DISCLAIMER: I own neither Buffy the Vampire Slayer nor the Wheel of Time; they are the property of their respective authors, publishers, and probably a half-dozen other entities woven together in a more complicated weave than the Age Lace. If I could figure that out, I'd be a good IP lawyer. If I were the author, I'd be making you pay to read this. Unfortunately, looking around my rather Spartan apartment, I think it's safe to say that I'm neither, or there'd be a Tesla Roadster in my driveway. Don't sic the Trollocs on me.
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: All Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel through Season 4 (no secondary sources, however); all main books of the Wheel of Time through Knife of Dreams. Of course, the WoT-verse is sufficiently complex that I'd be hard pressed to get everything right.
CHAPTER 6:
WHERE ONE BELONGS
Buffy stood still, watching the intruder in her dream-home for a long minute after the sound of his name died out. The name meant nothing to her, but the way he said it suggested that he expected it to mean something to her. Probably some famous warrior in the Aiel world. That sword and armor were not decorative, and he clearly knew how to use them.
"I'm sorry," she said. "But I still don't know you, and this is my house. I'm gonna have to ask you to leave." In truth, she really wanted the man to stay, wanted to find out how he knew of Sineya and the Scythe, but she wasn't about to start sharing her own secrets, especially her vulnerability here.
Artur returned her gaze levelly. "Your house?" he replied languidly after a moment. He looked around. "Tel'aran'rhiod belongs to all and none. The only things here that are truly yours are the body and spirit that you bring with you, and if you aren't careful here, even those can be taken from you."
"Hm, you think maybe by people who barge into others' homes uninvited?"
She saw him mouth the word barge and think for a moment before responding. "I meant no intrusion, but you need to hear what I have to say. If you want me gone before then, you'd better use that." He nodded at the Scythe in her hands. "And use it well."
Buffy sized him up. It was tempting. But perhaps the direct approach wasn't called for here, much as it had its appeal.
"I don't have all night," she said at length.
"I won't take long," he said. "But the more I stand here, the more I'm convinced that I do know you, even if you don't. I recognize Sineya's mark on your spirit. And you do, too. Don't even pretend to me that you've never heard that name before."
"I know the name," Buffy admitted. "But I'm not her. She died eight thousand years ago in my world."
"Eight thousand?" Artur seemed surprised, but shrugged a moment later. "Time is not the steady stream for which it is oft mistaken," he noted. "She vanished two thousand years ago in this world. The Horn called to her, and she did not answer. We have practically forgotten her over the years."
"Horn?"
"Ah." His eyes sparkled, as though Buffy had just given something away, though for the life of her, she could not understand what. She had already made it pretty clear that she didn't come from this world, so why should it be so surprising that she didn't know what horn he was talking about? "The Horn of Valere calls us forth, those bound to it by our deeds in the waking world in ages past, to fight the Shadow, weaving us out into the waking world and returning us here, to Tel'aran'rhiod, when its call is ended, awaiting our next rebirth. Sineya was one of us. For a brief time. Then she vanished. We thought she might have been claimed by balefire, but there was no evidence of that, and few knew the secrets of balefire by the end of the Trolloc Wars."
"So you're what? Two thousand years old?"
Artur chuckled. "What is age to a dream?"
"So you're not dreaming."
"Now? I do not dream. I am a dream. But I see that you are not. You are here, somehow, now, and fully grown. You should be a baby sucking at your mother's breast if you just now returned to the world of flesh."
"OK, little TMI there," Buffy noted. "And I wasn't just born here. Does this look like anything you have here?" she gestured around at the basement around her ... the electric lights, the washer and dryer, the smooth concrete floor, the water heater, the breaker box.
Artur, still apparently puzzling over the meaning of "TMI," shook himself and looked around. "No," he admitted simply. "I have never seen the like."
"So I'm not Sineya. I'm sorry. I don't belong here. I belong in my world. I have people there who need me, and who are going to be worried about me."
Artur nodded. "Perhaps," he said. "But I would hope that what I just told you would prove that things are not so simple. I'm sure you have a place in your world. By your age, Sineya was already well on her way to earning the heron, and designing her own weapons as well. Including that one."
Sineya designed the Scythe? Buffy was almost hurt. She hadn't the slightest clue about how to design a magic weapon. Was that supposed to be in the Slayer Handbook somewhere? Hmph. "Things have to be simple," she replied. "Letting things get complicated is how you get killed."
To her surprise, Artur threw back his head and roared with laughter. "You have Sineya's mind as well as her spirit. She would have said nothing different." His eyes narrowed and sharpened. "Be careful. Sineya let her dislike of complexity lead her to a dark place before she vanished, along with the rest of Aridhol. Some lines were not meant to be crossed, even in fighting the Shadow. Then again, in all her lives, Sineya was never much for playing by the rules, so I probably waste my breath."
It was Buffy's turn to laugh, though hers was more restrained than Artur's. "We do have a lot in common. But I'm really not here to cause trouble. I just want to go home."
Artur smiled. "I wish you the best of luck in finding your true home," he said. "Perhaps we will meet again in the dream." Without further warning, he vanished.
Buffy was silent for a long time after Artur left. Sineya. The Scythe. And some other things that she was less sure of. Rebirth? Horn of Valere? The heron? Aridhol? A dark place? The power of the Slayer is rooted in darkness. She thought she had solved that mystery. The shamans of prehistoric Africa had blended the essence of a dark, ephemeral demon with a young girl of their tribe, creating the First Slayer. Now she wasn't so sure anymore. Did that make sense? The power of one demon and one girl against thousands of demons and vampires throughout nearly eight thousand years of Earth's history? For that matter, a demon somehow allowing a human to be reborn, or a demon itself being reborn, to create the line of Slayers, a line that had nothing to do with actual ancestors and descendants? She had always chalked it up to just "magic" and shrugged it off, but she had been around magic—and demons—long enough by now to know that even in the magical world, some things were less credible than others. Had that black essence actually been a demon? Had creating the First Slayer and the line of Slayers that would follow her been so simple? Humans were infected with demons all the time. Vampires were such a hybrid. They didn't come back when you killed them.
So what, then? Shamans of eight thousand years ago on Earth sucked a girl away from two thousand years ago here? Well, stranger things had happened. Bitter memories of being sucked out of the tranquility of the afterlife surfaced, but she buried them quickly; she was trying to think, not wallow in some of the darker corners of her past. Besides, it wasn't like the girl had been sucked out of Heaven; she had been sucked out of this world. A living world.
Or a dreamworld.
Artur hadn't said where Sineya was when she vanished, she realized. Had she been here? If this dreamworld could possibly touch Earth, and Sineya had been here, not in the waking world of this place, when the shamans performed their little ritual, would that have done it? A dream. Sineya could have been like Artur—here entirely, not just when her living body was asleep. Awaiting our next rebirth. Artur had hinted that he had been born and died many times as well, and that there were others, others associated with this Horn. Maybe Sineya had died before being called by the shamans on Earth? Or maybe not. It was obviously possible to get from this world to Earth, or at least from Earth to here, while still alive—the shamans had not had a Portal Stone that she could see, but that didn't mean that there weren't other ways to get back and forth.
Ugh. Too much thinking. And too many unanswered questions. She sighed. There was no help for it. She returned to her bedroom to go to sleep. She was too exhausted to look out the window, where she might have seen the faint shadow of a man descending across the lawn in the silvery moonlight, the massive, looming shadow of a man with a sword at his waist, silent and thoughtful.
The sun had still not fully crested the eastern rim of the valley of Rhuidean when Willow awoke, staring at the ceiling of the tent she shared once again with the two Slayers, but the bustle of the camp gave her the impression that she had slept late, anyway. All the Aiel were already awake, as were Buffy and Faith. Those two could operate on so little sleep, it was unfair. Then again, it had been equally unfair of fate to shoulder them with the burden of trying to work a normal job during the day and as the Slayer at night, so perhaps there was some balance there, but there were times when she would have given anything to have their stamina.
Not that she was feeling all that tired. Far from it. In fact, she felt more alive than she had in years. Ever, even. It was that tree. Something about it sung in her veins. It radiated energy on a scale she had never seen on earth, a second sun that she could have pointed straight towards with her eyes closed. If the British coven where she had gone for "rehab" had ever heard of the like, they had never shared the secret with her. Nor had Giles. On Earth, she would never have dreamed of even attempting the display that she had given the Aiel last night. Here, it had almost been second nature, almost as if the lifeforce of the tree was pent-up, waiting to be tapped, to use her as a channel—she was under no illusions that she had been the one in control of whatever rite she had performed last night. The tree was not sentient, but it had a primal will of its own, operating at a far deeper and more irresistible level than human thought—a will born of purpose, inexorable as the turning of the seasons or the rising of the sun. The thing had been burned! Blackened! Had it been possessed of even more power before then? If it had, she might want to be grateful for the damage; her head was already swimming, and she didn't want to think what an even greater power source might have done to her. Or had the burning been of no real import, a mere cosmetic scar, touching only the meaningless facade of the tree's true essence?
She stretched, and her hand touched something unfamiliar, something alive. It was soft, moist, and surprisingly cool. She sat up quickly. A thin circle of mushrooms had blossomed around her overnight, pushing up through the sandy soil of Rhuidean as though it were a shady forest glen. She shook her head. We need to get out of here. Not just because they had to get home, but because they had to get out of Rhuidean. She did, at least.
Somehow, they must have known when she awoke. A white-robed gai'shain entered the tent after only another minute, bearing a bowl of something that might have been oatmeal sweetened with—what else—hiari gourd. When the man left, she ate quickly, and slipped back into the clothes Alsera had given her, a lightweight, sandy algode dress with baggy sleeves and sturdy leather shoes.
When she left the tent, she intended to just find someone to ask where Buffy and Faith had gone, but Alsera was there, waiting. "Walk with me," she said. She turned and glided off among the tents. Willow followed.
"That song you sang last night," Alsera asked. "Where did you learn it?"
"The song?" Willow had expected questions about growing the gourds, but this was the last place she would have expected to start. "I didn't. Those weren't words. Just ... music. Part of the channel for the power."
"I see. Where did you learn to sing it, then?"
"I didn't, either," Willow said again. "It just ... happened. I just kind of went with it."
Alsera took this in. They walked another several steps in silence. "Do you control it? Or need to?"
Willow was so startled that she missed a step. How much did Alsera know? "Control what?"
"Whatever power it is that you use. Does it have a name?"
Willow shrugged. "I guess it has a lot of names. Most people call it 'magic,' but I'm not a huge fan of that word. But I can't think of a better one. And ... well, of course you need to control it. Otherwise ... I don't know. But it can't be good." Her mind flashed back to the dark period in her life when she had definitely not been in control. Definitely not good.
Alsera smiled. "You know nothing of saidar, am I right?"
"Is that what you use?"
Alsera nodded. That glow appeared around her again. Willow was starting to see it more clearly now, without having to exert her eyes, though she still had no idea what it meant. She wondered if the woman were even aware of it. A moment later, a small ball of fire appeared, hovering in the air above Alsera's upturned palm.
"Saidar is the female half of the True Source, the force that turns the Wheel of Time, which weaves the Pattern of Creation," she explained. "But seizing, controlling that power ... if you try to grapple with it, to wrestle it, you will feel like you're wrestling a sandstorm. You can't grapple it, but it can swallow you." As she spoke, the ball of fire flickered and became green, then blue, then white.
"But you're controlling it now, aren't you?"
Alsera smiled. "The flows, the weaves, yes, I suppose, but they do not come from trying to bend or force saidar to my will. Opening oneself to saidar is a supreme act of submission. You don't reach out to it; you let it fill you, and then ride the flows, ride the wind of them, and then, only then, you find that you can guide them to do as you will. Saidar will not fill those who fight it." Her smile sharpened. "That act of submission is ... not easy for some of us, at times." Willow grinned. She could imagine; Alsera was a commanding woman. Hearing her talk of submission to anything was strange.
"Can I ask you something?"
"You can ask," Alsera replied lightly.
"Is ... saidar ... stronger in Rhuidean?"
"Stronger?" Alsera's look was puzzled. "Saidar is everywhere and nowhere. It exists outside of place and time. I have heard tell of places where it is difficult to sense, but such places are rare, and are usually in some way separated from the world as well."
Willow nodded. She appreciated what Alsera had been trying to say about saidar, and how it could not be fought, only guided, but she was talking about something different than the great tree, since its power would almost certainly fade with distance. And it very much existed in this world, not outside it, though it might exist beyond this world as well.
"My power is different," she confirmed. "It comes from within the world, not outside it. Everything in the world has power of its own—objects, places, natural forces, people, words, actions, feelings, everything that makes up who we are and the world we live in. I know how to use that." She reached out her hand, and a small stone leapt into it. "It's not 'everywhere and nowhere,'" she continued. "This stone doesn't exist outside this valley. Its aura, its presence, doesn't affect the world much farther away than we can see from right here. There are things I can do in some places, or some times, or with some people present, that I can't do otherwise.
"That weapon I used against the shadows? I would have a hard time pulling that off in a Buddhist temple. Erm ... a really peaceful place full of really peaceful people, probably one that's been that way for hundreds of years."
Alsera smiled. "The Three-fold land is not such a place."
"Actually," Willow replied. "Rhuidean feels so peaceful, I can't even begin to explain it." She turned a wry gaze on the older woman. "The battle fury I put into those coals came from Faith and Buffy. And from you. Well, Aiel, anyway."
She had wondered if it were safe to tell Alsera that, and only her nagging suspicion that she would have almost no chance of putting a lie, or even a significant omission, past the Aiel Wise One convinced her to say that. That, and the fact that her concentration had been off ever since she first laid eyes on that great tree rising above the palaces to the east. Alsera's reaction surprised her; the Wise One threw back her head and laughed. "I trust we had more than enough for that," she said. She sighed, and her expression sobered. "You would not be so surprised to feel the peace of Rhuidean had you been here four years ago. A great deal has changed since the coming of the Car'a'carn." A distant but sharp look entered her eyes, and Willow guessed that there was definitely a story there—probably several novels, in fact—but something told her that this was not the time or place to ask.
"I believe your friends want to leave for Tar Valon soon," she continued.
Willow nodded. "I think we've done all we can here. No Portal Stone guru is going to just show up here." Plus, I need to get away from that tree.
Alsera nodded in agreement, and the two of them walked silently for another minute or so. The Wise One left her as Buffy and Faith came into sight, once again picking over the supplies at Maglor Egan's wagons.
The gathering of Wise Ones in Tel'aran'rhiod had grown past the point when the tent they used as a common area could hold it. Word begun to spread of the strange women who had appeared on the slopes of Chaendaer, in the very spot where the Car'a'carn himself had first returned to the Three-fold Land. Alsera had thus moved the meeting to her home at Shiagi Hold, where there was both more room and less risk of being spotted by Buffy Summers should she happen to return to the tent city in the dream. There were easily forty in attendance tonight, including Amys, Bair, and several of the others who had followed the Car'a'carn until his recent vanishment. As for the two warrior-women themselves, it was a near-certainty that Buffy Summers was somewhere in the dream, as her body slept soundly in the waking world, warded by her spear-sister, and her dreams were nowhere to be found. The odds that she slept dreamlessly tonight were, in Alsera's mind, little higher than the odds of rain in the heart of the Waste tomorrow. She did not sleep in that strange bed of brass in their tent in the Rhuidean tent city tonight, however. Alsera had been able to sense that Buffy had appeared there, but then left, and her trail, though not subtly concealed by any stretch of the imagination, faded into darkness through which Alsera was not sure if she could follow, and she was considered above average among the dreamwalkers. Perhaps Amys might trail her through that. Or, she conceded grudgingly, Egwene al'Vere, if the wetlander woman had learned as much as distant rumor led one to believe. Buffy Summers still hadn't the faintest inkling of how to cover her tracks in Tel'aran'rhiod, but she had directed herself to a murky and distant corner of the dreamworld, a long way from the world that Alsera knew, where the tenebrous swirl of the dream itself was enough to deter the Wise One from following.
Alsera was not the only one with news of the two foreign women to share. The news that Amys and Bair had attempted—and failed—to teach Faith how to leave the dream at will was news to Alsera as much as it was to anyone else.
It was not the foreigners' strange dreamwalking abilities—or liabilities—that burned in Alsera's mind most tonight, however, nor Willow Rosenberg's ability to channel a power of which no Wise One—and likely no Aes Sedai living—had ever witnessed. It was what Willow Rosenberg had done with that power the previous evening, something that was about to convince her to break one of the strictest taboos among the Wise Ones and Clan Chiefs.
"I have one last favor to ask," she said, primarily to Amys and Bair, but directing her voice so that all the Wise Ones in the wetlands could hear.
"Of course," Amys replied, arching an eyebrow. Wise Ones were seldom so hesitant as to ask permission merely to ask for a favor. Alsera, in particular, had little need to ask—her standing with the others here was higher than all but perhaps four or five, though Amys was one such.
"Tell me ... do the Lost Ones still pass near Caemlyn?"
Like nearly all corners of Tel'aran'rhiod, the phantasmal hallways of the White Tower were ghostly silent, save for the occasional hint of an unidentifiable rustle in the distance that might have been no more than one's own wandering imagination. Egwene al'Vere had become accustomed to the silence of the dreamworld in the years since her first baby steps into that world, but there was something all too brooding and oppressive about the atmosphere in the dream here. It was not the awe-inspiring, pristine stillness of the deep wilderness, nor even the deserted emptiness of normal cities like Tanchico. The atmosphere in the dream here reflected the weight of the mistrust that had poisoned the Tower—all the more since Elaida had risen to power. The halls of the Tower were broad and high, and opened frequently onto broad windows and grand balconies, yet the dream reflected the world as people made it as much as the world as it was shaped by boundaries of stone and sky. The air here was as heavy as in the Heart of the Stone in Tear. The Aes Sedai under Elaida distrusted even each other, a terrible truth given that the presence of Egwene's own army on Tar Valon's doorstep should have united them against her, if nothing else. The fact that it had not was part of what gave her hope that she could turn them back to her side, unite them once again, and make the Tower whole and hale in time for the Last Battle. Tarmon Gai'don would not wait on the squabbling among the Ajahs to work itself out.
She still was not entirely sure in her mind whether Beonin had betrayed to Elaida that Egwene had been dreamwalking freely, and thus able to roam the Tower and communicate with her army outside its walls, even as her body slept in the bowels of the Tower's dungeons. Nevertheless, even if Elaida were aware, the usurper Amyrlin had been unable to ward her, or even to shield her own dreams. Egwene had not yet taught Beonin that weave before the Gray sister had betrayed her to Elaida.
Elaida's dreams were turbulent and fitful, though so scattered as to be uninformative regarding anything more than the usurper's state of mind. That, Egwene noted with a somewhat shameful twinge of grim satisfaction, was far more anxious than Egwene's own, even though Elaida slept in quarters fit for a queen and Egwene languished in the dungeons.
Abruptly, a new presence entered her awareness, within arm's reach behind her. Then another. She tensed, but relaxed quickly. A warm smile crept across her features, which by itself lightened the atmosphere.
"Amys," she turned to give the elderly Wise One a warm embrace. "Bair."
"Is it safe to talk here?" Amys asked.
Egwene raised her arms lightly into the gloom. "This is my home," she replied.
"That is not what I asked," Amys replied, the light spark in her eyes robbing her barb of most of its bite. "Besides, your home is full of rats, both with and without tails."
Egwene laughed mirthlessly. "Alcair Dal?"
Amys nodded, and Egwene willed herself to the bowl-shaped valley in the Waste where Rand had first proclaimed his identity to the Aiel. She set herself down on the same ledge where she had stood before, only a few steps from the man himself. She looked at the star-speckled desert sky, remembering what it had been like to see that crystal void darkened with thunderclouds, the first time in most of the assembled Aiel's lives they had ever seen such a phenomenon. Rand had summoned them as a somewhat blunt way of getting the Aiel's attention. The Aiel had threatened to riot after he had revealed to them that their past wasn't the forgotten era of martial glory most had always imagined it to be. The distraction had been successful, to put it mildly.
Amys and Bair appeared a moment later. "A new thread has been woven into the Pattern," Bair told her. "Three, in fact, which may find themselves entwined with yours before long."
Egwene listened, her wide brown eyes growing even wider as the Wise Ones told her of the mysterious newcomers that had arrived at the Portal Stone above Rhuidean, the warrior women whom the Power could not touch, the redheaded woman who could channel without seeming to touch the Source—while shielded—and who had grown a full crop of food right before their eyes. She allowed herself one moment of pure amazement, just to get it through her mind, before she reined in her thoughts again and began to consider what that might mean.
"And so they come to Tar Valon?"
Amys nodded. "The journey will be several weeks, I think, but we have told them that Tar Valon is the most likely place to find the answers they seek."
"The Portal Stones," Egwene half-whispered, more for her own benefit than the Wise Ones'. "I'm not sure even we have the knowledge of those stones buried in our library. I'm sure we don't have it in the minds of any living sister."
"They would like to meet you."
Egwene's eyes shot up. She hadn't been consciously lowering them, but she had drifted off into her own thoughts for a moment. "You told them about me?"
"Nothing about you personally," Bair replied. Her grin sharpened. "But they did ask for an audience with the Amyrlin Seat."
Egwene found herself giving a sharp grin of her own. It was good to have someone who didn't challenge her claim to the Seat either to her face or behind her back. Of course, as the perverse whim of fate would have it, that would have to be the Aiel Wise Ones—whose opinions of Aes Sedai in general were somewhat less flattering than almost any other group of people under the Light. What respect they gave her, she had earned as their apprentice, not been accorded because of her title.
She would never have had it any other way.
"Where are they?" she asked.
"How are you guys doing that?" Willow asked glumly, trying to force her form to ... well, form. Buffy and Faith both looked as solid as they did in the waking world. In fact, in some ways, even more so, as Willow could see shades of the power they held here that were hidden beneath the mundane robes of flesh outside the dreamworld. Granted, this was her first time in this world, but she didn't like looking down at herself and seeing almost nothing there. Her clothes had rippled between the Aiel garb and about ten different Earth outfits since she had been brought here.
She didn't dare even look at the tree.
Buffy had somehow managed to pull her out of her own dreams and into this place, at the very Portal Stone where they had entered this outlandish world. According to Buffy, all it took was an effort of will to bring someone here, indeed, to do almost anything here, but it seemed like Buffy and Faith could do a great deal here by sheer force of will that was completely beyond Willow. They could alter their clothing and even their bodies almost effortlessly, and hold them that way. Willow couldn't even keep her own clothes from shifting carelessly, sloppily, from one outfit to the next. Worse, her own form was misty and transparent, more solid than a hologram, but only barely. Worse than that, was that the enormous presence of the tree was a hundred times stronger here than it was in the waking world, or maybe it was simply that it felt stronger here because Willow herself felt so much more faint. Even avoiding looking at it, she was already fighting off a headache.
She was trying to avoid thinking that, had Buffy and Faith brought Willow into the dreamworld no farther from the tree than the Aiel encampment, instead of a half day's march farther away and beyond the threshold of the valley, her mind might have shattered like pottery in a rockslide.
"Good evening, strangers."
Willow turned to see a slip of a girl standing near the foot of the stairs leading up to the white stone base on which the Portal Stone stood. Amys and Bair had appeared beside her, but the newcomer somehow held all Willow's attention. She was shorter than either Amys or Bair, and in fact was no taller than Buffy. Her chocolate eyes shone with the light of both youth and experience, a rare combination, and soft brown hair framed her face. A slender green jersey dress with a flowing skirt framed a body that might have had a curve or two more than the Aiel women, but Willow didn't for a moment mistake this woman for soft. There was something about her that spoke of newly forged steel—young, perhaps, but bright and unyielding. A striped stole in seven colors draped around her neck.
"Um ... hi," Willow managed nervously, giving a hesitant wave. She felt extremely self-conscious being the only thing in evidence that was only half-here. The Portal Stone was as solid as Buffy and Faith, and for that matter, the newcomer was not far short of that. The tree, of course, dwarfed everything else. Even the unassuming rocks of the mountainside at least gave the impression of being here, of belonging here; they might as well have been the rocks in the waking world, had they been bathed in true sunlight instead of that soft, misty unlight that came from everywhere and nowhere in this place.
Buffy, apparently, felt no such strictures. "Hi," she said, stepping forward to extend a hand. "Buffy Summers. And this is Faith," she said, introducing her sister Slayer, who was stepping forward as well.
"Guys!" Willow admonished. This was supposed to be some kind of authority figure! You didn't just walk up and shake their hands!
The woman only laughed, and held out her own hand for Buffy and Faith. Amys and Bair's expressions were unreadable, but their eyes were lighter than normal. Of course, that wasn't saying much.
"I am the Amyrlin Seat," the woman introduced herself. "Most people in this world simply address the Amyrlin as 'Mother.'"
Faith choked back a laugh. "Mother?!" she gasped. "Come on. You're maybe two years older than me."
The woman turned a look on her. Faith met the woman's eyes.
For maybe a few seconds.
"Tch. Whatever," she said as she shook her head resignedly and lowered her eyes.
The woman turned to regard Buffy, in turn.
Buffy held her gaze. Unlike Faith, she didn't turn away. The woman seemed to take note of that. After a long moment, without breaking eye contact, Buffy said firmly, if impatiently, "if you've got our ticket out of here, I'll call you whatever you want. Mother." She said the word, but there wasn't exactly the kind of reverence in the title that Willow had hoped Buffy would be able to muster. Or at least fake.
"We will see, child," the woman said before turning her rich brown eyes on Willow. "I will do all I can to see that you are not kept long from where you belong."
Willow's eyes narrowed, just before Egwene's eyes locked with hers. She was no politician, but her mind was working even if her body was not. Maglor Egan had mentioned something about paying careful attention to the words an Aes Sedai spoke, to be sure that you didn't merely allow yourself to hear what you wished to hear, rather than what was said.
She forced herself to meet Egwene's gaze. It was a challenge, but she refused to let herself look away, even though the woman's eyes made her feel as though she were wearing nothing but her skin. A thoroughly amused light entered the woman's eyes as the thought crossed Willow's mind, and Buffy and Faith's eyes widened in shock and horror. The look was only fleeting on Faith's visage, however, before it was replaced with an insouciant smirk.
Willow looked around at them, puzzled, before a horrible realization seized her, and she quickly concentrated on forming clothes around her again. Earth clothes, she decided. A simple linen dress of dyed natural fabric, one of Tara's favorites.
She let her humiliation ignite into anger, enough to meet the woman's gaze again. "My name is Willow Rosenberg, Mother," she said. "And where we belong is in our own world."
An icy gleam touched the Amyrlin's eyes as she said that, briefly slicing across the warmth that usually suffused the deep earthen pools, and Willow knew she had hit her target. Where you belong, the woman had said. Not where you came from.
Her words had touched Buffy, too, she realized, seeing the older Slayer tense, her knuckles whitening imperceptibly for a fraction of a second. An instant later, Faith replayed enough of the conversation in her mind to catch on as well.
"Perhaps," the woman half-agreed. Of course, half-agreeing and agreeing had nothing really to do with one another, Willow reflected.
A brief, heavy silence hung in the air. Then the woman sighed, though she did not release Willow's gaze, and Willow still forced herself not to lower her eyes. "I do not believe any Aes Sedai today knows the workings of the Portal Stones," the woman said. "But if that knowledge exists anywhere under the Light, it exists in Tar Valon. Therefore, Willow Rosenberg, is it not possible that, for the moment, where you belong is in the Tower?"
Egwene's eyes iced. "Maybe. But it's also true that life can take us places we don't belong before it takes us where we do."
"The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills," the woman agreed. This time, the note of agreement in her voice was completely genuine, even though Willow had no idea exactly how that was supposed to amount to an agreement. "And enduring the trials of places we don't belong are part of how we grow into what we must become."
"OK, stop with the battle of the fortune cookies, you two," Buffy grated. "Can you help us or not?"
A warm smile touched the corners of the woman's mouth, belying the words that came out of it. "No," she said.
Willow nodded. "Thank you for coming to speak with us anyway, Mother."
"I was not finished, child," the woman replied.
Willow eyed the woman again, but held her tongue.
"I cannot help you," she said. "And the library of the Tower is open only to those who wear the ring," she continued. "But if you should decide to put on the ring and the white yourself, then perhaps you might be able to help yourself."
Willow's eyes bulged. "You want me to become a ... a ... an Aes Sedai?" she asked. "I don't think Amys and Bair told you, but I don't ..."
"I am aware that you possess an art of which we've never heard," the shorter woman cut her off. "But that does not mean that you cannot learn to channel saidar as well. You have the spark in you. I can feel it even from here, with only a small part of your spirit in Tel'aran'rhiod."
"Hate to break in," Buffy broke in, "but what exactly are we talking about here?"
"The Tower wants to offer a place to belong for all women who can learn to channel. If they have no societies of their own to belong to," she added, with a surprisingly deferential and apologetic nod to Amys and Bair, as though sorry she had thought of that only as an afterthought. "You have the spark born in you. Strong, unless Tel'aran'rhiod is truly addling my senses."
"It isn't," Amys assured her.
"Do you know what that means?" the Amyrlin asked Willow.
Willow shook her head.
"It means that you will eventually start channeling on your own, whether you wish it or not. Only about one in four women survive long after that without guidance. Some of the deaths are painful. Some are simply tragic—women burn themselves out and then lose the will to live. Sometimes it happens quickly, sometimes it takes more than a year. Sometimes several years."
"We don't plan on being here several years," Buffy cut in.
"But sometimes it happens faster than that, doesn't it?" Willow asked. She needed no verbal confirmation. The Amyrlin had already hinted as much, anyway. "And unless we want to try raiding the Tower library, the only way into that library is to become an Aes Sedai."
The Amyrlin ignored the suggestion that they might break in, which, in Willow's mind, was a surer reason to write off that option than had the Amyrlin adamantly denied it was possible. The woman merely smiled sagely. "So you see," she continued, "perhaps, at least for a while, the Tower is indeed where you belong."
"If I say yes," Willow replied, holding up a hand to preempt whatever Buffy was about to say, "what then?"
"When a girl commits to the Tower, she becomes a novice. Novices who progress far enough in their studies test to become Accepted. From there, one must be selected to test for the shawl of an Aes Sedai, an even harder test, of more than mere control of saidar."
Willow smiled. "Thank you, Mother," she said. "But I kind of meant more immediately."
Egwene smiled back. "I am willing to accept you into the novice lists right here, child ... the actual novice book may not be here, but I think I can let the others know if you're coming, and I am willing to trust your word. If your word were not good, it's unlikely you'd be breathing now, given how you arrived here." Willow shrugged uncomfortably, but there was no way to argue the point, nor any sense in trying. "I may have some tasks for you not long afterward, before you can begin your actual studies in the Tower."
"And my friends?"
"They will not be welcome in the Tower as novices, but there are more people in the Tower than merely those who wear the ring. Any hand that can wield a sword is, unfortunately, too valuable in this day and age."
"So they can come with me to Tar Valon."
"They can come with you to Tar Valon. I cannot promise that you will be able to see each other often when your studies begin in truth, however."
Willow grinned. "They're not much for libraries, anyway."
"Hey, I spent a lot of time in the library!" Buffy countered.
"Seriously," Faith added. "I mean, I know we weren't reading or anything, but give us some credit here, huh?"
Willow threw up her hands. "Then I accept."
The woman smiled. "Done." Dear Goddess, what did I just sign on for? the idle thought crossed Willow's mind. As it did, the Amyrlin reached her hand forward, and suddenly, there was a hidebound book in front of her, each page lined with the names of women and their parents and towns and countries of origin. Andor. Cairhien. Tear. Illian. Saldaea. Ghealdan. Shienar. Arad Doman. Mayene. Tarabon. Willow shook her head helplessly, but wasn't about to be completely outdone, even here where the woman was clearly in her element and Willow was equally clearly out of hers. She ignored the quill pen that the Amyrlin attempted to hand her and put her hand on the first blank line. There was a tiny but brilliant green flare along the page, and then the most recent entry in the novice book of Tar Valon read Willow Rosenberg, daughter of Isaac and Sheila Rosenberg, Sunnydale, California.
"Now, child," the Amyrlin continued. "There are some things you need to know, and I have your first task for you already. You have come to us at a rather ... difficult ... time. In fact, at the moment, I am a prisoner in the dungeons of the Tower."
"What?!" Buffy and Faith burst out together. Willow's eyebrows rose, but she saved her breath.
"There is another woman who calls herself Amyrlin, whose name you may hear. Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan. Rest assured that she is not the Amyrlin, and the Tower she usurped is beginning to fall apart around her. It may well be united again before you arrive—the crossing of the Waste is long, and I fear I may mean to burden you somewhat in that crossing as well. However, know that any Aes Sedai who profess allegiance to Elaida for the moment will bear you little love. Should you arrive before the siege of Tar Valon concludes, my army is the one camped on the banks of the river."
"River?" Faith asked.
"Tar Valon's an island," Willow noted. She had been studying enough of Maglor Egan's crude maps to know that much.
"'River?!'" Buffy blurted. "I was more thinking 'siege!' But don't mind me."
"As I said," the woman continued. "Elaida's usurpation is coming to an end. But if you reach Tar Valon before then, take yourselves to Tiana Sedai and Sharina Melloy. Tiana is Mistress of the Novices. Sharina doesn't have a title or even a shawl, but she nevertheless has done wonders helping. A good woman, too."
Willow nodded. "Avoid Elaida and anyone working for her, get to Tar Valon, find Tiana and Sharina."
"Tiana Sedai and Sharina," the woman corrected her, with just a touch of sternness. "You may have a craft beyond us, but while you are a novice, I will expect you to act as one. That includes showing deference to those who have attained the shawl, first and foremost."
"Oh. Sorry. Of course. Mother," she added nervously. She had always been anxious about getting scolded. Some people could just brush it off, but she had never been one of them. It was amazing how quickly she had come to accept the woman's authority, though. It wasn't just her title, either. It really was her. She was already beginning to understand how this woman had been given such a mantle of leadership despite being no older than Willow herself. Of course, it was more than a little unfair that no one had ever told her that the Aes Sedai used "Sedai" as an honorific, but somehow, she didn't think she'd score any points with this woman by talking back.
The woman smiled, and a gentle breeze ruffled the verdant hem of her dress. "It's all right," she said. "No harm, this time. Now, I have another task for you. The Aiel are the caretakers of a great store of ter'angreal which belong to the White Tower. They have lain safe in Rhuidean for thousands of years, but the Last Battle is approaching, and we need every weapon to hand that can be had. It might make more sense to have sisters simply Travel to Rhuidean to pick up the artifacts, but there are—complications—in the relationship between the Aiel and Aes Sedai, and it is unfortunately equally likely that some sisters would get somewhat—possessive—of anything of particular interest they might find."
"Wait ... um ... ter'angreal?"
"You mean all those whatzits in the square?!" Faith asked, her eyes wide.
Willow's eyes widened.
The Amyrlin laughed. "I only ask that, since you are coming, you bring what you can. Also, if you arrive before the siege ends, do not report this to Tiana Sedai or Sharina. The ter'angreal should go to Siuan Sanche. You can trust her." Sadness tinged her eyes. "Or at least I can."
"So, what do you want me to bring?"
The woman smiled. Her smile was warm, but nevertheless commanding. "As much as you can as fast as you can." She thought for a moment. "But in particular, anything connected to Tel'aran'rhiod. Anything that appears in the central square of Rhuidean in the dreamworld should come, if you can carry it."
"That's more than we'll be able to carry right there," Faith noted. Willow breathed a sigh of relief. Faith and Buffy had already been to the Rhuidean central square in the dreamworld; she wouldn't have to go herself, and expose herself to the full force of Avendesora.
The woman nodded. "Unless you find wagons or another means of bringing yourselves here."
"We'll get it done, Mother," Willow assured her. Maybe they could buy or lease one of Maglor Egan's wagons and just stuff it.
"Very good, child," the woman responded. "Now. A little token of my own faith in you ... and to make it more likely that you reach me safe and sound." She lifted her head back an inch, and her eyes grew distant. An image appeared in the air in front of her—one that Willow actually recognized, as did Buffy. It was the jade bracelet that Buffy's shadow had donned to corporealize in the heart of Rhuidean. "I remember seeing this myself in the dream, not so long ago. It's probably the strongest dream ter'angreal that Moiraine Sedai did not take with her in the first caravan to leave Rhuidean, more than a year ago now."
Willow tried to keep her eyes from flashing, and prayed she was doing a better job of it than Buffy. "I know about it, Mother."
"Good. Consider it yours on loan from the Tower, but also consider yourself forbidden to use it to enter the dream save in absolute emergency. Walking the dream untrained is a sure path to an early grave."
Buffy and Faith gave each other morose looks.
"Now for your guardians," the woman said. She turned to them. "Bair tells me you managed to defeat seven armed algai'd'siswai barehanded, and acquitted yourself the match of any Aiel against the Dark One's miasma."
"Um, huh?" Buffy asked.
"We kicked ass," Faith translated.
"Oh. That."
The woman shot Faith a level look, but this time, Faith had recovered enough presence of mind to simply grin and shrug.
"Bair also tells me that in your world, you fight Shadowspawn every day. That you came here prepared to face an army of them."
"I'm always prepared to face an army of them," Buffy countered. "That's the thing. When there are armies of them out there, you're either prepared to face them or you're not."
That actually elicited a fierce grin in reply, and a surprising expression of approval from both Amys and Bair, who had maintained carefully neutral silence throughout the whole encounter, save for when Amys vouched for Willow's ability to channel.
"Well spoken, child," the Amyrlin said. "Tell me, do you use the sword at all, or are all your battles barehanded?"
"Swords ..." Buffy began, and her expression went suddenly distant. Willow's hand went to her mouth; she knew what Buffy had to be thinking. Only one memory involving a sword could bring that look to her face. The expression vanished a moment later, however. "Swords get the job done," she said.
"Then I shall entrust these to your care, for the time being," the woman replied, and another image appeared in the air in front of her. This time, the image was of two identical swords, long enough that they would nearly come to chest height on Buffy. Even in the soft, misty ambient light of Tel'aran'rhiod, the edges gleamed brightly, enough so that at just the right angle, it was even difficult to look at them. Etched into the blade just above the narrow crossguard was the sinuous, stylish outline of a heron standing on one leg.
Buffy took one of the blades and held it up, blade angled downward, and made a few exploratory swings in the air with it. She seemed to approve of it.
Faith was less noncommittal. She took it, spun it around twice forwards and twice back in each hand before relaxing into an effortless, relaxed stance, just casual enough to convince an idiot that her guard was down and just forward enough that she could bring the blade up even if her opponent was a lot faster than he looked. "Wow ... sweet!" she breathed. She even offered the Amyrlin a little bow. "Mother." The most surprising thing, at least to Willow, was that the younger Slayer only sounded partially unserious adding the honorific.
"You'll find them in the waking world in a small rack near the westernmost edge of the central plaza," Egwene noted. "These are Power-wrought blades. They will never dull or chip, and will cut stone more easily than most blades cut wood. May you each prove worthy of the other."
"Thank you," Buffy said, letting out a breath as she did so, as though not entirely believing she was saying it. "Mother," she added, though it still sounded like a rote recitation than a true mark of respect. "It will be good to have a little more than our fists to defend ourselves."
The Amyrlin smiled. "I would send a sister to Travel to bring you all to Tar Valon as easily as crossing a threshold, but they tell me the Power doesn't touch you," she noted. "And I can spare no one to join you for an escort all the way across the Waste. That means the two of you alone will be guarding perhaps the most unique novice to don the white in the Tower's memory, and the Tower's memory is long. I trust you with the swords because I trust you to bring her safely to the White Tower."
"That," Buffy replied forcefully, "I can promise you, Mother."
The woman smiled. "And you might hear me called Egwene al'Vere, or Egwene Sedai, from time to time."
Willow smiled, but decided not to push things. "I'll keep that in mind, Mother."
Her smile broadened, and Willow wonder if she might not have dodged a trap just as the conversation was drawing to a close. "As much as you can, as fast as you can. I'll see you in Tar Valon." She turned, an unseen wind just barely touched the ends of her hair, and between one eyeblink and the next, she was gone.
Author's Note: Sorry about the long gap in between updates! Trying to keep all the information on the Wheelverse straight is something of a challenge, and finding writing time isn't as easy as it was when I was in school, either. Hope you enjoyed this chappie, and as always, I'll try to do better.
Thank you all so much for both your patience and your feedback! You make this all worthwhile. ('Cause Light knows I ain't getting paid for this.)
Coming Soon: Chapter 7, "To Tar Valon." Willow, Faith, and Buffy have a lot of desert to cross to get to the Dragonwall, to say nothing of Tar Valon. Could be a little bit boring. A welcome chance to sit back, take a breath, relax, reflect, and plan.
Hah! Not!