Fall from Grace
The dripping of water was the only sound that could be heard in the tiny room. A dark-skinned young woman stood on a three-legged wooden stool, seeing her face in the small mirror and touching the black tattoos that seemed to crawl over her face with her child-like fingers. In her other hand, there was a knife. Her eyes, pools of dark brown, looked sad as she saw the place she was allowed to call home now in the mirror. Her bald head was shining with the remains of water and lather the woman had used to shave the stubble of hair that would never cease to grow there off. It was a part of her, these strange looks, a mark of lost pride. It had taken her many years of long, hard training to be allowed to shave her scalp, to be allowed to call herself an Ayyad.
Cei'ila studied the razor and wiped off a tiny drop of blood. Another day in a life that was not her own, another day away from what really mattered. Because some things did matter, more than others. The small black woman was a mother, although few would guess that. The mother of a son she had given the name of Cei'liyo, Free Spirit. The mother of a son who knows neither his name nor his mother. The boy would live in a dungeon, deep below the buildings among the palisaded walls in the lands beyond the Waste, the lands these illiterate people referred to as Shara.
The first time she realised her place of birth was no longer her home had been painful, a sharp pain like a knife piercing her skin. Now, it was duller, like the throbbing pain of the needles that had made those black markings on her deep-brown skin. A pain that could be ignored but could never be forgotten. Many called the Grey Tower their home, Cei'ila never would. Home, she thought, home is where my son is. Home is where I have buried my heart… Grace, Ti'liyo!
She stepped off the stool onto the small rug in the middle of her novice room. The Mistress of Novices had proved a reasonable woman and did not expect Cei'ila to share a room with any of the green girls who shared her position here. She was an exception to everything, it seemed, although some of these Aes Sedai seemed to refuse the mere possibility of one novice being different from the others. The rough woollen novice whites were no different from anyone else's though, or perhaps a tad smaller. The only Westlanders shorter than her were their children. Ironic, maybe. She refused to let it hurt her.
She was about to get dressed when a thought struck her and made her turn, to see her own face in the mirror again. Fine lines on her face made her look younger than she was, but a sort of serenity had settled on her face, the sign of someone wielding the One Power for many years. As an Ayyad, she had channelled almost constantly and now they restrained her, keeping her bound to their oaths and their laws and their strange sense of pride, or lack thereof. Her face was that of a newly raised Aes Sedai, not yet ageless but serene and smooth nonetheless.
A wry smile on her autumn red lips, the Sharan opened the small chest that contained the belongings she had been allowed to keep. Snug brown breeches and a shirt that had certainly seen its best days and a dark grey cloak of fine, warm wool. She hadn't worn those clothes since that day four years ago when she had fled her former home, looking for a way to save her reason for living. Cei'ila put them on and noticed she had slimmed, the little flesh that had been on her bones had vanished and left her thin and fragile. Again, she looked at herself, and for a moment she was almost that girl again, the girl who had not believed in cruelty and ill luck.
Today would end it all. Today, Cei'ila the Ayyad, Cei'ila the novice of the Grey Tower, Cei'ila the Assassin, Cei'ila the Mother, she would be restored with what made her whole – or die. She drank in the Power that had been granted to her and wove the cloak of mists, inverting the weaves, hiding her from everyone… shading her in nothingness. For the first time in weeks she felt herself again, the repressed spirit that was deep inside her tortured body. Moving with the stealth that fit her like a glove, she left the room that was not her own through the Tower that was not her home… out of the gates and down the road, carrying naught but a small bag of supplies that would guide her through the wilderness on days when she could not provide her own food.
The thought of going through that desert again made her despair more and more as days came and went, running down the roads of Andor in a quick pace she had made her own. Small, lithe and athletic, most passers-by noticed nothing but a change in the air, a few shades of brown and green that perhaps differed from what they had seen before. A blink, and it was gone. Cei'ila ran, cloaked in delicious saidar running through her veins…
Weeks passed, and lands passed, changing from the lush deltas of Andor to the rocky outskirts of the Spine of the World gradually, hills slowly becoming mountains as the desert drew closer. Her cloak was sometimes too thin to guard her from the icy winds in the Mountains and in the nights, she had to draw as close to her fire as she dared so not to risk freezing… High up on the Spine of the World the snow never faded.
It was one night, some five weeks after she had fled, when Cei'ila was making her camp when her destiny was… altered. Trying to make a fire from a few twigs of dry wood she had miraculously found somewhere, she took a careless step backwards and all of a sudden, the snow beneath her feet cracked and crumbled, leaving the tiny woman hang suspended by her hands above a large precipice.
Death comes for us all, she thought, closing her dark brown eyes and preparing for what would be her final struggle. Ti'liyo, we shall be together after all… She could feel her fingers numb and knew she would not be able to hold on for much longer… when suddenly she felt the warm touch of a soft female hand on hers, the voice accompanying it calling for her attention…
"Cei'ila," the voice came, eerie and somehow unaltered by the howling winds, "this is the hour of truth. I hold your life in my hands. Pledge your service to me, Cei'ila, Ayyad, Assassin, and you will be saved… Serve me, serve the Great Lord of the Dark…" Shaking her head ferociously Cei'ila coughed, trying to gather enough moisture in her throat to speak. "Never," she whispered, a hoarse voice crawling out of her throat, nearly eaten by the howling winds. "Don't you know life means nothing to me, witch?"
The voice laughed, it was the most terrible sound she had ever heard, booming through the dark night where her fire had long since been extinguished… Straining, the former Ayyad managed to look over the edge of the precipice, seeing a female shape radiating a gloomy, pale green glow… "Doesn't it, Cei'ila the Mother? I have something I believe you value more than your life, Cei'ila the Novice." And suddenly, from within the folds of the woman's glowing white skirts stepped a young boy, skin as dark as wet soil, eyes as green as grass on a spring day.
"Cei'liyo," Cei'ila screamed, piercing the air with the cry of despair of someone who had lost everything. "My child, my… my LIFE!" She threw her head in her neck and howled, feeling the chains of an unbreakable pledge loom above her. The soft hands smoothly lifted her onto solid ground again, and there she lay, breathing heavily, eyes closely shut and full lips whimpering words of prayer, words of hope and words of utter despair. Her eyes opened slowly to see the bright green eyes of her son peer into hers. "Mother?" the boy said, a tear rolling down his cheek could be seen in the pale glow of the unearthly creature.
Pushing herself up on her elbows, Cei'ila turned to the woman. "What if I don't?" she asked, her voice broken and tired, that of an old woman nearing her death. "If you don't," the voice replied, "I shall bring him back. They were taking good care of him down there, Cei'ila the Ayyad. Any pig or goat would envy his chains!" Large tears streaming from the corners of her dark eyes, Cei'ila knelt before the servant of the Dark One. "Will he be allowed to go with me if I pledge," she asked softly, her voice barely able to whisper in this moment of utter darkness. The ghastly woman nodded, a cruel smile on her bloodless lips. "Then I will," Cei'ila said, and high above them thunder raged in the night air.
"SAY IT THEN, CEI'ILA THE ASSASSIN," the voice boomed, making the tiny woman push her hands fiercely to her ears, drawing her shivering son close to her, and that warm touch of her own blood, that moment of being whole again… That alone was worth it, that and nothing else. "PLEDGE YOUR LOYALTY TO THE GREAT LORD OF THE DARK!" Clenching her hands into fists, Cei'ila parted her lips to speak.
"By my life and that of my son," she said slowly, dragging the words out of her mouth, "I pledge loyalty to the Great Lord of the Dark. I will serve him in any ways my lowly talents permit." Again, thunder struck and the ghoul cackled loudly as Cei'ila felt her oaths settle upon her, heavier than chains, worse than death. It didn't matter. She was with Cei'liyo again, she had saved her son from his awful fate among the palisaded walls of Shara… Everything was worth that. Even this.
"Your first orders, Cei'ila the Assassin," said the woman, the glow dulling suddenly making her look drab, ugly. "Go back to the Grey Tower and spread your lore. Teach them how to kill without leaving a trace. As Cei'ila the Assassin you shall serve. More orders will follow." A flash of light appeared in the darkness and the woman grabbed Cei'ila's shoulder, pushing her and her son through the Gateway that had formed. In the distance, she could see the walls of the Grey Tower, the soft shine of a rising sun making them radiate in the darkness. "Serve, Cei'ila the Friend of the Dark," said the voice in a last whisper as the Gateway disappeared.
It was thus that on a cold morning in late autumn, a runaway novice returned to the Grey Tower, carrying in her short arms a seven-year-old boy who had her face, and as she wound up the endless stairs to the office of the Amyrlin Seat, her vow kept repeating itself in her head, meaning more and more every time she heard it. Cei'ila the Friend of the Dark. She nodded to the Keeper of the Chronicles who couldn't hide her shock when she saw who had returned and as she was brought before Lelianna Aes Sedai she knelt smoothly and deeple. "I have run away, Mother," she said, "but I have repented and come back. I know I deserve punishment."
