lionofthelight

“I’ve been told the Horde are consolidating troops in the Barrens.”

“Pointless posturing as usual, I’m sure. Unlike the Forsaken in the Kingdoms, their forces in Kalimdor have lives worth dubiously living.”

“Eking out a muddy existence wrangling swine?”

“Paradise for an orc!”

Harrowheart couldn’t help but laugh at that, and in doing so roused more laughter from the men around him. It was the first sound he’d made all afternoon, and it sat well with the gathering. They smiled in his direction, and for once today Harrowheart felt part of the group.

It was Zandros’ friends who surrounded him at the overly long table in the Alter manor’s dining hall. Most of the day the intricate inlays beneath his hands had distracted Harrowheart from conversations he felt he didn’t understand: discussions of the economy, of investments, of noble relations, of Lordly names he’d never heard but whom these men knew well. But the topics of war and racial relations? He understood those perfectly. Well enough to know when to laugh unprompted, at least.

“It does speak!” The ginger one laughs, and Harrowheart smiles uncertainly, suddenly all too aware of himself. Bartelby, he thinks the man was called, but he can’t exactly recall.

Maybe-Bartelby smiles at him from across the table. “And to laugh, even. Good man. My brother-in-law became one of your persuasion and it’s rare enough to hear a word from him, least of all a laugh.”

“Well, Harrowheart is an amenable fellow who does enjoy a good joke. Aren’t you?” Zandros asks, smiling in an easy way.

Harrowheart finds his own tentative smile growing at that. Encouraged, he looks around the group with fresh eyes. All of them dress similarly to Zandros, casually wearing the sort of attire he’d toiled for months to earn and only wears on the most important of occasions. Lace-ruffed necks, high collars, broad lapels in bright colors, seamless everywhere and perfectly fit to the form. And here he is in his country beige. He’d felt so out of place before. But now?

“I suspect you’ve got more than jokes to tell, too,” Zandros says, gesturing with an open palm. “Why were you so quiet earlier? I’m certain the lads and I would have wanted to hear your thoughts on prior topics!”

Zandros looks to his friends, brows raised. The two black-haired twins get to nodding right away. The young dwarven man says his ayes. Bartleby pinches a smile and folds his hands on the table.

When Zandros turns his attention back to Harrowheart he finds him slouching, brows furrowed equally with worry and thought. Zandros delicately presses his fingertips against Harrowheart’s collarbone, encouraging him to sit back and up, which Harrowheart uncertainly does.

“I... Idunno,” the dead man mutters.

One of the twins tilts his head and, brows creased, touches his ear with one finger.

A little louder Harrow tries again. “I ain’t really educated like y’all.”

”Over-educated,” says the other twin with a laugh that Zandros and his brother join him in.

Nodding, Zandros adds, “We’ve been taught to think only one way. A fresh perspective should reinvigorate the conversation!”

Harrowheart hadn’t seen it that way. A new light brightens his eyes and he squares himself into a prouder posture without coercion.

“So, I was thinkin’... If the kingdom’s got debts, why not just mint more coins? Give a whole bunch to all the folks who need ‘em. Then? No more debt, right?”

Zandros audibly gasps, while the twins nod so quickly that their faces become hard to see.

“What a concept!” Zandros beams. He pats Harrowheart on the back, then jostles his shoulder playfully. “Tell us more!”

Harrowheart, smiling with relief, begins to nod. “Well...”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Bartleby was the first to leave, and quickly. Not long after followed the dwarf. The twins lingered only until Harrowheart, who had graciously provided such entertainment, noted with some disappointment that the hour had grown late. He was due back in Acherus soon, he admitted, and had to depart – though not without a smile on his face. The autumn sun had set by then and the twins eventually conceded that the time had come to take their leave as well.

The silence of the manor felt so hollow after all the laughter that had filled the hall. Even Harrowheart had laughed, none the wiser. Recalling it brought a smile to Zandros’ face as he poured himself a glass of wine. He’d wanted a drink hours ago, but a touch too much alcohol and he might have tipped his hand, and where would the fun have been in that?

Content with the day, he passes through the marbled hallways of the manor toward his own room, but scarcely enters his chamber’s wing when his stony-faced father appears. Zandros tips his head and raises his glass, but his father’s dour expression doesn’t change.

“Father?” Zandros asks, his voice betraying his instant anxiety. “Is something amiss?”

His father hums affirmatively, and his expression falls.

Zandros hastens to ask, “Is there bad news? Has something happened?”

“Unfortunately,” his father says. “You’ll join me in the dining hall.”

His father’s measured strides are agonizingly slow for Zandros, who nervously sips at his wine all the way back to the table. He’d spent the entire day enjoying himself in that room. What news was to sully it? His thoughts raced with the possibilities. He'd seen neither his mother nor his sister all day. Could something have happened? Was it a business deal gone sour? An attack on their holdings in Northrend? Perhaps –

“Sit,” his father says, and Zandros obeys without hesitation.

But what follows is silence.

Zandros’ nearly-empty glass waits between them, now untouched. A few moments’ reflection and Zandros realizes that his father is where he’d been all day, while he himself sits where the corpse had been propped up. He could sense it still, the residual presence of necrotic magic that felt like centipedes stalking across his flesh.

“What am I to you?”

Confused, Zandros leans in. “Father?”

“Yes, I should like to think I am your father,” Lord Alter says, his distant voice hardly above a whisper. “Likewise, I should like to think you are my son. And yet I question who it is that raised you, for in recent days I fail to see the smallest scrap of myself in you.”

Zandros’ face twists with uncertainty.

His father’s does not.

“You stare at me as if you need an explanation. That alone tells me the extent to which you have changed and the depths to which you disrespect the name we share. My son, would you not recognize the shame of your own actions were it worn by a different face? Sadly, I think not, for you laughed readily along with those men whom you mistakenly call your friends.”

“Mistakenly?” Zandros huffs. “Father! We have known their families for years! What are they if not friends?”

“Poor influences, by the looks of it. Zandros, I watched you today with dire disappointment and imagined that were I a guest in this manor I might have come to the conclusion that privileged birth was the bane of the soul. The only ones among you without cruelty in their hearts were a corpse and Bartleby, of lowest birth, who--”

“Laughed.” Zandros is firm in that. “Bartleby enjoyed our humor just as much as the death knight–”

”Bartleby,” Lord Alter stresses, “Knew better than to defy his social superiors. He humored you with pinched smiles and hollow eyes.” He turns his head to the side and practically spits the word, ”Light. My own son fails to recognize the lie of feigned friendship. And to think that you interpreted the dead man's laughter as true enthusiasm. To watch you take advantage of one so ignorant… The depths indeed to which you have changed.”

Lips pursed, Zandros challenges his father, “Changed from what, exactly?”

Lord Alter's fist rattles the table. “From a man who is guided by the Light to one who is blinded by his own reflection!”

They sit in silence after that, unblinking stares locked until Zandros falters and looks toward the inlaid wood. His father breathes deeply and begins to nod.

“My son,” he continues, his voice a gentle sound, “The Light saw fit to send the spark of you into a life of comfort and joys few shall ever know. From your very conception you were blessed. Blessed to be born whole, into a family that would be whole, into a land which would remain whole. You have known a simplicity and happiness that comes to so few. Food at your table, laughter at your humor, and, eventually, the Light itself to warm you. But I see that the years of convenience have stolen two precious gifts from you: Compassion and Respect.”

The pillars of the Light. Zandros inhales sharply through his sculpted nose.

Lord Alter sighs and turns his gaze away. “The gifts you have been given were not made yours out of divine right, Zandros, but out of love. The education by which you escaped the nightmares of the battlefront was given to you by your mother and I as a loving protection, as a shield from a world which destroys the ignorant and the naive. But now you reforge that shield into a sword by which you might cut down those less fortunate.”

In the quiet that passes between them Zandros can hear the soles of a servant's shoes carrying him or her through other rooms. He sits with hard eyes and tight lips and stiff fingers as he waits for his father to continue reprimanding him, but his pressed expression softens at what he hears next.

“Catherine,” Lord Alter says, then pauses as he watches his son's tension turn to lax guilt.

Ah. So that is what it will take after all.

“Catherine,” he repeats, “Gave you her heart because she loved you, and you likewise loved her. Do you remember that? You were young then. Things were different. You were not too proud to bridge the gap between you and bring yourself into her ways. She taught you the grace of the Light, and by the unfortunate mysteries of fate was called home to it too soon. But in her absence you have forgotten true humility, and, I am sorry to say, I believe you have forgotten love itself.”

He watches his son, who remains unmoving, eyes cast down. Zandros has no protestations now. What could he say, after all, in the face of the bitter truth?

“Isidor,” Lord Alter now says and watches as his son's tension returns.

Another enlightening moment.

“Isidor,” he says again, “Is the one person you have encountered who has not granted you your every desire. Her heart was not immediately softened at the very sight of you. And do you know why?”

Zandros’ jaw clenches. He feels his face grow hotter. He knows exactly why. If his father is going to deign to lecture him, perhaps he ought to know the truth.

“Because she loves another. One far below her station at that.”

Lord Alter's brows raise, but there's a calmness in his eyes. “Is that so?” he asks softly. “She loves another?”

Zandros nods once, his bouncing hair a flash of gold.

“I see. A lowborn man? Perhaps one of no great education? No great status? Perhaps one who has not only failed to be blessed by the Light, but has in fact been Forsaken by it?”

“Precisely!” The word rushes out of Zandros louder and faster than he'd meant, but he can't be ashamed by it. Finally, his father understands his predicament. “She has been tainted by the overly familiar presence of darkness, father. Our relationship has been cursed from the start.”

Lord Alter rubs at his beard. His glassy eyes are elsewhere. “Cursed indeed. That she might choose a twisted husk above my own son speaks volumes.”

Zandros sits straight, a smile on his face. But his father turns his gaze to him and in that moment Zandros understands what his father meant: he fails to see a scrap of himself there.

Lord Alter doesn't have to say it. Zandros knows.

Of him.

Again they share a long and unbroken stare until Zandros finally parts his lips and Lord Alter raises his hand to silence him.

“Zandros. Recall humility. Recall love. Be once more a shield, not a sword, and bring yourself to her not as an instrument of war, but of the loving Light. Treat her as a person. Value her opinions and keep your own to yourself. Love that which she loves and find worth in it. Learn from her. Be as the wide-eyed and ignorant, not the pompous and hard of heart. Find in yourself that which comes so easily to a lowborn man with only a scrap of a soul. Only then might you have a future with her. And remember this above all else: Nothing is destined, and nothing is owed.”