Youngest Channeler: Book 2
by viggen
Her slippers scuffing on the intricate Tiarin rug which covered the polished stone floor of Romanda's quarters, Allerria clicked the door closed in her wake and turned to meet the elder Yellow Ajah Aes Sedai.
She passed the letter into Romanda's hands without saying a thing. Romanda turned the paper over and inspected the broken wax seal, "I presume this was you?"
"Of course," Allerria nodded, "It was sealed when it reached my hands. No eyes but ours have read this yet. Rayanne gave it to the courier with instructions for it to reach either of us."
"No eyes but yours have read it yet," Romanda corrected, then opened the letter and scanned the contents.
Allerria stood with baited breath while the other Aes Sedai's eyes tracked back and forth along the page. Romanda grunted once as she read, "The woman's script is fit for a horse thief..." She read several seconds longer.
Once she finished, Romanda's face fell into an inscrutable mask. She met Allerria's searching gaze with only blunt thoughtfulness. Her ageless features and the few streaks of gray in her hair accented the lack of reaction that she expressed.
"The Amyrlin will be pleased to read this," she said after a moment.
"Pleased?" Allerria replied, "I think the word you're looking for is 'ecstatic.'"
"A matter of weeks and the child is already writing?" Romanda said significantly, "Taught herself numbers? What else might she learn?"
"You read the letter," Allerria snatched the sheet from Romanda's hand and read aloud, "'We have been on this farm for weeks now and the child still screams. Her memory is sharp and anything that ever changes, she notices. We were forced to pull the tradesman's cart in close to the farm manor house so that the girl could sleep beneath it for the first week. That was her favorite sleeping place on the road, I'm afraid, and she refused to give it over without a significant fight. When I finally tired of her antics, I threw her into a room with a feather bed and left her there dusk to dawn. The little harridan screamed the entire night. I do not know what we will have to do when I bring her back to sign the Novice book.' I need to read no more to realize that this girl is not novice material."
"But the Tower cannot just put her out," Romanda reminded her, "If this one becomes strong, she must not be left free of control."
"'So complete is her focus that she sees nothing but her patterns,'" Allerria continued to read, "'She can become as stubborn as an oak if some aspect of the world around her does not perform precisely as expected at any given time, according to whatever pattern she has established in her mind. To start, she will eat exactly the same foods morning, noon and night. She must have cheese, it must be yellow and from a wheel, or she refuses to touch it. Every fifth day of the week, she must have at least one cup of goat's milk with breakfast, or she pouts until noon. When she agrees to eat, it must be at exactly a particular time or not at all. How she knows when, I cannot tell, but she is as invariant as a crafted mechanism.'" Allerria shook her head in aversion, "Maybe whippings from the Mistress of Novices can straighten her out, but this child is a borderline abomination. You read everything Rayanne wrote about linking with the girl in order to control her touching the source. Can we afford to have even an Aes Sedai like Rayanne tied up catering to every whim of this one freak of nature?"
"Maybe you would prefer that 'freak' to wander the countryside unattended?" Romanda suggested.
"The girl is as insane as any man who channels. And we Gentle them," Allerria said, "She is obsessed. This pattern thing that she does is an obsession. Teaching herself numbers?"
"Were you able to teach yourself to write numbers?" Romanda asked, "Rayanne says in there that she writes numbers as high as it is possible to count and was doing simple arithmetic with her limited skills before Rayanne even began to teach her more about writing. It has been weeks and she is not merely capable of writing, she is already skilled at it. Imagine if such a child can make it to the shawl."
"It seems to me that you and the Amyrlin and most especially Rayanne are doing more than enough imagining," Allerria quipped bitterly. "Someone has to be practical."
"I would almost think you might be jealous of our little Rayanne for pulling this duty?" Romanda commented with a sanguine grin, "Perhaps you might do a better job?"
Allerria shook her head and crossed her arms beneath her breasts, "If she channels, what then? Linking with the girl in order to keep her from drawing too deeply? If she comes to the White Tower as a novice needing a full Aes Sedai with her on a leash, how does that set her future -both in the eyes of all Aes Sedai and in the eyes of all the novices and Accepted? I concede that she should not be Stilled, at least not right away, but what then should we do?"
Romanda nodded, "These are valid points. As you say, the girl cannot come to the Tower, at least in the foreseeable future. If she cannot be controlled, the farm is the best place to keep her."
"What about next year, or five or ten years from now," Allerria asked, "I know Rayanne will happily labor away trying to set this child right with some metaphorical inner spirit, but that girl is truly a danger. This is not a farm girl who contemplates suicide. This one could properly set the entire farm and half the country-side on fire in a fit of some juvenile pyromania. What if Rayanne is not up to the proper teaching? Someone more skilled cannot be tied up with this girl for the long-term, but can Rayanne manage even the short term? Any real progress toward a child capable of living in the novice quarters may be years away."
Half-thoughtfully, Romanda recovered the letter from Allerria. She channeled a flick of Fire into the piece of paper and set it alight. Careful of the liquid flame spreading to conceal the words, she dropped the blackening sheet onto her fireplace mantle. "For the moment, we shall wait and see. We will keep this latest news between the two of us until there is no other choice. You keep your mouth closed and continue to be practical and I will decide what we should tell the Amyrlin. We'll give Rayanne some time to prove herself. If the girl lives long enough, we will decide what to do next."
Without another spoken word on the matter, both Aes Sedai went their separate ways. Walking to her writing desk while the door clicked closed behind Allerria, Romanda pondered the black ashes of the burned paper.