Fanfic:Homecoming (Kiryn Chaimere)
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The sound of A'Vron's hooves on the hard-packed dirt was soothing to Kiryn's ears. They rode hard, the gelding and he, winds stirring the silver bells braided through the Tinker's black curls. The sun was setting before them, far away it would drown in the Aryth Ocean beyond the borders of the known world. This was Tear, though, and there were mires and marshes, rocks and grasslands between the lone rider and the endless blue.
The sky had coloured a deep shade of indigo, cloudless and smooth it spoke of the beautiful weather that had been and would be. Nothing marred the solid beauty but for a small number of swallows, frolicking high in the warm sky, and several small plumes of smoke rising in the distance, from a valley slightly to the north and west.
With a smile, Kiryn realized he would spend this evening in the company of people. While his upbringing had left him fond of traveling, sleeping where the road led him, he had also grown accustomed to company, people to talk to, to laugh with, to sing for. It felt somehow wrong to travel for many days in a row, without Ava, without the children, yet his longing for it was too great. He needed the freedom, the uncertainty, to not be constrained within walls and to be able to forget his worries - the Grey Tower.
Doubtful by nature, Kiryn had often changed paths. It had begun when he was a Soldier and he tried to run away from the violence that so immersed the Grey Tower. He had been brought back and realized the One Power was nothing he could run from - it was a part of him he'd have to come to terms with. After backing away from the Three Arches once, he found the peace of mind and the strength to become Dedicated to the Tower, which was promptly followed by an accident that took away his eyesight.
Again, Kiryn had been about to give up. He was not a fighter, the Way of the Leaf was strong within him and he tended to accept what the Wheel spun his way, a leaf falling from a tree. The others hadn't accepted his defeat so easily, though. Carefully groomed to become a part of the Blue Ajah, Kiryn's friendships with Daimenin and Kiam and Shamus and his love for Aviaine had led him through the final test, making him an Asha'man of the Blue Ajah.
Not for long. Loving one's friends was not enough to devote one's life to a cause one didn't wholeheartedly support. The justice Kiryn sought in the Blue Ajah was often accompanied by violence of the kind he could not accept, it made him sick. He soon became Tower-bound by fear of the dangers of the world, and doubt led him to beg for acceptance into the Grey Ajah, where Aes Sedai and Asha'man had seen that the word was much mightier than the sword.
Although Kiryn was certain now the Grey Ajah was the only one he would ever truly be devoted to, he also knew he would never be like the others in his Ajah. He had led the Ajah one day, by request of the former Ajah Head, but he had never found much satisfaction in the job. To be Tower-bound, only occupied with the politics of the Hall and the community of Asha'man and Aes Sedai, he had been unaware of the world evolving around him but painfully aware of what he could've done had he not been stuck behind that desk. He quit after a few short years and found brief happiness, with Aviaine, with Emmaline and Suriel.
That also passed. There was no lasting peace in the world - no matter how many treaties were negotiated, stubborn nobles would find other reasons to fight, other faults worth killing for. Yes, the duty of a Grey Brother or Sister was an important and honourable one, but it was hard, too hard, too desperate. Born of a fleeting people feeding on joy and peace, Kiryn couldn't breathe in the mediator's chamber, couldn't live with the constant pressure of violence. So he fled.
Certainly, he had been in the Tower from time to time, when Aviaine had to be there, when the children had to be there. Ah, little Emma with the apple cheeks, she looked so serene in a novice's whites and so frightening when wielding her small balls of Fire. Suriel, little more than a toddler still yet accustomed to meeting Ogier, meeting Aiel, watching his friends play with wooden swords... The place scared him, in the turmoil of current time, a bastion of power trying to shape the world while unaware the world was shaping them instead.
The plumes of smoke of the nearby village waved in the soft breeze, and soon numerous thatched roofs appeared before the rider, forming a medium-sized village. Soon, like first snowflakes falling on an empty plate, houses started appearing one by one, more and more, thickening near the village centre. The houses seemed empty, all of them. It was clear people lived in this village - toys were littered carelessly over lawns, fires were still burning in hearths - but the lights were out, and no one was eating the dinner they would normally have around this hour. The quiet seemed to buzz, and Kiryn shuddered despite the comfortable warmth of late summer, feeling that something was wrong, awfully wrong in this village.
The closer the Grey came to the centre of the village, the warmer it seemed to get and the icier the chill on his skin began to feel. There was violence here, and pain, worse than he had seen in years. He saw the gathered red aura before he saw the folk spreading it - all the villagers had gathered on the main square in dead silence.
In the middle of the square, a boy was bound hands and feet inside a large, iron cage like the ones used for mean dogs, or captured wolves. His eyes were cast down and his skin was covered in soot, making him a miserable picture of black desperation. Next to him, a fire burned, high and bright enough to compete with the setting sun behind it. To the left of the village square Kiryn could see the remains of what must've been an inn - pewter mugs half-molten and deformed, the structure of wooden carrier beams visible as a frame of ashes. None of this could catch the Tinker's attention for longer than a moment - no, his black eyes remained fixed on the boy, the huddled shape in the cage.
He was aglow. Kiryn's Pattern Reader's Talent gave him vague auras most of the time, faint pictures at best, but this young man, he seemed to hold a destiny few had ever seen. The images were crisp - a pair of green eyes floating around him and watching him, two spotted dogs swimming in a pond, a pyramidic structure crowned with a scintillating gemstone, yellow and blue and brilliant red. This boy could channel, and he was strong, a thick thread in the Pattern, someone with a grand destiny - if that destiny wasn't taken from him now.
No one seemed to notice the new arrival, all eyes were fixed on the victim of their wrath. No one seemed to notice, except for the boy himself, whose curiously light brown eyes looked up to Kiryn and seemed to hold a spark of hope.
"Friends, villagers, we have gathered here to grant salvation to a young man's soul. Three days ago, you have all witnessed the burning of the Dancer's Grace Inn. The fire was set by this youngster, but it was not malice he displayed on that day. Nay, it is the One Power he channeled, doomed as he be!" The speaker let an ominous silence fall, as mothers shielded their children's eyes from the channeler and men grown made signs to ward off evil. The speaker, a round-bellied man with a mayor's chain draped around his neck, nodded and continued. "The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, and the Light was gracious to grant us insight before it is too late. Hoyin Tarnal will burn tonight, his soul cleansed of the Dark One's taint, so he will bring no more evil, no more madness to our village."
Hesitantly, an older man in the audience began a short cheer, and one by one others joined him as two sturdy young men stepped forwards. One of them opened the cage, and the blackened shape of the young channeler fell backwards, lower lip visibly trembling. No one would hear his screams as they would burn him, the cheers closing out the innocent's agony. It is impossible, Kiryn thought, impossible they still have fear for the madness, while it has been gone for a long time, a very long time. I have to act. This may not happen.
He dismounted his horse gracefully and made his way towards the cage, pushing his way through the audience aided by gentle flows of Air. The One Power was surging through him and boosting the anger he tried to suppress; his dark eyes flared up with unnatural fire. "Leave him be!" Kiryn shouted, and his presence and the strength of his Power-amplified voice made the audience fall silent in frenzied fear. "He is the Dark One," a terrified woman's voice exclaimed, and the mayor seemed to hesitate only everso briefly before proclaiming in a booming voice that evil had come to the village in the form of the dark-eyed devil, urging the strong men to take him and burn him with the boy.
There was a deafening calm in Kiryn's rage as he slammed a dome of solid Air around himself and moved forward, effortlessly keeping the villagers several feet away from him. They feared, he could taste the fear on the air, but it had to be - they could not kill the innocent boy. He could not let them. "Leave him be!" he shouted again when the young men tried, desperately, to push the struggling boy towards the fire. "Leave him be," he shouted, as he slammed an opening in his ward and dragged the boy into it with strong arms of Air, as he closed the dome around the two of them and pushed the soot-covered sobbing Hoyin to his side.
"You are misguided, you are wrong. The One Power, the male half, saidin, the Dragon has cleansed it and we are no longer doomed to go insane!" Kiryn realized while he spoke the words he must sound raving mad to these people, delusional and furious. Some tried to slam through his ward with their bare fists, others had brought pitchforks and tried to punch holes in the unmoving wall. "Forgive me," Kiryn whispered to the boy as he tied off the dome and wove a gateway to skim through, a circle of grass with stone boundaries a platform in the endless dark. He dragged the boy onto it and closed the gateway behind the both of them, cutting the Tairen sunset off to leave only their small platform in the endless darkness. "Forgive me, Hoyin, but it is all I could do to keep them from harming you. I am like you, and I will take you to safety, where you will no longer be threatened."
Soaring through the dark, accompanied by the boy's half-swallowed sobs, Kiryn couldn't help but think about his horse, A'Vron. The villagers would have him now - he was a docile horse, he wouldn't run away from them - but would he stay out of harm's way? Yes, Kiryn decided, although they feared him, they were too pragmatic to kill a good horse. They would give him a good few years until the old horse died, probably a better life than he would have in the Grey Tower stables.
When the Gateway flashed open into the Tower gardens, all went by quickly as in a dream. Rolnar was in his office to accept the new recruit, and within mere minutes Kiryn stood alone, reeling, by the door to the spacious apartments he shared with Aviaine. She will not be there. She has so many things to do, what are the odds of finding her here so early in the evening? Still, the Tinker was hopeful when he opened the door and found himself drinking in the sweet smell of the only place he could call home.
"Ava?" he tried tentatively, and there are no words to describe the joy he felt when his black eyes found her sweet, soothing face.
