rest of his kingdom—”
“They’re fools enough to follow his lead despite the bloodshed and horror his choices have caused; they can follow him through this.”
“You don’t mean that. Don’t you see—”
“Enough!” The outburst surprised Varian as much as it did his son. Anduin deflated. Varian read the immense sadness filling his son.
The prince headed toward his room.
“Anduin—”
“Good night, Father. I pray you’ll understand some day.”
Not quite certain as to what his son meant by that, Varian returned to the wine. Then, thinking better of it, he stepped back outside. There he found his guards anxiously awaiting.
“Safe to go in,” he jested. “I’ll stay out here for a moment.”
They did not argue. Varian felt some sympathy for the men, who wanted to do their duty but were constantly being dismissed by their charges. He would reward them when the party returned to Stormwind.
“Varian.”
“Oh, by all that’s holy, am I allowed no peace?” The king turned to face Malfurion. “I said my lot back at the induction! There’s nothing left to discuss!”
The night elf’s brow rose at this unexpected outburst. “There is much left to discuss, if I may be so bold. I am aware of why you said what you did and the right you had to say it. The summit, though, must continue, and I—”
“Your summit’s failed. You should know that. Failed like so much . . . ” Varian looked off as he spoke, his thoughts turning to distant memory, not the evening’s events.
The shift did not go unnoticed by the archdruid. In a calm, quiet tone, he replied, “Failure is not always the end of things. It can be a method of learning to better succeed in other ways. Cenarius knows I have met with failure enough myself, if I may use my brother—and perhaps the worgen themselves—as examples. I can also appreciate the troubles you have struggled with, and I know the blame you still lay upon yourself for them. You still think that you could have saved Tiffin from the riot or somehow prevented Deathwing’s own daughter, Onyxia, from stealing your kingdom while in the guise of Lady Prestor! Neither of those events could have been prevented by you—”
“Couldn’t they? Easy to talk so, after the fact and so far removed, Archdruid, but you weren’t involved in those troubles! My wife was killed by a brickbat! A good man, Reginald Windsor, was burned alive by the damned dragon’s breath! I let agents of the Defias capture me, and in my absence, my son, my only son, was left defenseless and abandoned! I will not let that happen again! Ever!”
“You were not—”
Varian thrust a condemning finger in the night elf’s face. “You’ve no right to speak of any of this, anyway! What do you even understand of the kind of horrors I’ve seen and suffered? Two wars came and passed while you cheerfully meditated and wandered that accursed Emerald Dream! Two wars in which countless lives were lost! You never saw the sacrifices Stormwind had to face, much less the rest of Azeroth, while Greymane sat back and did absolutely nothing! Nothing! You druids preach of the harmony of the world and the creatures on it, but harmony is easy to ask for when you don’t have to struggle to survive like the rest of us!”
“I understand more than you think,” the archdruid started. “I have faced war and strife too. When the Burning Legion first invaded—”
“You must reach back ten thousand years for your example?” Varian interrupted. “And what about something a bit more recent . . . or relevant?”
The pair stood in silence, their unblinking gazes fixed upon one another. Malfurion radiated calmness, which only served to increase Varian’s frustration.
The night elf considered, then tried a different tack. “Much of what you say is true; I will not deny that. I have made many mistakes, but I have sought to learn from them, learned to accept my shortcomings, and strived to do better for those around me. That is something a druid, gladiator, or ruler should always do.”
It was not by accident that the night elf mentioned Varian’s past role. Without saying anything direct, he reminded the king that, while Malfurion had been elsewhere during the most recent troubles, so had Varian. Stormwind had suffered for many years without its rightful monarch to guide it, first for a decade when Onyxia had used her magic to influence Varian following Tiffin’s death, and then after his kidnapping. While Varian had not had any choice in either