Fanfic:The Blinding Absence of Light/Chapter Four

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The Blinding Absence of Light/Chapter Four
Author(s)
  • Alexandra
  • Malin
Character(s)
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Only the original author(s) or Librarian(s) should make content changes to this page.




Preface

Failure revealed one final piece to suceed where love alone could not defeat the Shadow's cause. But at what price did this knowledge come by?

By the hand of Zaria Honast Sedai, the Amyrlin's Chronicler from the Great Library of the Grey Tower on the third day of Maigdhal, six days before Tandar, the Fourth Age of Mankind.

The Fourth Vision

A solitary beam of evening sunlight, slipping in through a crack in the curtains was the only real illumination of the scene before him. He exhaled slowly and lowered the crossbow. All that planning, all the effort to get here it was strange that the deed itself required so little effort. The crossbow bolt protruded from his chest where he lay on the floor of the dusky office. As he approached he could see that he was still conscious. He tried to speak to him, but could only cough blood. No matter. The wound was fatal and Shaaran would die. It was surreal in a way, he'd seemed immortal.

He knelt down by his side, reaching for his dagger. He could've made it quick, but the blood would fill Shaaran's lungs quickly enough and it was a long time since Caithlan had felt any sort of charitable or merciful. The stab to the belly area was calculated to maim, not to kill and Shaaran gasped in pain, a wet choked up sound. A quick wrench outwards allowed the intestines to spill out. "And despite all this, you'll never know pain, as I have known pain." he said thoughtfully. Shaaran opened his mouth, but only blood came out. He clawed weakly at Caithlan's arm as his eyes grew misted over, and then finally, went blank. The Dreadlord was dead, and Caithlan was free.

He'd told himself that the reason he waited so long was that he had needed to gain their trust. He needed to make sure they trusted his reversal to the shadow completely. And of course, there was the need for the right opportunity. None of those things were untrue, but the greater truth was that he hadn't been able to face the pain. Ten years ago, Liana had come for him, and he had watched as Morgana killed her in front of him. She had severed the golden thread between him and his wife forever. There was no describing that can kind of pain, and when he had come to he had been most bitterly disappointed to find himself alive. He tried to remember how long that fog of apathy had lasted, and what he had done while in it, but it was fuzzy. Terrible things. He'd come out of that fog with a dark reputation and a darkened soul.

He couldn't bring himself to do violence to her. For ten years she had been in his head and his bed, his companion and partner-in-crime. So he had used poison. It was hard to find poison with neither smell nor taste, but he had learned things and he had been a good study. He'd bit down on a leather gag and held her tight as her body shook in violent spasms and he had covered her mouth as she moaned in pain and then as the blood came. Out of her eyes, her ears, nose and mouth. He'd groaned through clenched teeth into the gag at her pain and wept as her consciousness flickered and the thread between them suddenly snapped. And then, after the shaking had subsided and he was done with weeping he had taken his crossbow and walked up the stairs to Shaaran's office.

Caithlan shook his head to snap out of his reverie and got up from his position on the floor besides Shaaran's body. There were other promises to be kept, miles to go before he slept.

The Tairen townhouse reeked as Millicent entered and the young man wrinkled his nose. Truthfully he was paid exceptionally well to run messages for these people, though sometimes he wondered if it was worth it. The woman made him feel like a mouse must feel around cats. And there was the man that always followed her. Gray hair that looked like it had once been black and stare that made his insides go cold and his forehead clammy with sweat. He had preferred the supervisor, he had seemed calm, normal after a fashion, and not one to put on airs.

Well, regardless of how strange and terrifying they had been, they had never been slovenly. Yet now the house reeked like... meat, left in the sun. It smelled like his brother's butchery on the downside of the city. Light help him, but it was disgusting. Meat and... something acrid, he wasn't sure. "Hello?" he ventured uncertainly. There was no answer. Tentatively he ventured further in. "Mistress Morgana? Master Lightfoot?" He looked about himself and slowly made his way further in and then up the stairs towards the Supervisor's office. The door stood ajar. The smell was stronger up here. "Sir?"

"You're late, son." That was Master Lightfoot! Well that was some relief at least. Not that Millicent liked the man, but certainly he could explain what was going on. But when he pushed the door open his relief turned to horror. The supervisor (he'd never given his name to Millicent realized) lay sprawled on the carpet, violently gutted, the stench of entrails making his stomach churn and a crossbow bolt jutting out of his chest. He gasped, and then almost gagged. Behind the great desk Master Lightfoot was sanding a parchment.

"Sir! I- what happened here?" Millicent stammered.

"Hmm?" Master Lightfoot looked up, a smear of dried blood was on his cheek and Millicent suddenly realized that his hands were caked in dried and flaking blood. He paled. "Ah yes, terrible business." He continued, as if speaking of losing your crops to a bout of summer frost. "I will deal with it. I have a task for you." He rolled up the parchment and fed it to a messenger tube. Something else went in there that glimmered in silver and gold he thought, but he didn't catch what. "You are to deliver this to the Amyrlin Seat of the Grey Tower, Amora en'Damier Sedai. You will be paid well and have your expenses seen to."

"I, but, The Grey Tower? That's in Andor! Thousands of miles away." Millicent protested weakly.

"Son," Master Lightfoot held his gaze calmly, sending a deep chill into his heart. "I wasn't asking." He got up and rounded the desk. Blood had stained the entire front of his coat, shirt and trousers. Crusting and falling off in little flakes as he moved. Millicent watched them fall in morbid fascination. The elder man put his hand on his shoulder as he handed him the messenger tube. In the leather a coat of arms had been pressed. He'd never seen it before: A swan, a tree and a severed branch with a dragon wrapped around it. "A saddled horse is waiting for you by the backdoor. You will find letters of writ and money to purchase a change of mount at every messenger station from here to Hama Valon." Millicent nodded, looking up and meeting the other man's gaze, he hadn't realized how short the man was, but he was actually slightly shorter than himself. Master Lightfoot smiled kindly. "Should you fail me, or take my money and ride off without delivering your message, I will start with your brother the butcher and his family." He said mildly. "And I will sell them for pie meat in their own shop front. And after that, I will find every person you have ever known and gut them like pigs. And then I will find you, messenger boy, and I will make you beg for death." He patted his shoulder in a fatherly fashion. "Now then, the day is young, and you have a long journey ahead of you."

Millicent hardly remembered getting out but suddenly he found himself in the backyard, where a surly man of middle age was holding a saddled horse for him. Suddenly he turned about and threw up in the rose bushes that edged the house. He wiped his mouth with a shivering hand and gulped down the fresh air, but soon he straightened up and mounted. Those dark green eyes seemed to burn into him still and he knew without a doubt that Master Lightfoot would make good on his promise, should he fail.


Millicent rode fast and he rode hard. But he could not fly faster than the news of his approach - an unknown courier who had never been outside of the city of Tear and carried papers that marked him as worthy of trust. His passing was reported in Far Madding by the guard, a peddler on the road north, a Caemlyn gleeman, the inkeeper who housed him in Four Kings, several merchants in Whitebridge and by the ship captain who carried him north on the river north to the city of Baerlon. No one hurried or harried him; they only noted with perceptive eyes and careful hands his likeness, whereabouts, and intentions. Amora en'Damier had known he was coming before he rode through the smoldering ruins of Taren Ferry, climbed the slopes of the Mountains of Mist, and passed under the gate into Hama Valon. The boundaries between strangers and the Amyrlin Seat were layered thick and were hard to penetrate. They had been thickest for the last ten years. He had been allowed to pass one of the Tower's searchers on the road, and again the Tower Guardhouse at the battlements, when they read his letters of writ and recognized the embossed seal on the leather messenger tube. But the boy was unknown to the citizens of the Tower, and so was the "Master Lightfoot" who had sent him to them. They delayed him with questions from sunrise to sunset in a small basement room, searching his story for answers and inconsistency. An old Cairhienien. Male. Grey hair that had once been black. Green eyes. His associates: the supervisor and the Illianer woman with an Andorean accent. The bloody townhouse in Tear. But the boy trembled with fear, mumbling that if he did not deliver his missive to the Amyrlin personally, he and everyone he knew would die violently. Every word he said was witnessed, written, and passed up the chain of command to the top of the Tower.

The next morning word descended through the ranks that the boy Millicent would be permitted a private audience, under guard. He was escorted to the top of the administration hall by six guardsmen, two before him, two behind, and one to each side. Up up up the length of the spire they rode in a small room, and finally passed into a small audience chamber lined with yet more guards, Asha'man in black coats, and Aes Sedai in silks. They pretended not to watch him as he approached the dais, making great study of their books and embroidery and light conversation, but he was most certainly watched.

"You may approach the Amyrlin Seat." she said. Though something about the way she said it made him feel like a dirty mouse in an immaculate room. She studied him, and he felt her eyes penetrate his soul.

Millicent drew forward. He doffed his cap and bowed before the silver-haired Aes Sedai who perched in a high-back throne of gold, his attention caught on the the moonstones shimmered in the shape of the Flame above her head in the morning light. A long strip of silken fabric, colored with seven stripes, trailed from her shoulders down to her knees.

An Andorean woman with black hair and green silks and a thinner stole of green met him before the dais and opened her hand to him. He looked between her and the Amyrlin and back. He supposed if she was present when he surrendered it that that was as good as delivering it into her hands. He bowed again and stepped back, and waited, fidgeting with his hat as the woman in green studied the capsule, opened it, and studied the rolled parchment too. "It's clean, Mother." she said, and delivered it and the tube up to the Seat.

Amora examined the leather tube and the contents herself with gold-rimmed spectacles pinched to her nose. The seal summoned feelings that she quickly and quietly set aside. Aside from Lembirt or Ellisande who resided in the Tower, there was only one other who would dare use this seal. There were no wards at all, no poison on the paper, and by the looks of the Asha'man loyal to her she knew that this messenger could not channel. She let the scroll fall into her lap together with flakes of red. She sucked in air between her teeth. The pace of her heart quickened with alarm and again when she rolled the scroll over to find two rings tied to it - one silver bearing her family sigil, and one gold bearing Liana's three joined Houses. The first was older and marked with four swans in flight, the latter was the very same pressed into the messenger capsule. Both were stained with blood.

"Leave us." she said, and the Sisters and Brothers began to rise. Mellicent took a half step back before the Amyrlin said, "Not you." with her eyes set on him, and he froze there like a mouse under a hawk's gaze. A petite girl in white with raven ringlets and brilliant emerald eyes also remained when the Amyrlin's gaze passed to her. She was the most lovely creature he had ever beheld. It was hard not to look at her.

Amora untied the scroll and flattened it between her fingers. This too was stained with blood.

Lady Amora en'Damier Sedai

High Seat of House en'Damier

Duchess of Whitebridge

Watcher of the Seals

the Flame of Hama Valon

the Amyrlin Seat

On the third day of the month of Choren, two days after the Festival of Lanterns.

It's been a long time, Amora,

I have not written as I have wished to, though I know your eyes have watched me and your ears have heard me. I did not dare send you word until now and endanger my purpose. You know my enemy as he has sought your downfall above all, and how dangerous he is. If there ever was a chance there would only be one and in order to attain it I had to gain his trust by whatever means possible.

As I write to you now I swear that this is the truth: Morgana and Sharaan are dead by my hands. I have arranged for an eye witness to their bodies to deliver this message to you so that you may confirm it, and by now your eyes and ears in Tear should have heard of a tragic fire in the western parts of the merchant quarters with no survivors.

I regret not being able to bring you these news sooner. Losing a bond is a painful thing, even to someone you hate. I swore myself to the Shadow to gain their trust and complacency; though my soul had always belonged to Liana, and no other. Through these long years without her I've lived to see my oaths to her fulfilled and my revenge complete. My life for her death. My death for her death.

If I wanted forgiveness I should ask for it, but for all that I have done there can be no forgiveness. And yet, I think I am not an evil man. Though evil men pretend to walk in the Light and I have walked in Shadows. I do not expect rebirth, nor to hear your sweet words of salvation. Though I am at peace. I have seen my lady, I swear. But she was in a dream and in the morning she was gone. I know myself for what I am, and so I throw my poor soul upon your forgiveness in the full knowledge of this: I deserve none at your loving hands.

I must ask of you a small favour. Beg forgiveness on my behalf with my children and with Lembirt for not returning to them. My years have grown long for a man of my profession and my soul frightfully dark. I am tired and I know that when I wake from this dream my beloved will be waiting for me.

It is better, perhaps, if they remember me as I was. And that they live on knowing that they are safe, and that their mother was avenged as she deserved.

Your faithful, errant son

Caithlan Damodred

A moment of silence passed. Amora studied the rings in her lap, the one that had bound him to Liana as her Warder and to her House, the other that joined their families and tracked its progeny. At last, justice! She clasped them tightly in her palm and kissed her thumb. "I forgive you, Caithlan Damodred. May you be reborn in the Light, as gloriously as you deserve." she said, and sent the messenger boy away.

"Svebere, child." The girl was lovely, dark, and clever. One day she would be an Aes Sedai with a heart carved of cold stone. Colder still for the lack of a mother, and numb to the pain of others. Even now she read into the Amyrlin's faint expressions, she knew the general thrust of the letter, and yet she was not moved. It could not be helped. At least she and her siblings had survived. "Fetch the family. Tell them the great fear has passed, and I bear them grave news."