The Shining Blade Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  MAPS

  CHAPTER ONE: NEW SHORES

  CHAPTER TWO: LIGHTLY TOASTED

  CHAPTER THREE: A RESPITE

  CHAPTER FOUR: THE OVERLOOK

  CHAPTER FIVE: DINING WITH DRUIDS

  CHAPTER SIX: ILL OMENS

  CHAPTER SEVEN: UNEXPECTED VISIONS

  CHAPTER EIGHT: SEVERING THE BOND

  CHAPTER NINE: SILVERLAINE

  CHAPTER TEN: COMPANIONS

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: OUT IN THE OPEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE: WEBWINDER PATH

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: CCAMP

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: AMBUSHED

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: BLOOD AND REGRET

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE SACRIFICE

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: FAREWELLS TO A FRIEND

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: MURKY’S LAMENT

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: FRIEND OR FOE

  CHAPTER TWENTY: PARADISE LOST

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE RISING TIDE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: LEAVING THE OVERLOOK

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: TO LAKESHIRE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: THE GLADES

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: DREAMS OF SHARDS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: DARKSTORM

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: HUNTING A DRAGON

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: TELAGOS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: HARD TRUTHS

  CHAPTER THIRTY: VALDREAD’S SECRET

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: DEELIVERRGGEEE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: A DRYAD’S GIFT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: DESPERATE ALLIANCES

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: MARCH ON OUTLAND

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: RELIEF AND BETRAYAL

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: WIELDING THE LIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: GALENA’S REVENGE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: BROTHERS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: SEVEN BECOME ONE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  He had been dreaming of home, of Lakeshire—at least, he thought he was. One moment, he was in his stepfather’s shop, watching the forge grow red and hot, the next he was on fire, burning up from grasping black tendrils that held his arms tight to his body.

  If that wasn’t bad enough, Aramar Thorne saw again the twisted, cruel face of his father’s killer, the most hateful man in all of Azeroth: Malus, captain of the Inevitable. He growled at Aram, so close he could smell the sweat dripping off the man’s brow. Aram’s mother always told him that a bad person’s innards would out, and the same had happened to Malus, contorting a once noble face into eyes and a mouth made only for sneering. Only for contempt.

  He wanted the magical compass around Aram’s neck and he would stop at nothing to get it, including, it seemed, bursting into Aram’s dreams uninvited.

  “I gave you every opportunity, boy. You brought this on yourself. Like father, like son,” he said in a deadly whisper.

  It was just like his memory of being back in Gadgetzan, back in Winifred’s house, snared by horrid magic, unable to move, unable to breathe, friendless and desperate, knowing any moment could be his last. Aram struggled to reach for his cutlass, then remembered it had been useless against the dark energy, so instead he reached for the incomplete crystal sword hilt tucked in his belt. Reached for it and gasped. It was gone. But how? Now he truly had nothing …

  There was no Light to save him this time, only Malus and his enormous hand slowly coming to rip away the one thing most precious to Aram, the thing he had sworn to protect for his father …

  “Ticktock,” Malus hissed. “Your time is up, boy.”

  And then, as quickly as the nightmare had taken him, it was gone. Malus exploded into thick, black smoke, the only lingering trace of him a pair of eyes in the darkness. Aram felt pressure on his shoulders, his chest, and shouted himself awake. He flailed while staring directly into the far more welcome eyes of his sister, Makasa Flintwill.

  It was just like being back on the Wavestrider, when she would snap him awake with a steely, “Aramar Thorne, get your sorry bones out of that bunk!” He had heard the words so many times from Makasa, they were practically burned into his mind. But this time she wasn’t yelling or impatient, just concerned, her dark brows knit with worry.

  “Brother? We’ve touched down. It’s time to go.”

  “Sure,” Aram whispered. “Yeah, I’ll be ready.”

  “Bad dream?” she asked as she left him, hefting her own pack and double-checking that she had her weapons and canteen.

  “You have no idea,” he said with a wince. The others had already gone ahead and left the goblin-made zeppelin, so Aram hurried to pack, though his hands were slick with nervous sweat. He couldn’t shake the nightmare. Usually his dreams were of the Light, there to guide and protect him, but now? He hoped it was not an omen of things to come. It wasn’t so strange, he decided, that the wild and sometimes scary events of the last few weeks would return to haunt him as he slept—most twelve-year-olds were worried about oversleeping for their studies or getting caught kissing behind the Boughmans’ place. But Aram, dressed in his father’s oversized captain’s coat, wielding a cutlass and carrying an enchanted compass, was beginning to feel less like a boy and more like a young man.

  Maybe he really was becoming a man. After all, they had come so far from where they began; for Aram, this long, winding adventure had started as a way to get to know his father better, but that simple plan imploded when the despicable Captain Malus sank their ship. Armed with his trusty sketchbook, Aram had followed the compass and visions from the Light, trying his best to fulfill his father’s mission to find and then retrieve shards of the Diamond Blade scattered across Azeroth. This was of vital importance. Azeroth was a big place, hard for Aram to even fathom, just like the mission he had been tasked with. But he had managed so far—or rather, they had. For everywhere Aram went he seemed to pick up more and more allies to his cause, including the powerful druid Thalyss Greyoak, who had met an end he did not deserve. An end that Aram and more of his friends might face if he didn’t rise to the challenges that lay before them.

  And so he squared his shoulders and departed the zeppelin, feeling a pang of regret that there would be no more late-night chats about technique with his fellow artist, Charnas. Yet Aram felt optimistic that saying good-bye to the goblin did not mean good-bye forever.

  The ladder was already lowered and Aram descended as steadily as he could, trying to balance all of his things and his dignity. When he landed, it was with the sea at his back and the blackened land spreading north and east into the vale, with mountains to the south. His optimism flagged a bit as he surveyed the landscape awaiting them.

  The Charred Vale was, well, charred, and Aramar Thorne felt the smoke and ash sting his lungs the moment they departed Gazlowe’s zeppelin, the Cloudkicker.

  I don’t know what I expected, he thought with a snort. The others didn’t look pleased at the thought of traversing a burnt and darkened landscape, but Aram tried his best to see the luster in it. There was a severe, brutal beauty to the smoldering hills, a stark contrast between the embers still burning and the charred land. It would be difficult to capture it, he thought, to communicate the awe of it, but that was his job as an artist—he had to try.

  He stood with his feet still on the otherwise untouched sand, the toes of his boots just barely brushing the blackened grass that carpeted the burning forest. An ashy wind ruffled his dark hair; it blew hot and dry, but still he shivered. Makasa, his taller, bolder counterpart and chosen sister, blew out a long, low whistle as she stood next to him. She fiddled idly with the chain crisscrossing her torso, then itched a new scab on her forearm.

  “We’re a long way from Feralas,” she
murmured.

  And she was right. They might have been abandoned, hunted, and near-starving in that rain forest, but at least there was rain. Still, it might not be so bad. They would be able to see enemies coming from a mile away; that wasn’t so easily done in a dense, misty jungle.

  The airship puttered behind them, hovering, its pointed nose angling north. Gazlowe, the short, green goblin engineer whom Aram had come to greatly admire, sighed and strode across the beach to them, stretching his arms over his head. The remainder of the crew stayed aboard, a clear sign that they wouldn’t be stopping there for long.

  “All right, kid?” Gazlowe crowed, cheerful. Of course he was cheerful. He wasn’t facing a two-day march through a burning forest. On tiptoes, he clapped Aramar on the back. “Here we are, the Charred Vale. Not bad, right?”

  Drella, their eternally honest dryad companion, twirled a few strands of curling teal hair around her fingers and scrunched up her nose. “It is … actually very bad. The trees—the animals … Everything is in pain. I can hardly look at it.”

  “I thought everything dies,” Makasa said with a smirk, throwing the dryad’s frequent words back at her.

  “It does,” Drella replied with a quirk of her lips. “But not this slowly.”

  “Oh yeah, forgot. You and your nature thing,” Gazlowe said with a shrug, referring to her deep, druidic bond to Azeroth and all of its creatures, not just some nature thing. “I’m sure you’ll get used to it. Hey! You won’t freeze. And gettin’ a fire started for supper will be a cinch.”

  Nobody indulged his jokes.

  “Anyway.” Gazlowe stretched again, ambling around the group until he stood facing them. He suddenly hissed, rubbing at his backside, which seemed to have been lightly singed by a falling cinder. “I told you this was as good as we could do. Sprocket and I gotta bounce outta here. The Mechanical Engineers’ Guild of Azeroth won’t stop the competition for any man … or engineer, or, uh, goblin, as the case may be.” He winked, but only Drella winked back. Gazlowe coughed and thrust out his hand toward Aram, then pumped it hard when the boy took it. “Hey, kid, anytime you need me—and you got enough dough or a sufficiently sweet business proposal—gimme a call.”

  “Sure thing, Gazlowe,” Aram replied with a weary smile. “I’m sure that will be any day now.”

  “All right, all right! Enough jokes already. You got some distance between you and Thal’darah Overlook,” Gazlowe said, giving Aram’s hand one last shake, then forcing his way through the travelers. They parted for him, and then turned to watch the goblin leave. Some of the crew, including Sprocket and Charnas, had gathered at the railings on the Cloudkicker and waved. Aram couldn’t say if that was because they were being supportive or because they were just enthusiastic about leaving.

  “Stay safe, kid!” Gazlowe called, all but leaping with joy onto the ladder that would take him up into the zeppelin. “Stick together. You got a good crew there.”

  Aramar Thorne waved him off, nodding. He did have a good crew. A solid crew. They had been through so much, surviving pirate attacks, gladiatorial combat, battles, races, more gladiatorial combat … He suddenly felt old and tired, then shook his head, forcing that thought away. They still had a long way to go—first, they needed to reach Thal’darah Overlook and see about fulfilling his promise to Drella. The Cloudkicker bathed them in a warm, sea-salted wind as it lifted off, machinery whirring and chugging.

  Aram jogged over to Makasa, who was pretending to adjust her pack as she stared anxiously at the sky. “Are you all right?” Aram asked.

  “I’m not sure we lost Malus,” Makasa said, putting a hand up to shield her eyes as she watched their ride depart.

  “With any luck he’s off on his goose chase across the sea, and the Crustacean will buy us time.” How much time, he couldn’t say. Makasa, scratching her chin, seemed to read his mind.

  “We got plenty of rest on the Cloudkicker. Time to put some miles on these boots.” Spurred on, she put up both hands and mustered the group. Makasa stood before the half circle of them, Murky the murloc on the left, wearing his beloved new nets like a vest; then Hackle the gnoll, his club resting on his shoulder; Drella, a dryad of immense power, in the middle; and Aram at the other end, itching for his sister to get on with it.

  “Excuse me!” Drella piped up. Her voice was harmonious, but commanding. She was transitioning into an older, more subdued version of her riotously colorful half-elven and half-fawn appearance. Spring was turning into summer for Drella, though it had been summer for everyone else for a long time. It was a dryad thing that Aram was only barely beginning to understand. Somehow, even in this desolate waste of smoldering wood, a butterfly had managed to find her and land gently on her head. Drella giggled and let it remain. “Oh! A friend.”

  “Is this important?” Makasa demanded, pinching the bridge of her nose.

  “Yes, it is important! If only I could remember—hmm …”

  Makasa groaned.

  “Give her a chance,” Aram murmured, much to his sister’s irritation. She had a firm rule against eye rolling, which she broke, demonstrating just what she thought of Aram’s many indulgences toward the dryad.

  “Oh yes, now I remember!” Drella mimed catching the thought and popping it back into her mouth. “When I was an acorn, Thalyss would whisper to me many stories about the great heroes of old, and how they each got good and true names to go with their good and true deeds. I believe it is time we each take our own true, true names.”

  Makasa groaned again. “Drella—”

  “Just look how far we made it. We survived the Bone Pile and the Thunderdrome, where I became Taryndrella the Impressive, daughter of Cenarius, which you all know, of course! And you”—she pointed to Murky, who burbled up at her with a spit bubble growing from between his lips—“are Murky the Unstung! Impervious to scorpid venom! Ooh, good, right?”

  “Mrgle, mrgle, Drhla,” agreed the murloc.

  “Drella.” Makasa looked murderous.

  “And you!” She pointed to Hackle, who tilted his furry head to the side. “You are Hackle the Revenged!”

  That was in reference to the gnoll’s feat of taking the head of Marjuk the ogre, a fearsome foe that had killed many of Hackle’s kin in the Woodpaw clan.

  “Aram will be Aramar Thorne, Wielder of Light!”

  He couldn’t help but nod, and was glad that Makasa had decided not to kill him before he got to hear his new “true, true” name. The name came from one of the stranger moments of their time in Gadgetzan, when Aram had narrowly escaped death at the hands of his sworn enemy, Malus. Caught in tendrils of black magic, Aram had wielded the hilt of the Diamond Blade to break the magic and flee to safety. The blade had serviced him then, but no such weapon of Light came to him in his nightmares. It had left him feeling so vulnerable …

  “DRELLA.” Makasa huffed, which was always a bad sign.

  “You are Makasa the Binder!” Drella sang, undaunted and circling Makasa on her fawn-like legs. The butterfly in Drella’s hair fluttered free and landed on Makasa’s forearm, only to be smashed into colorful dust a second later. Drella, it seemed, hadn’t noticed, bounding around, singing softly to herself.

  “The Binder?” Makasa screwed up her face, the scars on her forehead and left cheek contorting. Hackle began one of his high, hysterical laughs but ended it quickly when Makasa shot him a look. “Aramar is the Wielder of Light and I’m the bloody Binder?”

  “Yes! The Binder, because you are the stuff that holds us all together. Like paste! But stronger! Stronger even than paste.”

  That actually gave the young woman, tall and muscled and ferocious as she was, pause. Aramar knew that if there was one thing that might knock his sister for a loop, it was earnest sentiment. Whenever he dared wield the word “sister” aloud, she usually gave in to his demands.

  “Fine, spectacular, I’m the Binder.” Makasa wiped the butterfly’s remains from her hand before the dryad could see it. “Will you listen now?”
r />   Everyone was silent, even Drella, who was satisfied that she had spoken her piece and given them all their true, true names.

  “We’ve had plenty of rest and food,” she said. The Cloudkicker was already high above, the loud whir of its machinery growing softer as it carried Gazlowe, Charnas, and Sprocket on to their MEGA event. “I think it would be best if we marched through the vale with only one stop. It will be hard, and grueling, but I don’t think any of us want to linger here longer than we have to.”

  “I agree,” Aram said, nodding. He squinted out at the smoke rising behind Makasa and grimaced. “Tie something around your mouths; I don’t think we want to breathe all that smoke.”

  “Aram’s right.” Hearing the older, more experienced girl say that always gave him a jolt of pride. For a long, long time, it was the kind of phrase he couldn’t imagine her ever uttering. That was back in the days of him being shaken or kicked awake on the Wavestrider. Now, however, he and Makasa walked side by side as they pulled their shirts over their mouths and plunged into the blackened, steaming obstacle that lay between them and the Overlook.

  Aram was surprised to find that Murky, small and green, dashed up right beside him and marched along with his flipper-like feet slapping the ashen ground.

  “Mrgle, nk teergle, blurlem n Murky tilurgle-gurgle,” Murky said, brandishing his small spear and pointing it hastily toward the depths of the vale.

  The others and Aram all looked helplessly to Drella, who had managed to learn much of the little creature’s language from her night elf druid mentor, Thalyss Greyoak.

  “He says yes, we should hurry.” Drella followed just behind the murloc, translating as she went. Then she leaned down and scooped up Murky, letting him ride on her back, sparing his bare, amphibious feet the scorch of the earth. “We should hurry, he says, or his true, true name will be Murky the Lightly Toasted.”

  Makasa watched the heads of her compatriots bow dangerously low. Seven hours into their march through the bleak, black expanse of the Charred Vale and their morale, were it a thing she could hold, would be lodged somewhere in the smoking dirt at her feet. She trudged on, breathing only when she had to, eyes squinted against the stinging air, her hands looped around the chains on her chest as if she could pull herself along faster that way.