Disclaimer: I own nothing, it all belongs to Jordan's estate.
A/N: So, this is just something that I have had on my computer for a long time, its something I really like, and don't want to lose if my computer crashes or what not. It was intended to be a prologue for a much longer story, one in which you change two things that happened in the past, one at the breaking and this, and see how everything else changes later. Alas life stole my time, so this is most probably a one shot (there is something else that goes with this but it is more of a missing scene than anything). Anyway enjoy.
The Dragons Walk
The two men on either side of him half aided, half dragged him down the cobblestone streets. Try as he might, Guaire Amalasan couldn't get his legs to work properly. Months of campaigning had seen to some of that, weeks of …guidance by his Aes Sedai friends had seen to the rest. His battered and bruised body protested at every movement he, or either of the Warders, forced it to make. No matter what way he turned, what way he moved, the pain never ceased.
With his hands bound behind his back by a thick leather cord, a gag that drew blood and eyes that were almost swollen shut, he knew what it was to be a prisoner. His torso was concealed by a course woollen cloak that had been securely wrapped around him, his face hidden in the depths of the hood. The Aes Sedai were taking no chances with their prize. He knew he was how they wanted him to look as they marched him into his cell, parading him past rows of women who wanted nothing more than to bask in their own arrogance as he was humbled. 'Yet', he thought despairingly, 'the chances of even surviving this night were falling rapidly.'
Confinement in a cell, awaiting his trial, was far preferable then death on the streets of Tar Valon in the midst of chaos. No more than a league away the White Tower loomed in all its terrifying glory. He could see in the gazes of the twenty two Aes Sedai that surrounded him how it beckoned them, a longing that they couldn't suppress. That their small party had made it this close to the Tower without been swept up in the pandemonium that gripped the city was a testament to their plan. But their luck could not hold much longer and their foolhardiness would be plain for all to see. In their desperation to be rid of him, they had miscalculated and it would cost them all. Around them….around them Tar Valon burned.
Once, despite gag and pain, he would have smiled. The fires were so numerous and fierce that even in the dead of night the sky was painted orange. Ash fell like snow and swirled between the buildings as the gale whipped the city, spreading the destruction further as the flames danced from building to building. Those citizens who had not fled could be found either huddled in corners, or littering the streets. He turned his head slightly and looked at the snow capped peak. In the distance Dragonmount soared to the heavens. Somehow he had once thought he would like to see the fabled cradle. Now it just seemed to stare at him, mockingly. He could almost hear its laughing voice, booming at him, 'You who would be Dragon?' Not for the first time he questioned whether the letters promised what they seemed to.
Suddenly his arm screamed out in protest as it was wrenched violently to the right. His head swung from side to side as he shrieked around his gag, and his legs finally failed him. His captors payed him little heed, the two Warders simply dragged him along with them as their small party rushed toward the relative safety of an alleyway, his feet scraping the cobblestones uselessly behind him. His screams only increased until the gruff man to his left clamped a hand tightly over his mouth as the Warder on the right pounded his short ribs with a fist. 'Burn me, how could that possibly bring silence?' he wondered as his stifled cry's joined the laboured breathing in the dark alleyway.
Around him men with the Flame of Tar Valon on their breastplates crouched down with twenty two Aes Sedai, including the thirteen Reds that continued to prevent him from touching the True Source. Positioned on his knees in the very centre of the group with the few warders that accompanied the women, one could have been forgiven for thinking that they were protecting him. Almost. The ring of steel around him was surrounded by women with ageless faces who inturn were enclosed by a small group of soldiers. 'Strange how even shielded and bound the women still thought they needed protection from him.' He tilted his head forward and watched as blood dripped from his mouth to land between his knees. The irony didn't escape him.
The shadows engulfed them, the inky blackness his only source of comfort as he peered back along the stone walls toward the street. Kneeling on the hard stone cobblestones, struggling to regain control of his breathing, he couldn't help but wonder if his end was approaching. His gaze wasn't the only one focused on the small pool of light, he noted. The majority of the Aes Sedai stared fixedly with him; sweat giving their ageless faces a light sheen. The sole exception was Asra, the small and only Yellow. She continued to stare at him with that slight frown that after a while had become…distracting. He would have yelled at her if he could. 'Light burn him but he was no bloody puzzle.' Not for the first time he wished he had never opened his mouth.
As the distant sound of shouting men, running men, screaming men, began to echo between the walls he forced himself to ignore the irritating women and willed himself to silence. Around him hands found sword hilts and the Aes Sedai visibly tensed as the sounds became steadily louder. The clang of boots on the cobblestones turned into steady vibrations that shock the ground under his feet, before suddenly, men were streaming past the entrance in torrents.
Around him he heard more than one gasp from a startled woman. Among the brandished weapons and chain mail armour, every now and then, either fully or partially, the white teardrop of Tar Valon could be seen. 'Were they running too somewhere, or from someone?' he idly wondered before realising it didn't matter. They would as soon cut them down as stop and realise who they were. Apparently though, not everyone shared his assessment of the situation.
Closer to the entrance of the alleyway a Red quickly got to her feet, and even managed to stretch a hand toward the army before a Green desperately grabbed a handful of skirt and pulled her back down as she quietly hissed, "What do you think you are doing? We have no idea what…," she cut herself off with a curt shake of her head. "Just wait till their gone."
With a sinking feeling he realised the Red was Valera and she glared dangerously as she sneered, "What I do know is that the Amyrlin place me in charge of th-" Her voice faltered as an order faintly rang out over the city, before been drowned out by the unmistakable twang of crossbows. The soldiers on the road had just enough time to turn as they ran, just enough time for horror to etch itself on their faces, before the black streaks descended from the heavens. The damage those small black bolts wrought was terrible and men fell by the scores.
Most of the volley flew over the heads of the men that they could see, raining death on those that had already past. Yet even in their narrow field of vision men lay pin cushioned on the ground, unmoving. Others screamed in agony as they were suddenly missing limbs, only to be trampled as desperate men struggled to get out of range. As the order to fire range out again, some tried to enter the alleyway to escape the carnage but unsurprisingly seemed to run into an invisible wall. Knowing what was coming many of the Aes Sedai turned their heads and most of those that did glared squarely at him.
"We should do it now," a Red with black hair to his right muttered. He felt his eyes widen in surprise as he watched her. Eyes burning with hate and her hand fingering the dagger at her hip, she held onto her calm mask by a thread.
"And our punishment would be as severe as his if we did," someone else countered coolly, before she announced herself as the White, "the law is quite clear on the matter."
Still looking at the Red he once again flung himself at Saidin despite knowing what he would find. Like a gale held back by a door, he could feel the power pounding on the surface of the barrier, feel it brushing the surface of his mind. Separated by what seemed mere inches, he strained and struggled for life itself. It was torturous and utterly futile. In the alleyway more than one woman laughed quietly but he ignored them. He could almost feel Saidin rippling across the barrier as it was thrown back. 'So close, so close.'
In the street the last of Tar Valon's soldiers rushed past the alleyway but the vibrations didn't stop, if anything they only intensified. All talk ceased when seconds later the invaders flashed past the alleyway, running over the bodies of their fallen foes in pursuit of those that remained. Few among the rabble wore anything that resembled a uniform with which to identify them. Though, even before a man marched past carrying a banner showing a black and white disk on a field of blue, everyone knew whose soldiers they were. 'His rescuers,' he thought with disgust.
As they waited for the soldiers to move on the Aes Sedai watched him suspiciously, as if at any moment he'd try to get the attention of his troops, yet their uneasy gazes would often slip back to the alleyway entrance. His mind, however, was far away. The words that made all this pointless flashed across his vision as if burned into his very soul. They had been delivered personally by Sawyn Maculhene, the general of his army in Khodomar, not trusting any other hand to get him the documents safely. The man had been searching the ruins of a city that had once been in Essenia before it was destroyed in the Trolloc Wars a thousand years earlier.
Two letters had been found securely sealed in a vault under what Maculhene firmly believed were the ruins of the palace library. Maculhene had ridden into his camp with a small party not two weeks ago. As night was falling on an unexpected day of fighting with a far smaller army that was retreating through the Jolvaine Pass, he had ridden up to his command tent and, without so much as a greeting or bothering to explain himself, had thrust the letters onto his desk.
He remembered Maculhene's expression as one of satisfaction as he carefully opened the crumbling letters and read the words that changed everything. He also remembered his alarm as mere seconds later shouts and screams could be heard and, along with them, the unmistakable sound of thousands of hooves thudding on the damp ground. He had sprinted for the tent flap only to discover Artur Paendrag and a group of Aes Sedai bearing down on him. He had had no time to react as he was thrown from his feat. The next time he woke he was strapped across a saddle, galloping through the Jolvaine Pass, somehow blocked from Saidin.
In the days that followed as Maculhene rallied the army and set off after Paendrag, forcing him to stop and fight time and again before strategically retreating towards Tar Valon, one passage above all constantly ran through his mind. Addressed to a woman named Latra Posae Decume, the letter was desperate.
'We must stop this folly at once. What we claimed…we claimed because we had to, because there was no other choice, no other way to justify what was needed but we were wrong, don't you see? Don't you see the damage we are causing, that it is us that will bring about the end of everything? No punishment can be worse than been responsible for that, how can we live knowing what we have done? The Dark One destroyed the minds of all who had channelled Saidin, those that had ever been connected to it, he didn't taint the source itself, he never could…'
That last sentence had unlocked possibilities in his mind that had never existed before. That had never even had a chance to grow and suddenly, everything that had come before, everything that he had done, seemed meaningless. It was a waste of staggering proportions. 'How was I to know? Should I have known?' he demanded of himself before another thought came unbidden once again, 'Light is it even true?' Decume's reply had only demanded silence.
Despite his own private doubts he had informed the Aes Sedai in the breaks between the fighting. Had argued his case, had argued himself raw. At first he was laughed at contemptuously, seen as little more than a desperate man. Then as he had time to organise his thoughts and his arguments became more insistent and, as the White had stated 'based on solid reasoning both in the practical and the theoretical' though in her view flawed, the ridicule faltered. The Greens stopped laughing and chose to ignore him. The White looked at him down her nose with her head tilted to one side as if inspecting an interesting insect. The Yellow frowned whenever she saw him.
The Reds …their laughter had taken on a bitter tone and was the last to die before they began to simply stare at him with anger. Before long there was open hatred from the sixteen women and it was from them that he received his gag. It was only when they started beating him that the Greens hesitantly voiced their concerns and were pointedly informed by Valera that she would undertake whatever steps she deemed necessary. She was, after all, in charge. It was only later that he realised it was because he was attacking the very essence of the Red Ajah, attacking their only way to rationalize the toll their actions eventually took.
Maculhene's determination that he be informed personally had insured that the army hadn't completely disbanded with his capture as he thought it would. His skilful though increasingly despairing attempts to draw Paendrag into an open confrontation with the tattered remains of Guaire's army had managed to stall the march to Tar Valon considerably. So much so that upon their arrival even he had been surprised at what awaited them.
He had expected Maculhene to send for his army from Khodomar and seeing it already besieging the Shining Walls from the east only brought looks of horror from the Aes Sedai. What he had not been expecting was to see a second army carrying his banners approaching from west, an army that would arrive mere minutes after they did. The result had been Paendrag veering south, hoping to draw Maculhene after him, while what was left of the Tower Guard and the Aes Sedai rode for the White Tower.
'The defenders hadn't been prepared for the second army,' he recalled from his position on his knees, 'and from there things had got steadily worse.' Hours later and the fighting continued unabated. The three armies had split into small companies among the cramped city streets, fighting heated battles at one corner, before disappearing around the next. They had even witnessed soldiers fighting for the same cause in pitched battle with each other on several occasions. When the fires had begun and the citizens were forced out onto the streets his nightmare was complete. Even in the shadows of the alleyway he could feel Dragonmounts eyes on his back.
"The longer we sit here, the longer we remain on Tar Valon's streets, the greater are our chances of been discovered," Valera snapped into the near silence. And, after waiting several moments while starring pointedly at the Greens, continued to speak over the groans of men dying slowly in the street, "The two groups went towards the Ogier grove, we'll turn back towards the Alindrelle Erinin then turn towards the Tower as soon as we can."
With the tone of her voice allowing no room for argument and the order crisp and clear, men struggled to their feet and cautiously began moving back into the street. Once again he was wrenched into an upright position and forced to walk with them, irrespective of the pain that blossomed along his arms and in the small of his back. The Aes Sedai and the men that marched with them purposefully ignored looking at the carnage, it may as well not have existed for all the notice they took, yet he struggled to look at anything but.
Even in the dull orange light cast by the distant fires, the sheer amount of bodies that he could see laying all to still unnerved him. The dead and dying stretched far further then he could have imagined and even now he knew it would be an image that would stay with him forever. Retreating into his hood, he tried to block as much of it out as he could and forced himself to simply concentrate on carefully placing his feet. 'Light I've seen worse, but never has it seemed so senseless.'
They made their way through Tar Valon as they had before. They approached each corner with trepidation, carefully they made sure there were no surprises waiting for them, each time they came to a bend a scout was sent forward and the party waited until the all-clear was given before continuing. Twice they had to change their route when they came to a street that was lined on both sides with buildings that were ablaze, the heat to intense to continue. Despite the distant sound of trumpets, screams, and the clash of steel on steel their only companions were the wind as it shrieked between the buildings and the dead. That was, until, the Aes Sedai finally joined the fray.
They had been making their way down a particularly long street, waiting for the scout to give the all-clear signal, when lightening began to fall from the heavens. The first brilliant blue flash had drawn their attention as it lit up the sky, before snaking its way to the ground on the far side of Tar Valon, only to be replaced by three more. Every time one impacted the streets a loud clap pierced through the air and time and again the ground shuddered under his feet.
His attention was snapped from the chilling spectacle as the Warder to his right murmured quietly, "What is he doing?" Guaire quickly followed the man's gaze and saw what had alarmed him. The scout was slowly backing away from an intersection with one slowly placed foot after another. Seconds later, an eternity later, he turned and frantically ran back towards the party. The warder cursed and moments later he was silently agreeing.
Around the corner his followers spilled into the street, their movements frantic as they moved away from the Tower. 'Light, how did they get this close without been heard?' he questioned before two more claps rang out over the city and the ground rumbled, giving him his answer. 'Blood and bloody ashes.'
In the distance those leading the company slowed, before the inevitable happened. He could almost see the man's face and had no trouble imagining it. In his mind he saw confusion melting from his features as delight took hold. As if the world had slowed he watched the man's sword slowly lift from its scabbard, watched the light from the fires flickering on the blade as he thrust it at the vastly outnumbered party. And then he screamed, "Free the Dragon Reborn. For the Lord Dragon."
The host in front of them surged forward like a wolf that had finally found its prey. The battle cry was taken up quickly and was soon vibrating of the walls of the houses as they sprinted down the street. With no time to retreat and with barely enough time to react properly, he was thrown into a wall on the side of the road before the Aes Sedai started channelling. As alone as he had been for weeks and with the pain raging through his body once more, all he could do was watch as he struggled to sit upright.
His soldiers rushed at the Aes Sedai with weapons brandished and with a ferocity in their actions that only a night among such chaos could bring. They didn't even slow when the ground began to erupt under their feet and lightening fell among their ranks, or when fireballs exploded around them. On they rushed, past men that fell and slammed into the thin ranks of Tower Guard. As he watched realisation sunk in, 'their all going to die, and for nothing. Hundreds fell even before they made contact with the guards and more are dieing every second.'
It was then though, that later he swore the pattern took a hand. Perhaps they were drawn to the lightening like moths to a flame. Or maybe they had heard the battle cries of the soldiers that were ploughing into the ranks of Tower Guard. He first heard them as a dull grumbling in the distance which he ignored in favour watching the Aes Sedai do their ugly work. But as the dull grumbling turned into the unmistakeable clatter of hooves on cobblestones he turned and watched in alarm as hundreds of horsemen galloped down the street with his banner before them. Straight towards the unprotected backs of the Aes Sedai.
Too late they noticed them, too late the Aes Sedai turned to face this new threat, and too late they tried to stop them. Some died with swords in the back. Others were ridden down by the horses. All along their lines they were shown no mercy, whether they be woman, man or Warder. They rode right through the ranks of his escort and over the bodies of those that had kept the Aes Sedai distracted, before continuing on towards the Tower. He was left behind in the shattering silence with the dead, back pressed up against the wall, unnoticed.
His breathing heavy in his own ears, his heart pounding in his chest, it took him a while to even hear the groans of those that lay around him. He found his eyes, though, drawn to the broken bodies of the Aes Sedai. Seemingly of its own accord a single flame formed in his mind and the panic that had been threatening to overwhelm him vanished. Tentatively, slowly, he reached out to that bright light that seemed to burn at the edges of the void and it came to him, that roaring avalanche of ice which brought life where there had only been death. No shield stood in the way, no barrier that teased and taunted. Instead there was only joy as Saidin filled him once more.
That was until something streaked across the surface of the void and his mind screamed at him, 'This is it you fool, your one chance and you're sitting in the street smiling.' A single flow of air carefully cut through the leather that bound his wrists and with some effort he managed to bring his aching arms up to remove the gag. Working his throbbing jaw he slowly pushed himself to his feat, steadied himself, and on wavering legs started walking back towards the bridges that spanned the river to the west.
He hadn't gone far, however, before he felt something snag at his pants. Disorientated he looked down and found himself staring into Asra's green eyes. The little Yellow was on her back with a gaping wound across her chest and one leg bent at a hopeless angel under her. She was feebly trying to grasp him around the ankle with her hand. He expected anger or accusation yet her eyes were only questioning. "Were yo-," her words stopped as she coughed, bringing flakes of blood to her lips. "Were you born of the Mountain?"
He looked at the dying woman as Saidin filled him, the void and the power all that stood between him and unconsciousness. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the bodies on the street and his mind had no problem imaging the carnage as madness gripped the burning city. There were some wounds the void could do nothing about. Slowly he shook his head and as he opened his mouth to answer the woman struggling for breath forestalled him. "Why….why all this?"
This time he didn't even hesitate, he had asked himself the question countless times. "What else was there for me? What could I do, go and die quietly? Try not to go insane and live a normal life?" He thought back to the days when Saidin had first come to him and the fear he felt. "It had to mean something, it just had too."
Pain flickered in her eyes and blood began to leak from the corner of her mouth. "Is it pure?" she asked through clenched, reddened teeth.
Even as he began to answer, her eyes rolled up and her head lolled to one side as she slipped into unconsciousness. Looking down at the woman who had only ever shown him kindness, Guaire Amalasan, self-proclaimed Dragon Reborn, a man whose existence had lead to the demise of hundreds of Aes Sedai, knelt down in the streets of Tar Valon and did what he could to save the woman's life. His knowledge of healing was limited, but it had worked in the past, sometimes well, sometimes not.
When he had finished her leg was straight and the gash across her chest was gone, but her breathing was extremely shallow. Panting heavily he managed to once again stand upright. 'She might live, she might not it. All depends on how strong she is, and whether those horsemen came galloping back to finish the job. Or any number of things,' he thought dryly. 'More importantly why the bloody hell did I do that? If she lives and knows that I survived….' He didn't want to think about it. Even so he used flows of air to carefully move her body to side of the street, against the wall.
Turning away he started staggering down the street, determined to put it out of his mind. Later, when he had time, he would think about exactly what had changed inside of him, why exactly he even let her live, let alone healed her. But for now he needed to leave. 'Was it pure?' she had asked. As he struggled against the wind and falling ash toward the bridges that led out of the burning city he muttered the answer to himself with a small smile on his face, "There's only one way to find out."
A/N: Hope you enjoyed a little break.