worthier of winning me. They would take undue risks, silly risks. This would not stop after I had been won, but would continue until one or the other died. The survivor would live forever with guilt. Thus two lives would be destroyed.”
“Three, counting your own.”
“This I understand after many years. Then, not yet a half dozen years old, I knew only that they would die because of me. So one morning I packed some rice balls and a change of clothes, and headed out. My mother’s mother saw me. She helped. She wrapped me up in her favorite scarf. She whispered, ‘I wish I had known your courage, Yalia.’ And then I made my way to the monastery.”
Chen waited for more, but Yalia remained silent. Her story made him want to smile, for she’d been a very brave cub, and wise, to make the choice and the journey. At the same time, it was a terrible choice for a cub to make. In the echoes of her words, he caught notes of pain and sorrow.
Yalia shook her head. “It is not lost on me the irony of my being in charge of the Trial of the Red Blossoms’ traditions. I, who never had to endure those tests, now am a gatekeeper to decide who among the hopeful can join us. Had I been judged by the same harsh standards I must now employ, I would not be here.”
“And having to be a harsh taskmistress chafes against your true nature.” Chen bent and deftly plucked a pawful of yellow flowers with little red runners. He snapped the blossoms off and rubbed them together between his palms. They released a wonderful scent. He held his paws out to her.
She accepted the crushed flowers in her cupped paws and breathed deeply. “Spring’s promise.”
“There’s a similar flower in Durotar, which grows up after rain. They call it heart’s ease.” Chen rubbed his paws over his neck and cheeks. “Not the trolls, mind. They have noble hearts but do not believe they should be at ease. I think they think there was a time when they were at ease, but that ease is what led them to fall.”
“They let bitterness drive them?”
“Some do. Many, in fact. But not Vol’jin.”
Yalia poured the yellow petals into a small linen pouch and pulled the drawstring tight. “You know the content of his heart that well?”
“I thought I did.” Chen shrugged. “I think I do.”
“Then believe, Master Chen, that your friend will come to know himself as well as you do. That will be the first signpost on his road to healing.”
• • •
Their initial intent had been to head roughly toward dawn, then cut down along the road to the Temple of the White Tiger. However, before they’d gone even a league along the road, they found two young male pandaren tending a turnip crop, but neither moving very quickly. In fact, they were using their hoes and rakes more as crutches than as farm tools. They had the bruised appearance and defeated demeanor of the recently thrashed.
“It was not our fault,” one protested as he shared a boiled turnip porridge. “We had virmen infesting our field, after digging out from the storm. We asked a wanderer to help us. Before the dust settled from the first fight, she’d finished the lot and expected a reward. I offered her a kiss, and my brother offered two. We are handsome, you know, under these bandages.”
The other nodded quickly, then raised paws to his head as if the nod threatened to dislodge his skull. “She was a pretty young thing, for a wild dog.”
Chen’s eyes narrowed. “Li Li Stormstout?”
“You’ve run afoul of her too?”
Chen let a low growl roll from his throat and bared his teeth, since that was what an uncle must do under such circumstances. “She is my niece. And I am a much wilder dog. She must have had some reason for leaving you alive. Tell us which way she went, and I won’t have to decide if it was a good enough reason.”
The two of them quailed and fell all over themselves to point north. “People been coming south since the snows, looking for help. We’ve sent food. We’ll pack up some for you to bring.”
“Before you find a cart and bring it yourself?”
“Yes, yes.”
“That will be good.”
Chen remained silent, as did the brothers. Yalia was silent as well, but her silence had a different quality to it. After the porridge, Chen made tea and added a few things that would aid the brothers’ recovery. “Strain the tea leaves into cloth and use it as a poultice. Good for what ails you.”
“Yes, Master Stormstout.” The brothers, of the Stoneraker family, bowed deeply and often as the two travelers took their leave.
“Thank you, Master Stormstout. All blessings to your niece and on your travels.”
Yalia broke her silence as they passed down a hill, putting the crest between them and the croft. “You would not have inflicted a beating on them.”
Chen smiled. “You know me well enough that it’s not a question.”
“But you did frighten them.”
He opened his arms to take in the vista of the narrow valley with steep mountainsides. Below, a stream snaked along, blue where the sun could not touch it, silver where it did. Green, so much green and very deep, along with the rich brown of cultivated fields, screamed fertility. Even the way the buildings had been constructed into the landscape, adding to it without exploiting it, felt incredibly right.
“I grew up on Shen-zin Su. I love my home. As I look out here, however, it is as if I had been living in a picture. A beautiful picture, yes, but a picture of Pandaria. This land calls to me. It fills an emptiness that I’d never known I had. Maybe that is why I have wandered so much. I was looking, but didn’t know what for.”
He frowned. “I growled less for Li Li than for them calling her a ‘wild dog.’ For her, for me, Pandaria is home. It is a place where I could be at home.”
“And yet those two are like others who would forever point out why you are not of Pandaria.”
“You understand.”
She passed him the sachet of heart’s ease. “Better than you know.”
• • •
They marked their travel north to Zouchin not by days or hours but by the tales of Li Li’s passing before them. She’d been helpful but irascible. More than one person referred to her as a wild dog, but they quoted her as calling herself that. Proudly, too, as it turned out. Chen could not help but smile, and he easily imagined the legend of a wild dog spreading throughout Pandaria.
At Zouchin, nestled between cliffs and the sea, they found Li Li working hard in the midst of the village. The storm had wrecked one boat, collapsed some houses, and ripped a dock from its pilings. Li Li had pitched right in, and by the time they arrived, she was supervising a salvage crew and barking orders at carpenters to speed up work on the houses.
Chen caught Li Li, hugged her, and spun her around as he had when she was a cub. She squealed, but this time in protest at the destruction of dignity. He set her down, then bowed deeply and respectfully. That gesture silenced clucking tongues, though her returning the bow just a bit deeper and holding it a second longer started their clucking again.
Chen introduced Yalia to his niece. “Sister Yalia Sagewhisper has traveled from the monastery here with me.”
Li Li raised an eyebrow. “I bet that was a long journey. How did you get him out of taverns and not drinking beer all the way here?”
Yalia smiled. “Our journey was sped because we were chasing stories of Li Li the Wild Dog and her exploits.”
Li Li smiled broadly and dug an elbow into her uncle’s ribs. “She’s a sharp one, Uncle Chen.” Li Li scratched her chin. “Sagewhisper? There’s a Sageflower family here—name’s almost the same. They survived pretty well, just bumps and bruises.”
“This is good to know, Li Li.” Yalia nodded respectfully. “If there is time, I might pay them a visit; our names are so close.”
“I’m sure they will marvel at the coincidence.” Li Li looked around the village. “I’ll get back to work, then. The villagers are great on the water, I’m sure, but need some driving on the land.”
Li Li hugged her uncle again, then ran back to her work crews—whose pace quickened with her increasing proximity.
Chen cocked his head. “You’ve not been back here since you joined the monastery, after Taran Zhu changed your name. Does your family know you are alive?”
She shook her head. “Some of us are wild dogs by birth, Master Chen. Others by choice. It is for the best.”
Chen nodded and returned to her the packet of heart’s ease.
9
It surprised Vol’jin that Tyrathan was already up and out of bed by the time he arrived with a jihui board and pieces. The man had made it all the way over to the window and leaned against it, much as Vol’jin himself had done. The troll noticed that the man’s cane remained at the foot of the bed.
Tyrathan looked back over his shoulder. “Can barely see any signs of the storm now. They say you never see the arrow that will kill you. I didn’t see that storm. Not at all.”
“Taran Zhu said such storms be unusual but not rare.” Vol’jin set the board down on the side table. “The later they come, the more savage they be.”
The man nodded. “Can’t see anything, but can still feel it. There is a chill in the air.”
“You should not be barefoot.”
“Nor you.” Tyrathan turned, a bit unsteadily, then hooked his elbows on the casement. “You’ve taken to adapting yourself to the cold. Up before dawn, standing in the snows on the south side, the snows sheltered in shadow during the day. Admirable but foolish. I do not recommend it.”
Vol’jin snorted. “Calling a troll foolish be most unwise.”
“I hope you will learn from my folly.” The man levered himself away from the wall and staggered toward the bed. The limp had almost vanished, despite his weakness. Vol’jin turned toward him but made no move to aid him. Tyrathan smiled, catching himself on the footboard for a rest. It was part of the game they played.
The man lowered himself to the edge of the bed. “You’re late. Do they have you doing my chores?”
Vol’jin waved the question away as he dragged the side table over, then fetched a chair. “It speeds my recovery.”
“Now you come to take care of me.”
The troll’s head came up. “Trolls be not without a sense of obligation.”
Tyrathan laughed. “I know trolls well enough to know that.”
Vol’jin centered the board on the table. “Do you?”
“Do you remember when you commented on my troll accent? You said Stranglethorn.”
“You ignored me.”
“I chose not to respond.” Tyrathan accepted a canister, poured out the black pieces, and arranged them in sets of six. “Do you want to know how I learned?”
Vol’jin shrugged, not because he didn’t want to know but because he knew the man would tell him regardless.
“You’re right. It was Stranglethorn. I found a troll. I paid him very well for a year. He told himself he was my guide. He performed his duties well. I picked up his language—at first without him knowing I was listening, then in conversation. I have a facility for that.”
“I be believing that.”
“Tracking is a language. I would track him. Every day I would go back to a patch of ground to watch how his footprints deteriorated. In the hot season, after the rain. I learned the language that told me how long before he had passed, how quickly he’d gone, how tall he was.”
“Did you kill him after?”
Tyrathan scooped the black troops back into the canister. “Not him. I’ve killed other trolls.”
“I be not fearing you.”
“I know. And I have killed men, as have you.” The man set his canister on the table. “This troll, Keren’dal he called himself, would pray. That’s what I thought, and I mentioned it. He said he was speaking to the spirits. I forget what he called them.”
Vol’jin shook his head. “There would be no forgetting. He never told you. Secrets be secrets.”
“Times he would be irritable, like you. Those were times when he spoke to them but got no answers.”
“Does your Holy Light answer you, manthing?”
“I’ve long since stopped believing in it.”
“Which be why it abandoned you.”
Tyrathan laughed. “I know why I am abandoned. For the same reason as you.”
Vol’jin locked his face into a neutral mask but knew that by that very act, he had betrayed himself. The fact was that since he had tracked through Tyrathan’s memories, since he had seen the world through the man’s eyes, the lo
a had been distant and quiet. It felt as if the storm that had raged around the monastery still raged in the spirit realm. He could see Bwonsamdi and Hir’eek and Shirvallah, but only in dim, gray silhouettes that vanished in waves of white.
Vol’jin still believed in the loa, in their leadership and gifts, in the necessity of their worship. He was a shadow hunter. He could read tracks with the same facility as Tyrathan, and just as easily he could commune with the loa. Yet in the storm, tracks vanished and swirling winds stole words.
He’d tried to reach them. His latest attempt had been, in fact, what made him late to meet Tyrathan. Vol’jin had composed himself in his cell, had moved beyond awareness of his surroundings, but could not breach the storm’s barrier. It seemed as if the cold and the distance from his home and even his having walked inside the human’s flesh had distracted him. He could not focus to punch through and bridge the distance between himself and the loa.
It was as if once Bwonsamdi had relinquished his claim on Vol’jin, the loa had lost interest.
The troll’s head came up. “Why be you abandoned?”
“Fear.”
“I be not afraid.”
“But you are.” Tyrathan tapped his own temple with a finger. “I can still feel you in my mind, Vol’jin. Being inside my skin terrified you. Not because you found it repulsive—not just because you find it repulsive—but because you found me so fragile. Oh, yes, that sense remains with me. Bitter, oily, it will never go away. It’s an insight I shall value, I am sure, but you miss its import to you.”
Vol’jin nodded once, though he did not want to.
“My being so easily breakable reminded you how close you were to death. There I was, leg broken, trapped, unable to escape, knowing I would die. And you knew the same thing when they tried to kill you. Can you remember what happened after?”
“Chen found me. Brought me here.”
“No, no, that you’ve been told.” The man shook his head. “What do you remember, Vol’jin?”
World of Warcraft: Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde Page 7
