Michael Stackpole - Vol'jin - Shadows of the Horde

“I be not fearing you.”

“I know. And I have killed men, as have you.” The man set his canister on the table. “This troll, Keren’dal he called himself, would pray. That’s what I thought, and I mentioned it. He said he was speaking to the spirits. I forget what he called them.”

Vol’jin shook his head. “There would be no forgetting. He never told you. Secrets be secrets.”

“Times he would be irritable, like you. Those were times when he spoke to them but got no answers.”

“Does your Holy Light answer you, manthing?”

“I’ve long since stopped believing in it.”

“Which be why it abandoned you.”

Tyrathan laughed. “I know why I am abandoned. For the same reason as you.”

Vol’jin locked his face into a neutral mask but knew that by that very act, he had betrayed himself. The fact was that since he had tracked through Tyrathan’s memories, since he had seen the world through the man’s eyes, the loa had been distant and quiet. It felt as if the storm that had raged around the monastery still raged in the spirit realm. He could see Bwonsamdi and Hir’eek and Shirvallah, but only in dim, gray silhouettes that vanished in waves of white.

Vol’jin still believed in the loa, in their leadership and gifts, in the necessity of their worship. He was a shadow hunter. He could read tracks with the same facility as Tyrathan, and just as easily he could commune with the loa. Yet in the storm, tracks vanished and swirling winds stole words.

He’d tried to reach them. His latest attempt had been, in fact, what made him late to meet Tyrathan. Vol’jin had composed himself in his cell, had moved beyond awareness of his surroundings, but could not breach the storm’s barrier. It seemed as if the cold and the distance from his home and even his having walked inside the human’s flesh had distracted him. He could not focus to punch through and bridge the distance between himself and the loa.

It was as if once Bwonsamdi had relinquished his claim on Vol’jin, the loa had lost interest.

The troll’s head came up. “Why be you abandoned?”

“Fear.”

“I be not afraid.”

“But you are.” Tyrathan tapped his own temple with a finger. “I can still feel you in my mind, Vol’jin. Being inside my skin terrified you. Not because you found it repulsive—not just because you find it repulsive—but because you found me so fragile. Oh, yes, that sense remains with me. Bitter, oily, it will never go away. It’s an insight I shall value, I am sure, but you miss its import to you.”

Vol’jin nodded once, though he did not want to.

“My being so easily breakable reminded you how close you were to death. There I was, leg broken, trapped, unable to escape, knowing I would die. And you knew the same thing when they tried to kill you. Can you remember what happened after?”

“Chen found me. Brought me here.”

“No, no, that you’ve been told.” The man shook his head. “What do you remember, Vol’jin?”

“When I be walking in your skin, be you living in mine?”

“No. Nor would I do that on a bet. Worse than you knowing how vulnerable I am would be my knowing how invulnerable you feel. But to the point. Do you remember what happened after? Do you know how you got to where Chen found you? Do you even know why you’re alive now?”

“I live, manthing, because I refused to die.”

The little bug of a man laughed arrogantly. “So you tell yourself. But this is what you’re afraid of. You don’t know. The link in the chain of experiences between who you were and who you are now has been severed. You can look back at who you were, and you can wonder if that’s still you, but there’s a void. You can’t be sure.”

Vol’jin growled. “And you be sure?”

“Who I am?” Tyrathan laughed again, but the timbre shifted. Melancholy and a hint of madness ran through it. “You saw what you saw. Do you wish to know the rest of it? What you didn’t see?”

Vol’jin again agreed with a nod, wanting to avoid assessing the man’s words.

“I stopped being Tyrathan Khort. I crawled from that place. Not a man, a beast. Perhaps I saw myself as a troll would see me. Wounded, pathetic, driven by thirst, by hunger. I, a man who had dined with lords and princes, eating the finest flesh that I had placed on the table, I was reduced to prying grubs from dying wood. I ate roots I hoped would finish me or heal me but often found those that just made me sicker. I covered myself with mud to keep vermin away. I wove twigs and leaves into my hair so I could hide from hunters on both sides. I shied from anything and anyone until happened upon by a pandaren gathering herbs, humming happily to himself.”

“Why hadn’t you summoned your companion?”

That stopped Tyrathan. He looked down, remaining silent. He swallowed hard and his voice grew tighter and small. “My companion had bound himself to the man I had been. I would not dishonor him by having him see me as I was.”

“And now?”

The man shook his head. “I am no longer Tyrathan Khort. My companion no longer answers me.”

“Be this because you fear death?”

“No, I fear other things.” The man looked up, his eyes glistening emerald. “You fear death.”

“Dying not be scaring me.”

“It was more than your death to which I referred.”

The man’s comment sank a blade to the hilt in Vol’jin’s breast. He had seen the wisdom of the chain analogy, though he hated it. Clearly the Vol’jin he had been had made mistakes that resulted in his almost being murdered. Yet he lived and had learned, so he would not make the same mistake again. But something in his mind twisted that notion such that it made who he had once been somehow wrong, inferior. While Vol’jin rejected that concept and accepted that he was capable of error, he could not reject the idea that his changed circumstances meant he could not be the troll he had been.

The chain be severed. The links be gone.

With that loss, however, came new perspective on the greater picture. Vol’jin was not just a troll. He was a shadow hunter. He was the leader of the Darkspears. He was a leader within the Horde. The troll nearly had died. Did the distance from the loa signal the death of the shadow hunter? And did his death mean the Darkspears would die and the Horde would die?

Does this mean my father’s dream be dying? If his dream died, would it then mock the battle to free the Echo Isles from Zalazane? All the blood that had been shed would be for nought, all the pain meaningless. Event after event, everything in his life and beyond it, trailing back into troll history, all of it crumbled.

Do I fear that my failure, my death, be leading to the deaths of the Darkspears, of the Horde, of trolls themselves? He visualized the black chasm between lying in a pool of blood in a dark cave and waking up in the monastery. Will that void be swallowing everything?

The man’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “Do you want to know the truly cruel thing, Vol’jin?”

“Tell me.”

“You and I, we have died. We are not who we were.” Tyrathan looked down at his empty hands. “What we must do now is create ourselves—not re-create, but create. This is why it is cruel. When we first did this, we had all the energy of youth. We did not know that attaining our dreams would be impossible—we just went out and got them. Innocence shielded us. Enthusiasm and unflagging confidence got us through. But now we have none of that. Now we are old, wiser, tired.”

“Our burden be lighter.”

The man smirked. “True. I think this is why the simplicity of the monastery appeals to me. It is spare. Duties are defined. The chance to excel is present.”