Thrall - Christie Golden [69]
“I would not do it if I did not have to,” said Kalec. “In a way, I am not sure what to hope for: an Aspect in name only, or an Aspect with all the powers that one ought to have. For me, it would be hard to surrender to being something so different. It is something I never imagined having to consider. Something no one ever did. It … is a great burden.”
Thrall watched Kalec carefully as he spoke, and he thought he understood.
Kalec was … afraid.
“You think it will change you, if it truly happens,” Thrall said, and the words were not a question.
Silently, Kalec nodded. “I am already, by the reckoning of most of those in this old world, a very powerful being. It is all I have ever known, and so it is easy to bear that responsibility. But … an Aspect?”
He looked off to the side for a moment, his gaze unfocused. “Thrall … an Aspect is not just a dragon with extra powers. It is something else again. Something …” He floundered for words. “It will change me. It has to. But … two of the five of them went mad. Alexstrasza may be walking that line herself, and Nozdormu nearly lost himself forever in his own realm of time. What will becoming an Aspect do to me?”
He was right to be afraid. Thrall had faced something similar the day that Orgrim Doomhammer had fallen and named Thrall his successor. He had not asked for the weight of the mantle, but he had taken it on. He had become something more than himself, more than simply Thrall, son of Durotan and Draka. He had become warchief. And for years he had borne the responsibility. He had, as Aggra had said in her annoying and beloved, honest fashion, become a “thrall” to the Horde.
Kalec would never be able to lay aside the title of Aspect. And he would live much, much longer than a mere orc.
It would change him, and he would never be able to change back. He might be Kalecgos, the blue Dragon Aspect, but he would never again be just Kalec. What would it do to him?
“That is a very important question, my friend,” Thrall said quietly. “You don’t know what it will do to you. But there will always be things that even a dragon cannot anticipate. You can only act on what you do know. What your heart and your head and your gut tell you is right. The question of what will it do to you is not the one you need to ask. You have already asked the right question.”
“What will it do to my people if Arygos becomes Aspect?” Kalec said.
Thrall nodded. “See? You already know what to ask. And you do not know the answer to that question specifically, either. But you know enough so that you will choose to open yourself to the responsibility rather than subjecting them to Arygos’s rule.”
Kalec was silent. “Arygos makes much of his bloodline,” he said at last. “But what he doesn’t understand is our entire flight, our entire race, should be a family. Be united. Arygos’s way of thinking will no longer help us—if it ever did. And if the flight follows him, yes, they will be independent blues, separate unto themselves. But they will also be dead, or worse.” He smiled gently. “My head, heart, and gut tell me that.”
“Then your choice is already made.”
“I am still afraid. And I cannot shake the feeling that this makes me a coward.”
“No,” Thrall said. “It simply makes you wise.”
It was time.
Thrall pulled the heavy furred cloak more tightly around him. He was at the very uppermost of the levitating platforms of the Nexus, where he had a perfect view of the open sky. Some dragons in humanoid forms stood beside him, while others simply hovered in the air to wait. The night was bitterer than usual because it was so clear, the stars glittering against their ebony background. Thrall was glad