[Story] Ghosts of Memory

[Solivar]

The Warchief of the Horde was as good as his word. Highlord Mograine's missive delivered, and its contents accepted for the diplomatic overture that they were, the heralds fanned out from the Valley of Wisdom to all corners of the Horde's sprawling capitol carrying the news: the Scourge's grip on one of its most fearsome weapons had slipped, the Death Knights were free, servants of the Lich King no longer, and those who had once fallen in service to the Horde were to be welcomed back into its ranks, comrades in arms once more. And, to their credit, the folk of Orgrimmar were obedient to the wishes of their leader in both word and deed, a fact for which he was personally quite grateful. The rocks and verbal abuse were no worse than the reception generally provided by the Scarlet Pestilence and their pawns -- the rotten fruit, on the other hand, was considerably more objectionable, as was the ridiculously good aim of the orcs, guardsmen and commoners alike. He was beginning to suspect he would never get all the banana bits out of the inner recesses of his helmet. Now, as he wandered the darkening streets of the city, his mission accomplished and utterly without any further true aims, he was at least spared harassment, not counting the pair of guardsmen shadowing him from what they no doubt considered a safe distance, a reasonable enough precaution on their part. The Warchief's word compelled obedience, but no chieftain's dictum or royal decree could erase in a stroke nearly a decade of accumulated fear, the grief and pain of those who had suffered at the hands of the Scourge. He saw flashes of that fear in their eyes as he drifted past, ghostlike and restless, a reflexive reaction even a people who cherished valor as highly as the orcs could not wholly suppress; not so long ago, he would have reveled in that fear.

Now it made him feel somewhat...ill.

It was, he admitted to himself, a strange sensation. He could not clearly recall the last time he had felt unsettled about anything, could not, in fact, remember the last time he had genuinely felt. Emotion was a weakness that the Lich King, as a matter of policy, did not permit his servants to suffer -- or, at the very least, not emotions likely to impair the ability to slaughter without remorse. Hatred, yes. Contempt, most assuredly. But not this sickening, stomach-twisting emotion, the name for which danced just out of reach. And so he walked the streets of Orgrimmar as the night came swiftly on, passing through the squares of warm welcoming light cast into the streets from the doors of shops and the windows of gathering places without feeling the slightest desire to enter, to partake of the fellowship that was now theoretically his, thinking fixedly on anything other than how he was beginning to feel.

The path he followed wended its way through the city in a manner that could almost be described as whimsical, a characteristic he never would have thought to apply to the Horde. Succulents lined the path, aloes and cacti intermixed with weathered rocks and iron braziers to light the way and provide night-time travelers with some modicum of warmth as they passed by. For a land that was so hot during the day, the nights were startlingly cool, though not so cold as the metal that embraced his body. It occurred to him that he recognized the plants, even recognized the uses they could be put to if he thought hard enough on it, but he possessed no clear recollection of the city around him, or of the land beyond it. The oddly twisting lay of the streets stirred no memories in the depths of his being, no rough-made, serviceable building suddenly seemed more familiar than its neighbors, none of the faces peering suspiciously out those well-lighted windows or crossing the street to avoid passing too close to him brought a name to his lips. Frustration with himself and the dark, empty places in his mind where memories should be welled up, washing away other, more complex and even less pleasant feelings, to his great relief. Irritation he could manage – such as he was experiencing now, as he came around a bend and began climbing, realizing as he did so that he had walked in an enormous circle around the city center and was nearly back where he had begun.

Nearly. From somewhere further up the incline he heard the sound of running water, which had not been a feature of the Valley of Wisdom’s arid environs. The sound called to him as nothing else in Orgrimmar yet had.

The water pouring down the rise was as gray the sky overhead, the lake beyond the waterfall swollen with the unusually heavy spring rain. The pool below was a froth of churning water and the river it fed into a raging, muddy torrent that ate at its banks as it flowed toward the sea; it could not, however, pass the barrier erected to stem the flood and, even as he watched, the sorcerous shield shimmered into view as it caught up and guided the torrent back into its proper channel. Like everyone else, he was cold and soaked to the skin and accepted the cup of hot wine handed him with immense gratitude, its warmth suffusing every inch of his body as he drank it down in swift, thirsty gulps.

He stopped before he walked directly into the wind-stirred pool of water at his feet, the memory fading as swiftly as it had come and leaving him standing again in unfamiliar Orgrimmar, violently disoriented. For a moment, white stone gates and white stone buildings had become white trunked trees, a vast forest whose image still half hung before his eyes, a forest whose crimson and golden leaves blent into the russet roof-tiles of the city, the coppery stone of the mountain into which it was built. He closed his eyes, struggling to remember more, and when he opened them again, the disturbing vision had faded. He stood at the edge of a broad pond, its irregular edges delineated by thickets of marsh grass and small, almost stunted shrubs covered in tiny white flowers. At the farther, and narrower, end a waterfall plunged from far overhead, crashing against the rocks at its base in a shower of frothy spray; between, on the far bank, sat a squarish building, its wooden pier jutting out into the water, torches burning at intervals its entire length. The scents and sounds of life, of fresh flowing water, of green growing things, of insects chirping and frogs trilling, momentarily overwhelmed him and it was all he could do not to flee back into the night, emotions he had no name for making his head spin and his heart wish it could beat again with the force of them. He took a step or two back from the edge, trying not to stumble, struggling to restrain impulses more common to the battlefield, the urge to run or fight.

“Ahem.” The voice was low and soft and he nearly leapt in surprise, for he had not noticed its owner, so well did she blend into the shadows.

A bullwoman – a tauren woman, he corrected himself, standing twice an easy sword-stroke away. Which, he realized belatedly, was not at all foolish on her part, as his hand had instinctively flown to the haft of the weapon sheathed across his back; it took a conscious effort to force himself to release it. She was a good double hand span taller than himself, her short fur a deep shadow-gray darkening to black in the long mane that tumbled down her spine in a mass of tiny braids. Her clothing, a simple leather skirt and vest dyed a dark green, aided her stealthy approach.

“Ishnialo, stranger.” He had no idea what the first word was or what it meant, but the second was spoken in accented but entirely understandable Thalassian, to his great surprise. “May I ask your business in this place?”

Her tone was carefully neutral but it took no special skill to sense the distrust that underlay it; he could see it in her eyes and her posture – she was prepared to attack, if need be.

“Well met, sister.” He held his hands well away from his weapon, half-raised to show himself unarmed. “I have no errand that brings me here. I was following the sound of the water.” He winced, slightly, at the unnatural sound of his own voice and wondered how it must sound to others.

He somehow thought that she believed him no further than she could have thrown him, but some of the tension went out of her posture nonetheless. “And so you have found it.”

They stood for a moment longer in excruciatingly uncomfortable silence as he considered things to say or do and decided that all of his options were equally unsatisfactory. “I…perceive that my presence is offensive. I shall trouble your peace no longer.” He bowed from the shoulders, the gesture feeling utterly natural for no good reason he could name – every senior commander of the Scourge preferred those below them to kneel as a sign of respect. “I bid you farewell.”

He turned but before he could retreat more than a few strides, she called after him.

“Wait!” She sounded almost frustrated, though with herself or him, he could not guess. “You have my apologies, stranger, and I ask that you forgive my rudeness. I am Hyuala Skychaser and, if you will, you are welcome to share my fire.”

“No apology is necessary.” He followed her down the path, to a small dwelling tucked in behind several taller buildings, a cook-fire crackling merrily in the pit outside. “I…cannot expect that the presence of me and mine is particularly welcome.”

“The Warchief has spoken for it,” Hyuala replied, with a slight shrug that set the amber charms braided into her mane rattling. “That carries some weight. And we have given aid and fellowship to others of your kind.” Meaning, of course, the Forsaken. She picked a wrought copper utensil out of a rack by the fire and fished a kettle from where it sat in the coals, its contents releasing fragrant steam. “I have, I admit, always been somewhat curious. Do your people drink and eat?”

“Not…as your people do, no.” He seated himself, somewhat awkwardly, on the woven reed mat she indicated he should use, finally shucking off the sword altogether.

“Pity. This is a good tea.” And so saying, she poured herself a mug, liberally mixing the contents with honey from a jar also warming by the fire. “What about the sound of the water drew you, if you do not object to me asking?”

“It reminded me of something I once knew.” He admitted, honestly enough.

“Ah.” She sipped her tea. “May I see your face?”

He hesitated for a moment, then reached up and undid the straps of his helmet, lifting it off and setting it in the coppery sand at his side. The cool evening breeze stirred his hair as it fell loose around his shoulders and he brushed the frost-white strands that drifted over his face back behind his ears, suddenly feeling almost naked.

“I thank you. The mask makes it difficult to see anything of your eyes but the glow.” He glanced at her, surprised, and found her regarding him with an expression that mingled distaste with a modicum of sympathy. “You…lived by running water?”

“I…” He paused, and thought for a long moment, and finally replied, “I remember a waterfall. And a lake, and a long river that stretched to the sea. But I cannot say if I lived near to them. I…remember very little of my life before…this. In truth, I did not remember those things until I heard the sound of the waterfall here.”

“The Unclean One demands much of those whose lives he claims, it seems.” Hyuala looked away, gazing instead into the flames. “Not merely the pulse of the blood and the breath.”

“No. Not only that.” He agreed wearily, and closed his eyes.

They sat in silence for a moment, a quiet that was neither uncomfortable nor companionable, as the tauren woman drank her tea and he tried to remember what tea tasted like, if indeed he had ever known. A curl of cool wind fanned the flames, carrying with it the scent of the water and a second, sweeter aroma.

The chainmail links chimed gently as he went about his work, rubbing the vest inside and out with the soft cloth he held, spreading the oil as evenly as possible. The scent of it clung to everything, his clothing, his tools, his hands, gently sweet and herbaceous; he comforted himself with the knowledge that everyone else would smell like the castle stillroom the day after a good harvest, as well…

“That smell,” He asked aloud, feeling cool lengths of fine steel mail and a coating of oil on his hands even still, “What is it?”

Hyuala lifted her muzzle and sniffed the air. “That? The tea plants – the plants growing by the pool with the white flowers. We use the leaves to brew and the seeds to – “

“Make oil. One can make oil from the seeds, which is used to treat armor and weapons, to prevent rust.” He blinked several times; the memory of steel and sweet oil faded slowly away. “I remember…using it in such a way.”

“I know. I saw you remembering. Your hands moved,” She gestured, smoothing one large three-fingered hand over her own leg, “though your eyes were not open. Does this happen often?”

“Not before tonight.” He admitted. “I doubt, in truth, that it could have happened before tonight.”

“This is quite possibly the strangest conversation I have ever had with someone not under the influence of dreamgrass. I hope you realize that.” Hyuala shook her head, bemused.

“I know it.” He smiled, wryly, but a smile nonetheless. The expression felt strange on his face. “I thank you for your company, sister, and the answer to my question.” He pulled his helmet back on and rose, resettling his sword in its familiar place. “Shorel’aran, Lady Hyuala.”

“Be at peace, stranger.”

It took the best part of the hours before midnight to search all the shops in Orgrimmar for what he wanted – fortunately, the city never seemed to sleep entirely, travelers coming and going at all hours, and when they arrived desirous of conducting business. He found it, understandably enough, in the stock of one of the merchants selling steel in its various useful forms: a flask of the sweet-smelling tea seed oil, blown glass container the same yellow-green as the oil itself. He broke the seal and dabbed a bit on the tip of one ungloved finger, breathing deep of the scent, reminiscent of both the flowers and the leaves of the plant from which it came.

Keldris was on punishment detail – which meant, in his case, being set to work in the armory with a case of oil, a double handful of ragged cloth-ends too small to be used for anything else, and instructions to not leave until every warehoused blade, buckler, and bit of armor had been treated with at least one fresh new coat. Sensibly, he hadn’t argued or otherwise attempted to justify his transgression; Aretegos was out of the infirmary, with nothing broken, but the profusion of facial bruises gave mute evidence to the beating he’d received. Keldris had been required to apologize, publicly, which he had done through gritted teeth, and the apology had been accepted in a similarly grudging manner. Now Aretegos was somewhere out in the city with his pack of hangers-on, drinking on their sympathy, and Keldris was sitting on a backless stool with a look of grim determination on his sweaty face, auburn hair clinging to his skull in spiky whorls of oil, surrounded by a small mountain of empty flasks and dusty cloths and freshly polished bits of armor.

“You know, you could spare yourself all this agony by simply not letting Aretegos get under your skin in the practice ring,” He pointed out, sensibly enough he thought, about midway through the grimly silent third hour of his best friend’s punishment. “He only needles you because he knows he can get a rise out of you no matter what he says.”

“Aretegos is a pompous know-it-all who thinks his doesn’t stink because he’s Lord Mograine’s nephew.” Keldris replied sourly, redoubling his efforts to buff away a patch of rust too tiny to be seen with the naked eye on the rim of an otherwise flawless shield. “And he torments everyone except you.”

“He doesn’t try those tricks on me because he knows he’s wasting his breath and in the time it takes him to form an attempt at wit, I’ll have hit him three times and ended the match.” He replied, sliding a freshly oiled bit of exceptionally rough wool across the table. “Here, try this.”

“Are you supposed to be helping me? I thought the aim of this punishment was to teach me to control my temper by way of driving me insane with boredom instead.” Keldris nonetheless accepted the cloth, scrubbed furiously for several minutes, and finally made a satisfied noise in the back of his throat, putting the buckler aside.

“It is. And, no, I’m not supposed to be helping you. If I were caught, I would probably be mucking the stables until I perished of old age.” He smiled thinly. “However, the Warmaster wishes me to challenge myself, and so my tactical training objective for today is to assist you while avoiding being caught and be done with this entire miserable endeavor before sundown.”

“So why is it that I’m the only one polishing anything?”

“Because I’m the general and you’re the troops. Get back to work.”

“Lord Mograine,” He whispered to himself. “Lordaeron.”

The Death Gate made everything much, much simpler. No sea-going vessels. No airships prone to explosion. Just an infinitesimal period of gray, howling cold and Orgrimmar faded away, replaced with the jet-and-cobalt stone of Acherus, the familiar stink of Plaguelands air. The Highlord accepted his report and curtly gave him his leave; moments later, he was on the ground, and riding hard across blighted eastern Lordaeron, the miles falling away beneath the hooves of his deathcharger. It was nearly dawn by the time he passed the Bulwark, such as dawn was in the forsaken north, where even the sun did not seem to shine as brightly as it should.

He could not recall visiting Lordaeron, the city itself, before that moment. But as he rode along the crumbling path below its slowly crumbling walls, he felt that he knew this place as well as he knew the weight of his own sword. In his mind’s eye he saw it as it had been: shining gray stone without, fluttering banners of royal blue and silver, the bustling streets within, alive with motion and laughter and the sound of a half-dozen tongues, the marketplaces and taverns, the polished armor of the knights gleaming in the sun. He paused for a moment, on the rise leading into the ruined main gate, and fought to bring himself wholly back into the moment, into the place where Lordaeron lay dead and ruined, and eventually succeeded. It stirred a feeling in him – half pride, half sorrow – to see that Lordaeron had not died without a fight. The ruined streets and fallen buildings, the Scourge siege machinery abandoned to rust and the broken remnants of statuary, the shattered fragments of bronze cathedral bells and the fallen vaulting supports of high-ceilinged halls, gave mute testimony to the violence that had attended the city’s final hours. Some of the larger, more useful bits of wreckage had obviously been hauled away, likely to be reused in the construction of the Forsaken capital in the darkness below; it looked as though whole blocks of stone buildings that had survived the assault had been razed and the raw materials dragged down, the tumbrels leaving deep gouges in the paving stones where their wheels had dug in. He found he knew the layout of the streets and could guess, from the shape of the foundation-holes, what the buildings above had once been: the Royal exchange at the very center of the old market district, the healers’ hall, the arsenal…He found he could clearly envision them all, their rooves of gray slate, their shutters painted bright blue or silver-gray, the heavy canvas awnings striped in the royal colors, the colors of the city itself.

He stopped at the shattered remnants of one of the old internal walls that had separated quarter from quarter. The steel-barred gate had been torn free of its mountings and lay rusting in the street, the collapsed masonry that had once supported it all-but blocking entrance to the district beyond. He swung from the saddle and found a sturdy bit of wreckage, to which he looped his reins; the deathcharger gave him a long-suffering look from beneath its saronite barding and nosed him away with a thoroughly exasperated snort. On foot, he continued past the fallen gate.

Fire had ravaged the district beyond it: the buildings, even those that were mostly stone, were little more than gutted, blackened skeletons, left to fall in on themselves beneath the weight of time and their own absolute ruin. He was reminded sharply, almost sickeningly, of Andorhal, where the defenders had preferred a self-chosen death by fire to the mercy meted out by the Scourge. Most of the buildings that remained had collapsed into their own lower levels, charred support beams jutting up from below street level like the hands of a man desperately trying to claw out of his own grave, smoke-stained stones catching what little light there was and reflecting startlingly bright, like human bone amid upturned soil. And yet he felt he knew this place best of all. The banners still hung, tattered and soiled and scorched, at the intersection of every street, and if one looked closely enough one could still identify the standards woven into them: the ancient arms of the Brotherhood of the Horse, Stormwind’s fearless defenders, who had fallen almost to a man in the First War and whose sacrifice was honored forever by their fellows; the Royal Knights of Lordaeron, whose standard was only slightly different than the royal arms themselves; the Knights of the Silver Hand…

Their standard stood before a place he knew well – a place he had once come, of his own volition, in the pursuit of knowledge. The novice’s hall lay in absolute ruin: the roof had entirely collapsed but for a pathetic remnant clinging to the top of the last intact section of two walls, and the rest of the walls had fallen inward, a mountain of scorched rubble. Stratholme was the heart of the Order but this place had been the heart of those who had yearned to travel there, to become truly worthy of a place in the Order’s ranks, a place that had drawn the sons and daughters of the Alliance who felt summoned to that high calling, the way of the paladin. The hall had been built flush to the ground – it had no lower level to collapse into and so the wreckage lay in mounds of shattered wooden retaining beams burnt to less than half their prior mass and segments of iron-reinforced masonry laying at dangerous angles, with thousands of smaller bits of stone and glass and rusting metal scattered about to make passage no easy thing even without the threat of further downward collapse. The ghost of smoke clung to everything, the scent lingering even after a near-decade of rain and snow and wind. He picked his way carefully, the remnants of stained glass windows crunching underfoot, the tusks of his helmet and spaulders scraping soot away as he squeezed through tight spots, searching. He found what he sought in the far, most-intact corner, though it was itself far from whole. The armory’s contents had not been stripped from it – the weapons remained in the surviving racks, rusted to ruin, or scorched to blackened and useless lumps of metal; the chain vests and coifs had fused together by the heat they had endured; the shields and plate warped, streaked with soot and rust.

In one corner stood a charred, three legged stool and, next to it, a charcoal lump that he knew had once been a reed basket of oil-coated rags.

He closed his eyes and heard the sounds:

The clash and clatter as the youngest squires trained on the practice floor, sword drills, shield drills, conducted with double-weight wooden armaments, elder apprentice calling time! And advance! And keep your shield up!

Carved bone dice rattling in a wooden cup, low voices murmuring in conversation, as a group of squires sat around one of the long tables conducting a tactical exercise over a map of Lordaeron, one side playing Horde and the other Alliance, moving the wooden counters that represented troop units and dealing with random factors decided by the dice…

He smelled the scents:

The ever-present herbaceous sweetness of the oil they used on their arms and armor, the perfume sinking into leather and cloth, ineradicable no matter how frequently one washed…

Sweat and sawdust and horses…

He saw their faces. All their faces. All those he had come to train with, all those he had been prepared to fight and die beside if need be. In the instant, he knew all their names, and almost knew his own again. Until that instant, he hadn’t known he had lost it, had not known that the name He had spoken was not the name had been born with.

He knew, in that instant, what he had to do.

This is not who I am, the thought articulated itself with startling clarity. This is not who I was, nor what I had chosen to be. I would never have chosen this, no matter what He might have said.

A face swam before his eyes: a face more familiar to him than even the one he wore now, a face with a stubborn jaw and laughing brown eyes and a mouth permanently fixed in a smile or a half-smile or an outright mad grin, hair plastered to his skull in unruly whorls and spikes, with or without oil.

“Keldris,” He whispered aloud. “Keldris…My friend.”

He made his way back out with equal care, bits of wreckage tumbling behind him nonetheless, and found his horse still waiting where he had tied it, waiting with the patience of the dead. As he left the ruin of Lordaeron, he knew not where he was going but, now, instead, he knew why: to seek that face, that name, the man he knew had once been his friend, to seek the answer to the question of whom he had once been, and to seek the way beyond what he had become.

[Darren Tereos]

Very nice introduction story. I liked your very vivid descriptions. Looking forward to reading more about this Death Knight.