Medivh collapsed.
The Lion of Azeroth had been drinking.
He lay outstretched on the bar in the Lion’s Pride Inn, surrounded by empty bottles. An equally empty tankard dangled from his fingers. His eyes were closed, and Garona wondered if he was unconscious.
She took a step forward, trying to move quietly, but even so Lothar heard her and his eyes opened. He didn’t look at her, but kept his gaze fixed on the ceiling. Garona wondered if she had should have come. Perhaps Medivh had been wrong. Perhaps this was foolishness, to think that a human could care for an orc, particularly one who could easily be held responsible for the brutal murder of his only child.
But she thought of the Guardian’s words. She was here. She would speak. At least she would know that she had tried.
“I’m sorry.”
He didn’t answer, and Garona had almost turned to leave when, at last, he spoke.
“Callan’s mother died in childbirth. I blamed him for it. For years. I’m not going to blame you.”
His voice was less slurred than Garona had expected, and he was obviously aiming for a conversational, relaxed tone. But she, who had tasted so much pain, could recognize its sharp, bitter notes in the voice of another.
Her eyes widened at the words. Lothar had been carrying such a burden… She moved forward. He sat up and slipped off the bar, stepping back as she drew closer. She halted. He looked almost as awful as Medivh: pale, save where his cheeks were flushed with drink. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen, and he trembled. Suddenly he whirled, flinging the tankard against the wall. It shattered with a musical crash.
He was in a place Garona knew well. A place where anger and grief and guilt collided in an unholy trinity of torment. He was a soldier without his armor in front of her now, raw and aching and unable to hide any of it. She stepped forward, reaching to touch his face, wanting to do whatever she could to ease a pain that was obviously ripping him apart.
“He was so young,” Lothar whispered. His eyes were red from weeping. She trailed her lips over his bearded cheek, mindful of the sharpness of her tusks, then pulled back, gazing at him. “My whole life,” he rasped, “I’ve never felt as much pain as I do now…”
Lothar’s voice, and Garona’s heart, broke on the last word. Then he whispered, “I want more…”
Garona understood at once. Her whole life, she, the cursed, had been in pain. It was never the physical pain of broken bones or ripped skin that hurt the most. It was the pain that stitches and poultices and healing drafts could not mend: the pain of the soul, the heart. More than once, she had found healing, respite, from that torment in physical pain, which provided a distraction and allowed the spirit to, somehow, find its own way. Sometimes it did not work, but sometimes it did.
He lifted his eyes to her, and if there had been any question that she loved, and that she belonged here, at this moment, it vanished like mist beneath the sun.
She reached out to him, gently touching his face. He closed his eyes and tears, warm and wet, slipped beneath the tightly shut lids. Then, slowly, ready to stop if he did not wish this, Garona began to dig in her nails.
His eyes flew open wide, and in those blue depths Garona saw desire. Lothar reached out, pulled her to him, and pressed his mouth on hers.
And then, there was no pain at all.
16
Day or night, it made no difference. Work continued on building the Great Gate, whether that work was done by sunlight or torchlight, as it was now. Orgrim glanced briefly at the orcs laboring in the flickering firelight, and at the construct that disappeared up into darkness. It was coming along swiftly. It would be ready in time.
There was more on his mind than the portal, though. Before this day’s decisions, his life had seemed simple. Choices had been clear to him. It was Durotan who had always seemed to agonize over the gray shades when, to Orgrim, things were either black or white. But now that he had made his decision, he suddenly understood what his friend had wrestled with. Orgrim now stood beside Gul’dan, who occupied an ornately carved chair on a platform above the gate, supervising the work as ordinary orcs might observe ants.
On Gul’dan’s other side huddled a human slave. It seemed that with his pet Garona turned traitor, the warlock felt the absence of someone crouching at his feet. Garona, though, had never looked like this: pale, emaciated, staring at nothing. Orgrim could count the human’s ribs.
It was not a pleasant sight, so Orgrim looked to the Great Gate. He pointed to the two statues that flanked what would be the portal’s opening. They were representations of the same figure—a tall, too-slender being whose face was hidden by a cowl. “Who is it?”
“Our… benefactor,” Gul’dan said, his voice a rough purr on the word.
Orgrim scoffed in surprise. “A new world in exchange for a statue? Gods are strange creatures.”
Gul’dan chuckled. Ever since he had first arrived at Frostfire Ridge, asking the Frostwolves to join the Horde, Gul’dan had unsettled Orgrim, and never more than when he laughed.
“Frostwolves,” the warlock said. “You are a practical people. Those of us from the south have always admired that about you.” He turned to look down at his slave, smiling with apparent affection. He extended his hand, and both his eye and the tips of his fingers burned bright green. He waved his hand, languidly. A thin, misty trail snaked from the human to Gul’dan’s green-tipped fingers. The human’s eyes widened in terrorized agony, but he made no sound. He began to struggle, weakly, and choke, withering before Orgrim’s gaze. It was as if Gul’dan was literally drinking the creature’s life energy.
He is, thought Orgrim. Spirits help us, he is. He found he had to fight an instinct to flee.
Gul’dan dropped his hand, and the human sagged back, his thin chest heaving.
“When the portal opens,” and Gul’dan’s voice was relaxed, almost dreamy, “and the rest of the Horde joins us, we will gift them the fel. All of them.”
Orgrim’s fists clenched. “Durotan did not agree to this,” he said snapped, angrily.
“And why would you care what that traitor thinks?” Gul’dan’s eyes were radiant with the bright green hue of fel. How much of this thing is still an orc? Orgrim wondered with a surge of horror. When the warlock spoke, his voice was strident, harsh, and biting. “It is time for a new leader of the Frostwolf clan. One who has the best interests of his orcs in mind. One,” and he placed a hand immodestly on his own chest, “who appreciates Gul’dan’s vision. His power!” His green lips stretched in a wide smile, and again extended his hand to the slave, taking another sip of that pathetic creature’s life energy.
“Come,” Gul’dan said, as the human, little more than a skeleton now, drooped, panting. “I will grant you the fel.”
My master is dark and dangerous. Garona had said this to Durotan, to the Frostwolves. Garona, who had arranged for the humans to meet with Durotan. Garona, as green as Gul’dan, but as unlike him as could be imagined.
She had said this, and she had been completely right. Was she—was Durotan—right about allying with the humans against him?
“Durotan, he…” Orgrim struggled to appear sincere, though his heart was pounding. “He has poisoned the Frostwolves against the fel. Let me gather them. Bring them here. Grant me the fel in front of them—let them see how much stronger I become.”
Gul’dan’s eyes narrowed. Orgrim forced himself to project calm, meeting those eyes evenly, even as at the corner of his vision he watched the human gasp for breath. The warlock considered.
“As I said,” Gul’dan said finally, “a practical people. Summon them, then. This is not Draenor, Frostwolf. This is a new dawn! The time of the Horde.”