Thrall - Christie Golden [18]
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