Chapter II
A few minutes later, the Dark Lady stood in the throne chamber. The ceiling was intact here, looming high overhead. Icicles hung from the balconies of the round room, and snow had blown in to form a graceful fan from the doorway out into the cracked tiles of the floor.
Whenever she began to tire of her gross parody of life, when the days grew long and the nights grew longer, she came here. Now she crouched in the shadow of the hulking throne, staring up with burning eyes.
This is where it began, Sylvanas thought, feeling the old hatred rise like bile. Summer or winter, it was the only thing that could warm her. This is where he killed his father. This is where the blood of a king was spilt in Lordaeron for the first time in years on years, far back into the memory of the Elves.
But it was not the true beginning. That had taken place far off, when the thrice-cursed Prince had sold his soul for a sword and a false promise.
And one day I will find him there, Sylvanas swore, not for the first time and not for the hundredth. I will find him and I will tear out his black heart, and I will drink his cold blood and die, joyful that he is dead. I will avenge my kin, whose survivors would recoil to see me as I am now.
"I swear," Sylvanas whispered. The sound echoed unexpectedly in the empty throne room, returning strange rustlings from the balconies. Her keen cold ears returned what might have been the sound of distant footsteps…
She realized what was happening when it was already too late. The balconies suddenly filled with dwarves, muskets and mortars at the ready. The sound of hoofbeats turned into a dozen knights pouring through the room's arched doorways, and just like that, she was surrounded.
Sylvanas crouched down in the throne's shadow, nocking a black arrow. No one had seen her yet. Human and dwarfish eyes were not as keen as hers had been, in the days when her heart beat and her blood was red.
A barrel-chested man on a white horse reigned up a few yards from the throne. He held a sword in his right hand. As he dropped the reins, Sylvanas saw the soul gem in his gauntleted left. It glowed darkly, casting an aura something like light and something like shadow over man and horse. He wore no helmet, and the black light cast deep hollows in his face.
"I know you're here," he said. "This cursed thing never fails, when it comes to finding its own kind."
A soft wail came from the soul gem, and Sylvanas laughed silently as she heard the voice of one of her own banshees. She stood up, drawing the arrow's fletching back to her cheek. (The feathers were soft on her cold skin, almost warm.) She heard the sound of muskets being cocked all around her, waiting the order to fire. If it came to that, they would be too late. No dwarfish trigger finger would ever be as quick as the Dark Lady's hand on a bowstring.
"You've shown unusual cleverness, for a human," she said. "I wonder if we could track your kind that way?"
The knight glared at her, squinting through the gloom, as his men closed in around the throne. He shoved the soul gem into a pouch on his saddle.
"You're no banshee," he said suspiciously.
"Yes, I am," Sylvanas said.
"No, you're not. I can bloody well see your feet touching the ground. What are you?"
"You'll know soon enough." -I could almost pity them. They make it so easy.-
She began to draw mana up around her, and faint silver traces circled in the air as she prepared her charm.
The knight laughed at her.
"You can't possess me," he said. "I found out the hard way that I'm entirely immune. How do you think we collected the other one? And believe me when I say that if you try for anyone else here, I'll hack you into a pile of reeking guts before you get inside his head. Does that frighten you? Would you like to find out what is worse than dying, woman?"
"There is nothing you can do to me that will be worse than what has already been done," Sylvanas said.
A human would begin to tire of holding the bow drawn for so long. Perhaps even an elf. But dead muscles can keep pulling until they tear themselves apart, or the will that drives them falters. Sylvanas was far, far beyond the point of being able to falter.
"We'll see. Since you seem more or less solid, I think we'll try and take you alive, insofar as that's possible," the knight said. He waved a hand in some prearranged signal, and the dwarves on the balconies lowered their weapons. "Then we'll hang you up by one ankle and see how long we can keep cutting bits of you off. When there's nothing left, the man with the most bits wins a cask of new ale. What do you say, Men?"
Dark murmurs of agreement came from the circle of mounted men. They moved their horses closer. One or two of the animals blew noisily as they caught Sylvanas' scent.
They're in the dwarves' sightlines now, Sylvanas thought. They won't be able to shoot without hitting their own men.
"Wait, Lord Dirath," one of the knights said suddenly. "I think I know who this is. Holy Light! I thought she seemed familiar."
"What?" Dirath asked, without taking his eyes from Sylvanas. His horse's head shielded his body from her, so that if she fired she must risk the easily-avoided shot at his eyes. But the horse's armor was makeshift. There were gaps…
"This is the Dark Lady. She's the Queen of the whole stinking lot," the knight said. "They say she never leaves the Undercity without a crowd of bodyguards."
"Then it looks like we've been rather fortunate," Lord Dirath said. "Take her."
It seemed as good a time as any. Sylvanas shot his horse in the neck.
She dove behind the throne, rolled, and came up on the other side. She pulled and shot again, and curses rang out as another rider was pinned under a half-ton of falling horseflesh. Then a horse loomed up in front of her, cutting off her view of the others. She seized the bridle and swung herself nimbly up in front of the rider, subtly changing the structure of the mana now beginning to envelop her body.
Her life drain was very effective at close range. Green energy crackled between the two bodies. Sylvanas felt the knight stiffen as life flowed into her. Then he toppled from the saddle behind her, instantly a corpse.
The horse panicked at the metallic stench of strange magic, and Sylvanas dove off and behind the throne just as two other men tried to hack her out of the saddle. A blade caught her right arm on the way by, and blood spattered in a black fan on the cold floor.
It is a myth that the Undead do not feel pain. Perhaps this is true of the ghouls and the abominations, whose understanding is limited to killing and feeding. But those which possess any modicum of a thinking self are never free from pain from the first moment of their unsleeping existence until it ends.
It was no wonder, in the constant dull agony of being what she was, that Sylvanas hardly noticed the wound in her arm. She nocked and fired in rapid succession, and two men fell with black arrows in the joints of their armor. She need not strike anything vital. The venom of –her- arrows was brewed from her own blood, the most poisonous thing she knew of on the face of her entire miserable world. From the corner of her eye she saw them fall, and knew with bleak satisfaction that soon they would be hers to command.
It would be too late. Eight men still remained on horseback, and a glimpse around the edge of the throne revealed Lord Dirath on his feet with his broadsword in hand. Sylvanas did not even try to steal his mind this time.
She took the man next to him, instead.
The knight froze as the silver rings of her charm swirled around him.
"Kill Dirath," Sylvanas hissed. The knight obediently reigned his horse around and tried to cut down his own Lord.
She heard a dull pop as she ducked down again. A musket ball pinged off the dead man's seat next to Sylvanas, chips of stone stinging her uninjured arm. The dwarves had decided to risk it, apparently. She smiled humorlessly. The sound of seven mounted men cursing as they all tried to converge on one small dais filled her ears. As she had expected, they were used to open ground, and they were getting in each others' way.
And the sharpshooters' way, of course. Sylvanas heard a horse's inhuman scream as a dwarvish musket ball struck.
Then she heard a distant boom. She knew what was coming, but there was nowhere to go. The mortar landed right next to her, and in the next instant a hundred shards of hot metal shredded through her limited armor and into what was underneath.