Christie Golden - Thrall - Twilight of the Aspects

He did not want to believe that Aggra was right—that he hid behind the mantle of leadership and was a “thrall” to duty. If that were so, then why could he not lose himself in the work here?

“What is wrong with me?” he muttered aloud, slamming one great green fist impotently into the palm of his other hand.

“That,” came a lilting feminine voice, “I do not know the answer to. Maybe I will, at some point.”

He turned, startled. A few feet away stood a tall but slender cloaked figure. The cloak, wrapped about her frame, revealed it to be a female, but her face was hidden in the shadow of the cloak’s cowl. Thrall did not recognize the voice and frowned slightly, wondering who this stranger might be.

“Maybe I will too,” he said. He inclined his head in greeting. “I am Thrall.”

“I know. I’ve come for you.” Her voice was musical, mesmerizing.

He blinked. “For me? Why? Who are you?”

“It’s … hard to explain,” she said, and cocked her head as if listening to something he couldn’t hear.

“It’s hard to explain your name?”

“Oh, that … no. It’s the other that is challenging. You see … I have a small task for you, Thrall.”

He found himself more amused than annoyed. “A task? Something for the Ring?”

“No, something for the villagers.”

“The villagers?”

“In Feralas. It is little more than a small camp called”—she chuckled as if at a private joke—“Dreamer’s Rest. There is suffering there. Suffering of the land, and an old-growth grove that has seen many years, and the druids who live near it. The elements there are out of control, as they are in many parts of this poor wounded world, and they are going to destroy the village if something isn’t done. Only a shaman can talk to the elements and soothe them into harmony.”

Thrall’s amusement faded. He was beginning to suspect a joke. And he did not like it.

“Then let the shaman of the village do so,” he said, somewhat sharply.

“There are no shaman there. It is too small, and there are only druids,” the stranger said simply, as if that explained everything.

Thrall took a deep breath. What she was asking of him was trivial. It was the sort of thing novice shaman could handle. Why she had come to find him for such a task, he did not know and did not care.

“Surely there are others who can do that,” he said, reining in his irritation and trying to maintain courtesy. If this was some sort of bizarre test by the Earthen Ring, he did not want to explode with erratic anger, no matter how much this dithering female was annoying him.

She shook her head vigorously, walking toward him. “No,” she insisted, seemingly quite earnest. “ No others. None like you.”

This was getting ridiculous. “Who are you, to set me to such a task?”

Her face was still in shadow, but the glow of radiant eyes illuminated a smile of haunting sweetness. Was this a night elf? “Perhaps this will clarify.”

Before he could retort, she had sprung into the air—high, higher than any true elf could go, the cloak falling from her as she spread her arms wide, offering her face to the sky. Her body began to shift faster than the eye could follow, and where before he thought a night elf had been, now there was a huge dragon gazing down upon him, wings beating steadily as she lowered herself to land.

“I am Ysera … the Awakened.”

Thrall took a step backward, gasping. He knew the name Ysera. She had been the Dreamer, the guardian of the Emerald Dream. But now she dreamed no longer.

Much had changed with the recent Cataclysm, it would seem.

“Do this thing, Thrall,” Ysera said. Her voice was still pleasant, though deeper and more resonant in her dragon form.

He almost answered, Yes, of course . But his recent failures haunted him. What she was asking seemed trivial indeed, but considering who she was, he guessed that it had to be very important. And he was not sure he could be trusted with something important right now.

“Mighty Ysera … may I meditate on this?”

She looked disappointed. “I had hoped you would say yes.”

“It is … only a small camp, isn’t it?”

Her disappointment seemed to deepen. “Yes. It is a small camp, and a small task.”

Shame heated his cheeks. “Still, I would ask: Come again in the morning. I will have an answer for you.”

She sighed, a great, melancholy bellow, and her breath smelled of fresh grass and mist. Then Ysera the Awakened nodded, leaped upward, and vanished with a few beats of her wings.

Thrall sat down heavily.

He had just been asked by a Dragon Aspect to do something, and had told her to come back tomorrow. What was he thinking? And yet—

He placed his head in his hands and pressed hard on his temples. Things that should be easy were difficult, too difficult. His head was not clear, and it seemed neither was his heart. He felt … lost and indecisive.

Thrall had largely kept to himself since the argument with Aggra last night. But now, as he sat alone with only the moons and the stars for company, he knew he needed to seek her out. Aggra had wisdom and insight, although recently he found that he often disliked what she had to say. And he was clearly in no position to make a decision without support, or else he would have been able to say yea or nay at once to the mighty Aspect.

Slowly he rose and walked back to the hut.

“Did the moons give you guidance?” Aggra asked softly in the darkness. He should have known better than to think that his movements, however quiet, would not have awakened her.

“No,” he said. “But … this shaman would like to ask something of you.” He expected a sarcastic response, but instead heard the furs rustle as she sat up.

“I am listening,” was all Aggra said.

He sat down next to her on their sleeping furs. Quietly he told her of the encounter, and she listened without interrupting, although her eyes widened at several points.

“This seems … almost insulting,” Thrall said at last. “This is a minor task. To remove me from here, where my help is sorely needed, to save a tiny village in Feralas …” Thrall shook his head. “I don’t know if this is a test, or a trap, or what. I don’t understand any of it.”

“You are sure it was Ysera?”

“It was a large green dragon,” Thrall snapped, then added more quietly, “and … I felt that it was she.”

“It doesn’t matter if it is a test or a trap. It doesn’t matter that this seems like a trivial task. If it is Ysera asking something of you, you should go, Thrall.”

“But my help here—”

Aggra covered his hand with her own. “Is not needed. Not now. You cannot do what you need to do in order to be of aid to us here. You saw that yesterday—we all did. You are no good to anyone here at this point. Not to the Earthen Ring, not to the Horde, not to me, and surely not to yourself.”

Thrall grimaced, but there was no scorn or anger in Aggra’s voice. Indeed, it was gentler than he could remember it being in some time, as was her hand on his.

“Go’el, beloved,” she continued, “go and do this thing. Go and obey the Aspect’s request, and do not concern yourself as to whether it is a large thing or a small. Go, and bring back what you learn.” She smiled a little, teasingly. “Did you learn nothing from your initiation?”

Thrall thought back to his initiation in Garadar, which seemed so long ago. He recalled the plain robes he had been asked to wear, how he was reminded that a shaman balanced pride with humbleness.

He was most assuredly not being humble in thinking of refusing the request of an Aspect.

Thrall took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out slowly.