Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde

8

The storm broke along with Tyrathan’s fever, causing Chen to wonder if the weather wasn’t somehow supernatural in nature. It certainly was a sinister notion, but it didn’t stay with him too long. It really found no purchase in his heart, for even as the last snowflake fell, Chen saw signs of snow lilies fighting their way up toward sunshine. Surely something evil never would have allowed that to happen.

Taran Zhu did not pass judgment on the nature of the storm’s origin but dispatched monks south, west, and east to assess damage. Chen volunteered to head east, since that would take him toward the Temple of the White Tiger. He’d be able to see his niece and learn how she’d fared. Taran Zhu had agreed to allow him to go and promised that Tyrathan would have the best of care in his absence.

For Chen, it felt good to be out of the monastery. Traveling fed his wanderlust. He was certain most of the monks put his willingness to descend the mountain down to that and that alone. It fit with their sense of the world and their idea that those who dwelt on Shen-zin Su were, by their very nature, out of balance and tilted toward Huojin.

Chen wasn’t going to deny that he liked travel and exploration. Others might have itchy feet because they feared being trapped, but not Chen. He turned to his traveling companion and smiled. “I just feel that every time I move on, I’m making room for someone else to rest and enjoy for a while.”

Yalia Sagewhisper graced him with a quizzical expression, yet not one devoid of mirth. “Master Stormstout, are we having another conversation of which I’ve not been part of the first half?”

“My apologies, Sister. Sometimes thoughts rattle around in my head and just tumble out like jihui cubes. Never know which face will be up.” He pointed back toward the monastery hidden beneath a cloak of clouds. “I like the monastery perfectly well.”

“But you could not dwell there forever?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Chen frowned. “Have we had this conversation before?”

She shook her head. “There are times, Master Stormstout, when you pause while sweeping, or when you watch the man head off for his trek up the mountain, and you get lost. You focus elsewhere, just as you focus when you are preparing a concoction.”

“You’ve noticed that?” Chen’s heart beat a bit faster. “You’ve been watching me?”

“It is difficult not to pay attention when the love of enterprise shines so brightly in one.” A sidelong glance lingered, and a smile joined it. “Do you wish to know what I see when you work?”

“I would be honored to hear your thoughts.”

“You become a lens, Master Stormstout. You have the experience of the world—the world beyond Pandaria—and you focus it on what you do. Take, for example, the Get Well brew you created for the troll. There are pandaren brewmasters who could have executed the brewing with your same skill. Perhaps even more. However, their lack of experience means they would not know what to add to it to infuse it with well-being for the troll.” She glanced down. “I fear I do not express myself well.”

“No, I understand, thank you.” Chen smiled. “It’s humbling to see yourself through someone else’s eyes. You’re right, of course. It’s just that I’ve never seen it as focus. I see it as fun, as a gift I am giving others. When I made tea for you and Lord Taran Zhu, I wanted to show my appreciation and to share some of me. By your reckoning, that meant I was sharing part of the world.”

“You did. Thank you.” She nodded as they slowly descended into a valley surrounded by a patchwork of distant villages and cultivated fields. “Your earlier statement suggests motivation for this journey beyond chasing the turtle or the desire to see your niece. Am I correct?”

“Yes.” Chen’s brow furrowed. “If I could identify it, I would not run from it. I’m not really running now. I just need…”

“. . . perspective.”

“That’s it.” He nodded quickly, liking that she’d pulled the word from his mind. “I have been seeing to the physical recovery of Vol’jin and Tyrathan Khort. They are healing. Bodily, anyway. But each still carries wounds. I cannot see…”

Yalia turned and laid a paw on his shoulder. “It is not your fault that you cannot see. What they hide, they hide well. And even if you could see, you could not make them see. Healing of that sort can be encouraged but not compelled, and sometimes it hurts the healer to have to wait.”

“You speak from experience?” Chen leaped over a small brook.

Yalia spritely picked her way over rocks. “An experience, yes. A very rare one. Most of our initiates are chosen through a series of trials, but this is not always so. Do you know how the other cubs, the very special cubs, come to be chosen, Master Stormstout?”

The brewmaster shook his head. “I never thought about it.”

“Legend has it that some cubs are not meant to undergo the Trial of the Red Blossoms. Their fates are decided in a very different way.”

As she spoke, her stare grew distant and her soft voice became even softer. “These cubs, wise beyond their years, some suggest, arrive as toddlers in form but ancient in spirit. Kind travelers give them aid, and legends suggest those travelers are the gods themselves. These cubs are accepted by the Shado-pan lord. They’re spoken of as the Guided Cubs.

“I was a Guided Cub. My home village, Zouchin, is there on the north coast. My father was a fisher. He owned his own boat and was prosperous. In our village, there were many proud families. As I grew up, I understood that I would be given in marriage to the son of another fisher. The difficulty was that there were two candidates, each a half dozen years older than I. They competed for my attention and for the whole village’s attention. The choice would guarantee the fortunes of one family, and sides were chosen quickly.”

Yalia glanced at him for a heartbeat. “You must understand, Master Stormstout, that I understood the way of the world. I understood that I was a prize and that this was my role in life. Perhaps, were I older, I would have resented being reduced to chattel. The reality I saw made that unimportant.”

“What did you see?”

“Yenki and Chinwa’s rivalry had begun with a benign nature. They are pandaren. Many antics, much noise and bustle, but no real hurts. Yet each did things that progressed. Their actions escalated, each egging the other on to do more. And, in their voices, hints of acrimony.”

She opened her paws. “I could see what others could not. This rivalry between friends would become enmity. And while it might never get to the point where one would strike another in anger, they would each do something to prove themselves worthier of winning me. They would take undue risks, silly risks. This would not stop after I had been won, but would continue until one or the other died. The survivor would live forever with guilt. Thus two lives would be destroyed.”

“Three, counting your own.”

“This I understand after many years. Then, not yet a half dozen years old, I knew only that they would die because of me. So one morning I packed some rice balls and a change of clothes, and headed out. My mother’s mother saw me. She helped. She wrapped me up in her favorite scarf. She whispered, ‘I wish I had known your courage, Yalia.’ And then I made my way to the monastery.”

Chen waited for more, but Yalia remained silent. Her story made him want to smile, for she’d been a very brave cub, and wise, to make the choice and the journey. At the same time, it was a terrible choice for a cub to make. In the echoes of her words, he caught notes of pain and sorrow.

Yalia shook her head. “It is not lost on me the irony of my being in charge of the Trial of the Red Blossoms’ traditions. I, who never had to endure those tests, now am a gatekeeper to decide who among the hopeful can join us. Had I been judged by the same harsh standards I must now employ, I would not be here.”

“And having to be a harsh taskmistress chafes against your true nature.” Chen bent and deftly plucked a pawful of yellow flowers with little red runners. He snapped the blossoms off and rubbed them together between his palms. They released a wonderful scent. He held his paws out to her.

She accepted the crushed flowers in her cupped paws and breathed deeply. “Spring’s promise.”

“There’s a similar flower in Durotar, which grows up after rain. They call it heart’s ease.” Chen rubbed his paws over his neck and cheeks. “Not the trolls, mind. They have noble hearts but do not believe they should be at ease. I think they think there was a time when they were at ease, but that ease is what led them to fall.”

“They let bitterness drive them?”

“Some do. Many, in fact. But not Vol’jin.”

Yalia poured the yellow petals into a small linen pouch and pulled the drawstring tight. “You know the content of his heart that well?”

“I thought I did.” Chen shrugged. “I think I do.”

“Then believe, Master Chen, that your friend will come to know himself as well as you do. That will be the first signpost on his road to healing.”

Their initial intent had been to head roughly toward dawn, then cut down along the road to the Temple of the White Tiger. However, before they’d gone even a league along the road, they found two young male pandaren tending a turnip crop, but neither moving very quickly. In fact, they were using their hoes and rakes more as crutches than as farm tools. They had the bruised appearance and defeated demeanor of the recently thrashed.

“It was not our fault,” one protested as he shared a boiled turnip porridge. “We had virmen infesting our field, after digging out from the storm. We asked a wanderer to help us. Before the dust settled from the first fight, she’d finished the lot and expected a reward. I offered her a kiss, and my brother offered two. We are handsome, you know, under these bandages.”

The other nodded quickly, then raised paws to his head as if the nod threatened to dislodge his skull. “She was a pretty young thing, for a wild dog.”

Chen’s eyes narrowed. “Li Li Stormstout?”

“You’ve run afoul of her too?”

Chen let a low growl roll from his throat and bared his teeth, since that was what an uncle must do under such circumstances. “She is my niece. And I am a much wilder dog. She must have had some reason for leaving you alive. Tell us which way she went, and I won’t have to decide if it was a good enough reason.”

The two of them quailed and fell all over themselves to point north. “People been coming south since the snows, looking for help. We’ve sent food. We’ll pack up some for you to bring.”

“Before you find a cart and bring it yourself?”

“Yes, yes.”

“That will be good.”

Chen remained silent, as did the brothers. Yalia was silent as well, but her silence had a different quality to it. After the porridge, Chen made tea and added a few things that would aid the brothers’ recovery. “Strain the tea leaves into cloth and use it as a poultice. Good for what ails you.”

“Yes, Master Stormstout.” The brothers, of the Stoneraker family, bowed deeply and often as the two travelers took their leave. “Thank you, Master Stormstout. All blessings to your niece and on your travels.”

Yalia broke her silence as they passed down a hill, putting the crest between them and the croft. “You would not have inflicted a beating on them.”

Chen smiled. “You know me well enough that it’s not a question.”

“But you did frighten them.”

He opened his arms to take in the vista of the narrow valley with steep mountainsides. Below, a stream snaked along, blue where the sun could not touch it, silver where it did. Green, so much green and very deep, along with the rich brown of cultivated fields, screamed fertility. Even the way the buildings had been constructed into the landscape, adding to it without exploiting it, felt incredibly right.

“I grew up on Shen-zin Su. I love my home. As I look out here, however, it is as if I had been living in a picture. A beautiful picture, yes, but a picture of Pandaria. This land calls to me. It fills an emptiness that I’d never known I had. Maybe that is why I have wandered so much. I was looking, but didn’t know what for.”

He frowned. “I growled less for Li Li than for them calling her a ‘wild dog.’ For her, for me, Pandaria is home. It is a place where I could be at home.”

“And yet those two are like others who would forever point out why you are not of Pandaria.”

“You understand.”

She passed him the sachet of heart’s ease. “Better than you know.”

They marked their travel north to Zouchin not by days or hours but by the tales of Li Li’s passing before them. She’d been helpful but irascible. More than one person referred to her as a wild dog, but they quoted her as calling herself that. Proudly, too, as it turned out. Chen could not help but smile, and he easily imagined the legend of a wild dog spreading throughout Pandaria.

At Zouchin, nestled between cliffs and the sea, they found Li Li working hard in the midst of the village. The storm had wrecked one boat, collapsed some houses, and ripped a dock from its pilings. Li Li had pitched right in, and by the time they arrived, she was supervising a salvage crew and barking orders at carpenters to speed up work on the houses.

Chen caught Li Li, hugged her, and spun her around as he had when she was a cub. She squealed, but this time in protest at the destruction of dignity. He set her down, then bowed deeply and respectfully. That gesture silenced clucking tongues, though her returning the bow just a bit deeper and holding it a second longer started their clucking again.

Chen introduced Yalia to his niece. “Sister Yalia Sagewhisper has traveled from the monastery here with me.”

Li Li raised an eyebrow. “I bet that was a long journey. How did you get him out of taverns and not drinking beer all the way here?”

Yalia smiled. “Our journey was sped because we were chasing stories of Li Li the Wild Dog and her exploits.”

Li Li smiled broadly and dug an elbow into her uncle’s ribs. “She’s a sharp one, Uncle Chen.” Li Li scratched her chin. “Sagewhisper? There’s a Sageflower family here—name’s almost the same. They survived pretty well, just bumps and bruises.”

“This is good to know, Li Li.” Yalia nodded respectfully. “If there is time, I might pay them a visit; our names are so close.”

“I’m sure they will marvel at the coincidence.” Li Li looked around the village. “I’ll get back to work, then. The villagers are great on the water, I’m sure, but need some driving on the land.”

Li Li hugged her uncle again, then ran back to her work crews—whose pace quickened with her increasing proximity.

Chen cocked his head. “You’ve not been back here since you joined the monastery, after Taran Zhu changed your name. Does your family know you are alive?”

She shook her head. “Some of us are wild dogs by birth, Master Chen. Others by choice. It is for the best.”

Chen nodded and returned to her the packet of heart’s ease.