The Sun Beyond Fingertips
The White Tower was her life. The One Power was her sword. What happens when an Aes Sedai is stilled.
A woman with a calm, ageless face watched another, who appeared to be in her twenties. The young woman's hazel eyes were empty, bleak like death and she didn't turn as the other shook her head with a touch of aversion in her cool green eyes and glided away.
Once outside the room that housed a horror worse than death it seemed the Aes Sedai breathed a soft sigh of relief but the anxious man waiting outside didn't believe that.
"Aes Sedai?" All he knew was that Nilene Gisori, his advisor had screamed once while battling Trollocs, and her Warder had toppled dead from his saddle for no obvious reason.
"It would be better is you'd allowed a Trolloc to carry her away." The Aes Sedai said, grimness cracking the edges of her serenity. She felt a great desire to empty her stomach. The King of Shienar stared at her and she had to resist that urge, tasting bile. Light preserve her from that terrible fate. "I will be leaving in the morning." Nilene should have known better that to draw too much of the One Power. Why had she?
"What about Nilene Sedai?"
"She is dying, man! And there is nothing I can do. Better dead than alive with this curse." And the Aes Sedai swept away.
In…Out…In…Out…Still her chest moved and she wondered what it would be to die, vaguely. Once she had clung to life fiercely, refused wounds their prize but now…without saidar she was already half-gone. Would it hurt? The final breath wheezing out, blood falling, perfect crimson droplets, drip, drip, drip… Some part of her knew Diril was dead, that the snapping of saidar had snapped their bond too, like a brittle branch cracking, sending splinters sliding into his skull…
Did the air stir with the breath of the living, some person who had never known the true joy of the rightly named True Source, or some woman still clenched by life, by saidar? Did it matter? Gone it was, like the memories of her mother crooning songs to her in her cradle, dancing away. And it made her ache with longing, the bright burning sun just beyond her fingertips no matter how she strived. When had she ever taken it for granted?
It had been an ounce too much, a gamble that had shredded her very soul. Trollocs had not been worth that…not worth it... she wanted to scream it but she could not cry out, could not even whimper. She saw her grave and longed for it. Peace? Had life ever given her peace but with the Power filling her, a cup brimful of the very Light?
A strand of hair fell across her face, brushed her skin with memory of Diril's hands stroking her head gently. It faded, just like his touch.
The blade gleamed with sunlight as her finger ran along its edge. Blood welled, accenting cold steel, blossoming as she raised it. She pressed it against her chest, felt its tender pricking, and pushed it deeper, gasped softly as her life spilled on the stark floor.