Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde

24

“And one only a fool would be acceptin’ on my words alone,” said Khal’ak.

“You be persuasive.”

“And you be kind.” She laughed easily. “I do have things I need to know, of course. How be it dat I be findin’ you in the company of pandaren, with a man helping you oppose us?”

Vol’jin watched her face for a moment. “Chen Stormstout you know of. He be a friend of long standing. He found me after the Horde was done with me. The monks, who your mogu allies hate, took me in and healed me. They had done the same with the man.”

He drank a bit more wine. “As for opposing you, when I saw an invasion, thinking on who be invading never occurred. I be just repaying a kindness to my benefactors.”

Khal’ak cocked her head. “ ‘When I saw,’ you said. Then the Silk Dancer gave you visions as well.”

Vol’jin nodded. “I thought it might be she.”

“Yes. Ever our patron, she be not pleased with our renewing our ties with the mogu. There were, in the past, I gather, some of our warriors who came to favor the mogu magic, so dey abandoned her. That cultus be long since gone, but she be robust in her remembering.” Khal’ak stared into her wine’s dark depths. “It does not surprise me she be willing to stir up a little trouble now to avoid much trouble later.”

“You get the same visions I do, and you ignore them?”

“I be finding solutions to dem.”

“And I be such a solution?”

“You be more than a solution, Vol’jin.” She leaned in, lowering her voice. “You offer much, and your reward will be equal to your service. For example, right now your brave little band has shown our troops that being Zandalari does not make us arrow-proof. More important, it has reminded the mogu how deadly their former slaves can be. Dat we captured them be goin’ much to our credit. Again, thank you.”

The Darkspear sat back. “If I prove to be such a benefit, do you not fear that your master will be eliminating you and raising me in your place?”

“No. He fears you. He be lacking the spine you showed in refusing the king’s request. He gonna keep me to keep you under control.” She smiled shyly. “And I do not fear you betraying me because the way I gonna keep you under control is to control your friends. Chen Stormstout I do be recognizing. The man, no, but your regard for him be evident.”

“The need for coercion be undercutting your offer of trust.”

“No, I just wish a brake on your actions until you have a full chance to be considerin’ what I offer. I be mindful of your refusal to join us in the past and your rejecting of Garrosh’s dictates. You be principled, which be a wonderful trait. It be one I value.” She set her cup aside and knelt there with her hands open in her lap. “If you be joining us with your full and open cooperation, I will free your companions.”

“And not be setting hunters after them as you did the others?”

“Had we bargained for their safety, no one would be pursuing them.” She raised a hand. “But, again, dis be not a decision for you to make now. Your companions gonna be comfortable—not enjoyin’ the luxuries I offer you, but comfortable.” Khal’ak smiled. “And, tomorrow, you gonna see firsthand what the mogu bring to our partnership. Once you be having your eyes opened to dat, you gonna see why my offer be most generous and gonna be worth serious consideration.”

Their conversation turned to things more banal. Vol’jin had no doubt that had he so inclined himself, she would have slept with him. She would have seen intimacy as a way to encourage his cooperation—but only in someone of inferior intellect. She had not taken him for a fool, so she’d know he was bedding her simply to make her believe he was easily manipulable. She would distrust that and him.

On the other hand, refraining gave Vol’jin some measure of power over her. Competent though she might be, she was also clearly infatuated with him. She’d not have remembered the impression of his foot in sand from years ago were that not so. She would want consummation of their relationship simply to justify her years of interest in him.

He could use that, no matter which way he replied to her offer.

They spoke for a while longer, then slept in the courtyard under the open sky. Vol’jin woke with the first hints of dawn lightening the dark vault above. He hardly felt rested but wasn’t fatigued. Nervous energy was making up for his lack of sleep.

After a simple breakfast of smoked golden carp and sweet rice cakes, the servants again tended to his and Khal’ak’s bodily needs. Then they mounted raptors and headed back toward the southwest. Khal’ak said nothing. She sat on a raptor well and looked magnificent as the wind tugged at her hair and cloak. In that image Vol’jin saw the Zandalari as they saw themselves. This erased all doubt in his mind as to why they so often sought to reclaim what they had lost before. To know how far you have fallen and to fear never to reach that point again would devour one from within.

They headed for a tall, stoop-shouldered mountain and rode around it. Here things had gone to ruin, though not through natural aging. The area had been broken by war long ago. Though weather might have washed away blood and soot, and golden plants buried bones and detritus, the remains of arches marked the violence that had shattered them.

As they came up the road through the mountains, dim though the day was, Pandaria’s majesty made the place beautiful despite the signs of destruction. Vol’jin felt he had been here before, though it could have been that he understood from his time in Orgrimmar the power that had once resided here. While the Darkspears were content with modest dwellings that served their purposes, he recognized the needs of others to prove their superiority through grand works. He’d heard of the tall statues at Ironforge and Stormwind, and knew this place would similarly memorialize the mogu past.

The mogu did not disappoint.

The road led to a rough-hewn opening in the mountainside, providing the glimpse of a massive gray statue on a bronze base. The statue depicted a mogu warrior standing tall, his hands on the haft of a huge mace. Reduced to normal proportions, the weapon would have defied Garrosh’s ability to lift it. Though the statue’s impassive mask provided no clue as to the personality of the mogu, the weapon spoke of power, cruelty, and the desire to crush all opposition.

Khal’ak and Vol’jin did not enter the tomb, for in the distance, proceeding toward them at a stately pace, came a parade. Zandalari troops with pennants flying from spears led the procession. Behind them, in an elegant pandaren coach drawn by kodos, a half dozen Zandalari flanked three mogu. Behind them came a smaller coach with a dozen Zandalari witch doctors. Fourth, right before the Zandalari troops bringing up the rear, came a rickety wagon bearing Chen, Tyrathan, the three monks, and four humans, all male. Wood creaked and draft beasts grunted as their hooves thunderously shook the ground.

When the procession stopped before the tomb, the witch doctors took possession of the prisoners and hustled them within. Zandalari and their mogu hosts followed. Khal’ak snapped commands to the captain leading the remaining troops. They fanned out to take up defensive positions as she and Vol’jin stepped into the tomb’s dark precincts.

One of the mogu—a Spiritrender, if Vol’jin would have been forced to guess—pointed two fingers at the prisoners. The Zandalari witch doctors brought Dao and Shan forward, positioning them at the near-left and far-right corners of the statue’s base. The mogu pointed again, and two men were hauled into position at the other two corners.

Vol’jin felt a wave of shame for Tyrathan. The pandaren monks held their heads high as their captors led them to their positions. They didn’t have to be shoved or coerced. The monks had a quiet dignity about them, completely denying the reality of what they had to know would happen. The men, on the other hand, whether lacking balance or being possessed of an acute sense of their own mortality, wept and had to be dragged into place. One could not stand and had to be held upright by two Zandalari. The other blubbered and urinated on himself.

Khal’ak half turned to Vol’jin and whispered, “I tried convincin’ the mogu dat all they needed were men, but when they saw the Shado-pan fighting, they insisted. I was able to make Chen and your man off-limits, but…”

Vol’jin nodded. “Leadership be demanding uneasy decisions.”

The mogu Spiritrender approached Brother Dao at the near-left corner. With one hand, the Spiritrender yanked the monk’s head back, exposing his throat. With the other, using a single talon, the mogu stabbed Dao’s throat—not a killing blow, not anything more than annoying. The nail came away heavy with a droplet of pandaren blood.

The mogu touched the drop to the corner of the bronze pedestal. A tiny gout of flame shot up. It shrank again into a small blue guttering tongue.

The Spiritrender moved next to the man at the front. His blood drop, when deposited at the corner, caused a small geyser of water to spurt upward. It calmed down into a tiny puddle. Its surface rippled in time with the flame’s dance.

The mogu then came around to the second man. His blood produced a small cyclone, red in hue. It became invisible after that, save for the slight flutter it introduced to the man’s dirty robe. Again, the flutter matched the water’s ripple.

Last the mogu came to Brother Shan. The monk lifted his own chin, exposing his throat. The mogu took his blood, and when it touched the bronze, Vol’jin interpreted the resulting volcanic eruption as being fueled by Shan’s anger. The molten earth did not quiet but continued to flow. It extended in lines toward the water and the cyclone.

Air, fire, and water also expanded. Where they met, they warred. The power of their collisions rose straight up in semitransparent, opalescent walls of force. They shot to the roof, quartering the statue. Sharp thunder sounded. Cracks appeared in the stone, huge rents as keen as those that remained on the broken stones outside. They radiated out like roots from a tree, and as Vol’jin figured it, when that statue collapsed, the tomb itself would be filled to a depth of ten feet.

Enough to bury us all.

But the statue didn’t collapse. The energy lines shrank back down and drew into the cracks. For a handful of heartbeats, they coalesced at the center, where the mogu’s heart would have been. They pulsed twice, maybe four times; then energy pumped out through invisible veins. An opalescent blush suffused the entire statue, and beneath it the statue cracked and cracked again. It was as if the glow put the statue under incredible pressure, like a millstone grinding it into dust.

And yet the power let it retain its shape.

Then, from ankle and wrist, an ethereal tendril flicked out. It looked like fog. It wrapped around Brother Dao’s face. The monk had thrown his head back to scream, and the fog flowed into his body. In the blink of an eye, the glow had surrounded him. And crushed him like a grape.

The slurry of what Brother Dao had been flowed back up through the tendril. Only after his horror ended did Vol’jin notice that the other three had vanished as well. The glow returned to the statue and grew brighter. It pulsed and intensified. Two spots burned where the eyes had been.

Then the magic contracted in a rippling series of pops and cracks. As the glow blazed, heat flared, then dropped off abruptly. The outline began to shrink. At the same time, the statue’s arms spread. Lifeless stone compressed itself into thick muscles sliding beneath black skin. The light drew itself into the statue, the flesh healing along the jagged lines where stone had broken. It left no scars, only a peerless mogu warrior, naked and invincible, standing on a bronze dais.

The other two mogu hurried forward. They both dropped to a knee before him. With bowed heads, one offered a thick golden cloak trimmed in black. The other held up a golden baton of office. The mogu took the baton first, then stepped to the floor and allowed the other mogu to dress him.

Vol’jin studied the mogu’s face intensely. He assumed that were he dragged out of the grave after millennia, he might be unguarded in his first few moments as he assessed what had happened. He caught a flicker of contempt when the warlord saw Zandalari present, and pure fury at a pandaren presence.

The warlord took a step toward where Chen and Brother Cuo stood, but centuries of death had made him a bit slow. Khal’ak interposed herself between him and the prisoners. As Vol’jin stood beside her and back one step, he realized that she’d chosen their vantage point for the ceremony anticipating this eventuality.

She bowed but did not go to a knee. “Warlord Kao, I be welcoming you in the name of General Vilnak’dor. He awaits your pleasure at the Isle of Thunder, where he resides with your resurrected master.”

The mogu looked her up and down. “Killing pandaren will honor my master and will not delay us.”

Khal’ak gestured with an open hand toward Vol’jin. “But it would be spoiling the gift Shadow Hunter Vol’jin Darkspear wishes to make of these two to your master. If it be pandaren you wish to slay, I gonna arrange a hunt as we travel. But dese two be promised.”

Kao and Vol’jin exchanged glances. The warlord understood what was happening but was not prepared to deal with it at the moment. The hatred flaring in his dark eyes, however, informed Vol’jin that his part in this play of manners would not be forgiven.

The mogu warlord nodded. “I wish to kill a pandaren for every year I have been in the grave, and two for every year my master has been dead. Arrange it, troll, unless your shadow hunter has promised more of them to my master.”

Vol’jin’s eyes narrowed. “Warlord Kao, you would be slaying thousands upon thousands. Your empire fell for the want of pandaren labor. What you want may be just. The result would be tragic. Much has changed, my lord.”

Kao snorted and turned away, stalking off to where the other mogu stood with Zandalari officials.

Khal’ak cautiously exhaled. “Well played.”

“And you, for anticipating him.” Vol’jin shook his head. “He gonna demand the lives of Chen and Cuo.”

“I know. The monk I gonna likely have to give him. The mogu be hatin’ the Shado-pan to the depths of their dark souls. I gonna find another to replace Chen. To the mogu, they all be lookin’ alike anyway.”

“If he discovers the deception, you gonna be killed.”

“As you and Chen and your human gonna be.” Khal’ak smiled. “Like it or not, Vol’jin Darkspear, our fortunes now be hopelessly intertwined.”