The Last Guardian (24 page)

“Mother, I thought you were being hysterical,” said the past-Medivh.

“So a mystic bolt would bring me to my senses?” snapped the previous Guardian. Khadgar saw that she was much older now. Her blond hair was now white, and there were tight wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Still, she held the presence of the earlier forms he had seen. “Now,”

she said, “answer my question.”

“Mother, you’re not seeing things right,” said the past-Medivh.

“Answer,” snapped Aegwynn sternly. “Why did you bring the orcs to Azeroth?”

“No wonder he was so testy when you asked him that,” said Garona. Khadgar shushed her, and kept an eye on the present-Medivh. The present incarnation had ceased to press against the walls of the wards, and his face seemed to have lost its emotion.

“Mother?” said the present-Medivh. His face looked credulous.

“You don’tHAVE an answer, do you?” said Aegwynn. “This is some little game you’re playing.

Some challenge for Llane and Lothar to amuse themselves with? The power of theTirisfalen is no game, child.

There are more orcs coming in all the time, and I am hearing of caravans being raided near the Black

Morass. A novice could track back to your Portal, but only your mother would be able to taste the power that wrapped it. Again, child, how do you account for yourself?”

Khadgar wilted under the older woman’s invective, and half-expected the past-Medivh to flee
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the room.

Instead, Medivh surprised him. He laughed deeply.

“Does your mother’s disproval amuse you, child?” said Aegwynn sternly.

“No,” said Medivh, flashing a deep, predatory grin. “But my mother’s stupidity does.”

Khadgar looked across the room, and saw the present-Medivh flinch at the sound of his past incarnation’s words.

“You dare,” thundered Aegwynn, raising her hand. A sphere of blazing-white light erupted from her palm and lanced toward the past-Medivh. The Magus raised a hand and turned it aside with ease.

“I do, Mother,” said the phantom of the past. “And I have the power for it. The power that you invested me with at my conception, a power that I did not want or request.” The phantom-Medivh gestured, and the topmost floor was alight with a blazing bolt. Aegwynn caught the energy herself, but Khadgar noted that she had to raise both hands, and still was staggered back.

“Butwhy did you let the orcs into Azeroth?” hissed the older woman. “There is no need. You put entire populations at risk, and to what end?”

“To break the cycle, of course,” said the past-Medivh. “To smash the clockwork universe that you have built for me. Everything in its place, including your child. If you could not continue on as Guardian, your hand-picked, born and groomed successor would, but would be locked into his script as tightly as any of your other pawns.”

The present-Medivh had sunk to his knees, his eyes locked on the tableaux before him. He was mouthing the words that his past-self had spoken.

Garona tugged on Khadgar’s sleeve, and he nodded. The pair left the heart of the wards, and began to edge around the room, trying to ease behind the present incarnation of the Magus.

“But, the risk, child…” said Aegwynn.

“Risk?” said Medivh. “Risk to whom? Not to me, not with the power of theTirisfalen at my command.

To the rest of the Order? They worry more about internal politics than demons. To the human nations?

Fat and happy, protected from dangers that they do not even know about? Is anyone important really at risk?”

“You’re playing with forces greater than yourself, Son,” said Aegwynn. Khadgar and Garona were nearly to the door, but the present-Medivh was held rapt by the vision.

“Oh, of course,” said the Magus’s past with a snarl. “Thinking that I could handle powers like that would be the sin of Pride. Sort of like thinking you could match wits with a demon lord and come out on top.”

They were behind Medivh now, and Garona reached for the knife inside her blouse. Khadgar stopped her hand and shook his head. They slipped behind Medivh. Tears were starting to form at the old man’s eyes.

“What happens if these orcs succeed?” said Aegwynn. “They worship dark gods and shadows.

Why would you give Azeroth to them?”

“Whenthey succeed,” said the past Medivh, “they will make me their leader. They respect strength, Mother, unlike you or the rest of this sorry world. And thanks to you, I am the strongest thing in this world. And I will have broken the shackles that you and others have placed on me, and I will rule.”

There was a silence in the vision, and Khadgar and Garona froze, holding their breath. Would the present Medivh notice them in the silence?

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Aegwynn, speaking from the years past, held his attention. “You are not my son,” she said.

The present Medivh put his face in his hands. His past version said, “No. I have never been your son.

Never truly yours, in any case.”

And the past Magus laughed. It was a deep, thundering laugh that Khadgar had heard before, on the icy steppes, when last these two battled.

Aegwynn looked shocked, “Sargeras?” she spat, in final recognition. “I killed you.”

“You killed a body, witch. You only killed my physical form!” snarled the Medivh of the past, and already Khadgar could see the overlay of the second being, the alternate shadow, that consumed him. A

creature of shadow and flame, with a beard of fire and great ebon horns. “Killed it and hid it away in a tomb beneath the sea. But I was willing to sacrifice it to gain a greater prize.”

Despite herself, Aegwynn put a hand over her stomach.

“Yes, Mother dear,” said the past Medivh, the flames licking at his beard, the horns forming out of smoke before his brows. He was Medivh, but Sargeras as well. “I hid in your womb, and passed into the slumbering cells of your unformed child. A cancer, a blight, a birth defect that you would never surmise.

Killing you was impossible, seducing you unlikely. So I made myself your heir.”

Aegwynn shouted a curse and lurched her hands upward, her anger wrapped around words not made for human voices. A bolt of scintillating rainbow energy struck the Medivh/Sargeras creature full in the chest.

The phantom of the past staggered back one step, then two, then raised a single hand and caught the energy cast at him. The room smelled of cooking meat, and the Sargeras/Medivh snarled and spat. He invoked a spell of his own, and Aegwynn was flung across the room.

“I cannot kill you, Mother,” snapped the demonic form. “Some part of me keeps me from doing that.

But Iwill break you. Break you and banish you, and by the time you’ve healed, by the time you’ve walked back from where I will send you, this land will be mine. This land, and the power of the Order of

Tirisfal!”

In the present day, Medivh let out the howl of a lost soul, screaming to the heavens for forgiveness that will never be forthcoming.

“That’s our cue,” said Garona, pulling on Khadgar’s robe. “Let’s get while the getting is good.”

Khadgar hesitated for a moment, then followed her to the stairs.

They tumbled down the stone stairs three at a time, almost slamming into Moroes.

“Excited,” he noted calmly. “Problem?”

Garona hurdled down past the castellan, but Khadgar grabbed the older man and said, “The master has gone mad.”

“More than usual?” replied Moroes.

“It’s not a joke,” said Khadgar, then his eyes lit up. “Do you have the whistle to summon gryphons?”

The servant raised a rune-carved piece of metal. “Wish me to summon…”

“I’ll do it,” said Khadgar, grabbing the item from his hands, and hurtling after Garona. “He’ll be after us, but you had better run as well. Take Cook and flee as far as you can.”

And with that Khadgar was lost to view.

“Flee?” said Moroes to the apprentice’s retreating form; then he snorted. “Wherever would I go?”

Fourteen

Flight

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They had made it several miles when the gryphon began to misbehave. Only a single beast had answered

Khadgar’s summons, and bridled as Garona approached it. Only by sheer strength of will did the young mage get the gryphon to accept the half-orc’s presence. They could hear Medivh screaming and cursing long after they have left the circle of hills. They tilted the gryphon toward Stormwind, and Khadgar dug his heels deeply into the gryphon’s haunches.

They had made good speed, but now the gryphon bucked beneath him, trying to tear at the reins, trying to turn back toward the mountains. Khadgar tried to break the beast, to keep it to its course, but it became increasingly agitated.

“What’s wrong with it?” asked Garona over his shoulder.

“Medivh is calling it back,” said Khadgar. “It wants to go back to Karazhan.”

Khadgar wrestled with the reins, even tried the whistle, but at last had to admit defeat. He brought the gryphon down on a low, bare tor, and slid from its back after Garona had climbed off. As soon as he touched ground, the gryphon was aloft again, beating its heavy wings against the darkening air, climbing to return the call of its master.

“Think he will follow?” asked Garona.

“I don’t know,” said Khadgar. “But I don’t want to be here if he does. We’ll make for Stormwind.”

They stumbled about for most of the evening and night, finding a dirt track, then following it in the general direction of Stormwind. There was no immediate pursuit nor strange lights in the sky, and before dawn the pair rested briefly, huddling beneath a great cedar.

They saw no one alive during the next day. There were houses burned to the foundations, and clumps of newly hummocked earth that marked buried families. Overturned and smashed carts were common, as were great burned circles heaped with ash. Garona noted that this was how the orcs dealt with their dead, after the bodies had been looted.

The only animals they saw were dead—disemboweled pigs by a shattered farmhouse, the skeletal remains of a horse, consumed save for the frightened, twisted head. They moved in silence through one despoiled farmstead after another.

“Your people have been thorough,” Khadgar said at last.

“They pride themselves on such matters,” said Garona, grimly.

“Pride?” said Khadgar, looking around him. “Pride in destruction? In despoiling? No human army, no human nation would burn down everything in its path, or kill animals without purpose.”

Garona nodded. “It is the orc way—do not leave enough standing that their foes could use against them.

If they could not use it immediately—as fodder, as quarters, as plunder, then it should be put to the torch.

The borders of orc clans are often desolate places, as each side seeks to deny the other resources.”

Khadgar shook his head. “These arenot resources,” he said hotly. “These are lives. This land was once green and verdant, with fields and forests. Now it’s a wasteland. Look at this! Can there be any peace between humans and orcs?”

Garona said nothing. They continued in on silence that day, and camped in the shambles of an inn. They slept in separate rooms, he in the wreckage of the common room, she moving farther back to the kitchen.

He didn’t suggest they stay together, and neither did she.

Khadgar was awakened by the growls of his stomach. They had fled the tower with little but what they had on their backs, and save for some foraged berries and ground nuts, they had not eaten in over a day.

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The young mage extricated himself from the raindamp straw tic that made his bed, his joints protesting.

He had not camped in the open since his arrival at Karazhan, and he felt out of shape. The fear of the previous day had ebbed entirely, and he wondered about his next move.

Stormwind was their stated target, but how would he get someone like Garona into the city?

Maybe find something to disguise her. Or did she even want to come? Now that she was free of the tower, maybe it would be better for her to rejoin Gul’dan and the Stormreaver clan.

Something moved along the wrecked side of the building. Probably Garona. She had to be as hungry as

Khadgar. She hadn’t complained, but he assumed from the wreckage left behind that orcs required a lot of food to keep them in top fighting form.

Khadgar stood up, shook the cobwebs from his mind, and leaned out the remains of a window to ask her if there was anything left in the kitchen.

And was faced with one edge of a huge double-bladed ax, leveled at his neck.

At the opposite end of the ax was the jade-green face of an orc. A real orc. Khadgar had not realized until now how accustomed to Garona’s face he had become, such that the heavy jaw and sloped brow were a shock to him.

The orc growled, “Wuzzat?”

Khadgar slowly raised both hands, all the while calling up in his mind the magical energy. A simple spell, enough to knock the creature aside, to get Garona and get away.

Unless Garona had brought them here, he suddenly realized.

He hesitated, and that was enough. He heard something behind him, but did not get to turn as something large and heavy came down on the back of his neck.

He could not have been out long—long enough for a half-dozen orcs to spill into the room and start pushing through the rubble with their axes. They wore green armbands. Bleeding Hollow clan, his memory told him. He stirred, and the first orc, the one with the double-bladed ax, spun on him again.

“Wharsyurstuth?” said the orc. “Wharyuhidit?”

“What?” asked Khadgar, wondering if it was the orc’s voice or his own ears that were mangling the language.

“Your stuff,” said the orc, slower. “Your gear. You gots nothing. Where did you hide it?”

Khadgar spoke without thinking. “No stuff. Lost it earlier. No stuff.”

The orc snorted. “Then you die,” he snarled, and raised his blade.

“No!” shouted Garona from the ruined doorway. She looked like she had spent a bad night, but had a brace of hares on a leather thong hanging from her belt. She had been out hunting.

Khadgar felt mildly embarrassed for his earlier thoughts.

“Git out, half-breed,” snapped the orc. “None of your business.”