The Book of Vinwald

I am having a LOT of difficulty in loading this chapter in its entirety (the site doesn't seem to like it for some reason...) so I'm finally caving and posting it in parts. Trying to find good cut points for it has not been easy; but I hope it doesn't take too much from the story. Thanks for bearing with me.



(edit: HAH! Found the problem, consolidating the chapters. Sorry if this is spamming. >_< I just worry about my format too much...)













~*~



Nearly two months had passed since Marilee and Elora’s arrival in the Dantez home. Amarante treated the two girls as if they were her own daughters, teaching Marilee to sew and embroider, tending for Elora, who was still too young to know what was going on. She had gone to the City Hall, speaking to the census keeper and the registrar, before speaking to one of the matrons at the orphanage, formally adopting the two girls “until other family came forward to claim them”. Amarante said that it was only to keep the two from becoming wards of the crown, but to Vinwald, it felt that the act would bring only bad luck, prevent Twyla somehow from returning.



Then, one day not too long after the adoption had been finalized, a small parcel arrived in the mail for Vinwald. By the size and heft of it, he figured it might be a book, but upon reading who had sent the parcel, he grew even more confused, though hopeful.



The parcel meant that Twyla was alive somewhere, or had been not that long before. Though why she would send him a book he had no idea.



Ignoring the curious look from his mother, he carried the package upstairs and locked himself in his room before cutting the twine that bound it and carefully pulling back the thick brown paper it had been wrapped in.



He recognized the worn, battered cover of the book at once, and grew even more confused. “Why would she send me her journal…?” He wondered aloud. He had seen the journal on several occasions, for she frequently wrote in it (he remembered teasing her when she had written about their engagement and the private celebration that had followed) but she had never let him read so much as a passage, going so far as to scowl and give him the rough side of her tongue for daring to try and peek over her shoulder.



Vinwald lifted the cover of the book, feeling almost as if he were committing an act of treason. He saw the folded parchment tucked between the cover and the first page and lifted it out, setting the journal aside before unfolding the parchment and beginning to read, relieved to note that it was a brief letter from Twyla.



Vinwald,



A courier arrived from Lordaeron, and he has agreed to wait a moment while I write this out, so forgive me, I must be brief. I am sending this to you in hopes that its contents will explain what has happened, what is happening even as I write this.



This voyage was a mistake. I know that now. I should have resigned my commission when I had the chance, should have deserted Arthas with Lord Uther and Lady Jaina while I had the chance, but my sense of duty was too strong. My love for my family stronger still.



The courier has brought order from the King that we are to return to Lordaeron immediately, yet I do not expect to return; this land has a fel shadow over it, as if the Light itself has give up the land and deserted it. In truth, I am not certain I will want to return. If you read the contents of my journal, you will understand why.



You will also come to understand why I do what I do now. I love you dearly, but it must be done.



I release you from your promise to me. Find someone else, Vinwald. Someone else to love and wed. You may protest all you like that I am the only one for you, but even so… Find someone else. Even should I somehow manage to return, which seems quite unlikely at this point, I could not marry you. Not now. The journal will explain everything.



Care for Mare and Elora. I regret I will not be able to, and I am sorry for thrusting them upon you this way, but they will need all the love and care they can get. I won’t be able to give that. Not any more.



Farewell, my love.



Twyla



Vinwald found himself staring down at the letter in shock, a knot forming in his stomach. Release him from his promise to her? She was unable to wed him? She could not give the girls the love and care they deserved? He wondered what sort of madness, what sort of despair had overcome Twyla, his beautiful, laughing Twyla, who he remembered as possessing a heart so big it could encompass all of Azeroth.



He set the letter aside, and began to read.



The entries at the beginning of the book were rather lighthearted, for it started when she had become classed as a paladin; told of the trials and tribulations of those early days when she was still learning so much. Told of her pleasure at eventually being assigned to Prince Arthas’ command.



Vinwald merely skimmed over these entries, smiling and rereading passages where she had mentioned him, or her hopes and dreams regarding her future.



… I love him so. I hope someday he proposes, or else I might have to take the bull by the horns and do it myself! I can hardly imagine a life without him, wonderful man that he is. I can even see us now, living in a small house in the countryside, barely a soul around us (for privacy, of course.) I shall be a retired paladin, for of course we would want children, and I couldn’t very well serve while pregnant, or while I had children to care for! The very thought of me waddling around, heavy with a babe in my belly, still trying to fit into plate armor and battling wolves and orcs… the thought is hilarious! But perhaps he will still be serving his commission, and will come home to me and the children, and at night he can take me in his arms and we will retreat to our room. We will



The entry abruptly ended there, the following passage revealed that there had been trouble she had needed to see to.



… but I daren’t finish my previous entry anyway. It would hardly do if someone ever thought to disrespect my privacy and read such passages! Light only knows what they would think of me then…



“They would think little of it, love.” He murmured aloud, “Only that I am a lucky man indeed.” He could not force himself to say that he had been a lucky man. That she truly meant what she said about him finding someone else. He was certain that when she returned he would be able to talk her around, ease her fears, and things would be how they had been. They would wed and be happy, and all would be well.



Vinwald asked me to marry him. I think I said yes before he was even finished asking me. I don’t think I have ever been so happy before. His mother is thrilled, of course, but now she is watching us so closely to make certain we don’t do anything “inappropriate” that I feel if I were to so much as take his hand she would be there to separate us! He chuckled at that passage, before continuing to skim the pages We were finally able to snatch a few hours to ourselves, but I feel certain she knows. It is all I can do to keep from blushing bright red in her presence now! But oh, it was worth the risk we took. I thought his kisses were amazing (they are!) but by the Light! The things he can do with his tongue and his hands! It should be a sin but I am quite glad that it is not! I don’t know where he learned it from or how, but I am half tempted to send him back to whoever she was to learn more! He was startled at that, before he flushed to the tips of his ears. It hadn’t been cheating on her, he had reasoned, but there were certain needs that a man had, hungers that he wasn’t able to slake by himself, that a simple exchange of coins for services received could help a great deal.



I feel horrible for demanding we wait for true consummation until we are legally wed, for right now I would like nothing more than to draw him in to me and wrap myself around him, but we must wait. Not only for fear of getting me with child (I’ve learned a few things from here and there to know how to prevent THAT if I wanted, and if the herbs are available) or because it is proper but… I have an odd sense that I must wait for him, almost as if the light is telling me so. He may sow as many wild oats as he wishes (especially if it teaches him to do things similar to those he did tonight!) but I will wait. It feels almost silly, putting down on paper things I can’t even fully reason through in my mind, but… Well. I’ll be silly then.



It was then that the entries began to grow sparse, and a bit darker.



We lost another good man today…



…



Where are all these monsters coming from?



He knew by the dates on the entries that he was nearing the end of what was written, that whatever Twyla had wanted him to read, what she had wanted him to understand, would be somewhere close to these pages.



We have been fighting so hard, and for so long. I hate to even think it, but I am beginning to feel that we are fighting a war we cannot win. We are losing men, good soldiers, every battle. We lose them to our opponents, and they don’t even have a choice. No matter how hard we fight, how we try to guard ourselves and each other, someone always falls. And lately when they fall, they do not remain down for long.



…



We met Lady Jaina yesterday. At first the men thought she was me; for looking at her is so similar to looking in a mirror that it is almost frightening.

…

Carl fell in battle last night, and it was my fault. I saw the damnable creature reaching for him from behind, but I was too slow. I could not help it, but I should have. I shouldn’t have frozen when I saw it wrap its arms around him and sink its teeth into the exposed area of his neck. I should have done something to prevent it. But I felt rooted to the spot… If it hadn’t been for Luc, it is likely I would have been dead myself, for when the ghoul was done with Carl, it turned its attention to me. And then Carl rose, and came for me as well. As if he knew that I was to blame for his state, for not saving him.



“Light…” Vinwald breathed, horrified, before reaching an entry dated the same day as the letter he had received from Twyla shortly after Marilee and Elora’s arrival.



I can never atone for what has been done. There is no penance I can pay. No penance any of us can pay.



We reached Hearthglen ahead of the scourge army. We thought that we would have a position of strength there, that we would be able to hold back the tide.



We were wrong.



The plague reached Hearthglen before we could. The grain had been distributed among the population. Peasants, soldiers… Everyone there had eaten it, and the change was already occurring.



I do not think I had ever fought so hard for my own life before that day. There was no justice in that battle, no glory. It was nothing other than pure survival. Kill or be killed. Knowing that, as a paladin, the plague would not affect me as it did others was a small comfort. And yet, if it had not been for the arrival of Lord Uther and his contingent of knights, I know we would not have survived. We could not have lasted more than another hour or two. As it was, when the fight was over I could barely heft my mace or remain mounted upon my charger, but I had to. We had received word that grain was being shipped to Stratholme. Prince Arthas was adamant we try to reach the city before the grain did, and I followed, too worried about my family to be concerned with such trivial things as exhaustion.



We saw the crates when we arrived. We were too late, the grain already distributed. Prince Arthas gave the order that the city was to be purged, that not a single person be left alive. I raced ahead of everyone else to find my family, praying all the while that their stores had held out, that they had not eaten any plagued grain because they had not needed to.



On my arrival I found my father, already transformed, in the dining room with what was left of mother. Bringing myself to do what needed to be done was a hard thing, for even though he was dead, it was still the body of the man who had given me life, who had loved me unconditionally and raised me, who used to let me sit on his lap and have a few small sips of wine from his glass when I was a small child.



I found Roland in the kitchen. He told me what I had feared; they had all eaten the grain. But then he gave me hope as well. Marilee had been sent away without supper, and it was likely she hadn’t had any. Elora was so young that she could not really eat the grain in any form.



I was able to save the two of them, but their salvation does nothing to ease my burden of guilt. I still see the horrified faces of the ones I had to kill.



I can still see Gareth’s face.



I know that if I had not been the one to see to my family, the girls would be dead. I know this, but I cannot resign myself to it. I cannot help but wish that I hadn’t been so foolish. That I hadn’t run ahead. That I had left with Lord Uther and Lady Jaina. I wish I had not been the one who did what needed to be done… And yet I know that if I hadn’t of done what I did, I would regret it for the rest of my days.



We left Stratholme for Menethil harbor. We encountered a demon, a dreadlord, who called himself Mal’Ganis. He claims to be responsible for the plague. Our new goal is to find him and destroy him. A part of me yearns for revenge for my family, for what had been done to them, but the rest of me knows that such a thing is unreasonable, and wrong to wish for. The rest of me is tired, and wants only to leave this place of horror behind and go somewhere where I can be safe…



I haven’t slept in so long I feel as if I will go mad from want of sleep, but sleep eludes me. I tried sleeping again last night. Exhausted though I was, I could not keep my eyes shut. Whenever I shut my eyes I see the faces… So many faces. All in a sea of blood.



She went into more detail of the situation at Stratholme, and what she and the others who followed Arthas had done. The rest of the entry was jumbled, disjointed. She would follow one trail of thought only to run off on another tangent and then another, finishing her original trail abruptly some lines later. By the end of it, Vinwald was feeling ill, but as the entry held no clue he could puzzle out as to why Twyla would wish to end their engagement, he continued to read.



I am so seasick I can barely write this. I have to stay in my cabin for fear of being ill all over someone else’s boots. Not to mention my own.



…



My life is turning into a nightmare.



I have been too tired to write anything out until now. I don’t have any explanation for my being well enough to pen this entry, save that I have been able to rest for a good long while after my fainting spell the night before last.



Vinwald had to reread the last line of the paragraph several times over to truly grasp the implications. Twyla had never been one for fainting spells.



Land was sighted today, and it looks to be Northrend. We leave these cursed ships tomorrow.



He hasn’t ordered me to bed him since he found out the news that I was pregnant-



Vinwald gaped at the paper, and, rereading the line, having to reread it several times before he was able to actually grasp its meaning. And when he finally did, he felt anger rising up inside him.



At first he had thought that she had merely cast him aside for someone else, but reexamination of the line (and his knowledge that Twyla wasn’t the sort of woman to do anything like that, or so he fervently hoped) helped him reach the conclusion that the matter was not quite as simple as that. Not with the words ordered me to bed him on the page. After taking several calming breaths, he continued to read, hoping there was more written about the situation, more to help him understand.



He hasn’t ordered me to bed him since he found out the news that I was pregnant, but that is a small comfort. He also made it frighteningly clear that I would wed him before the babe was born, or else he would take it from my care by force. I was rather dazed at the time, but I believe his exact words were along the lines of “any child of mine will be heir to the kingdom of Lordaeron, and will be raised as such”.



Vinwald stared at the page, stunned by that revelation. Prince Arthas? Ordering her to his bed? It hardly seemed possible, but then, it hardly seemed possible that he had ordered the murder of thousands of people who had done nothing more than eat infected grain… And yet he had.



I am not the kind of woman who could carry a babe to term and then give it away so easily. This child is a part of me, much as I may hate its father for what he has done and what he has ordered me to do, it is still my babe, and I will love it as such. Oh Light, I wish things had been different. I wish that I had never come on this damnable voyage, that I had gone to Vinwald while I still had a chance. I don’t know how I can bear to face him now, carrying another man’s child in my belly, wanting nothing more than to go to him instead of where I must go now.



He will hate me, I’m sure of that. The thought that he will, that he will never know the truth of the matter, just breaks my heart. I doubt that Arthas will ever allow me to tell him, or anyone, the truth of the matter. I can only write it here, for I am the only one who will ever read these pages. The only one who ever should.



I refused to play the role of Lady Proudmoore for him any longer. I thought he might strike me for my refusal, but by the Light, if he is going to force me to wed him he will have to take ME, not some imagined version of her. I should have refused to follow his order, should have known something was wrong when he asked me to join him after dinner that first night. I was such a naive fool. It was stupid of me to think that he merely wanted someone to talk to or pray to the Light with.



But after I joined him and he gave me the order to be Lady Proudmoore, to let him do with my body whatever he willed, what could I have done? I saw no other way… there had to have been, something I didn’t see, still can’t see. If I had refused he could have merely taken what he wanted. And seeing his madness this close, his determination to have things his way and no other, I think now that he would have taken what he wanted from me instead of throwing me in the brig, or ordering me killed for treason or Light only knows what.



He trapped me easily and expertly. He is a master hunter, and knew my weaknesses and how to use them against me.



I am never going to be free of him.



He flipped through the remaining pages, trying to see if there was anything else for him to read, finding nothing but blank sheets of paper.



“Oh love…” He whispered in the darkness of his room, for the day had passed and night had come while he read, pausing only to light a single candle to read by. “Oh love, I could never hate you. But I can hate him for destroying and using you the way he did.” He closed the journal, touching the cover lightly, before looking to the small, framed portrait he had commissioned of her and hung on his wall. In it she was smiling, the painter having caught her laughing, looking so vibrant, full of joy, life, and light. “Be safe, love. And if you can return from Northrend, can find a way out of his trap… Come home to me. To all of us.”



If his eyes were damp with tears in the darkness, there was no one to remark on it. And when he finally emerged from his room, late the next morning, to tell his mother that Twyla sent word that her return was unlikely, that she released him from their engagement, Amarante wondered how he was able to look so collected, how her rash boy could be so resigned to this turn of events.



And time went on.



~*~





Note: SO not the end of this book. Definitely not the end of the story. Hope to have more posted soonish.