She hefted the ax. Since entering the Emerald Dream, it had taken on a golden hue. Thura had accepted that as another of the weapon’s mystic properties.
Something just at the left edge of her vision moved toward her.
The orc swung. The ax met no resistance, but she heard a hiss, followed by a wail. Thura caught a glimpse of something that stood on two hooved legs melt away as if it were truly only made of shadow.
But even as the ax cleaved through that figure, another came from the opposite side. The orc spun around. The ax felt so right in her hands as it sliced through another shadowed form.
Again, there came the hiss and the wail.
There were no traces of her fallen enemy nor any of the one preceding it. The other shadows in the mist had withdrawn to greater distances, a sign that they rightly feared her and the ax.
Sneering at their weakness, Thura turned back to her chosen path.
The keep was no longer there.
Thura uttered an epithet, then looked again. The keep was no longer there, but something else was.
It was a tree.
Orcs had learned to carve out lives in harsh, unforgiving lands and so the twisted, almost painful bend of the nearly obscured tree only slightly bothered her. However, Thura decided that such a tree was suitable for this dank place.
But it was not that for which she was searching. The keep had been her guide. Frustrated, the orc started to turn away. The keep had to be somewhere —
Just before the tree would have vanished from her peripheral vision, the orc noticed a change. She immediately focused on it again.
Only…the tree was now the distant and murky silhouette of a tall, cloaked figure.
Almost as quickly as Thura spotted the figure, the mist wrapped around it. What remained of the silhouette once more resembled the tortured tree.
But it was enough to the fixated orc to thrust her toward it. The silhouette had been telling. She recognized that outline, so often had she seen it in her dreams. A tall figure with the shape and stance of a night elf and adorned at the head with antlers. It could be no one else.
Gripping Brox’s ax tighter yet, the orc grinned without humor. At long last, Thura had found Malfurion Stormrage.
16
THE SHADOW REACHES
Tyrande felt the gentle touch of a hand on her cheek. She stirred to find someone kneeling next to her.
It was a smiling Malfurion. He was exactly as she last remembered him. Tall, broad-shouldered for a night elf though not built like a seasoned warrior as Broll Bearmantle was. His face and eyes bore the centuries of toil he had performed in service to his calling and Azeroth. His antlers were long and proud, a symbol of his closeness to nature, to the world that he loved.
Heart leaping, the high priestess pushed herself up enough to tightly embrace the archdruid.
“Mal…” Tyrande whispered, sounding for the moment many millennia younger than she was. “Oh, Mal…I found you at last!
Praise Elune!”
“I have missed you so much,” he returned, holding her just as tight. His tone suddenly lost its pleasure. “But you shouldn’t be here. You should go. I wasn’t expecting you to be the one to find me first…”
“‘Go’?” The high priestess stood. Her expression showed her tremendous disbelief. “I won’t leave you now!”
The archdruid looked around as if wary of something. Tyrande followed his gaze, but saw only the pristine, sweeping landscape of the Emerald Dream. It was as beautiful, as untouched, as Malfurion had ever described it —
Tyrande’s head pounded. “This isn’t right…there’s something wrong about us…”
“This is only an image in your mind,” the archdruid answered, his wariness growing. “I wanted you to see me, to know it was me!”
“Malfurion…”
“Listen to me! It’s all about to fall into place. I need you to turn back! You can only be here because he suspected! I should have known that he would plan for this! I should not even be speaking with you, for fear he senses us and gleans the full truth!”
“Who? Who is ‘he’?”
Malfurion grimaced. “You have to listen! If the Nightmare Lord has something in mind for you, then you need to leave as quickly as possible! He’s why you managed to get this far—”
“I’ve nearly died more than once to reach you!” the stricken high priestess returned somewhat angrily. “No one has led me by the nose—”
“He likes to play his games, torture even those he needs! He roots into your dreams—” Malfurion broke off, laughing bitterly.
“‘Roots’! He’s not the only one who can root! He—” The archdruid suddenly spun from her. Peering at something Tyrande could not see, he growled, “Go back, Tyrande! Everything will be just as needed if you can do that! If you’re not there, his trick will fail and mine will succeed!”
“What trick? What—”
Turning back to her, Malfurion muttered, “I can feel him! He knows, but not enough! I dare not say anything more, even to you, for your thoughts are more open to him! Now leave! It’s your only hope!”
And, with that, he broke contact. Tyrande strained to maintain the link, but to no avail.
Yet she still felt as if he were near. It was a feeling she could not shake. Tyrande looked around. The foul mist was inches from her.
At its edge crowded the black vermin, who seemed eager to return to the area where she stood.
The high priestess almost dismissed her notion…then for some reason she could not comprehend, glanced down next to her.
Less than an inch from her foot was a small, upturned root. It was like a thousand other roots nearby…and yet not. There was something, something not visible, that drew her to it. She felt an urge to touch it.
But as she started to, Tyrande felt Elune fill her. The high priestess stiffened as the Mother Moon made her understand.
The root…was somehow bound to Malfurion.
His words came back to her, his pleading for her to leave him be. Yet, despite the earnestness with which he had spoken to Tyrande, the high priestess was not at all prepared to retreat. If Malfurion had one fault, it was that he felt certain that only he should bear the burdens of the world and only he should risk himself. Tyrande suspected that it had something to do with all the lives he had watched be lost so cruelly during the War of the Ancients, lives that he likely felt he should have somehow been able to save.
She no longer had the glaive, but that did not matter. The night elf started on. There was no sign of the keep, only the cloying mist and the half-seen shapes ever lurking just beyond the edge.
That briefly made her ponder Malfurion’s warning. Am I being guided? Is he right?
But even if that were true, the fact that she had been made aware of it gave her some advantage. Malfurion had gone out of his way to be very cautious when warning her. He had worked so that his captor — this Nightmare Lord — would not know.
Tyrande finally shrugged off her concerns. All that mattered was that she reach Malfurion.
The landscape did not change. The illumination she cast kept the vermin scurrying for the cover of the mist, and whatever else watched her from it also kept back. Satisfied that they were kept at bay, the high priestess continued to search for some sign of her beloved. He was near. The root proved that.
She allowed herself a very brief smile at his cunning. Even with his dreamform captive, he had managed to raise and manipulate some plant — some tree — for his purposes.
The root! Tyrande studied the angle of it. She made an estimation of direction. Certain that she had calculated correctly, the high priestess peered into the mist.
And in the dire fog, she suddenly caught a glimpse of one.
Though it could have been any of ten thousand trees, Tyrande knew that it was the one she sought. The one that would lead her to Malfurion.