Thrall - Christie Golden [46]
He eyed her thoughtfully, then said, very seriously, “Do you truly wish to know?”
Taretha frowned, poking again at the fire, then shoved the branch in and sat back. “Yes. I do want to know.”
Of course she would. Taretha did not shrink from the uncomfortable. He hoped that what he had to tell her would not turn her against him, but it would be wrong to tell her anything other than the absolute and complete truth.
He sat for a moment, gathering his thoughts, and she did not interrupt. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the soft murmurs of night creatures.
“You died,” Thrall said at last. “Blackmoore found out that you were helping me. He had you followed when you went to meet with me, and when you returned … he had you killed.”
She made no sound, but a muscle in her face twitched. Then, her voice strangely calm, she said, “Go on. How did I die?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” Thrall said. “But …” He closed his eyes for a moment. First witnessing the butchering of his parents, and now this. “He cut off your head, and put it in a bag. And when I came to Durnholde and asked him to release the orc prisoners … he threw it down to me.”
Taretha put her face in her hands.
“He thought it would break me. And in a way, it did—but not the way he wanted.” Thrall’s voice deepened as he remembered the moment. “It made me furious. For what he had done—for the sort of man he had proven himself to be—I would show him no more mercy. In the end, your death meant his. I have relived that moment many times. Always I wondered if there was something I could have done to save you. I am sorry that I could not, Taretha. So very sorry.”
She kept her face covered, and when she at last spoke, her voice was thick and muffled.
“Tell me one thing,” she said. “Did I make a difference?”
He couldn’t believe she was asking that. Did she not understand everything he had said?
“Taretha,” he said, “it was because of your kindness that I was able to understand that some humans could be trusted—and that’s why I was willing even to consider allying with Jaina Proudmoore. It was because of you that I believed I was more than … than a green-skinned monster. That I and therefore my people—all orcs—were worthy of something more than being treated like animals.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder. She lifted her head and turned toward him, tears streaming down her face.
“Taretha, my dear friend,” he said, his voice shaking. “My sister of the spirit. You didn’t make a difference. You made the difference.”
To his astonishment, she gave him a shaky smile.
“You don’t understand,” she said brokenly. “I’ve never made any kind of a difference. I’ve never mattered. I’ve never done a single thing that affected anything or anyone.”
“Your parents—”
She made a dismissive sound. “The parents from your world sound more caring than mine. I was a female, and little use to them. We were all too busy trying to survive. The schooling you talked about—I never got it. I can’t read, Thrall. I can’t write.”
Thrall couldn’t imagine Taretha being illiterate. Books were what had bound them to each other in the first place. Without her notes, he might never have escaped. He had thought her fate in the true timeway a brutal one, felt that it was unjust to one who was so kind and greathearted. But in a way, the life she had been leading here was almost worse.
Aggra had accompanied him on his shamanic vision quest, and had, in a fashion, “met” Taretha.
She should not have died, Thrall had said on that spiritual journey.
How do you know this was not her destiny? That perhaps she had done all she had been born to do? Aggra had replied. Only she knows.
And Thrall realized with a lurch in his heart that Taretha—in both timeways—did know.
“To hear this from you—to know that my being alive mattered to anyone, let alone to nations, to … to the history of the world—you don’t know what it means to me. I don’t care if I died. I don’t care how I died. At least I mattered!”
“You did, and you do,” Thrall said, his voice urgent. “You may not have made a difference … yet.