Youngest Channeler: The First Arch

by viggen

Ghedlyn wanted badly to have her question answered, but Rayanne Sedai still seemed to be ignoring it. "Why was it me? Me why?"

The dim chamber lit by the lonely torch bustled with a frantic activity, even though no one seemed willing to speak. Ghedlyn did not like the atmosphere of strangeness. Servants in black livery marked with the white flame brought in a hammered brass tub and buckets of water which Rayanne Sedai warmed using a simple, symmetric, three-node Fire weave. Sildane, Rayanne and the Accepted Ghedlyn did not know --Duvella-- all cooperated to quickly clean her. They rid her of the torn, stained dress, shift and cloak, then set to work ladling water over her body in the tub to rinse away the dried cake of dirt.

She did not like being touched. Ghedlyn bit her lip and stifled a squeal every time hands brushed against her unclothed body, but she did her best to endure. She was shaking with anxiety, shivering with violation, but found temperance. Sildane looked askance at her every time someone touched her, waiting for her to burst out, but she staunchly refused. She twitched when Duvella helped scrub soap into her crusted hair and clenched the side of the tub with white fingers, but persisted in shaking silence. She trembled when Rayanne sponged her back and belly. She picked Sildane's face as a comfortable focus and refused to break eye contact.

"All is well, Ghed," Sildane assured her, patting her hand. "Do not worry about Duvella, she's a friend."

Ghedlyn saw her mentor shake her leonine head in amazement, plainly surprised at Ghedlyn's stubborn exertion of control. "There is so much you still need to know. You are not yet ready."

After Rayanne Sedai toweled Ghedlyn off with a linen sheet, Duvella slipped a fresh new shift over her head and Sildane a brand new white dress. It was cut differently than the dress Ghedlyn preferred to wear, but she refused to do more than bear the revelation in silence. Rayanne Sedai used a brush to comb the rats from her hair until it ran in a silken black waterfall down her back.

"Why me?" Ghedlyn tried again, changing her tact, "why always me when always it is me?"

"I do not understand what you are asking," Rayanne Sedai said. "Do you remember when I told you about the test?"

"I remember," Ghedlyn affirmed, switching back to the matter at hand, "You must know why it is always me or you would not protect me and Sildane would not protect me and Nordel would not protect me. You must know why it is always me. Why is it always me and not Sildane, though Sildane stands up to protect me when it's me?"

Sildane pursed her lips and seemed about to answer, but Rayanne Sedai cast a quick glance at her. "You must remember about the test Ghedlyn. You are going to be tested to see whether you can go on to become Aes Sedai. I have told you about the test. Most girls have a right to refuse, but you alone cannot. You are not allowed to refuse, whether you want to or not. If a normal girl refuses to try this test three times, she is put out of the Tower, but you are too dangerous to be allowed to leave..."

"Why am I too dangerous?" Ghedlyn seized onto the one tiny hint her Aes Sedai gave her. "Why am I too dangerous and Sildane not too dangerous? Is this why it is always me?"

"Ghedlyn," Rayanne Sedai put her hands on either side of her face and forced their eyes to meet. The blond Aes Sedai had such intense ice blue eyes that Ghedlyn wanted to squirm and look away, but she resisted the impulse. "Ghedlyn, this test is very difficult. It will not make you happy. It will hurt you a lot. You... you may not survive it. If you want to understand why you are too dangerous to be allowed to leave the Tower, you must come through this test. Some girls go into this and they do not return from it, ever."

Ghedlyn stared at her in silence, digesting what she had said.

She had estimated the existence of an array of dangers in the Tower, but also anticipated that meeting up with Sildane and Rayanne Sedai again would help to protect her from them. The possibility that Rayanne Sedai would deliberately permit her to fall directly into some sort of hazard had been of exceptionally low probability. She wondered now if the best decision would have been to avoid the Tower rather than to seek it out. She reminded herself that the answers she sought were here, somewhere. She had a purpose for coming. Also, Sildane took a crossbow bolt meant for her and she owed it to her friend to face this danger without flinching.

Still, she flinched.

Rayanne Sedai took a deep breath and continued, "Girls come out of this test grievously injured, or do not return from it at all. Other girls who decide to quit in the middle because it hurts them too much are asked to leave the Tower forever, but you alone don't have that choice. You must want more than anything to come through this alive and be trained to become an Aes Sedai."

"Will I die in the test?" Ghedlyn asked. "Is it because I am me?"

"No dear girl," Rayanne Sedai exclaimed sharply, "any girl can be lost in this test. The day Sildane takes it, she might die. Duvella can tell you; like everyone who walks into the Arches, she almost didn't come back. I refused once before I ever got there and I almost died when I did take it. It is a horrible trial, but if you want to know why you alone cannot refuse to take the trial, you... must... survive it! Only if you survive can the Tower answer your questions and teach you what you need to know. Survival is in your hands alone!"

Rayanne Sedai hurried her out of the basement cell with its thick door into the dusty, dimly lit corridor with no other advice. Ghedlyn's mind was spinning. She was barefoot and deeply afraid.

"Be sure to come back, Ghedlyn!" Sildane called after them before someone closed the door between them.

A servant showed them on, guiding the way with a single torch flame through the twisting corridors. The blond Aes Sedai adjusted her yellow shawl about her shoulders and walked with her chin held high. Her eyes fluttering, Ghedlyn followed after them, counting each step, remembering each turn. She did her best to keep her feet moving. The floors were cold and the occasional peddle bit into the heels or balls of her feet. Dust clung between her toes. She continued to count just as she always did to record her path through space and time.

At one intersection, the servant stood aside and bowed, "I leave you here, Aes Sedai."

Rayanne Sedai nodded and continued on without a word.

Unlike elsewhere, torches stood lit in these passages at intervals and the woman and girl could both see without aid. If Rayanne Sedai had been radiating her best serenity before, she redoubled her efforts with every step until Ghedlyn hardly recognized her.

Ghedlyn was quaking. Up ahead, she could sense three women channeling. She gripped the hem of her white dress with fingers that refused to unlock.

The final double door opened into a huge domed chamber cut directly into the bedrock of Tar Valon Island. Oil lamps on tall stands stood all around the chamber, their light reflecting off the smooth stone surfaces. An Aes Sedai with a brown-fringed shawl stood beside a plain table upon which sat three large, silver chalices. Ghedlyn immediately began to speculate about purpose and significance of three such containers, spinning out one theory, then another, then another.

In the middle of the great chamber stood an unusual structure that positively hummed with the one power. Ghedlyn could taste the resonance. Three polished silver arches, just tall enough for a woman to walk comfortably beneath, connected to a ring-shaped silver base. Each arch abutted against the next and together transcribed an equilateral triangle upon the ring: she could not see a difference in symmetry between arches themselves, though three Aes Sedai sat cross-legged on the floor at each tip of the triangle channeling intently into the points where the adjoining arches connected to the ring. Under other circumstances, Ghedlyn would have loved to examine the arch structure to determine how saidar flowed through it in such an organized fashion, but she was too frightened to clearly analyze the patterns. She recognized the Arches as a ter'angreal of some sort, though she had never actually seen a ter'angreal before except to hear about them by Rayanne Sedai's description. The middle of the Arches glowed misty and non-distinct, as though leading into another place, not quite here.

Meilyn Sedai, her steel gray hair pulled into a tail that ran down her back, was one of the three Aes Sedai channeling into the ter'angreal. Aside for Rayanne Sedai, Meilyn Sedai was the only other woman in the room that Ghedlyn recognized.

"Be strong," Rayanne Sedai whispered to Ghedlyn as they proceeded out into the huge chamber together.

The Aes Sedai in the brown-fringed shawl stepped forward as they approached. She was not the most elegantly dressed woman Ghedlyn had ever seen, but no one could doubt her Aes Sedai authority, "And whom do you bring with you, Sister?"

Rayanne Sedai tipped her nose back proudly. Her voice actually quavered for the first two words, "One who comes as a candidate for Acceptance, Sister."

"Is she ready?"

"She is..." Rayanne swallowed hard, "...is ready to leave behind what she was, and, passing through her fears, gain Acceptance."

"Does she know her fears?"

"She has never faced them, but... goes now without argument."

"Then let her face what she fears," the Aes Sedai with the brown-fringed shawl stepped back and gestured to the nearest Archway.

The blond Aes Sedai guided Ghedlyn to the Arch. Rayanne Sedai turned to regard her, "You must enter as you arrive in this world; forgive me child, you must remove the dress and proceed unclothed."

Shaking to her toes, Ghedlyn experienced a paralysis as if her body were disconnected from her mind. She simply could not bring together the dissimilar pieces of her being. The Arch stood before her, beckoning, waiting, and she could not budge. It was her chance now to be brave. This crossbow bolt was meant for her and for her alone. Time moved like cold honey. The answers she wanted existed beyond this experience. Through an act of pure will, she lifted her arms and fumbled the dress up over her head. The shift was easier, but not significantly. Rayanne Sedai caught each clothing item as she half-unwillingly discarded it.

As Ghedlyn stripped off her clothing, Rayanne Sedai gave a final whispered instruction, "Child, remember not to channel within the Arches. That is one certain way to not return."

Ghedlyn blinked and shakily forced a nod. She faced the Archway trembling, feeling saidar thrumming from the silver gate like a fast river pounding its banks. She sensed the laced flows forced into shape by the structure of the Archway itself, but had no idea at all what the elaborate convolutions of the power were intended to form.

"The first time is for what was," Rayanne Sedai told her, intoning, "The way back will come but once. Be steadfast."

Ignoring her dread, Ghedlyn forced herself into action. She put one dusty foot before the other and told herself that Sildane would be more brave. She wanted to be as brave as Sildane. The glow brightened and expanded, shining out at her and steadily enfolding her.

Light poured upon her, made liquid by its intensity.

Light became everything, the air, the ground, the arch. Illumination swept past her. It draped around her in form and caught at her, brushing, caressing.

Stirred by ocean winds, the gold-dyed silk hangings swept over her face and arms as she stepped through the membrane out onto the sandstone veranda. The gauzy hanging pulled back over her head and dropped away to reveal a sunny Arad Doman day.

She stopped herself, for a moment not remembering where she was. What had been this place?

The sleeveless yellow dress she wore was stitched with elaborate patterns of interlocking triangles and hung to just above her knees, which were dirty and scraped. She lugged a basket heaped with fresh peaches from the orchard.

With a smile, she remembered what she had been doing. "Mama! Look what Papa and I did!"

Mama stood at the edge of the veranda, her hands resting on the casement gorgeously sculpted with interlocking stone forms of lizards and fish. She looked off the veranda down the face of the short cliff which cut right to the churning, crashing waves of the Aryth ocean not too far below. At high tide during a storm, the waves broke high enough that someone standing on the veranda could taste their mist. In a clinging, purple gown, her long, raven hair strung with shining firedrops and pearls, Mama contemplated the rippling blue ocean expanse with onyx black eyes.

She glanced up when she heard Ghedlyn. "My dearest girl!" A gorgeous smile broke onto her smooth, copper-skinned face and she swept across the veranda like the wind and waves and enfolded Ghedlyn in a hug, "I have not seen you since morning."

"Mama!" Ghedlyn giggled as her mother set to tickling her. She tried not to spill peaches from the woven basket, but two bumped off onto the stone veranda anyway.

"Oh, what have we here?" Mama asked. Her hand sliding over Ghedlyn's, her gold rings tickling warmly between them, she caught the handle of the basket and helped share some of the weight from Ghedlyn. "Picking all these must have taken hours!"

"Papa helped," Ghedlyn told her brightly. "The field hands cleaned out most of the trees already, so I had to climb up really high to find these."

"That must have been fun," Mama said, eyes glinting in the sun, "I hope you were careful."

"Ma-maaa," Ghedlyn drawled, "I'm always careful."

"I know you love to climb my dearest girl, but I worry that your Papa, dear as he is, won't reach you in time should you fall."

Ghedlyn gave her a smug look, "But I never fall."

"I remember one time..." Mama reminded her, tickling her. "Now Ghedlyn, would you like to see something very interesting?"

"Um, sure, what is it?" Ghedlyn asked. Mama always seemed to find such incredible, neat things to show her.

The way out will come but once, be steadfast.

"Come here, come," Mama guided her across the veranda to where she had been standing at the carved casement. She put her hands on the face of a sculpted fish, "Feel it, feel it!"

Ghedlyn readjusted how she was holding the basket to free up one hand and did as instructed. The cut stone of the fish's face was sun-warmed and smooth. On mild winter days, she had leaned her face against these polished stones to feel their heat, had played among them her whole life and had even named each different carved animal. The fish was Esa. Beneath her fingers, the fish seemed to vibrate, as if about to leap off and seek the sea.

"Do you feel it?" Mama asked.

Ghedlyn shook her head, not quite certain what her mother was showing her.

"Right here," Her mother shifted her hand upward slightly.

The vibration actually seemed to tickle when felt right at that spot. The tone was deep and clear, almost like the ocean, but not. "It's singing!" Ghedlyn exclaimed in surprise.

"Sometimes," Mama said, "when there is a storm on the horizon and the level of the ocean waters are just right, the waves move across the rocks at the base of the cliff in just such a way that their sound carries up here. The rocks themselves sing when the ocean caresses them just so."

"How does it do that?" Ghedlyn asked in amazement. She had never thought of such a thing before.

"You must think of the entire cliff face as if it were the string of a harp, but it connects right here to this point in this carved fish, and nowhere else. The ocean is like a tireless musician, ever tuning and plucking the strings. Feel it, feel there. It is only right here!"

She was correct, Ghedlyn realized. Nuzo, the fat lizard carved next to Esa the fish, did not resound at all the way Esa did. She touched other figures nearby, checking each one. Only Esa sounded.

"Does that mean there's a storm coming?" Ghedlyn asked her mother. "The skies are so clear!"

"Such a smart girl" Mama fawned, "There might be a storm. The winds will change if such a thing is coming, and they have not yet." With a smile she helped lift the basket of peaches, "Quick now! Let's take these peaches in and have Eldrith bake them into a pie. If we start now, it might be ready in time for the evening meal!"

"Okay!" Ghedlyn felt excitement. She loved Eldrith's pies, particularly the peach.

The afternoon passed quickly. Ghedlyn helped her mother and Eldrith, the house cook, by moving wood into the ovens or by mixing bowls when either of the two more experienced cooks was otherwise occupied. When nothing remained but to wait for the pie to bake, Ghedlyn bolted from the main house back down the steep, switchbacking stairway between the main house and the sea-side guest cottage. Twitching his mustache and fingering the ruby stud he wore in one ear, Papa instructed servants to bringing chairs and tables up the path from the cottage down low by the cliff, nearest the ocean. Ghedlyn went back through the low cottage to the veranda and felt that spot on Esa the fish: the stone was still singing!

"If there is a sea storm," Papa said to her, "best we move the valuables up to the main house."

Ghedlyn helped out by dragging a chair up the stairway, but most of the other contents had been moved by the time she pulled it to the top and rested herself well enough to make another trip.

Late in the afternoon, she picked a spot in the sun on the stone veranda and spread out her wooden blocks. She was going to build a tower; not just any tower, but the Tower of towers that stood in Tar Valon. Ghedlyn liked hearing stories of the White Tower when Mama or Papa would tell them. Papa had been to Tar Valon many times on his trading expeditions and the Tower always seemed to grow taller every time he told stories about it. She started off attempting to stack the painted cubes as high as she could, but they kept falling over and scattering across the stone before she built them too high. The surface of the veranda made it difficult to stack since the stones, while mostly level, met at slight variations between one another. Every so often, she would creep back over to the casement to check the fish.

It was still humming!

The sun had nearly dropped down to a bank of clouds that lay upon the horizon lip when Mama came to find her. She sauntered down the stairs in a wrap of silk over her purple dress, her necklaces making faint chiming sounds as she moved, "Ah, here you are! Stacking blocks I see. Which tower is it this time, the topless towers of Cairhein? Is it the Stone in Tear? Maybe it's another tower."

"The White Tower!" Ghedlyn proudly declared.

"I didn't know the White Tower came in so many different colors," Mama joked, pointing to the red and green blocks that interrupted any continuity of hue.

"I sort of ran out of white," Ghedlyn complained.

"Not an easy feat, stacking them so high on this surface. You might have better luck in the servant's hall in the main house," Mama suggested. Her onyx eyes sparkled with a quiet pride.

"I wanted to stay down here," Ghedlyn told her, "Esa is still singing!"

"She is?" Mama asked. Her gaze tracked to the horizon and a faint shadow passed over her features.

"Esa's a 'he,' Mama," Ghedlyn corrected her.

"Of course, my dearest child," Mama replied. She smiled, "The sun seems about the right declination... would you like to see something else interesting?"

"What Mama?" Ghedlyn asked, wondering if any of the other stones in the veranda sang.

Mama nodded, her long silken black hair spilling over her shoulder as she crouched down to gaze at Ghedlyn's handiwork. "That's quite the Tower you have," she said, "But, to be a proper tribute to the Amyrlin Seat, you need a finishing touch." She slipped a ring off her finger and held it for Ghedlyn to see. The circlet of gold contained a huge clear-blue waterdrop gem. She turned the huge jewel point up and carefully set it at the pinnacle of Ghedlyn's Tower. She adjusted the angle of the ring until it gleamed in the low angle of the sunlight. Then, she pointed to the shadow of Ghedlyn's Tower, "A worthy tribute! May the Light illumine the Aes Sedai!"

"Wow!" Ghedlyn gaped.

The shadow of the block tower was a normal, slender finger of darkness up to the gemstone cap. Where the shadow of the gem should have fallen was instead a bright burst of focused blue light that looked as though a star lodged within the strip of darkness.

The way out will come but once, be steadfast.

Mama explained how gemstones were cut to focus light and showed Ghedlyn the way the bright blue spot would move when the stone was shifted. Eldrith came down the steps to find them not long after and let them know that dinner was ready. Mama took Ghedlyn's hand and together they climbed back to the main house. The sun dipped behind the bank of clouds before they quite reached the top of the stairs.

Eldrith had outdone herself with the evening meal: Scallops and Tune with tasty sauce. Ghedlyn relished the cheese.

A low patter of rain sounded on the tile roof of the main house by the time Eldrith willingly brought out the peach pie they had slaved over for the majority of the afternoon. Mama smiled through most of the meal, chatting happily with Papa and teasing Ghedlyn, but her onyx eyes would sometimes flick toward the western windows that showed a view of the Aryth Ocean. A gentle wind stirred the expensive tapestries and silken hangings at open doorways, which servants soon set about closing. Eldrith and several other servants soon started lighting oil lanterns.

"The storm looks like it may be large this time," Mama commented to Papa as Ghedlyn started into her second piece of pie. "I hope you had servants tying down the storehouses."

"All been done, my love," Papa said, fingering the ruby stud in his ear. "We even moved the furniture up from the lower cottage."

"I helped!" Ghedlyn piped up.

"That you did," Papa laughed.

Mama nodded, "A fair precaution."

"Will the storm get bad, Mama?" Ghedlyn asked.

"A few storms here can raise the sea in ways other storms do not." Mama said, "The lower house is not so safe under such conditions."

Ghedlyn stopped in sudden recollection, "Oh no! We left your ring down there. My blocks are there." She slipped out of her chair.

"Not to worry, Ghedlyn, I can send someone down to fetch them," Papa said.

"Ghedlyn..." Mama began.

"No, I can get them! I left them," Ghedlyn called, racing for the door that led to the downward stairs. She pushed through the silk hanging in a hurry and fumbled with the latches on the newly closed door.

The sky had transformed to dark gray, nearly black and Ghedlyn ran headlong into a face full of rain. Her yellow dress was soaked through almost immediately in the deluge. She had not expected the wet to be this wet. Careful to find the handrails along the switchback stairs, she quickly skipped down the carved stone steps toward the cottage far below. As she descended, the wind steadily began to strengthen until it nearly flattened her against the hillside. Ghedlyn had never known wind so strong. A white-purple bolt of lightning cracked down through the rain shower to cast eerie shadows and the thunder boom echoed in refrain off the ocean cliffs.

The lower cottage was dark when she reached it, the windows closed and oil lamps unlit at the sides of the entry. She shivered with wet, cold and a new dread as she raced through the strangely empty building toward the veranda.

Colored blocks were scattered in trembling pools of water. Ghedlyn set about collecting blocks into the bag she used to carry them around. The ring was nowhere to be seen. "Oh no!" Ghedlyn moaned. She had to find her mother's gem. Dropping to her knees, she quickly began to search the wet, reflective surface of the veranda in the near darkness for some sign of the circlet with the blue gem. Lightning cracked down again much closer and the wind picked up such a spray of flying water that Ghedlyn had to squint to see right in front of her.

The way out will come but once, be steadfast.

Mama appeared, her purple dress soaked flat against the curves of her form, "Ghedlyn, come now...!" she said something else, but Ghedlyn could not hear her over the bellow of the wind.

"No Mama," Ghedlyn cried back, "your ring is lost! I have to find your ring!"

"Forget it Ghedlyn!" Mama caught her beneath the arm and dragged her to her feet, ignoring the sack of blocks that sat nearby. "We have to get back to the main house!"

"My blocks!"

"Forget them!"

Against the steadily mounting fury of wind, Mama dragged Ghedlyn back through the cottage and up the stairs. A stream of water sluiced down the steps at them, slowing them and making their footing treacherous. Mama pulled her upward --even when Ghedlyn slipped and fell-- with a fierce determination. Ghedlyn was sobbing with fright before they even made it to the first switchback.

"Do not be afraid!" Mama instructed, "Keep going, no matter what!"

Ghedlyn glanced back once toward the low cottage. Lightning in the skies backlit falling water. Jagged branches dancing the sky revealed a mountain where no mountain could possibly be: out in the Aryth ocean.

Her eyes widened with horror.

The cliff of water speeding toward them out of the depthless gloom stood higher than the roof of the low cottage.

"Mama!" she shrieked in fright.

Mama's head slowly turned.

The tremendous swell of water crashed right over the cottage in a sheet of spray and foam and leapt up the cliff at them like a hateful living thing. The wall slammed hard into them and ripped them off their feet and sent them spinning. Mama's body cushioned her as they smashed together hard against the rocky face of the hill. The flood of water tumbled them entangled with Ghedlyn screaming and blowing fluid from her nose. Pieces of wood smacked into them and caught at them.

Her fingers claw uselessly for any purchase, Mama was pulled inevitably away from Ghedlyn.

The receding wave dragged them both back down through the wreckage of the cottage and across the veranda where the decorative casement had been utterly destroyed. Gasping and sputtering, Ghedlyn found herself lying on her back staring upward into the lightning reaved sky. Rain hit her in the eyes and mouth. She felt so dizzy and disoriented. Where was Mama? Swinging her head back and forth, she could not see Mama.

Rolling over and struggling desperately to put her shaky legs back beneath her, she screamed, "MAMA!"

"...Ghedlyn...!" a tiny voice reached her.

Ghedlyn looked around.

Lit by the lightning flashes from above, she saw eight fingers clamped white over the broken edge of the casement.

"MAMA!" she staggered to the edge.

Dangling in space above the reeling swells and crawling surges of foam, Mama looked back up at her with a strangely peaceful expression on her badly cut face. Her necklaces had been stripped away and her gown was flayed to threads. A set of huge gashes leaked blood down her back. Those onyx eyes were wide, but fearless.

"Mama," Ghedlyn stooped at the edge and caught her mother's wrists in her childish fingers. "I can pull you up!"

"Thank you, my dearest girl."

A glowing silver Arch stood at the other end of the wrecked veranda. Its light seemed strangely still next to the violence of the tempest.

The Way out!

"Mama, hold on!" Ghedlyn begged. She heaved back hard trying to affect the woman dangling below. The wetness made her grip slide easily and the blood seeping from her mother's fingers foiled her efforts.

"I love you my dearest girl," Mama murmured in a weak voice.

"Help me Mama, I can pull you up! Help me!" Ghedlyn cried at her.

The way out will come but once, be steadfast.

She saw the scene before her from outside herself.

A new mountain of water raced toward them from across the liquid void, emptying the rocks at the bottom of the cliff as the ocean took its next deep breath before swinging to pound them flat. Mama looked so sad. A proud smile touched her lips.

The way will come once and only once.

The choice is now or never again.

"MAMA!" Ghedlyn screamed.

She sprang to her feet and ran hurting, bleeding and crying away from where her mother dangled in space. The blasting wind caught at her and tried to bear her back, but she ran anyway. The Arch seemed so close yet so impossibly far away.

"Ghedlyn...?" Mama asked questioningly, her voice lost behind the raking torrents of the gale.

Ghedlyn fell face first and skidded naked into the light. "MAMA! MAMA! MAMA!" she screamed over and over, her voice echoing.

The wind was gone.

The rain was gone.

The injuries on her arms and legs, and the remains of her yellow dress were gone.

An Aes Sedai in a brown-fringed shawl stood over her. The woman stooped down to help Ghedlyn to her feet.

"Mama..." Ghedlyn whined. She was unable to stop her knees from knocking. Tears leaked down her face despite her newly found draconian control. The entire experience rang absolutely crystal clear in her mind as if she were still standing on the veranda--this time through had been very different from what actually happened, but not different enough to put lie to the memory. "Mama..." she wept.

Retrieving one of the silver chalices from the table, the Brown sister raised it over Ghedlyn's head. The woman poured a stream of cool clear water over her, allowing it to run in rivulets freely down her body into a lapping pool at their feet on the floor, "You are washed clean of what sin you may have done and of those done against you. You are washed clean of what crime you may have committed, and of those committed against you. You come to us washed clean and pure, in mind and soul."

Looking shaken, Rayanne Sedai touched Ghedlyn's arm, "Returning once is something not all girls do. But, you must return twice more as well. Are you prepared to continue?"

"Aes Sedai, yes, Aes Sedai," Ghedlyn chirped, hiccupping on the last word. Tears mingled with the wetness on her face, but she said the words anyway, "Ready I am I ready. Ready ready. To continue ready."

She feared that if she did not go now, she would lose her nerve and not be able to do it again. What would happen if she refused when she was not allowed? Would they toss her bodily into the next Arch? She was so afraid and wanted badly to be brave.