As usual speech in italics is in the Old Tongue.
Chapter XXXV - Can You Forgive The Unforgiveable?
While the Dedicated were intriguingly odd, there was something else in the Stone that captured Taija's attention.
It was Moiraine that told her that there was a store of artifacts from the 'Age of Legends' in the bowels of the Stone. Taija could tell she wasn't happy revealing it to her, that woman kept secrets like they were treasure, but she thought Taija might have more luck than her in identifying what some of the ter'angreal were meant to do.
So one day Taija descended with Moiraine down into the depths of the fortress. She led Taija to a damp, dark room that looked like it was strewn with rubbish. When the ball of light that Taija channeled into the air illuminated it she could see that it might once have been richly decorated and well organised, but now random objects lay haphazardly everywhere.
Taija carefully picked her way through the room glancing at what surrounded her. There must have been well over a hundred items in there, but as soon as she saw it she only had eyes for one thing. A ter'angreal that she instantly recognised. A large doorframe, made of a red stone that seemed to twist to make a continuous edge that her eyes refused to follow. Wavy lines bedecked its sides and edges.
"Do you recognise it?" Moiraine asked, a hint of impatience in her voice.
Taija stared at it for a long moment, "yes, I'd never seen it, but I recognise it. The Aelfinn…" She gave herself a shake, "you know of it?"
Moiraine didn't answer immediately. "Yes. The White Tower has studied it, I am aware of its nature."
"Mmm," Taija stared a little longer before tearing her eyes away. "A dangerous thing to leave unattended. Dangerous for anyone who walks into it. I'm surprised it isn't better guarded."
"No one comes here, the High Lords despise anything to do with the Power," Moiraine didn't seem to be overly interested. "What about the other items."
"Oh. Yes." She'd be back for the doorway when Moiraine wasn't around. Taija started to pick her way through the room, careful not to touch anything without looking at it first. She picked up a small intricately decorated box. "This was used to make video-calls. Umm to view and speak to someone from a distance. Useless now."
She kept looking, "this will produce a bright light from one end if the button on it is pushed down. It should still work." Taija showed Moiraine a torch.
She found a blank screen encased in a metal frame. "This was used for entertainment, imagine seeing a play whenever and wherever you wanted. It wouldn't work anymore."
There was a pistol made of some kind of hardened plastic sitting on a pedastal. Clearly an officer's weapon, it was ornately decorated. Taija picked it up and sighted along it, being careful not to point it at Moiraine or anything potentially valuable. "This was a miniature shocklance. It would shoot… tiny fireballs, but you needed… bolts to put in it and it's useless without them." She pointed it at the wall and pulled the trigger to the sound of a dull click.
"This is a mobile telephone, it was used to communicate over long distances." Taija found quite a few of those. All useless without infrastructure.
She spotted a small ball made of a black metal and while Moiraine was distracted by one of the other items Taija slipped it into a pocket in her coat. It might come in useful at some point and would be a neat trick to have up her sleeve. Once charged with a flow of saidar she could set a timer by twisting it and then it would work as a reusable flashbang.
There was a small, silvery metal rod, separated into two parts that could be twisted separately. "This one's actually useful." Taija tried not to sound surprised. "You can use it to create a bubble of silence, like a ward against eavesdropping, but it also blocks light and electromagnetic signals." She took a certain immature pleasure in not explaining the last two words.
Many of the items Taija discarded as rubbish, nothing to do with the Power or her time.
She found a metal rod with a pair of probes on the end, "this is more interesting. You'd use it to detect electrical activity, umm tamed lightning, perhaps if you were a builder. I think it would still work, but I'm not sure what you'd use it for now."
As Taija progressed through the detritus of her civilisation, doing her best to explain concepts that were blindingly obvious for her to someone who didn't even know what a steam engine was, she found herself getting more and more depressed.
"This one I've got no idea." Moiraine didn't say anything, but Taija had said it about a few things and she could feel her being unimpressed each time It was actually very irritating that Moiraine seemed to expect her to know what everything was. Lots of the objects were mass manufactured, some of them weren't even really ter'angreal in any sense beyond using the standing weaves to function or just simple electricty, but there were thousands, millions of different ter'angreal. Many of them custom made. Why on earth would she know what someone's special, personal 'massage wand' looked like?!
"This one controls the weather in a small radius. If you channel air and spirit into it you can charge it so it'll be useful for a few hours. The very rich would use it for garden parties to ensure good weather, I'm not sure it's got much use to it beyond that." That was a flat golden disc with clouds etched into it.
Finally Taija got to the last item. "Another mobile telephone." She wondered what that said about her world, that half the remnants were mobile phones. "I'm afraid that's it Moiraine sedai. There's nothing more that I can identify."
She nodded graciously, "nevertheless thank you Taija sedai, you have been most helpful."
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Rand sat at the ornately carved desk in his room staring at the piles of reports on it. Callandor was propped up against the wall. He wasn't mad yet. Surely. But it was ridiculous, everyone was looking up to him when he knew what his fate was. He laughed at the dark irony.
He looked up, his laughter cut short when his door swung smoothly open on its well oiled hinges. A servant walked in carrying a jug of wine. It was odd, he hadn't called for anything, but the Aiel had let him past so he supposed it was normal. He was still getting used to being more than just a farmer.
There was a certain tension about the servant though. Something not quite right.
Rand immediately reached for the Power, seeking to seize saidin, just in case.
Instead of feeling the raging torrent of saidin he smashed into an unseen barrier. Panic spiked in him, he'd been shielded!
With a snarl Rand dived for Callandor, only for the air around him to ripple into solidity, leaving him uncomfortably frozen mid leap. All he could do was stare at the 'servant' fury and despair competing for dominance in his eyes.
The 'servant' met his eyes with a hard look of his own and then seemed to waver as his appearance rippled to be replaced a few seconds later by an arrogant looking blonde man, hair and beard cropped short, blue eyes hard and a scar torn across his face. Saidin also seemed to suddenly fill the man, presumably as an inverted web was allowed to dissipate.
Sammael looked at Rand for a long moment before using his web of air to drag him back to a more comfortable position in his chair.
"What do you want?" Rand spat, defiance his last weapon as he stared death in the face.
Instead of the gloating or torture that he expected Rand received an awkward shrug. "Lews Th… Ah Rand… I'm sorry, let me ex… No, you'll understand soon enough." He could feel saidin raging through Sammael, more than he could possibly hold.
Helpless as he was, all he could do was wait for death and watch.
So he looked on with ever wider eyes as Sammael drew his sword. He could see it was a masterwork, herons stamped into the hilt. The sword came slowly out of its sheath and Sammael held it between them as if weighing it up. Then, with a sudden, decisive movement he turned it towards himself, hilt pointing to Rand before laying it smoothly onto Rand's desk.
"W what are you doing?" Rand stammered.
Sammael's reply was terse, "be silent, for once in your life." Rand could feel tension thrumming through the man. "You'll understand soon enough." He repeated.
The Forsaken then pulled a pair of daggers from his belt, again laying them on the desk with their hilts pointing towards Rand. The scowl that Rand had come to associate with the man from their brief encounters was there as strong as ever.
Then came another dagger from inside Sammael's coat and another one from each boot. Each silently placed on the table with careful, almost formal precision, although Rand was sure he could see a slight tremble in the man's hands.
Finally, he reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a long gem encrusted ivory tooth, thicker than Rand's thumb and almost as long as his hand. That too was laid on the table beside the sword. The amount of saidin Sammael held felt like it diminished greatly as he put that down.
Sammael then took a step back and spread his arms. "I am unarmed." His tone was flat, but with a hint of pain to his voice.
At this point Rand was left watching him with shock dominating his other emotions. There was something deeply ritualistic about what Sammael was doing, Rand wasn't sure why, but it somehow felt like a familiar pattern.
Sammael met his eyes then, furious, sharp blue eyes boring into his before he suddenly looked down. Was this it? Was this when it all ended? Some sick joke for Sammael to prove he didn't need weapons to kill him? Rand closed his eyes, perhaps death wouldn't be so bad.
He heard a thump and franticly reached for saidin. The shield was gone! He seized it before opening his eyes, drawing in as much as he could hold, Be'lal's angreal, a statuette of a bald, fat man sitting cross-legged and holding a sword, allowing him to hold far more than he could unassisted. Sammael had sunk to his knees before him. His eyes down and hands clenched in tight fists at his side.
"Lews Th… No. Rand al'Thor. I have wronged you. I have wronged the Light and I have wronged the world." Under Rand's stunned gaze Sammael prostrated himself, folding over his knees so that his forehead touched the cold, stone floor. "I have committed crimes for which there can be no forgiveness. I acknowledge and accept my guilt, I can offer no defence and I do not ask for mercy. I offer you my life, so that my blood might begin to redeem the slightest of my sins. I do not ask for forgiveness, I beg for redemption that I do not deserve."
An old wording, practically ancient and achingly formal, but deeply serious. How did he know that?
Rand didn't know how to react, what to do with a member of the Forsaken on his knees in front of him. In the end all he could do was gasp out one word, "why?"
Sammael straightened up, still kneeling with his head bowed. "I've…" His body language was wildly different to the arrogant confidence that Rand had seen from him the last two times they'd encountered each other. "I've been thinking and… the more I've thought the worse it's been." He took a deep breath, his hands clenching into white knuckled fists at his sides. "I don't want to try to justify myself, there is no justification. I'll just say that since I found that Taija was alive, since I spoke to her, the justifications have made less and less sense. I…"
He trailed off, sounding more like a broken, unsure man than one of the Forsaken. Rand needed to be careful, the Forsaken were manipulators, dangerous. He stood, ready to burn Sammael to a cinder without warning. "Why me? Why have you come here? Why not go to Taija?"
Sammael laughed, a hollow humourless sound. "Going to Taija would have been easy. It would also have been one of the most selfish things I could do. She will never forgive me, how could she? If I offered her my life she'd have to decide whether to take it. How could I do that to the woman I loved, still love? She's burdened with so much already. I've put my actions on top of that. Tel Janin is dead. Sammael is about to die." He sounded utterly broken. "Let her move on, find someone else who'll make her happy."
"You still haven't answered my question." For some reason Rand felt himself growing angrier. Every word Sammael said seemed to inflame something inside him, a mounting urge to kill the man, to make him suffer and watch him burn. "Why me?" He knew his voice was cold and distant filtered through the void.
"You… I could have just killed myself, it would have been easy. Oblivion and an end to my shame. It wouldn't have been enough. It would have been too easy. I hated Lews Therin you know. Even before Taija di… left, I severely disliked the man. I thought he was pompous, foolish and wrong about almost everything. Afterwards, I can't even describe my hate for him. I blamed him for Taija's death. I blamed him for the Light's defeats. I even blamed him for my own failings. I wanted him dead and I wanted nothing more than to do it with my own bare hands." Rand resisted the urge to recoil from the vehemence in Sammael's voice at the same time as he tamped down on the drumbeat of rage inside him that was demanding he exact his own punishment on the Forsaken. "I was wrong though. Oh Lews Therin had his flaws, of course he did, but how could a man like me judge a man like him?"
Sammael took a deep breath and then continued, "What better way to atone for the unatonable than by submitting myself to the man I hated most in the world. I know, you're not Lews Therin, that much is clear to me now. I could have killed you three times in the last few weeks and each time you showed me you weren't." What was the third time?! "But you're still Lews Therin reborn. I must not, cannot take the easy route, so I'm here offering myself to you. My life is forfeit a thousand times over. I deserve to die. I want to die. But it's your choice. I swear under the Light and my hope of salvation and rebirth that I will serve you and the Light to the best of my ability if you so choose. Otherwise, perhaps my blood will serve to wash away some small part of my sins and you'll have one less of the Forsaken to worry about."
Sammael subsided into silence though he was breathing heavily, he seemed to have said his piece. Rand paused for a second, studying the man who knelt there head bowed before him. Internally he was in turmoil, raging torrents skittering across the surface of the void, it was like he felt a voice screaming for him to kill Sammael now.
With a low hiss of metal on leather Rand drew his sword. "I don't know a fraction of what you've done Sammael, but I know enough to say there can be no forgiveness for your crimes."
Rand came round the desk with slow steps and at the same time Sammael reached up to the collar of his coat with trembling fingers and rolled it down exposing the bare skin of his neck. The man was clearly very brave, but terror was starting to show signs in him too.
Kill him! He had to be hard. The Dragon Reborn needed to be able to act. Kill him! Needed to fight for the Light. This man was so dangerous he couldn't even imagine half of what he could do. Kill him! Had committed crimes that made the worst darkfriend look like a kindly grandmother.
Rand stopped beside Sammael, looking down at him as the man bowed his head, fingers digging into his thighs.
Rand raised the sword, hands shaking with the fury hurtling through him. "For what you've done there can be no forgiveness," he repeated the words as he brought the sword down. At the same time he channeled, not totally sure what he was doing, vaguely remembered webs from when he'd first fought Ishamael forming an intricate pattern around the descending sword.
The razor-sharp, saidin-clad blade sliced through the air behind Sammael cutting through something Rand could neither see nor feel. "But maybe there can be a chance at redemption."
Rand was left standing there panting as Sammael screamed in brief, excruciating pain.
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Deep in the bowels of the Stone Taija once more stood in the dark, dingy room of ter'angreal looking up at the twisted red stone doorway. She didn't know anywhere near as much as she'd like about it, but she knew enough. She needed answers.
No frivolous questions, no questions that touched on the Shadow. Such simple rules, but she'd heard enough about what happened to people who broke them, whether accidentally or deliberately.