This one was very difficult, but I had to write it. I hope I will be back to "Youngest Channeler" soon. Thanks for reading. "Wheel of Time" is the property of Robert Jordan and those who represent him.
Desertion of Reason
by viggen
Reason
He struggled against saidin's reeling iceflow, holding fast to the razor's edge between burning out his ability and losing his grasp on the one power. The ichor from the Taint slid along the surging cold in an oil slick just thick enough to make him ill. With every sensation heightened and every color more vivid, holding saidin was like walking along the sky and playing tag with the moon, until he got bowled over by the backwash of the Taint when he let the power go. Until recently, the brisk, bracing pleasure had been ample incentive to keep him coming back for more despite the corruption mixed in just steeply enough to be a reminder. When the sickness began to worsen, he wished he could give it all up, but found he could hold off from touching the source no longer than a few hours before he became willing to risk losing his lunch just to feel it again.
Leaning back against the loosely stacked bricks, Lenovire counted the moments. He maintained a hold on saidin and breathed, squeezed his eyes closed and hoped desperately against another fit. He could sometimes keep them at bay if he focused, but his control had become more tenuous since Dumai's Wells. Despite the illness, he needed to keep quiet. If a fit overwhelmed him here, he would not be able to remain still and he could ill afford to give himself away with an attack of shaking--or worse. He fled the Black Tower when the sickness began to make itself felt so that he could avoid the inevitable culling when his masters realized how unstable he had become. Lenovire was not ready to lie down and die, especially not by poison from a stranger. He had carefully considered his desertion and had dodged parties of channeling men to come this far.
He clenched the glass vial in his pocket. Not just now.
"You should slow down, Lenovire," a soft voice near his shoulder said.
He waved it away. He refused to yield just yet. Worried to have given himself away, he pressed himself more solidly against the wall and held his breath until he picked out the tiny sounds he had been anticipating.
A dim shadow migrated up a nearby stone wall half collapsed with age. Streaks of sunlight cupped the dark edges of the silhouette. Ivy crunched underfoot. Lenovire swallowed hard. The M'Hael had been correct that one witch alone could be stripped naked and spanked, but almost any three together could do the stripping and spanking for someone of Lenovire's strength. The weirdness of their channeling still frightened him with its absence, though the M'Hael insisted that a clever man could feel it out with patience. Their ability left an itch when they used it, but not nearly as apparent as when another man spun out a weave. A second shadow moved near the first and crept over the tufts of grass between broken pieces of debris. Trying to keep his breathing level in the icy crisp focus of the Void, he forced himself to wait. If nothing else, the owners of those shadows were frighteningly patient. Lenovire did not like being the fox with these women as the hounds. As a rule, women were not supposed to do the chasing.
He heard a whispered conference by his power enhanced ears, though too low for him to discern the words. They knew he was somewhere near and were not about to give up. How they were managing to track him, Lenovire did not know, but coming upon them had been happenstance. When he saw the ageless faces, he bolted away in forlorn hope that they had not seen his black tunic. If only the one in the red dress had not noticed him. After his journey across Andor, his destination was finally close and he took full advantage of his knowledge to try to hide in these lands. But they came after him anyway. He wished that he had been smart enough to ditch his Black Tower uniform a long time ago. Of course, he had been focused on other matters at the time, like keeping his illness contained.
"That way," he heard the whisper, "that way for certain."
"Listen for him."
He thought those voices were not imagined, but he could never entirely tell anymore.
Another crackle of feet in brush and the shadow moved further along the wall. Lenovire squinted his eyes. The shadow smiled an evil grin and actually seemed to snake toward him against the direction of the light, dancing from stone to stone as it reached out. Lenovire squeezed his eyelids closed and shook his head sharply. Sometimes, the visions made him want to cry out in fear. He managed to hold fast to the power despite the momentary confusion. When he opened his eyes again, the shadow had flicked back to where if truly fell. This aspect of the illness continued to catch him by surprise and it had grown worse as he got closer to home.
The woman who cast the shadow crept across the gap between two ruined walls, visible only for an instant. Lenovire kept stalk still, back pressed against the rock, barely daring to breathe. If the witches found him now, they would drag him off without an afterthought. All he wanted was to see Ardri one last time before he met his fate.
When the witch who crossed the gap disappeared from view, Lenovire took a deep breath and began to edge away along the wall. He remembered playing in this ruin as a child, remembered racing down these broken corridors pretending to vanquish Trollocs or Forsaken. He remembered hiding from Hoften or his younger brother. A stick propped against one broken wall here had been a lance used to fend off an onslaught of pretend Aiel--nothing like fighting them for real and far less like shredding them with the one power. More clearly, he remembered Lenala playing here with her friends when she was still just a little girl and remembered Ardri sending him to find the child when she failed to return home on time for an evening meal. Lenovire had never expected to use these ruins to hide from someone who actually wanted to do him harm.
"Careful," he heard one woman telling another in a hushed voice, "the edge by the broken wall goes down quite a way." He had not heard that woman speaking yet. Something about that voice tickled his memory, though he did not know whether the sense of remembrance had been installed by the cruel hand of the illness or not. Were they three, or four? Had he missed one?
Ducking to stay in the shadows when he finally could go no farther without pushing away from the wall, Lenovire picked his path carefully to keep atop large pieces of stone. If he could hear the witches by what they stepped on, they might also hear him. The time he spent at the Black Tower, even at his age, made him mindful of slips in combat. In spite of the nearly one-sided blood bath at Dumai's Wells, he had seen a friend felled by an errant bowshot and knew better than to trust Lady Luck not to favor the other side when the dice hit the table. Many skills a farmer had not needed became his in that Tower among the channeling men. One stone shifted precariously beneath his foot and forced him to test his next steps to be certain they were solid.
"We mean to help you Lenovire," a voice whispered at his shoulder. A shadow between the rocks at his feet smiled up at him, toothy, hungry. The eyes always stared in through holes of darkness, always watched him. They would have him eventually.
Lenovire ignored it. He vowed not to stumble.
"Over that way," one woman called another, not bothering to mask herself, "freshly turned stones here!" The others did not answer, but they were somewhere nearby.
"They mean to help you, Lenovire," that whisper buzzed like a biteme by his ear.
Lenovire attempted to move more quickly, certain one woman or another might stumble onto him at any second. So far, at least, the size of these ruins was to his benefit. He scurried over a wrecked column in a quick jaunt across open ground and flattened himself against a shadowed wall. His heart hammered in his ears and his equilibrium struggled to keep pace. As long as he held saidin, the euphoria of the power helped mask some of the worst effects of the illness, even if it did not stave off the queerest.
"What will you do if I let them know you're here?" the whisper needled him, moving around his head. An eye looked through a dark crack in a nearby wall.
Lenovire swallowed hard. He knew It only wanted his acknowledgement. As long as he did not fall down in a fit, this effect could not touch him. He had spoken to It before and found that It could spout some disturbingly accurate insight. If It resided only in his mind, he did not think that it could raise his pursuers. But, he could not deny that tiny grain of doubt. He sneaked down the broken corridor as much to put distance between himself and the eye in the crack as from the witches hunting around in his wake.
"What will you do if they find you?" It asked. "Will you try to hit them with a weave of Earth and Fire? They won't hesitate to cut you off from the source if they're linked. The witches do that, you know?" A coil of shadow slithered across a rock at his feet.
Blinking his eyes and trying not to see it, Lenovire took a turn through a break in the ancient wall and glanced quickly either direction to see that no women were there to notice him. He bit his lip when a rock disturbed by one step clattered, but skulked as quickly onward as possible. At least the witches could not feel his death grip on the saidin, though nature hid almost as much about their abilities from him. If he could take them one at a time, maybe there would be a chance. It would be a terrible gamble.
He shook his head.
Another man might try it. A month ago, Lenovire might have tried it. But, all he wanted now was to get on his way as soon as possible. If he did not get there soon, it would be too late. He already felt as if he were at the very edge. If he tried to fight these witches, they would surely trap him. He staggered on in indecision. If he did not stand, they would trap him--if he did, they would still trap him.
Gasping for breath, he crab-walked beneath what might once have been a window. His Head spun. He wanted to vomit. The quenching cold of saidin was not cold or quenching enough.
"Come now, Lenovire," the whisper followed him. "Do you really think you can hide for much longer? You will have to do something when they find you."
"I don't have to do anything," Lenovire grunted, then clapped a hand over his mouth.
"This way!" someone called out behind him, "I heard him this way!"
"You see?" It murmured, "As easy as that. What do you plan now?"
Cursing himself for giving in to the taunt, Lenovire rushed forward as quickly as he could. The thought of using saidin on them became ever more tantalizing. Unlike Aes Sedai, he had no constraints preventing him from using his one truly potent weapon against this enemy. But, if he tried to hurt them with the power, they would have free license to fight back. Of course, since he was a channeling man, there was always the chance they would automatically feel threatened enough to be able to do him harm without his trying to fight. Another shadow squirmed and moved and Lenovire did his best to hurry past it. His face was slick with sweat.
Two female voices spoke behind him. They were getting closer.
Lenovire slipped around a corner and ducked back into shadow. He could barely contain it.
"Someone came through here recently," a woman very close said, her feet barely making the noises Lenovire had been expecting. "The other two linked?"
"What sort of question is that?" a second woman said.
They passed so close by the corner behind which Lenovire hid that he could hear the rustle of their dresses and could smell a fragrance one of them wore. A scent like the lavender jasmine Lenala once loved.
Lenovire's left hand abruptly began to shake, twitching and flicking with uncontrollable jolts. He tucked the offending limb against his chest and held it there. Eyes and tendrils of shadow caressed at him where he hid, like a thousand cockroaches scurrying around his feet and boldly crawling on his legs.
"There, there, Lenovire," the toothy mouth by his ear hissed, "we are here for you."
"Get away from me," Lenovire breathed back, more loudly than could possibly be safe. He readied a weave of Fire and Earth, prepared to flick out on a moment's notice. This weave saw much use at Dumai...
"Did you hear?" one of the women said.
It breathed on his shoulders, touching his back gently with the edges of claws and teeth and tongues. He did his best not to move even with the rapacious sensations venturing all over him. His hand would not stop trembling.
"They know you're near," It told him. "You should kill them while you have the chance."
He kept silent. He needed to run for home; he did not know if he could hold out much longer. The illness was going to take him, maybe in a few minutes, maybe in a few hours, but today would be his last. Memories of Ardri's face floated like a beacon in his mind. Beyond that one need, if channeling men finally tracked him down to kill and hang in the Traitor's Tree or if channeling women decided to Gentle him, he did not care.
As they always seemed to meander near the surface of his mind, those haunting recollections of Dumai's Wells began again to visit him. How easy it had been. Aiel after Aiel, veiled and ready to fight, but they all came apart as naturally as breathing. Just a relative few of his brothers and they had decimated the enemy. He remembered the lofty feelings of power and superiority associated with transforming the opposing army into a fleshy tatter strewn across the field. When the fearsome Aiel broke and fled like a rabble of children, he remembered thinking he had finally attained his manhood, despite all the years married to his wife and despite the adult daughter he loved. That sensation had been so intoxicating, like returning to youth.
Lenovire breathed hard. A stream of spittle escaped the corner of his mouth and he jerked to wipe it away. It would be so easy. Even a man who did not channel saidin strongly could kill and kill and kill.
He also thought about how all those ruined bodies were once some proud father's child and he quailed. What would he do if Lenala had been a Maiden of the Spear and fallen so easily to some channeling man?
Saidin fluttered and almost escaped his grasp. He seized it harder, hanging on for dear life and filled himself to the brink. The Taint nearly brought up that bilious retch. Just a moment of doubt...
"I think I heard..."
Lenovire snapped out with the power and the ancient wall exploded with a thunder crack. Someone screamed. Shadows nipping, toying at his ankles, he ran for all he was worth.
He had to get home.
Lightning came down at him in sheets, white arches cracking into walls and unleashing showers of fractured stone. He threw his own weaves back blindly, blasting apart rock surfaces and exploding the ground in his wake as he ran. He needed to get away. He needed to get away.
Explosions from the lightning stretched fingers out almost lazily to catch him, smiling teeth of It unleashed into the world whether anyone could stop It or not. Lenovire ducked through jaws that emerged from the haze, ducked past hands and greedy tendrils.
"Don't be that way, Lenovire," It sighed, somehow always with him even though he ran with everything he had. "There will be no hurt, Lenovire. You will be free."
Lightning narrowly missed him as he used the weave of Fire and Earth to punch a hole through the last wall of the ruin between himself and open ground. His pursuers were having problems seeing exactly where to land their thunder strokes through the billowing clouds of dust lifted into the air by the violent channeling exchange.
"There!"
As he emerged from the ruin into open grass, a careening ball of Fire came sizzling toward him from the side. In surprise, he tripped and fell on his face, but struck out with the Earth-Fire weave to send an explosive fountain of stone up into the path of the fireball. Flames burst everywhere in a fog of orange that soaked into grass and trees alike. Flying rocks and meandering orbs of flame sprinkled down over everything. Shaken, Lenovire had enough mind to use a weave of Fire himself to shed the new flames chewing at his clothing--the tongues of fire which had settled on him ran off of his body harmlessly onto the ground around him when he stood back up on quivering feet.
The woman who loosed the first fireball attacked with a second, but Lenovire was already running. He was not good with Air, but a simple weave foiled her aim, diverting her attack off harmlessly into the sky. Panting hard as he ran for dear life, he felt the Spirit weave just soon enough to keep it from cutting him off from the source; at least he understood how to protect himself from that. Another two witches linked to that woman could have cut him off, but he did not wait around to give them the chance to group.
Continued in Chapter 2
