Fanfic:The Blinding Absence of Light/Chapter One
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Preface
About a year ago, while making some researches in the Great Library of the Grey Tower for The Journal of Daimor Asha'man and the Hiding of the Tower's Greatest Secret, I came across the Memory of Futures of Caithlan Damodred Gaidin: The Blinding Absence of Light, written by his ward and wife Liana en'Damier Damodred Antii Sedai. It concerns the divergent futures she beheld when studying the thrice-bound ring, a ter'angreal with prophetic properties, and like most works of that period, when authors were desirous of writing the truth without incurring the risk of obliterating natural fate, it was not circulated. The Wise Ones have warned of spreading prophetic visions too widely, and indeed, our own tradition inherited from the White Tower prohibits anyone from speaking of what was experienced in the Three Arches. Indeed the risk was great, for what follows is an account of love denied, of Shadow, and of tragedy had she and those around her made other choices than those they had made. Therefore, I was curious after the Sitter's reasons for penning such an account-merely in the Indigo Ajah's typical compulsive study of all things related to the One Power, to commit to memory what she saw, or to purge it from her thoughts, perhaps-and with the kind of permission of a librarian, I carried the journal to my home and eagerly devoured it.
Now that enough time has passed, and we are well into the Fourth Age of Mankind, I think it not immoral to transcribe the Sitter's memoir into print. It is not my intention to give an analysis of this curious account of the futures ten years forward from where she stood then, nor to criticize her judgements. My purpose is only to carry this memoir into the future for the benefit of posterity, and add the following introduction to allow the reader to immerse oneself in the context of the time. The Memory of Futures takes place in the midst of the historical account The Dark Prophecy, should the reader wish to pursue further.
In The Dark Prophecy the reader will learn of how Liana en'Damier Damodred Sedai had been poisoned while full with child. As a result, sister Liana nearly perished alongside her babe, and her work to decipher The Journal of Daimor Asha'man and the Hiding of the Tower's Greatest Secret would have been incomplete, or lost or stolen, robbing the Grey Tower of an important artifact to ensure our survival into the Fourth Age had she not survived.
Two investigations were initiated by the Amyrlin Seat, Amora en'Damier, to discover the culprit: one official, the other unofficial. The Amyrlin used her official resources in the official investigation, and the unofficial one was be carried out by Caithlan Gaidin, Lembrit Antii Asha'man, and Aric Cosamaru Asha'man. Their most obvious suspect, the en'Damnier Whitecloak Questioner cousin, Itheara, was the target, though in time the three men found her innocent.
Conflict erupted between Liana and her Warder-husband, Caithlan, and they parted with heated words - but not before their daughters Avaritia and Ellisande slipped away from safety, unable to cope with disruption in domestic tranquility. They were found by a mysterious Sister, Morgana Sedai, who was possessed of an unusual interest in their family. At the conclusion of Chapter 4 of The Dark Prophecy, the Amyrlin Seat realized the identity and true motive of the assassin, a shadow from her past. She rushed to the scene with Aric Asha'man.
Meanwhile Caithlan, Ellisande, and Avaritia discovered that Morgana (though not her true name) was not only Black Ajah, and the one responsible for poisoning Liana, but also the same Black Sister who tormented Caithlan in his youth and sought to claim him for her Warder. Unable to rescue the girls any other way, he gave himself up to Morgana to be bonded. The girls were set free, but Caithlan Gaidin was placed under compulsion and taken from the Tower. He left, hoping that the girls would alert sister Liana of his fate, and that she would come to him when she regained her strength. There at this juncture and the beginning of Chapter 5, Liana Sedai was left with a terrible choice.
I now offer readers the first part of this precious manuscript, restoring the title most appropriate to it; and, pledge to follow it up with the second, third, and fourth visions of the futures branching ten years from decisions she could have made at this juncture and very soon after.
And now, having offered this explanation, we will begin our narrative...
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 First Vision
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
A solitary moon beam, 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. He tried to remember when he had begun resenting her, when time and death and darkness had laid itself so heavily across his soul that the idea no longer horrified him. He had welcomed it even. The crossbow bolt protruded from her chest where she lay on the floor of the Amyrlin Seat's darkened bedchamber. As he approached he could see that she was still conscious. She tried to speak to him, but could only cough blood. No matter. The wound was fatal and Amora en'Damier would die. It was surreal in a way, she'd always seemed immortal.
He knelt down by her side, reaching for his dagger, yet a sound behind him made him spin, cutting upwards violently, catching the Tower Guard in the gap of his helmet, slashing his throat. He was but the first of many. He had expected there to be time. Not much, but at least a moment to contemplate and to finish the job. He drew his sword and met the next one. Arc of the Moon. They were pouring into the room, Courtier Taps His Fan.
He'd never make it out alive; the thought made him smile.
He kicked a chair into the face of one guard and spun to engage another in a lock, his blade twisted into the bind, disarming him; He kneed him in the groin, pushing him back. A horizontal slash severed head from body, buying him a precious moment of time. From the edge of his vision he saw a flash of cool grey silk and a wave of long golden hair kneeling by the Amyrlin Seat. Not a guard. He dropped his sword, drawing his small, handheld crossbow. He kicked a guard he'd tripped earlier hard in the head as he struggled to rise and stepped over him, drawing the lever back and stepping forward he had a clear shot of the Aes Sedai kneeling over Amora.
His finger began squeezing the trigger when she looked up suddenly and met his eyes. Defiant emerald eyes in a face too young to be ageless. Features that had changed and grown in the decade since he had seen them last, but ones that he would never forget. And those eyes. Her body trembled not with fear, but with indignation. Her mouth moved, "How dare you?!" His heart skipped a beat and in that one moment he faltered, hesitated. It was but a fraction of a moment but it seemed to stretch out forever. His eldest child, Ellisande. Oh not her, anyone but her.
And then someone tackled him, hard, throwing them both to the ground. The crossbow went off and lodged into the wall with a heavy thunk.
A young woman's voice above him asked, "Flame it! Are you hurt, Ellie?"
"No, Avi, praise the Light; but be on your guard! That man in Tower Guard livery is outside his mind, he tried to murder the Amyrlin! She's fading and may be beyond my aid...stand back!"
She kicked his weapons and they went skittering across the floor beyond his reach. He could see the banded hem of her Accepted's gown from the floor as the cold tip of a longsword slid under his chin. A man's knee pinned him between the shoulderblades and a spearhead pressed against the nape of his neck. Aias. Should've hit him harder the first time around. He rolled his eyes up and saw his second daughter glaring down at him. Avaritia. She didn't recognize him, but he knew her. Flame hair grown long and half braided. Tall, lithe, and fierce. Her face was hard and leaned with age, no longer a child, with eyes that bore down on him unforgivingly. The same emerald eyes as her sister and the ancestor who lay bleeding on the floor. The pool of blood had almost reached him. And he realized...the sword she held to his neck was Lord Sigmund's, her hand wrapped around the golden hilt twined like wood. Avaritia growled, "If she dies, you'll die like the dog you are, you light-forsaken darkfriend. Aias and I will fight over who gets to send you to to your master; may he take your soul and burn it!"
With the spear at his neck and the sword at his throat his freedom was but a breath, a twitch away. But it would come at the tip of his daughter's sword. He could not put that burden on her, no matter if she knew or not. Caithlan's lips twisted into a sneer. Contemptuous for the casual observer, but it was directed at himself. You fail again, stableboy. He turned ever so slightly and felt a trickle of warm blood at his throat where the point dug into his skin. He didn't care, and he couldn't stop himself, he wanted a better look at her. If she was in an Accepted's dress that meant she, too, had manifested the spark to channel, just like Ellisande. He wondered if Svebere and Larrold were enrolled as novices and soldiers as well. With her eyes sparkling in anger and her wild hair she reminded him of Sapphire, though he never known her in her youth. She'd turned into a young woman in his absence, though seeing his little scrappy Avi in a dress was absurd.
Avaritia frowned, her head tilted sideways to get a better view of him, "Who are you...?" she eased the blade back from his neck, but only a finger's width. He felt the air harden around him, preventing him from moving suddenly.
"Speak!"
He looked away and down, his mouth hardening into a thin, defiant line of silence. He couldn't move, but his gaze left her face and focused on the pool of blood slowly spreading under Amora's body. She wasn't dead yet, Aias would've killed him within a second. He could've changed his voice and answered. These past years had provided him ample opportunity to practice disguise and deceit. But he did not trust himself to speak, and risk recognition. If he was lucky they would execute him as a nameless darkfriend and they would never need to know. This wasn't going as planned at all.
"I asked who you are, you bloody son of a shepherd's boil. Speak! Or I'll cut your throat now, and may the Dark One take the flaming law!"
"Really Avaritia," the words, crisp and calm, slipped out of him almost thoughtlessly, "Language. Your mother and I did not raise you to speak that way. And what would your papa say?"
He heard a sharp intake of breath, and then the blade was under his chin again. "Liar! You are not my father. One is an Asha'man and a Sitter, and he stands in the Light. The other was a Gaidin. You are no Lembirt Antii, and my other father is dead."
He chuckled and felt blood on his neck, an unwise choice in a long line of unwise choices really, but he couldn't help his dark amusement. Was she not right after all? What was left of the stalwart, honourable Gaidin she had called 'father'? Not much but a hollowed out shell. "I suppose you are right about that."
"He's trying to provoke you, child." the knee on Caithlan's back grew heavier, sharper and he grunted. That bloody man ought to be put on a diet.
And it had worked. The blade at his neck slipped away as Avaritia stepped back. Confused, distressed, she backed into the pool of blood where her sister labored over the Amyrlin.
"I've done all that I can do. The rest is the will of the Wheel." At last Ellisande breathed a sigh, finished. Her voice was tired, but not oblivious to what had happened around her. "Wait, Avi. How did he know your name....?" no one but the darkfriend had said her name in full. "Aias, would you show me his face?"
Bloody flaming- Aias unceremoniously grabbed hold of his ponytail and yanked up hard (harder than needed really, though who could blame him if he was a tad upset?). Caithlan grunted.
An unearthly sphere of light sparked to life and hovered by his upturned face, illuminating what had once been cast in darkness. Caithlan closed his eyes momentarily against the bright light.
The girls gasped in horror. Curious, he thought. He hadn't thought things like that would bother him anymore.
"Take him away!" Avaritia cried, "Please!"
Though the grey sleeves and breast of her gown stained with dark red blood, Ellisande was the calmer of the two. By virtue of her training, and he hoped - what he had told her years ago, she drew from the well of deep serenity inside herself and glanced at the face of the Amyrlin and then back to him, though not meeting his eyes. "She would want a trial." she said quietly.
He caught a glimpse of her consoling Avaritia before Aias yanked him up and took him away. You turned out well without me, Ellisande. I guess that's worth something.
We were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness grope:
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.
Caithlan stared at the ceiling of the small cell they'd confined him to, though not looking so much at it as through it. Far up above, on the level reserved for Sitters and Ajah Heads he sensed something he hadn't felt in years: Liana's presence. How could knowing that she was weeping affect him so? He thought he had felt hollow before. This was a new kind of low, then. Hollow - and bitter. He wasn't sure how long he'd been laying there, sensing her, but she was not moving. She didn't come for you then, why would she come now? She hadn't been at his trial either, or at least he hadn't seen her.
Someone was coming though. He was deep within the dungeons and there were a series of doors between him and the civilized world of the Tower. He heard the clank and clatter of iron keys against iron locks, hinges that groaned with disuse, and wood that slid against stone. He grimaced, the noise made his head hurt. Probably had something to do with being thrown head-first into the opposite wall by a fat, irritable Warder. He'd done that twice now, when he was first brought to the cell and after the trial. Aias had a face of rough stone, but apparently even he could be nettled.
"That's a terrible racket." He said idly, not bothering to look at his visitor, "Are there no errant Learning Ranks to polish the hinges anymore?"
"Hello, father."
His face turned sharply at the sound of her voice. She had changed her clothes since he saw her last. Grey skirts and indigo embroidery, but she was not wearing mourning. Amora still lived then. Blasted, stubborn woman. Perhaps she really was immortal. Ellisande had given testimony at the trial, though he hadn't been able to read her reactions or face. She was well-schooled for someone so young, but she had apparently chosen the Grey, so that made sense. He hadn't expected to see her again. He sat up slowly. "Hello Ellisande."
"Tower Law guarantees the right to Healing before questioning, and executions." she began slowly, though her voice caught on the final word. She recovered her composure. "They would have sent a Yellow Sister or Brother, but I volunteered." and she met his eyes. "Would you accept it?"
He looked at her silently for a moment. It hadn't been easy for her to come to him like she had now, he could see that. But she had come, on purpose. He rested his elbows on his knees as he regarded her intently. It was odd seeing her. In his mind she was still his little rose. Scarcely more than fourteen, and yet here she was all grown up. It stirred an odd longing in him. A longing that he very carefully took and ruthlessly squashed back down.
"An odd custom, for all the good it will do me." He remarked dryly. He glanced skywards towards Liana. Even after all this time he was drawn to her like a loadstone. "Why did you volunteer?" A sudden thought occurred to him, "You're not here to convince me of the errors of my ways and spring me into freedom, are you?" He smiled wryly. "That only works in stories, I'm afraid."
A faint, grim sort of smile flickered on her face, "Papa was very good at telling stories, was he not?" before the light of hope died there. "Though he also told us of the scorpion and the frog." she looked away when she quoted. There were no windows in this cell, even a narrow one for her to focus on, but her eye fixed on the light that entered the room from the door and cast itself on the far wall. "'I am sorry, Lady Frog,' said the scorpion. 'But it is a scorpion's nature to sting.'" she paused, "I suppose, I wanted to know your nature. You gave up everything for us so selflessly, and yet return to murder my Amyrlin and foremother." shaking her head, she returned to gaze on him, "Such different accounts; they puzzle me exceedingly." But then something in her serenity wavered. "And also...because the quality of mercy is not strained. It blesses she that gives, and him that takes. And whatever has happened, whatever you have done, you will always be my father. And because, I know you would never hurt me."
"You never saw ill in anyone." He remarked, "It seems that hasn't changed." He paused, considering her implicit question. When he had left them she had been on the cusp of an age where he could no longer provide her with easy, comforting answers. Another thing that hadn't changed. You will always be my father. I know you would never hurt me. The three oaths guaranteed the truth in her words. He looked down at his hands, an old man's hands by now. A woman grown, and still so young. He searched in his mind for some comparable reference. At her age he had been... Gaidin Captain. The older he got the more amazed he became at things like that. "And yet it seems that hurting you is precisely what I have done. Given that you cannot lie, how would you reconcile such a high opinion with such a lowly fact?"
"I do not think you intended to hurt me." she said simply.
"Ah." Well, she'd always been bright. He should expect her to run circles around him at this point. "I suppose that is true." His gaze was drawn back towards the ceiling. He wasn't used to having her there in the back of his mind again. It itched and pained him like an old scar. Why would she unveil the bond only to stay away? He wasn't sure if he truly wanted to see her, or wanted her gone from his mind again. "She's not going to see me, is she?" he remarked, seemingly nonchalant, but his eyes were dark, betraying an unspoken depth of emotion as they penetrated stone to see beyond walls and ceilings to a Sitter's chamber he could only see with the eyes of imagination.
He could hear Ellisande take a deep breath. Perhaps he had struck a chord in her. "You love her still, don't you?" It was an Aes Sedai answer, but this one was not without feeling.
He did. He loved Liana so much it was like a punch to the gut. Knowing she was so close, yet so far away. Or whatever he ought to call it now. Need. Need and longing and desperation and crushed hopes and self-loathing. Without her he was nothing and worse than nothing. All twined up together, impossible to separate by now. What could he possibly tell Ellisande that she could understand? He chuckled. It was a dark, and bitter sound. He had spent the majority of his life amongst Channelers and played the Great Game in Cairhien and won, he could evade and twist with the best if he had to. "If I do, I have a funny way of showing it, don't you think?" He remarked conversationally, his eyes returning to Ellie, his hands casually clasped before him. They could have been discussing tea selections, for all that his tone revealed.
"Yes, you do." she replied, as if that had been the point all along. But her tone...she was disappointed. "You will not give an inch, will you? I had hoped...." and she sighed. "...never mind. It matters not now. Will you accept it, then?"
"An inch?" The tone was mild, but deep below something stirred in the darkness that ruled his soul. And it caused little ripples and waves as he spoke, "Tell me Ellisande, which inch should you like to have of me, that I have not already given?" Some part of him wanted to make her understand, and some other part saw with bitter clarity all the things she could not. Could a child truly understand that there had been a life before them? Liana had been one of the first people he had met in the Tower. He still remembered that pair of bright eyes, curious yet a little shy that had gazed up at him from between her mother's arms. He had lived his life for her, to be better for her and then for their family. He had given them everything, including his immortal soul and hope for rebirth. And all that pain had festered and it had asked why he was alone and abandoned and it had searched for a target. Eventually it had settled on the only possible one, the one person who had set him on this path so many years ago. He could never hate Liana, or his children, but he could hate Amora. Anger came so easily to him these days. It wasn't much of a refuge, but it was warm at least.
He rose to his feet. "You come here to understand my nature?" His mouth twisted bitterly around the word, like a foul insult, "To understand, to show mercy. Very well then my lady frog," his voice lowered to a whisper, quivering with the effort of reigning in his emotion, "I shall educate you."
"Your teachers have told you I am sure that shadows are merely the absence of light." He gestured outwards, mockingly imitating a lecturer at his podium. "And no matter how great the light, it will always cast a shadow. Such is the nature of the Pattern and the Wheel. You don't need me," he bit off the last word, "to explain my nature. You want to know why? You want to understand how?" he snorted derisively. "You're speaking to the wrong person. Ask your mother where she has been these past ten years? I know not. Ask your grandmother, ask your Amyrlin." He paused and drew a ragged breath. Blood was pounding in his veins like a war drum. "Ask them why they cast me off, and how they like the price of loyalty and honour repaid, and you shall have your answer."
Ellisande did not know if he could see her eyes misting with her back to the light of the door, but it may have wavered in her voice. "And now you do mean to hurt me. I was wrong. And perhaps they were right; you've stood so long in the shadow that you cannot help but hurt those you would love, who love you." Ellisande did not become angry, only disappointed.
She steadied herself with a novice calming exercise. Disappointment gave way to feeling the tragedy of what had happened. "But you never knew, did you?" another breath, "Mother was still too weak after Morgana's attack on her life. You remember. Grandmother flew from the battle at the Caralain Grass with Sojin and died trying to reach you, as my Amyrlin sent her." Perhaps Ellisande was beginning to regret coming down here. The memory summoned a well of emotions she had set aside for so long. "As for mother, I can not speak to all of her reasons thereafter. Perhaps the Amyrlin could have explained them more fully and more eloquently. Perhaps she should have gone to you when she was well, I know not. But I do know that as I stand here now, I survived - and so did my brother and sisters - because of your sacrifice and because of hers, as you told me she would care for us after you were no longer with us. And as I stand here now, I think perhaps it's best she remember you as you were, if you can not love her as you once did. Though I think she loves you still - for she opened herself to her bond with you, I think, to suffer your death with you; and because she did not, or could not, save you from it."
So many different emotions raged through him. Grief, anger, bitterness, love. Or whatever was left of it. If he could he would've torn that golden thread from his heart root and be done with it. And perhaps that was the answer Ellisande had been seeking. Love was great - and terrible. It cast the brightest of lights and the darkest of shadows. And the pain of it could drive the best of men to lose themselves in the wilderness. A choked, frustrated sound escaped his throat and he turned away from her. Enraged, embittered, trapped. He could not make her understand, or see. And he wasn't sure if there was point in trying. Did he want that for his child? To see as he saw? To feel as he felt? Had he not sacrificed so much precisely to protect them from this?
"Just leave and let me die in peace." He suddenly sounded tired, his voice hinting at the long, harsh years he carried on his shoulders.
Despite what she had witnessed, Ellisande still ached for him. It was a difficult feeling to have, but no less real to her than the horror. "I grieve for what happened to you, father. I wish I could Heal you of it. I only hope it gives you some peace that you were not forgotten..." She crossed half the distance of the cell, and stopped, unsure if he would want to be touched. "May your soul shelter in the Creator's hand, and you be reborn in the Light, as brightly as you deserve."
"When I bonded your mother," he said quietly, "I took an oath above and beyond the call of duty. My life for your life. My death for your life. My life for your death. My death for your death." Briefly his thoughts wandered speedily down memory lane. He remembered that day so well. How happy he'd been. Young, victorious, proud, full of purpose. It was like looking into a warm house through a smudged and dirty window pane. "Do you understand what that means?"
Ellisande frowned and her lips parted in shock. He cannot die for her if he is executed. His soul condemned by his own hand. "Oh, father, I..." she approached a little closer, "...I did not know. Light, what a tragedy!" but then she frowned. "Why would you do such a terrible thing and condemn your immortal soul? If you were free to, why not return home to us instead?"
He had half-expected that question when she came to him. Her life had been sheltered to a greater extent than she could possibly understand at such a young age. Whatever she knew of grief, of pain and betrayal was a candle compared to the fires that had scorched him. And so he had emerged on the other side, blackened and burned beyond recognition. No one escaped such a trial unscatched. Like a vase someone had dropped on the floor. At first sight it looked whole but closer examination would show deep cracks and if one tried to fill it with water, it would leak. Morgana had made him do terrible things, wretched things. Would she understand how that changed a man, whether he was free or not? It clung to you like tar. But Shaaran had been worse. He remembered after Morgana had died. Shaaran had taken care of him in his own fashion. Kept him alive until the worst shock of the bond breaking had worn off.
"Very well my little hound. Your mistress is gone and so you are free." Shaaran regarded the aged warder before him. What a wretch bond breakings made of men. It was not worth the benefits of the bond and Shaaran had never taken a bond-mate for that reason, and many others. Caithlan was staring out the window. Any other man might think him too far gone, or think that he was not hearing what Shaaran was saying, but Shaaran knew the warder well by now. All that was required was a little push and a little pressure, applied in the right place. "You could go home to your family of course, if you think they'll have you." Not that they ever came for you. The sentiment hung unspoken between them. "However, should you desire some useful employment, I have an assignment for you." He put a folded parchment on the table before him and left the warder to his thoughts. When he returned in the evening warder and letter both were gone. He smiled.
And after that fateful day, Shaaran had kept him busy. Work was its own reward and distraction. Shaaran had made good use of his skills and talents and he had found satisfaction in a job well done, at being good at what he did, perhaps even in pleasing his master. Shaaran was a good employer, as long as you did not cross him or make him wroth. He had thought of going back, but even if he had declined that first assignment he would have returned a tainted man. He had not had the strength for it, to face them. To save himself.
The silence stretched between them, long and hard. He drew a deep breath as if to speak and then he hesitated and breathed out slowly. "A dog needs a master, or it goes bad, it goes mad." He said softly. "You wouldn't understand."
"Then please make me understand." Ellisande said.
"Why do you think a Warder is so dangerous, Ellisande?" He asked. "The bond is only part of it. It gives him unnatural strength and endurance. But a Warder is trained to be loyal to their Aes Sedai without question. And A Warder does what an Aes Sedai may not. Lies, subterfuge, torture, kidnapping, murder. A Warder's task, more than keeping his Aes Sedai safe, is to furnish her with the means to her ends. She must be his moral compass.Your mother always had a strong sense of justice to guide her. And I... had her, to guide me. Without her I became lost." He turned his head towards her. "Dedicated men, hard men, but in the end we are just men." She had had a strong interest in healing, and a talent for it as the Amyrlin still lived. Perhaps that was something she would understand. He pulled his shirt off in one fluid motion. "And men can be broken." And when they were broken, their strengths could be used against them.
Across his back and his torso a map of pain had been painted. long trailing scars from whips, short and fine lines by knives and deep and ugly rips of an indeterminate source. Some pale and silvery with age, other almost black in scar tissue. Some were pink and fresh. A large chunk of flesh seemed to have been torn out by a clawed hand across his chest a long time ago, ripping the nipple clean off. They'd never touched his face, a pretty face could be useful, and was far less memorable than a scarred and broken one besides. "I provided the means they... provided the purpose." He shrugged. "In practice it doesn't make much difference and I had no cause to hope I had a home to return to."
Ellisande breathed once and deeply, her eyes flickering up to the ceiling where she presumed the bond led him. "I will see what I can do." She promised.For Man's grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide!
Access to him was severely restricted now, even to her. Especially to her. Sisters, Brothers, learning ranks, even the clerks and servants grew silent now when she passed them. Everyone wanted to look at the fallen Warder who had nearly snuffed out the Flame of Hama Valon. Some wanted to snuff him out for that. She had even learned that there had been death threats, and an attempt made.
She knew where he was, of course. He had been moved to a different location, a remote and disused room in the bowels of the Tower. But it had required some time and persuasion before she had learned who to talk to and gain that access. It had not been an easy thing. They thought she would either aid his escape or kill him herself given half a chance - the rumors depended on the source. But custom was a powerful thing, and the one that barred interference between an Aes Sedai and her Warder was near strong as law.
Guardsmen in Tower livery guarded the first door with swords and halberds, the foot of the stairs and at the lift, and both ends of the corridor. More of them passed her, their eyes sliding sideways, watching her pass. A handful of Aes Sedai and Asha'man were stationed too, incase the threats became real or a gateway opened. Two checked the wards by the lift. As she approached them the glow around the Aes Sedai winked to life. The Tower had not had been this secure since the Amyrlin had been raised.
Behind his bars Caithlan paced like a restless animal. He could sense her moving, down down through the Tower, closer and closer. Was she truly coming to him then? Had Ellisande convinced her? He had thought it a fruitless venture. Perhaps she had heard of the attempt at his life. It had not even been close to successful. The standard of Guardsmen these days was absolutely dreadful. The guardsman in the room watched his pacing uncertainly. He did not care what the man thought. His heart was beating hard and irregular. He refused to hope, she could be going someplace else, to the storage rooms perhaps. But if she was... He forced himself to stop. He grabbed the bars with his hands and leaned on the cage momentarily, cool against his forehead. He breathed in deeply, held it and exhaled slowly. In his mind's eye he shaped a singular flame into which he meticulously fed his hopes, his dreams, his love until his heart grew quiet and steady.
Outside, a guardsman stood before the threshold; Gregor she thought his name was. "Do you know the rules, Aes Sedai?"
"Aye." she said quietly, and he waved her by. There were only a few she needed concern herself with.
Liana passed into a large, unused, stone storage room. The was well lit by torchlight, a single bright island in a sea of darkness. Her slippers whispered across the floor, the only sound aside from the scuttling of mice and insects. Her path was straight towards the center of the spacious room where a temporary, but massive, iron cage stood elevated on a platform. He would have a hard time seeing those who approached from the shadows into the pool of light. Another Guard, Willom, sat facing its barred door. He rose, nodded, and moved away to allow her some modest privacy. There was little to be had. One could see inside the cage from every angle of the room
There was a cot and a small table, each bolted to the floor, and a flimsy paper screen that hid a bucket. Caithlan wore the same stolen uniform he had been captured in, and it had not yet been laundered. There was a basin for water on the table, but there was only so much one could do without soap. Liana stopped at a barricade, a few paces below and before his bars.
Caithlan watched her from the opposite end of the cage, one hand on the bars. The void that he had built so carefully around him fell like a house of Cairhienien playing cards. He had crafted a mask, a cold impassive face that had shielded him over the years but she could see him. The man behind the mask regardless of his games and theatrics. It made him feel vulnerable and naked as he hadn't in years. He leaned on the bars and crossed his arms defensively.
Liana also wore a mask of Aes Sedai calm. It hid the beating of her treacherous heart as she looked on him for the first time in ten years. How long had it been since they had been this close? It must have been the day we quarreled over Itheara and the law. Though her composure now could not obscure the redness around her eyes, or her frustration, her anger. She could feel him through the bond of course, as crisply as she had then. The golden thread that bound them together, it pulled her to him, now more than ever. She wrapped her hands around the top of the barrade to steady them, she told herself, but really it was to keep herself from drawing closer.
"You've finally come back." she was surprised by the steadiness of her voice. Did he know how egregiously his attempt on the Amyrlin's life had hurt all of them? Did he know what his absence had done to her? To their family? And why did he feel so vulnerable? "I was tempted to come see you earlier, and then even that became difficult." she glanced to the guard on the other side of the room. "I hear you have been mistreated."
"What, this?" He glanced about the room. He could feel her anger, her frustration and... something. "I've had worse." He said wryly, a hint of a sardonic smile upon his lips. Well of course she would be angry, he had tried to kill her grandmother. But it made his hackles rise, defensively. "As for the boy..." Caithlan shrugged. The guardsman had been young and rash. Caithlan was dangerous even when unarmed, and he wasn't weighed down by an over-abundance of scruples. "He'll live. People from this Tower make terrible assassins."
She did not take to the bait, and a long pause passed before she spoke again. Liana doubted Caithlan realized how she had missed him through the years since he'd left her. And then she had felt him far below burning with need and anger like a hot ember in her shoe. How could she ignore him? "I am here now." she said simply as her glance returned to him through the bars. "Yet I am conflicted, Caithlan. How do I grieve for my kinswoman, my family, my loss of you, and for you - the Amyrlin's assassin, my Warder, and my husband? How can I reconcile it all with my anger for what you have done, and what has been done to you, to us? What am I to do with that? What am I to do with you?!"
"You could always kill me." He offered mildly. He could feel her shock reverberating through the bond. "Does that surprise you? My life does still belong to you. I could make it easy for you. You wouldn't need to use the power, either." Why was there still love there? When she had thrown him aside. He didn't understand. "Though you must think me a darkfriend now, so perhaps that would not hinder you; but it requires very little to kill a man." He stepped out towards the middle of the cage. "These bars aren't very narrow so I expect you can get your hands through. You could strangle me with your corset strings. Or wring my neck if you're strong enough. Or perhaps you would bend the bars to step into my prison." His gaze fell on the table. "You could tear a leg of the table." he tapped his temple. "If your aim is true it'd be quick. Painless even." He stepped closer to her side of the cage. She stared at him, he didn't need the bond to see that the idea was horrifying to her, but it was like he couldn't stop at this point, like pus puring from an infected wound, but there was also something... satisfying in knowing he could make her feel something, after being absent from his life for so long. He was hurting her, well, she had hurt him, and if they no longer had love, well, perhaps they had pain. He knew pain well by now. "Or you could bind that guardsman with air and take his weapons." He was up against the bars now, looking down at her from across the barricade. She was so close. Some part of him wanted to touch her red hair and caress her skin again. To see if it was as he remembered. "So what will it be, my love?"
Liana reeled from the shock of he suggested. She was grateful that she had already rested her hands on the barricade; it did not require much to let it steady her. He had begun his speech laced with sarcasm, but by the end it was longing, as if he wished for her contact, any kind of contact.
"What....no! Are you mocking me?" Is this what a blade feels like on the receiving end? She felt it in her heart and in her gut, twisting sharply. "Why?!" she backed suddenly from the barricade as if it were searing hot against her palms, back, back out of the circle of light and him in the center of it. "Why would you leave me only to return after so long to injure me again? How could I take your life? How can it e'en belong to me," How can you still call me your love? "when you abandoned me and forsook the oaths you once laid in my keeping?"
His eyes closed and his head snapped back, as if she had slapped him. His hands on the bars hardened and he forced himself to open his eyes, though he could only see her silhouette. "Abandon you?" The bars clattered as he shook at them hard, suddenly frustrated at the distance between them. Though what he would do if he got free he did not know. He grew still and leaned his head on the bars. "So this is your opinion of me. Thank you," he said, his voice brimming with bitterness, "for explaining so fully." His eyes strained to make out her facial expression. "How could you say such a thing? I did this for you. For the children. But you never came. And then you silenced the bond, cast me off into the shadow, and abandoned me there."
Alarmed by the racket of iron against wood and hinges, Liana had pressed her back against the cool slate stone wall and sought refuge in saidar. She did not know what he would do if he was free, or if she had the will to stop him. But as Caithlan grew still again she let the source go and willed herself to relax again.
"For me?" her brow furrowed. Whatever did he mean? "I did no such thing! When I woke you were hundreds of miles away. The girls returned, and Lembirt said-" what had he said then? It was difficult to remember his exact phrasing; her mind had been thick with the fog of herbs and fatigue then.
"'Lembirt said.'" Caithlan repeated, in dark mockery. He felt so tired all of a sudden. 'Grandmother flew from the battle at the Caralain Grass with Sojin and died trying to reach you...' A new narrative to what he had lived through seemed to be opening up to him. Strange that it seemed even more painful than his original interpretation.
"I am sure he was only worried for my safety." she said, "I was so weak then."
"He," Caithlan retorted crisply, "wanted you to himself. He always did."
She shook her head, "I cannot believe that, not after the life we three shared. His anxiety for my safety only grew more severe when you vanished. I could barely stand, he said, how could I ride to find why and where you had gone? The girls said you'd sworn yourself to that woman, and I did not comprehend why you had not delayed for me even to send someone to aid you. Nor did you send word thereafter." Liana crossed into the light that shone over Caithlan's cage again. "Yet I consented to my mother's quest in my stead, believing she was nigh unstoppable. And when she perished, I gave way to despair. It was too much to bear feeling the loss of you too, with me always in my mind, yet so far beyond my reach." She had to pause as her eyes stung. Burn her, but she thought she was done with weeping! "Lembirt and others were terrified of another assassination, of that darkfriend finding us through you. Every encounter with that darkfriend, 'Morgana', diminished us." She covered her eyes. Flame it! She would not let him see her weep! "I was struck with anguish at your leaving! Did you think it was a simple, nay, an easy thing for me to let you go?!" Her hands closed into fists. "Yet in the end I could not utterly divorce myself from you. By the Light, I ne'er released my bond to you."
"I wouldn't know, would I?" he said thinly. Yet he heaved a heavy sigh, weary. "Ellisande told me of Saphire." A pause. "I'm sorry, I never knew." He felt Liana's grief for her mother as an ache, but it was relieved somewhat with his sympathy.
He pushed his graying hair out of his face. "She was the same woman, you know? From my dreams all those years ago. Light, Liana! She would've killed them. What else could I do?" His eyes met hers, steady yet tired. Aged. "I had nothing else to stop her with, nothing else to barter for their lives that she would want. So I paid the price."
"Morgana was that dreamwalker?! Light...!" the pieces were beginning to fit now. A casual glance around the room told her that Willom had left, if for a moment. Perhaps he had hoped that she really would kill the prisoner given half a chance, and his offer to let her kill him. Liana let the guard fade from her thoughts and drew up to the barrier again, and stopped.
"I am more indebted to you than I e'en realized, my Gaidin." It was the first time in many years she had called him that. "And the girls ne'er forgot it, nor did they give up hope." It was becoming clear to her now. The Warder and husband she had known had done nothing but for love of her and their family; of course he had not forsaken them, at least not at first. "I ought to have risked it, at least when I grew strong again." she shook her head. "Perhaps my luck would have given me an edge." Sometimes her minor ta'veren nature led to disaster, and at other times, it was her saving grace. She beheld Caithlan in a different way then, he was not forgiven per se, but more understandable.
Channeling was forbidden here, but perhaps there was something she could get away with. At once she decided to do something that was perhaps very foolish. She crossed the barricade. "I am told that even through long distances an Aes Sedai can sense her Warder's strongest feelings. Yet you and I were rarely far apart after we bonded and before we were put asunder, we never had a need to discover it for ourselves." she shook her head with the weight of regret. "I am so sorry you suffered needlessly, mashiara."
He leaned on the bars, watching her approach with something of wariness and longing in his eyes. Like a dog, unsure if his master approached to pet it or punish him. "I'm sorry, too." He offered quietly, though it felt meaningless now. A candle to outshine a firestorm.
Liana stopped short. "It is true what they say, that you have become a darkfriend, Caithlan?" It seemed almost silly to ask now. Attempting to murder the Amyrlin seemed by definition to make one a darkfriend, but Liana believed what moved him was far more personal. She had felt everything when their daughter had called on him down in the cell. And all those feelings, mixed and tangled together, lay bare to her now with what he had told her. There was love but also anguish, and a deep boundless need. She glanced up, high up where the Amyrlin recovered from her near fatal wound. "Or..." she closed her eyes, feeling his anger and bitterness, "...is it she you blame? 'Tis so unjust. I am your Aes Sedai; you ought be wroth with me."
She'd been crying. He knew that, and he could see that. He felt the short distance between them like an open sore. He missed her so badly that he had to clench his fists at his sides to keep it in. It wasn't fair. She'd left him behind. And he still wanted her, needed her. Like a man needed water. "I couldn't care less about the Dark One." He had sworn no oaths. All he seemed to be doing these days were breaking oaths, so what was the point? But she had struck a point of truth. He closed his eyes momentarily. "I wish..." he said, his voice thick with fervent feeling, "...that I could hate you." He had tried, oh he had tried and perhaps it had corrupted and tainted his love for her. But he couldn't, and his hate had strayed and wandered, ever so subtly guided by Shaaran's hand, until it had found the only target he could muster. And Shaaran had gotten the tool he wanted. "But since not you..." He shrugged, a hint of a bitter smile on his lips. "... Why not her?"
"Because Amora en'Damier is the equal and opposite of Morgana, Caithlan." she answered with a small sigh. "You were bound to her, you must know that and who she really was, beyond the woman in your nightmares. You must know who she used to be." It was but a small step up, but it brought her so close and level with her Warder. "'Morgana', and...whoever sent you to commit this evil deed, are the ones who most deserve our hate. It was they who threatened our family, parted us, killed Saphire and Sojin, deminished me, broke you down, and fashioned you into a weapon turned against us." she drew closer, only a pace from him now, barely within arm's reach.
"Shaaran." He murmured. He'd stone-walled his entire trial, not speaking as to why or who sent him. But what did he care after all? "I do know... who she was." At some point it had ceased mattering to him. Even the most shocking revelation became mundane after a while. Liana was so close to him now, he could smell the perfume she wore. Lightly floral, it was the same she preferred all those years ago. It sent a tremor of emotion through him and he swallowed, his throat suddenly dry and thick.
"Oh, my love..." Liana wrapped her hands around the bars of his cage. Her face was mere inches from his. The Guard and the Hall of the Tower had pressed him to confess a name, anything they could use, yet he told her so easily. Perhaps...he still belonged to her, wholly and truly, despite the claim that woman had made on him. Could he still trust her? Could she trust him?
She was so close he could feel her breath gently against his face. His hands slid up on the bars to just below hers but something made him hesitate to touch her. "It was never Morgana you ought to have worried about." She had been trapped as he had been in her own way, though she had refused to see it. "Shaaran was the mind behind it all, and his goals have never changed. He will seek Amora's downfall no matter what."
"Why?" she asked anxiously.
"'And she shall rise from the ashes of a tower broken like will o the wisp in the darkness to tempt loyal sons and daughters from the Lord of the Grave...'" Caithlan looked into the distance, quoting from memory. "'... And she shall nurse a storm of fireflies at her breast to swarm against the dark tide of his Glory. Break the sword in her hand and fetter it to the dark, unkindle the hope in her eyes that her legacy might fail. Let her seedlings wither in the winter night. Let her legacy be dust and sand and her bitter cries a song to the Glory of the Father of the Night...'"
He sighed and shook his head. "He is a man of prophecy, dark prophecy. He believes that the death of Amora en'Damier is... paramount for the enduring success of the shadow."
"...An' the ruin of her legacy too." My mother...Me...My children! "What are his plans, Cathlan?!" Liana pleaded. "How can we stop him? How can we secure ourselves?"
Caithlan hesitated briefly, yet as he opened his mouth the door to his cell banged open. Startled he looked up towards the door as Liana turned. Five sets of footprints echoed in the chamber. Mathias Silstrom, Captain of the Guard; Zakuri Shahan Asha'man, a Justicar of the Blue Ajah beside him; and the two guardsmen, Willon and Gregor, all approached her with faces grim as carved stone. Their time was up.
"Step away from the cage, Aes Sedai." Mathias barked as he seized her elbow. "It's time to go." The guards drew to either side of her. One gripped the hilt of his sword, watching the corrupted Warder inside the cage, the other, his Aes Sedai. Her hands clung to the bars. Things would go worse for both her and Caithlan if she didn't comply.
"No, I need more time! You do not understand!" she protested. And she gasped when a shield slid between her and saidar.
Caithlan watched in bitterness as she let go and stepped back to face them. He could not perceive the weaves, but he knew his Aes Sedai well enough, and the look on the Asha'man's face, that he was channeling, probably shielding her from the source. "You bloody guardsmen don't know how to do a single thing right, do you?" He spat angrily.
"That's enough from you, traitor." Mathias growled, and tugged at Liana sharply. "Out." he inclined his head towards the door.
She struggled to push them away, but the guardsmen were pressing in around her, "Every man deserves the right of confession..." they would not stop, "...I am his Aes Sedai, custom forbids your interference...!" and took her by the arms to pull her away from the cage, "I am a Sitter of the Hall of the Tower, and you cannot make me go!"
"You aren't a Sitter any longer, Liana." Zakuri spoke with a voice smooth and firm with the confidence of authority, but devoid of feeling. "Apologies, Sister - we have orders to take you away."
"Are you arresting me?" she gasped, "Am I to be put to the question?!"
They didn't answer her, but Liana cursed them anyway, "Blood and ashes! Unhand me you bloody muscle-bound cretins!..." Liana's spirit was as brave as it ever had been, but something in her had diminished over the years she'd remained hidden in the Tower, and she was losing. "Burn your eyes! The shadow take your souls, loose me!" As they were dragging her towards the door she called to her husband, her Warder. If only she had come sooner! This was their last chance... "Caithlan! Hear me, you were deep in the Shadow's counsel: give your suffering meaning and come back to the Light - tell me!"
Caithlan swore as they dragged Liana away. He kicked the bars and shook them, but they would not budge. "Look to the north! Just beyond the blight border on the coast of Saldaea he makes his base. An old palace from the Age of Legends, half-eaten by the mountains. There he breeds an army of trollocs. Flame it, let her go!"
Liana heard his answer, and it kindled something deep inside that had long been smothered in ash and burned down to glowing embers. Resisting a Justicar was unwise at best, and treasonous at worst. But Liana didn't care. Blindly, frantically, she felt along the shield. There was nothing there, any more than the shield itself was a thing she could feel or see, but somehow she could feel around the nothingness, feel the shape of it. Like a knot. There was always space between the cords in a knot, however tightly pulled, gaps finer than hair, where only air could go. She fumbled at those gaps, squeezing through the spaces between what seemed not to be there at all. And suddenly she could feel saidar, light as thin as paper. Its warmth was still beyond her - the shield was still in place - but she felt hope. Hope and trepidation. She was stronger than Zakuri. She could break free!
She pulsed with what she had extended through the knot, flexed it as hard as she could. The knot resisted. It trembled...and then it unraveled. The shield tore apart like a rotten cloth and Zakuri cried out in pain, his hands holding his head. The Power filled her.
The guardsmen hesitated, and with a gesture the air around her rippled in a wave, like water in a still pond when a stone cast into it. It spread away from her, through the men, and threw them off their feet and against the walls. Liana knew she had to move quickly now. They would be stunned for a moment only. She was serenity in a cup, but something close to panic tried to wiggle creepers into the euphoria of the Power. More would come for her quickly. She bolted to the cage and climbed it.
They stood face to face again between the iron bars. "I am so sorry my love," he whispered. He saw now, as he had not before. He had convinced himself that he could strike at Amora, and Amora alone, but in doing so he had struck a blow against the ones he loved the most. "Forgive me. I did not see, I have failed you all." He spoke quickly, his words brimming with regret. "Liana, I never stopped loving you. You must believe me, I will love you until my last breath." He caressed her cheek through the bars. "Do not give in to despair when I am gone, that is what he wants. That is how he defeats you."
Liana nodded, her words came as rapidly as her beating heart, "I do not know what strength there is in me any longer, but I swear to you I will not give in as I did before." She leaned into his caress and raised her hand to comb through his hair. "Be at peace my Gaidin. You have not failed me, you endured bravely and redeemed your honor. I will love you long after you are reborn in the Light, may it be bright." They were coming for her. "Forgive me for despairing and losing faith. You have saved us one last time." She bent to kiss him farewell.
He leaned into the kiss as much as he could. The scent of her hair, her perfume filling his nostrils. It was like being transported back in time when things were bright and he a better man. He reached through the bars to gently cup her face and tangle in her hair. And then she pulled back as the guardsmen approached. He could hear shouts and running steps from outside his cell. As the guardsmen reached her she took his hand in her own and squeezed it tightly. "Do not die in pain."
Then they took her from him. And she was gone. He stared at the door, his hands clenched in frustration, and then he slowly opened his hand to look at the small vial of clear liquid she had pressed into his hand. Ellisande?
