Wolves

Are you ready? Are you sure this is what you want to do?Tcha. The words that Kipcha spoke were full of fear, Atia could taste it in the air. She stared at the Accepted, her chin lifting ever so slightly, eyes gleaming, almost feverish in their brightness.

The woman in the gold dress was already moving away, down into the shadows past the Great Hall, away from the crowds of people that were dancing and laughing behind them, oblivious. Atia, barely sparing Kipcha a glance, followed.

They did not go far. What Atia had expected, she did not know. But when the woman quietly opened the door to one of the White Tower’s many libraries, Atia did not hesitate. Her dress swishing around her ankles, the girl slipped through the door in front of Kipcha, her mind whirling around what it might be that Lelaena was going to do – what ‘tests’ the woman had in mind.

The door shut behind them with a hollow boom that was muffled, as if the darkness around them was swallowing the sound. There were no candles lit inside the library, only what light came through the windows by star and moon, and to Atia, everything seemed washed clean of color, even Lelaena’s golden dress.

“Kipcha says that you are ambitious and proud, novice.” The woman’s voice was biting, almost a whip against Atia’s awareness, harsh with disapproval. Atia blinked, startled, but did not step back from the woman’s cruel voice – she was not afraid of anything, least of all this woman. But this had not been expected. What sort of ‘test’ was this?

“These things will bring the eyes of all these Aes Sedai straight to your heart, focusing on you where there should be nothing to see.” Even in the shadowed darkness, Atia could see the sneer that curled Lelaena’s mouth, the glint of hatred in her eye.

“You must cease your prattling about ‘destiny’, girl.” The voice snapped. Atia stood silent, searching her inner heart for the reasoning behind Lelaena’s words. Kipcha – she was there too, and the fear was still around her, so much that Atia almost expected her to cringe, though the words were not directed at her. Finally, Atia spoke, unable to keep the fury from shaking in her voice. What right did this woman have to chastise her?

“Why should I? My destiny is important, I am important. What do I care that eyes might see me? Let them see that I am greater than they are, I am not afraid! They will be afraid, when they see how far above them I stand, they will cower in their fear!”

She felt the rage of the woman snap into existence, swirling around her like a living thing. Still, she did not step away. Her chin lifted, her eyes glittered. She was not afraid of Lelaena in the slightest, for she had always been in the eye of the Great Lord, working at his words and whispers for as long as she could remember. What was this woman to her? Nothing. Her words about ambition and pride were only puffs of air, born of the fear that Atia would make them all discovered. What did she care if other people saw how powerful she was? Tcha. They were nothing more than slaves to the Creator, and Atia did not bother with the thoughts of slaves.

Atia stared at Lelaena, willing her to speak. The rage was still there, but it had changed, somehow. Finally, just as Atia was about to leave, a bare heartbeat before she would turn away and forget this woman and her stupid fears, Lelaena spoke, and there was no anger in her voice, only a sense of grudging approval. She spoke to Kipcha, as if Atia were not there, and the novice whispered a promise in her heart that she would see the woman dead at her feet one day, if for no other reason than that she had been temporarily blind to the Great Lord’s want.

“We will talk more about this girl later, Kipcha. She has much potential. Do your utmost to keep her loyalties away from Aes Sedai notice.” Lelaena’s eyes snapped to Atia once again, bright with the woman’s restrained anger.

“You might have a destiny, girl, but you will cease to speak of it where anyone can hear. It would not please the Great Lord at all if you were discovered and killed before you could be used to your fullest extent.”

Atia barely suppressed a snort of derision at the woman’s idiocy. The Great Lord would not let her be killed before He was ready. It was not her time to die, she knew that for certain. She could shout her loyalties from the rooftop of the White Tower itself, and the Great Lord would protect her from harm, keeping her alive until his purpose – and her destiny – had been fulfilled. But she did not say these things. Instead, she looked at the woman with eyes that saw the fear behind the words, and offered the curtsy that the Aes Sedai had taught her instead of the scorn that the woman deserved.

There were no more words to say. Atia could not think how to say anything to this woman that even remotely smacked of acceptance and submission to her will. So she said nothing, and let the woman see what she thought she wanted to see – a novice, obedient and fearing of a sharp tone of voice. Tcha.

“Come on, Atia.” That was Kipcha, grabbing her arm and pulling her away from Lelaena, out of the library, and back down the hall. Kipcha, who kept shooting her little glances of shock – perhaps because of the way that Atia had spoken to the woman in the golden dress, perhaps because she was finally seeing Atia for her true self.

“You heard what Lelaena said.” Kipcha muttered, as she half-shoved Atia back towards the light and the crowds and the dancing. “No more talk of your destiny to anyone but me.” Atia spared her a single searing glance, a glance that no novice should have dropped on an accepted, but Atia did not care. Kipcha was afraid of being caught, Atia was afraid of nothing. She would have to figure out how to get used to all the fear she saw around her, she did not understand it, and often found herself wanting to ask people what made them so weak that they had to fear things.

Of course, she knew better than to do that. Some people were as mindless as sheep or goats, and wouldn’t understand that they were even afraid.

So she twirled herself back into the throngs of people, dancing and laughing, just another pretty novice in a white dress, and kept her dark thoughts to herself. She danced among the sheep of the White Tower like a wolf in sheep’s clothing: dangerous, lethal, but disguised enough that no-one noticed what had wandered into their midst.

Eh, I pretty much ended the thread with this post, I think, but it had to be edited.