Daughter of Azeroth

44 | IDYLL

Over the next two weeks, Idira spent every free moment she had going through her books. Logan had managed to buy fifty-two books for her, three of them about Khadgar, though they didn't tell her much about him as a person; they only detailed his achievements in the many battles he had fought up until he left Azeroth, never to return. One of the books did have a full-page colour illustration of him standing tall and proud, his staff raised, crackling with magic as he wielded it against powerful humanoid creatures with green skin, hefting enormous double-bladed axes and clubs.

At first, she had no idea what the creatures were so she asked Unambi, but he said he didn't know either. Later, as she read through the book, she learned what they were and where they came from. Orcs, more frequently referred to in the books as The Horde, had reached Azeroth via a massive magical portal opened by dark magic from their home world, Draenor. As she read, she finally learned why VanCleef had had to rebuild Stormwind. The orcs had nearly destroyed the city as they marched across the Eastern Kingdoms, leaving destruction in their wake. Idira had never known the reason why Stormwind had to be rebuilt, but now she understood.

These orcish invaders had been a terrible threat to Azeroth and from what she read, Khadgar had been the main reason for their defeat. The destruction of Stormwind might have happened seven years before Idira was born, but to learn Khadgar had been there, fighting against the orcs, perhaps looking just like he did in the picture in the book, made her feel warm and tingly inside. He had been so close, just on the other side of the mountains.

But now he was gone. When the portal couldn't be kept closed, Khadgar had decided to take Azeroth's fight to their world. He must have won, because the portal had fallen silent. The books said no one knew what his life was like there, or even if he still lived since everyone who had travelled with him on that expedition had never returned.

Idira smiled to herself as she cleaned the fish for dinner. She knew. Perhaps she might be the only person in Azeroth who knew Khadgar was still alive and living in that strange, sunken stone city. A ripple of pleasure shot through her, making her shiver despite the late afternoon's broiling heat.

She wished she could see him again, even as a shadow, just to be certain he was safe. In those rare precious minutes when Unambi went down to check the crab traps, she would close her eyes and try to see Khadgar, but nothing ever happened. Her theory seemed to be correct, they only transcended the impossible distance between them when they called to her Light at the same time. She positioned the last fish on the cutting board and slid her knife into its belly, reminding herself if her theory was true, she had been fortunate to have even seen him those two times. Still, she wished she could see him again, just one more time.

A tendril of hair slipped free from its pins and fell over her eyes. She rubbed the back of her hand against her forehead and pushed it away, her thoughts turning to her other books. She had only managed to browse through them so far, with so many things to do around the farm, she didn't have a lot of time to spare, but nothing she had read could explain her abilities or even how to begin to harness them. She knew Unambi had been captured because Arinna didn't know what Idira's magic was, but still, it was she who lived with it and knew it best. They might have missed something. She had to try.

With every new book she opened, she harboured the hope she would find something, anything, even a small reference she could latch onto, a trail she could follow, but there was nothing. The books talked about every other kind of magic in great detail, but not one of them even came close to hinting at what lived within her. Unambi had said nothing as she went through her books in the evenings, sitting on the rug with her back against the book chest, a dozen books piled up around her. She sensed he was giving her time to work out things in her own head. One day she would ask him what he knew, but first she needed to do things her way.