World of Warcraft: Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde (13 page)

Over the next two days, reconstruction work finished in the village and preparations for building the brewery commenced. Chen designated Li Li as his agent and enlisted the Stoneraker brothers—who happened to arrive with the food they’d promised—as masons. They clearly weren’t cut out to be farmers, since their fields had grown more stones than turnips, and they’d spent enough time hauling rocks from their fields that a mason’s work suited them.

Chen took some time to gather herbs from the area and prepare a test mix in a wooden keg, which he strapped to the small of his back. It sloshed as he and Yalia slogged their way back to the monastery. He burped it every so often, and watered it, and fed bits of this and that to the mix.

On the road Chen frowned as Yalia paused at the base of a switchback. “I realize I may need to apologize, Sister Yalia.”

“Whatever for?”

“For inserting myself into Zouchin.”

She shook her head. “You have been seeking a home, and you found that Zouchin felt like home. Why would you apologize for that?”

“It is your home, and I would not intrude on your privacy.”

Yalia laughed, and Chen enjoyed the sound of it immensely. “Dear Chen, the monastery is my home. I am fond of Zouchin—and fonder now that you like it as well. But you, as a wanderer, must know that a true sense of home must be carried within. If one cannot spend a silent evening sipping tea and feel at peace, there is no geographical place that will confer that peace. We seek a place because it amplifies that peace. It shows us another face of it and reflects it back on us.”

She pointed back down in the distance. “By seeing Zouchin through your eyes, and by reuniting with my family at your suggestion, I now have another place that will amplify peace. But you
should know that on a quiet night, sipping tea with a friend, I feel even more peaceful.”

Chen felt that had she suddenly become a tree and rooted herself in that spot, he would never wander farther than the shade she provided. He couldn’t say that, of course, and his smile couldn’t convey it. So he climbed up to where she stood, wishing the brew would not slosh so loudly, and nodded.

“Quiet night, or loud, with tea or beer or just cool water, I would also feel at peace with my friend.”

She shyly turned her face from his, but could not hide a smile. “Then let us return to our home away from our homes, and enjoy that peace as well.”

•  •  •

Only after Yalia had made a case to allow it did Taran Zhu agree to permit Chen to share his new concoction with a select few of the monks in the monastery. Yalia was not among them—Taran Zhu had chosen five of the eldest. Chen wasn’t sure if the master monk felt things would turn into a drunken debauch, or if he just felt these monks might appreciate the new experience. He was betting more on the former than the latter.

Vol’jin and Tyrathan also joined the group, though they arrived separately. Chen couldn’t help but notice a stiffness and formality between them. It probably wasn’t that vast a gulf, but compared to the closeness he felt with Yalia, the two of them appeared to be continents drifting apart.

Chen poured for each guest a modest portion of his concoction. “Please understand this is not a final formula. I mixed many things together, including some of the spring beer I brewed a while ago and left forgotten in the storerooms. I won’t tell you what I mean this to be. What I wish from each of you is to know not what it tastes like but what it feels like. You’ll taste and smell, but those sensations will link back to memories.”

He raised his own bowl. “To home and friends.” He bowed his head first to Taran Zhu, then Vol’jin, then all the others in order around the table. As one, save for Taran Zhu, they drank.

Chen let the brew linger on his tongue. He easily picked out berries and hints of heart’s ease, but other ingredients had mixed and mingled into a sometimes sweet and sometimes sharp taste, with just a bit of bite. He swallowed, relishing the scratch running down his throat, then set his cup down.

“This reminds me of a time, in lands beyond the mists, when I found myself the dinner guest of three ravenous ogres. Well, not their dinner guest really, but their dinner. They argued among themselves what I was going to taste most like. One said I’d taste like rabbit, since I was a bit mottled, and I said, ‘Very close.’ Another suggested bear, for obvious reasons, and I said, ‘Very close again.’ And the third said crow—he had a rather odd dent in his skull—so I said, ‘Very close for you as well.’ Which left them arguing.”

A monk smiled. “So you chanced to escape.”

“Very close.” Chen grinned and drank a bit more. “I offered to settle the argument by way of a contest, with a prize. I told them to fetch rabbit, bear, and crow, and to cook each up, for they must have the taste in their mouths if they were to know what I truly tasted like. And I offered to brew something for each meat and then to make a brew they could enjoy with me. So they set off, each to fetch his meat. They cooked them all up, and I brewed. Then they ate. And I chanced to ask which brew tasted best with which meat, which set them arguing again. So they swapped meals and drinks around. And I, after a night’s revel, being the only sober one, walked away free in the morning.

“This brew reminds me of how freedom felt in the dawn’s light.”

The monks laughed and applauded—even Tyrathan chuckled. Only Taran Zhu and Vol’jin remained untouched by the story. But Vol’jin drank, then nodded and set his cup down. “This be reminding me of the peace one knows from crushing his enemies. Their dreams
be dying with them, leaving your future clear, like a morning after rain. Its crispness be echoing the snap of their bones. The sweetness be the joy of hearing their dying sighs. And I be tasting the freedom there, as well.”

The troll’s story left everyone quiet and the monks wide-eyed. Tyrathan drank, then smiled. “For me it is autumn, as the leaves turn crimson and gold. It’s gathering the last of the crops, finding the last of the berries, everyone working together to lie in stores for the coming winter. It is a time of unity and joy in preparation for the uncertainty of winter—yet with the knowledge that hard work will be rewarded. So, it is freedom for me too.”

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.”

W
ith 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?