Lorena sighed. If the airship was already prepared, Kristoff had made this decision before she ever walked in the room. Still, she had one last card to play. "I think we should wait until Lady Proudmoore returns."
"You're entitled to think that." Kristoff walked back over to the throne and sat in it, placing his arms rather theatrically on the flared rests on either side of him. "However, Lady Proudmoore is busy helping her precious orc friends, while they mount defenses and prepare to destroy us. I will not allow what she has built to be destroyed by her own shortsightedness when it comes to Thrall. Now then, Colonel, you have your orders. Kindly carry them out."
"Kristoff, this is a mistake. Let me try to find Strov and find out—"
"No." Then Kristoff softened, and lowered his arms to his side. "Very well, Colonel, I will grant you one concession: you may assign two soldiers to search for Private Strov. I can spare no more than that."
She supposed that was the best she was going to get from the chamberlain. "Thank you. Now if you'll excuse me, it seems I have to put a senior staff together."
Picking up the scroll once again with his right hand, Kristoff waved dismissively with his left. "You may go."
She turned on her heel and angrily left the throne room.
Fourteen
As Aegwynn told the story of how she was made Guardian, Jaina found surprise piling upon shock. The histories she had read had always painted the appointment of Aegwynn in nothing but a positive light. The notion that the council was reluctant to appoint her, and did so despite misgivings about her sex—and that they would have resisted her methods so thoroughly—was completely alien to her.
Of course, Aegwynn's memories of those days were several centuries old. "Your account of matters does not match what is in the history scrolls, Magna."
"No," Aegwynn said with a sigh. "It wouldn't. Better to let you young mages think that all wizards function in perfect harmony. Figure you might learn from their lack of example." She shook her head and slumped a bit farther in her seat. "But no, they didn't want a girl there, and only appointed me because they didn't have a choice. I was the best qualified—certainly more than the other four. And they regretted it every minute." She sat back up straight. "In the end, we all did. If it wasn't for me…"
Jaina shook her head. "That's ridiculous. You did so much."
"What did I do? I insisted that Tirisfal be more proactive in dealing with the demons, but what did my insistence accomplish, exactly? For eight centuries, I tried to stem the tide, to no avail. Zmodlor was just the first. So many demons, so many battles, and in the end I was still tricked by Sargeras. I—"
This time, Jaina didn't need to hear the story. "I know what happened to you when you faced Sargeras. You destroyed his physical form, but his soul remained inside you—and was passed on to Medivh."
Chuckling bitterly, Aegwynn said, "And you still think I was a great wizard? I let my arrogance interfere with my judgment. I assumed the Tirisfalen to be a group of hidebound old fools, rather than what they truly were: experienced mages who knew better than me. After I ‘defeated' Sargeras, I became more arrogant, if that's even possible. I ignored every summons the council sent me, disregarded their procedures, disobeyed their orders. After all, I beat Sargeras, and he was a god, so what did they know?" She snarled. "I was such an idiot."
"Don't be ridiculous." Jaina couldn't believe this. Bad enough that the greatest wizard of her time, the woman she'd idolized all her life, turned out to be such an unpleasant person, but now she was just being idiotic. "It was Sargeras. Any mage would have made the same mistake you did. As you said, he was a god. He knew he would have to trick you because of your power, and he knew how to manipulate you. What you did was perfectly natural."
Aegwynn stared at one of the corners of the ramshackle hut that she apparently called home. "I did far far more than that. There was also Medivh."
Now Jaina was even more confused. "I knew Medivh, Magna. He was—"
Whirling to look at Jaina, Aegwynn snapped, "I'm not talking about what my son was. I'm talking about how he was."
"What do you mean?" Jaina asked, genuinely confused. "Medivh was fathered by Nielas Aran, and—"
" ‘Fathered'?" Aegwynn let out a noise that sounded like a rock shattering. "That's far too generous a term for it."
Sixty—nine years ago…
The summons had been insistent this time, which was the only reason why Aegwynn responded to it. The Guardians of Tirisfal had changed over the years. The three elves were the same, but the humans and the gnome had all died and been replaced, and then their replacements died and themselves had successors. In many ways, though, they had not changed at all. Rather than deal with them in any way, or deal with an apprentice, Aegwynn had used her magicks to extend her life so she could continue to do her duty as Guardian.
She had almost fallen to her death while standing on a parapet in Lordaeron, casting a seeker spell for one of Sargeras's former thralls, rumored to be out and about in the city. In the midst of the incantation, the council had decided to hit her with a summons so powerful that she almost lost her balance. It was the third summons in as many days, and the first that had interfered with her ability to function.
Realizing that she would not hear the end of it until she answered, she teleported to the Tirisfal Glade. She stood on top of the very rock Falric—who had also long since died, as had her other three fellow apprentices, all perishing while fighting demons—had transmuted into fool's gold all those centuries ago, time having exposed and tarnished it so it was a dull brown instead of the bright golden color it was eight hundred years past.
"What is it that's so important that you interrupt my work?"
"It has been eight centuries, Aegwynn," one of the new humans said. Aegwynn had never bothered to learn his name. "It is past time you relinquished your duties."
Drawing herself up to her full height—which made her taller than any of the men surrounding her in this glade—she said, "I am properly addressed as ‘Magna. That's one of those ridiculous rules you insist on foisting upon the magical world." The word was a dwarven one meaning "protector," and had been the honorific for every Guardian since the first. Aegwynn didn't care much for titles, but the council's insistence on the rules and regulations, and their disapproval of her flaunting them, made her sensitive to their own violations.
Relfthra threw it back in her face. "Ah, so now you're a stickler for rules, eh?"
The human gave Relfthra a look, and then said, "The point, Magna, is that you know as well as any of us the risks of what you are doing. The longer you extend your age, the greater the risk that it will be undone. The de—aging magicks are not precise, nor are they stable. In mid—conflict, in mid—casting, you could find yourself suddenly brought to your natural age. If that happens without a successor—"
Aegwynn held up a hand. The last thing she needed from these fools was a lecture on the ways of magic. She was a stronger magician than any of them. Had they faced down Sargeras himself? "Very well. I will find a successor and transfer the Guardian power to that person."
Gritting his teeth, the human said, "We will choose your successor, just as we chose Scavell's—and that of every Guardian before him."