World of Warcraft: The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm Page 0,53

got to his feet and wiped a trickle of blood from his eyes to peer at the distillery. He blinked sticky lashes, and for a moment refused to believe what he saw.

There was no distillery. Not anymore. There was only a dreadful hole in the ground, a hole covered with pieces of walls, and ceiling, and tables. Dust was still rising, mingling incongruously with the peaceful image of falling snow.

Aerin. …

Rohan clambered up and tapped on the stone, cocking his ear to listen. After a few seconds he tapped again. Then he sighed heavily and stepped back, shaking his head slowly.

Something snapped in Anduin.

“No!” he cried, surging forward. Fear gave him new strength, and he forced his cold fingers to obey as they grasped a large chunk of stone and hurled it away only to reach for another one. “Aerin!” he cried, his voice hoarse. “Aerin, hang on, we’ll get you out!”

“Lad,” came a gentle voice.

There was something in that tone that Anduin refused to acknowledge. He ignored Rohan’s voice and kept going, his breath coming in hitching sobs. “Aerin, just hang on, okay? We’re c-coming!”

“Lad,” came Rohan’s voice again, more insistent. Anduin felt a hand on his shoulder and angrily shook it off, glaring with blurred vision at the priest, seeing the compassion and sorrow on the aged visage and denying it utterly. He looked around at those who were supposed to be helping him. They stood still. Some of them had tears running down their faces. All of them looked stunned, shocked.

“There’s no tapping,” Rohan persisted inexorably. “It’s … over. No one could have survived that. Come away, lad. Ye’ve done all ye could an’ then some.”

“No!” shrieked Anduin, lashing out with his arm and barely missing Rohan. “You don’t know that! We can’t just give up! They’re not answering because they’re wounded, maybe unconscious. We have to hurry—have to get them out—have to get her out. …”

Rohan stood quietly by, making no further attempt to stop the young human prince. Anduin, tears flooding down his face, kept going, for how long, he did not know. Stone after stone he moved, until his slender shoulders screamed in white-hot agony, until his hands bled furiously and numbed and cramped until finally he crumpled on the snowy stone and sobbed violently. He reached one hand out, palm flat, trying to contact his friend, who was trapped beneath the implacable stone hurled upon her by the violently agitated earth.

“Aerin,” he whispered, for her ears alone, wherever she might be. “Aerin … I’m sorry … I’m so so sorry. …”

Now he did not resist the gentle hands slipping about his exhausted body and lifting him up. He accepted, unable to fight anymore, his heart hurting and his body too drained to protest. The last thing he knew before merciful unconsciousness finally claimed him was the gentle touch of gnarled hands upon his heart and forehead, and the soft voice of Rohan telling him to rest now, rest and heal.

And the last thing he saw in his mind’s eye was a cheerful dwarven face framed by brown hair, smiling, as Aerin always was, and in his heart always would be.

FOURTEEN

Magni looked older than Anduin had ever seen him.

In the two days since the disaster at the distillery, Anduin had learned that those who had fallen at Kharanos had had a great deal of company. The quake had not been localized. It had shaken towns throughout Khaz Modan. Part of Menethil Harbor now lay at the bottom of the ocean, and excavation sites from Uldaman to Loch Modan had been buried, at least partially. It had gone from being a localized incident to a national crisis.

The tragedy had aged the dwarven king, but there was a determination in his eyes that told anyone who looked into them that Magni Bronzebeard would not be kept down. He glanced up as Anduin entered the High Seat and waved him forward, not with the enthusiasm he had displayed on the first occasion, but with blunt command. Anduin hastened to the king’s side.

“I dinna wish to act precipitously,” Magni began, “but by th’ Light, now I wish I had. We might have been able to save all those lives. Including Aerin’s.”

Anduin swallowed hard. A service for the Khaz Modan dead had been conducted yesterday. It was harder to sit through than the one in Stormwind had been; that was a commemoration of many thousands of lives lost over a long period of time. Anduin had mourned the death