Gawyn had just gone through a long day with the younglings. Practice was long and hard and now he was putting away his gear. He threw his practice swords into his bag, peeled off his clothes and stepped into the shower. He reached for the chrome shower lever and turned on the hot water. He moved the towel on its rack aside, revealing Lanfear and Graedal.
"AH!" he cried, turning off the shower and wrapping his waist in the towel.
"We're looking for something," Graedal began, "we think you might know where it is." Gawyn ran to his bag, but was pursued by both Forsaken. "Are you Sir Gawain?"
"Gawyn," he answered, "who is…"
"Nevermind," Lanfear interrupted. "There's a dagger. We think it's in the hand of a guy named Cauthon…"
"Cauthon!" Gawyn stammered, "Cauthon totally pwned me in a match of swords-vs-spars. He bashes my head with his staff, I get a concussion and have to go through weeks of recovery. I lost half my memory. I miss months of study and what happens? My swordsmaster stand there and is all like 'oh, the greatest swordsman in the world was once beaten by a guy with a quarterstaff.' Yeah, right. Spare us the history lesson pops, I need a brain surgeon." Gawyn shrugged. "I got my revenge. I knifed the guy in this very locker room. It's a good thing Elaida chose to depose Siuan then, or I'd have had no way to make it look like anything but murder." Gawyn pulled on his clothes. "Of course, now that I'm humiliated and babysitting some stupid younglings, I can't get any girls. My only choice is this stupid bitch named Egwene al'something. Light, she's a brainless, compulsive liar who delights in secrets, like a ****ing five year old. She can't even give me proof that my beloved sister is still alive. She won't even let me know where she is. Does she delight in giving me nightmares about Elayne?"
"Would you like to come with me?" asked Graedal. "We can have a lot of fun together."
"Fun!" echoed fifty voices from behind the nearby lockers. "Lots of fun with Graedal." Gawyn looked around.
"You snuck some of your servants in here?" he asked. Graedal was beside him in a moment.
"Yes. And you can join them. I'll put your lovesick little heart right next to Edward Cullen…"
"Graedal!" snapped Lanfear. "Stick to the point. Where is Mat Cauthon?"
"Salad Bar," replied Gawyn. "And if you see my sister, tell her I love her very much and I'm sick with depression over where she is and it's not fair to me to keep secrets from me and…" Graedal and Lanfear gated away.
"No!" stammered Gawyn. "This, around the time I lost my mommy to Rand Al'thor." Then Gawyn doubled over and sobbed. "M…m…mommy! Mo…mommy!"
…
The air was thick with a fat smoke. It smelt like grass to be frank, fresh cut grass. Sammael also began to feel hungry as he worked his way into the Ogier stedding. Such a strange word "stedding." The ogier had originally jumped onto the old tongue bandwagon and called it a "ste'dd'inga'sooph'''''ai'gla'ndes'saddoodle''''''," which had more apostrophes than any other word in any tongue. But even the old tongue could only have so many apostrophes.
"You know," grumbled a weary ogier woman that Sammael walked past, "why is there only one language in the world? Why do we speak the same words as the monkeys?" She looked promising. As Sammael squeezed through the trees and sat by the woman he began to take in his surroundings.
Everyone wore sunglasses, with long ropy hair and messy clothes that were as colourful as a tinker's outfit. Some of them sat on rugs and played banjos and some roasted sausages over open fires. A lot of them wore the peace symbol. Sammael chose this woman to be near because she was actually speaking. The others were just moaning and braying.
"I'm looking for the dagger of Shadar Logoth," Sammael said to the woman, who was now rolling on the ground next to a band of squat musicians. Sammael sure was hungry.
"Yo, peace," huffed the woman, sitting up. "Shadar Logoth is a bad place. It violates human rights, bro! It is so suspicious of its people. It conducts unwarranted searches on its own people, carries out chargeless arrests and discriminates. It discriminates bro! Shadar Logoth is so full of suspicion and it wages shallow, criminal wars all in the name of suspicion and fear bro! It stomps all over Vietnam. And for what? Witch hunting those commies bro? We gotta get Shadar Logoth out of Vietnam, bro!" She wasn't much, but she was the best this forest-city of hairy idiots had yet shown him.
"Where is the dagger…?" Sammael began.
"Vietnam, bro! Get out of Vietnam bro!"
"Where in Shai'tan's name is the dagger!"
"Woah!" one of the band members, the harpist, stood up. Sammael blinked in horror.
"Asmodean?"
"That's right, bro," replied the former Forsaken. "I'm tired of doom and gloom, bro. I want to just be happy. Play my harp. Live with nature," he emphasized "nature." He emphasized it heavily. "Love and live and grow trees. Make love, not war, man!" The cry was taken up by the whole stedding.
"MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR!" Sammael helped his friend to his feet.
"I think we've had enough of crazy ogier tree-huggers," Sammael muttered. He was secretly grinning and rubbing his hands together in sickly ambition. Where these hippies saw trees, he saw…progress. Cities, castles, capital! Let's see how long these fools could hold when he bulldozed their stedding. "Did you find out anything?"
"The dagger, it was taken from Shadar Logoth!" Asmodean blathered. "It's a conspiracy! The government is lying to us. They want to use it to kill the trees. We've got to protect the trees bro!" Sammael stomped his foot.
"Where did the Dragon's fri…I mean, the henchmen of the government take the dagger?" He hoped there was some vestiges of his fellow Forsaken inside the shell of flesh he now held in his hands.
"It's a government conspiracy!" Asmodean cried. Sammael grabbed Asmodean by the ankles and hoisted him over his head. He brought him down like a hammer, bashing his head into the ground. Up and down he went, bashing Asmodean with all his strength. Sammael dropped Asmodean's ankles and leaned down.
"Where is the government hiding the dagger?" he demanded.
"Salad…bar," hissed Asmodean. Sammael gated away. Asmodean grabbed his ankle before he could disappear and was dragged behind the other Forsaken.
…
"Alright you two, spread out!" Be'lal shouted. Mesanna and Semirhage dove into the pile of angreal like children into a ball pit. Be'lal held back his outrage when the two women began throwing angreal at one another.
"Careful with tho…AH!" Be'lal ducked down as an angreal landed near his feet and activated, firing a red beam of fire dangerously close to him. "We're here for clues. And don't make noise. The garrison in the Stone of Tear cannot be disturbed."
"Relax, no one knows we're down here," replied Semirhage. A passing angreal knocked a nearby door open, revealing the chanber where the Cadinsor was being kept. Be'lal closed the door in a moment.
"What was that?" asked Mesanna, craning to look.
"It is Cadinsor," replied Be'lal. "It is a powerful tool, built for a man. The Sword that is not a Sword: a great manly tool. It can cause great ruin whenever it is brought out of its sheath."
"Bow-chicka-bow-wow," Mesanna said. Be'lal rolled his eyes.
"Just search. We don't have all day…stop throwing angreal at each other!" Be'lal barked. He picked up a random angreal, a long hard cylinder, and activated it. From the things end shone a bright light from a glowbulb. "Ah, a working fla'shl'ight. It's type has not been seen during the age of legends," Be'lal praised. "Come." The other two forsaken stopped throwing angreal and followed Be'lal further into the depths of the cellar, filled with angreal.
"There sure are a lot of these caches lying around. There's one in Ebou Dar too," Semirhage remarked. A circle of illumination passed over the heaped junk, affording the forsaken glimpses of statuettes and curious pieces of art. "Ah! This!" She flashed over to a curious white box and turned it on. The cellar filled with lively music and a man's singing voice while a small sign popped out of a trapdoor on the box's top.
"Do you suppose he's speaking about a lover?" asked Mesanna, listening to the singing.
"I believe he is," replied Semirhage. "Isn't that sweet? He'll never give her up. Or let her down." She squinted at the sign. "It says someone named Rick has rolled over onto us...I think." The other two forsaken shrugged in blissful ignorance and kept going.
"What about this?" Be'lal fell upon a flat crystal screen. Touching it, the screen lit up to reveal a moving image of two girls and one cup. "It cannot be!" gasped Be'lal in disgust, "Dark One burn my soul! They were…AH!" he threw the screen into a corner before the others could see it.
"How about this angreal?" asked Messana, turning over a large black square of opaque glass. Activating it, the square lit up, revealing an image stored inside its crystalline depths.
"It says 'goat,' or…" the image changed. "AH!" Messana hurled the angreal away. "Hands! Hands, they were…AH!"
"Doesn't this cellar carry anything that isn't stupid or disgusting?" asked Be'lal in disbelief. "Maybe we'll have to go to the Dark One empty-handed. Semirhage shook her head.
"No, there!" she pointed out a standing statue of a monk with crystal eyes, revealed in the light of Be'lal's flashlight. Activating it, light shot from the eyes. Forming in the air where the light shone was a hovering image. It was a large man in glasses swinging a stick.
"A hologram! Now it all makes sense. Those disgusting images…it is tool of the age of legends," whispered Be'lal in awe. The image changed to a similar man, from the waist up, swinging his arms to the tune of a song that Be'lal didn't understand. "What?" he asked, his awe fading. It changed to a boy falling from a log into a river, then a man on stage dancing to different songs.
"What?" asked Semirhage. The new image showed a zombie confessing a liking for turtles, then it changed to a whale exploding, then to a Nazi speaking in another language, with subtitles appearing across his chest revealed his anger over stolen waffles.
"The intur-net. Or in the old tongue, the idiost paradis," admitted Messana. "A foolish invention from the age of legends, where idiots went to waste their time. Some of the worst, most ignorant intur-net users of all were the ones who wrote stories lampooning their favourite books and then uploaded them to be read for free by strangers." Be'lal nodded, remembering. Suddenly he didn't miss the age of legends.
"I can't believe I ever liked it…wait!" Be'lal stopped the stream of images. "Look!" An image of a muscled warrior in a red cape kicking a smaller man into a hole remained frozen in time. With a mental nudge with Saidin, Be'lal reviewed the previous image.
"Matrim Cauthon!" laughed Semirhage. "It's him, stealing from Shadar Logoth!" Squinting at the image, Be'lal saw Mat was running from the city with the dagger, to join a group headed up the east road.
"That road leads to one place only," Be'lal roared in triumph. "Salad Bar!" They turned around to leave. As they turned around, the angreal's light disappeared. Sensing danger, the forsaken turned around.
"Did you deactivate it?" asked Messana. Be'lal approached the statue and touched it gingerly.
"It's still on. Can you feel it?" he said to the other two. He touched it again and it began to make noise.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
"What the fu…!"
BOOOOOM!
…
It was time to crown Egwene as the Amyrlin Seat. The hall that served the Aes Sedai in Salad Bar as their meeting-place was filled with all of the Aes Sedai membership who had decided to forsake Elaida and run off to Salad Bar. There were only two missing. One was Rosemary Sedai, who had raced off into the Blight to defect to the Dark One's service when she found out who the popular choice for the next Amyrlin Seat was. The other was Jaina Sedai, who had only joined the White Tower to hone her arts at showmanship. She and her Warder can now be seen in Cairhein giving magic shows at the local clubs, using the One Power to pull rabbits out of hats (or, more commonly, her swooping neckline) and demonstrating how free will does not exist thanks to the power of the Wheel of Time. But enough about that.
As with most Aes Sedai rituals, it involved more awkward and inexplicable nudity than a teenage farmer boy's daydreams about a young milk maiden. For years, Aes Sedai and scholars have plied the records of the White Tower, trying to understand why a ritual as straight forward as raising an Amyrline required…what it did. The Blue Ajah alone know the answer, but they prefer to use their Aes Sedai answers to placate curious researchers.
"There's a reason," they say when asked about it. What is the reason? "Oh? I have to go do stuff now. Bye."
Egwene felt hot in the face as she stood in front of the throne that all Amyrline's were to sit in. Since they did not have time to bring the real throne from the White Tower when they fled Elaida, the Salad Bar Aes Sedai made do with a beanbag chair. She was here, now came the hard part.
"Are only women present?" cried the MC of the ritual, a woman named Siuan, who was not too old and very pretty. She was the former Amyrline. "There must only be women present here, so we have to make sure." She unbuttoned her shift. "And by the way: silverpike." Siuan lowered her shift to her waist. Were this primetime TV, a black rectangle would appear at this moment. "I am a woman." All around, the same bizarre gesture was repeated, with a PHOOSH of fabric as the shift was lowered.
"I am a woman."
PHOOSH
"I am a woman."
PHOOSH
"I am a woman."
DUP DUP DUP, KURICK
Mat Cauthon had just unbuttoned his vest and pulled it aside, to reveal two pink balloons taped to his chesthair. As every female eye turned to regard him, Mat looked around the room, his eyes wide enough to engulf a small town. The whole membership, numbering over in the hundreds, with lowered shifts glared at him, and he was looking back. Even beneath his womanly wig and makeup, Egwene could see it was him.
POOF! Mat had just taken a picture with his camera.
"What?" Mat asked, his voice high and girlish. He was still trying the ruse.
"We know it's you, Cauthon," Egwene stammered. Mat took another picture.
"Fine, you caught me. But at least I'm honest, unlike the ninety-five peeping toms who're spying right now." At Mat's words, the sound of running could be heard outside. "And you should check the windows whenever you send a girl into that archway thing."
…
"Alright." The Forsaken were gathered outside the hallway where Egwene was being crowned. The target was in there with her. "Ok guys," began Lanfear, "these Aes Sedai have given us a lot of trouble in the past. Do we need to jump this guy right now or can we just bypass all these women?" The other Forsaken exchanged glances.
"Yeah, we can't," Demandred admitted. "If we don't drop them here, they'll hunt us." Lanfear cursed.
"Alright, here's what we'll do," Lanfear began, "I'll run in first and gather up people's attention, blast them down with the One Power. Mogidean can use her compelling shout, make them do what she says, so we don't have to fight them all at once. Then I'll need Rahvin to shout at them, to scare them, keep them scattered. We continue dropping them with our magic powers. I mean, we'll get in trouble if we don't take them down real quick. What do you think Aginor? Can you give me a brain-crunch real quick?" Aginor paused, calling on his scientific mind to do some calculating.
"I'm coming up with a thirty-two…point…something chance of survival. Repeating, of course," he said. Lanfear looked at him funny.
"Repeating?"
"Of us repeating. Of us being repeated in the next book, a 32 percent chance of that," he looked at her like it should have been obvious. Lanfear rolled her eyes.
"That's a lot better than we usually do with our minions." As it was, an assassin or army they sent at a servant of the Light, or at the Dragon Reborn and his friends, had a zero percent chance of survival and none of them were ever repeated in later books. Though somehow the same scene was repeated, just with different assassins.
"Alright!" Ishamael laughed, his eyes full of flame, "let's do this!" He kicked open the door. "WE'RE THE FOOOOOOORSAKEEEEEEN!" Lanfear gaped in disbelief at where Ishamael had been standing.
"Oh my god he just ran in."
…
"Ah!"
Aes Sedai shrieked as the Forsaken barged in. Women grasped at their shifts trying in vain to raise them in time. Others covered up. Some were knocked over by the terror of their kin. Of all the times the shadow chose to attack, why in the names of all the gods did it have to be now, when they were all half-naked? The Aes Sedai were too busy fumbling with their clothes and covering themselves to fight back against the attacking Forsaken.
"AH!" Ishamael cried out as he crashed into a potted plant on his way in. He tumbled to the ground as he hurled a bolt of balefire. The potted plant, incidentally a rose, bashed into Balthamel who was collapsed dead, his cloak pierced by thorns. Thorny vines reached out of his mask's eyeholes.
The balefire Ishamael threw hit Aginor and Belal by accident, demolishing both. This opened a temporal hole in the fabric of space and time. Lanfear paused to avoid crashing into it, but Rahvin charged into her from behind, knocking her through. Lanfear shrieked as she loosed a line of balefire by mistake, destroying Rahvin. The temporal hole closed. As Ishamael got up, Moghidean fell into him, knocking him over again. This time he fell on his own sword, killing himself.
Sammael tried to remedy the situation by opening a gate to Shadar Logoth and unleashing Mashadar on the Aes Sedai. But as Moghidean pulled back from Ishamael, she knocked him through his own portal and into Mashadar's maw. The portal closed. Moghidean's actions in turn distracted Messana as she launched her balefire missile. It plowed through Graendal and Semirhage before exploding against the wall, pushing the other Forsaken to the ground. Demandred fell on his own sword, killing himself. Moghidean broke her neck against the wall. Messana's skull split open on the ground. Only Asmodean stood back up.
"You?" he cried in disbelief to no one. "NO!" he keeled over and died.
"Sisters, the Forsaken are upon us. Fight for your lives and die with honour!" cried Nyaneve as she and the other Aes Sedai finished raising their shifts and jumped into attack formation, prepared to sell their lives. They got into ready stance and faced the entrance, where lay a pile of dead Forsaken and the smoking boots of those destroyed by balefire.
Crickets. Crickets. Crickets.
In the silence, someone coughed.
Crickets. Cricket. Crickets.
"Well," Mat beamed as he whipped out the dagger of Shadar Logoth and twirled it in his hands, "they're as stupid as hell…"
"At least I have a tank, BIYATCH!" cried a voice from outside.
The wall beside him crashed down as an M1A1 battle tank plowed through it. Its main cannon fired, blasting scores of Aes Sedai to bloody ruin. Its machine guns rattled, punching those women around Mat off their feet. Mounting the fierce metal beast's turret was a figure dressed in black, with a veil that covered their face and dark glasses over their eyes.
"Hahahah!" cackled the stranger, leaping off the tank's hull. Mat tried to defend himself, but the stranger bashed him over the head. He fell unconscious and was dragged away by the black-clad invader. "Goodbye losers!" the stranger hissed, getting back atop the tank with Mat and the dagger. "The power of Shadar Logoth is MINE!" The Aes Sedai fled in terror and the tank backed out of the hall.
"Well that's not fair!" Nyaneve cried in dismay as she pulled her braid. She had a habit of pulling on her braid when angry. "That person stole Mat? Now how are we going to box his ears for what he…what he…" She looked at Elayne, beside her, and handed her braid to her. Elayne pulled on it with all her might and Nyaneve continued talking. "He can't get away with that…ARGH…with that stunt. We've got to get him and punish him!" The thought of Mat getting away made her even angrier. She pushed her head forward with all her might, dragging even more pressure onto her braid. Several other women ran in to help Elayne pull Nyaneve's braid. They didn't even shake her balance. That made Nyaneve even angrier.
"But Mat was kidnapped. That's punishment enough," Egwene said.
"Not by us!" Nyaneve spat back, getting so angry her face turned red. "We need help from the Dragon Reborn. We've got to recover Mat so we can punish him properly." She shook her head. "Girls, get off my braid. Your pulling sucks! That makes me really angry!" Everyone let go of Nyaneve's braid and she walked into a corner, smoke billowing out of her ears.
"But how will we find that kidnapper?" asked Egwene.
"Easy you dirt-brained toad. The Wheel of Time will help us," growled a steaming Nyaneve as she tied her braid to something. "It does everything for us. We just have to start looking for him. We'll need Min too, to see Mat's future, which will give us clues as to where he is. And Aviendha, in case we have to fight the kidnapper."
The five-story rocket Nyaneve tied her braid to launched. Everyone plugged their ears as the rocket fuel ignited.
"That's better!" Nyaneve cursed as the rocket lifted up through the ceiling, tugging her braid. "And we need Rand and his powers to help us with Mat."
"What?" Egwene cried over the rocket's engines.
"I said get Rand!" Nyaneve shouted, straining against the rocket, putting as much pressure on her braid as she could.
"Hand? Who's hand?"
"I said we need Raaaaaaaaaaa…" Nyaneve's voice grew distant as the rocket shot up into the sky, taking her with it. The hall fell quiet as everyone bunched around the hole the rocket plowed in the ceiling and at the distant light that raced into the sky, a flailing Nyaneve hanging by her braid from its bottom. No one spoke until the light was gone, lost from sight on its course to outer space.
"She must have been really angry," Elayne said. "So, looks like she's gone forever."
Silence.
Then the hallway exploded into a chorus of cheering and jubilation. Women hugged, danced and cried in joy.
"Goodbye bossy ignoramus!"
"Goodbye little-miss ear-boxer!"
"Finally, I can get some respect around here."
People even danced over the bloodied bodies of the people killed by the tank. From that scene, the news spread that Nyaneve was gone. All across Salad Bar, the rumor was told.
Nyaneve tied her braid to a rocket and was launched into outer space after a kidnapper stole Mat, killed a bunch of Aes Sedai and rode away on a tank. No. Nyaneve was the kidnapper and took Mat into outer space with her. No. Nyaneve tied her braid to a kidnapper who launched Mat into outer space. No. A bunch of dead Aes Sedai rode in on a kidnapper who tied Mat to Nyaneve who was then fired from a tank into outer space. No. A braid from outer space rode in, stole a bunch of dead Aes Sedai and rode away on Mat after launching a kidnapper tied to a tank into Nyaneve. These rumors and more went from ear to ear throughout Salad Bar.
