After the Arches
by viggen
Whenever Sildane broke from struggling with chores or attending lessons with the other novice girls, she found herself living in the dungeons of the Tower. She and Duvella took turns in the tiny cell during the day so that someone would always be available to watch Ghedlyn. Allerria Sedai, the yellow sister Sildane had sometimes seen at the farm periodically appeared to check on Ghedlyn, but she never stayed long.
Sildane wondered if her friend would recover. Slumped on a stool in a cloud of depression, staring blankly at a wall, Ghedlyn had not attempted to communicate in three days. She went about bodily functions, cooperated when Duvella or Sildane tried to clean her up, but ate only a little. Her deep onyx eyes were clouded over. Sometimes Sildane thought her friend was crying, but the other girl kept hiding the evidence. An awkward tendency toward isolation had always existed in Ghedlyn, but something new compounded it. She seemed more broken than Sildane had ever known her.
When they brought Ghedlyn back after the test, Rayanne Sedai had smiled sadly and refused to tell Sildane anything about it. She had made certain to swear Duvella to secrecy, for at least the third time, and pointedly directed Sildane to protect Ghedlyn.
"Do not let her channel; she is very weak," Rayanne Sedai said to Duvella as she departed. "You know the weave Duvella? Her strength has been drained, so shielding her should not be a terrible challenge, but beware..."
"Of course, Aes Sedai," Duvella curtsied.
"Good. I warn you, be ready to shield her," the heavy door thumped closed in the wake of the blonde Aes Sedai. Rayanne Sedai had not returned since.
Sildane got her first inkling how deeply impacted her friend was midway through that first night when Ghedlyn suddenly awakened, screaming with a cracked voice that threatened to fail. She burst full of saidar in a flat instant before either Sildane or Duvella awakened fully enough to respond. Fortunately, Ghedlyn had not fought when Duvella remembered to embrace the source herself and slammed down a panicked shield to cut the young girl off. After they got the oil lantern turned up, Sildane saw her friend's face bone white, dark eyes the size of saucer plates and pupils dilated wide open like a tiny animal searching desperately for a means to escape a death trap. Ghedlyn flinched from hugging Sildane until the dream relaxed its hold and allowed the younger girl to fully awaken.
"You are safe, Ghed," Sildane whispered into her messy silk hair and held her tightly. "You are well, you are safe."
Ghedlyn's sobbing intensified and she buried her face against her friend's neck. She shook like a leaf in a stiff wind and her tears rapidly soaked throungh Sildane's shift.
Duvella stood back with a tear running down her face, "She's too young. Light blinded Aes Sedai should not have put her through the Arches."
"I- I don't understand," Sildane said to Duvella, continuing to hold Ghedlyn tightly in some hope that the younger girl would calm. "What did they do to her?"
Duvella's eyes went glassy and she touched her Great Serpent ring in thought. "Burn all Aes Sedai. May they eat ash and choke on it..." she did not say more, returning instead to her cot to lie down and throw a blanket over her head. Sildane knew the young woman was not actually trying to sleep since she kept hold of the Spirit shield secured on Ghedlyn.
Ghedlyn cried until she simply lapsed back into unconsciousness.
The first nightmare was far from being the last and Sildane was dog-tired by the time the night ended and she needed to go to her first shift in the Tower kitchen.
In the following days, Ghedlyn improved only a little. The violent nightmares occurred several times a night and left both Sildane and Duvella perpetually exhausted. Sildane found herself nodding off during her lessons, which several times earned her a sharp rap across the knuckles by whatever Aes Sedai happened to be teaching. After Sildane's burst of temper on her first day in the Tower, the burst that first landed her in trouble with the Mistress of Novices, most of the other novice girls left Sildane alone and observed a pointed silence whenever she came near. She found herself wandering in a lonely daze from one duty to the next.
The powerful silver-haired Aes Sedai, Meilyn, appeared on an infrequent basis to check on Sildane. One time, without saying a word, she took Sildane's face between her palms, and channeled a weave of flourishing ice that left Sildane refreshed, as if following a good night's sleep. Another time, she patted Sildane on the shoulder and said merely, "Take heart, this affair was difficult and had no simple solution. She did well enough for a woman twice her age and cannot be expected to recover as quickly. If she is the material she seems to be, she will return to us soon."
Sildane did her best to endure. The only novice girl who would associate with her was moon-faced Tindyl, who seemed bent on taking possession of her as the proud older sister of a wayward sibling. The older girl stolidly ignored the glares and silence of the other novices to accompany Sildane. "Can you help me today?" she would often ask. "How about later, after dinner when everybody goes back to the novice quarters?"
Sildane demurred as politely as possible, uncertain how to take Tindyl's overtures. The situation with the older girl felt almost like her own relationship with Ghedlyn, but with Sildane forced somehow into the role of "kid sister." Telling Tindyl that she did not know how to teach channeling grew prohibitively difficult when faced with the older girl's pleading eyes. Sildane did not want to be in any more trouble with Aes Sedai than she already was, which made the situation even more awkward. At one of Tindyl's advances, Sildane was finally forced to reply, "There is someone else you should probably talk to, but she isn't here yet..."
"You know someone who knows more? Will you introduce me?" Tindyl asked excitedly.
With a shrug, Sildane departed on the note, "Maybe sometime soon."
Duvella never quite returned to the chatty, friendly-yet-homely woman she had been when she and Sildane first met. An air lingered around her that Sildane almost took to be Aes Sedai-like. The woman never quite cracked an expression, though volumes seemed always to be pouring through her mind. They met during the day when they traded turns babysitting Ghedlyn, they ate together when Allerria Sedai spelled them for a few minutes to visit the Tower dining hall to eat and then they lay quietly in their pallets staring at the ceiling during the night, wondering when another nightmare would possess Ghedlyn. Sildane had seen Duvella weave the shield of Spirit enough times that she thought she could reproduce it now. If Ghedlyn were herself, she would not only be able to weave the Spirit shield, but could probably do some things with it that Sildane did not even want to think about.
"It took me months," Duvella said once, her voice breaking an hours long silence.
"What took months?" Sildane asked. Her brain had been turning over the day's channeling lesson with Verin Sedai and she did not know what Duvella might be referring to.
"I had nightmares after the Arches too," the woman admitted. "I barely came back and I was years older than Ghedlyn when I went in."
"Is it really that bad?" Sildane wondered.
"Because you can channel, you will face it someday," Duvella replied. She rolled onto her side in the dimness of the barely lit lamp. "It is a test, of that there can be no doubt. I see myself in her, how I felt."
"Did you sit around for days not wanting to talk to anyone?"
"I must've lost a stone for not wanting to eat. I was afraid to sleep," Duvella said. "They have been particularly kind to her since they have yet to toss her out the door and drag her to her lessons. But, they won't be patient forever. I suppose they are still concerned about hiding this girl's strength."
Sildane lay on her back staring at the ceiling, trying to comprehend an experience awful enough to crush anyone. From her lessons and from all her time with Rayanne Sedai, she knew a little about how the Tower turned a woman into an Aes Sedai. For those women who could learn to channel, beyond the challenges and chores and unending lessons, two life-and-death tests stood between a novice and the oath rod. She knew Ghedlyn had taken the first. Rayanne Sedai had been oblique about answering any questions. "What happens during the test?" she ventured carefully.
"Something different happens for everyone," Duvella responded very quietly, "and something the same for everyone. It was the worst thing I can imagine. I left the test hating all Aes Sedai. Seeing her like that, I remember the feeling."
With a snort, her singsong voice ragged with misuse, Ghedlyn suddenly spoke, "Did it happen?"
Sildane gave a start. Her friend lay in her pallet as when they put her to bed, but her face peeked out from beneath a protective blanket, intent on Duvella. "Ghedlyn!" she had assumed the other girl was asleep.
"Did it happen?" she asked again. She sounded so haunted.
After a bloated moment of thought, Duvella said, "Inside the Arches, anything seems possible."
"But the last Arch, did it really happen, happen really did it? That Arch."
"The last Arch was the hardest," Duvella said.
"But the symmetry of the pattern is happened not yet in reflection to what might not yet might be," the tumble of words from the black haired girl made almost no sense to Sildane, but they seemed important to Ghedlyn. "Did it happen?"
"Do you mean 'Will it happen'?" Duvella asked.
Ghedlyn mulled the not-at-all tacit suggestion. She finally nodded.
"I don't know," Duvella returned. "I'm not old enough to know yet about what happened during my own test. No girl sees the same thing. I asked questions about it once, and the Aes Sedai did not say anything for certain. Some girls see things inside that they never see again in their lives while some girls see things that actually come close to happening. However true the inside of the Arch, it is never quite reality, ever."
"If... if... if she dies," Ghedlyn choked, visibly laboring not to break into tears, "I do not know what to do. If that truth is true when other parts are untrue, what do I do?"
"I don't know," Duvella admitted honestly. "I don't know what I'll do if what I saw comes true."
"I cannot live if she dies like that," Ghedlyn whispered.
Sildane cringed at the statement, aware that Ghedlyn was avoiding looking at her. Even in the dimness, Sildane could tell that her friend's hooded face was fixed with blinders on Duvella.
"I don't know what will happen if the things inside the Arch turn true," Duvella began to reiterate, "but I know I can't spend my whole life worried about taking another step as if the worst possible thing is always hanging over my head. I think maybe that's why some girls do not come back."
Ghedlyn gasped almost inaudibly, "I wanted to stay."
Duvella chuckled at that, "Everybody who comes back says that. Every Accepted I know says the same thing. For most girls, they needed to want to be an Aes Sedai more than anything to escape it. For me, I just wanted to get out and strangle the first woman I saw wearing the shawl."
"Are you going to be well, Ghed?" Sildane asked timorously. This new facet in her friend frightened her.
Ghedlyn lay for a long while without answering. She clapped her hands about her head and made gasping noises, as though struggling against some invisible force. "I am sorry Sildane, I am. I miss Papa. I miss home. I promised not to cry, but I cried. I promised to face the next thing. I promised to face the hurt. I promised to be strong as you as strong as and broke. So sorry, so sorry, so sorry."
Sildane stretched her arm across the cool stone floor between their pallets and sought out Ghedlyn's hand. The other girl grudgingly took hold. She could feel the rapid beat of her friend's heart in that tense, tiny palm. "Did you see the future somehow?" Sildane asked.
"Sildane..." Duvella said.
"Yes," Ghedlyn continued to struggle against sobbing, "no."
"Did I die, Ghed?" Sildane felt ice creeping up her spine. She did not know if she wanted to hear what the black haired girl would say. She held her breath.
Ghedlyn's fingers tightened.
She said nothing.
Inhaling deeply, Sildane felt as if she were falling. Her head grew light. She knew the truth, whether or not Ghedlyn actually wanted to say it.
Duvella reached out and cupped both her hands over theirs. Her voice was gentle and measured, "The Arch does not tell what will happen. She saw something that was bound to hurt her. It may mean nothing."
Steeling herself, Sildane leveled her breathing, "Whatever happens, Ghed, I'm still here. We'll both get stronger. We'll make certain that the part which hurts the most doesn't become the truth."
