As always, with greatest respect to Robert Jordan. I own no part of the Wheel of Time and make no claim to. For everybody who has read my work so far, thank you very much! I will try to keep the quality good, though I am short of time now with the resumption of the school year. If I do anything here that you don't like, either to the characters or the WOT world, please forgive me; this story is written exclusively for entertainment on my part. The details of the WOT world are so intricate that it's hard to be absolutely perfect, and the characters found here are denizens of the sidelines since they will never actually be seen in the real books.
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Weaving LuckChapter 3: Into the Lurch
By viggen
Through the night the rains fell in a constant tapping, evolving drips that ran off the oiled skin strung up as shelter. Marayna pretended to sleep, the Warder's color shifting cloak wrapped around her for warmth. The cloudless, punishing sun from the day before had been blown out like a candle, replaced by a raging tempest out to scour away the entire world. She shivered as the mid-summer heat slipped into memory more quickly than seemed possible. The tiny fire in the middle of the hollow helped dull some of the chill, but not nearly enough for her to entirely ignore it. Whenever the Warder came back to lay more tinder on the fire, Marayna squeezed her eyes shut and made herself breathe deeply. She could not say where he found wood dry enough to burn, but he did.
The Warder and his Aes Sedai did not match her notion of what they were supposed to be. She knew Aes Sedai as untouchable women. They walked tall and serene and radiated a powerful aura that warned against even the slightest misstep. They were majestic to the point of inspiring awe. Their Warders were always lean, deadly men with the cadence of wolves and the vision of falcons, seeing every corner, knowing every danger. People like that could be picked out of a crowd at a glance, which was why Aes Sedai advised royalty more or less for fun and nobody dared mess with a Warder unless they were bored of living. Before the Seanchan came, Marayna had gotten plenty of opportunities to see Aes Sedai wandering Ebou Dar; she knew what the serpent ring looked like and expected the lavish clothing.
If Marayna had not seen Tavis dispatch six men single-handedly, she would never have believed he was a Warder, not even when he still wore the cloak he had given her. His gray hair made him too old, his lined face too jovial and his lack of weaponry far too benevolent. If she had passed him on the street in the Mol Hara, she probably would have tried to pick his pocket. He was a large enough man to scare away most footpads on principle, but not visibly a brute or a killer. However, his bluish-green eyes gazed very deeply, no matter how gentle his smile.
The Aes Sedai herself, Ghedlyn, was an enigma. Without the ageless face, she belonged in an asylum. With the ageless face, she belonged someplace on the other side of the world -in an asylum. Marayna did not understand most of what the woman said when her mouth opened, as if she were speaking in tongues. It occurred to her, perhaps for the first time ever, that some women probably needed to be fit with an a'dam just to keep them from doing themselves harm. She chastised herself for that thought; Ghedlyn had yet to show even an ounce of cruelty. What bothered Marayna most was that the word "meek" simply did not belong in the same sentence as the name "Aes Sedai." Despite her peculiarity, if Ghedlyn pulled up her hood to hide her agelessness, the small, faintly brass-skinned woman would have vanished into a crowd by sheer lack of grandeur.
Together, seen randomly on the street, this Aes Sedai and her Warder could have passed as a middle aged husband shepherding his gloomy wife.
Marayna pretended to sleep, bundled in the cold. The Warder saw through her too easily with his sharp eyes and the unusual Aes Sedai seemed only to feed his deductions. If she feigned, Marayna thought perhaps she could hide herself from them for a time longer. If it had been any Aes Sedai but this one, would they have known her immediately? Between kinswomen, Seanchan, Atha'an Miere and Aes Sedai, she had had more than enough of channeling women.
She knew the Seanchan were coming. She could feel them out there, growing steadily closer. She could feel the pain, as if being flagellated her whole body over, could feel her skin pealing free in a pot of boiling oil. A hundred awful things she could feel coming ever closer. She bundled herself tighter and set the sensations out of her mind, set the pain aside even as it blistered through her. With distance it was easier, but the distance was closing. If she threw off the cloak and ran, the Warder would have her on the instant, but she wanted to run.
The night passed in fits and starts. She remembered a jigsaw puzzle of moments with water dripping or dancing shadows from the flickering fire. The Warder lurked awake throughout, in and out of the small shelter. Marayna remembered shards of his broad, tired face staring down at her in contemplation. When she forgot herself, she dozed.
She gasped in agony and awoke, flames burning through to her bones. Her breath came out in sharp, punctuated rasps. The sensation had been so real and close. Her heart thundered in her ears.
Transluminous gray reached through the low hanging clouds in a vague announcement of morning. Rain continued to fall in a lulling rhythm. Branches of the forest dripped and water streamed over everything in sight. The edge of the color shifting cloak soaked through from a rivulet running into the hollow, causing her to shiver. She propped herself up on her elbows and blinked sleep from her eyes. Blackened remains from the fire still smoked. The two horses stood beside the hollow, heads down under the drenching, soft whinnies and grunts traded to each other.
The Aes Sedai and Warder stood out in the drizzle, well away from the shelter. Marayna could hear his baritone voice carrying without being able to distinguish his words. The hood of her white fringed cloak raised, the Aes Sedai gazed into the distance and answered whatever he told her with a word or two.
Tavis raised his voice, "This is woolheaded. I refuse."
But she was insistent.
He continued to shake his head.
Making certain that the Ghedlyn Sedai and Tavis still conversed, Marayna wrapped herself more closely in the cloak and crawled across to the hollow. She grabbed the sul'dam in her rumpled blue dress by the shoulder and rolled her onto her back. The woman did not fight her -but regarded her instead with fearful blue eyes slung with bags from lack of sleep. "Marayna..." she whispered in a shaking voice.
"How the tides have turned, Dobiene," Marayna stretched a hand out and touched the a'dam on the woman's neck. "I had no idea that these actually worked on a sul'dam."
Dobiene stared back at her in fright before finding any nerve, "You know there is no distance you can run that they cannot find you."
"They are coming," Marayna agreed, "and when they get here, they are going to lock the collar on my throat, on that crazy Aes Sedai's, and that one there on your's is going to stay put. Maybe they'll let their three new damane share a room."
"It just cannot be," Dobiene replied, shaking, "it cannot be. There must be some mistake. If you will just take this off of me..."
"Take it off of you and what?" Marayna interrupted her, "Do you think things will just go back to normal? You belong wearing it now, just like me. Just like her. When they get here, they'll make a damane out of you. Come to think of it, if that Warder had not brought you here, you probably would be in a gray dress already. What do you think your new name will be when your sul'dam decides?"
The woman shook trying to contain her sobs. Tears streamed from her eyes over a face already beat red, "It is a mistake, they'll know it."
"Then why can you not take it off? Ghedlyn Sedai and Tavis left you alone pretty much all night; you had time," Marayna pointed out. "Or maybe you spent the whole night trying to puke your guts out or fighting a headache. I am no fool, you cannot even pick the bracelet up."
Dobiene closed her eyes and tried to turn away, too weak in her stupor even to fight, "What do you want? Does this give you pleasure?"
Laughing softly, deliberately, evilly, Marayna hissed in her ear, "You have no idea at this moment how satisfied I am. But, what I want is to get out of here, and I want you to help me."
Shuddering, Dobiene shook her head. She could not speak through her weeping.
"If you were smart, you would help," Marayna told her, touching the smooth cord of the metallic leash. "How long do you think it will take that Aes Sedai to figure out that she can get whatever secrets she wants out of you just by wearing this bracelet? You are lucky they have never met a Seanchan before and do not know exactly how your little toy works."
"I do not know anything she wants," Dobiene protested. Her blue eyes clenched tightly and bled copious tears.
"But she'll have to actually ask you to find out for sure," Marayna drew the warder's cloak a little more tightly around her shoulder and glanced to see that Tavis and Ghedlyn were still out conversing. "The Aes Sedai are supposed to be harmless because of their three oaths, but do you think a lunatic can decide what her oaths even mean? I do not want to know, for one."
"Light," Dobiene whined, "it just cannot be."
"Maybe I should snap that a'dam around my wrist," Marayna suggested, "have your help whether you want to give it or not. My own personal damane..."
Dobiene's eyes went wide as the notion sank in and her face became pasty white.
"I can just snap it on," Marayna picked up the bracelet end and opened the catch on the smooth metal loop.
"No, please!" Dobiene begged in a sharp whisper, grasping at Marayna's forearm in desperation, "I don't want to be collared. You know it can't be true, you must take it off. Please, no... please... please."
"When the chance comes," Marayna told her, "and you help me get away from these two, I'll think about releasing you. If you dream of betraying me, I will tell them exactly what they can learn from you by using the a'dam."
Dobiene wept and nodded.
----
"This is woolheaded," Tavis insisted to Ghedlyn, "we should have packed and left on the instant of first light."
"We must not," Ghedlyn stiltedly responded, her dark brown eyes searching past the Warder. In her mind, she could feel a brimming anxiety welling from him. Her own fear reflected back at her, the intensity of it magnified ten-fold. She wanted to crawl into the hollow and bury her head in the deepest part. If only she could.
She thought again about the leash-bracelet-collar locked onto the blond woman's neck. Ghedlyn's precious hours asleep had overflowed with related calculations of similar potential structures in the power. If she could just figure out how it all fit into the steady-state. The logic suggested a whole host of relationships between Aes Sedai circle-links, Aes Sedai/Warder links and this a'dam pseudolink. She even envisioned the potential of a balanced woman-woman multi-link that lacked female resonance and the possibilities of a male saidin counterweave equivalent to the saidar warder link. The theory could be sound. Her rumination about the figures was all that kept her from running away for her life.
"Aes Sedai?" she jerked out of her reverie when Tavis spoke into her ear and touched her shoulder. "A hundred things could go wrong. If they marched through the night, they could be here very soon. When that happens, we will be in this mess deeper than we can get back out. I am only one man. I can protect you only if we run, now. The girl has every reason to run with us. Light, she probably would've run a couple times in the night while you slept, had I not come frequently to check the fire. The sul'dam has every reason to run with us as well; that has to be why she has been so withdrawn. The one time I tried to speak to her last night, the one time she actually rolled over to see where she was, she immediately hid away on herself and pretended she had not been noticed. When she is ready to talk to us, I would be willing to bet, with the collar around her neck, she faces the same slavery as the girl. If I take the a'dam off her, she will run like a tavern girl from a rapist on the moment. She is that frightened. The collar is the only reason she is with us. How this a'dam ter'angreal makes it so that she won't move I cannot begin to imagine..."
"I must see how the pseudolink is forged," Ghedlyn explained once again, for perhaps the tenth time, hoping he would eventually see the importance. She blinked several times and half met his gaze, though not quite. "It is intrinsic to my work. I must see. With this, the logic may all finally self-support."
"Sometimes," he growled angrily, "I think your work is foolishness..." He abruptly stopped, "Listen..."
A lone, mournful keening note rose to the south, peaking above the patter of still falling rain. The howling song was joined momentarily by a second and third, punctuated sharply by a staccato of yelps. Then, silence.
"Dogs," the Warder turned back toward the shelter slung to the side of the hill, "we have to go, right now."
Ghedlyn tipped her head back so that the rain spattered her face, eyes closed. She relaxed, a flower bud facing toward the sky, waiting. The sun of saidar flashed down onto her as she embraced the source. She drank in the sweetness, feeling the world grow vibrant and clear until she could sense every droplet of water striking the ground, sense every eddy of breeze and sense even the miniscule crinkling motions in swaying tree branches. She filled herself deeply in the ecstasy of the coursing river right up to the brink. The utter joy and happiness caused her jaw to go slack. It dulled her ingrained fear, suppressing it into the distance outside of the cresting wonderment. She embraced the source as she had her mother in those age-old memories. Long conditioning finally kicked in and she forced herself away from drawing any deeper. Pain came somewhere beyond that.
Opening with flows of spirit and water, she stitched a weave that settled in around her. It tightened onto her body beneath her clothes and into her skin so that she could barely feel it. It had to be just so; each thread placed so that the gaps in saidar were also properly placed. Her hours calculating the dynamics of this weave required it to be precise. Many weaves she knew could be swiped together in a heartbeat, but new ones, complicated ones, demanded conscious care so as not to buckle or rip apart before they were complete. Depending on the stresses in its fibers, a buckling weave could burn out her ability to channel, or explode and kill everyone around her. Because of how dangerous forming a truly new weave could be, very few Aes Sedai ever attempted it. Ghedlyn rode the edge, flying through the unknown guided by logical deduction and pure experience. She channeled flows she had carefully planned and looped them together so that they meshed exactly as she had foreseen they should, in a pattern perhaps never attempted before in any age of the world. Finally, she inverted the weave and tied off its flows. Under continuous stress, it would eventually collapse, but she thought the decay rate would give her time enough.
Tavis ripped out the stakes holding up the skin and raveled it into a roll. The girl, Maray, and the yet unnamed sul'dam stared up at him in surprise. Tavis dropped the roll of skin into the girl's arms, turning immediately to gather his saddle bags. Ghedlyn saw him fix a sharp eye on the blond haired sul'dam, "You came dead weight and we were kind enough to leave you be, but I can ill-afford to drag you any longer. Will you carry yourself? I can leave you here for your fellow Seanchan if you wish. Or you can ride out with us of your own free will. While I had hoped we might speak about what you said yesterday, I fear the Wheel weaves as it will. What is your choice?"
The woman regarded him with reddened eyes, her short blond hair a straggling mess. She sniffed through a clogged nose. She fingered the collar at her neck, "The collar... if you..."
Maray lifted the bracelet on the other end of the leash with her free hand, "Will you go along?"
Tavis glanced at the grime encrusted girl. Ghedlyn blinked several times.
"I... I... I... will go with you," the sul'dam stammered, her eyes fluttering. She sat on her knees beside where the fire had burned in the hollow. Her blue dress soaked up wetness from the drizzle.
The warder draped his saddle bags onto the tall, black Farstrider, who nodded his head and whickered. Tavis stroked the horse's mane and whispered something to the animal. Finally, he spoke to the sul'dam, "If you do anything to compromise the safety of my charge, I will kill you."
Ghedlyn swallowed hard.
"You two take Lorentz," Tavis took the roll of skin from the girl and pointed toward Ghedlyn's dun colored mount, "Ghedlyn will ride with me on him." He patted Farstrider.
The tiny Domani Aes Sedai struggled to find the right words. She had to speak quickly, she knew she needed to, but she could not find the right thing to say. After he helped the girl and the sul'dam onto the other horse, Tavis grabbed Ghedlyn's hand and dragged her toward his own horse. With a wordless yelp, Ghedlyn jerked her fingers from his. She drew herself up, backing slowly away. She did not know how else to refuse.
Tavis turned on her questioningly, his wet gray hair streaming over his round, kindly face and sharp blue eyes. Ghedlyn took another step in the opposite direction. "What is this?" he demanded.
Ghedlyn shook her head, refusing to meet his gaze. "Here. It must be here."
"This is not smart," Tavis came toward her. She rarely realized how wide his shoulders actually were, or the thickness of his arms. In anger, the man could probably uproot a tree. "I cannot leave you in this sort of danger. You won't survive it!"
"It must be here," she whispered. "It must be here. You must go." Not knowing what else to do, she channeled. Ghedlyn spun thick cords of air which she looped around her warder to lift him bodily off the ground.
"Aes Sedai!" the big man cried out in fury as he was deposited bluntly into his saddle. "I have to protect you!"
A few thready howls and yelps drifted through the intermittent trees. Behind them rose the sounds of men shouting to one another.
"Go," Ghedlyn begged him. "Three days. Remember, please. Three days."
Grabbing up Farstrider's reins, he physically shook with rage, "This is not sane!"
"Go," the small woman pleaded again. She channeled a trickle of air and flicked the horse in the rump. Farstrider whinnied, rearing to flail his hooves. Astride, Tavis glared down at her.
He gave a snort, "Go! She will buy us time!" Tavis heeled Farstrider into motion and smacked Lorentz into following on the way past. The blue dressed sul'dam sat behind the dirty, tattered girl in the saddle of the dun mare. The girl, Maray, held low to the reins, the warder's color shifting cloak fanning up behind her. The sul'dam grabbed tight to the girl, but cast Ghedlyn a teary look over her shoulder as the two horses thundered off around the low rising hill. Tavis rode with his head held high and did not glance back.
Ghedlyn could feel her warder's anger surging through the bond. She wondered if he would ever fully understand or forgive. Sometimes he got so angry that it curled her toes.
Standing wrapped in her white fringed cloak, the Aes Sedai turned to face the forest alone. Her knees shook with fear that glossed around the worldliness of saidar that held her. She would give her warder a chance to escape. At the very least, she would protect his retreat with her sacrifice. If only she could decide exactly how to do that.
Wet, ruffled gray wolf-hounds with short docked tails came through the trees in twos or threes. They bounded on lengthy shanks with flowing full-body strides, their tongues lolling as they yelped to one another and ran. As long and tall as their bodies were, they could probably match a horse for speed. Ghedlyn had never seen dogs quite like them before. The breed had a distinctly foreign feel that she did not know except as a texture of strangeness.
Feeling sorrow, Ghedlyn allowed her eyes to narrow and her head to tilt slightly to the side. Saidar almost always knew what to do as quickly as she could think of it. She reached out with conservative flows of spirit, air, water and a touch of fire. The weave danced into being and enveloped the lead dog charging toward her. It gave a funny bark and crashed headlong onto its face in mid-stride. Ghedlyn leaped out with the weave several more times, dropped one dog, then another, then another. "...I think maybe..." she whispered to herself as she worked. If she made the symmetry of the weave a little different. If she altered the flows this way rather than that way. If she laced it through this part of the dog just a little differently than before. If she removed those strands and used saidar just a bit differently. She became so utterly engrossed in refining the method of this particular weave that she almost did not realize that no more dogs were approaching her. Gray bodies littered the ground.
Ghedlyn blinked. Twenty seven dogs! Three sets of nine! Had any slipped past her? She did not know.
The first dogs lay panting on the ground, their eyes spinning in their sockets. Several managed to shakily recover their feet, but could only walk in dazed circles whining or crying. Several came up growling and foaming, immediately laying into each other with bear-like roars and flashing teeth. Ghedlyn cupped her ears against the sound of dogs biting into one another, cringing at flying spittle or blood. Still other hounds, the last she had brought down, managed to find their feet, and darted off at a loping run back in the direction they had come.
Men in colorful lacquered armor emerged through the trees. They wore fearsome helmets shaped like insects or demonic beasts. "Heel, heel," one called as he ran, making a hand gesture at the hounds charging back in his direction. "Heel! Heel!" he shouted, but the dogs sprinted in at him all the faster. One lunged at the man growling, white teeth flickering even far enough away from Ghedlyn to see it. Two dogs brought down one of the soldiers while another clubbed a dog aside and recovered enough from the unexpected attack to draw his sword.
"It was defense," Ghedlyn whispered to herself in mortification, "defense. Not against oaths. Not against." She wanted to hide.
"Morat'canine something is wrong with this light-blinded beasts!" men defended themselves with flashing steel. "Watch out, they are biting!" The dogs and their cloven pieces rapidly fell.
"The marath'damane!" one soldier pointed with his sword, "she is here!" Other men were appearing between the trees. "Archers!"
Ghedlyn trembled. Men. Facing her. Bringing out bows and arrows and crossbows. She knew crossbows.
"Do not kill her, she is valuable!" a woman ordered in a slurred accent.
"Ashes to that," one soldier spat, "it is her or us!"
Ghedlyn could not stop her knees from knocking. She felt so much fear. Saidar almost slipped away from her. Dimly, she considered that her ultimate objective was for naught if they managed to kill her. She wished she had allowed Tavis to drag her away.
Soldiers with tall bows strowed into the open where she could see them. They fit shafts of wood to their strings and drew feathered fletchings to their cheeks.
Ghedlyn formed a simple weave of air. Wind whipped around her in a flurry of gusts that bubbled out in all directions, upward and sideways.
The first flashing broad heads were on their way in the next instant as bowstrings twanged sharply against wood. Other men from behind the cover of trees launched as well, sending a hail of feathered shafts flying at the solo Aes Sedai. Ghedlyn's wind interfered with the flight, pushing projectiles outward in curves that flew wide of her to all sides. She found herself shaking to her bones when an arrow destined for her heart arched downward in the wind and slammed into the water logged ground at her feet.
A sul'dam and damane stood back by a distant tree, barely visible. The woman in gray did not embrace the source, though she and her master watched intently what Ghedlyn was doing.
"Bring her down!" men continued to advance beneath the waves of arrows that flew awry. They were coming regardless.
Ghedlyn tried a new trick. Lacing strands of fire into her sheath of protective winds to help keep the air moving and water to disperse the unnecessary heat, she tied off the swirling flows so that she would not have to put effort into maintaining them. Then, with a simplistic mesh of air, she pushed open a massive hole in the atmosphere in the shape of a cone such that the wide end faced away from her. The weave was not complex, but the sheer force of the atmosphere weighing in on itself as it tried to fill the hole required a good deal of Ghedlyn's full strength. This technique she knew well; she had invented and mastered it facing Trollocs. She did not make it as strong as it could be made, though she knew how to make it such that it performed as she wanted. She fired it off by simply releasing the weave.
Air slammed in to fill the conical void, snapping closed first at the pointed end in a wave that ran out toward where the widest part of the vacuum had been. From Ghedlyn's side, near the point, the effect crashed like the roll of thunder from a lightning stroke nearly hard enough to knock her off her feet. From the other side, the closing shock reinforced itself almost into a solid wall of noise.
The traveling shock wave flew as fast as a voice through the air, blowing up rainwater, mud and even snapping branches from trees. Men blew off their feet like toy boats tossed by a towering wave. Those thrown aside lay where they fell. Right at the focus, the pressure wave could instantly kill, but Ghedlyn had not let any of the soldiers in that close. At a short distance, the shock brought immediate unconsciousness, and nausea from broken eardrums. Farther away, felled men struggled with disorientation and a few vomited in the mud. Not one of the soldiers remained fully afoot and none of the archers continued to fire on her.
Ghedlyn turned to run and collided headlong with a man in green-tinted armor. During her fight, she had not seen him coming. From Ghedlyn's side, he had barely felt the pressure wave. Saidar left her in a whisper, bringing down the usual subdued absence. Ghedlyn tried to scream, but the flat of his sword met the side of her head in a full-on swing.
The flash of stars exploding in her vision was all she knew before the world went dark.
End Chapter 3
This story is copyright Greg Smith 2005
Please do not use any part of it without my permission.