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As In Uffish Thought - M'Hael Lysander & Myrth Sedai
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought–
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
–Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll
And so what I must ask myself, the Dedicated thought, is what will come of opening it?
He needn’t worry of anyone intruding upon him. Whether night had descended to meet the sky, or day had ascended to bring the end to daylight, he did not know. All that mattered, in brevity, was that not a soul watched over him as he held the
letter, its sleek vellum envelope that only foddering his curiosity. That was the man Lysander T’hoth was. When his curiosity was piqued, he had no choice but to bring an end to whatever so piqued it. And that was this flaming letter.
The room was silent as he sat there alone on his bed, cross-legged and holding the letter with careful hands, examining it for all it was worth. That was also the sort of man he was. With a careful eye, Lysander peered over the letter. If there was
any relief in the least, it was that it had been delivered by the Black Tower’s letter-carrier, and not planted here among his linens. That only would rouse his suspicions beyond the world’s saving grace.
The fact of the matter was, Lysander could name people who would like to hurt him. He could name people who would like naught more than to stage some plan, some lark, that would end with his own head twisted firmly on a pike. True, the letter had
come by the carrier, which meant that there had not been an excessive amount of urgency in whomever had sent it. The Shadow preserve him, but could that also not be some attempt to lull him into a belying sense of security. What traps could be
planted in a letter?
Peering at it, Lysander gave it a thorough look-over to see what it was worth. It was made of sheepskin vellum, which was a more expensive alternative to parchment, and more durable to boot. It was then not penned by the hand of a pauper, though
the precise and deliberate penmanship in the words “Lysander T’hoth” scrawled on the envelope’s face could have said as much. The other side of the letter bore a standard seal of red wax, with no emblem or sigil embossed into it. It could not be of
a noble, then, though he knew no nobles who would want to address him of all people. It appeared as though it had been sealed with the face of a coin, and unless he was very much mistaken, it was that of a Tar Valon mark.
“Are you from an Aes Sedai, then?” he asked the envelope with little conviction. That could hardly be the case, as Aes Sedai had the tendency to seal their letters with their Great Serpent ring, didn’t they? Besides, the Tar Valon mark was in
circulation virtually everywhere . . . and if it was an Aes Sedai, it would’ve been pressed with the obverse, not the reverse, as to show their monarch, the Amyrlin Seat. This was not sent by an Aes Sedai.
Oh, he had his suspicions, and yet he did as best as he could to put them to a quiet. It would hardly do him well to infect himself with a bias, especially as he was only examining the letter. Anything new he found out would only be skewed
depending upon that bias. He’d not let that happen.
Well, there was one way to get this done, though he’d do it with every precaution ‘neath the sun. Assuming the Void, Lysander reached out for the seductive song of saidin, allowing it to course in its glory through his veins. Air and Spirit.
Contrasting a weakness with his strength, Lysander channeled the two spheres of the Five Powers in tandem. Plucking the envelope from his fingers with a deft thread, he let it waft to the opposite side of the room. He wove a thin barricade of Air
bolstered with Spirit. That ought to protect against a ward.
Summoning a surgeon’s concentration, Lysander channeled a fine thread of Spirit, prodding the envelope with it. Should it be able to be set off by any element of the Power, it would be Spirit. Beads of clean perspiration formed on his forehead,
sliding down his temple and down against his cheek. The Great Lord preserve him. After a moment, he was able to exhale in relief. He was safe. The letter had not reacted, and there was not a way he could–
His head snapped to the side, eyes peering at the door. There were sounds outside, and not the idle sounds of just anyone going about his business, either. Without warning in the least, the door crashed open, and Lysander reached up his sleeve,
procuring a gleaming knife. Sparing not a moment for hesitation, Lysander whipped it at the intruder; it was loud as it tore through the air, slicing through silence.
And there, hanging resolutely in the air, was the knife. It was not moving, merely suspended in time, hardly a hair’s breadth away from the face of the would-be victim. The man wore smug satisfaction on his face as thick as any mask. Yellow cords
of Air held the blade from going any further, and the sense of another man holding saidin was strong in Lysander’s mind. Without changing his stature, the man released the One Power, and the blade fell to the floor with the thud of
steel on wood.
Confident, Chogan Corvus approached the bed upon which Lysander was perched. “Good evening, T’hoth,” the man said in oily tones. It was dark, and his garbs were the same as any of the Asha’man. Lysander could feel relief once more. Chogan would not
attack him. Instead, the tall Asha’man simply closed the door in his wake, turning again to face Lysander. “Unfortunately your reaction time was far too delayed. Had I been hasty, I could very easily have escaped that assault before it even came,
Dedicated. That is the main limitation of using corporeal weapons against a channeler, too–had I reversed my flows, I could so easily have sent the hilt of the knife aiming at your head, and perforated the skull and killed you.”
“I understand, Asha’man,” Lysander said, his every whisper subordinate.
Chogan nodded again, and his eyes flicked over to the envelope now forgotten on the floor. Lysander still held the Power, he realized, but at the time of the Asha’man’s surprise entrance–an entrance made if only to test him!–he’d let his flows
dissipate. Peering at him in wry amusement, Chogan conveyed his admonishment for that without speaking a word. Wielding saidin, the man summoned the letter to his hand with a single woven thread. “This is the letter, I assume, to which you
were talking?”
Lysander peered at him oddly. “I’m sorry, Asha’man, but I do not know what–”
“Do the words ‘Are you from an Aes Sedai, then?’ mean anything to you?” he asked.
Lysander’s stomach lurched. How did . . . ? How would this man know what he’d said? “Sir . . .” he said carefully, “were you watching me?” Had he been listening outside the door, then, the entire time? Surely Lysander would’ve heard him?
Chogan smirked. “That would be quite an accusation. No, I sensed channeling, and was listening from the other side of the door for the sound of an intruder.”
“I see.” Lysander tried not to peer at him warily, taking his thoughts through paces. That was a lie if he’d ever heard one. The man seemed to have lying down to a fine art, for it was no hallmark of his voice that gave Lysander the indication, but
rather what he’d said. Lysander had spoken before seizing the True Source. Was Chogan following him? Chogan Corvus was the only man within the walls of the Black Tower to know of Lysander’s allegiance to the Shadow, and had been vital in
keeping that secret. What was Chogan playing at?
“So, the letter,” the man said in casual tones, peering down at him over a hooked nose. His hair was black and long, his voice quiet smooth, and the man was intimidating if ever Lysander had been intimidated. He was not above admitting that he had,
though if Chogan was playing any games with him . . . Lysander would not tolerate them. “You’ve checked it for wards set off by channeling, then? What else?”
Was the man watching him? “Yes. I assume that it will be of no harm if I open it.”
The Asha’man only handed over the letter. “And may the burden of the consequences if you’re wrong fall squarely on your shoulders.”
Accepting the vellum, Lysander licked at his lips. He rather wished the Asha’man was notpresente, yet they had not the typical relationship of any Asha’man and Dedicated. Chogan guarded Lysander’s secrets closely, and could exercise authority over
him that no Asha’man should have over any Dedicated. Holding the vellum by the edges with nimble fingers, Lysander hesitated, if only to test his self-control. He knew not what the envelope, but if he ever wanted to know something . . . he wanted
to know something tonight. And so, sitting there atop his bed, Chogan Corvus watching him, Lysander began to open it. He let the smallest fissure rive across the seal, if only for a moment, before breaking the seal entirely.
He was reeling with screams.
Razors. Innumerable razors, razors of saidin, tore into him, cleaving into his flesh. He writhed in the bed sheets, staining them with blood, and screamed further. He knew not was happening, but, suddenly, a convulsion shot through him, and
another, and for the pain in his chest, and the tremors going through him, it was to be both set afire and doused in ice-water at once. When the razors abated and the tremors died away, Lysander sat up, head in a daze. The pain was there.
Cautiously he peered down at his own chest, for his black coat had been torn clearly away from him. Red lines cut through his skin, and, exhaling, he let his words set the tone for his horror. “Blood and ashes,” he whispered. It was the Dragon’s
Fang. The Dragon’s Fang! The bloody Dragon’s bloody Fang carved into his bloody chest! No!
“I was wondering,” Chogan said to break the silence, “if you’d thought of motion wards. Wards activated by the breaking of the wax seal.” Evidently not! he thought in poorly stemmed fury. “My, this is a problem.”
“You Healed me,” Lysander cried, “but it didn’t work! The tremors I felt! You wove Healing on me, but it didn’t work!”
Chogan shook his head, retaining his placidity in spite of it all. “No, it did not. You are aware, I think, of my limited Talent for Healing? I can Heal shallow cuts, Dedicated, but those are anything but shallow. My weave only allowed the wound to
ease and the blood to congeal.”
He was near-short of hysterical, or near-short of acting so. The man could not be so calm! Not when . . . ! “The flaming envelope shot razors at me, and now I’m cut up in the shape of the Dragon’s Fang!”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” the Asha’man mused. “The most symbolic way of naming you a Darkfriend, and scrawled into your chest, too. I suppose that guild of yours . . . I suppose they have Dreadlords. Kiserai Alshan, I believe?”
He flinched. Kiserai Alshan indeed. The Lord’s Glory. Before his coming to the Black Tower, Lysander had become a member of the guild, though organized service to the Great Lord was not for him as he’d soon discovered. Leaving the guild had not
been easy, and keeping away had been and impossibility. They’d trailed him all the way to the Black Tower, and had wanted to use him as a mole. He’d not stood for that. This, then . . . well, he hadn’t known if the guild had Dreadlords among their
numbers, but for them to weave such a complex ward of Air as this . . . he assumed so.
“Kiserai Alshan did this to me,” Lysander agreed. “Now Heal me.”
“You’re not listening, Dedicated. I cannot. If I were to put all my effort, all my strength, all my everything into this, I would only be able to close the wound, but the scar of a Dragon’s Fang on your chest would remain still. If anything, with
the blood congealed . . . it’s in limbo. Not Healed, and certainly not unhealed. You’ll need immediate attention before it heals naturally, however, and before infection sets in. You’ll need a Healer of true merit.”
“Then I’ll–”
“March down to the Infirmary? Ask them to Heal a wound that would earn you death if anyone discovered it? How might you lie your way out of something like that, then? Or would you kill the Healer after? Do you think you could kill a fully trained
Asha’man? Or even a Dedicated of equal skill as you? And do you think there are any Soldiers with skill enough to Heal that?”
Lysander would love nothing more than to strike out at this man. He asked of him all the answers, though would not render any himself! “What is your suggestion, then? Sir?” he added. “I suppose you have connections within the Tower? To other
. . . ones like us? Other Darkfriends? Darkfriends must number even among the Tower’s Healers.”
Chogan chuckled. “You overestimate me. Why do you think I cling so close to you, T’hoth, overseeing your progress? Why do you think I recommended you for promotion? I have guarded my own secret closely, and the connections I bear to other Friends
of the Dark within the Tower’s walls are delicate beings. I can ask of them not favours, Dedicated, and most certainly not for you.” The man had to be lying. With every last whit of his being, Lysander knew he was lying. “If you are, however,
looking for a Healer with sufficient strength . . . a Healer who is not trained in combat, one who you’ll be able to do away with as soon as you’re finished . . . I will be able to help you.”
Lysander had little choice but to listen, and with the Asha’man’s every word, his own doubt of Chogan Corvus increased a thousandfold.
Soft moonbeams filtered through the window, striking the surfaces as barely luminous and painting them with silver. It was a dead silence that encompassed the evening, broken if only by the sound of the woman’s breaths.
Soft, quiet, and deliberate. Deliberate. Deliberate, because she held herself together. Deliberate, because she held herself from tears.
Mundane work really wasn’t all too awful for her. Even in the dead of the night, when a thousand times over Myrth would rather be sleeping . . . she could withstand it. She supposed it was an inherent skill, because it was the only thing that
kept Myrth sane working in the Eyes and Ears of the Yellow Ajah. Why hadn’t I tried harder to get out of this job? she wondered vaguely, sniffling. In any case, it was a fruitless thought, because Myrth knew very well that she couldn’t
have gotten herself out of working for the Eyes and Ears, though that she’d never say. Besides, even if it was not the work she would rather to be doing, she needed something to bait her mind away from other matters. Darker matters.
Focus, Myrth, she told herself stubbornly, snivelling.
Had it not been for her procrastination, Myrth would not be up at these unholy hours, working away to have these reports for Padmini finished. Light, but Padmini saw the Yellow Ajah’s Eyes and Ears as a steam engine–and one failing part of that
engine would invoke devastation, or some silly metaphor like that. Volunteering for as many Infirmary shifts as she had, well, it was only a matter of time before the First Weaver, Fionavar, called Myrth in for a meeting to discuss priorities.
Light, priorities. As if she didn’t already have enough on her mind.
The quiet glow of the moon caused her left hand to glint the slightest, the only one of the two not holding a burdensome scratching pen–and the only one adorned with rings. Two rings, most specifically, representing two parts of Myrth’s life.
Upon the fourth finger of her left hand, fat and gleaming for the gilt of it, was the Great Serpent ring. She eyed the Serpent through her peripherals, the fated beast doomed to chewing on its own tale for all eternity. As the Wheel turned, so
the Great Serpent turned, and so was it doomed to this life.
On the middle finger, however, cast of a sleek bronze, was the second. A second ring, and if the first reminded her of duties and responsibility and burdens piled high into the sky . . . this second reminded her of losses. It reminded her of
Rilain. She blinked away the tears faster than they could form, putting up a valiant fight to slay an enemy she hardly could control, though this did not last long. Exhaling, Myrth felt the tears slide down her cheeks, feeling like a miserable
child for this.
Light, she was tired, yet fatigue was no bar to her memories.
I’m leaving . . .
A mission of great importance . . .
Assumed identity, one that refuses me to return to Tar Valon . . .
I’m leaving . . .
Release me of that promise . . .
I’m sorry . . .
I’m leaving . . .
And so Rilain had left. She still had his parting letter in her armoire, and Myrth had read it over enough to be able to recite it from memory. Her brother, an Aes Sedai of the Green Ajah . . . and he was gone. Did she only miss him? She’d
always had a close relationship with Rilain, yet since he’d become a resident of the Tower two years into her life as a novice . . . that relationship had strengthened. The ties that bound them were of cuendillar. If something stronger
existed–oh, Light, something did–then their relationship was that.
Maybe, mayhap, she felt guilty? Maybe she felt she’d not done enough to keep him here? Or was it envy? Envy for the life Rilain led, knowing that no matter how much he missed him, he was serving his Ajah in the way he longed to most?
Whether she felt yearn, whether she felt guilt, whether she felt envy–whether she felt any of these, this was what the bronze ring represented. It represented a lost brother. To touch it with Spirit was to summon him to her; Rilain
always had been deft with making ter’angreal. What emergency, then, did she have that would have her risk her brother’s welfare? Was she thick enough to wager her brother’s very life to have him steal away to Tar Valon if only so she
could see him? How many times had she come a hair’s breadth away from activating it for her own selfish reasons?
Sighing, Myrth peered down through the darkness at the vellum sitting beneath her. It all would be so much easier if she had her lover, her Adriel, but he was on some Brown Ajah expedition to the Black Hills to study florae. While Rilain’s
location was guarded and sealed away to the Green Ajah, Adriel’s was common knowledge . . . or so it would seem. He had not known precisely when he would return upon his departure to the Black Hills, no, but he’d told her it’d be hardly more
than a week. Light. She wanted to know. And so she’d taken to asking every Brown ‘neath the sun, though she received but casual shrugs and delayed responses. This was the plight faced by a woman so weak in the Power, so low upon the hierarchy
of an Aes Sedai. Myrth could command answers from no one.
She had little to no motivation left to finish. Standing up on unsteady legs–Light, but she’d not budged in hours–Myrth took three careful steps toward her bed, ready to flop down upon it and leave this work for tomorrow. Maybe she’d tell
Padmini to eat those reports. Maybe she’d tell Fionavar that she’d work for the Yellow Ajah as she wanted to work for it. Maybe she’d activate the ter’angreal so she could be with Rilain and everything could be as it once was.
I won’t, though. Peering back over at the reports, Myrth shook her head, smiling ruefully. She’d finish those reports if they took her until dawn, and unless she was greatly mistaken, they would.
“Light, Myrth, you look awful.”
The sympathy was overwhelming as she entered the dining hall the following morning, eyes itchy with tiredness and legs leaden with exhaustion. She would much rather have had her breakfast with a bowlful of solitude, yet seeing that all the
tables were occupied by at least one person–Lights, but Whites did enjoy empty company–she chose one with Rozalille. Though without her shawl, Rozalille worked alongside Myrth in the Yellow’s Eyes and Ears. She appeared youthful and sprightly
with bobs of hazelnut hair, just barely attaining the agelessness that came with the sworn Oaths.
Something was tickling the back of her mind, almost annoyingly so. It was her weather sense. Myrth could Listen to the Wind, and the Wind . . . the Wind spoke of a storm. A frightful storm, if any warranted the title, yet she hardly
could puzzle it out. The air was dry, with northbound winds having gusted the precipitation and low pressure systems toward Arafel. The clouds didn’t look fit to burst for another week. This storm, however . . . this one was just on the
horizon.
Usually seeming impatient and hurried, Rozalille peered at Myrth squarely, and Myrth was startled from her weather worries. “I’m not kidding, Myrth. You look as good as a Trolloc. Did you not get any sleep? Did you and Adriel have a fight? I
thought he was away in–”
“The Black Hills? Yes, he is,” Myrth replied, hoping not to sound harsh. Light, but she didn’t like to offend people . . . of course, the conversation as it was left a little to be desired. “I was finishing up my reports, Roz.”
She nodded energetically, tiny curls bobbing with wonted enthusiasm. “I see. Well, I mean, to be fair, Myrth, you were in the Infirmary well-nigh of every day this past week. Padmini isn’t pleased, you know. Isn’t that a bit excessive?”
Myrth peered at her sharply. “As I have it, Padmini isn’t pleased that you’ve bonded your second Warder. Isn’t that a bit excessive?” Had she been able to exercise any self-control, she’d have stopped then and there, but she did not. “An
Aethan’Tar, this time, I’ve heard? Tavarius or something of the like? Really, an Aethan’Tar? I’m guessing it’s not excessive, then, just bloody stupid, to bond a man–sorry, boy, I mean–who couldn’t tell one end from a sword from
the other, and probably is too weak in the arms to lift it, anyway.”
Rozalille looked hurt. Oh, Light, for that entire moment, Myrth hated herself, sitting there in that sickly silent guilt. Light! Myrth hadn’t meant to offend! She was just so bloody tired, and Rozalille was difficult to endure even after a
whole night of sleep. Even after a hundred. “Roz, I’m . . . you know I didn’t mean–”
“No, you’re right,” she said stiffly. “It’s what everyone’s been saying, at least, about my bond with Tavarius. Bonding children and whatnot.” An awkward silence gravitated between them. Myrth peered into her porridge, cutting runic shapes into
it, and wishing fleetingly that she had her brother to help her finish it. “If you’re too tired, Myrth . . . Fionavar wanted me to deliver this to you.” From her pocket she presented a vellum envelope. “A teaching opportunity. It came in the
dead of the night . . . a pigeon, apparently, flying from a gateway. From the Black Tower.”
Myrth looked up in interest. “Really? Can I–”
“If you’re too tired to, though, that’s fine. I wouldn’t mind the opportunity myself, you know, to be outside of the White Tower and away from the ridicule.” Rozalille peered down in a sudden, self-piteous look.
She’s trying to manipulate me, Myrth realized. Fionavar had given her a special assignment–and gotten Rozalille to deliver it to her–and here Rozalille was, trying to snatch it away from her! Light, she was sick with exhaustion,
yet a teaching opportunity . . . but she’d be placing herself on the same path as last night, shirking her work until the twelfth hour, but . . . it would help. It would help take her mind of Rilain. Call it greed, call it gluttony–Myrth
certainly did–but she’d take it for herself. She’d take this mission.
Embracing the True Source, Myrth hardly paused to savour the sweetness while she plucked the envelope from Rozalille’s hand with an artful swoop. Pulling the letter from its envelope, she read it over.
Aes Sedai,
We request a single female Aes Sedai of the Yellow Ajah to teach a lesson on the subject of Healing at the Black Tower this evening. Grave business in the Borderlands has caused us to dispatch all but a handful of our Tower’s Healers. All that
is required is a strength in Healing, so that this knowledge can be imparted upon our recruits.
The lesson will convene at the lake inside of our forest tonight at midnight.
Regards,
Asha’man Mynoan
“The strength in Healing, I believe, is the only reason Fionavar chose you over other candidates,” Rozalille said briskly. Well, that stood to reason, as Myrth was one of the strongest Healers the Ajah had to boast. It did little to aid her
cleave a path through the Tower’s hierarchy, however, as she was also dreadfully weak in saidar. The Wheel of Time sought balance, they would say. “Well? Will you be taking it?”
“Yes,” she answered without thought. Perhaps, had fortune favoured her differently, Myrth would’ve found a more altruistic side granting the letter to the other Yellow. As things were, however, with Rilain in the Borderlands, and with Adriel
gone to the Black Hills . . . that altruistic side seemed stunted. That was likely because Myrth stunted it.
Standing up, Myrth left her porridge as it was. Myrth had developed a few insights into the life of a servant in her years, and many would not be opposed to table scraps. Striding for the exit, she heard Rozalille call from behind her, “Where
are you going?”
To the Black Tower, Myrth thought, but not before a nap. Her Talent itched continually at the back of her mind, but little still could be done. Perhaps the Wind in Andor would not deceive her so?
The pieces found their places. The entire plan was a blacksmith’s puzzle, for lack of a better analogy. It didn’t suit Lysander at all, for though his father had been a smith of another sort, he himself didn’t much care
for the working of metal. It was an interesting trade, in a sense, but nothing that had particularly ensnared his interest. It was mundane. So long as he had his knives, his arrowheads–and knew how they were properly made and that they
were properly made–anything else was unimportant. He was, after all, not a smith himself.
Nonetheless, whether he applied himself to one trade or another, Lysander could see the puzzle. The interlocking pieces required a scrupulous eye, seeing how each link was wedged firmly in by another. He saw it. The wound, the letter, the
Aes Sedai . . . they all came together to form the plan. Tonight, the Aes Sedai would find that her own link had become too deeply wedged for her to escape, and once he’d gotten what he needed from her, he’d kill her. The puzzle was
immaculate.
Chogan had been of little help for him. The Asha’man had procured the pigeon, yes, and had channeled the gateway to allow for the bird’s swift travel, but he’d left Lysander to scrawl the message.
“The Yellow Ajah, Dedicated,” the man said, “is the equivalent of our Tower’s Healers. They all know how to Heal, but they come of varied strengths. Request one of a potent strength, and all will be done that can be done.”
And so he had. Asking for a woman, however, was his own idea. The term “misogynist” might apply to Lysander in the eyes of a lesser person, but he knew the truth. He was a realist. Most especially in the world of the Black Tower, women were
weaker, and harvesting one would be all too easy of an act.
He fished furtively into the pocket of his britches–the right one. It was a useless practise, as he knew as assuredly as he knew that trees bore the waxy cuticles of fat, round leaves that it was there. The Shadow preserve him, but he could
even feel it pull down on the inside of his pockets. It was a nondescript piece of copper, with the flows of Spirit lacking inversion. Not his own flows. Chogan’s.
“What am I supposed to do with it?” he wondered aloud, holding his tiny copper ingot in the palm of his hand. Remaining motionless, Lysander flicked his gaze upwards the meet Chogan’s.
Chogan smiled that suave, irritating smile of his. “A piece of warded metal.”
“A ter’angreal?”
“No. It is warded metal, Soldier. Warded with Spirit. Trip the ward with a thread of Spirit of your own, and I will know. Trip the ward with Spirit, and I will come to your side. I will not be there with you tonight–I will not deprecate
myself to cover the tracks of one lowly recruit–but if it is in the best interests of the Black Tower, I will come should I receive a summons. If matters with the Aes Sedai get out of hand tonight, you will have this to summon me if my aid
is so required. But take this warning with distinction: don’t let them.”
Lysander peered at it a moment longer, the clockwork of his mind clicking and clacking away soundlessly inside his skull. He thought until the fruit of his indecision was not there. He thought until there was no fruit of his indecision. “I
don’t understand. Why would I need your help?”
But Chogan only smiled.
Lysander placed the warded ingot back into his pocket. That Chogan was mad did not surprise him; that Chogan thought an Aes Sedai would cause him to sweat did.
Peering at the archery butt ahead of him, Lysander raised his bow, keeping his shoulders low and his hand right beside his chin. Archery was a fine skill; he was, after all, masquerading as an Officer, and it was important that he learn a
few of the tricks of such a trade. He had not quite decided whether he’d be taking the bow with him on tonight’s excursion. It had helped him before to get out of a tight fix, and it would be possible for it to help him again . . . he
pondered at the thought as he fired away, the arrow straying a tad to the left of hitting a true bell ringer. “Hrm,” was all he said.
The wound still stung his chest, and so he was keeping his training today rather relaxed, lest he break the wound open and bleed to death. Aside of channeling exercises, there was little training he could do besides archery that would still
guarantee his welfare. He’d not be stupid and ruin this for him.
“Hey, Lysander!” Three black-coated individuals were scurrying up to them, their unadorned collars marking them as Soldiers. He’d been practising alone in the Tower’s easternmost exercise yard until their intrusion. “Lysander, you missed!
Lysander, you missed it!”
Fools, he thought, granting them not a reply and simply reaching forth with a thread of saidin to pluck his arrow from the target. Suddenly one of the three boys lurched forth, snatching the arrow as it wafted through the air.
“I got it, guys!” the swarthy young recruit said, peering at his friends in boyish glee. “Jeffer, Denton–I got Lysander’s arrow! I got it from a Dedicated!” The Shadow preserve him, but did they really think he’d been trying to keep
his arrow away from them?
“You bested Buggy Lyander! You did!”
Buggy Lysander . . . ?
“Watch out, Jorge! Buggy Lysander might just wig out on you!” Soldier Jeffer cried, giggling madly.
“Ooh, Jorge, it’s okay! You’ve seen him with a sword, haven’t you? Buggy Lysander never makes it through a sword lesson without a reprimand! Here, catch!” Tossing forth a wooden practise sword, Denton watched with a blue-eyed gaze as
Lysander snatched at it with a thread of Air, peering at them silently. He was used to this. He was used to it, and they’d get bored eventually, so long as he remained silent . . . they’d get bored of this eventually, and they’d leave him
alone.
Swarthy Jorge, discarding the arrow to the ground, pulled out his own practise sword. The Soldier began with Ribbon in the Air, or . . . or some form similar to that. Ribbon in the Air might’ve been its name, anyway. Jumping backwards,
Lysander was far back enough just to see the tip of the wooden blade dance about in front of his nose, all to the Soldiers’ laughter.
“You’re right, guys!” Jorge laughed. “He can’t use the sword!”
“Heron Wading in the Rushes to parry it, Buggy!” Heron Wading in the Rushes? Wasn’t that a stance? The children–Jorge, Jeffer, and Denton–watched him as he stood motionlessly, their laughter loud enough to deafen him. He raised the sword
awkwardly, chest stinging with the pain of his fresh wound, and brought the blade back down to his side.
This was his price. Lysander held his cards close to himself, which was another ill-befitting analogy. He was not a cold, callous person on his exterior, as would be expected from a Friend of the Dark. No, he was not so foolish as that.
Instead, he strived to appear as quiet, almost timid, and he wore a crooked sort of smile. People thought he was crazy. They thought . . . thought he was buggy. It did not matter to him, as companionship was not something Lysander sought.
Quite the opposite. They all got bored of poking fun at him for a while. He was stronger than to care. He’d tempered himself so that he was stronger.
“Aaw, guys, Buggy Lysander’s not even trying anymore,” Denton said dejectedly, peering around in boredom. “Come on, the sun’s starting to set . . . let’s go.”
Muttering amongst themselves, casting back smirking grins at him, the trio departed, though never for long. Their attention spans, it seemed, while wasting away quickly, were quick to rejuvenate, and there was always another round
for Buggy Lysander. Jorge, Jeffer, and Denton were no different from any others of them. He did not pity himself. He pitied them, but he did not know why. Peering at them from behind, Lysander touched the True Source, though not enough to
garner notice. The three Soldiers were backlit by the light of the sun, seeming as though a troika of black apparitions. In turn, he channeled three selfsame weaves. Grids of Air. They fell into each of their throats. No. Their windpipes.
All it would do was bring less oxygen into their lungs, and they’d tire with greater ease. If anything, an Asha’man might reprimand them for falling behind in their laps of the yard. That tiny token of vengeance would be enough. Lysander
tied off each of them.
The sun was starting to set. The forest’s branches in the near distance were beginning to reclaim their foliage, the light filtering through the gaps bordering the sparse clumps of leaves. The sky was a raw, luminous shade of orange.
Preparations would need to be made, and though midnight would not be upon him for several hours yet . . . well, he would wait.
Glancing back over his shoulder to be sure no Asha’man had their eyes on him, Lysander knew that was not finished with the Power. From this medley of saidin, Lysander plucked a few choice threads of a few select elements. Black. He
wove threads of Illusion over his skin, his hands, his face. Lysander was the Illusion, and this Illusion was blackness. He appeared a silhouette, a shadow, perched there upon the grassy expanse of the yard. In the last light of the setting
sun, shadows grew oblong and dragging. He was one of them. It was as close to folding light as Illusion could offer.
He let his steps grant him passage into the forest, not in haste nor in delay. His own thoughts tarried briefly on Jorge and the other two recruits. Lysander knew he was better than they were–faster, smarter. After tonight, he would have
something to further set him apart from them, to further emboss his greatness into the world. After tonight, Lysander would have killed an Aes Sedai.
From the moment he’d seen her slight form untangle itself from the undergrowth and thickets . . . Lysander had known victory was imminent. They might as well have sent a child for the task, and by the grace of a first
appearance, they had. This woman was tiny, seeming more like a girl’s doll than a representative of the famed White Tower. The tiny ball of light cast luminance upon her features, her face not entirely touched with the agelessness. He
had theories of what this fact could possibly mean; all proffered the conclusion that this was yet another token in his favour.
He watched her for some while, swallowing the moment for its depths of knowledge. The analytical man prospered; this wasn’t some worn, overused adage to be spouted off by crotchety old blokes, but rather the simple truth. She seemed to
lack confidence, this one, and though she wore her serenity . . . he hardly wondered how well indeed she held it. Nonetheless, he had to assume that there had to be some measure of steel behind anyone trained to Heal what would consume
a life. Or did the Yellow Ajah shy away from the gore and vileness that the Black Tower’s Healers so had to endure?
What was arguably most important of what he gleaned from her, he knew, was that she had no Warder. A burly man with a broadsword–yes, he’d seen their likes before–were no match for the One Power, and yet he liked the notion of
increasing the probability of his victory as much as possible. Lysander was not a gambler. He’d not place such important stakes in the hand’s of fate, in the hands of the Wheel. One created one’s own fortune, and with the proper
forethought, Lysander knew he could be a very lucky man.
And Chogan had given him the ingot. With a slender, indulgent touch, Lysander fingered the piece of warded copper in his pocket. It would find no use tonight.
The fire he used to ensnare Myrth was beautiful. It was beautiful because it had ensnared her, because the fiery columns that licked away at the evening with their crepitations barred her movement. She’d collapsed to her knees,
peering into the flattened blades of grass. Is that what it takes to break an Aes Sedai? he mused. He’d let saidin do the majority of his work, though he had his reasons. The raw wound on his chest still stung, and it
would bleed freshly if he gave it the chance. He’d not.
“I see you’re ready, then, for me to begin,” he murmured. Crouching low to the loamy earth, Lysander tilted his head, trying to catch the dark eyes of the woman’s gaze. She kept them understandably averted. He peered through the
crackling bars with a smile, saying, “I had you come here because I have a task for you, but one that has naught to do in the least with a lesson. Do you understand?”
Myrth’s gaze was downcast, hidden . . . before she looked up, and her eyes held suddenly something altogether different. Glistering in the light of the Aes Sedai’s prison, her gaze was fixed, resolute. She watched him squarely, and
though he was left to wonder how much of that lustre was tears, she appeared to be drawing from a wellspring of confidence. “I understand enough. I understand that you’re a madman. I understand that, whatever you want from me . . .
you’ll not get it. You’ll not get it because I’m not going to give it to you.”
And so her words held defiance? This did not irk Lysander; the woman had not as of yet been broken, yet that would be quickly remedied, and then she would remedy him. It would be of no difficulty. “The task I have of you is simple,” he
said, going on as if she’d not spoken a word. “I have to me an infliction, I suppose, for you to Heal.”
“You have Healers in your Tower,” Myrth replied in a level tone. “You don’t need me, and I’ll see that you do free me.”
She was a cheeky harlot. “No, I’ll not free you. And this task has to be trusted to someone more disposable than members of my own Tower.”
He wondered if the clockwork in her mind was at work, and if she was piecing together the situation. Though he’d not say it, Lysander knew in essence that she was safe–safe until she performed the task he so required of her. Once he’d
gotten what he needed from her, however, and once she’d Healed him. . . .
“You’ll kill me? Right. Well, you’ve a deft hand at motivation, child.” The woman went as far as to smile at him. Smile! He silenced his furies. The only reason she was doing this, he knew, was to set him off into frustration. Lysander
would not believe that the woman, of all things, chose now to be merry. “I suppose I’ll just wait here until dawn, then? Do you think this can last any longer than that? By dawn, I’ll have been found, and it’ll be your head on that
Traitor’s Tree of yours.” Her appearance was that of too much confidence. He could see through facades. He could see through liars. Not a child indeed.
Straightening himself–a luxury Myrth did not have, not with such a low ceiling to the cage–Lysander reached his hands into his pocket. His left. He pulled out a tapered blade, a gift long-since bequeathed upon him by a friend now gone.
He held it, letting the moonlight grace it with a foreboding sort of sheen, before placing it gently on the ground. Next came his pin to match, thin with a silver enamel like the sword Lysander knew not how to wield. That earned its
place beside it.
Summoning a surgeon’s precision, Lysander undid each of his coat’s fastenings, his gaze and his smile not stirring in the least. Once each of the tiny fastenings had been undone, Lysander let the coat fall to the ground, baring himself
to the evening’s subtle breezes and whispering undercurrents, ones hardly to ripple the grasses or stir the bowers. He was a lean man, Lysander, and so one would have to be blinded in both eyes to miss it. The wound, covered in the
blackened scabs of dried blood. Hardly closed. She did not flinch at it, nor bat a lash out of place, but she saw it. She saw the wound. She saw the Dragon’s Fang.
“And now you’ll Heal it,” Lysander breathed.
Myrth’s smile held, much to his distaste. “Well, I can certainly see why you’d need someone ‘disposable’ to Heal it, child. Someone might get the impression you’re a Darkfriend, and, well, kidnapping an Aes Sedai and caging her with the
Power isn’t exactly a step in your favour.” The impression? Did she not already see him for what he was? Was she a fool, then? “I desist, child. You can administer torture on me if you think it would help, but I doubt it will.”
She was right. Lysander had never . . . never tortured someone in his life, though bereaved of experience as he was, he could just as easily supplement creativity. He had Seianai’s blade, after all, and a wealth of saidin
to boot. A flare of Fire, an assault of Air. . . . Unfortunately, however, he could rob this woman of endurance all he wished, yet if he brought her past the point of human endurance where she was still able to Heal him . . . he’d have
to kill her, and the wound would fester another day yet.
That was when the most peculiar of all sensations gripped him. He was staring at her, staring as he would at a door or plate or any arbitrary fixing. In all suddenness Lysander blinked his eyes, and he saw it. Perched upon her shoulder
was a . . . what? A manacle? It was there, as corporeal as the lake or the trees or the very Aes Sedai crouched before him. It was caught in the limbo between her shoulder and the bright light of the wicked flames, remaining there just
beside her fringed shawl. He began to wonder if it was but an apparition of the light. It did not waver, though, and it did not leave him. It was there.
“What is that?” he asked quietly.
“I beg your pardon?”
How can she not know of it? he asked himself. It was right on top of her shoulder! Upon closer inspection, however, he realized that this was not entirely true. The iron manacle, complete with its metal looks and conjoining
chain, hovered above the woman’s shoulder. It did not actually touch her. He shook his head, clearing his thoughts, and peered back at it, expecting it to have vanished. It didn’t. The manacle haunted him yet.
If the woman thought him crazy, she did not show it. “Listen,” she said, the cocky defiance in her voice replaced with a more soothing sound, “I understand your situation. You’ve idly stepped between two Trollocs, and neither option
will favour you. You’ve made a mistake. By the Three Oaths, Dedicated Lysander, you’ll not hear me breathing word of this evening to another soul. I came this evening to teach a Healing lesson, and it easily can be arranged so that this
is the extent of what anyone knows. Let me go, and–”
With the screech of a cry, the woman’s words were silenced as she slapped her hand to her cheek, dark eyes wide and fearful, if only for an instant. Saidin was passion personified as it coursed through his skin, and he’d let that
passion free, striking out at her with Fire. “A minor burn, and a cautionary one at that. If you even think of trying to barter your way out of this again, then the burn I’ll administer won’t be Healed. Not ever.”
“Monster,” she accused, nursing the burn on her cheek.
Lysander was not a monster. He was a man. He was as any other man who had a problem, and he, so long as it was in his power, would rectify it. Why should he assume the short end of the stick for this? He was the one with the initiative
to change this, to fix this; he should not suffer for what others had done to him. It was not with cold-blooded contempt that he watched the woman, but with need. He was resourceful, clearly, and she was his resource.
The manacle, however, was gone. What was that? What did it represent? Was he truly going mad?
“You’re a despicable creature, and once the White Tower has you, you will regret your treason. By the Oaths, boy, I promise we’ll make you regret your very birth. You don’t deserve to walk under the Light,” Myrth said, her voice just
barely disgusted.
“You don’t see it. I’m not a despicable creature.”
She laughed coldly. “Then what are you?”
“I,” he said quietly, “am a Darkfriend.”
He was a Darkfriend. From fear to confidence to coldness, Myrth’s spectrum of emotions had carried her labouriously, but only was it now that she felt . . . anger. It was fast to rise in her, poisoning her
thoughts, crippling her serenity. If there was one thing in this world for which she held no respect, for which she held only hatred, it was those to pledge themselves to the Dark One.
Had she been able to freely stand, Myrth would have, if only to meet the evil man’s gaze. Even still, she would not let her gaze waver, if only to let this man know of her hatred for him. The hatred was inherent for what he
represented. For all that they’d done to Madeline, to Aiyaela, to those Myrth held dear, she’d not spare them anything else. This man was not Mesaana, no, and nor did he represent the Black Ajah, but that mattered not. He was the
same. He was the same as any of them, as the rest of them, and justice fell heavily on Friends of the Dark.
So the Black Tower has Darkfriends, she realized. It was the madness of this notion that had kept her from surmising it, yet here it was in olive-skinned flesh before her. A peculiar notion, to imagine Darkfriends cavorting
among those sworn to serve the Dragon Reborn. Light, but they’d sworn to serve the Dragon Reborn. What logic was there in serving the enemy, if even only as a facade? What logic is there in serving evil?
No good would come from stark refusal. Darkfriend or not, Lysander would kill her when presented the chance, and if it took conversing with him on a level that was almost human to divert him, to save her . . . well, she was ready.
“Your injury,” she said. “How did you get it?”
The man’s eerie smile only held, though with every passing minute, it grew all the more translucent. Perhaps it was because every passing minute would soon translate to every passing hour, and in hours too few for him, dawn would be
upon them. Dawn. The sun would be her saviour. “That isn’t for you to know. You will Heal me now, woman.”
“I might very well do so, yet it would do you no good if I Healed you improperly. Different injuries require variations on the Healing weave,” she said conversationally. This was indeed the truth. However, by and large, a cut was a
cut. Myrth did not bandy about her words idly, and she was speaking as not to stroke his temper. Now, at least, after he’d demonstrated that same fury. Her cheek still stung with the burn.
“I have enemies,” he said simply. “Enemies who would kill me at their first opportunity. Enemies who would love little more than to have the truth of my secret exposed.”
“Enemies? So a follower of the Light did this to you?”
He peered at her carefully, touching his lips with his tongue. “No,” he said slowly. No? A Darkfriend attacked another Darkfriend? Well, that was not entirely unreasonable. The Seanchan would exchange blows with the White
Tower, yet neither walked under the Shadow. For the most part, rather.
“Ironic, isn’t it,” Myrth mused, “that in order to conceal your secret, you’re revealing it to me now?” She watched him for what he thought of this. Buying time was not necessarily a tricky feat, she supposed. Conversation was
conversation, yet this had to be as twisted of a conversation as she’d ever witnessed.
“Dead men tell no tales.”
“A shame that we’re not going to be able to put that adage to the test tonight.”
“No?”
“No.”
Lysander began pacing–it was subtle at first, certainly, with just a couple of idle turns of direction, yet he was pacing wide circles around the perimeter of her prison. “Heal me.” Myrth only shook her head.
It was this gist that carried them across the expanse of . . . of hours? Counting the passing of time was difficult in any such situation. The night was stalwart, the moon receding and emerging with each cloud to pass across it, the
wind beginning to whistle across the ground. It all was in stark contrast to the fire crackling around her. If she was cold, she did not shiver; if she was hot, she did not sweat. The tiny point behind her navel was the supplement
of her feelings. Weakness would not be tolerated.
The extent of this man’s patience was being tested. He continued pacing, seeming lost in apparent thought that hardly mattered to her. Besides, perhaps, her burnt cheek, she had nothing to distract her. With dwindling moments, the
man would order her to Heal him. Sometimes she’d refuse, and other times she’d let her silence mark her defiance.
This would never have happened to Rozalille. It was a peculiar thought to come at some a time, though it was truth. Adriel was away safely in the Black Hills, surely, though no bond wrought of the True Source joined them. She
was reminded of the truth that she had no Warder. Rozalille . . . Rozalille, who’d deprecated herself to bond an Aethan’Tar, would have been saved. Surely her distress would have been sensed, and even if either one of her Warders
had not joined her in her excursion, a rescue mission would already have been staged. Any Green would have been saved several times by now. Light, but Myrth truly needed a Warder to call her own. She would live to see the day when
she’d bond one. She would.
“Time grows thin,” Lysander said, breaking the gravid silence. “If you Heal me . . . if you Heal me, woman, you might find me a merciful man. You might find me allowing you, if only with your vow of silence, to walk free–”
“I’m not a fool, child,” she sighed. “If I’m not to haggle myself out of this situation, well, you’ll follow suit. Understood?” He said nothing.
The barrier barring her from the True Source . . . he would know if she tried to slam herself against it, and she’d not give him the satisfaction of it. Adriel. Rilain. With her every glance to the forest, she expected one of them,
either of one them, to charge from it. The perfect deus ex machina. The Creator, however, granted her no manumission. When dawn came . . . when dawn came, would she find herself saved by the miraculous intervention of an
Asha’man in passing, or would the Dedicated simply kill her?
“Heal me,” the man breathed for another incessant time.
Myrth swallowed. Dawn . . . Light, but dawn was too far away. And Adriel and . . . and Rilain would be no closer to this clearing than they would to the bloody Pit of Doom. “Fine. I’ll Heal you.”
The Dedicated whipped his ahead around to look at her, caught in a seeming stupor. He expressed his relief with a simple nod. The bars of crackling fire winked out of existence in that very moment, gone without ostentation. She’d
have fled, hastened away, if the man was not already prepared for what would come to pass. Cords of Air bound her ankles, bound her wrists, and she was jerked off the ground, pinned and wriggling there. She was some patient
etherised upon a table, some writhing insect watching the pins in their steady approach to her stomach.
“I will lessen the shield,” the man said, “letting only a trickle of the Power through. It will be enough.”
“A trickle? Your wound looks deep, and deep injuries require–“
“Healing is a Talent. It is independent of how much of the Power you hold. With a trickle or a landslide, you’ll be able to Heal me just as easily.” His eyes narrowed. “You know this.” She masked a flinch. She did know this.
She only had hoped Lysander hadn’t.
The glassy barrier began to dissolve from one side, or so it would seem, as the invisible threads of saidin were plucked cleanly from the weave. This left the tiniest amount of room for saidar to wheedle through,
filling her . . . well, sampling her with a mite thereof. She drew in that mite for all it was worth. It was the aftertaste following a meal, not the meal itself, and Myrth found herself yearning for that main course. Light. This
was hardly the time.
“Whenever you’re ready, Aes Sedai,” he said with a mocking hint to his smile.
Light.
The threads she drew were narrow, starved of life and lustre, though she knew this did not matter. Spirit was the core of the weave, the heart thereof. Spirit was its everything. She laced into it ribbons of Water, laurels of Air,
so that the result–the streaming medley of white and blue and yellow–was as much a tool of Healing as it was a piece of art. Its entirety was artful.
It would have been enough to Heal the Dragon’s Fang, though she did not stop there. Fire, Earth . . . she laced these into the weave of Healing, weaving constantly Water and Air, until it was a behemoth of woven skeins of the Power.
The strain of it was incredible, for with such a small amount of saidar . . . to maintain it . . . her vision grew patchy, her head swaying and lurching and threatening to abandon her now. . . .
It won’t. She was confident in her resolve. She was confident in what would come next.
“Who thinks he turns the Wheel of Time,” she murmured sadly, “may learn the truth too late.”
With an upheaval of energy, Myrth plunged the elephantine weave into the man’s very chest. To say that he convulsed was to say that Dragonmount was tall, or that Saldaea could get chilly under winter’s hand. Dragonmount was
astonishingly high, Saldaea was icy past endurance . . . and this man, this Lysander, fell to the ground in the sheer potency of the weave alone. His body jerked, writhing wildly, and saidin was gone from him. The shackles,
the shield . . . it all was gone.
She sprinted off into the forest, fleeing the wounded beast she left in her wake. If he truly seized the Power again, if the flows licking the backs of her ankles were not just her imagination . . . he did not stop her. Myrth was
into the trees. Myrth was gone.
He wondered if his given pulse was his last. That he was able to think such a thought, however, surely was a point in his favour. Or so one might suppose. Pulling himself up onto shaking legs, Lysander was
able to hold himself steady as he watched the last of the woman’s silhouette spirit away into the evening. The Shadow bloody preserve him! Nonetheless, the impact of Healing had not stolen all so much from him. His orientation,
perhaps, and most definitely his captive–but he was Healed. The weave would very likely have killed him if not for the simple fact that it was a weave of Healing; it negated its own detrimental effects. The Dragon’s Fang
was gone. Gone as the Aes Sedai was.
Never before had he so much envied the dead.
And in that fleeting moment of weakness, of fear-blinded pandemonium, Lysander unearthed Chogan’s copper ingot from his pocket. He peered at its sharp edges, its soft faces; if it had been quenched in its crafting, it had been
quenched poorly. He saw the bands of Spirit, the narrow skeins of saidin, of Spirit, that seduced him. A flick of the Power, and . . . and Chogan will have you blackmailed a second time. He owed too many bloody
favours to a man whose entire being deserved spite and scorn! Naught but spite and scorn! He’d not touch it!
Sprinting forth, Lysander knew this was not the time to lament what had come to pass. His objective had been met, yes, but at the price. The woman could not be allowed to escape. In the direction she was heading . . . no, she
was due the course of the eastern wall of the Black Tower’s perimeter. If she was so weak in the Power that she’d hardly been able to cause his shield to flex, he doubted she’d be able to Travel. What did that leave? Escaping by
foot? He knew the forests better than she–better than many of his own Tower–and Lysander would as soon marry the woman as he would allow her to find her way to the gates.
The trees enveloped him, the thickets and bramble and bracken that impeded his mobility. The bloody women’s skirts had been divided, hadn’t they? Leaving behind his coat, he realized, had been a mistake, and so he called upon
the Void to anaesthetize him. Narrow white scratches against his skin fell on unfeeling limbs, and the deeper, redder gashes could only be ignored. His chest, his arms, was a labyrinth carved by the groundcover.
As he progressed further, the tangle growing gradually less sizeable, and he was able to walk on the level. He peered about with a rodent’s rapidness, neck snapping for every direction there was, as he was hastening between the
trees. Lysander was quick on his toes, an attribute he held dearly. Where was she, then? Had he passed her? The forest personified darkness. He could not know.
The Shadow preserve him, but if he’d run for all of five minutes–seven minutes? Precision would be the only guarantor. His lungs burned, for the breakneck speed had been sought with no respite, though the Void masked any and all
of it. Lysander touched the True Source, drawing it in further, deeper, as he knew saidin would be an ally most needed.
Intricate was no word to describe his weave; intricacy was what the weave embodied. Spirit laced with Fire laced with Fire laced with Spirit. The weave stretched the scope of the trees, hanging between and above every expanse,
every length . . . every aperture of the forest. It was delicate, even, like the fragile wisps of a spider’s web. A swarm of the tiny creatures would have strived past endurance to make anything of this magnitude. He tied it off
by the ends. It was large enough not only to burn the trees, but to burn them to cinders.
Where is she? Where are you?
And in the second Lysander stopped breathing, and in the second where he heard every sigh and breath and creak and groan of the forest . . . he did not hear her. And he knew that, wherever he was, she was not here. And he knew
that his ward would trap no woman. In that second, Lysander knew the final of his alternatives, even as much as he detested it.
The lashes of Spirit had already whipped through air as he pulled the ingot from his pocket. The cords of Spirit pressed deeply into the tiny copper bit. The ward was tripped, and the ward vanished, and Lysander was there to
wait.
Breathe . . . breathe . . . breathe . . .
A breath . . . a breath . . . a breath . . .
The shining light of a flare of silver imbued the darkness of the forest with the light and lustre of the Power. A horizontal slash severed reality’s fabric as the gateway opened. From the wood-panelled recesses of the
Asha’man’s quarters did Chogan step, immaculate in his calmness. The hook of his nose, the glint of his eyes, and that swinish smile belied everything of the man’s character. Chogan was a bad person; Lysander was a Darkfriend
and he did not consider himself bad. Chogan Corvus was bad.
Chogan peered at Lysander’s chest, still bleeding with the tiny cuts of the branches, blinked, and met his gaze. “The Fang is gone,” was all he said.
“The Aes Sedai ran off, Chogan,” Lysander breathed.
“I know. I wouldn’t imagine you’d be here like this if she hadn’t. I wouldn’t imagine you’d set a ward to set the trees ablaze if she hadn’t.” He said nothing else.
The silence piqued his temper. Did Chogan see nothing of desperation? Did Chogan see nothing? “Help me, Chogan.” A pause and a breath. “Please.”
“She’ll be gone, you know. She’ll have Travelled.”
“She’d have Travelled at the foremost sign of any shred of opportunity. She doesn’t have enough knowledge of the forest to Travel from it. She can’t Skim, either, because she would have. I don’t think she’s powerful enough.”
Chogan smiled. “Fortunate.”
Lysander was a man of endless patience when he needed himself to be, but if Chogan could not see the rays of faint sunlight filtering through the forest, capping the undergrowth with a white-gold crown. . . . “You told me that
you’d help me.”
Chogan nodded, seeming almost dutiful. Was this some charade? “I will. I will help you by teaching your something you need to know, recruit, that you can’t live without. To depend on any soul in the world will have you killed.
To depend on the woman to fail, to depend on me to succeed . . . to depend on any entity that is not your own skill will do you no good. This is the help I give you. If you fail to capture the Aes Sedai, I will uphold the name
of the Black Tower. It will be known that this attack was formulated not by the collective mass of the Asha’man, but of one Dedicated. One Dedicated who can blame that one Dedicated if that one Dedicated fails.”
He was smiling as he passed through the gateway. It was gone.
The effect of the words left him dazed, left him disoriented. The hair on his arms stood erect, though this he hardly noticed. He stood there, the avalanche that embodied life and lustre flushing his veins with saidin
Impact.
His vision lurched as stars erupted, the pain rising in the back of his head as dim as the Void would allow it. The prickle of his skin had not been soon enough in warning him. The woman burst from the trees, a vapid blur of red
against the backdrop; he watched as unseen flows severed his own weave, and the ward of Fire and Spirit was not tripped. It vanished flatly.
The woman said nothing even as he felt the shield pressing in around him. Straightening himself, jerking erect, Lysander drew saidin in until the sheer volatility was burning him. It was not enough. The edges were sharp,
pointed, and as Lysander held that level of Power without howling into the coming dawn . . . he felt it closing. It did not shield him. It was too sharp.
Pain blossomed. If saidin was not torn from him, he was torn from saidin, or severed therefrom. He could sense it, nearly taste it, but it was gone. He held the Void, yes, and he groped out in that expanse of blackness for the
light of the True Source. She’d gentled him. He kept groping. The woman had gentled him! The bloody witch had gentled him! She’d gentled him!
For all that he’d love to kill her, Lysander did not. He darted off into the trees, off in the opposite direction. The woman’s flows only grazed him. He was fleeing, but not to be gone from her; he fled for his weapons. He fled
so that he might kill her–that he might kill her for making him feel so hollow!
Deadpan, Myrth watched the man turn tail and escape, the lithe frame of his figure transcending darkness. It was a swell or a thrill or a sheer wealth of shock she felt as realization dripped slowly into
her. A sharpened shield was a weapon to gentle, but . . . but it was not supposed to gentle him! Beneath the foliage, beneath the sparse tufts of darkness where the rays of the ascending dawn did not touch, she could not
touch him with her flows. She could not channel where she could not see. Lysander was out of sight.
But she’d gentled him. Then where was he going? What rested at the end of the path he tread? At the far side of the forest, the only thing . . . was the lake. The lake, where his coat was. The lake, where he’d deposited his
pin and his dirk. Men of the Black Tower were trained both in weapons of the Power and weapons of a much more tangible variety.
What was she to do? Better yet, what did he expect her to do? Wait to see him burst free from the immurements and tangles and leap forth with his weapon in hand? Her heart was hammering against its ivory prison, her mind
swaying with tiredness . . . her cheek stinging with the burn . . . and she tasted blood. Light, but it was only exhaustion. Only the exhaustion.
Exhaustion the man will not feel, she knew, dashing off down Lysander’s same path. She had to count her advantages. Light, but she knew more of the Power than he did. He’d likely never had the Power severed from him
in such a way, either. The desolateness, the hollowness . . . if she could wager on any aspect of the evening to counter his psychological state, it would be that. If he did not need saidin to kill her, he might very
well need it to keep himself sane.
And she’d felt his weave break as she severed the flow with Spirit. Who the Asha’man stepping from the gateway was, she did not know, but what he told Lysander had not pleased him. What had not pleased Lysander had to have
pleased her. If his actions before had been exact, even meticulous, he was growing sloppy. That ward had been sloppy. Light, but if she’d not seen through the swarthy gaps between trees the man so fixed and resolute, peering
at what seemed as nothing, Myrth would not have known he’d placed such a weave in the least.
She let her ribbon-like flows of saidar serve as her forerunner, snapping to tattered shreds the copses and thickets in her passing. The shawl was gathering burrs with her every step, though this was unimportant.
Festinating, Myrth knew that she was no runner, and her tiny legs mourned this in their pain. Her throat was thick, her side aching, and the subtle taste of coppery blood disgusted her. Disgusted her almost as much as the
man she hunted, the man who would kill her if she did nothing first!
The minutes transcended to Myrth bursting back again through the bowers of the trees, the clearing opening up to her. Dawn was almost upon them. She could see the golden light of the Andoran sun poke up over the horizon as
it crested the sky. The grasses were wet with dew . . . wet, yes, and empty.
No coat. No pin. No dagger.
No Dedicated.
It seemed like the lilting calls of the birds of the Black Tower forewarned of nothing. The tantrum, with a shining surface, the soft buzz of insects, and the shadows cast by billowing bullrush . . . it was a painting. Had
she been peering at the painting, she would never have guessed that the woman from whose perspective the image had been witnessed was at death’s doorway.
She turned at a steady pace, surveying her surroundings . . . trees, lake, trees, trees, grass, trees, lake. It fell under her gaze as she turned, stealing itself from sight, only to appear again as she completed a full
rotation. With the peak of senses that came with saidar, Myrth watched and listened, waiting for the resolution to this that would not come. She watched and listened.
“What are you waiting for?” she cried, her voice piercing the idyllic dawn. “Come out, child! I know you’re there! I know you’re watching me, and I know you have your dagger, and I know you’re wanting to kill me!” Silence.
“I know you’re there! Kill me, child, lest the Dark One detest you for cowardice!”
Silence.
“Kill me, Dedicated! Kill me!”
It happened as though through some montage, a vapid, soundless blur of sight and light and the Dedicated dashing for her. Lit by the light of the rising sun, Lysander came out of the undergrowth, his face all malice. The
curves and creases, the edges. The man was venom. An unassuming smile was now a demonic sneer. Savage, feral–this was the Lysander T’hoth sprinting for her.
And so she wove. Not a ball of Fire. Not a chasm of Earth. Not a cascade of Water. Not even a razor of Air. It was Spirit. It was the most divinely unique lack of thought, the greatest manifestation of instinct, that was
Myrth’s defence. Her assault. And, with his dagger overhead, with his legs pumping for the sweet release of it all, Lysander watched with blind eyes the fruit of her channeling. Spirit laced with Spirit laced with naught but
Spirit plunged into the very pith of him, only as her hand rose to catch him upon the forehead.
Panting like animals, Myrth and Lysander exchanged heavy-eyed gazes, their minds bereaved of substantial thought. Their minds, however, were supplemented with something more. It formulated in the back of her mind, a tiny
ball of knowledge. Knowledge was a vain word. His emotions, his feelings . . . she felt this man more thoroughly than she thought she ever could have in the entirety of her living. This was not empathy. This was something of
the Power. This was a bond.
Stroking the bond with gentle fingers, Myrth willed for Lysander’s obedience. “Lower your weapon,” she ordered in little more than a haggard whisper. Lysander peered at her. Betrayal and accusation belied the truth of
Lysander T’hoth, stripping him of that sense of dread that might once have tainted her. He was something much more corporeal. Something much more realistic. It was because the bond delivered unto her the truth of his
emotions. He feared. The lowly Dedicated feared the Aes Sedai. She peered up at him, knowing that there was not the lowliest piece of triumph left for him to salvage of this. He knew this. This was what he feared. The
dagger was lowered.
The bond of an Aes Sedai and her Warder could be used to compel complete and total obedience. This was the greatest weapon of it. She did not have to kill him. It was Spirit that had saved her, because it was Spirit that
could tame one.
“Excellent,” she chimed. “Tell me, Darkfriend. Do you know how to Travel?” There was the slimmest of pauses before he proffered a single shake of his head. “Do you know how to Skim? Are you strong enough? Have they taught
you?” The pause fell upon them once more, if only before he nodded. “Excellent again. And the White Tower? You must have knowledge of your destination. Have you ever been there?”
“Yes,” he murmured. “I have.”
“Under what circumstances?”
“A lesson at the training grounds.”
“And do you think you’ll have spent time enough there to bring me home?”
“Yes.”
“Then, Warder, do so.”
There would be time enough before the Aethan’Tar and Sei’Tar began their training, she concluded rather decidedly. Dawn in Andor was not dawn in Tar Valon. Savouring that swell of relief, Myrth channeled Fire and Spirit into
the familiar flows of Healing, plunging the weave into the man. Light, but she was even humming as she did so! She was humming! The man blinked, caught in a daze, as he was Healed of being gentled. “You have my permission to
seize saidin.”
Was this shame? Did Dedicated truly know what it was to feel shame? The feelings filtered across the gradient of the bond. A mutual connection. The silver light of a gateway materialized before them both, opening to reveal
the misty void that was the realm of Skimming. It was a dark, shadowy world, without the whispers of this one. The platform that would carry them depended on the user’s will, limited only to his or her imagination. Stepping
out onto the platform, she regarded it for what it was. It was almost as dark as the swirling world around her, though not entirely, appearing more of a shade of grey.
The symbol of the Black Tower, she regarded. Opposite the Flame of Tar Valon was the sinister claw–she could think of no better word–that represented the White Tower’s polar opposite. “A bold choice.” She would have
boldness in her Warder.
Lysander followed suit, if somewhat rigidly; his abidance required that ceaseless tweaking of the bond. Being ferried through this realm of Skimming was a unique feeling, for there were no discernible sights that might
signify that they were indeed moving, save perhaps for the man’s few billowing braids. Silence between the pair of them seemed to fit the scenario.
And only when the platform seemed as though to have stopped did Lysander open a gateway again. The pale light of Tar Valon’s dawn filtered through, seeming to blind them in this world of no light, yet of constant
illumination. She could spy the barracks in the near distance. Gathering composure, Myrth stepped forth, taking the steps back on the soil of the city to which she’d wondered if she would ever even return. Peering around
behind her, she regarded the man levelly through the gateway.
“You will never come to Tar Valon. If I so much as sense you returning–and don’t think that I will not–then I will rouse every Green and Red sister within the Tower’s walls to have you killed.”
“What of the bond?” he asked, and she could feel desperation blossom.
Wasn’t that the question that was most itching at her? “I’m undecided. I truthfully don’t know what I’ll do about it. If I do release you, or if I do transfer the bond . . . you will know. Now, return to the Black Tower.
You’re at liberty to tell anyone you please of the evening.” She smiled demurely. “But . . . I don’t think that you will. Somehow, I don’t think it would play well for you. Good-bye, Warder.” It was an unceremonious farewell
as the gateway snapped to a close.
“Well, I mean, you’re just going to have to hold still for a moment!”
His coat lay discarded off to the side, abandoned with little ceremonious treatment. That, at least, had been done on the Soldier’s part. Had Lysander the ability to have his words transcend to the realm of law, well,
he’d not abide by the Soldiers taking up shifts in the bloody Infirmary. It wasn’t how things should be. They couldn’t Heal a thing unless they had the guidance of an Asha’man right alongside them, more often than not.
It was somewhat ironic, he supposed, though that was no topic upon which he liked to dwell.
The Soldier was a young lad, seeming far too out of place in the realm of the Black Tower. He had the wide, saucer-like eyes of an ignorant boy apparently trying to blunder into something too difficult for him. “The
Healing weave like this, Asha’man?”
“No,” replied the taller figure overseeing the Healing. “Spirit. Spirit. And I’ll have to deduct marks from you, al’Arum. You didn’t clean the Dedicated’s wounds first.”
“But they’re . . . covered in a sticky . . . something. It’s like tree resin!”
The swarthy Asha’man nodded, appearing as a stony-faced well of eternal patience. “Indeed. All the more reason for you to clean it, lest you Heal over the resin and infect him.”
The Soldier’s disbelief showed no signs of waning, however, as his wide-eyed gaze passed over Lysander. “But I thought you said you’d gotten all these scratches and cuts all over you in an explosion.”
“I did,” Lysander replied quietly, peering off behind them. “My weave missed its mark, and it was the tree before me to tear apart so.” The Shadow preserve him, but it was an exercise in futility. This was why he put
forth so much bloody effort on a continual basis not to have himself wind up in the Infirmary. Unless one’s injury was enough to put in danger one’s own health, one usually ended up as a demonstration for some bloody
thick recruit’s Healing. The scratches he’d earned tearing through the forest, it seemed, warranted the incidental aid of the Infirmary.
“Tell me what will happen, al’Arum,” the dark-skinned Asha’man said, “if you do not clean any debris such as bark out of the Dedicated’s wound.”
“It will calcify,” the Soldier said proudly. It was more likely than not his first succeeded attempt at making himself appear more intelligent than the wooden stool upon which Lysander was perched.
It was only under the severe discipline of a well-taught patience that Lysander was able to endure such torment. The plunge into the icy bowels of the flows of Healing was a bedevilment, however, as it was startling to
witness the sudden resurgence of memory that came therewith. The Healings he’d suffered. These only helped him suffer further.
And when at last the Soldier was finished the Healing under the guidance of the Asha’man–he expected that the Asha’man had done well-nigh of the entire Healing, if not actually all thereof–Lysander was dismissed. It
hardly had required further machination than that. Injuries of any sort were far too commonplace for them to question the validity of each, even those most ludicrous. Exploding trees indeed.
The first light of springtime’s sun greeted him upon his first steps onto the compacted dirt road. Shielding his eyes with the aid of a hand, Lysander peered left. He peered right. And so life went on. It was any other
day, any other morning, and no one needed to know what might have befallen him in the darkness of a forest.
Of everything to have happened to him, too, he accepted what had fallen before his eyes to be the most peculiar. The auras. He accepted what he saw as fate. It was all too simple. The sinister manacle seemingly
levitating over the Aes Sedai’s shoulder, after all, had foreshadowed the truth. The pair of them was bound far stronger than the iron ever could. He’d seen similar auras hovering in a spectral manner over the shoulders
of the Asha’man, mostly, though some of the Dedicated and even a Soldier or two. Never had he seen them before the previous night, and now . . . now, he could hardly helped but see them with every turn. More oft than
not, however, he could not discern for the life of him what most could possibly mean. Lysander assumed it was what it was: a Talent. A manifestation in him of something . . . something special. He knew what would come to
pass. The aura he’d seen over Myrth, however, had not told him everything. It had not told him if that bond should ever be released.
Kicking up a tiny plume of dust with his ever step down the beaten path, Lysander knew that his anger had dissipated over the entire ordeal. That feeling of helplessness, he knew, was frustrating, though that was the
limit of his feelings. Fatalism had consumed the rest of it. Myrth was somewhere to the northeast, he knew, which would place her in Tar Valon. By no means was that surprising.
Aes Sedai. And so, with the new dawn to wipe clean the vestiges of the past evening, so was Lysander purged of his old prejudices. Even if the majority of them were women, Aes Sedai were not the mewling babes as he once
thought. Instead, they were something warranting a much deeper punishment than innocent babes. Aes Sedai. He loathed them. And if every Aes Sedai would find the fate deserved by them, and if this fate was administered by
his own hand, well . . . he’d hardly be disappointed.
Dust crumbled beneath the weight of his footfalls as he took his first steps unto the Blasting Grounds, where a distant regiment of Soldiers was dodging and diving past an assault of volatile weaves. Was it a wave of
nostalgia, then, that caught him?
“I see you survived last night’s counter,” said the silkily smooth voice from behind him.
Lysander did not turn. Chogan Corvus was not worth the effort. “The pact is through, Chogan. You can no longer threaten to reveal my identity. You revealed the conditions of our agreement. You said, and I quote, that you
would ‘mentor and shape’ me. This was not mentoring. This was desertion.”
“A radical approach, I concede,” Chogan said, “yet effective? Do you not glow with a sudden bolstered self-worth? Do you not know the extent of your capabilities? You bested an Aes Sedai. You killed her.” He . . . and
Lysander realized, then, how little Chogan knew. An Asha’man was not a multitudinous wellspring of knowledge. He’d been guided, even taught, under such a man . . . yet Chogan Corvus was no mentor. He saw the man through
different eyes. Dragon pin or no, Chogan Corvus was only human, and Lysander could never hold his allegiance to any human.
“I understand,” Lysander lied, imbuing his words with a diminutive tone. “I thank you for the lesson, Asha’man.” Chogan nodded, his dark eyes coasting lazily over the rocky terrain, passing over every dip and swell and
crevice of the grounds. And it was then that Lysander saw it, subtle at first, but growing in definition until its presence was as brassbound as the very ground beneath his boots. The aura. It was the pin of the
Dragon–the pin of Asha’man–with a red enamel shining in the lustre of a thousand burning suns. If anything could be sure, it was that this pin . . . this pin, this particular Dragon pin, did not belong to Chogan.
Suddenly a hand picked it up, touching it–a hand, Chogan’s hand, and not the hand of he who owned the pin–and placed it down again. Though it looked the same, it was not, and the aura would not be clearer than that.
After Chogan’s hand touched it, the pin was different somehow. This information was intrinsic. What it meant . . . what it meant, he could not know. It was, if nothing else, significant.
Nodding, the Asha’man’s face curved into an ugly sort of smile. “May the day treat you well, Dedicated, and may the Shadow be your bed.” It was with this peculiar message of farewell that Chogan departed. It was with a
frothing hatred that Lysander now viewed him. Chogan and Lysander were bound, yes, with ties of allegiance. Friend of the Dark or not, Chogan was hated more than any man to walk beneath the Light.
As the backlit silhouette of Chogan departed into the rising sun, Lysander turned, his eyes again falling over the procession of training Soldiers. Bedlam, it appeared, had ensnared their training. Shouts and agitated
cries rocked the skies as the weaves fell to nothingness.
An Asha’man parted the sea of recruits, his height prominent even in the distance. Far-off threads of saidin were channeled, and the still bodies of three recruits were caught on stretchers. Lysander was the
silent onlooker as the Asha’man, followed even by his procession of Soldiers, hastened past. He caught the air of their worries in their hushed murmurs–heat stroke, exhaustion, suffocation. Lysander looked on as the
three bodies, their chests barely heaving, were rushed in the direction of the Infirmary. Three Soldiers. Unless he was greatly mistaken . . . Jorge, Jeffer, and Denton were their names. Not altogether unfamiliar. And
over each of their heads was a glistering aura of black and grey, and he knew inherently what these represented. They would die before reaching the Infirmary.
A quiet smile crested his face. Perhaps he could’ve stood to have lessened the flows a mite.
It was within the recesses of the closed halls of the Yellow Ajah that Myrth took her refuge up until that afternoon. She did not lock herself away in her quarters, sulking among the stilted
shadows and remnants of unfinished reports, for that was not the sort of woman Myrth Vendedd was. In spite of this, however, she found little reason for merriment. Light, but did she realize even now how fortunate
she was to have escaped with her life? If it had been any other weave she’d administered–any–Myrth doubted she’d be able to stand right here, right now, and count the blessing of her existence.
The halls were lined with depictions of celebrated Healers, of Amyrlins raised from her own Yellow Ajah, though she spared little attention to these. No, not even the unblinking stare of a triptych of the formidable
Marasale Jureen could draw Myrth’s thoughts away from the matter at hand. If any of her fellow sisters in passing thought Myrth was walking about in a lost daze, she did not know, for she did not even pay notice in
the least to them.
She knew where Lysander was: south and west, past the high-rising spires of Dragonmount, over every swell and bower of the Braem Wood, and past the border of the nation of Andor into the Black Tower. The Black Tower,
where she almost would have been placed to rest. The man was but a Dedicated, which had been her saving grace. Though she had less strength in the True Source, and though she had less knowledge of offensive tactics .
. . Myrth would live to see him die.
At that notion, indecision was at a state of unrest in the pits of her being. Light. She was no Blue, perhaps, but justice was justice, and Myrth had no tolerance in the very least for the Shadow. Knowing fully that
there was one man, one Darkfriend, within the Black Tower . . . why should she not turn Lysander in? What reason did she have for keeping the bond? All she would have to do is arrange to have a word with the Amyrlin
Seat, and how many Green sisters and their Warders would be away for Andor? None would think her a liar, none would find it suspect that she’d bonded the man . . . Light, she could not lie. . . .
And even still, there was defiance against this notion. It was impossible to place, but with time, she would. What part of her wanted that bond with such an awful man?
There was no smile to grace her pale cheeks as Myrth spied Rozalille approaching down the hall. The woman looked as if she’d been fighting a particularly nasty head-cold, red nose buried in a leather-bound dossier.
The curly-haired sister was peering into it with a rather deliberate quality, almost fighting to resist the urge to peer up and spy her.
“Roz?” Myrth said quietly, peering at her. “Are you okay, Roz?” The woman’s sniff was caught somewhere between the threshold barring indignance from sorrow. Myrth turned tail as the woman strolled right on by,
pursuing her down the corridor. “Rozalille, are you sure you’re okay? Why aren’t you answering me?”
Letting the dossier fall amongst a maelstrom of scattered pages, Rozalille Petula spun about in a single, abrupt motion, hazel eyes afire with fervour. Her hands were tightly clenched and ashen, and Myrth saw nothing
of the woman that resembled an Aes Sedai. She saw nothing of the woman that resembled a person who Myrth, to this day, considered a friend. “I released Tavarius of his bond this morning.”
Myrth let out a shuddering gasp, clapping her hands to her mouth. Oh, Light, no! It was common knowledge that the Warder bond could indeed be released, but . . . Light . . . to actually do so was shameful! It simply
was not done! To release a Warder of his bond–even an Aethan’Tar like Tavarius–showed an awful lack of judgement in choosing said Warder in the first place. “Rozalille . . . Rozalille, why . . . ?”
“Because of what you said, Myrth. I did it because of what you said.” Rozalille, so buoyant and sprightly, was now looking at her with leaden eyes. “I was a fool to have bonded an Aethan’Tar in the first place.”
“Roz, this wasn’t my decision to make in the–”
“No, it was mine, and I made it. You were right, though. It’s no secret that I released him, either, and now Padmini won’t look at me. There’s been talk of a congregation between a Yellow Eyes and Ears agent and the
Sea Folk . . . we’ve not collaborated with the Sea Folk in decades. We have no Sea Folk division among us, obviously. It’ll be ground-breaking, and I thought–I mean, I thought that I–well, not now, anyway. That
privilege will likely go to you.” She was grim-faced as she said her words of parting. “Enjoy it, Myrth.”
Myrth shook her head. “I wouldn’t want it this way. Rozalille, please, just . . . just reconsider. Light, but I’ll follow you into the depths of the Sea of Storms and through the Aiel Waste if I have to. I value our
friendship, and you value it, too.”
Cold and unflinching, Rozalille gave her a fell response. “I’m stronger with the Source than you are, Myrth. I hold seniority. And I order you, from one tier of hierarchy to another, to a lower . . . to stay a
bloody world away from me.”
It was with a helpless, pleading stare, that Myrth watched Rozalille’s retreating back get lost among the milling bodies of sisters and brothers. No, Myrth thought. Among an entire Ajah, Myrth watched the only
true friend she had within the Tower desert her. She did not return even for the dossier.
How long in that muted stare she stood there, she did not know, but her rapture was broken by the sound of a clearing voice. Myrth peered around, spying a red-cheeked young novice standing there, his dark eyes spying
her in confusion. She assumed an Aes Sedai’s serenity with such a quicksilver speed that the young boy would more likely than not believe that his eyes had been only deceiving him. “Sorry, Aes Sedai,” he said, bowing
deeply for her. “I did not mean to interrupt you, but Adriel Sedai said that I’d find you here. He says he’s back from the Black Hills.”
And only as her heart appeared deflated, depressed, did it soar again in that resilient feeling of mirth. Instead, however, all she said was, “Thank-you, child.” She waited with bated breaths for the young novice to
depart down the hall–oh, Light, certainly his little feet could move quicker than that?–before festinating in the opposite direction. She’d not let some novice see her like this, as giddy as a child watching the
newly fallen snow, yet she’d not disguise this from herself. She’d not disguise this from the rest of the Aes Sedai.
Clambering up the spindly flight of steps dividing one floor from another, Myrth found herself ghosting down the familiar halls of the Brown Ajah. Light, but these were halls in which she’d almost spent as much time
as her own Ajah’s. Footfalls carried her down the familiar twist of corridors leading to Adriel’s room. She did not stop for something as trifling as knocking on her lover’s door; instead, she let herself in.
Face the perpendicular wall, Adriel stood there, his clothes and belongings splayed out messily over his bedspread. She could very well have laughed at the sight. He was a tall Arafellin, black hair treated with an
unusually short crop for his heritage. He peered at her with wide, blue eyes, and his face creased into a smile. Lurching forth, Myrth hopped into her lover’s arms, weighing him down to their synchronized peals of
laughter. Not a looker, no, but Adriel looked as beautiful to her as she could ever need him to be. “I missed you,” she said, face muffled in his narrow shoulders.
And as they remained in that limbo, hugging one another and murmuring their words of welcome, Myrth allowed her thoughts to stray. She thought of Rozalille, and her order . . . she thought of Jazin, and how she’d
needed him to channel a gateway to get to the Black Tower . . . she thought of how nobody would tell her when Adriel would return . . . she thought of Fionavar and Padmini, and every other Aes Sedai she stood beneath
if only for her weakness in the Power. In the same thread of thought, Myrth envisioned how helpless she’d been against Lysander. How she’d not been able to save herself. How she’d not had a Warder to save her,
either.
She began kissing Adriel, and he began kissing her, and for the most fleeting of moments, she could forget that there were problems plaguing the world. Myrth could forget about the weaknesses she suffered, and the
political leverage she could gain with a man like Lysander T’hoth bonded to her. The leverage she could gain by . . . by using him. Myrth could even forget how awful of a notion this was, exploiting this monstrosity
of a Warder bond. As Myrth and Adriel fell back against the bed, she could forget about the bond she knew she would keep, and the bond of which she’d not tell a soul.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
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