The Shining Blade Read online

  “There is something special about you two,” Llaran had observed, her pale, violet eyes settling on them for a long time. “It is difficult to describe, but I sense … I sense—”

  “A bond?” Drella provided. Her turquoise-colored curls bounced as she nodded at the Sentinel. “We do have a special bond. That is why we have come all this way. You see, I was born from an acorn, a beautiful, tiny little house. It was very cozy in there, but also cramped. And when I was born, the first thing I saw was Aramar Thorne, and now we are bonded for life! Is that not amazing?”

  Drella closed her eyes and tossed back her head, clearly pleased with her explanation.

  Llaran blinked back at them, then smiled what Aram was beginning to think of as her usual amused grin. “Surely there is more to it than that? Are you by some chance gifted with the knowledge of a druid, boy?”

  “Not really,” Aram said, helpless. “A druid tender sent us here, to undo the bond and, well, bond Drella to someone else. Someone more …” Competent? Wise? Knowledgeable? “Druidly.”

  He winced.

  “Oh! A new word!” Drella marveled.

  “Indeed.” Llaran seemed lost in thought, but not about his new word. “I have heard tell of dryads being born, though I thought it required a druid tender, and a bond is formed with that druid so the dryad can be trained. I have never heard of a … human boy managing the task.” She sounded bewildered. “And yet I cannot deny your bond. Odd.”

  Ahead of them, swaying back and forth on Iyneath’s moonsaber, Makasa gave a conspicuously loud cough, one that was harsher given their recent smoke bath. Aram colored. Right. She didn’t trust anyone, not even the elves who had saved her life, and now there he was, blabbing away to Llaran about their mission. But where was the harm? Eventually they would need to explain their reason for getting to the Overlook, and it wasn’t like he had mentioned the compass or the shards …

  “So yes,” he concluded lamely. “We’re here to see a druid called Thal’darah about the bond. To … to undo it.” His heart sank at that. As much as he understood why the bond had to be changed, it didn’t mean he had to like it. It was nice to be special, and to be special with Drella, who was the most fascinating creature he had ever laid eyes on. He snuck a glance at her, watching as she gently collected fallen wildflowers along the trail and linked them into a chain.

  “When I shot that drake,” Llaran mused softly, “I had no idea I was saving such an unusual band of travelers.”

  “Not that interesting,” Aram insisted, aware that Makasa was still firing lightning bolts in his direction with her eyes. “Extremely average, to be honest. The bond was just an accident. I have a lot of those … accidents, I mean.”

  “Do not be silly.” Drella lightly draped the crown over his sooty hair and giggled. “There are no accidents in this world.”

  His heart picked itself right back up and then began to beat wildly as he gazed into her bright, sweet eyes, her hands clasped under her chin. There are no accidents in this world. Did she mean that their bond was somehow fate? Was it that important to her? She gestured outward in every direction. “Everything is perfect. And you are perfect just the way you are.”

  He couldn’t be certain, but up ahead it sounded like Makasa snorted. His heart stopped beating so quickly.

  After that, he fell silent, trying not to huff too loudly as the path became steeper and steeper, until he was all but crawling his way up the switchback that led to Thal’darah Overlook. They passed under a polished purple arch, glittery with ghost-like wisps, and Aram flapped his shirt, sweaty and exhausted. He watched Makasa being helped off her moonsaber and hoped dearly that she needed a rest, because by the Light, he needed one, too. To Aram, it seemed as if the outpost had been established as an antidote to the Charred Vale’s bleak and smoky hills. Soft music, as mystical and beautiful as starlight, twinkled throughout the clearing. A ring of tall trees protected the smattering of buildings, including a well-built inn.

  Aiyell spotted them first, and then the other Sentinels. Iyneath seemed to be the only male among them, and soon they were surrounded by curious, armored night elves. A brown owl sat preening itself on Aiyell’s arm, its keen eyes pinned on the weary travelers even as it cleaned itself.

  “You have arrived swiftly,” she observed, coming forward to help the others dismount from their moonsabers.

  “They are young,” Llaran replied. “But stalwart.”

  Makasa backed away from the Sentinels, planting herself next to Aram. Despite having both shoulders bandaged, she stood tall, and gazed around at the gathering of elves before clearing her throat, saying loudly, “We’re here to see Master Thal’darah. Please summon him.”

  Aram elbowed her, but only gently, mindful of her wounds.

  “Or what?” Iyneath teased, placing Murky carefully on his feet. The murloc adjusted the spear and net on his back and promptly sat down, massive toes splayed out in front of him. Hackle looked equally exhausted, but stood his ground, rubbing his eyes with dirty paws.

  “Slow down, young visitors,” Iyneath continued. “Master Thal’darah will be summoned, but you must also find rest.”

  “Indeed. Find your comfort here, at least for a while. There will be time to speak of druidic spells and bonds and all sorts, but perhaps after you have eaten, yes?” It was Llaran’s turn to chide them.

  Aram preemptively nudged Makasa, knowing how much she hated being lectured.

  But for once, she didn’t put up a fuss, sighing and touching one of her new bandages with a grimace. “Sure. We’re eager to continue on our journey. We didn’t come all this way to—”

  “And how far have you come?” Llaran asked.

  She was interrupted, however, by a larger and considerably furrier face breaking through the crowd. Aram’s initial instinct was to get out his sketchbook, and he saw Makasa reaching for her cutlass. He noticed that the tauren girl was smiling, or rather, she was gasping and throwing her three-fingered hands into the air. No Horde ambusher, then, as perhaps Makasa had expected, just another of the outpost’s residents.

  “Another dryad! Here! How exciting!” The tauren, taller than Makasa and with long, black braids flecked with brown, wore a long and flowing robe. Colorful feathers and beads were sewn into the neck and sleeves. Her eyes were by far her most striking feature, glittery and round, sparkling with the kind of friendly intensity that reminded Aram of Drella. “I’ve been wanting to meet another dryad. By the Earth Mother, I have so many questions!”

  Drella stepped forward, dancing a little, as if they hadn’t just walked for two days and camped in an ash-covered cemetery. The Sentinels around them seemed to regard the tauren with veiled expressions.

  “Hello, new friend! I am Taryndrella the Impressive, this is Murky the Unstung. This shaggy fellow is Hackle the Revenged, and the one with the really big coat is Aram, Wielder of Light. The angry girl with the scary chain is Makasa the Binder. Do you know Master Thal’darah?”

  “Titles and questions, and so much youthful exuberance!”

  Aram glanced away from the strange meeting taking place before him. The voice boomed out of a tall, sturdy night elf, his skin a milky blue, his face covered in a wispy beard, leaves and feathers woven among the strands. He wore a robe much like the tauren’s, though it was more embellished and capped with tall, elaborate armor pieces that pulsed with subtle magic.

  He leaned heavily on a staff, and given the way the tauren stepped back and demurred, Aram could only assume this was the elf they had come to see.

  “Titles and questions,” he repeated, laughing, his bright eyes settling on each of them in turn. “You are safe now and welcome. Look how the wisps dance in the trees at your coming! Even my Sentinels are excited by your arrival.”

  Drella took one tiny step forward, a dainty hoof hovering in mid-air questioningly. “Are you Master Thal’darah?”

  “I am,” he said in that deep, warm voice of his. “It sounds as if you were looking for me. Well now, you
r journey is at an end.”

  Aram felt his shoulders ease, relief trickling over him like cool water. Even if the druid was wrong, even if their journey was nowhere near its end, he was glad to have that moment of peace, and to see Drella smiling brightly, as if they truly had not a care in the world.

  Aram wiped a spot of kimchi off his sketchbook, cursing under his breath. He couldn’t even wait until after supper to begin putting down on paper everything he had seen since leaving the Cloudkicker. After the first sip of fresh juice and a few bites of roasted sagefish smothered in spicy kimchi, his vigor returned. With that energy came his urge to sketch, and so he tried to manage shoveling food into his face, gulping down juice, and moving his pencil without making a mess.

  He wasn’t quite successful, but at least he had managed to draw a quick picture of the long trestle table at the inn and all of those gathered around it. Master Thal’darah sat at the head, with Drella and their new tauren acquaintance on either side of him.

  “Galena,” she had introduced herself breathlessly as they all walked to the inn to put down their packs and rest. “Galena Stormspear! I’m with the Cenarion Circle, well, with Master Thal’darah. He’s teaching me everything he knows. It’s just … you can’t know how exciting it is to meet you all. Life here can get a bit …”

  She had trailed off, aware that her teacher was listening in, but Aram could fill in the blanks. Her excitement—her elation—was clear as Drella’s pleasure at being so admired by the apprentice. Life at Thal’darah Overlook seemed tense for a young tauren, and Galena couldn’t ask them questions fast enough. Aram got the distinct impression that most of the night elves were not willing to shirk their duties to converse with her, and that the travelers contained some of the first friendly faces she had encountered in a long while.

  Where had they come from? How did they avoid the battle in the valley? Why did they need to see Master Thal’darah? Would she be allowed to help with this bond ceremony? It went on and on, a dizzying number of questions, all of which Drella was more than happy to field. And that was for the best; the others didn’t have the patience for it, especially not Makasa, who positioned herself as far down the table as possible. They had been given water for baths and a light snack once they reached the inn, and then a short time later, as dusk deepened, Llaran summoned them from their rooms on the upper level of the inn. Everyone gathered downstairs, and Aram tucked into his food, half listening to Galena pepper Drella with questions, while Makasa brooded over her fish and stew.

  After a time, Drella turned the tables, asking questions as they came to her, jumping to a new subject with little connection or logic while Galena, flustered, struggled to keep up. The tauren had left Mulgore at a young age, her druidic abilities obvious, and she was soon apprenticed to a Cenarion Circle acolyte in Feralas. She wasn’t there long before a letter came, informing all Circle members that Master Thal’darah was taking on a new apprentice at last, and Galena jumped at the chance to go. Aram wondered if she regretted that now, given that, by her own admission, it was difficult to be the only tauren at the Overlook.

  “Watch out,” Makasa said, polishing off a third cup of juice. “I think you might have competition for the title of Drella’s biggest admirer. Look at those moon eyes. I’ll never understand it; she’s exhausting.”

  “She’s practically a newborn,” Aram reminded his sister. The dryad had only been alive a short while, and though physically and mentally mature, still maintained the wide-eyed wonder of a human toddler. “I think it’s nice, Makasa, don’t you prefer this? Food and drink, a safe place to sleep … it sure beats running from ogres in Gadgetzan.”

  “Hackle miss home,” the gnoll cut in. He, too, seemed mystified by the dryad and tauren fawning over each other. “Hackle miss real food.”

  The gnoll, much cleaner after a quick roll in a tub and a subsequent shake, picked up his plate of fish and sniffed, then growled.

  “Why they ruin it with this?” He scooped up a bit of the kimchi with a claw and flung it, the blob of cabbage landing on Murky’s plate. “Make nose itch. Hackle take raw fish next time. Aram tell them. Aram fix it.”

  “Mrgla, blurgly lurk-kelurk,” Murky agreed, lips flapping in disgust at the splodge of kimchi.

  “Raw for us,” Hackle said with a sigh. He found a bit of the fish that had gone unsauced and tore it off with his teeth. “Aram tell them.”

  “I will,” Aram said, amused. “I think it’s rather good.”

  “Is no good, stink like ogre den.”

  Aram smirked. “I think it’s just fermented.”

  “Then Aram eat ogre poop. Hackle have standard.”

  And with that, Aram took the portion of Hackle’s food covered in the deliciously spicy kimchi and ate it himself. That he was now, without hesitation, sharing food off the plate of a gnoll did not go unnoticed.

  “Hate to interrupt bonding time,” Makasa cut in, “but don’t forget why we’re actually here. First thing in the morning you need to find out how to remove your bond with Drella. After that, we’re not staying.” She lowered her voice, glancing nervously down the table at Master Thal’darah, but he wasn’t paying her any attention, instead engrossed in conversation with Drella and Galena. “Don’t forget about the shards. We need a plan, and then we leave.”

  “I know,” Aram insisted. His appetite vanished, and he shut his sketchbook with a grunt. He reached for his shirt, for the compass hidden underneath. Its needle remained fixed to the southeast, toward Lakeshire, and suddenly he sympathized with Hackle—he missed home. He missed the simplicity of life then, when he wasn’t consumed with magical shards; the Voice of the Light; the death of his father, Greydon; the possibility of an even more mysterious uncle, Silverlaine; and a strange bond with a dryad.

  Aram’s gaze drifted down the table, and for a moment he watched Drella, her hair flying back over her shoulders as she laughed with Galena over some new topic.

  “You’re so different from Miri, the other dryad I know. You seem … special,” the tauren was saying.

  “I am,” Drella replied, without a hint of shyness. “Entering my summer has made me feel much happier. But then, I am almost always happy.”

  “Sure,” Galena said with a laugh. “Well, I wish Miri would find her summer; she is never, well, friendly. At least not to me.”

  Somehow, even with fawn’s legs, the dryad made sitting at the table graceful and easy. The bond. He knew they had to break it, that Drella had a greater fate to fulfill, but part of him wanted to guard that connection fiercely. When it was gone, their friendship might change forever.

  When eyes began to droop and the stars shone in earnest, Master Thal’darah insisted they all retire to bed.

  “We will begin the process of removing your bond in the morning,” the druid master promised them. “Galena and I will make preparations tonight, and now it is time you all had some much-deserved rest.”

  With that, Makasa pushed away from the table and disappeared up the stairs. The others followed, Aram leaving the table last. He wanted to talk to Drella before everyone went to sleep, but she trotted away from the stairs and out into the night.

  “I want to sleep under the stars,” she told him, waving happily as she dipped out of the inn. “The moonwell is so beautiful and so bright; it will be perfect company!”

  “Goodnight,” Aram called, surrounded by friends but suddenly lonely.

  He and Makasa shared a space upstairs, and she dropped off to sleep at once, snoring away before he had even blown out his candle. Soon Hackle and Murky joined the chorus of snoozing, Murky’s hiccups and Hackle’s yips audible through the wall. Hackle was no doubt chasing ogres back in the forest, but Aram could imagine that Murky was dreaming about fishing and helping his friends.

  Sitting up in bed, he found himself still wide-awake, and so he finished his sketch of the dinner table, taking more time with Master Thal’darah and Galena. He wanted to put them down accurately, to learn the angles and quirks of
their faces the way he had memorized those of his companions. Galena had such a youthful, gentle look, nothing like some of the fearsome tauren they had seen in the lower wilds. She had the same sturdy, bovine body of other tauren, of course, but she spoke with an almost night elven accent, her voice higher than others of her kind. He carefully re-created her long, intricate braids and the one tuft of black hair that stuck up roguishly from her part.

  Master Thal’darah reminded him in some ways of his departed friend, Thalyss Greyoak, the patient and ancient druid who had sacrificed his life to save Aram. They both possessed the same long, flowing hair and well-kept beard, though Master Thal’darah filled his with decorations. Aram made sure to include the friendly smile lines around the master’s mouth, and the many beads and feathers sewn to his Cenarion robes.

  He sketched the moonwell, too, and the elven Sentinels—Iyneath with his moonsaber, Llaran with her bow drawn, and Aiyell with her trusty owl. After that, sleep eluded him still, and so he turned to a clean page and smoothed his palm over it. Hackle was already homesick, and so was Aram. Glancing at the candle, he decided he had more than enough flame to pen a letter home.

  Mother, he wrote, pulling in a deep, steadying breath. Just thinking about her made tears sting behind his eyes. He wasn’t ashamed of it; a sailor on the Wavestrider had once told him that a man who didn’t get teary-eyed over his mother was no man at all.

  He scratched out Mother, writing instead: Dear Mom.

  Where to begin? He wanted desperately to tell her everything, every truth, tiny and big, in his heart. He wanted to tell her the scary things they had seen, and the times they had laughed, and the moments when he felt hopeless and overwhelmed. But he thought of her reading all of that, and how it would frighten her. So, how to begin?

  Dear Mom,

  I’m writing to you from the Stonetalon Mountains, from a small outpost called Thal’darah Overlook. You wouldn’t believe how beautiful it is here, and how different it is from Lakeshire! The trees are as big as mountains, but only after you cross a valley that’s always on fire. I’ve come so far to get here, I don’t even know where to start …