The Last Guardian (20 page)

Spying?” She looked up, a frown on her face. “Actually, I’m just trying to understand what you’re doing here. It was left out in the open. Hope that is all right with you.”

It is NOT all right with me,thought Khadgar, but instead he said, “Lord Medivh has instructed me to extend to you every courtesy. However, he may take umbrage if, in doing so, I allow you to blow yourself up in casting some ill-thought magical spell.”

Garona’s face was impassive, but Khadgar noted that she did lift her fingers from the pages. “I have no interest in magic.”

“Famous last words,” said Khadgar. “Is there something here I can help you with, or are you just snooping in general, seeing what you can come up with?”

“I was told you had a tome on Azeroth’s kings,” she said, “I would like to consult it.”

“You can read?” asked Khadgar. It sounded harsher than he meant it. “Sorry. I meant to say…”

“Yes, surprisingly, I can read,” said Garona, quickly and officiously. “I have picked up many talents over the years.”

Khadgar scowled. “Second row, fourth shelf up. It’s a red-bound book with gold trim.” Garona disappeared into the stacks, and Khadgar took the opportunity to gather up his notes from the table. He would have to keep them elsewhere if the half-orc had free run of the place. At least it wasn’t Order correspondence—even Medivh would have a fit if he turned over ‘The Song of Aegwynn’ to her.

His eyes went to the section where the scroll used as the key was kept. From where he was standing it looked undisturbed. No need to cause a scene here, but he would probably have to move it as well.

Garona returned with a massive tome in her hand, and raised a heavy eyebrow at Khadgar, forming a question. “Yes, that’s the one,” said the apprentice.

“Human languages are a bit…wordy,” she said, setting the tome down in the empty space that previously held Khadgar’s notes.

“Only because we always have something to say,” said Khadgar, trying to manage a smile. He wondered, did orcs have books? Did they read at all? They had spellcasters, of course, but did that mean they had any real knowledge?

“I hope I wasn’t too hard on you, earlier in the hall.” Her tone was glib, and Khadgar was sure that she would rather have seen him spit out a tooth. Probably this was what passed for an apology among the orcs.

“Never better,” said Khadgar. “I needed the exercise.”

Garona sat down and started pouring through the text. Khadgar noticed that she moved her lips as she read, and she had immediately turned toward the back of the book, to the recent additions about King

Llane’s reign.

Now, not in the immediate fire of combat, he could see that Garona was not the standard orc he had fought earlier. She was lean and well-muscled, unlike the lumpy, rough brutes he had battled at the

caravan site. Her skin was smoother, almost human, and a lighter shade of green than the jade flesh of the orcs themselves. Her fangs were a bit smaller, and her eyes were a bit larger, more expressive than the hard crimson orbs of the orc warriors. He wondered how much of this was from her human heritage and how much from being female. He wondered if any of the orcs he had fought earlier were female—it was not obvious, and he had no desire to check at the time.

Indeed, without the green flesh, the disfigured, tusked face, and the hostile, superior attitude she might almost be attractive. Still, she was inhis library, and going throughhis books (well, Medivh’s library, and

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Medivh’s books, but the Magus had entrusted them tohim).

“So you are an Emissary,” he said at last. He tried to keep his words light and conversational. “I was told of your impending arrival.”

The half-orc nodded, concentrating on the words before her.

“Who are you emissaringfor, exactly?”

Garona looked up, and Khadgar saw a flicker of irritation beneath her heavy brows. Khadgar felt good about bothering her, but at the same time wondered where the woman drew the line.

He did not want to push too hard or too fast, lest he earn another beating, or another curt dismissal by the Magus.

At least this time he would get some information out before the battle. He said, “I mean, if you’re the

Emissary, that means that someone is giving you orders, someone is pulling your strings, someone you have to report back to. Whom do you represent?”

“I’m sure your Master, the Old Man, would tell you, if you asked,” said Garona smoothly, but her eyes remained hard.

“I’m sure he would,” Khadgar lied. “If I had the effrontery to ask him. So I ask you instead.

Whom do you represent? What powers have you been granted? Are you here to negotiate, or demand, or what?”

Garona closed the book (Khadgar felt a small victory in distracting her from her task) and said,

“Do all humans think alike?”

“It would be boring if we did,” said Khadgar.

“I mean, does everyone agree about everything? Are people always agreeing to what their masters or superiors want?” said Garona. The hardness in her eyes faded just a touch.

“Hardly,” said Khadgar. “One reason that there are so many tomes is that everyone has an opinion. And that is just the literate ones.”

“So understand that there are differences of opinions among the orcs as well,” said Garona.

“The Horde is made of up of a number of clans, all with their own chieftains and war leaders.

All orcs belong to a clan. Most orcs are loyal to their clan and their chieftain.”

“What are the clans?” asked Khadgar. “What are they called?”

“Stormreaver is one,” said the half-orc. “Blackrock. Twilight’s Hammer. Bleeding Hollow.

Those are the major ones.”

“Sounds like a warlike bunch,” said Khadgar.

“The homeland of the orc peoples is a harsh place,” said Garona, “and only the strongest and best organized survive. They are no more than what their land has made them.”

Khadgar thought of the blasted, red-skied land he had seen in the vision. This was the orcs’

homeland, then. Some wasteland in another dimension. Yet how did they get here? Instead he said, “So which is your clan?”

Garona gave a snort that sounded like a bulldog sneezing. “I have no clan.”

“You said all of your people belonged to a clan,” said Khadgar.

“I said allorcs, ” said Garona. When Khadgar looked at her blankly, she held up her hand.

“Look at this.

What do you see?”

“Your hand,” said Khadgar.

“Human or orc?”

“Orc,” said Khadgar. It was obvious to him. Green skin, sharp yellowing nails, knuckles just a shade too large to be human.

“An orc would say that it’s a human hand—too slender to be really useful, not enough muscle to hold an ax or bash a skull in properly—too pale, too weak, and too ugly.” Garona lowered her hand and looked at the young mage through lowered brows. “You see the parts of me that are
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orcish. My orcish superiors, and all other orcs, see the parts of me that are human. I am both, and neither, and considered an inferior being by both sides.”

Khadgar opened his mouth to argue, but thought twice of the matter and kept silent. His first reaction was to strike out at the orc he had found in the halls, not to see the human that was Medivh’s guest. He nodded and said, “It must be difficult, then. Without a clan allegiance.”

“I have turned it to my advantage,” said Garona. “I can move between the clans more easily. As a lesser creature, I am assumed to not be always looking for an advantage to my native clan. I am disliked by all, so therefore I am not biased. Some chieftains find that reassuring. It makes me a better negotiator, and before you say it, a better spy. But better to have no allegiance than conflicting ones.”

Khadgar thought of Medivh’s own castigation of his Kirin Tor ties, but said, “And which clan do you represent at the moment?”

Garona gave a wry, fanged smile. “If I said Gizblah the Mighty, what would you say? Or perhaps I am on a mission for Morgax the Gray or Hikapik the Blood-render. Would that tell you enough?”

“It might,” said Khadgar.

“It wouldn’t,” said Garona, “because I made up all those names, just now. And the name of the faction that has sent me here would mean nothing to you either, not at the moment. Similarly, the Old Man’s stated friendship with King Llane means nothing to our chieftains, and the name Lothar is nothing more than a curse invoked by the human peasants we encounter. Before we can have peace, before we can even start negotiating, we have to learn more about you.”

“Which is why you’re here.”

Garona let out a deep sigh. “Which is why I am praying that you will leave me alone long enough so I

can figure out what the Old Man is talking about when we have our discussions.”

Khadgar was silent for a moment. Garona opened the volume again, leafing through the pages to where she had stopped. “Of course, that goes both ways,” Khadgar said, and Garona closed the book with an exasperated breath. “I mean, we need to know more about the orcs if we’re going to do more than just battle them. If you’re serious about peace.”

Garona glared at Khadgar, and for a moment the young mage wondered if the half-orc was going to leap across the table and throttle him. Instead, her ears perked up, and she said, “Hold on. What’s that?”

Khadgar felt it before he heard it. A sudden change in the air, like a window had been opened elsewhere in the tower. A bit of wind stirring up the dust in the hall. A wave of warmth passing through the tower.

Khadgar said, “Something is…”

Garona said, “I heard…”

And then Khadgar heard it as well, the sound of iron claws scraping against stone, and the warmth of the air increased as the hairs on the back of his neck rose.

And the great beast slouched into the library.

It was made of fire and shadow, its skin dark and containing the flickers of the flame within. Its wolflike face was framed by a set of ram’s horns, that glowed like polished ebony. It looked biped, but walked on all fours, its long front claws scraping along the stone floors.

“What is…” hissed Garona.

“Demon,” said Khadgar in a strangled voice, rising and backing away from the table.

“Your manservant said there were visions here. Ghosts. Is this one?” Garona stood up as well.

Khadgar wanted to explain no, that visions tended to encompass the area entirely, shifting you to the new place, but he instead he just shook his head.

The beast itself was perched in the doorway, sniffing the air. The creature’s eyes blazed with
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flame. Was the beast blind, and could only detect by scent? Or was it detecting a new thing in the air, a spice that it had not expected?

Khadgar tried to pull the energies into his mind, but at first his heart quailed and his mind went empty.

The beast continued to sniff, turning in place until it faced the pair.

“Get to the high tower,” said Khadgar quietly. “We have to warn Medivh.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Garona nod, but her eyes did not leave the beast. A trickle of sweat dropped down her long neck. She shifted slightly to one side.

The movement was enough, and everything happened at once. The beast crouched and leapt across the

room. Khadgar’s mind cleared, and with a quick efficiency he pulled the energies into himself, raised his hand, and buried a bolt of mystic energy into the creature’s chest. The energy ripped through the beast’s chest and splattered out its back, sending pieces of flaming flesh in all directions, but it did not deter it in the slightest.

It landed on the study table, its claws digging into the hardwood, and bounded again, this time for

Khadgar. The young mage’s mind went blank for a second, but a second was all it took for the slope-shouldered demon to close the distance between them.

Something else grabbed him and yanked him out of the way. He smelled musky cinnamon and heard a deep-throated curse as he spun out of the path of the loping demon. The beast sailed through the space that until recently had been occupied by the apprentice, and let out a scream of its own. A long ragged tear had appeared along the creature’s left side, and was oozing burning blood.

Garona released Khadgar from her grip (a weak, humanish grip, but still enough to drive the air from his lungs). In her other hand, the apprentice noticed that Garona held a long-bladed knife, crimson with its first strike, and Khadgar wondered where she had hid it while they were arguing.

The creature landed, wheeled, and tried to make an immediate, clumsy second assault, its iron-shod talons outstretched, its mouth and eyes blazing with flame. Khadgar ducked, then came up with the heavy red volume ofThe Lineage of Azeroth’s Kings. He hefted the massive tome into the creature’s face, then ducked again. The beast sailed past him, landing back near the door. It let out a retching, choking noise, and shook his ramhorned head to dislodge the weighty grimoire. Khadgar saw there was a line of burning blood etched along the creature’s right side.

Garona had struck a second time.

“Get Medivh,” shouted Khadgar. “I’ll get it away from the door.”

“What if it wants me, instead?” responded Garona, and for the first time, Khadgar heard a ripple of fear in her voice.

“It doesn’t,” said Khadgar grimly. “It kills mages.”

“But you…”

“Just go,” said Khadgar.

Khadgar broke to the left, and, true to his fears, the demon followed him. Instead of heading toward the door. Garona broke for the right, and started climbing the far bookcase.

“Get Medivh!” shouted Khadgar, darting down one of the rows of books.

“No time,” responded Garona, still climbing. “See if you can delay it in one of the rows.”

Khadgar turned at the far end of the long bookshelves, and turned. The demon had already leapt over the study table and was now prowling down the row between the bookcases, between histories and geographies. In the shadow between the rows the creature’s flaming eyes and mouth stood out in stark relief, and acrid smoke now roiled from its wounded sides.

Khadgar cleared his mind, stuffed down his fear, and fired off a mystic bolt. A globe of fire or a
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