“‘Noble blade of Elune,’” Tyrande translated. “A proud name that.”
The hippogryph bowed his great head. The winged creatures were not simple beasts. They had an intelligence and were considered allies, not servants. They allowed themselves to be ridden.
“I am honored to fly with you,” Tyrande told the hippogryph.
Shandris undid the reins and handed them to her mistress. “He answers to ‘Jai.’ If you fly just above the trees, the others won’t see you depart. I’ll join the party in a few minutes, then delay them some more.”
Nodding, the high priestess took the reins. “Thank you, Shandris.” Tyrande recalled one last thing. “Shandris… be on alert.”
The general’s eyes narrowed. “For what?”
How to explain what she had fought against? “For that which the light of Elune must melt away …”
Shandris frowned at the explanation, but said nothing. She saluted once more, then whirled around and marched off in the direction of the other priestesses.
The high priestess wiped moisture from her own eye, then turned her thoughts to her imminent journey… not the least problem of which would be convincing Broll Bearmantle to take her to Ashenvale.
To the Great Tree.
And to the portal into the Emerald Dream.
7
AUBERDINE
Broll landed just beyond sight of Auberdine, already impatient to be on his way from its vicinity. Although officially part of the night elf realm, the region in general — called Darkshore due to the odd mist that tended to blanket everything — was mostly shunned by his race.
There had been attempts made to settle this land — some of them not by his kind — but all had fallen to failure. Ruins dotted the wilds, many of them now housing threats to travelers willing or forced to journey through the area.
Auberdine was the only stronghold, if it could be called that. It was a dismal place by not only night elf standards, but even those of humans or dwarves. There ever seemed a cover of storm clouds over the area and a chill wind that cut through to the soul.
Auberdine existed more out of necessity than anything else, for Darnassus required some place on the immediate mainland where dealing with the outside world could take place.
Those of his people who populated the town were generally looked down on by the inhabitants of the capital, a failing that even Broll found himself suffering at times. Auberdine consisted of outcasts and misfits. True, there was a garrison of the Sentinels there and even some druids, but they remained as separate as possible from the towns-folk.
Broll returned to his true form, and cursed as he shook his foot.
In his storm crow form, his arms became his wings and his feet his talons. Unfortunately, some of the buds had struck at the latter, leaving the druid with the idol sealed to that foot.
Broll drew some herbs from a pouch at his waist and scattered them over the sap. As if snow touched by the sun, the sap finally softened, then melted away. The Idol of Remulos dropped ignominiously to the ground.
Retrieving it, Broll peered ahead. The path was dark, and although that did not bother a night elf much, he wondered why there was not some illumination on the horizon even despite the mists. In fact, he could not recall any glow at all during his descent.
Auberdine should have been lit enough to be seen from where he was, if only for the sake of the other races who frequented the settlement.
With a grunt, the druid moved on. He could have landed closer to the town but had not wanted to call any more attention to his presence than necessary.
Secreting the idol in a hidden place in his cloak, Broll picked up his pace. He hoped that Fandral would not notice his theft for some time. There was no reason for the archdruid to retrieve the figurine
… but Broll never trusted his luck.
As he reached the top of a hill, the druid grew more wary. He still could not see any illumination from Auberdine, and this close the mist should have been no impediment whatsoever.
A sense of dread rising within him, Broll reconsidered his earlier choice not to fly directly to the town. He drew the idol out again, placing it down by his foot.
But as he raised his arms, he realized that he was not alone.
The flapping of wings immediately stirred images of Fandral in pursuit of the errant druid, but what Broll located in the sky was no storm crow, but rather the hazy shape of a hippogryph.
The beast had a rider, too. Although he could not make her out, there was no doubt in his mind that it was Shandris Feathermoon.
The figure was maintaining a low height, flying just above the trees. Indeed, she vanished from his sight before he could signal her. Broll doubted that Shandris was going to land directly in Auberdine; like himself, she would find a place just beyond the town. They were both being overly cautious, but it was a trait that had served Broll well in the past and no doubt had done the same for the general… and it made more sense with the odd lack of light.
Broll quickly finished his transformation, then, clutching the figurine, rose up into the air. Like the hippogryph rider, he kept low over the trees. The druid traced the other’s path as best he could, but Shandris was nowhere to be seen. That likely meant that she had already landed.
Auberdine was now not that far off. The low-slung, wooden buildings rose like shrouded tombs. At the very least, there should have been bridges and paths illuminated by lamps, but all Broll could make out were the arched outlines of what might have been a pair of the structures.
What’s happened in Auberdine? None of the druids at the convocation had mentioned anything amiss and surely at least a few of them had passed through or over the region. If anything had taken place here, then it had done so in the last day or two.
The druid descended. Shifting back into his true form, he secreted the idol, then moved to the outskirts of town. A deathly silence was all that greeted Broll. Indeed, even the woods lacked the cries of nocturnal creatures, not even insects.
Broll touched an oak, hoping to learn something from it, but discovered something unsettling. The tree was asleep and not even the druid’s prodding could wake it up. He went to a second tree, this one an ash, and found it the same way.
More disturbed, Broll finally decided to enter the mist-shrouded town. Curiously, the mist thickened as he entered. Even the sharp vision of the druid could pierce the veil only a few feet at a time.
The druid sniffed the air. To his relief, there was no hint of rotting flesh. He had feared that some disaster — plague or attack — had taken the population, but, for the moment, that did not seem the case. The wetness of Auberdine’s air, due in great part to the nearby sea, should have been enough to cause swift decay of any dead body. Several hundred bodies would have made quite a stench.
The architecture of Auberdine bore the typical curves of night elven culture and in general these would have been some comfort to Broll, but in the mist, the arched buildings began to resemble macabre structures made not of wood, but rather bone. Broll even went so far as to touch one just to make certain that some dread metamorphosis had not actually taken place. Yet the wood was wood…
Something moved further in. The sound was a brief one and not repeated, but Broll had caught it. Reflexes trained by his calling and honed by his years of fighting immediately enabled the sturdy night elf to leap into hiding behind a building. He did not think that the other had heard him, which gave the druid the advantage.
A brief grunt escaped the mist. It was no sound uttered by a night elf nor any similar race. The sound had a bestial origin.
Something very large prowled Auberdine’s stone and earthen streets.
Reaching into a pouch, Broll brought out a powder that mildly stung his fingers. Ignoring the irritation, he leaned around the corner.
A huge shape converged on his location. Whatever the beast, it had finally smelled him.
Broll threw the powder directly at it.
The beast let out an angry sq
uawk and leapt up. Broll ducked, hoping that the creature would not land atop him. However, not only did it not fall upon the night elf, but the beast did not even alight on the path behind him.
Instead, it continued skyward, leaping atop one of the nearby buildings. Once there, it perched and began sneezing and growling.
At the same time a silver light ate away the mist surrounding Broll. He whirled to his right.
The light emanated from above, and bathing in its glory was clearly a priestess of Elune. Broll started to tell her to douse the illumination, then saw exactly who it was who approached.
“My lady… Tyrande! What’re you doing here?”
“Meeting you, though not as I originally planned.” Her eyes darted from one shadowed corner to the next, as if she expected other, less desired, companions to join them.
The druid gaped. “You told me it was Shandris who was to meet me! I expected her to come—”
“So did she. This had to be my quest, though… and the more I see of this place, the more I know my decision was the right one. If I’d told you then that it would be me, you might have refused and I could not let that happen. My apologies for the subterfuge.”
“High Priestess, you shouldn’t be here! There’s something terribly wrong going on in Auberdine …”
She nodded gravely. “Come with me and you will see just how wrong it is.”
Above them, the beast — her hippogryph, as Broll had suspected even before he had accosted him — made a low, angry squawk.
Tyrande whispered something to her mount. The hippogryph reluctantly descended, landing near his rider. He kept one baleful eye on the druid.
“What did you do to Jai?” she quietly asked, one hand running over the creature’s beaked countenance.
“An herb with stinging properties …”
The high priestess briefly smiled. “You were fortunate. I daresay if you had tried that anywhere else, Jai would not have flown from but rather through you. He knew, though, that I wanted a prisoner if possible. A live one.”
As Tyrande continued to pass her hand over the beast’s face, Broll commented, “The effects of the herb will pass in a few more moments.”
“We do not even have time for that.” A faint glow from above emanated over the hippogryph’s eyes. Jai shook his head, then seemed much happier. Nodding her satisfaction, the high priestess looked again to the druid. Her expression remained dark. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”
With the hippogryph trailing her, Tyrande led Broll to the nearest of the dwellings. She then shocked the druid by entering the domicile without any hesitation, a sign that things were even worse than he had imagined. He was filled with a sense of dread over what they would find inside.
The interior had some of the trappings of a night elven home, but the plant life within looked sick, weak. The mist that covered Auberdine permeated even inside the dwelling, adding to the feeling of imminent disaster.
Jai, too large to fit through the entrance, peered uneasily inside.
Broll watched as Tyrande glanced into the sleeping quarters.
Withdrawing, she indicated that Broll should look as well.
With much wariness, the druid complied. His eyes widened at the scene within.
Two night elves — a male and a female — lay on woven mats. The female’s arm was draped over the male’s chest. They were utterly motionless, which told Broll the worst.
“It is the same in the other places I have looked,” his companion solemnly remarked.
The druid wanted to approach the pair but held back out of respect. “Do you know how they perished?”
“They are not dead.”
He looked back at her. When Tyrande added nothing more, the druid finally knelt by the two. His eyes widened.
Quiet but steady breathing escaped from both.
“They’re… asleep?”
“Yes — and I could not awaken the ones I found earlier.”
Despite what she said, Broll could not resist gently prodding the male’s shoulder. When that failed to wake him, he did the same to the female. As a last attempt, Broll took hold of an arm from each and shook. Backing away, the druid growled, “We must find the source of the spell! There must be some mad mage at work here!”
“It would take a powerful one indeed to do all this,” said the high priestess. She indicated the door. “Come with me. I want to show you one more thing.”
They left the home, and with Jai in tow, Tyrande led Broll over a bridge that connected to the more commercial areas of Auberdine.
The mist kept many of the details of the village hidden, but Broll spotted a sign written in both Darnassian and Common that read,
LAST HAVEN TAVERN.
Broll knew that the tavern, of all places, should have been lit and alive. Along with the local inn, the tavern was one of the few public gathering places in the town.
Jai took up a position outside the entrance, the hippogryph peering into the mists in search of any potential foe. The high priestess strode inside without a word, her silence again warning Broll of what was to come.
The tavern was not like the home, which had been in order despite the bizarre scene inside. Chairs were scattered over the wooden floor, and some of the tables had been overturned. The bar at the end was stained not just from years of inebriated patrons, but also from several smashed bottles and barrels.
And all over the tavern lay sprawled the bodies of night elves, a handful of gnomes and humans, and a singular dwarf.
“I landed not far from this area and was disturbed when I saw no life or lights,” the high priestess explained. “This was the most immediate public place, and so I entered.”
“Are they also… asleep?”
Tyrande bent down by one human. He was slumped over a table, and looked as if he had fallen there from sheer exhaustion. His hair and beard were disheveled, but his garments, despite some dust, were clearly of a person of some means. Next to him lay a night elf, a local. Although the night elf lay on his side on the floor, his hands were still stretched forth toward the human. Like the human, the night elf looked oddly unkempt. They were the worst in appearance, though all of the sleepers in the tavern looked as if they had been through some struggle.
“A fight broke out here,” Broll decided.
Tyrande stood. “A very polite fight, if that was truly the case. The only bruises I found were caused by their falls. I think these two collapsed.” She gestured at the dwarf and a few of the other patrons. “See how these others are positioned?”
After a moment’s study, Broll scowled. “They look like they’re taking a rest. All of them!”
“They are all asleep now, even this first desperate pair. Look around. The tavern looks as if it was set up for defense.”
“I should’ve seen that myself.” Indeed, the druid noted now that the tables and chairs created a wall of sorts that faced both the entrance and the windows. “But a defense from what?”
Tyrande had no answer for him.
Broll squinted. In fact, he had been compelled to squint more often for the past few minutes despite the fact that, with the sun down, his vision should have been sharper. “The mist is getting thicker… and darker.”
Outside, Jai let out a low warning squawk.
Tyrande and Broll hurried to the entrance. Outside, the hippogryph moved anxiously about. However, there was no sign of anything in the vicinity, as more and more the deepening mist limited the distance that could be seen.
A moan came from inside, and Broll brushed past the high priestess to investigate its source among the slouched figures near the back end of the tavern. Then another moan arose from a different direction. Broll identified it as coming from the night elf near the human. He bent down next to the figure.
Tyrande joined him. “What is it? Is he awake?”
“No …” Broll turned the sleeper’s head slightly. “I think he’s dreaming …”
A third moan joined the previou
s. Suddenly, all around them, the slumbering figures wailed. The hair on the back of Broll’s neck stiffened as he detected the thing all the voices had in common: fear. “Not dreams,” he corrected himself, rising and glancing back at the entrance. “They’re having nightmares. All of them.”
Jai again made a warning sound. Returning to the hippogryph, the pair saw nothing… but heard much.
There were moans arising from all over Auberdine.
“This is tied to Malfurion,” Tyrande stated with utter confidence.
“But how?”
Jai stepped forward, the beast’s head cocking to the side, listening.
A murky figure briefly passed into and out of sight. It was shorter than a night elf, more the height of a human. The hippogryph started after it, but Tyrande quietly called his name. The animal paused.
The high priestess took the lead again. Broll quickly moved to her side, ready to use his arts to aid her. Jai kept pace behind them.
“There!” she hissed, pointing to the left.
Broll scarcely had time to view the figure before it again vanished in the fog. “It looks as though it’s stumbling. May be a survivor.”
“The mist seems to thicken most around our quarry.” Tyrande put her hands together. “Perhaps the Mother Moon can remedy that.”
From the shrouded sky directly above the high priestess, a silver glow descended in the direction of the mysterious figure. It burned through the fog, revealing everything in its path. Broll’s brow rose as he watched the glow veer like a living thing stretching out to find the stranger.
And there he suddenly stood: a male human. His clothing bespoke of better times but he had clearly been put through a long decline of station. He stared back at them with eyes hollow from what seemed to be a lack of sleep. The human was more haggard looking than any of the group they had found in the tavern.
Somehow, though, he kept moving.
“By Nordrassil!” blurted Broll.
The human had not only kept moving, but before the eyes of both night elves, he had also just vanished.
“A mage,” Tyrande snarled. “He is the cause, then, not a victim
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