The meeting went well, I thought. While there was certainly fear and uncertainty amongst the incoming leadership Teagj brought, most seemed willing to give it a chance. A few had reacted badly, but it was no worse than Lorni's outburst. I was confident that those who walked could be brought around, with time and care.
I didn't want to leave them to the Others, and as long as they didn't cause trouble, they were as welcome to stay as everyone else.
Mance walked at my side as we descended a stairwell down to the ground floor. His eyes lingered on the decorations that people had carved into the wooden walls while the building was being built, murals depicting portions of stories commonly told by my people.
"How have you been finding First Fork?" I asked him, genuinely curious. Part of me felt a little like I was meeting a celebrity, now that I was thinking straight enough to recognize it. I'd been hearing things about him since my first day here, and he was far more charming in person.
"Hopeful," he replied after a moment's consideration. He looked over at me, eyes warm. "Your men had told me of some of what you've wrought. Having experienced some of it now, I'd say it's not nearly as terrifying as they talked it up to be."
"Oh? What did they say?"
We stepped outside through the main doors of the Tower into the warm sunlight. Mance shaded his eyes with his arm while they adjusted, "Well, they've talked about the tree you shredded quite a bit."
"The tree?" I ask, "That was… A mistake, in hindsight. I've since taken to traveling a mile or so out into the forest to practice. I hadn't meant to scare folks."
Grenwin snorts behind me, "A mistake, she says. It was a display of power, and most of us took it as what she'd do to the Others."
"That didn't work," I remind her, remembering how slick and slippery those threads of Saidar had become just getting close to one of them, before the threads dissipated forcefully. "At least, not directly."
"So, this story about the tree, it was an accident?" Mance asked innocently.
"Yes," I confirm.
He chuckled at that, "Well, it's not exactly worthy of a song by itself. Maybe a verse?"
"Or two," Grenwin added.
Humming for a moment, Mance agreed. "Or two." He chuckled at some private joke, falling silent.
We walked together for a little while further before he bade off, joining a group of newcomers that eyed me with open suspicion. He took their attention quickly, and we left them behind us.
Ygdis peeled off to keep an eye on him, raising a hood to cover her copper hair.
Grenwin set a firm hand on my shoulder, "Maia, wait."
We stopped, standing to the side of the shaded street between two of the mixed-use buildings surrounding the plaza.
Looking up at her, I could see the naked concern on her face. "What is it, Gren?"
She took a deep breath, green eyes boring into mine.
"Are you well?" She gestures to my sword, "This, you don't seem worried about, and that worries me. The dreams you've talked about, and the dreams we've shared, none of this is easy. Aren't you scared?"
"I'm…" Looking into Gren's eyes, I couldn't find it in myself to… What, lie to her? Distract from the issues?
"I'm scared too," I admit, "I have two sets of memories in here," I tap my temple with a finger, "And the lights are offering me a third. Some of my lights have gone, and I think I ate them, somehow." Something caught in my chest, and I shuddered.
"I met a tree who was a dragon, last night. Not the dragons you or Symon have told me about, she was more serpent-like, with a wolfish head and long whiskers. She didn't have wings, but she talked to me, the same way Nis talks to us. She said I was kin. Do I look fucking scaly to you?" My voice raises a little, and I pull back. "Sorry. I'm trying to square it all in my head."
Grenwin doesn't hesitate before wrapping me up in a bear hug. "Tell me everything?" She asked in my ear.
"Where do I start?" I whisper. "You already know I'm a girl and the ghost of a madwoman smushed together, however that works."
"You know you aren't them, Maia." She tells me lowly.
"Maybe. I remember some of Mai's life, flashes and snippets. In more than one, she's bearing witness to mass blood sacrifice. Prisoners, cut like animals, their lifeblood gathering in carved channels, pooling in runic shapes for something. In all of them, there's a man who I think is her father, and he's making her watch these horrible things."
"Mhm," She hummed in my ear, giving me a rib-creaking squeeze.
Once she relaxed and let me breathe in, "And Kasey's life, while better, cuts off halfway through her education. And now, I'm learning through my lights that she was probably insane and somehow she had to get from there to here to meet Mai, and it doesn't make sense! Symon called this world Earth. Kasey called her world Earth!"
I know I'm working myself up, but I can't stop now. It feels like it needs to come out. "And, the lights might be hurting me. I haven't told anyone, but the last few times I've gained something new, I've been knocked out for longer and longer periods. The time before last, a blood vessel in my brain popped for a few seconds. And not taking any when they come also seems to hurt me, or at least cause pain. The way they integrate changes, too, that mechanism shifting how information gets into my head."
She stopped breathing for a moment, in shock or concern, I couldn't tell. Her voice held both, "I don't know, Maia. If you're downed from your gift, that's all the more reason to put together a guard for you, to watch until you recover."
"What if I don't? What if I just fall over and don't come back?" A sob tore its way out of me, sudden tears welling in my eyes.
"We'll carry on," Grenwin said resolutely. "But that won't happen." She grabbed me by my shoulders, forcing me to look at her. "You've said you're still aware while the lights are doing whatever they do to you. That means you'll find your way back to me, no matter what." She said it with strong conviction, intense.
Suddenly, her face was close, her lips pressed to mine for a moment I wanted to last forever. She pulled back after a moment, looking suddenly stricken. "I'm sorry, that wasn't- I didn't-"
"It's okay," I interrupted, emotions in turmoil. "That was really nice." I found I was smiling broadly, for some reason.
Grenwin, clearly relieved, brought me in for another hug.
"Uhm," I said, trying to remember what we'd been talking about. "Right. I'll do my best to come back, trust me."
"Is that why you collapsed when we found the Stedding?"
I considered the fragmentary memories of the event, "It's related, I think. Saidar vanished and I panicked, and I think whatever happened involved me consuming the lights concerning the One Power, somehow. I'm fine, as far as I can tell."
"Okay," Gren acknowledged. "Okay. What happened last night?"
"Oh, I'd been talking to Ellir about the dreams and Dreaming," I make sure to pronounce the capital, "She brought up a ritual that was supposed to bring clarity. It was pretty simple in practice, drinking a sour brew and laying down."
"One of her rituals?" Grenwin sounded amused, "Did it work?"
I pulled away a little to look her in the eye. Nodding seriously, "It did something. One moment I was in my bed, the next I was laying in a moonlit clearing, somewhere in that world of Dreams. There was a woman, with the same snowy hair and ice-blue eyes that Ellir has, and we spoke a little. Her name was Eshe. I showed her First Fork, and she showed me something else."
Wetting my still-tingling lips, "Eshe brought me to the tree-that-was-Kazui, in the dream. She, the tree, was swaying back and forth, and now I realize she had been trying to wake herself." Shivering, "Then, Eshe pushed me off the roots, and I fell. I was high, high in the air," I pointed upward, "and falling swiftly, but it was such a distance it still felt terribly slow. I was over the coast, below the Wall, and I could see all the lands and sea for hundreds of miles."
Taking another breath, "I was falling toward an island that held the Kazui-tree, set in a bay, around which lay verdant land protected by a half-ring of mountain ridges. As I fell below the clouds, the whole thing began to billow acrid smoke and flames, lava pouring out as the land shattered. It felt as much a memory as a warning, and I think we need to make sure it doesn't blow, again. Somehow."
How was I supposed to stop a terrifyingly large super volcano from exploding? Was that why she showed me that? The formation was easily as large as the Yellowstone caldera, if not larger.
"Is that why you left, last night?" Grenwin asked.
Nodding, "Yeah. Well, no." Shaking my head, I frowned. "No, after the ritual, I wanted to be alone. I walked outside and, I'm not sure. It gets blurry, like I was dreaming normally. I didn't come back to myself until the sun rose this morning. Those first rays of dawn chased away a chill I'd not noticed until it was gone."
Grenwin studied me for a long moment, staring into my eyes. Whatever she saw in them, it seemed to satisfy. "You were still you, just a little strange."
From around the corner, I spotted Ellir hurriedly walking, looking around. She spotted me and beelined over to us. "Well, what do you know, there's Ellir."
"Ellir," Grenwin greeted the rejuvenated woman as she approached.
"Maia, Grenwin." She said quickly, blue eyes intense. "There's a slaver camp being built on the ruins of Hardhome. That woman you met was Eshe, and she's still watching out for us."
Gren set her jaw, "Slavers, again." Toward me, "Maia, we need to get rid of them."
"Yes, we do," I agreed with the sentiment entirely. I could feel Yin Nis yearning for me to draw her, to use her to cut away the disease. She was practically vibrating with eagerness. "The sooner, the better. What are you thinking?"
"We scout using your Gateways, drop off the recon teams to take a look around the area. After that, we'll plan depending on what they've built so far."
Ellir raised an eyebrow in surprise, "That's more planning than usual, Grenwin. What happened to charging as a group?"
"I've been studying," the taller woman told her tersely.
"I think it's workable." I said, agreeing with Gren. I sent Herrick a quick message, telling him that something came up and that we'd handle the Knight later this afternoon.
Nodding, the leader of our army pulled out her tablet and began sending messages. "Alright, we should head back to the Tower to brief our commanders. Ellir, can you describe everything you saw?"
On the way back up into the Tower, the wise woman described the construction she'd seen. Four low wooden buildings, arranged on either side of a path leading down to what sounded like a pier that stuck out into the water.
Rather than ascending, we made our way to the room we'd set aside for planning operations like this. Granted, it was a glorified meeting room like the one we'd left earlier, but I felt the principle of the thing was what mattered.
Wyck was the first to enter, followed by Ygdis. The rest of the command structure filed in over the next few minutes as we explained the situation to the best of our abilities. On a whiteboard reproduced from those in the Archive's offices, Ellir drew out the camp as she'd seen it.
Verifying with Gateways took a little bit, 'walking' the exit several miles at a time, following the coast down and then eastward, then northeast as it curved northward again. A couple more jumps and we had our view of their encampment, looking down at them from at least a hundred meters in the air.
Ellir's information was accurate, though she hadn't seen the dozen single-masted wooden sailing vessels anchored in the bay. Uverth identified them as cogs, and from our previous encounter, we knew each one could carry a significant number of people, in addition to their crew.
We could see slaves toiling away around the camp, chopping trees, clearing land, and constructing more buildings and the start of a palisade. They wore different clothes than the slavers, simpler and rougher, making it fairly easy to distinguish them.
All around, taskmasters walked with long switches in hand, giving those slaves that didn't satisfy strikes along the shoulder blades and buttocks.
We couldn't tell how many people were in the buildings, but there were over a hundred working outside at the moment, including the slaves.
A low howl emanated from the cliffs above the camp, and we could see that they were riddled with caves.
Fortunately for us, the slavers didn't seem to be expecting any trouble. What sentries we could see seemed lax, though while we planned, we treated them as if they were as capable as our own.
The plans came together quickly. The scout squads were inserted to the north and south, while I'd open a Gateway every second hour for them to check in via the squad leads tablets. They'd continue to observe for the next couple of days, hopefully undetected, and attempt to identify the leadership and other priority targets.
Nobody wanted the slaves to get caught up between us and the slavers, or to potentially side with their captors.
While the site was under observation, we'd work on expanding quarters here, preparing to take in as many as wanted to join us, as well as the ill and wounded. This was a harsh climate, and those people were not equipped for the chill on the tip of that peninsula.
None of us knew what to do with the ships, however. We didn't have the crew to man them, unless we impressed the Slavers into our service, or the slaves with the knowledge and experience share that with us.
Hours later, I finally caught up with Herrick, bringing Ami straight from the briefing. To my surprise, he'd gathered twenty-five people willing to learn in the intervening time, and we started right away.
It was a hyper-specialized education I was giving them in the months crammed into hours, and even then, we had barely established a foundation. Clearly, the more technical the training, the longer it took.
The experience was oddly personal. Schenburgs's memories were full of eager students, just like these men and women. Those same students would go on to proliferate weaponry and contribute to the end of his world. It hadn't necessarily been their fault, things had already been falling apart, but it stuck with me anyway.
I wasn't a faithful woman by any means, but I found myself praying to whoever would listen to prevent a repeat of that. Logically, I knew it was impossible. There was no other nation on this planet that we knew of with the capability to reproduce the Knight's systems, even if the knowledge were to become widely known.
Maybe I was too concerned with the long term. I'd long since internalized that I'd live for centuries, and with that perspective, my worries felt entirely reasonable to me. I'd see the world change, and I was purposefully letting the cat out of the bag.
What will we be in a year? Five years? Fifty? A century from now, what will our society look like? What relations would we have with our neighbors?
That all assumed we survived whatever the Others were planning. We were in a good position, now, but who knew what they would bring out in the future, or when.