Thrall - Christie Golden [58]
“The ancients spoke,” Thrall continued. “Their memories are becoming confused. Someone was damaging the timeways.”
“I know this,” she replied bluntly. “I know the bronzes are concerned about it, and they are enlisting the aid of mortals to correct it. You tell me nothing new, Thrall, and certainly nothing to inspire me to return.”
Her words and voice both were venomous. There was hate in them—but hate, Thrall knew, that wasn’t directed at him. It was directed at Alexstrasza herself.
He pressed on. “Nozdormu believes that many things are connected. They are not separate occurrences. All the terrible events the Aspects have suffered—the mysterious attacks of the infinite dragonflight, the Emerald Nightmare, even the madness of Deathwing and Malygos—Nozdormu senses a pattern in it all, a pattern of attack hammering at the Aspects and their flights. An attack designed to wear them down and defeat them—perhaps even cause them to turn on one another.”
A soft murmur. “Who would wish such a thing, even if it were true?”
Thrall was encouraged by even this faint sign of curiosity. “Nozdormu needs more time to figure it all out,” he answered. “For now, he suspects the infinite dragonflight is at least somewhat involved.”
A silence. “I see.”
“He asked me to find you. To—to help you. Help you heal.” It was difficult, and humbling, to believe that he, a simple orcish shaman, was in a position to heal the Life-Binder herself—perhaps the greatest healer there had ever been. He half expected her to scorn the offer and dismiss it, but she remained silent. He continued.
“If you can recover, many other things will be healed as well. Together we can go to the Nexus, speak with the blues, and help them find clarity. Then—”
“Why?”
The question, asked simply and bluntly, left him without words for a moment.
“Because … it will help them.”
“I ask again: Why?”
“If they are helped, then they can join with us, and we can find out what’s going on. And once we understand that, we can set it right. We can fight the Twilight’s Hammer cultists and defeat them. Figure out what the infinite dragonflight’s motives are. Stop Deathwing once and for all … and save this world, which even now is being ripped to pieces.”
She stared at him, her eyes boring right through him. For a long time she said nothing.
“You do not see,” she said at last.
“What don’t I see, Alexstrasza?” he asked very gently.
“That none of this matters.”
“What do you mean? We have information; we know this is part of a huge, complex plan that has been going on perhaps for millennia! We might be able to stop it!”
Alexstrasza shook her head slowly. “No. It doesn’t matter. None of it. It doesn’t matter if everything is interconnected. It doesn’t matter how long this has been going on. It doesn’t even matter if we can stop it.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending.
“The children,” she said flatly, “are dead. Korialstrasz is dead. I am dead in all ways but one, and that will soon happen. There is no hope. There is nothing. Nothing matters.”
Thrall suddenly felt the heat of anger. He still felt the loss of Taretha as a quiet ache in his heart. Her loss was a necessary one, if all was to be as it should be. But he would miss her, now and always. He thought of how she burned to make a difference, to matter. She had felt there was little she could do, but she had done all she could. The Life-Binder could make differences on a scale that Taretha could not even comprehend, yet she preferred to stay here and insist that nothing mattered.
Things did matter. Taretha mattered. Azeroth mattered. Despite what she endured, Alexstrasza did not have the luxury to wallow in her pain.
He pushed back his anger and tempered