Recovery and Loss

Rayel's words perplexed Melarintha, but she knew they didn't bode well for her. "Wh-what…?" she murmured, lower lip trembling.

Rayel said, "You would be killing me now if you had your strength. That doesn't make it all right for me to kill you back. But all of your other crimes – most of which I have not heard about – justify it. At least in my mind."

"Oh, no, no, no, please, please, please…"

Rayel suddenly saw the glow in the distance, the glow she had expected to see earlier but that she had missed. Be steadfast, the voice told her, for The way back will come but once. Rayel thought, it seems like it's come numerous times today, but knew that she could not waste more time. She had to go. But should she get rid of Melarintha first?

"I have to go," she said slowly, frowning in indecision.

Melarintha looked suddenly bright-eyed, as if she had suddenly thought of some plan to get herself to safety. "Do you know about Agnene?" she asked.

"You already told me about Agnene," Rayel said, confused. "I do not need to hear about her again. I need to go. But…but first…"

"You don't know everything," Melarintha interrupted. The sureness in her voice unsettled Rayel, and she considered killing the woman right here and now, on the spot. "You didn't…recognise her. Because, well, she has…"

It appeared that Melarintha had regained quite a lot of her strength in the moments that had passed since Guydin's death. That told Rayel that she should not hesitate. She glanced once at Agnene, and then made a quick, difficult decision. She would have to leave the woman there, not ever knowing what could have come of their relationship. She was absolutely sure that Agnene would never have been her friend, because she could never befriend a member of the Black Ajah. But she would certainly never have been an outright, hated enemy either. Not in the way that Guydin had been in the end. Or in the way that Melarintha was now. Do not forget what she is, Rayel warned herself, and began to step around the petite woman.

Melarintha looked almost disappointed, and turned on the spot to watch as Rayel slowly moved away, towards the now flickering glow that shone from around the nearest corner in the hallway. Rayel glanced back and saw that the look of disappointment was slowly fading. Melarintha was sure that, although she wouldn't get the chance to tell what she claimed to know about Agnene, she would at least escape harm. The fact that the woman looked so suddenly relieved and content unsettled Rayel. In fact, it made her think twice about her decision.

Be steadfast, the voice called. The way back will come but once. The voice had gained strength of conviction in the last little while, clearly thinking that perhaps there was hope for Rayel after all. The glow continued to flicker, suggesting that it was not as strongly present as it had been in the past. Rayel found herself in quite a predicament, but she kept moving and kept her eyes on Melarintha, giving herself time to think.

As the petite woman watched her moving backwards, she embraced saidar and saw a look of doubt flicker onto the other's face. "Tell me what you know of Agnene," Rayel said, still moving backwards, "or I'll kill you horribly."

It sounded like such a typical thing to say to a villain, and it reminded Rayel of all the adventure stories she had read in her past. She was no hero, yet here she was talking like one. And she knew that Melarintha was not stupid enough to assume that she was bluffing. Rayel knew, and had made it clear that she did know, that Melarintha was not yet strong enough to channel. She had almost burnt herself out in the earlier confrontation, and was still recovering. For that reason, Rayel could kill her if she wanted, even though she was walking away from her bit by bit. Knowing all this, Melarintha took a brief moment to consider her options, and then shrugged almost imperceptibly and began to move forward again.

"Agnene Villareja is her name," she said, clasping her hands together and cocking her head as if settling down to tell a story out of ancient folklore.

Be steadfast, the voice said, sounding slightly worried again. It seemed to want Rayel to know that the way back definitely only came once, and that this was her chance. If she wasted it, she would be stuck in the hallway with Melarintha. She took bigger steps backwards and finally came to the corner, which she rounded. She glanced briefly sideways and saw the arch in the distance. She turned the corner and Melarintha came with her, seemingly happy to divulge the story of Agnene if it meant she could have her life in return. Rayel did not want to kill the woman at this moment, in spite of the fact that she was Black Ajah. She had had enough killing for one day.

"She was a wonderful Blue Sister," Melarintha continued, "and her fellow Blues aspired to be like her. Although when she joined the Ajah she was very young, she set a good example from the beginning. She was said to have been one of those Blues who was more like a mixture of Blue and Green. She was not afraid to fight. To kill, when necessary."

"And what is the point?" Rayel asked impatiently, still moving backwards, edging closer to the archway. She had just received another warning about the way back coming only once, and she had sensed the growing concern in the voice. The arch behind her began to flicker more violently, and sometimes it even disappeared all together. For some reason, whenever Rayel glanced back and saw the arch flicker out of existence, she was struck by a strong sense of despair and fear. She felt like running towards the light, but she could not tear herself away from Melarintha's story either.

"Let me continue," Melarintha had said right after Rayel's interruption, and now she did so, explaining a little bit about the life of the apparently great Agnene. Rayel thought as she listened that it was odd she had never heard of Agnene. She surely would have if the Blue had been so important, wouldn't she? Perhaps not, considering Rayel had spent much of her time at the Tower tucked away in private study rooms trying to learn all that she could about various crucial subjects, or in her room, alone, thinking.

"Agnene was a very mysterious figure," Melarintha said softly, smiling slightly. "When she arrived at the Tower, she was…well…practised. She did not have a smooth face, but she had used the Power before, and it almost seemed as if she had been taught by some of our own Sisters. For example, she had somehow acquired many habits similar to Serene Sedai's when it came to weaving with Fire. Also, she nearly perfected Lanas Sedai's Ring of Earth weave on her second day of trying. She had…experiences under her belt."

The way back will come but once! Be steadfast. Rayel was standing on the threshold, and she kept alternating between glancing back at the light that nearly touched her skin and forward at the Black Ajah member who was speaking to her in a hypnotic, story-telling tone.

"In time it was discovered that she had in fact been at the Tower before as a student. She had had a close friend or two, but none compared to the relationship she had with one girl in particular. The two had met each other on their way to the Tower, and had become fast friends. They had…strange things in common."

Rayel felt her hackles rising, and she wasn't even sure why. Her scalp began to tingle as Melarintha continued to talk.

"On their first day in the Tower they met the Amyrlin Seat, and one of them fainted right there in her office."

Rayel's skin was clammy with suddenly cold sweat. Her heart seemed to slow as it was squeezed in a painful vice. She winced and struggled to breathe rhythmically. On Melarintha's face was a look of something close to triumph.

"The two of them shared some kind of link: a psychic bond, not like when a Sister takes a Warder, but something along those lines. They could actually read one another's thoughts. No one knew how it had happened. There has been speculation in past years that they were related, somehow, were blood kin who had through pure chance located one another on the way to the Tower. Yet they did not look very much alike, and they had come from completely different areas of the land. There were numerous other notions, too, including the perhaps not so absurd suggestion that they had both been reborn into new bodies but had retained their old spirits. In the end, no clear determination was made. These deliberations went on after Agnene's disappearance, of course. The truth about her and that…friend…of hers was only revealed when she returned to the Tower under her new guise."

The way back will come but once, the voice said, and behind Rayel the archway flickered out and stayed gone for almost eight seconds. Rayel could tell because when it was gone Melarintha's face and torso were bathed in shadow. When it returned her skin lit up again in the soft glow of light.

"In any case, when Agnene appeared, she wasn't content to go on as she had been earlier in life. She was…unhappy. She was so very angry that the old times had been stolen from her. And she wanted revenge. But more than that, she wanted to try something new. She wanted to see if the other side would fail her in the way that her old one had. So she joined the ranks of the Black Ajah, and oh how she shone!"

Rayel's heart had turned to stone, even as she tried to reason with herself. What Melarintha was saying was that back there, in the hallway they'd exited, slumped on the ground where Guydin had dropped her, was Marana al'Jade, now known as Agnene, a Black Ajah version of her former self. Marana, the woman that Rayel had had an intensely close and inexplicable link with; who had affected her life both positively and negatively for decades now; and who once upon a time she had thought she could never live without. How was it fair that here and now, decades after the initial loss, and years after she had finally come to accept reality as it was, she should be reminded of all that had been lost in such a dreadful way? How was it fair that the pain should all resurface in this overpowering wave?

"Black Ajah?" Rayel said bluntly, wanting to vomit right then and there. The way back will come back but once, the voice repeated almost shrilly, and the arch winked out of existence. It seemed permanent this time, for at all other times it merely flickered and died. This time it had literally disappeared in an instant. Rayel's emotional agony was suddenly consumed by her sheer panic. Come back, come back, come back! she yelled inwardly, no longer facing Melarintha. The woman continued to speak in spite of being momentarily ignored.

"Agnene Sedai did some of our best work, Rayel," the woman said, perhaps attempting to completely shatter the heart that in Rayel's chest had already been severely fractured moments earlier. "She was one of our true stars, the one we all looked up to. Not only did she shine in the ranks of the Blue, but she consumed everyone else in the ranks of the Black with her brightness."

"What became of…Agnene?" Rayel asked dully, alternating between longing for the return of the arch and longing for someone to knock her unconscious. She didn't think she could count on even Melarintha for that – the woman was enjoying having her awake too much.

"Oh, Agnene made a few wrong moves, and finally got herself exiled. Killing our fellow Sister was only the first in a series of dastardly misdeeds." Melarintha shrugged, raising her eyebrows. "Nevertheless, she will endure as one of the most renowned Sisters in Black Ajah history. And besides, she is still a Blue, even if she has sunk below the heights she used to stare down from."

The arch winked into existence and Rayel turned on her heel, preparing to launch herself forward into it.

Melarintha's voice stopped her. "She remembers that friend of hers, though. Rayel Markhin. She remembers, and it consumes her. I believe that, deep down inside somewhere, she still holds you in high regard."

She turned slowly to face Melarintha as the voice whispered inside her to be steadfast, and in the light of the arch it seemed that the petite woman's face had taken on a new expression. To Rayel's eyes she looked purely evil, and the sight of her sent chills down her spine, and into her very core, much like the triangle of ice that had sent literal waves of cold into her earlier. Goosebumps sprang up all over her skin.

"I believe now it has come for us to say goodbye," Melarintha said, quirking her eyebrows. "It has been…educational."

She reached forward suddenly to shove Rayel backwards – into the Arch. Rayel's mouth opened in a wide circle of shock, and at the last moment she embraced saidar, knowing with a sudden sharp certainty that if she did not kill Melarintha, many others would die at the woman's hand. Perhaps even Marana, a small voice said inside her as she loosed a deadly weave that formed a horizontal scythe. She had intended to cut off Melarintha's head but she fell backwards into the light before she could see if her plan had succeeded.

Her last thought before being impossibly divided by the light was that she would never have the chance to talk to Marana again. Now, knowing that the woman was still alive, the thought caused Rayel the most intense emotional pain she had ever known, and as the light consumed her she wished for it to be a permanent arrangement. She did not want to exist anymore.