“I, uh . . . not so brave,” Anduin admitted. “I was scared to death. But I had to stop him, no matter what the cost.”
Tyrande seemed taken aback, but then she smiled—sweetly, genuinely. “Ah,” she said in a kind voice, “to proceed with what you knew was right even while afraid—that is courage indeed.”
Anduin felt his color rise, but all he said was, “Well, it’s the truth. He couldn’t be allowed to continue.”
Tyrande gave Chromie the signal to resume the scene.
“I will not let you do this. I swear to it,” the image of Anduin cried out.
“Stop me then, human,” Garrosh taunted, knowing Anduin couldn’t physically prevent him from striking the bell a second time. Couldn’t hold back that massive arm, couldn’t even reach him or the bell fast enough. Garrosh proceeded to make a mockery of Anduin’s threat.
Again the awful sound, terrible in its beauty, rang out, and this time the bell had a victim in Garrosh’s champion.
Ishi cried out, his body contorting as the dark entities known in Pandaria as the sha, the very essences of hatred, fear, doubt, and despair, descended upon and into him. Even now, the sound of the orc’s anguish made Anduin’s heart ache.
“This pain!” screamed the orc, who had likely endured more of it than most could ever imagine. “I cannot control it!”
Both Anduins—the one in the courtroom and his image—watched, transfixed, as Ishi struggled. No doubt drawn by the screaming, Horde members began to emerge from the depths of the vaults. Ishi charged his own people, who were forced to fight him or be slaughtered themselves. “Pause,” said Tyrande. “Prince Anduin—why did you not strike earlier, or now?”
“The mallet would only work once. A glancing blow would have wasted my chance. I had to wait till I could strike strongly and true. As for why I didn’t do anything here—I didn’t know what it would do to Ishi.”
“You were concerned for the welfare of an orc champion?”
Anduin was puzzled. “Why shouldn’t I be?”
Tyrande stared at him for just an instant before recovering. “Continue,” she instructed Chromie.
Garrosh kept encouraging Ishi to “fight,” to “master,” to “use” the sha, while Ishi went through every conceivable negative emotion—doubting the Horde’s strength, grieving the fallen, fearing his own death, which claimed him soon after. Ishi fell to his knees, his last thought of his duty, gasping, “Warchief! I . . . I have failed you.”
Garrosh went to the dying warrior and said, calmly and brutally, “Yes, Ishi. You have.”
And suddenly, Anduin was angry. Garrosh had forced the sha upon Ishi, and both he and Anduin had watched how hard the champion had struggled to dominate things that he simply couldn’t. He’d given his life to try to please his warchief, and for all his effort and suffering, he had received the cruelest possible words from Garrosh. Now Anduin did turn his gaze upon the prisoner, feeling his face flush with the emotion, and clenched his jaw when Garrosh, curse him, actually let his lips curl in a tiny smirk of satisfaction.
His bones ached.
“Your interference has cost me a great warrior, young prince,” the image of Garrosh was saying. “You’ll pay with your life.”
“That is where you are wrong, Garrosh.” Anduin’s own voice sounded impossibly young in his ears. He watched himself leap upward. He remembered praying silently with all his being to the Light, asking for peace, for this single strike to ring true. The image of Anduin brought down the hard-won mallet upon the Divine Bell, and saw a great crack mar the beautiful and dangerous-looking surface. Garrosh Hellscream reeled backward, stunned, barely able to keep his balance as the sound washed over and through him.
The then-Anduin turned, and hope shone brightly on his young face. He opened his mouth to speak—
Garrosh recovered, growled, “Die, whelp!” and charged—not at Anduin, but at the bell, which would never again summon sha with its call. The bell that fractured and fell upon Anduin in a rain of brass and agony. The bell that shattered his bones, which now ached so fiercely with remembered torment that it was all Anduin could do not to gasp.
The next thing he was to remember was waking up in the care of pandaren monks and his teacher, the kind and wise Velen, who had saved his life. What the Vision of Time now displayed was new to him, and Anduin forced himself to focus on what he was witnessing rather than the icy-cold ache of his body.
To his surprise, the Vision-Garrosh looked distressed, rather than pleased at having dealt a death-blow to the son of his great enemy. “There is much I do not know about this artifact,” he muttered. “The weak-willed cannot control this sha energy, but I will master it.”
No one dared speak to him. Even his own people stood silently by, doubtless wondering what would happen next. Garrosh roused himself. “At least the human prince is dead,” Garrosh said. The words bit deep. “King Wrynn now knows the price of his continued defiance.” He waved a hand dismissively, turning inward again, his massive brow furrowed. “Leave me. I have much to think about.”
The scene faded. Anduin was glad to see the last of it, but Garrosh’s words—and his expression—confused him. He glanced over at the orc, who wore the same expression as he had in the display—a furrowed brow of deep thought, but no hint as to the nature of those thoughts. Anduin gazed into those yellow eyes, and was pulled away from them only by Tyrande’s voice.
“Chu’shao, your witness,” Tyrande said, stepping back. She bowed to the prince of Stormwind, and her wonderful eyes were kind. Anduin gave her a ghost of a smile, then steeled himself. It was now Baine’s turn to question him.
12
Baine inclined his head. Anduin thought he caught a faint echo of regret from the tauren, but if it was there, it was gone an instant later.
“We have all seen what you endured, Prince Anduin,” Baine said. “For a while, rumors circulated that you were dead. I am very pleased to see that you survived.”
“So am I,” Anduin said, and a small titter rippled through the courtroom. Baine’s ears twitched.
“You said earlier that you were frightened when you confronted Garrosh. How did you feel when you realized the bell was about to fall upon you?”
Anduin blinked and drew back slightly at the question, then recovered. “I . . . it . . . it happened so fast.”
“Try to remember, please.”
The prince licked his lips. “It’s impossible to describe how terrified I was. And how . . . betrayed I felt. That sounds foolish, I know, to feel ‘betrayed’ by an enemy.”
“Why did you come to confront Garrosh at all?”
“To prevent him from invoking the sha.”
“Understood. But why?”
“Because . . .” Anduin paused. The obvious answer, of course, was that he wanted to stop Garrosh from using the sha as a weapon. He’d talked his own father out of the same idea, persuasively arguing that the abominations would do more harm than good. Varian had seen the wisdom of it.
“I wanted Garrosh to understand just what he’d be doing,” he blurted. “I thought if I could make him grasp the price he’d be paying for victory, he’d—well, he’d—”
“He would what?”
“He would see that it wasn’t honorable. That it was—dark in a way I didn’t believe he was dark. That sacrificing his people to those . . . things . . . wasn’t the path toward any kind of victory worth having.” The words tumbled from him, uncensored, unimagined until they passed his lips. But Anduin knew by the easing of pain in his wounded bones that it was the truth—and it was of the Light.
Baine’s body quivered, ever so slightly, and he strode over to Anduin, peering at him intently. “When the weight of the brass pieces of the bell crushed you, I would imagine you were filled with fury. That when you awoke and faced an agonizing and long recovery, you wanted revenge against Garrosh for breaking every bone in your body, after you had come to him with help and wisdom.”