WOT belongs to Robert Jordan, I appreciate being able to play in his world.
For the most part, the mile long laboratory was brightly lit. Hanging lamps, with long glowing tubes of light, lined the tile ceiling. There were a dozen tables, their black surfaces filled with long slender glass tubes, big and small mouthed beakers and bowls of varying sizes. Most of these items held colored liquids, or bubbling froth with tendrils of fog rising to weave indecent lines in the air.
The southern wall was lined with more tables. Varying pieces of equipment made out of metallic – gold, silver, bronze and black – seem to hover on plates of air. Red, green and golden lights blinked off and on, some slow, some fast, along the thick base of each machine. On the first four tables, long slim needles pumped up and down into quivering blobs of gray, green or red. Each was flattened at the bottom giving the indication that they rested on more of the unseen platforms of air. Pain seemed to radiate outward from these machines, unseen and unheard, perhaps imagined, but there nonetheless. When the needles paused, a flattened piece of metal seemed to slip beneath the blobs, lift them and carry them to a moving belt that shifted what could only be flesh to the next machine, where the process began all over again.
The next row of tables contained dozens and dozens of glass boxes, stacked one upon another, nearly as high as an ogre. The fleshy globules were placed inside, the sides slid silently closed, and each slowly filled with a noxious looking gas that made the blobs quiver and shake. It seemed the process caused some sort of skin, slick and scaly, to hide the flesh.
The other tables held larger boxes, still all glass, though thicker, giving a magnified view of the contents within. These contained what could only be some sort of evolving creatures, that troubled the eye and the mind, so convoluted where they. Some had flipper like appendages, or hooves or gnarled hands. Long, short, stout or thin necks supported immature heads with tusks and teeth that made one think of nightmares thought to be forgotten. Some had tails, some not, some even had small appendages that looked to be wings sticking out from their spines.
Further back, where some of the glasses boxes were massive, the light abruptly vanished and darkness held sway, giving the illusion that the windowless, door less room had no end. Within the shadows there was movement, but nothing that could quite be seen.
Nearly fifty men and women, each slightly less than average height, wore long gray coats, and moved up and down the long rows of tables. Their heads were covered with hoods hiding their features, shiny black gloves and boots covered hands and feet. Quietly busy, they worked, checking gaseous mixtures, calibrating machines, measuring liquid levels, or feeding the larger, more evolved creatures hunks of what could only be fresh meat of some sort.
A vertical flash of light appeared on an empty dais, near the darkness at the end of the room, twisted and expanded to a large oval and a figure stepped through. The man wore loose black trousers, cuffed at the ends, over soft leather knee high brown boots and a long tunic, flared at the waist, made out of linen dyed crimson, the cream lapels wide at mid-chest, tapering to thin bands at his hips. Beneath the tunic he wore a white silk shirt, with thin bands of finely stitched lace at the cuffs and along the narrow collar. A black handkerchief, folded into a sharp point stuck jauntily out of the pocket set high on the right side of his chest.
He was a tall, handsome man, but with a hard face. He took two strides forward of the silver oval and then flicked his fingers, which seemed to cause the oval to fold in on itself and vanish in a flicker of movement filled with light. Arrogance filled his stance as he surveyed the room, his gaze sharp, seeing every little detail, from the scuff on a workers boot to one of the machines where the light blinked, demanding attention. As his gaze circled the room, the fingers of his left hand played idly with the froth of lace on his right wrist. Behind the dais, the blackness shifted as a tall, thin figure with white pasty skin moved forward. The Myrddraal stood near one corner, eyeless face facing the man, and waited silently for his next command. The man opened his mouth and. . . .
Daila Sedai gasped loudly and sat up in bed. A nightmare, only a nightmare, she told herself, her heart pounding in her chest, but she touched sadair, and very quickly wove a small thread of Fire, lighting every oil lamp in her bedroom, and in the sitting room beyond. The wicks flared, flooding her rooms with so much light that even the shadows beneath her bed fled.
Swinging her feet out of bed, the newly raised Brown sister shivered as she pulled on a light dressing gown with only a little lace at the throat and cuffs. Pulling it tightly around her thick waist, Daila suddenly wished for the heavy woolen gown she had worn back on the farm located in the rolling foothills west of the Black Hills, near the fork of River Haevin. Some what short and more than a little stout, with wavy mouse brown hair, and plain features, Daila still looked like a poor farmer's wife, which she had been at the early age of fifteen when an elegant looking Aes Sedai had sensed her ability to channel. Without so much as a by your leave to her husband, Rani Sedai has swept her away to Tar Valon. Twenty-five years later, eleven as a Novice and fourteen as an Accepted, she had finally received her stole.
Frowning, she went to the small window with its eastern exposure, disappointed that there wasn't so much as a glimmer of dawn in the vast blackness of night. Her thoughts, which were normally as neat and orderly as her surroundings, were scattered in the aftermath of the dream. Strangly, it was the face of her husband, Neilan, which suddenly came to mind. Why, she hadn't thought of him in years, not once since she had received the note written from the Wisdom of their small village telling of his death. Neilan had died in his sleep from old age at seventy-eight. He had been nearly sixty when she became his third wife. He had married her not because he wanted someone to warm his bed and take care of him, but because he was left caring for his son of thirty years who was a simpleton and needed someone to keep an eye on him. Who had watched over gently Ramyond after her departure she never heard, but she hoped the person had been kind.
The darkness outside brought her dream back to her – the Myrddraal slipping from the blackness – and she hurriedly turned away from the night and moved into the center of the small room where the light was the strongest.
"You would think," she scolded, speaking aloud as her habit when alone, "that at your age you'd not be scared witless by a dream." Her inner voice scoffed at that, asking if she often dreamed of Shadowspawn. "Of course not. Don't be silly. And I'm certain I won't dream of it again." She shuddered, the terror that had awakened her slipping oily fingers back into her bones.
"There's only one way to handle this," she said, moving from her bedroom and into the sitting room. "And that's to write it down."
Her bedroom was neat and clean, uncluttered and simply furnished. It had a double bed, the sheets made of smoothed linen, and the comforter a wagon wheel quilt in pale blue and green. The single night stand held only a small book with a tattered bookmark, a glass of water and a clean handkerchief. The wooden dresser and matching wardrobe were unadorned, the craftsmanship well done if not fancy. A single rocking chair, with her new brown stole folded carefully and placed in the seat, sat near a small fireplace, the hearth swept clean of ashes.
Stepping into the sitting room was something entirely different. She had only been in these rooms a little over three months, but the two large wooden bookcases were already completely filled and the overflow was in several stacks, nearly five feet high, to either side of the door. Nearly every single book, over two hundred of them, had bits of paper sticking out every few pages. If a Sister came to borrow "The Early Talents, Lost and Hidden" by Ardella Sedai, Daila could have told her it was on the second shelf, sixteen books from the right, in the larger western bookcase. And if the Sister had asked whether or not Ardella herself has any of the Talents she wrote about, Daila would have told her to look on page two hundred and twenty two, third paragraph.
The long, narrow table held a an inkpot, a wooden mug with a dozen or so ink stained quills, a large stack of clean paper, and a smaller stack filled with her neat lines of notes, each page neatly numbered and dated to correspond with the paper marked books. A high backed wooden chair, with its single rose colored cushion had been pushed neatly beneath the table-desk.
Near the small fireplace, the hearth swept clean since it was mid-summer, were two comfortable arm chairs. Between them was a small square table with shell inlays along the edges that held a tray with the remains of her evening meal, half eaten and now cold. Another weave of fire, handled delicately, brought the water in the tea pot to boiling in seconds. Daila always found the motions of making tea soothing, but tonight she found them less effective than usual.
With the delicate porcelain cup in hand, the tea heavily laced with brandy and not a small amount of honey, she pulled out the chair at the desk and sat down. Lifting a square of paper off the clean stack, she placed it neatly in front of her, taking a moment to make sure it was set squarely in front of her. Removing the lid from the inkpot, she dipped a quill, tapped it twice against the side before starting to write.
Her writing was small, clear and unadorned, a habit that had made her very popular with not only the Brown Sisters, but the Gray and White as well, while still a novice. She could write for hours without stopping, never missing a line or a word in her copy and rarely leaving a large enough blot that caused a copy to be discarded. Now she applied that ability in relating her dream, hoping that by writing it down, it would lesson its effect on her. Her hopes, though were not realized, as she felt even less easy once it was written down.
After blotting the three pages carefully, she laid the lines aside to dry completely, and looked up to see the first faint signs of dawn reflected in the sitting room's window. She had an early class to teach, Histories of the White Tower, that for some reason unbeknownst to her, the Amyrlin wanted taught to Novices early, before they were allowed to break their fast. Daila disagreed; she thought the Histories were fascinating and to try to teach it to young minds still half asleep seemed a waste, but the Amrylin was not to be moved. Daila taught as she was told.
There would be just enough time to wash and dress before Erinia, a novice assigned to her, brought her breakfast. With the light of day, the dreams horror started to fade, and so they were nearly forgotten by the time she took the tray from Erinia's hands, and completely forgotten by the time she gathered the notes she needed for teaching and left to make her way to her classroom.
Between that moment, and the late that evening when she finally returned to her rooms after an exhaustingly busy day, Daila never thought of them again. And when another dream awoke her at the same time as the previous night, when she went to look to for the pages, to add the details of her second dream, she was horrified to find that she couldn't find them. They had disappeared.