Thrall - Christie Golden [79]
He closed his eyes against the reality.
The image that filled his mind was that of him sitting atop a stone peak next to a beautiful, broken form. Alexstrasza looked at him, her body radiating a violent grief and dull despair.
You do not see, she had told him.
What don’t I see, Alexstrasza?
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.
The children 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.
He had not seen, not then. He had been filled with hope after freeing Nozdormu. Kalec, too, with his cheerful optimism and great heart, had encouraged Thrall to keep fighting, to keep struggling, to stand against the encroaching twilight.
But Alexstrasza was right. None of it mattered.
Kalecgos had likely been defeated by the appalling creature, which had managed to repel the blues’ attack as if it were the sting of so many angry insects. The Twilight’s Hammer cultists would prevail. They would first enslave and then destroy.
What did it matter, if he continued to draw breath? What did it matter, all the hard work and concern and study that the Earthen Ring was putting into its understanding of how to heal the world? It was for nothing.
Except…
The delicate face of the shattered Life-Binder gave way in his mind’s eye to that of another. It was a harsher, more angular face, with tusks and dark skin. But his heart suddenly began to beat in a painful fashion, as if it were waking up.
Maybe the world would be destroyed by the cult. Maybe the shaman of the Earthen Ring were indeed fooling themselves, trying to heal a land, only to witness its doom.
But in the desolation, in the despair and darkness, Thrall knew one thing.
Korialstrasz is dead, Alexstrasza had said. She would never again behold her mate, her companion and friend and champion, never touch his face in love, never see his smile.
But Aggra was not dead. Nor, surprisingly, after his fall, was Thrall.
He gasped with the pain of returning feelings. His chilled lips moved to whisper her name. “Aggra…”
She had encouraged him to go—the blunt encouragement of practically ordering him, admittedly, but with a depth of love behind that “order” that he only now could fully appreciate. It had not been for her own sake that she had wanted Thrall to leave. She had wanted him to go for himself, and for his world, not merely for her. He recalled how irritated she had made him, with her quick wit and sharp tongue. She spoke what she thought and felt, when she thought and felt it. He remembered the unlooked-for tenderness of her protection and guidance on his vision quest, and the sweet combination of gentleness and wildness in their joinings.
He wanted to see her again. Before the end of all things.
And unlike Alexstrasza, broken and alone in Desolace, surrounding herself with an ashy emptiness reflective of her own devastated heart… he could see his beloved again.
He was cold, his body rapidly growing numb, but the thought of being with Aggra—so vibrant and alive and warm and real—began to push that lethargy aside. Thrall forced his lungs to work, to breathe the frigid air as deeply as he could, and tried to tap into the Spirit of Life that he felt was now dormant inside him.
This was what gave the shaman his connection to the elements, to others, and to himself. All beings had this; shaman, though, understood it and could work with it. For a moment Thrall was terrified of failure. This was the part he could not work with before, back at the Maelstrom. This was where he had failed