Fanfic:Sarkaska's Return Fiction
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He turned his back on his home for the second time in his life. Unlike the first time, he stood before it at midday, and also unlike that first time, there were no tears on his cheeks, mixed with the patchy stubble of a boy's first beard. The horse at his shoulder was still stolen, though, and like that previous occasion, his heart was pounding in his ears, his chest...he felt lightheaded from the dread of leaving the stones and sticks of Keep Kol. Yet, he was going to go: he had been looking forward to leaving before his feet had even touched familiar soil.
Shienar was his past, not his entirety. And what had happened here could not, would not be explained: it remained a mystery that had him at its core. Despite the speed of his arrival, he had been too late, and now, he wondered if that had not been a blessing. If it was, it would be the first he had ever been given.
He knew now that he'd worked for everything else in his life.
The week that Shienar had dominated him had been the longest he'd ever survived. She had been there, eyes large, face solemn: Aes Sedai to her core. If she had known anything, he doubted she would have said: they did not even trade words at the pyre that had noisily digested all the answers he might ever had had. He had been too late. Despite the stench of burning flesh and bone, Sarkaska had stood, unmuffled, erect and straight, in the courtyard. He owed the man nothing, cared nothing for the hard-won edict that made the cobblestones under his bootsoles his own.
Shienar might recognize him as a lord, a man of merit, wealth, and character, but it was not the adulation he desired. Neither, he knew then, kneeling beside the guttering flames, had he come to this place for answers. There were none to be had. What lingered in the resentful stones of his castle was what had ever been here for him - nothing at all. He had slept a night in the great apartments of the lord, then moved out of them, discomfited by the presence of ghosts speaking a tongue he didn't comprehend. And he had dared to go there - that place where none were welcome. He had dared set foot in the past.
He was unchanged. What had he truly expected from Shienar? If you began in a place, it didn't make that spot the entirety of the world: that was defined by yourself. He didn't know who that was, precisely, but he understood what he was not, and that was somewhere to begin. He was not the lord of House Kol, not even if they said he was by decree read before a thousand people he couldn't name. And he was not a deserted trainee of the Grey Tower: that at least he could be sure of. These were both truths, if in name only, and a man could depend on truth. His uncle, the same who had championed his attempts to join his blood, was regent as he should have been heir, and Sarkaska was leaving.
There was no need to dwell on the past. Yet, the images swarmed him: the dry scent of ancient dust kicked up by his boots, the crumbling caress of paper fallen to pieces in his fingers. Her rooms, preserved as they'd been the morning of her death: the blanket from his swaddling still pooled on the pillow, painted in blood. He didn't know what he'd expected to find there, buried in the mouse nests and the shame that no one would put a name to. Whatever it was, it slumbered on, oblivious to him. There had been no epiphany here in Shienar. Death, yes, justice perhaps, but no discovery: no blazon to light his way as he made his decisions.
The castle was cold, even without winter wailing at its walls. He had had his fill of cold. Stones dressed in mourning held no appeal. His heart held no grief as he faced the battlements: before him, the Aes Sedai pulled her hood up around her face, studiously avoiding his glance. Did she think him satisfied? Was her duty discharged, her soul at peace? Sarkaska could not comprehend what she might have found here that he had not. There was nothing here in Shienar that he had not already had.
Nothing except a slender book he could not read, and a pendant he had found laying in a box lined with crusted, decaying velvet: a slender vial that he had wondered at, turning it with a finger that seemed too large, before realizing he had seen its like: it hung around the necks of those who had suffered a great loss. It was called a lachrymosa - some silly word that meant tears. It did not suit him. He kept it anyway, stuffing it down in the depths of his pocket, a thief in a castle that belonged to him. Inside, he had seen nothing but dust: a fine fall of salt, evaporated from tears decades old.
Shienar: a land of shame, secrets, and grief. He turned his back on it with gladness in his heart. Certainly the road ahead would be long, and the journey painful, but it was his road and his destination.
