Jeff Grubb - The Last Guardian

“The hourglass also measures time, true?” said Medivh. “Yet here you never know which particle of sand will move from the upper half to the lower half at any instant. Were you to number the sands, the order would be slightly different each time. But the end result is always the same—all the sand has moved from the top to the bottom. What order it happens in does not matter.” The old man’s eyes brightened for a moment. “So?” he asked.

“So,” said Khadgar. “You’re saying that it may not matter if you set up your tower here because an explosion created this valley and warped the nature of reality around it, or that the explosion occurred because you would eventually be come here, and the nature of the universe needed to give you the tools you wanted to stay.”

“Close enough,” said Medivh.

“So what these visions are, then, are bits of sand?” said Khadgar. Medivh frowned slightly but the youth pressed on. “If the tower is an hourglass, and not a clock, then there are bits of sand, of time itself, that are moving though it at any time. These are unstuck, or overlap each other, so that we can see them, but not clearly. Some of it is parts of the past. Some of it is parts of the future. Could some of it be of other worlds as well?”

Medivh now was thinking deeply himself. “It is possible. Full marks. Well thought out. The big thing to remember is that these visions are just that. Visions. They waft in and out. Were the tower a clock, they would move regularly and be easily explained. But since the tower is an hourglass, then they don’t. They move at their own speed, and defy us to explain their chaotic nature.” Medivh leaned back in his chair. “Which I, for one, am quite comfortable with. I could never really favor an orderly, well-planned universe.”

Khadgar added, “But have you ever sought out a particular vision? Wouldn’t there be a way to discover a certain future, and then make sure it happened?”

Medivh’s mood darkened. “Or make sure it never comes to pass,” he said. “No, there are some things that even a master mage respects and stays clear of. This is one of them.”

“But…”

“No buts,” said Medivh, rising and setting his empty mug on the mantelpiece. “Now that you’ve had a bit of wine—let’s see how that affects your magical control. Levitate my mug.”

Khadgar furrowed his brow, and realized that his voice had been slightly slurred. “But we’ve been drinking.”

“Exactly,” said the master mage. “You will never know what sands the universe will throw in your face. You can either plan to be eternally vigilant and ready, eschewing life as we know it, or be willing to enjoy life and pay the price. Now try to levitate the mug.”

Khadgar didn’t realize until this moment how much he had drunk, and tried to clear the mushiness from his mind and lift the heavy ceramic mug from the mantel.

A few moments later, he was heading for the kitchen, looking for a broom and a pan.

In the evenings, Khadgar’s time was his own, to practice and research, as Medivh dealt with other matters. Khadgar wondered what the other matters were, but assumed they included correspondence, for twice a week a dwarf on gryphon-back arrived at the topmost tower with a satchel, and left with a larger satchel.

Medivh gave the young man free license in the library to research as he saw fit, including the myriad questions that his former masters in the Violet Citadel had requested.

“My only demand,” said Medivh with a smile, “is that you show me what you write before you send it to them.” Khadgar must have shown his embarrassment, because Medivh added, “Not because I fear you’ll keep something from me, Young Trust, but because I’d hate for them to know something that I had forgotten about.”

So Khadgar plunged into the books. For Guzbah he found an ancient, well-read scroll with an epic poem, its numbered stanzas precisely detailing a battle between Medivh’s mother Aegwynn and an unnamed demon. For Lady Delth he made a listing of the moldering elven tomes in the library. And for Alonda he plunged through those bestiaries he could read, but could not push the number of troll species past four.

Khadgar also spent his free time with his lock picks and his personal opening spells. He still sought to master those books that foiled his earlier attempts to crack them open. These tomes had strong magics on them, and he could spend an evening among his divinations before getting even the first hint what style of spell protected its contents.

Lastly, there was the subject of the Guardian. Medivh had mentioned it, and Lord Lothar had assumed that the Magus had confided in it to the young man, and backed off quickly when the King’s Champion had found it not to be the case.

The Guardian, it seemed, was a phantom, no more or no less real than the time-skewed visions that seemed to move through the tower. There was a mention in passing of a Guardian (always capitalized) in this elven tome, a reference in the Azeroth’s royal histories of a Guardian attending this wedding or that funeral, or being in the vanguard of some attack. Always present, but never identified. Was this Guardian a position, or, like Medivh’s supposed near-immortal mother, a single being?

There were other phantoms that orbited this Guardian as well. An order of some sort, an organization—was the Guardian a holy knight? And the word “Tirisfal” was written in the margins of one grimoire, and then erased, such that only Khadgar’s skill at examination told him what was once written there by the carving the pen had done in the parchment. A name of a particular Guardian, or the organization, or something else entirely?

It was the evening that Khadgar found this word, four days after the incident with the mug, that the young man fell into a new vision. Or rather, a vision snuck up on him and surrounded him, swallowing him whole.

It was the smell that came to him first, a soft vegetable warmth among the moldering texts, a fragrance that slowly rose into the room. The heat rose in the room, not uncomfortably, but as a warm damp blanket. The walls darkened and turned green, and vines trellised up the sides of the bookcases, passing through and replacing the volumes that were there and spreading wide, flat leaves. Large pale moonflowers and crimson star orchids sprouted among the stacked scrolls.

Khadgar took a deep breath, but more from anticipation than fear. This was not the world of harsh land and orc armies that he had seen before. This was something different. This was a jungle, but it was a jungle on this world. The thought comforted him.

And the table disappeared, and the book, and Khadgar was left sitting at a campfire with three other young men. They seemed to be about his age, and were on some sort of expedition. Sleeping rolls had been laid out, and the stewpot, empty and already cleaned, was drying by the fire. All three were dressed for riding, but their clothes were well tailored and of good quality.

The three men were laughing and joking, though, as before, Khadgar could not make out the exact words. The blond one in the middle was in the midst of telling a story, and from his hand motions, one involving a nicely apportioned young woman.

The one on his right laughed and slapped a knee as the blond one continued his tale. This one ran his fingers through his hair, and Khadgar noticed that his dark hair was already receding. That was when he realized he was looking at Lord Lothar. The eyes and nose were his, and the smile just the same, but the flesh was not yet weathered and his beard was not graying. But it was him.

Khadgar looked at the third man, and knew at once it had to be Medivh. This one was dressed in a dark green hunter’s garb, his hood pulled back to reveal a young, mirthful face. His eyes were burnished jade in the light of the campfire, and he favored the blond one’s story with an embarrassed smile.