Certainly much had happened in those few short years to keep her busy and focused elsewhere. Five years ago, a powerful wizard named Kel’Thuzad had drawn the ire of the Kirin Tor with his dabbling in unnatural necromantic magic. He had left, suddenly and mysteriously, after being severely reprimanded and told in no uncertain terms to cease his experiments immediately. The mystery had been one of many things that had helped distract her over the last three years.

Outside the gates of the magical city, things had happened too, though information was scattered, rumor-ridden, and chaotic. As best Jaina had been able to determine, the escaped orc Thrall, now calling himself the warchief of the new Horde, had begun attacking the internment camps and freeing the captive orcs. Later, Durnholde itself had been razed by this self-styled warchief, crumbling into ruins as Thrall called forth what Jaina had learned was the ancient shamanistic magic of his people. Blackmoore had fallen too, but by all accounts, he would not be mourned overlong. While troubled at what this new Horde might eventually mean for her people, Jaina could not find it in herself to mourn the loss of the camps. Not after what she had seen of them.

Voices reached her ears, one raised in anger. So unusual was that in this place that Jaina slid to an abrupt halt.

“As I told Terenas, your people are prisoners in their own lands. I repeat to you now—humanity is in peril. The tides of darkness have come again, and the whole world is poised upon the brink of war!” The voice was male, resonant and strong, and Jaina did not recognize it.

“Ah, now I know who you must be. You are the rambling prophet who was the subject of King Terenas’s last letter. And I am no more interested in your babble than he is.” The other speaker was Antonidas, as calm as the stranger was insistent. Jaina knew that she should discreetly withdraw before she was noticed, but the same curiosity that had driven the girl she had been to go along with Arthas to spy on the orc encampments now prompted her to cloak herself in invisibility and learn more. She moved closer as quietly as possible. She could see them both now; the first speaker, whom Antonidas had sarcastically referred to as a “prophet,” clad in a cloak and hood decorated with black feathers, and her master on horseback. “I thought Terenas was quite plain in his opinion of your predictions.”

“You must be wiser than the king! The end is near!”

“I told you before, I’m not interested in this nonsense.” Clipped, calm, dismissive. Jaina knew that tone of voice.

The prophet was silent for a moment, then he sighed. “Then I’ve wasted my time here.”

Before Jaina’s startled gaze, the stranger’s shape blurred. It compressed and shifted, and where an instant before a man in a cowled robe had stood, now there was only a large black bird. With a caw of frustration, it sprang skyward, flapping its wings, and was gone.

His eyes still on the interloper, now a vanishing dot in the blue sky, Antonidas said, “You can show yourself now, Jaina.”

Heat washed over Jaina’s face. She murmured a counterspell and edged forward. “I’m sorry for eavesdropping, Master, but—”

“It’s your inquisitive nature that I’ve come to rely on, child,” Antonidas said, chuckling a little. “That crazed fool’s convinced that the world’s about to end. That’s taking the whole ‘plague’ thing a bit far, in my opinion.”

“Plague?” Jaina started.

Antonidas sighed and dismounted, sending his steed off with an amiable slap to the rear. The horse pranced a little, then trotted obediently off to the stables, where a groom would attend to him. The archmage beckoned to his apprentice, who stepped forward and took the outstretched, gnarled hand. “You will recall I sent some messengers to Capital City a short time ago.”

“I thought that was regarding the orc situtation.” Antonidas murmured an incantation, and a few moments later they appeared in his private quarters. Jaina loved this place; loved the untidiness, the smell of parchment and leather and ink, and the old chairs into which one could curl and lose oneself in knowledge. He gestured for her to sit and with the crook of a finger had a pitcher pour nectar for them.

“Well, that was on the agenda, yes, but my representatives thought that a more dire threat was at our doorstep.”

“More dire than the Horde re-forming?” Jaina extended her hand, and the crystal goblet, filled with golden liquid, floated into her palm.

“Orcs, potentially, could be reasoned with. Disease cannot. There are reports of a plague spreading in the northlands. Something I think the Kirin Tor should be paying close attention to.”

Jaina peered at him, her brow furrowing as she sipped. Generally disease fell under the auspices of the priests, not magi. Unless—

“You think it’s magical in nature somehow?”

He nodded his bald head. “It’s a strong possibility. And that’s why, Jaina Proudmoore, I am asking you to travel to these lands and investigate the matter.”

Jaina nearly choked on her nectar. “Me?”

He smiled gently. “You. You have learned nearly everything I have to teach. It’s time you utilized those skills outside of the safety of these towers.” His eyes twinkled again. “And I have arranged for a special envoy to assist you.”

Arthas lounged against a tree, turning his face up to the weak sunlight and closing his eyes. He knew he radiated calmness and confidence; he had to. His men were worrying enough for all of them. He couldn’t let them see that he, too, was anxious. After all this time…how would they get along? Maybe it hadn’t been so smart a decision after all. But all the reports had been glowing, and he knew she had the most level of heads. It would work out all right. It had to.

One of his captains, Falric, whom Arthas had known for years, stomped about, going a little way down one of the four paths at this crossroads, then returning to venture a short distance down another. His breath was visible in the chill, and his irritation was obviously growing by the minute. “Prince Arthas,” he finally ventured, “we’ve been waiting here for hours. Are you sure this friend of yours is coming?”

Arthas’s lips curved in a slight smile as he answered without opening his eyes. The men had not been told, for reasons of security. “I’m sure.” He was. He thought about all the other times he had patiently waited for her. “Jaina usually runs a little late.”

No sooner had the words left his lips than he heard a distant bellow and the barely decipherable words, “Me SMASH!”

Like a panther dozing in the sun only to waken instantly alert, Arthas sprang to attention, hammer in hand. He started down the road, to see a slender, feminine shape racing toward him as she crested the hill into his vision. Behind her loomed what he knew to be an elemental—a swirling blob of aqua-colored water, with a crude head and limbs.

And behind that…were two ogres.

“By the Light!” cried Falric, starting to race forward. Arthas would have beaten him to the girl except for the fact that right at that moment, he caught sight of Jaina Proudmoore’s face.

She was grinning.

“Stay your blade, Captain,” Arthas said, feeling his own lips curve into a grin. “She can take care of herself.”

And so indeed the lady could—and efficiently. At that precise moment Jaina wheeled and began to summon fire. Arthas realized that if he was going to feel sorry for anyone in this conflict, it was the poor baffled ogres, bellowing in pain as fire licked their pudgy, pale forms and staring in shock at the tiny human female responsible for such astonishing agony. One of them had the sense to run, but the other, seemingly unable to believe it, kept coming. Jaina sent a blast of rumbling orange flame at it again, and it cried out and collapsed, burning to death quickly, the rank scent of charred flesh filling Arthas’s nostrils.