And then Durotan broke off in mid-sentence, suddenly going very still. Before Thrall realized what was happening, the chieftain of the Frostwolves screamed his battle cry and reached for his axe.
It happened so fast.
There were three of them, each charging in a different direction—one to Durotan, one to Draka, and one to the wolf who sprang forward to protect his companions. Thrall cried out hoarsely and reached for the Doomhammer, determined to help his family.
A strong hand seized his arm and jerked hard. “What are you doing?” snarled the guard. And then Thrall realized two things at once as more fragments of his conversation with Doomhammer returned.
Though I do not know for certain, I am convinced that the guard I entrusted to lead Durotan to safety summoned assassins to kill them instead.
The guard was in on the attack. And he had assumed Thrall was too.
The second thing Thrall realized was worse.
He could not stop what was about to occur—not if he wished to preserve the true timeway.
His parents had to die. He himself had to be found by Blackmoore, had to be trained in battle, if he was to free his people from the internment camps. If he was to keep the world as he knew it from destruction.
He froze in mid-step, agonized. Every fiber of his being told him to fight, to destroy the assassins, to save his mother and father. But it could not be.
Draka had placed the infant Thrall on the ground and was now fighting fiercely to defend both her child and herself. She shot Thrall a brief glance filled with fury, contempt, and hatred. He knew he would bear its sting to his grave. She returned her attention to her struggle, uttering curses upon the orc attacking her and upon Thrall for his betrayal. A short distance away, Durotan, blood pumping from a brutal cut in his leg, attempted to choke his soon-to-be killer. There was a sharp howl, cut off abruptly as the wolf fell. Draka continued to struggle.
And the infant Thrall, lying helpless on the earth while his parents fought, wailed in terror.
Sickened, Thrall watched, unable to alter history, as his dying father fought with renewed strength and managed to snap the neck of his enemy.
At that moment, the assassin who had killed the wolf whirled on Grukar. The traitor was so surprised by the turn of events that he didn’t even think to draw his own weapon.
“No!” he cried, his voice high with surprise and fear. “No, I’m one of you; they are the target—”
A massive two-handed sword sliced through Grukar’s neck. The severed head went flying, blood spurting in a pattering spray over Thrall’s robes. Now the assassin turned on Thrall.
It was a grave mistake.
This, at least, Thrall could do: defend himself. His day would come, certainly. But not today. Thrall uttered a battle cry and charged, channeling his grief and horror and outrage into an attack that startled his would-be killer. Still, the assassin was a professional, and he rallied. The fight was close and intense. Thrall swung, ducked, leaped aside, kicked. The assassin hacked, growled, dodged.
His attention focused on his own survival, Thrall’s heart nonetheless ached as he heard Durotan’s cry of pain at the sight of Draka’s mangled corpse. The sound did not weaken Thrall. Instead, he felt a surge of renewed energy and focus. He increased his attack, pushing his now-alarmed opponent back, back, until the other orc stumbled and fell.
Thrall was on him at once. He pinned the assassin to the ground with one foot and lifted the Doomhammer high. He was about to bring the mighty weapon down to smash the orc’s skull, when he froze.
He could not alter the timeway. What if this vile creature needed to live, for some purpose he couldn’t imagine?
Thrall growled and spat in the orc’s face, then leaped off him. He stepped on the huge sword the other had wielded. “Go,” he said, “and never, ever let me see your face again: Do you understand?”
The assassin was not about to question his good fortune, and he took off at a dead run. As soon as he was certain the wretch had truly gone, Thrall turned back to his parents.
Draka was dead. Her body had nearly been hacked to pieces, her face locked in a snarl of defiance. Thrall turned to his father just in time to see the third assassin cruelly lop off both of Durotan’s arms—denying him even the ability to hold his son before he died. Thrall had seen many atrocities, but this horror froze him in place, unable to move.
“Take … the child,” Durotan rasped.
The assassin knelt down beside him and said, “We will leave the child for the forest creatures. Perhaps you can watch as they tear him to bits.”
Later, Thrall would not be able to recall how he had gotten from one end of the small clearing to the other. The next thing he knew, he was shouting so loudly his throat hurt, the Doomhammer moving so fast it was but a blur. This killer, too, he let go, though everything in him burned to tear the bastard to tiny pieces of bloody pulp. Clarity came back to him as, on his hands and knees, he gulped in air in great racking sobs.
“My child,” Durotan whispered.
He was still alive!
Thrall crawled over to the infant and picked him up. He gazed into his own blue eyes and touched his own small face. Then, as he knelt beside his father, Thrall rolled him over onto his back. Durotan grunted once in pain. Thrall placed the infant, wrapped in a swaddling cloth that bore the emblem of the Frostwolves, on Durotan’s chest.
“You have no arms to hold him,” Thrall said, his voice thick, tears filling his own blue eyes as the child that he had been wept. “And so I place him on your heart.”
Durotan, his face drawn in torment that Thrall could barely imagine, nodded. “Who are you? You betray us … you … let me and my mate die … yet you attack our killers. …”
Thrall shook his head. “You would not believe me, Durotan, son of Garad. But I beg you … by the ancestors, I beg you to believe this: your son will live.”
Hope flickered in the dimming eyes.
Thrall spoke quickly, before it was too late. “He will live, and grow strong. He will remember what it means to be an orc, and become both a warrior and a shaman.”
The breath was coming rapidly, too rapidly, but Durotan fought to cling to life, listening raptly.
“Our people will recover from the darkness Gul’dan inflicted on them. We will heal. We will become a nation, proud and powerful. And your son will know of you, and his brave mother, and name a great land after you.”
“How … can you know …?”
Thrall forced the tears back and placed a hand on his father’s chest, beside the infant version of himself. The heartbeat was fading.
“Trust that I do,” Thrall said, his voice intent and shaking with emotion. “Your sacrifice was not in vain. Your son will live to change his world. This, I promise.”
The words had simply poured forth, and Thrall realized as he uttered them that they were true. He had lived, and he had changed his world—by freeing his people, by fighting demons, by giving the orcs a homeland.
“I promise,” he repeated.
Durotan’s face relaxed ever so slightly, and the faintest of smiles touched his lips.
Thrall gathered the baby and held him to his heart for a long, long time.
The infant slept, finally. Thrall held and rocked him through the night, his mind and heart filled nearly to bursting.
It was one thing to hear that his parents had died trying to protect him. It was another to witness such devotion. As a suckling babe, he had been dearly, deeply loved, without having to do anything. This infant had no accomplishments. Had saved no lives, fought no battles, defeated no demons. He was loved simply for being himself, tears and fussing, laughter and smiles.
More than anything in his life, Thrall wished he could have saved his parents. But the timeways were merciless. What had happened must happen, or else it had to be put right by the agents of the bronze dragonflight.
Put “right.” Letting good people die, innocent people; that was putting things “right.” It wa
s cruel. It was devastating. But he understood.
He glanced up, winced, and looked away from the sight of his butchered family—and blinked. Something was reflected in the water—something gold and shining and scaled—
Thrall tried to see where the reflection was coming from. There was nothing—only trees and earth and sky. There was no mammoth dragon as expected. He rose, holding the infant, and looked into the water again.
One great eye looked back at him.
“Nozdormu?” The river was far too small to house the dragon—it had to be a reflection—and yet …
Thrall’s concentration was broken by a sudden squalling sound. It would seem the infant Thrall was awake—and hungry. Thrall turned his attention to the child, trying to murmur something soothing, then looked back to the water.
The reflection was gone. But Thrall was certain he had seen it. He looked around. Nothing.
A human voice broke the stillness of the forest. “By the Light, what a noise!”
The voice was full of respectful courtesy and apology, although the noise issued by the infant Thrall was none of the speaker’s making. “Might as well turn back, Lieutenant. Anything that loud is certain to have frightened any game worth pursuing.”
“Haven’t you learned anything I’ve tried to teach you, Tammis? It’s as much about getting away from that damned fortress as bringing back supper. Let whatever it is caterwaul all it likes.”
Thrall knew that voice. Had heard it offering praise. More often had heard it hurling curses, lowered in angry contempt. This man had helped shape his destiny. This man was the reason he still bore the name of Thrall—a name to show everyone precisely what the orc no longer was.
The voice belonged to Aedelas Blackmoore.
Any moment now, Blackmoore and his companion—who had to be Tammis Foxton, Blackmoore’s servant and father to Taretha Foxton—would come to this clearing. Blackmoore would find the baby Thrall now held in his arms and take him for his own. He would raise Thrall to fight, to kill, to learn strategy. And then one day Thrall would kill him.
Gently, Thrall placed his infant self down on the ground. His hand lingered a moment on the tiny black head, caressed the not-yet-worn fabric of the swaddling cloth.
“Such a tender yet bizarre moment.”
Thrall whirled, seizing the Doomhammer and placing himself between the infant and the owner of the voice.
The mysterious assassin who had attacked him in the Caverns of Time now stood a few paces away. Thrall had thought the bronze dragons would have dealt with this man, but it would seem that, despite his words of frustration as Thrall had escaped earlier, he had eluded the bronzes and found a way into this timeway after all. And a way to Thrall.
Again Thrall could not shake the strange sense of familiarity. The armor—the voice—
“I know you,” he said.
“Then name me.” It was a pleasant, booming voice, tinged with humor.
Thrall growled. “I cannot name you—not yet—but there is something about you …”
“I should thank you, really,” the assassin continued to drawl. “My master set me a task. To slay the mighty Thrall. You’ve already slipped through my fingers once. And you might again. But you’ve forgotten one … little … thing. …”
With each of the last three words, the assassin took a step forward, and Thrall suddenly realized what he meant. He tightened his grip on the Doomhammer and drew himself up to his full height. The human was large for his race, but nowhere near as large as an orc.
“You shall not harm this infant!” he snarled.
“Oh, I think I shall,” said the black-armor-clad figure. “You see … I know who is just a few moments away from being here. And it’s someone you won’t want to harm—because then this timeway would be just as violated as if you’d let your parents live. You know Aedelas Blackmoore will be here, and that he’s going to pick up this little green baby and raise him to be a gladiator. And you most certainly don’t want to be around for that particular reunion.”
Curse the bastard, he was right. Thrall couldn’t let himself be seen. And he couldn’t fight Blackmoore and risk injuring or even killing him.
Not yet.
“So you need to go. But you also need to protect your younger self. Because if my job is to kill you … it’s ever so much easier to chop a baby in two than it is a full-grown orc. Although I’ve done that quite a lot, if I do say so myself. What to do, what to do …?”
“It’s not going away,” complained Blackmoore. He was closer now, though he was still a few steps away from the clearing.
“It could be an injured creature, sir, incapable of crawling away,” Tammis suggested.
“Then let’s find it and put it out of our misery.”
The stranger laughed, and suddenly Thrall realized his course of action.
Silently, though his whole soul ached to shout his battle cry, he lunged at the assassin. Not with his hammer but with his powerful body. The human was clearly not expecting such an attack and did not even manage to raise his weapon before Thrall slammed into him, the force propelling them both into the briskly flowing stream.
“What’s that splash?” Lieutenant Aedelas Blackmoore took a long drag from the bottle.
“Probably one of the large turtles that live in the area, sir,” Tammis said. Already tipsy and about to head into drunk, Blackmoore nodded. His horse, Nightsong, came to an abrupt halt. Blackmoore stared at the bodies of no fewer than three adult orcs and that of a huge white wolf.
Movement drew his eye, and Blackmoore suddenly realized the source of the horrible noise. It was the ugliest thing he had ever seen—an orc baby, wrapped in what no doubt passed for a swaddling cloth among the creatures.
He dismounted and went to it.
EIGHT
Several days had passed since the debacle at Wyrmrest Temple. Kalec had thought—foolishly, perhaps, but sincerely—that with the tragic but necessary death of Malygos, some kind of healing, some kind of peace and unity, could occur among the dragonflights. He had come to that meeting with hope in his heart, only to see more than his own personal dream shattered.
The loss of so many eggs, from all the flights, all at once—exterminated by one of their own, no less—was a devastating blow from which Kalec wondered if any of them would truly recover. Korialstrasz, a friend of his for some time now, someone Kalec had completely and utterly trusted … Kalec shook his head, lowering it slightly on his great neck in sorrow.
Ysera was awakened, but still unfocused and unclear, and had, according to what he could learn from her flight, gone wandering. Nozdormu had been missing for some time. Alexstrasza, shattered by Krasus’s betrayal, had vanished as well. Malygos was slain, and Deathwing was loose in the world, plotting the destruction of all of them.
Even the oldest among them admitted that not since Deathwing’s initial betrayal had there been such a time of despair and chaos.
Each flight had withdrawn unto itself. Kalec had friends among most of them, but even contact with them had been laden with tension. While the green, red, and bronze flights did not know where their Aspects might be, they at least had living ones. The blues did not, and their focus in these last few days had been in rectifying that.
The blues had converged on the Nexus, the site that had always been their home. There, in their cold caves, there had been a great deal of talk, and analyzing, and theorizing, and discussion of magical protocol. But very little had actually been done.
Kalecgos thought his flight was much more interested in the theory of how they might go about creating or choosing a new Aspect than in the pressing need for one. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. The blues loved intellectual challenges. It was only their contempt for the “lesser races” that prevented them from—as the late Krasus had done—adopting different forms to mingle with other users of magic such as the Kirin Tor magi. Arcane magic—cold and intellectual—was their birthright, thanks to the titans’ decision to make Malygos t
he Aspect of Magic in this world. The younger races, really, had no business meddling in it, according to those who thought this way. And too many of them did for Kalec’s comfort.
There seemed to be as many different proposals for how creating or selecting a new Aspect would occur as there were blue dragons themselves. Or, Kalec amended, nostrils flaring in annoyance, as many different proposals as there were scales on each dragon.
An early fear had been quickly calmed when one of the younger blues had asked worriedly, “What if there can be no new Aspect? The titans made Malygos into the Aspect of Magic. What if only the titans can make another, and the other flights have forever doomed us to living without an Aspect?”
The older dragons had shaken their heads, completely unconcerned. “We all know that the titans were very powerful, and very wise,” one of them had said. “We must assume that they anticipated this might one day happen. Our scholars are certain that, with enough research, they will be able to discover what we should do.”
Kalecgos believed this; he believed in the wisdom of the titans, who had charged all the Aspects so very long ago. Other blues, though, believed more in the superiority and capability of the blue flight itself. They could not possibly fail to come up with something. They certainly did not lack for theories.
According to legend, when the Aspects were first created, the moons had been in a rare conjunction. A repeat of this same alignment, not seen for centuries, was due to occur in just a few days. One popular theory, which played to the sense of the dramatic, espoused that this celestial event was of import to their task. Some felt it was “crucial to the proper working of the magic necessary to facilitate the alteration of a normal blue into an Aspect”; others simply deemed it good timing.
Others wanted a majority of blues present at the ceremony. “We will have an Aspect, one way or another,” one of the more pragmatic magical scholars had said. “If there is no physical transformation bestowed by the conjunction of the two moons, at the very least we can decide, as a flight, who we think would be our best leader.”
Thrall Twilight of the Aspects Page 9
