But he had not.
Howls and shouts pierced the night air and as he approached the Frostwolf encampment, Orgrim saw one hut go up in a sheet of flames. “Gul’dan does not want to waste his power on the Frostwolves!” he heard a large Warsong, green with the fel, declare. He would never say anything else. Orgrim closed the distance between them, hoisted the other orc, then slammed his head down at an angle on his own bald pate. The Warsong’s neck snapped. Orgrim hurled away the body and continued on.
Durotan, my old friend, forgive me.
He rushed to the chieftain’s hut. Draka whirled, one arm on her child in its cradle, the other holding a huge, wicked-looking dagger that could slice Orgrim’s throat just as easily as it had once opened a talbuk’s belly.
“I’ll bathe in your blood!” she snarled, her eyes hard with loathing.
“Maybe,” he agreed sadly, “but not now. I can’t give you long, but I can give you a head start.” He moved to close the tent flap. The instant he turned back to face her, she had the blade to his throat. He knew how badly she wanted to slash it across his jugular. He saw it in her eyes, could feel it in the slight trembling of the metal against his flesh. And she was right to want to do so.
She spat at him. “Why should I trust you? You have betrayed us all!”
Orgrim gestured to the baby. “Do you recall what I said to you, before we left to join the Horde? I swore I would never let harm come to you or the baby, not if I could prevent it. I cannot halt what I have put into motion, but let me at least keep that promise. For your son’s sake, Draka. Leave! Now!”
Draka looked at him, listening to the sounds of murder and chaos outside the tent. At last, her expression as cold as winter in Frostfire Ridge, she lowered the blade—but not without leaving a small, bloody cut on his neck. Frustrated, she whirled and directed her fury at the back of the tent, slicing a hidden exit.
Holding her and Durotan’s child in its cradle, she turned and gave him a final, contemptuous glance. “You should have trusted in your chieftain, Orgrim Doomhammer.” Sick with shame, Orgrim found he could not bear to look at her as she slipped out into the darkness, instead checking to make sure no one was coming to the tent.
Once he heard her leave, he went to the rift she had made and looked out, watching her race for the trees and, Spirits willing, safety. Out of the corner of his eye he saw movement, one of the Bleeding Hollow orcs rushed the tent, his eyes on the fleeing Draka. Casually, Orgrim swung the Doomhammer, crushing the other’s skull. He looked up from the corpse, and saw no sign of Draka or other pursuit.
Now, to see if there were other Frostwolves he could help before it was too late. And then, he would do what he could for Durotan.
* * *
Khadgar had leaped from the gryphon’s back while it was still in flight, landing on the stairs that led to the Chamber of Air and racing up them. He knew this room well. Here, he had stood as a boy of eleven, while the same mages who stood on the ringed platform now had tested him and found him worthy. Here, silvery white magic had burned its Eye into his arm. It tingled now, as he returned to this place; something he had never imagined happening.
“Khadgar!” another mage shouted. “How dare you return here!”
“Get out!” another cried.
Khadgar turned his face up to the thin, elderly Archmage Antonidas, catching his breath as the Council of Six, clad in their violet robes embroidered with the Eye of the Kirin Tor scowled down at him. “I come seeking your wisdom,” he said.
Antonidas’s scowl deepened. “There’s nothing for you here now.”
“The Guardian Medivh is unwell.”
Murmuring broke out as the six exchanged glances that ranged from shocked to furious to offended. Antonidas looked thunderstruck. “What?
The young mage took a deep breath. “He has been poisoned by the fel.”
Silence. Antonidas strode to the edge of the platform. He looked as if he wanted to bring lightning down upon Khadgar, but didn’t want to damage the precious inlay of the floor. “Ridiculous,” the archmage all but snarled.
Archmage Shendra, who never had much cared for Khadgar, stepped forward. “It was you, Khadgar, who was weak!” She didn’t even attempt to disguise her loathing as she stabbed a bony index finger in his direction. “You who felt the need to study that wretched magic the Kirin Tor had so specifically banned!”
There was no time for lectures, no time for posturing or arguing about who was right or wrong or anything other than what was going on with Medivh. Khadgar was not the boy who had left only a few short months ago. He had seen more horrors in the last few days than, he suspected, had any of these old mages in their entire lifetimes. He did not rise to challenge Shendra’s accusations, keeping his gaze on Antonidas. “What do you know of the Dark Portal?” he demanded.
“You come back,” Antonidas sneered, “and accuse the Guardian—”
Khadgar lifted the sketch he had showed Lothar—the one of the Great Gate, and the mysterious figure inviting the Horde into Azeroth.
“What,” he asked, “is Alodi?”
The chamber fell silent. Antonidas looked stunned. Whispers came: “Who is he to speak of that?” “How does he know?”
* * *
They took him to the bowels of the Violet Citadel. Khadgar had known the Citadel had a prison level, but had never been here. It was not deemed necessary; he was to be the Guardian of Azeroth, and the archmages would take care of Dalaran. He looked about, frankly stunned at the myriad magical wards, until at last the door was opened to a single large cell, and his eyes widened as he was escorted inside.
The humming sound of voices was oddly soothing as Khadgar tried to take everything in. Four mages were stationed at the compass points. They stood stiffly, their bodies held taut in almost unnaturally perfect stillness, their eyes closed. All that moved was their mouths, a regular incantation flowing from their lips. In front of them floated placidly bobbing purple sigils, and from these flowed a steady stream of magenta magic.
In the center, surrounded by the mages and the sigils, was an enormous black cube that hovered about a foot off the floor. The inky surface rippled, as if the cube were composed of thick, sludgy fluid. As the spells reached the cube, they revealed swirls and markings on its surface in no language that Khadgar recognized.
“Alodi,” was all Antonidas said.
This was decidedly unhelpful. “What is it?”
His eyes never leaving the form, Antonidas replied, “An entity from a time before the Kirin Tor existed. We think it once served a function similar to that of the Guardian.”
Ask Alodi. “A protector…” Khadgar whispered, his eyes glued to the languidly rippling surface of the cube.
Antonidas turned to him. “No one beyond the arch-council knows of its existence… and it will stay that way!” Khadgar hesitated, then nodded his agreement.
The archmage scowled, but he looked more lost than angry. At last he said, “For you to mention it by name in the same breath as the dark portal is too much to be mere—”
Movement caught their attention. A fluid… crack? Line? Khadgar wasn’t sure which to call it—began to make its way vertically up the side of the cube that faced them. A semicircular segment shimmered, and Khadgar caught a glimpse of his and Antonidas’s reflections. Then, it simply vanished, leaving an open area. More slick blackness gushed forward from the newly-created entrance and rippled, forming stairs that led to the dark interior.
“—coincidence,” Antonidas finished, weakly.
Khadgar’s mouth was desert-dry. “Do… do I go in?” he managed, his voice cracking slightly.
“I don’t know.” Antonidas stared with open astonishment. “It’s never done that before.”
Ask Alodi.
Well, Khadgar thought grimly, here’s my chance. And slowly, his heart in his mouth, he stepped forward, climbing up the slightly vibrating stairs, into the heart of the thing called Alodi.
17
The cub
e was as black inside as it was outside. Khadgar ascended, pausing on the final stair, then stepped forward to enter. Instantly the wall behind him sealed shut and the wall in front of him emitted a slitted light. He felt the surface upon which he stood undulating. It was silent—utterly so, a stillness such as Khadgar had never experienced.
“Alodi?” he asked, and his voice was loud and strangely flat; no resonance, no echo, swallowed up as if he had not spoken, had never spoken.
Then, the silence was broken again—but not by him. “We do not have long, Khadgar,” said the voice—husky, warm, feminine. Khadgar gasped as he saw a lump materialize “I have used the last of our power to bring you to us.” The lump shifted, elongated. Now it resembled a person standing up, still covered with the black, slick substance that comprised the rest of the cube. As Khadgar stared, enraptured, the form refined itself. The black material began to look more like cloth, the shape fleshed out, becoming more detailed.
Khadgar gasped.
“I know you! The library—”
That mysterious shape, which had pointed out the book to him and then vanished. The book that had “Ask Alodi” scribbled on its pages.
“All are in danger,” Alodi continued. “We are counting on you.
“The Guardian has betrayed us,” she said, sadly.
Khadgar thought back to the flicker of green in Medivh’s eyes that had prompted his journey to the Kirin Tor. He had hoped he had been wrong. “I saw the fel in his eyes,” he told Alodi.
“He has been consumed by it,” Alodi went on. “If he is not stopped—this world will burn.”
Khadgar shook his head. This wasn’t possible. “But he’s… How could this have happened?” How could the one person who was entrusted with the welfare of a whole world want it destroyed? What had tempted him so, to betray his charge so utterly?
Alodi regarded him with great compassion from beneath her hood. The reason she gave shocked him.
“Loneliness,” was all she said.
Khadgar stared at her. Could something so simple truly have undone someone so strong?
“Like all Guardians before him, Medivh was charged by the Kirin Tor to protect this world, alone. His heart,” she said gravely, “was true. So devoted to his charge was he that he took it upon himself to find and master all forms of magic.”
The young mage listened, his soul sick. He didn’t want to hear. He didn’t want to know, but he had to.
“It was during this search, in the depths of the void, that he came upon something insidious, a power of terrifying potency…”
Alodi waved her hand. The black confines of the cube disappeared. Khadgar found himself floating in space as colors, images, and shapes whirled about him. Some he could recognize and name: Oceans, stars, purple, blue. Other concepts were so unfamiliar he could not even wrap his mind them. And at the center of the exquisite, roiling, beautiful chaos stood the Guardian of Azeroth.
His face was young, alight with joy in what he beheld. Fierce intelligence shone in those eyes, and there was both kindness and a sense of friendly mischief in the little lines at the blue-green eyes and slightly parted mouth. This was the Medivh that Llane and Taria and Lothar had known. And all at once, Khadgar understood why they were so loyal to him. Medivh embodied all that a Guardian should be.
And then, all at once, the hue, like a flaw in a perfect weaving, began to stain the celestial images of a Guardian at work. Its evil, glowing green tendrils, like blood poured into a bowl of pure water, seeped through the scene. More and more colors fell to the green, and the beautiful images turned ghastly and malformed. Medivh closed his eyes, grimacing, and when he opened them, they glowed as green as the mist that Khadgar had first beheld issuing from a dead man’s throat.
He had all but forgotten Alodi, and her voice was a welcome reminder that what he was seeing was in the past. “The fel,” she said.
Khadgar took a deep, shuddering breath. “Despite his best intentions, it consumed him—twisting his very soul. It turned his love for Azeroth into an insatiable need to spread the fel.” Alodi paused. “You must face him, Khadgar.”
He felt blood draining from his face. “I—I don’t have the power to defeat a Guardian!”
Alodi smiled. “‘Guardian’ is but a name. The true guardians of this world are the people themselves. I know you see what the Kirin Tor cannot—that’s why you left them. No one can stand against the darkness alone.”
She was right. He had always believed that the Guardian should not be isolated, that the entire burden should not rest on a single pair of shoulders. He thought the Kirin Tor should become more involved with the people they shared the world with, not stay aloof and apart from them. But even so…
“I don’t understand what you want me to do.”
Alodi stepped closer to him, her strange wispy form flowing around the outlines of her body as she turned her head to him, letting him fully see her face for the first time. He gasped, softly. Around her face were the unmistakable, spider-web traces of fel magic. But they were not green and sinister. They were scars left behind, remnants only of something that had once been there, but was no more. Of a wound that had healed.
“Yes,” she said. “You do.”
And he did. He did not suffer as Medivh had. He was not alone. Medivh once had friends in the form of Llane and Lothar, but he could not stay close to them. His charge—to hold himself aloof from others ostensibly to protect them—had made him vulnerable. It was a vulnerability that Khadgar did not share.
“Lothar,” he breathed. “Lothar will help me.”
Even as Alodi’s fel-scarred face smiled approval of his understanding, her form was starting to melt away. Her voice came to him still, but faintly.
“Trust in your friends, Khadgar. Together, you can save this world. Always remember—from light comes darkness, and from darkness… Light!”
* * *
Moroes rushed to the crumpled, panting lump on the floor that was his master. Quickly, he scooped up Medivh and bore him to the font. Where was the girl? He had asked her to stay with the Guardian! Then his eyes fell on the runes the Guardian had scribbled on the floor, and he understood.
Moroes blanched as he supported his master as they stumbled toward the font.
Carefully, moving as if drunk, Medivh stepped forward to the center of the pool. The white energies gently seeped into the Guardian’s body and spirit, soothing him, caressing him, washing away the demonic grip of the fel. His gaze became lucid, and he tried bravely to smile.
“Thank you, Moroes,” he said, his voice so very weak it cut at the old servant’s heart.
“You’ll recover, Guardian,” he said with a certainty he was far from feeling. “You always do.”
Medivh waved a too-thin hand. “No,” he said, “for Garona. Thank you for the time with my daughter.”
Moroes’s shrewd gaze softened. He started to speak, then froze. A thin wisp of green was starting to tinge the whiteness of the font. He blinked, hoping against hope that he had imagined it, but the hideous, glowing green hue bled into the pool.
“I’m sorry, old friend. It seems I have led the orcs into this world.”
Moroes shook his head, disbelieving. Medivh had wrestled with this for so long. He couldn’t fail, not now, not when—
“The fel… it’s twisted me, I… I don’t even know what else I may have done.” His voice cracked. “I just don’t remember.” Moroes, his heart breaking, moved around the circular pool, watching as the white magic struggled, then ceded to the green. “Everything I’ve thought to protect, I have destroyed.” Broken, he lurched to one side in the font, his head hanging in defeat.
“I can’t control the fel. No one can.”
Abruptly Medivh shot to his feet, his body strong once again. His body was bathed in green light from the polluted magic, but his eyes—whites and irises—were inky black. Moroes backed away. He wanted to urge his beloved master to fight it, to turn it back, as he always had before. But there
was no trace of the Guardian he had tended to for so long in that face any more; no hint of friendly good humor, or pain at the thought of another’s suffering, or love for the young woman who—
It was gone. All of it. And the only thought Moroes—old beyond reckoning, who had taken care of so many Guardians of Azeroth—had, as the demonic figure before him began to draw out his life, was that he wished he had died ere this moment had ever come.
* * *
Llane had been worried about Lothar. His friend had watched his son die, right in front of his eyes, unable to do anything about it. Llane knew that if he had lost his own boy, Varian, something in him would have broken irreparably. And so, he had said nothing when Lothar had left afterward, saying only he was “going to Goldshire.” How often had he, Llane, and Medivh done so in years past? Except then, the drinking and carousing had been to celebrate the joys of life, not to drown its pain. And yet, this morning, when Llane had sent Karos to fetch Lothar from the Lion’s Pride Inn, deep as his agony ran, his old friend had honored his duty to the man who was both friend and king and come at that man’s command. Karos intimated that Garona had been with the commander. Llane could only assume that Medivh, having noticed the attraction between the two, had seen to it that they were together. Llane trusted Garona. He was certain that the ambush had not been of Durotan’s making, and if she and Anduin could comfort one another, Llane would not judge, so long as the commander was fit to carry out his duties. Lothar seemed able, but there was a hardness to him that had not been there before. A stubbornness and a determination, and they had been locking horns for an hour on strategies. Llane was exhausted. He had returned only to cleanse himself of the sweat and blood of battle, kiss his wife and son, seize a few hours of sleep, and had been in the map room for hours before Lothar’s arrival.
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