She opened a Gateway, and stepped onto the platform on the other side, Gabriell joining her after a moment's hesitance. If she Skimmed, Kesinda wouldn't know where they'd gone; she didn't think there was a Tracer in the lot. The platform came to a halt barely a second after it started moving, and she stepped out, into her tent. She packed swiftly, muscle memory from years as a Maiden aiding her in getting her bag packed quickly. Lasana was laid out on her bed, and Gabriell picked her up in his arms, looking to Sinead for instruction. She wove another Gateway, back to the place where she had fought Arla. ITel'aran'rhiod/I was as fitting place as any to bury her sister, and it was unlikely that her grave would be disturbed.
She stepped through, and found herself in Tar Valon. Lasana had loved the Grove, and she began to walk in that direction. Minutes passed as they walked, and she glanced occasionally at the White Tower. What she would give to be one of the few Aes Sedai who had remained there to teach the novices and Accepted. They reached the Grove rather quicker than they would have if they'd been walking in the waking world, but momentary confusion disappeared as she channeled, creating Lasana's grave.
She found herself singing softly as Gabriell laid Lasana down, and she straightened her dress and her hair out. It was an Aiel song of mourning, and no one deserved it more than Lasana. Gabriell joined in after a moment; he would know the words, after being with Lasana for half a decade. She stared at her sister for a few more minutes, memorizing her face as she never had before, and then she channeled, still singing. The earth moved, and slowly covered Lasana up. For a moment, Itel'aran'rhiod/I didn't seem sure what to do. The ground f lickered from bare earth to grass, back to bare earth, before settling on grass. Something had happened to the Unseen World that hadn't happened in the waking world, and Sinead had no idea what would happen because of it.
Gabriell just knelt there, staring at the grass with blank eyes, until Sinead put a hand on his shoulder. "We go to the Borderlands." She said, and he nodded dully, standing up. She Traveled from the Dreamworld to the Borderlands, intent upon finding Lundren. Her sister's last request rang in her ears as she tied her skirts up and began a ground-eating trot over the rugged landscape, her full attention focused on what she would find ahead. Gabriell ran beside her just as easily, and nothing in anything around them was as bleak as their eyes as they searched.
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Months passed, and Sinead didn't find Lundren. She ran across camps of Aes Sedai, but none of them knew where he was, only that he showed up occasionally to give them orders, then disappeared again without a word. She fought battle after battle, her rage over Lasana's death giving her strength she normally wouldn't have, even with the help of the Isa'angreal/I. Shadowspawn died, and Darkfriends; Dreadlords she was merciless to, and people she knew from camp to camp commented on the coldness with which she killed. Gabriell killed, as well. And he tried to Ibe/I killed. Sinead had never felt so helpless in her life as the day she had to carry him to the infirmary to be Healed because he'd tried to fight three Myrddraal at once by himself.
She didn't know what had happened, except that something about her had changed forever when Lasana died. She moved from camp to camp, and she thought that each time she appeared at a camp she'd already been at, they viewed her rather like they would have regarded Deane Aryman come to life. Gabriell, they were frankly scared of. He gave lessons to soldiers with cold precision, and then disappeared with Sinead when she moved on. There was certainly a lot of curtsying or bowing, and scurrying to do what they said. Soon she was too worn out to protest when sisters curtsied to her or brothers bowed to her; just made a small gesture as if to stop them, and let it drop.
In one camp, she missed him by an hour, and spent the rest of the night berating herself for being so slow about getting out of the camp she'd been in before. She found Darmou in one camp -driven nearly insane by Lasana's death. She thought it interesting that Lasana hadn't arranged to have his bond transferred. She asked him if he wanted her to bond him, to ease the pain a little. He refused, and he was dead the next time she came by. She found Nesari in another, dressed as a Maiden but fighting with the Power. Lessia, Nesari told her, had gone to the White Tower for training. Nesari had been an Accepted, before all-out war broke out, but she channeled with a desperation and power that Sinead knew all too well. Her blood sister had at least two things in common with Sinead- power, and a reckless hatred for the Shadow.
She was there when the Seanchan attacked, and saw them put the collar around Nesari's neck. She couldn't do anything about it, and felt a part of her die. When next she saw her, Nesari was Nari, and was trying to kill her. Another part of her withered and died. She went on, to another camp she knew. Everyone there had been slaughtered; everyone there, she knew by name. Gabriell helped her bury them, and though she dug the graves with the Power, they were individual, and each grave got a marker. She wrote it with Earthfire, burning the words into the stones so they would never fade.
She found herself dreading the next trip, yet still making it, hoping against hope that she would be able to fulfill Lasana's request before she died of loneliness or hunger. Before Gabriell killed himself, and she died of shock. A year passed, then two. The Borderlands were fading from the cold, green, wilderness they had once been, to a waste nearly as hot and barren as the Three-fold Land. Her clothing wore out, and she purchased breeches and a shirt from a soldier, and wore them to rags, before purchasing more. She forced Gabriell to do the same; he would have forgotten about clothing and food altogether.
After nearly three years of wandering, she entered a camp she had never been to before, and began to look around for familiar faces, and to ask questions. "Lundren Sedai?" A burly man at a forge asked, scratching at his gray-streaked beard. "Last I heard-" Sinead's heart sank, "he was meetin' with his gen'rals, somewhere o'er yonder." His accent made it difficult to understand him, but Sinead caught the gist of it, and the direction his finger pointed in. For the first time since her search began, she felt a tendril of hope worm its way through her mind.
"He's here? Tell me, man!" She demanded, resisting the urge to grab him and shake the information out of him. "I must see him- at once." She took hold of the man's wrist and pulled him away from his forge. "Take me to him. Now!" With a nod, the man trotted off, and Sinead and Gabriell hurried after, her eyes darting to find Lundren before he found her. He had been the one to convince her to go with Kesinda…what would he say? She shook off her fears, and kept going. That first tiny bit of hope had blossomed, and lit up a desolate part of her that she hadn't even realized Iwas/I desolate.
The blacksmith bellowed for Lundren, and Sinead half raised her hands to cover her ears. But then Lundren was ducking out of the large tent to their left, and looking around, and Deiree followed him, shading her eyes from the sun. The former Keeper, superceded by Marela when Kesinda took the Seat, looked as weary as Lundren did, as weary as Sinead felt. Sinead walked forward- stumbled, really- and bowed, as she was wearing breeches. Gabriell bowed as well, but he straightened immediately, and stared at absolutely nothing, eyes blank. They looked astounded as she straightened, and she actually smiled, though it did nothing to bring life back to her eyes. "Light shine on you, Lundren. And you, Deiree." She said, feeling like she was coming home, even though she'd never seen the place before. "How may I be of help?"
The blacksmith was looking back and forth between them, and suddenly Sinead realized something. She'd been channeling almost every day for seven years, and she'd worn the shawl for…Light, had it been twelve years? Her face was that of an Aes Sedai's, beneath the desolation, and the blacksmith was only just beginning to realize it. And her eyes. They probably freaked him halfway to insanity. "Sinead?" Lundren asked, and she nodded, tears trembling at the corners of her eyes, swaying back and forth. "Come in, so we can talk," he said, and she followed him, relaxing so much that if he hadn't had a hold of her hand she would have collapsed. Deiree had a grip on Gabriell's arm, pulling him in as well. She had succeeded. Only a little further to go and she could join her sister- nothing could or would stop her now, when she decided it was time to go.
"This is Sinead of the Blue Ajah, and Gabriell Gaidin." Lundren was saying to the other people in the tent, still with a hold on her hand, and everything else rolled over her like cleansing waters, washing all her doubt and self-hatred away. Lasana had wanted this…therefore it must be right.
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Sinead wasn't sure exactly where she stood in the chain of command of Lundren's army. She wasn't just an Aes Sedai, but she wasn't really anything more than that, either. It was more like the people of the camp saw what she and Lundren thought of one another, heard the stories about her from people from other camps, and treated her…carefully…because of it. Gabriell's cold eyes wherever she went probably didn't help matters. She wasn't on the council that discussed where to go and what to do -by her own choice, she was tired of having to be in charge- but that didn't seem to matter. The blacksmith bragged that he'd been the first to speak to her, and Sinead just shook her head and walked away. What was the point of it? All she did was fight, just as they did. She was a war machine, with Gabriell and Lundren as her back-ups.
Since she'd been mostly on her own -or with only Lasana- since Kesinda had led them out of the Tower, it was a new feeling, being linked with more than one Aes Sedai, fighting the Shadow together. The bleakness still remained in her mind and heart, but sometimes it seemed to shrink. The first time she laughed at something another person had said, she felt like a new person. But every time she fought the Shadowspawn the memories would come back, and sometimes she would realize she was in the center of a company of trollocs with no idea how she got there, and no way to get out. Her friends said she would go berserk, and throw herself at them, but she couldn't remember doing it. And every time she returned to the camp after a battle, she would go to her tent and collapse, crying as she had forced herself not to for so long.
Gabriell's presence in her mind was a dark spot, where creatures from nightmares lurked. It was through no fault of his own; he had nothing to console himself with. She had the Power, at least. And she had Lundren. He had nothing, though she attempted to find him something. He was, as she had thought of herself so long ago staring into her mirror, a walking corpse. He requested she pass his bond. When she asked why, he said it was because he didn't want to hurt her when he died, and there was a Yellow who wanted to 'study' him. He said it so bleakly that she cried for two nights over it before finally deciding that maybe it would be best. The Yellow was young, pretty, and smart, and maybe she could bring Gabriell back. Sinead passed the bond to her.
One day, they were fighting a battle that they thought would be the 'normal' way of events- maybe a Dread lord, or a few Darkhounds, but basically as it always happened. However, Sinead realized that the flows being used to attack them weren't like what the Dreadlords used- with her experience, it was no surprise that she noticed when no one else did. "Forsaken!" She called to Lundren. She was leading one circle, he another. "Female." She added unnecessarily.
"It must be Mesaana," the woman behind her commented. A Brown, if she wasn't very much mistaken; a Brown would know the most about that sort of thing. Sinead nodded, and funneled the anger that always came when she fought into making the earth rise up against the Forsaken. She had no time to see what else was happening, only pressed forward. She cut every weave she could, while making the ground roll and boil beneath the enemy's feet, and could only hope that Lundren was actively attacking, because she hadn't a clue what he was doing.
She heard a high-pitched scream, and one of the women in the circle just-disappeared. Not physically, but she wasn't linked anymore, and that could only mean one thing, if the woman was still alive. The shock of it reverberated through all twelve of the remaining women, and Sinead nearly doubled over to vomit before collecting herself. She assigned two of the other Aes Sedai to get the burnt-out Aes Sedai to safety, then continued on. Fire flared from her hands, and the black lightening that she always used reached out tendrils like Imashadar/I, attaching themselves to Shadowspawn and Darkfriends alike. It didn't release its prey until they collapsed- more often than not a charred corpse in a silvery coating that had once been their armor.
"There!" Sinead called, and pointed. Fire streaked from her fingers, and cleared a way through the troops ahead of them. The woman standing there simply stared at them for a moment then wove something that Sinead knew would be nasty. She cut it through as she advanced, and the woman's eyes narrowed. Definitely Mesaana; Semirhage, she was to understand, was quite dark, Lanfear and Graendal were beautiful, as well as cautious, and Moghedian would never have attacked openly, according to the chatter of the Brown.
"You wish to fight, IAes Sedai/I?" The Forsaken asked, smiling slightly. Sinead wove more Earthfire, and directed it through the ground, waves of red-hot earth rippling toward Mesaana. They disappeared as if they'd never existed, and she wove again, with the same result. A fountain of dirt and fire roared up behind the woman, and she stumbled slightly; that had to be Lundren's work. "I take it you do. Naughty children."
She stepped through, and found herself in Tar Valon. Lasana had loved the Grove, and she began to walk in that direction. Minutes passed as they walked, and she glanced occasionally at the White Tower. What she would give to be one of the few Aes Sedai who had remained there to teach the novices and Accepted. They reached the Grove rather quicker than they would have if they'd been walking in the waking world, but momentary confusion disappeared as she channeled, creating Lasana's grave.
She found herself singing softly as Gabriell laid Lasana down, and she straightened her dress and her hair out. It was an Aiel song of mourning, and no one deserved it more than Lasana. Gabriell joined in after a moment; he would know the words, after being with Lasana for half a decade. She stared at her sister for a few more minutes, memorizing her face as she never had before, and then she channeled, still singing. The earth moved, and slowly covered Lasana up. For a moment, Itel'aran'rhiod/I didn't seem sure what to do. The ground f lickered from bare earth to grass, back to bare earth, before settling on grass. Something had happened to the Unseen World that hadn't happened in the waking world, and Sinead had no idea what would happen because of it.
Gabriell just knelt there, staring at the grass with blank eyes, until Sinead put a hand on his shoulder. "We go to the Borderlands." She said, and he nodded dully, standing up. She Traveled from the Dreamworld to the Borderlands, intent upon finding Lundren. Her sister's last request rang in her ears as she tied her skirts up and began a ground-eating trot over the rugged landscape, her full attention focused on what she would find ahead. Gabriell ran beside her just as easily, and nothing in anything around them was as bleak as their eyes as they searched.
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Months passed, and Sinead didn't find Lundren. She ran across camps of Aes Sedai, but none of them knew where he was, only that he showed up occasionally to give them orders, then disappeared again without a word. She fought battle after battle, her rage over Lasana's death giving her strength she normally wouldn't have, even with the help of the Isa'angreal/I. Shadowspawn died, and Darkfriends; Dreadlords she was merciless to, and people she knew from camp to camp commented on the coldness with which she killed. Gabriell killed, as well. And he tried to Ibe/I killed. Sinead had never felt so helpless in her life as the day she had to carry him to the infirmary to be Healed because he'd tried to fight three Myrddraal at once by himself.
She didn't know what had happened, except that something about her had changed forever when Lasana died. She moved from camp to camp, and she thought that each time she appeared at a camp she'd already been at, they viewed her rather like they would have regarded Deane Aryman come to life. Gabriell, they were frankly scared of. He gave lessons to soldiers with cold precision, and then disappeared with Sinead when she moved on. There was certainly a lot of curtsying or bowing, and scurrying to do what they said. Soon she was too worn out to protest when sisters curtsied to her or brothers bowed to her; just made a small gesture as if to stop them, and let it drop.
In one camp, she missed him by an hour, and spent the rest of the night berating herself for being so slow about getting out of the camp she'd been in before. She found Darmou in one camp -driven nearly insane by Lasana's death. She thought it interesting that Lasana hadn't arranged to have his bond transferred. She asked him if he wanted her to bond him, to ease the pain a little. He refused, and he was dead the next time she came by. She found Nesari in another, dressed as a Maiden but fighting with the Power. Lessia, Nesari told her, had gone to the White Tower for training. Nesari had been an Accepted, before all-out war broke out, but she channeled with a desperation and power that Sinead knew all too well. Her blood sister had at least two things in common with Sinead- power, and a reckless hatred for the Shadow.
She was there when the Seanchan attacked, and saw them put the collar around Nesari's neck. She couldn't do anything about it, and felt a part of her die. When next she saw her, Nesari was Nari, and was trying to kill her. Another part of her withered and died. She went on, to another camp she knew. Everyone there had been slaughtered; everyone there, she knew by name. Gabriell helped her bury them, and though she dug the graves with the Power, they were individual, and each grave got a marker. She wrote it with Earthfire, burning the words into the stones so they would never fade.
She found herself dreading the next trip, yet still making it, hoping against hope that she would be able to fulfill Lasana's request before she died of loneliness or hunger. Before Gabriell killed himself, and she died of shock. A year passed, then two. The Borderlands were fading from the cold, green, wilderness they had once been, to a waste nearly as hot and barren as the Three-fold Land. Her clothing wore out, and she purchased breeches and a shirt from a soldier, and wore them to rags, before purchasing more. She forced Gabriell to do the same; he would have forgotten about clothing and food altogether.
After nearly three years of wandering, she entered a camp she had never been to before, and began to look around for familiar faces, and to ask questions. "Lundren Sedai?" A burly man at a forge asked, scratching at his gray-streaked beard. "Last I heard-" Sinead's heart sank, "he was meetin' with his gen'rals, somewhere o'er yonder." His accent made it difficult to understand him, but Sinead caught the gist of it, and the direction his finger pointed in. For the first time since her search began, she felt a tendril of hope worm its way through her mind.
"He's here? Tell me, man!" She demanded, resisting the urge to grab him and shake the information out of him. "I must see him- at once." She took hold of the man's wrist and pulled him away from his forge. "Take me to him. Now!" With a nod, the man trotted off, and Sinead and Gabriell hurried after, her eyes darting to find Lundren before he found her. He had been the one to convince her to go with Kesinda…what would he say? She shook off her fears, and kept going. That first tiny bit of hope had blossomed, and lit up a desolate part of her that she hadn't even realized Iwas/I desolate.
The blacksmith bellowed for Lundren, and Sinead half raised her hands to cover her ears. But then Lundren was ducking out of the large tent to their left, and looking around, and Deiree followed him, shading her eyes from the sun. The former Keeper, superceded by Marela when Kesinda took the Seat, looked as weary as Lundren did, as weary as Sinead felt. Sinead walked forward- stumbled, really- and bowed, as she was wearing breeches. Gabriell bowed as well, but he straightened immediately, and stared at absolutely nothing, eyes blank. They looked astounded as she straightened, and she actually smiled, though it did nothing to bring life back to her eyes. "Light shine on you, Lundren. And you, Deiree." She said, feeling like she was coming home, even though she'd never seen the place before. "How may I be of help?"
The blacksmith was looking back and forth between them, and suddenly Sinead realized something. She'd been channeling almost every day for seven years, and she'd worn the shawl for…Light, had it been twelve years? Her face was that of an Aes Sedai's, beneath the desolation, and the blacksmith was only just beginning to realize it. And her eyes. They probably freaked him halfway to insanity. "Sinead?" Lundren asked, and she nodded, tears trembling at the corners of her eyes, swaying back and forth. "Come in, so we can talk," he said, and she followed him, relaxing so much that if he hadn't had a hold of her hand she would have collapsed. Deiree had a grip on Gabriell's arm, pulling him in as well. She had succeeded. Only a little further to go and she could join her sister- nothing could or would stop her now, when she decided it was time to go.
"This is Sinead of the Blue Ajah, and Gabriell Gaidin." Lundren was saying to the other people in the tent, still with a hold on her hand, and everything else rolled over her like cleansing waters, washing all her doubt and self-hatred away. Lasana had wanted this…therefore it must be right.
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Sinead wasn't sure exactly where she stood in the chain of command of Lundren's army. She wasn't just an Aes Sedai, but she wasn't really anything more than that, either. It was more like the people of the camp saw what she and Lundren thought of one another, heard the stories about her from people from other camps, and treated her…carefully…because of it. Gabriell's cold eyes wherever she went probably didn't help matters. She wasn't on the council that discussed where to go and what to do -by her own choice, she was tired of having to be in charge- but that didn't seem to matter. The blacksmith bragged that he'd been the first to speak to her, and Sinead just shook her head and walked away. What was the point of it? All she did was fight, just as they did. She was a war machine, with Gabriell and Lundren as her back-ups.
Since she'd been mostly on her own -or with only Lasana- since Kesinda had led them out of the Tower, it was a new feeling, being linked with more than one Aes Sedai, fighting the Shadow together. The bleakness still remained in her mind and heart, but sometimes it seemed to shrink. The first time she laughed at something another person had said, she felt like a new person. But every time she fought the Shadowspawn the memories would come back, and sometimes she would realize she was in the center of a company of trollocs with no idea how she got there, and no way to get out. Her friends said she would go berserk, and throw herself at them, but she couldn't remember doing it. And every time she returned to the camp after a battle, she would go to her tent and collapse, crying as she had forced herself not to for so long.
Gabriell's presence in her mind was a dark spot, where creatures from nightmares lurked. It was through no fault of his own; he had nothing to console himself with. She had the Power, at least. And she had Lundren. He had nothing, though she attempted to find him something. He was, as she had thought of herself so long ago staring into her mirror, a walking corpse. He requested she pass his bond. When she asked why, he said it was because he didn't want to hurt her when he died, and there was a Yellow who wanted to 'study' him. He said it so bleakly that she cried for two nights over it before finally deciding that maybe it would be best. The Yellow was young, pretty, and smart, and maybe she could bring Gabriell back. Sinead passed the bond to her.
One day, they were fighting a battle that they thought would be the 'normal' way of events- maybe a Dread lord, or a few Darkhounds, but basically as it always happened. However, Sinead realized that the flows being used to attack them weren't like what the Dreadlords used- with her experience, it was no surprise that she noticed when no one else did. "Forsaken!" She called to Lundren. She was leading one circle, he another. "Female." She added unnecessarily.
"It must be Mesaana," the woman behind her commented. A Brown, if she wasn't very much mistaken; a Brown would know the most about that sort of thing. Sinead nodded, and funneled the anger that always came when she fought into making the earth rise up against the Forsaken. She had no time to see what else was happening, only pressed forward. She cut every weave she could, while making the ground roll and boil beneath the enemy's feet, and could only hope that Lundren was actively attacking, because she hadn't a clue what he was doing.
She heard a high-pitched scream, and one of the women in the circle just-disappeared. Not physically, but she wasn't linked anymore, and that could only mean one thing, if the woman was still alive. The shock of it reverberated through all twelve of the remaining women, and Sinead nearly doubled over to vomit before collecting herself. She assigned two of the other Aes Sedai to get the burnt-out Aes Sedai to safety, then continued on. Fire flared from her hands, and the black lightening that she always used reached out tendrils like Imashadar/I, attaching themselves to Shadowspawn and Darkfriends alike. It didn't release its prey until they collapsed- more often than not a charred corpse in a silvery coating that had once been their armor.
"There!" Sinead called, and pointed. Fire streaked from her fingers, and cleared a way through the troops ahead of them. The woman standing there simply stared at them for a moment then wove something that Sinead knew would be nasty. She cut it through as she advanced, and the woman's eyes narrowed. Definitely Mesaana; Semirhage, she was to understand, was quite dark, Lanfear and Graendal were beautiful, as well as cautious, and Moghedian would never have attacked openly, according to the chatter of the Brown.
"You wish to fight, IAes Sedai/I?" The Forsaken asked, smiling slightly. Sinead wove more Earthfire, and directed it through the ground, waves of red-hot earth rippling toward Mesaana. They disappeared as if they'd never existed, and she wove again, with the same result. A fountain of dirt and fire roared up behind the woman, and she stumbled slightly; that had to be Lundren's work. "I take it you do. Naughty children."
