Shadows Rising (World of Warcraft: Shadowlands) Read online

  World of Warcraft: Shadows Rising is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DEL REY is a registered trademark and the CIRCLE colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  WARCRAFT, WORLD OF WARCRAFT, and BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., in the US and/or other countries. All other trademark references herein are the properties of their respective owners.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Roux, Madeleine, author.

  Title: World of Warcraft: Shadows rising / Madeleine Roux.

  Other titles: Shadows rising

  Description: New York: Del Rey Books 2020.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020008859 (print) | LCCN 2020008860 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399594120 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780399594137 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: World of Warcraft (Game)—Fiction. | Imaginary wars and battles—Fiction. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3618.O87235 W67 2020 (print) | LCC PS3618.O87235 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020008859

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020008860

  Ebook ISBN 9780399594137

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Jo Anne Metsch, adapted for ebook

  Cover art: Bayard Wu

  ep_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Maps

  Prologue: Westfall

  Chapter One: Orgrimmar

  Chapter Two: Nazmir

  Chapter Three: Dazar’alor

  Chapter Four: Nazmir

  Chapter Five: Orgrimmar

  Chapter Six: Stormwind

  Chapter Seven: Dazar’alor

  Chapter Eight: Dazar’alor

  Chapter Nine: Arathi Highlands

  Chapter Ten: Nazmir

  Chapter Eleven: Arathi Highlands

  Chapter Twelve: Atal’gral

  Chapter Thirteen: Nazmir

  Chapter Fourteen: Orgrimmar

  Chapter Fifteen: Dazar’alor

  Chapter Sixteen: Dazar’alor

  Chapter Seventeen: Nazmir

  Chapter Eighteen: Tiragarde Sound

  Chapter Nineteen: Orgrimmar

  Chapter Twenty: Zeb’ahari

  Chapter Twenty-one: Dazar’alor

  Chapter Twenty-two: Dazar’alor

  Chapter Twenty-three: Nazmir

  Chapter Twenty-four: Stormwind

  Chapter Twenty-five: Dazar’alor

  Chapter Twenty-six: Nazmir

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Dazar’alor

  Chapter Twenty-eight: The Necropolis

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Nazmir

  Chapter Thirty: Stormwind

  Chapter Thirty-one: Stormwind

  Chapter Thirty-two: Dazar’alor

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Madeleine Roux

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  Westfall

  Anduin Wrynn rode as if a thousand screaming servants of the Void followed close at his back, thunder booming above in the sky and crashing below as his horse’s hooves beat the ground hard, carrying him across the wounded plains of Westfall. No one but his loyal friend and spymaster chased him, but it didn’t matter. Darkness nipped at his heels, and he would do whatever he could to outrun it.

  At least for the moment. At least for one moment.

  “Sire! Sire! Damn you, my horse is going to throw a shoe!” Mathias Shaw’s voice managed to rise above the rumbling overhead and the din of the horses.

  Anduin ignored him, clucking his tongue, spurring Reverence faster. Faster, faster, faster. He couldn’t slow down, not for anything.

  In the distance, a tower of debris and energy rose like a crystalline spike from the low hills of the farmlands. He couldn’t take his eyes away from it as the thickening clouds above rolled closer, casting a shadow over the land. He remembered thinking it impossible that Westfall should change so drastically, but the Cataclysm had raged, heedless of a young man’s nostalgia. And yet it was as if his own childhood, his own deeply held memories, had been rearranged. He was but a boy then, untested; now he felt honed as a blade. That untested boy had thought certain things remained constant, but now he knew such beliefs to be childish. Nothing was permanent. Any city could crumble, but foes could also become allies, even friends. There was no more wisdom in cynicism than in optimism.

  “Sire!”

  He relented at last, pulling gently on Reverence’s reins, the magnificent white horse slowing to a canter, allowing the spymaster to gain ground and trot up to his side.

  “My apologies.” Anduin sighed, tossing back the hair that had fallen into his eyes. “That must have been a taxing ride for your old bones.”

  “You didn’t tell me this was a race,” Shaw grunted. Despite Anduin’s teasing, the older man, weathered but still strong and cunning, wasn’t even out of breath. “With fair warning I would leave you crying in the dust. Your majesty.”

  “Well.” Anduin reined his horse around to face the wall of forest behind them, across the river in Elwynn. “We shall have to put that to the test.”

  “Maybe, but first you’re going to tell me why you’re riding like a madman today. The last thing we need is you getting thrown and snapping your royal neck.”

  Shaw had a rough way about him, and his voice was equally gruff, as if he gargled with sawdust each morning. But that harsh, forward manner was a comfort to Anduin. While most at court bowed and scraped around in the king’s presence, Shaw always gave it to him straight.

  The clouds overhead bunched and threatened to unleash a downpour, but Anduin ignored the coming rain, jumping down from the saddle with the ease of a practiced rider. Reverence seemed agitated, tossing his great white mane and gnashing his teeth. The king made his way around to the horse’s head, taking a few slivers of apple from his pocket and offering it to the beast. Ah. His halter had gone crooked. He let the horse lean its warm, soft nose into his shoulder while he fixed the bit and touched his forehead to the spot between Reverence’s eyes.

  “You know, when I was very young and learning to ride, my father took me to the stables and gave me my first pony. Dappled. Gentle. Thirteen hands. I asked my father why horses were measured in hands.” Anduin smiled wanly at the distant memory. “He only grinned at me and said he didn’t know, then he barked at the groom, asking if he knew. Nobody did. I think the groom probably soiled himself he was so embarrassed; the poor lad was hardly older than I was. Marvin was his name, I think.”

  Shaw was still in the saddle, his expression suddenly distant. “I didn’t know him.”

  But Anduin knew better, knew Shaw was holding something back. He almost certai
nly had known Marvin, and Marvin had probably died somehow. In one war or another, by an orcish axe or a poisoned Forsaken blade. Maybe his house had collapsed in the Cataclysm and the ground had swallowed him whole.

  Anduin pushed the bitter thought aside. “I was shocked. My father, the king of Stormwind, had just admitted his own ignorance in front of a servant. I told him as much, and do you know what he said?”

  Shaw shook his head no.

  “He said: Only the fool thinks himself an expert in everything. The wise man admits his limitations and endeavors to know more.”

  They were both silent for a moment, listening to the storm roll its way across the Dagger Hills, moving north toward them.

  “He wasn’t an easy king to serve, but there was satisfaction in the challenge. The same can’t be said for all rulers.”

  At that, Anduin winced. “Ouch.”

  “Oh, there’s satisfaction in service to your crown, too, it’s just…a bit more of a challenge,” Shaw replied with just a hint of a smile, and that was the most the enigmatic spymaster ever gave. “Case in point—you’re avoiding my question.”

  “No, Shaw, I was answering it.” Anduin held Reverence’s reins loosely with his left hand, pointing to the forest with his right, and beyond that, the spires of Stormwind City rising in the misty distance. “I’m acknowledging my limitations. Today was…Today was…”

  Anduin groped uselessly for the word. Difficult? That didn’t cover it. Disheartening? Vexing?

  Crushing.

  Tyrande and Malfurion had fled to Nordrassil, and all of his missives went unread. A messenger had returned that morning with his letter to them unopened. The man looked shaken, more so when Anduin told him firmly to leave, return to Nordrassil, and try again. No matter how much Anduin attempted to console himself that the rift between humans and night elves could be bridged, its mere existence dismayed him. They ought to be united, solid, though he could not begrudge them their anger. Had Stormwind burned to the ground under his rule, he wasn’t sure forgiveness would come easily or ever. A plume of smoke shot up just west of Saldean’s farm. An accompanying boom might have been mistaken for thunder were it not for the distinctive sound of splintering wood and a man’s scream that followed.

  “What was that?” Anduin murmured. He charged off toward the commotion and the smoke, with Shaw grumbling behind him.

  “Caution,” the old spy said. “It could be an ambush.”

  “These are my people, my lands.”

  “And your enemies would use that against you.”

  But Anduin had heard anguish in the cry from the barn, and he couldn’t stand by helplessly while one of his subjects suffered. They reached an open field, the hay gathered and formed into rounds as high as a man. Chickens scattered at their approach, and Anduin and Shaw used a gap in a broken fence to enter the field, leaving their horses with their reins looped around the jagged posts.

  “Could it have been an explosion? I hope nobody is injured…” Anduin quickened his pace, raised voices growing clearer and more numerous as he and Shaw were enveloped by the changing wind and, with it, the choking smoke.

  Anduin batted at it, squinting ahead to see what remained of the barn roof, collapsed in on itself with three men in a heated argument. One fellow, the tallest, was dressed in little but rags, his hair matted and dirty, debris from the explosion hanging in his beard. The other two men wore the simple homespun garb of farmers, patched and pricked with grass, their faces weathered from their labor.

  “Jago, you miserable halfwit! I said you could shelter in my barn, not use it for your mad experiments!”

  Closer and with the smoke dissipating, Anduin could tell that the two farmers were related, one father and one son, the latter his parent in miniature, with even the same ruddy beard, just with less gray shot through it. The older farmer lunged at Jago, fists balled and at the ready.

  He stopped at the unmistakable sound of steel being unsheathed. Spinning, he was met not with a blade itself, but simply Mathias Shaw’s stony face. The sword never came free of its scabbard; the suggestion that it might was enough to give the farmer pause.

  “Gentlemen,” Anduin said softly, putting up his hands. “Is there a problem here?”

  “He’s no gentleman!” the farmer bellowed. “He’s a lousy drunk, using my barn to brew his bedeviled moonshine. Look at my roof! How am I to afford the repairs?” It took him a moment to realize whom he was addressing, but he only made the most meager attempt to bow his head with respect. His son, by contrast, went white as a sheet.

  “I would have his side of the story, too,” Anduin replied. He turned toward Jago, whose only response was to spit loudly and wetly on the ground at the king’s feet. Just that much made the man nearly topple over, and his hiccup could have been heard all the way back in Stormwind Keep. The smell of burned wood and burned moonshine wasn’t enough to cover up the telltale sour ale stench on his breath.

  “There,” Jago slurred, pointing at his own drying spittle. “That’s all m’side a’the story is worth. That’s all I’ve left in the world. Me bones, me blood, me bile. Nothing…I’ve nothing.” His eyes flared wide for an instant, his face turning red through the soot coating his face. “Nothing.”

  He sprang at Anduin clumsily, but even so, Shaw was there to intercept him. Like a flash, the spymaster leaped in front of the king, keeping his weapon half sheathed, his hand clamping down on the drunkard’s shoulder.

  “I wouldn’t,” Shaw growled.

  “Do it, use that sword of yours,” Jago sputtered. Over Shaw’s shoulder, Anduin met the man’s tear-swollen, bloodshot eyes. The more he looked at him, the more he seemed somewhat familiar. “I was there! I was there when the Forsaken queen turned on her own!”

  Anduin froze, watching as Jago’s legs turned liquid beneath him and he slumped down to the ground, the blackened motes on the air settling around him like a blackened snow.

  “Arathi…I went. I was there. My Wilmer. He was there’n…He was changed. One of them, all rotten and strange but still Wilmer. Still…still the best man I ever knew and loved.” Jago’s rage took him again, and he snarled, jabbing a finger up at Anduin. “You could’ve stopped her. You could’ve saved them…”

  Shaw carefully lowered Jago’s hand. “That is not how you address your king.”

  “My king? My king?” Jago laughed, high-pitched and half-mad. “Not my king. The king of fools, maybe.”

  Anduin forced his voice to be steady and moved the spymaster aside. “It’s all right, Shaw.” Then he knelt, disguising the quivering he felt in his knees. The shame he still felt about that day, about that failure…He had gone to the Arathi Highlands in good faith, to try to mend the rift between those who had become Forsaken, undead, and the human family members they had left behind. The talks had gone well until they hadn’t. The queen of the Forsaken, Sylvanas Windrunner, now the most hunted person on Azeroth, had killed her own people, executing any of her kind who chose to reunite and stay with their human loved ones.

  “I’m sorry, Jago,” Anduin said. “I’m—”

  Jago pushed him aside, hard, then managed to climb to his feet and run a few paces out into the field. Swiftly, Shaw turned to apprehend him, but there was no need. Jago fell facedown in the dirt, arms splayed out to his sides, and he had managed to fall inches from the pointed leather boot of Alleria Windrunner. Anduin had not heard her approach, and no horse waited beside her, but the ranger had more creative ways of traveling anyway.

  She nudged the fallen man with her boot and shrugged. “Still breathing.”

  “That’s a relief,” the farmer muttered dryly.

  Anduin rose and walked resolutely toward Alleria while the farmer detained Shaw, complaining about his ruined roof. “Just how am I to pay for this? Jago doesn’t have a copper to his name.”

  “Speak with Captain Danuvin,” Shaw
was telling him coolly. “He can lend you some of the garrison boys to see to the damage.”

  “Sure,” the farmer grunted. “I’ll bet he will…”

  Anduin stopped a hair’s width from Jago’s feet, staring at Alleria over the man’s toppled body.

  “You’re early,” he said, breathless. He didn’t intend to ignore the issue at hand—Jago mattered, of course, every subject in his kingdom mattered, but Alleria’s appearance had everything to do with Jago’s pain. Alleria had been sent on the most urgent of missions—to find Sylvanas Windrunner—but the king had not expected her so soon. Wilmer was just one of Sylvanas’s innumerable crimes, and the murderess responsible for his death was to be found and brought to justice. Anduin took Alleria by the arm, leading her away from the field and back toward their restless horses.

  “Is early a good sign?” he pressed.

  Alleria Windrunner’s delicate, pale face was half hidden by her hood, but even so, Anduin read only disappointment in the taut line of her lips. She kept her eyes down on the ground as they walked, her body tellingly rigid.

  “No,” Alleria whispered. Just that one word and her voice cracked with emotion. She looked tired, drawn, dark smudges making her void-touched eyes all the brighter. “No, my king, I have no good news for you this day.”

  They had reached the fences. Anduin grasped one of the crossbeams and squeezed, the old, battered wood creaking. He wanted to break it. He wanted it to snap. A surge of anger made him close his eyes, as if he were afraid of what Alleria might see there.

  “My sister is not some slovenly boar bumbling across the open plains,” Alleria continued, drawing back from him and crossing her arms over the green-and-gold cuirass beneath her cloak. “She is cunning and using all of her dark power to conceal herself.”