Heroism Is For Fools
When she looked in the mirror this day, all she saw was shadows. She could move this way or that and the shadows would shift, melting into different parts of her face and neck, then sliding back, the colours constantly altering. The shadows defined her almost plain features and transformed them, making her look like someone else entirely; someone other than the person she knew herself to be. Perhaps that was fitting, though. She was already certain she would have to become someone very different in the coming days. The state of affairs in Tar Valon had seen to that.
Only four days since the revelation, and already the Tower was in chaos. Every time Rayel contemplated that fact, she felt the panic rise in her along with the bile. For that reason, she tried not to think about it for too long at any time. It was all too much.
And yet it was hers to contemplate, and hers alone. Who could she trust, after what had happened? She did not know of a single person who would for a certainty stick by her through thick and thin. If she let them close, they could sell her down the Erinen in an instant if it meant saving their own skins, and she wouldn't be surprised. For it was so that madness had consumed the Tower, madness that had created rifts too great to be repaired. Rayel saw herself as one of the few Aes Sedai who remained sane – that being the main reason she was on the market, so likely to be betrayed by her former brethren if she chose to give them the chance.
Her heart told her not to write off the other members of the Tower still remaining, and yet her head insisted it wasn't worth the risk of blind faith. She could not afford to take any more gambles than it was necessary to take.
She inhaled deeply, physically unable to stop until her lungs felt on the verge of bursting. She kept her eyes on the mirror, but when she shifted slightly, the shadows did too, swarming about on her face. For a moment it seemed that her skin was covered in spirit-sucking creatures waiting for the right moment to move in for the kill. They would let her exist as long as she entertained them, and when that period of time had expired they would converge on her nose and mouth, perhaps even covering her eyes too, and would suffocate her. She was the prisoner of shadows, here in her personal quarters where she had hidden for the past three days. She was a prisoner in her own home, and if she stayed here too long she would never escape.
The shadows lost their menacing quality, but she was still sure about one thing: she would not go down willingly. She had made the decision a few hours earlier, after considering numerous options. Most of them had seemed viable at first glance, but upon further examination had come to look more like forms of suicide than anything. So she had finally settled on two possible ways of proceeding from here, each equally safe insofar as any option could be considered safe. All that remained was for her to choose which one was best suited. It was this final decision that was threatening to overwhelm her, to make her hesitate too long.
She did not feel entirely alone, of course, and that was not a good thing. She could usually hear some form of activity in the hallways outside, even if it were just a soft murmur of voices or the ginger padding of feet along the carpets. She had stayed in these rooms hoping she would be missed, everyone else assuming she had fled the Tower already like so many others. But she could not rely on that slim hope forever, she knew. Nor could she accurately gauge the amount of time she had left before her luck would run out. Something told her, with impressive conviction, that time was increasingly scarce.
And yet she did not move yet. She had too much on her mind. The fact that the White Tower, in its symbolic capacity, was falling down around her ears was the foremost of these. The fabric of this age-old institution had begun fraying at the edges long ago, but now it had finally begun to crumble completely. What made her hesitate in taking action was the perhaps foolish notion that she could somehow act to salvage some vestige of what was on the brink of being lost forever. Logic told her she was useless here, but her sentimentality, her sense of duty and honour, threatened to override that virtue so praised by those who had chosen the White.
Her choices, in the end, were these. She could step boldly out into the viper's den she had once called home, and eventually go down in flames, not without a fight. She could aim at taking as many of the enemy with her when she expired from this world. Alternately, she could creep out of this room with her tail between her legs, hiding every step of the way in a manner entirely unsuited to the woman she had believed herself to be. She could hope to preserve her own life that way, and when she had travelled out into the world, far from the Tower, she could hope to encounter other exiled Sisters, and with them share the misery of the fundamental institutional downfall she had witnessed with her own eyes.
Wishful thinking, perhaps, but it was all she had to cling to. She was not ready to die yet.
Looking at her shadowed self in the mirror, head and shoulders draped in darkness, she understood that the decision was made. She would never see herself the same again, and if after the fact others learned of the actions she had taken, they would not either. It was very difficult to come to terms with what she was about to do. In fact it made her head hurt, although no outward sign of discomfort showed on her reflection's face. Sighing softly one last time, she stood up in front of her sparsely patterned dresser, knowing that the time to act was now.
She went to her bed where her satchel waited. She had packed earlier, while sorting through the options available to her, and by the time she had narrowed the list down to two, she had been three-fourths of the way through. She had paused momentarily, holding a pair of folded shifts in the air over the open bag for a moment while she let reality sink in. Then she had forced herself to continue, in order to complete the task at hand. Here and now she would have to force herself to act again, and this time it would be far more difficult to maintain her resolve.
Packing a bag was not life threatening. Fleeing from the White Tower with no intention of ever returning, on the other hand, was about as dangerous as one could get, particularly in these uncertain times. It was a pity she really had no choice.
She picked up the bag and started for the door, pausing only once more to glance back. She caught a fainter version of her reflection in the dully-gleaming mirror, and hated what she saw there. I will do what is necessary, she thought, but she wondered then whether anything could justify what she was about to do.
Her hand closed over the doorknob.