Michael Stackpole - Vol'jin - Shadows of the Horde

Chen nodded. “Yes, both of you, you found the freedom. Good.” He looked over to where Taran Zhu sat, his bowl yet untouched. “And you, Lord Taran Zhu?”

The eldest monk stared at the bowl, then lifted it carefully in two paws. He sniffed, then sipped. He sniffed again, then drank a little more before setting his bowl down.

“This is not for me a memory. It is a portrait of now. Of a state of being of the world.” He slowly bowed his head. “And of freedom, for change. It portends coming change. Crushing of enemies, perhaps; a coming winter, most like. But as you will never brew exactly this brew again, so the world will never again know this time or, alas, this peace.”

With some bitterness lingering on his tongue from Chen’s offering, Vol’jin took himself out and away from the monastery. Taran Zhu’s remark echoed in his head and found resonance with Tyrathan’s tale of harvest time among men. Autumn, the time the world died, death being the line drawn between old and new, another definition for change. Cycles like that implied new, and creatures with an awareness of self and of time often chose a season or other arbitrary chronological point to mark the end or herald the beginning.

End of what? Beginning of what?

He had not lied when he shared the emotions and memories triggered by Chen’s brew—though he did realize they were harsh and counter to what the pandaren brewmaster had expected. But they were a troll’s memories, and no less valid because they were not those of a pandaren. Any troll would have felt the same thing, for that was the nature of what it was to be a troll. Trolls be masters of the world .

Vol’jin shivered as he worked his way up the mountain and toward the north. His feet found snow and he squatted there in shadow. He drank in the cold, wanting it to toughen him, but having it remind him of the chill of the grave. Trolls once were masters of the world.

His father, Sen’jin, had looked at other trolls and had seen the folly of their desires to rise again. Those trolls sought to bend the world to their will. They wanted to subjugate everything and everyone. But why?

So they could feel the freedom Chen’s brew invoked?

In an instant, he caught the flash of insight that his father must have had, yet had never shared. If the goal was to feel that freedom, the question was whether conquest was the only path to that goal. Freedom from fear, from want, freedom to see a future, none of those things demanded dead enemies. They might require that some enemies die, but dead enemies were not a sacrifice that would secure those things.

The troll thought of the tauren at Thunder Bluff. They lived there in relative peace and isolation. While many of them joined and fought for the Horde, they did not appear to be driven to do so. They joined because it was the right and honorable thing, to aid their comrades in fighting the Alliance, not because it sanctified some millennia-old traditions.

It wasn’t as if his father had advocated abandoning the old ways. Vol’jin had seen the occasional troll—blue tauren, as Chen had called them—who had gone to live with the tauren and adopted their ways. He couldn’t recall if they seemed more or less at peace with themselves, but their disjointed relationship with their traditions left them a half step out of sync with others. It was as if they had traded one tradition for another, and functioned within neither terribly well.

Sen’jin had great respect for troll traditions. Had he not, had he wished to break with them completely, Vol’jin never would have headed down the path to becoming a shadow hunter. His father had always encouraged him in his pursuit, and had done so by looking forward. He always stressed lessons in leadership, not traditions to copy blindly.

A comment Chen had made and had attributed to Taran Zhu, about ships and anchors and water, came back to Vol’jin as the troll rose and headed for higher ground and colder shadows. Traditions could be the water that permitted the ship to travel, or they could anchor it and prevent all movement. The loa, and what they demanded of trolls, could be seen as an anchor. The loa and their needs were born in an earlier time. For their demands, and for their glory, trolls had raised great empires and razed civilizations.

Cutting himself off from them could free him from the anchor, but it would leave him to be tossed about on unfriendly seas. It was the sort of rash and radical decision that his father would have counseled against. It occurred to Vol’jin that the loa could be the tide and waves to propel the ship forward.

Which makes our history an anchor, ever trapping us in the same bay .

Before he could explore that thought, however, he came around a corner on the path and found Tyrathan Khort facing northeast, staring off into the misty distance. He hesitated, wishing only to escape into his own solitude, and not wishing to disturb the man’s.

“You’re more quiet than most trolls, Vol’jin, but I’d have long since died a thousand times over if I couldn’t hear one sneaking up on me.”

Vol’jin raised his head. “Trolls do not sneak. And you did not hear me.” He watched the way the mountain wind molded a red woolen cloak to the man’s body. “Chen’s brew, or my scent.”

Tyrathan turned slowly, smiling. “I spent many hours getting your scent out of bedding.”

“I would not be disturbing you.”

The man shook his head. “I mean to apologize to you.”

“You have done me no slight.” Vol’jin squatted, his feet buried in snow. He meant to say that any slight a man might do him would be beneath his notice, but he contented himself with the words as spoken.

“When I said you were afraid, it was to strike out at you. That sense of you in my head remained. It haunts me still. Less and less, but you are there. I thought I could drive you out by driving you away, by hurting you.” Tyrathan glanced down, his brow furrowed. “That’s unbecoming the man I was, and not part of the man I hope to become.”

Vol’jin’s eyes narrowed. “Who be it you wish to become?”

The man shook his head. “I know better who I cannot be than who I will be. Do you know why I was stopped here the day the storm came? Do you know why I was so lost I did not see it coming? You, above all the others, must be aware that such a storm could not steal upon me.”

“Your body was here. Your mind was not.”

“Yes.” Tyrathan half-turned, sweeping a hand out over the distant green valleys. “I swore, when undertaking Stormwind’s call to action here, that I would not die before I saw the green valleys of my home once more. It was my pledge to my… family. I have always kept my word. They knew I would return. But the person I was, the person who made that pledge, isn’t here anymore. Am I still bound by it?”

Something in Vol’jin’s stomach tightened. Be I bound by traditions and promises made by trolls long dead? Do their dreams and desires hold me still?

The troll flicked at the snow with a finger, scraping through the crust. “If you be assuming the mantle of the man you once were, you be him again. If you are a new man, this be your home valley.”

“So shadow hunters are philosophers, then.” Tyrathan Khort smiled. “I had seen you before, before the monastery. I was with the forces from Kul Tiras—I’d been lent to Daelin Proudmoore. I was much younger then, darker of hair and smoother of skin. You’ve not changed, really, save for some scars. Another hunter wanted to bet ten gold he could kill you. I heard later on that he died hunting trolls.”

“You did not take that bet.”

“No. Fix on a target, you lose track of the others.” The man sighed, his breath jetting in white vapor. “Had I been commanded to kill you, on the other hand…”