Chapter 13: A prayer at Uther's Tomb

Up, down, half a swing to the right.

The blade swished through the air and hit the skeleton squarely in the chest, turning the undead into a pile of bones.

Turn around half of a circle. Parry.

With an arc that captured the weak sunlight into the perfection of the steel and sent it sparkling around, the sword went first through the necromancer’s abdomen then up almost to the collar bone.
Withdraw.

The pale man dropped his staff, clenching his hands around his body in a vain attempt to prevent his insides from spilling out then collapsed to the ground writhing in the last convulsions of death.

Turn around again, another perfect half of the circle.

It was like a dance, a long practiced one she could do with her eyes closed.

Daria spun again, in a perfect smooth movement, all thought melted to the point where she was one with the blade in her hands, steel and flesh were one…
Reality struck back too soon as she lowered the sword and took a hurried glance around. Sorrow Hill lay quiet in the morning light – so quiet it would have been hard to imagine what had just happened unless you noticed the heaps made by rotting corpses in the pale, sun streaked grass. All around her, the air smelled of sickness and decay.

She heard steps and whirled towards the sound, then relaxed as she acknowledged Eireannan’s presence.

“Morning exercise?” he asked quietly. He looked bad, Daria thought, those sharp green eyes almost too big in the pale face. As usual, he wore black softened only by a tinge of grey here and there. She had never asked him if that was the color for mourning among elves as well as among humans…and there was no need for it. She had not seen him happy since the fall of Silvermoon. Maybe happy was too much to hope for. Daria sighed. Sometimes even “at peace” would have sufficed. But Eireannan seemed … haunted. Whatever peace was there in those lands, it was not for him. The past would never let go. Or he would not let go of the past. If only he could look at her and see…

She tried very hard to focus on something else. That line of thought was painful to say the least. He would never see what she wanted him to.

“Someone has to do it” she answered reluctantly. She sheathed the sword in a casual sort of way, then started slowly eastwards, stepping over ghoul remains. Sorrow Hill had been the main burial place of Andorhal and the dead had grown too restless in their graves. Necromancers like the one she had dispatched would show up to pick reinforcements for the Scourge. And it all had to do with the plague cauldrons, spewing their miasma everywhere. The air was thick with that odor clinging to clothes and skin.

Eireannan followed quietly and only then did Daria realized he was not alone. The draenei had been kneeling near one of the ghouls – otherwise there was no way in which she could have missed him. A bulky, alabaster skinned figure, towering shoulders and head over her – and Eireannan as well. Glowing white orbs fixed her intently as the draenei closed the distance between them, then bowed quite respectfully. Daria returned the bow even if slow.

“An honor to meet you, young lady…”

He spoke with a strong, exotic accent. Not unpleasant, just heavily stressing every consonant. Young lady. Eireannan seemed vaguely amused.
“Anchorite Truuen here wants to pay his respects at Lord Uther’s tomb.”, he said in a very neutral tone.

“I find your history fascinating…for a race so young…to have so many heroes. And your vision of the Light…most interesting.”

“We are honored that you think so”, Daria answered with a respectful nod. The draenei were strange to say the least – immortal beings with the curiosity of little children – and mighty fighters against everything unholy. The anchorite glanced once in a while at Eireannan, visibly discomforted by the pereception of shadow magic. From his part, Eireannan looked as if he had eaten a handful of rotten plums. He strode at a distance from the draenei and clearly in his mind the task of accompanying the anchorite didn’t include conversation.
Daria fell in between the two men and for some time they walked in silence.

Uther’s Tomb stood on the bank of the Darromere, at the far end of the graveyard. A bastion of hope in a ruined land, most of those fool enough to venture into the Plaguelands did so to visit it. The creator of the Knights of the Silver Hand, righteous defender of Lordaeron, betrayed and murdered by Arthas, the pupil he loved like a son – the Lightbringer’s story was one to be remembered. So people said – and this vastly shared opinion had made the Church canonize him soon after the war.

The anchorite trotted ahead, apparently too anxious to wait for the other two. He climbed the stairs towards the mausoleum and peered up at the great statue erected over the tomb. Eireannan stopped short of the stairs and Daria did the same, after glancing at him. She came sometimes at the tomb to meditate…yet Eireannan avoided the place as hard as he could.

“You need more sleep”, she said casually. “You look three days buried and dug out of your grave.”

The comparison made him choke. Really she could have found another outlet for her imagination.
What he couldn’t deny was the truth of her words - he had barely managed to close eyes the previous night. Whenever he drifted into sleep, dreams would come. Sweet –bitter dreams of that woman which made the empty spot inside feel like a tender wound...nightmares that had him bolt upright drenched in sweat and shivering. Something was wrong in the air – like the tension before a storm. He reached behind his back to rub a sore spot in his right shoulder and gave Daria a distracted look.
As usual she had donned her worn plate - well polished though – her dark blonde hair tied into a simple, practical braid, not to bother her while fighting. There was a certain grace to her flowing movements, even if graceful was not the word he would have used to describe Daria…and her face would have been outright beautiful if not for the permanent frown.

With little effort of imagination Eireannan could picture her differently, a young housewife in a nice woolen dress, a little tight over the bosom, and a very white apron tied over it. Cooking dinner for her husband, maybe looking over the baby in the cradle. Sad thoughts. She was a warrior, not a housewife. The march of the Scourge had stolen her innocence as surely as it had crushed his own life.

“Maybe if you wouldn’t have taught her all the hatred in your heart…”

He crushed that tiny voice. Do what you have to do. And pay for it.

“Don’t you regret it sometimes, Dar?”

She had been watching the anchorite as he strode leisurely towards the mausoleum. Now her head whipped around to glare at Eireannan.

“What, sudden access of melancholy?”

“Things could have been different…”

“Tell that to the Lich King”, she said irritably. “It’s a lie and you know it.”

“I could have made them different…” Eireannan’s voice was level, almost thoughtful. He really meant it, Daria understood with a shiver. Why would he be so blind about everything…about her, about the way in which he kept torturing himself day and night…The war had broken an awful lot of lives. People still found it difficult to face the truth, face their own memories…yet the struggled to get over it. Eireannan was doing just the opposite. He made sure he did not forget anything – walked around with festering wounds in hid soul he would not let to close.

“No”, she snapped. She wasn’t going to let him drown in self loathing. “I would be dead if it weren’t for you. Dead a thousand times. Or worse. I would be Scourge. You did everything that could have been done under the circumstances.”

“Yet maybe I could have done it better”, Eireannan whispered. He should have sent her south to Stormwind, as soon as the war had ceased. The Stormwind Orphanage would have been a better place for a young girl than the devastated Plaguelands with their cohort of horrors, having as only company a half mad warlock…
Well, at least his sanity had improved over the past seven years, Eireannan thought wryly. He had once been very interested in diseases of the mind. “I didn’t give you a chance, Dar. Kept you here, with me, just because I was afraid…to be alone…And ruined whatever other life you could have had…”

“I want no other…”

“Oh, of course, who wouldn’t love it? He bent to pick up a handful of pebbles then threw them away in a shower, over broken tombstones. The noise made Daria jump and even the draenei anchorite, seemingly lost in contemplation of Uther’s statue, turned his head to stare at them.
“Ghouls, necromancers, plague cauldrons. The Scarlets stalking us day and night. Ruined houses and spider webs…something to kill for, really..!”

Daria hadn’t seen him so off - balance for a long time.

“I want no other, I’ve told you!” she said hoarsely. “By the bones of Kel’Thuzad, stop blaming everything on yourself! What made you think of this, anyway?”

A glare that could have cut through stone was the only answer, before Eireannan walked away stiffly. It was very not like him to loose his calmness. Something had shaken him deeply this time and what had happened in Undercity the other day was just the straw that broke the cart.

Suddenly she became aware of the anchorite standing near her and placing a large yet gentle hand over her shoulder.

“There’s much anger to him”, the draenei said shaking his head sadly. “It hurts…”
It didn’t comfort Daria too much to know he was right.