Fanfic:The Truth is a Sword
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The Truth is a Sword
You did not refuse the summons of an Aes Sedai. He knew that: it was one of the first things you learned at the Tower, along with "padding to avoid broken bones," and "do not avoid the Gaidin even when they have cause to be angry with you." That it was rare to be summoned was clear in the Ji'alantin's puzzled face as he read the summons to Sarkaska, but not being able to read the sheet of vellum handed to him did not make the summon disappear. She had said immediately, and she had said "Sarkaska Jinlo," and he was the only Cursed Bastard that the Grey Tower could boast of - if he did anything worth boasting of, that was.
It had to be about the lies, he knew that: while he was a bastard child of House Kol, if the Aes Sedai had demanded funding for his education or the like from his father's coffers, they would find out about his masquerade. He'd been so careful to project confidence and carelessness, but inside, he was nervous: a writhing, squirming mass of worms made their home in his belly. Any day, someone would come who knew the truth, knew more than he, a single careless greeting would ruin what he had built.
His life was a lie built on sand. Was the typhoon coming?
He entered Kimra Aes Sedai's private offices with a low, sketchy bow. She paid no mind: she was lost in perusing a gold-bound ledger, a slender finger following rows he could not fathom. The maid closed the door behind her, and at the discreet, tiny click of metal on wood, the Aes Sedai looked up. Her face was expressionless, any age at all between twenty and fifty, smooth and lineless but gifted with a dark intelligence that showed in her eyes. She looked too young to be old, but too old to be young, and even the few pale strands of grey in her dark hair did not put an age to her.
"Honor to serve, Aes Sedai," he volunteered, in a thin voice that he hadn't heard since his adolescence. Clearing his throat, he ducked down in another bow, looking up into amused dark eyes. She opened another drawer and pulled out a different book, this one shining clean, obviously well used.
"Be seated," she said, pointing at the room's other chair, a delicately crafted settee of a style he did not recognize. It was comfortably upholstered in a muted, pale silk, but short of finding a button to worry on its tufted top, he paid the furniture no attention. His fingers circled the button anxiously, but the Aes Sedai seemed not to care.
"We have not been introduced. I am Kimra Aes Sedai, second counselor to the King of Shienar. And I have some questions about your ancestry." She frowned at him as he half bolted toward the door, and her sharp cry made him be seated again. Nearly as fast as his bottom touched silk, his mouth was open and he was explaining in a torrential outpour of words why he had lied.
She cut him off with a gesture. "So you aren't a child of Lord Kol?" the Aes Sedai inquired, one slender brow raised. Was that what she wanted to know? He dared to relax a fraction, and his fingers found the button on the seat again.
He blinked. Of all he'd said, that much was true. "No," he admitted, "I am a bastard son of the Lord's. I don't know who my mother was."
"Do you know the story of the Lady Lisanri of House Kol?" she inquired, her head to the side. "About twenty years ago? Perhaps just before your time. It was gory enough, mayhaps you knew it growing up." He had to shake his head: he had never heard the name. A throbbing pressure had begun in the back of his head, and he closed his eyes, willing it away.
"Well, the tale has it that she had a child, and being both a noble maid and a child of a proud House, it's very curious that there's no verification in the family line. She has been removed, even from our own copies of the pedigrees, but I was always curious. Some said it was a Trolloc, some said that she gave birth to some webbed monstrosity, but everyone seems to agree, she had a child before she was executed."
His mind prompted something, and he seized it the way a drowning man clutches at reeds on a shore he'll never see again. "She died in childbed," he argued.
"No," the Aes Sedai said, frowning, "I thought you didn't know the tale. No, she was executed. It was a sad day for your House: she was to have been wed into the royal House, although to a third son. Power at any rate."
His stomach was revolting: grimly, nausea clutched it, kneaded it, released it. He gulped air, tried staring at the carpet, turning, staring at the fire behind him. Finally, he paced, until the Aes Sedai's cool silence made him retreat again to the seat he'd vacated. His headache was growing worse, blinding: he saw white if he turned his head too far either way.
"Some say she may have been executed for something she knew and shouldn't: others say she was plotting to kill her father and make her uncle Lord Kol. And the few who say they knew her best say it was to do with that child. Still, it's two decades gone, and I thought it was time to find the truth - child, what's wrong with you?"
For an answer, Sarkaska vomited, and was only dully surprised to find that it never touched the fine carpets under his seat.
"Please say something before you do that again. No one said you were sick today." She mumbled something about "flaming honor" and "woolheads with swords," that he ignored: he'd heard the likes before. But he wasn't sick: he'd been fine all day. It was just this inquisition: it was setting his stomach on edge.
"I don't know anything," he said, when he could speak again. "I'm just a bastard. He didn't even want to claim me: he told me that..." What had he said? His mind was blank about that, and for a boy who vaguely remembered nursing at his own wet nurse, that was puzzling. Memory had always been his strongest suit. The Aes Sedai was waiting, so he glossed over what hadn't been said.
"I don't know who my mother was, or who your missing Lady is, or where she is. Sometimes the people in the Kitchens told tales, and maybe I heard it there, but I think she never existed at all. She was a story, not a person. And I can't help you."
"But you can, Sarkaska."
He shook his head at the Aes Sedai, confused.
"I think you are Lisanri's son, by her father. I think her only crime was to be young and beautiful in a hard land. I think, when faced with losing his daughter to a rival House, he made sure that no man in his right mind would marry her. And then, he killed her."
He made the only response he could: he threw up all over her carpets again.
Uh. If you bothered to read all that, thanks, and I don't need replies. I'm doing what our moms used to claim would make us all go blind - playing with myself.
I tend to jump in time a lot, and so you'll see several incarnations of Sarkaska: like any person, he has a public self, a private self, and this self, an unacknowledged self. The Rage is making him vomit, as it controls all the logical conclusions Sarkaska came to years ago - and it occludes them. It made it possible for him to live through years of abuse and the guilt he felt about his own origins.
Get the boy a psychoanalyst, for he shall need one.
Mnemosyne
He had been ushered to bed but he could not sleep. The Aes Sedai had shooed him to the Infirmary, showing no regret, no sorrow in those dark eyes. Sarkaska wasn't sure she was human. Perhaps she was not. The Rage just wanted to kill her, and Sarkaska was lost in the war between some last bastion of his sane self and the pounding, surging, screaming ocean that the fury inside him was drowning him in, one voice at a time. Slowly, each surfaced, birthed a pernicious bubble of sound, and added to the growing, clamoring din inside his skull.
And these were the voices he could not ignore: these were voices he knew, memories of memories that he had never experienced. Nothing could have hidden this many repetitions of a story from him. It was all the Aes Sedai's fault, but she had not told him these details, these damning facts repeated by so many grieving people. So much dross and so little gold: so little he could be sure of. He clamped his hands to his ears but it couldn't stop the whispering - it was all inside.
voices
a thousand thousand voices
whispering
the time has passed for choices
Close to sobbing, he rolled off his bunk and shoved his feet blindly into his boots. Habit made him move quietly, which saved him a pounding from another Drin'far'ji who could find solace in sleep's oblivion. Ignoring the guards, who were more for keeping girls out than men in, Sarkaska tottered outside, into a night alive with starlight and shadows. He turned in a dazed circle, the moon riding the sky above his shoulder and the crickets only adding to the screaming he was forced to endure.
He tried to quiet all the voices, but the Rage was not helping. He could feel it, twisting in the ocean of poisonous tales, kicking up more like a dust plume under a horse's hooves, drawing his brain to facts he could not easily discount. Light, he was coming undone: his life had been built on sand, and the sand had come from him! He had built it so, brick by brick, on the back of the Rage.
Ignoring the possibility of stares and shouts - no one could be louder than what was inside his head, he reasoned - he dropped to the dirt yard, laying his full length on the cold, perspiring ground. It was soft and smelled of fertility, of the promise of the spring season that enveloped him now. He buried his face in it, breathing. In. Out. In.
The voices quieted to a chorus of sursurruses, skeletal whispers of their shouting selves.
I'm
trying to hold it together
head is lighter than a feather
In. Out. In. Out.
His whole world was a breath. He could feel it expanding his lungs, making his back rise. He forced more, made himself bigger with it. More. There was pain now, but he did not let his breath go. Grimly, he concentrated, feeling the burn deepen and increase. Finally, he let the air whoop out, gasping another breath, and lay, spent, in the grass. He was Sarkaska Jinlo. He was what he had made of himself and no one's truth could steal that.
looks like I'm not getting better
not getting better
Not even his own.
wait
I'm coming undone
too late...
"See You On the Other Side" - Ozzy Osbourne
"Coming Undone" - Korn
Wishes and Dreams
When he finally awoke, he was stretched in the grass to the side of a pair of sparring Ji'alantin. Neither one cast a glance his way: it was surreal, like he was invisible. He rolled to the side in time to avoid being kicked in the solar plexus, and then drew himself up into a small ball to one side of the combatants. They fought on, oblivious, never pausing to ask what seemed like the most natural question: why in the Light was he sleeping in the grass on a new spring morning? That kind of redication was usually conserved for courting a maiden, not your death of pneumonia.
It was still early, and his eyes were still raw, telling him he had not slept long. Yet, dawn was pearling the sky, and there'd be no rest for him in his own bed. Sobered, stiff, sore, and bewildered, he gained his feet and strolled away from the spar with what he hoped was his usual insouciant carefree swagger. If it was a bit hesitant, well, he knew why, and who else could ever need to? He could hide all this.
It could be like it never happened. As the Aes Sedai had said, in that calculatedly casual tone, it had happened twenty years ago. He wasn't even sure of his age. Well, the Rage knew his age, and the voices still softly asserting a truth he wanted to be deaf to knew his age: they knew it to the very hour. He didn't want to be...who? Himself? Yes. He didn't want to be himself.
He wanted to be Sarkaska Jinlo, a creature he was slowly coming to realize had never even existed. Certainly he had lived and breathed, but he'd been a blind doll: wind him up, he was a consummate parody of a Shienaran warrior from a once-proud House. And if the Aes Sedai could not lie, then so much about the decay of House Kol made sense: he would not honor one of whom such accusations were made.
But no, instead he had to be that one. He had to be the bastard son by incest of a murdered Shienaran noblewoman. Why the flaming hells hadn't he just been born to a whore? He could live with that. Light, up until yesterday, he'd always blithely thought that was the truth.
Years ago, he'd dreamt of the sudden discovery of a noble mother, the estates, honors, training, the future. Now, he had found a niche of his own, and a mother had come too late, and all wrong. Yet, he could not push the thought away to die of exposure. He could not say he was not the son of House Kol.
Realizing his fists were so clenched that he'd left blood-red half-moons in his palms, Sarkaska stopped, looked around himself. He'd wandered off the grounds and into the forests beyond the gardens: some said there was some Ogier thing out this way, and if you walked long enough you'd find peace. Well, he wasn't finding peace, but rather, pieces. Fragments of his own past tortured him as he paused, glaring down a noble nose into the blameless clear water of a trickling stream.
Why could it all just be nothing more than a bad dream?
He had to know more: he'd have to beard the Aes Sedai again.
The Hornet's Nest
It had taken him a whole day to work up the courage to do this, a day of hideous revelation. He'd lost an easy spar to a memory of being bounced in someone's lap and hearing the flaming tale of Lisanri for the hundredth time. His pride was stinging and his brain was reeling: where had he hidden all these memories for so long? How had he avoided them all? And why could he only remember now? What arcane key had turned in his memory storehouse lock?
How could he make it turn back?
That had been what had finally propelled him into the cool grandeur of the Hall, where a few questioners in traveling cloaks spoke in hushed whispers to the girls who were training to be Aes Sedai, and were led out of sight by girls barely out of childhood, dressed in the white gowns he'd come to realize meant they were truly young - Novices. The Accepted, the next rank up from them, could be any age behind those banded gowns, and he couldn't really tell. All the Aes Sedai looked young to him, but he'd been told they could live for more than a hundred years.
He joined a queue whispering questions, and the young women checked their books and whispered together before they sent a girl in white scurrying away. He waited impatiently atop the circle, half black Dragon's Fang and half white Flame, with a dozen other petitioners. Some of them glanced his way, but for the first time ever, Sarkaska was too busy and too worried to think about seduction, fighting, or drinking. His whole universe was the dim corridor that the Novice had vanished down: when would she come back? What tidings would she bring?
It felt like a small eternity before the white gown and the pale face over it returned, spoke to the Accepted, and was summarily pointed back to himself. She was tall, willowy, lovely: Domani. He could care less. She licked her lips and tried for an unsuccessful mien of calm, but ended up stuttering:
"Kimra Aes Sedai will see you. She says you're a day late."
She darted glances at him as they strode through the halls, taking the largest stairway to a vestibule decorated with some pretty glass. She glanced at him again as they entered the series of halls tiled in grey, and said, "You know, Aes Sedai don't like to be kept waiting. You should have come yesterday."
"She hadn't told me we had an appointment again yesterday," Sarkaska growled, outpacing the swaying woman. He knew the way from here: he doubted he'd ever forget it.
"Make sure you ask the Accepted for a punishment for speaking out of turn," he snapped, and saw the girl pale. He probably shouldn't have said that, but to have her yammering that he kept Aes Sedai waiting was pure silliness. And to have her supposing that they were meeting for some clandestine reason? The Aes Sedai would skin him, and that was after the Master of Arms had finished with him. Better to buy a little silence or at least the semblance of propriety. He raised a hand to knock, but the maid opened it as if she had been listening for his footsteps.
"Come in, child," the Aes Sedai called, from behind her desk. Once again, he entered the room, peeling himself off the doorway as if he had melted to it momentarily. He didn't want to be here, but he couldn't stay away. It was like wanting honey and getting a large beehive: one would do for the other, but not without painful lessons. Only, she was Aes Sedai, so it was more a wasp's nest: wasps could sting multiple times and had no honey to begin with.
He sat back down upon the same chair. The rug was unstained. Kimra Sedai caught his glance down at it and let out a soft, bitter laugh.
"It's one of the things the One Power does well, boy, cleaning up messes. And the Grey Aes Sedai are famous for cleaning "messes" much worse than that." She sat back in her seat, her features arranged in something that might be delicately termed a "smirk."
Really? He'd have thought the Yellows, to whom the Infirmary belonged, were more astute at removing vomit. You'd think they saw more of it.
"I didn't eat breakfast this time," he assured her, anxiously.
She let out another strange laugh, and leaned forward, the ghost of amusement dancing in her eyes. "I doubt you're here to make another mess on my rug, although I do suspect you were hoping for some sort of revenge. I usually wouldn't be so blunt about a revelation, but from how you acted, I supposed you already knew and were toying at Daes Dae'mar with me. Then I recalled that Shienarans don't play the Game of Houses, except with cards."
Apparently, national stereotyping wasn't a lie: the Aes Sedai had said it, after all, and Sarkaska knew of a few nobles who were insanely and annoyingly manipulative. Still, he hadn't come to argue about the Great Game: he had come to pump the woman for education on why this debatable past of his had to be examined, and what had made her call for him in the first place. He crossed his legs, squirmed, and uncrossed them: his skin felt too tight, too small. Why was it, every time he saw this woman, he was uncomfortable?
"Tell me," he gasped, trying not to scratch his fiery skin, "why you called me. Why me? Why now? Why did I need to know? What do you want from me?"
Her face lost all its amusement, and her back straightened. "I did not lie about the pedigrees: she has been crossed out. But I did not tell you that I knew her: she was my dearest friend as a child. Yes, mine: we were inseparable. And you couldn't be anyone else's son. You look just like her, except the height: that would come from your...your father." She swallowed, and he realized that the thought of incest sickened her, as well. Light, though, the Aes Sedai didn't have to live with being its consequence, though: no, that was a burden he got to carry for himself.
"She wrote me a letter, when I left her for the Tower. I could not make sense of it until I heard the story say she had had a son in seclusion. Then, I knew: I knew also that I had failed her just by ignoring her when she was in dire straits. It seemed so unimportant then, so trivial: she wanted me to come and rescue her, but I thought she only wanted me to leave my studies to play at being noblewomen, not because she was...she was..." The Aes Sedai stopped, dug in her bodice, and dabbed at her nose. What, was the woman crying? He'd never believe it.
"At any rate, she asked me to safeguard her treasure: I thought it was a jewel, or an estate, but all she sent me was this. Now I believe she meant you, and that she wanted you to contest her death and rival your....your father...for the control of the House. It would be a demanding position: you would have to - but I'm ahead of myself. Why now, you asked, why now..."
The Aes Sedai glanced up at the ceiling, where a plasterwork sun held on to a lit chandelier, its candles steadily melting to nothing. Sarkaska glanced up, too, but he didn't see what held the woman's attention. His skin was still a nest of stinging bites, too tight, his clothing an agony. He just wished she'd say it.
"He's sick, and he's left no heirs to the House. Yes, I know you have uncles and...well, I suppose they are still cousins. He's disowned his sons, and forbidden their sons to press suit for the House. He says they are no blood of his. You, of course, are also likely no blood of his, he'd say, but I have the things your mother sent to prove who you are, and maybe even who your father is.
"I couldn't save your mother," she said, slowly, steadily, while Sarkaska broke down and started to wildly scratch his misery, "but I can win your House for you."
The Reluctant Lord
He had time to stew in his misery. In fact, he had months.
The questioning voices had begun just days after the terrible dambreak of memories had swept him over and away. He had never agreed to the Aes Sedai's plan, never done more than gape at her like a netted fish. She'd rolled him flat as a Gaidar's chest, packaged him neatly and slapped him on some "finished" shelf in her mind. Owe a dead friend a favor? Just shanghai her son into a lordship! The Rage, quietly redefined, bubbled over in his mind all the time. The controls he must have perfected once upon a time were gone.
He was furious, day and night. The anger he felt made him make rash mistakes, cost him the patience necessary for the bow or sword. Time and time again, he ended up with stinging shoulders and painful pride. There were a few instructors who would turn him away at the door: people had been hurt and rules had been broken. Most of the time, he was forced to work forms alone: it didn't bother him. Something about the solitude and the sword soothed him.
Sarkaska, a sword, and the sky: he didn't think there was a better combination than that.
While his body worked at the forms, learning them so that their instinctual use wouldn't get him killed, his brain stewed. Furiously at first, ideas pounded through his brain like galloping horses. As he tired, they slowed, congealing like yesterday's porridge, until he could catch one by its tail. Quicksilver they flowed, taking the form and the function from his one big question: no longer "who am I" but "what happens now?"
What if he didn't want to be a lordling? The Aes Sedai had never asked that. What if he didn't want to remember Shienar? What if he wanted to be someone new, someone to whom House Kol had never happened? How did you accomplish that when you were going to be the head of it? All he had never wanted was his. Only, deep down, he had wanted it, and more than a little of him was ravenous for it. The power, the prestige, the future, the estates: he had been denied it all, but he could win it. And, most of all: did he want to embrace the legacy that might be and shouldn't be his? This had never been his family, and Shienar was not his home.
It had just taken distance to see that. Away from the petty taunting and the rudimentary power struggles, he had gained a clarity and an insight that let him see the limitations of the bubble that nobility survived in. Not, of course, that he understood it in those terms, but it was what he saw. He had seen the lives of the farmers and peasants that worked the lands of the House, and in their own way, they were more genuine and real - and maybe honest and enjoyable - than anything he had ever seen in the House. Yet, some disowned bit of him longed for the power to crush those first enemies, and for the solidity of the seat that he had not quite ever dared to dream might be his.
Torn, he was bisected: he was of two minds about becoming a different man. In this place, his future was assured if he only worked and learned: there, it was assured so long as an Aes Sedai wished it to be. Repercussions from his uncles and his cousins were likely, but not insurmountable. He could rule, with the power of Hama Valon behind him. Well, rule his House: Sarkaska had no designs on taking over a country.
Today, he was practicing out of the Training Yard. It wasn't specifically prohibited, but it was frowned on. Because of that, he'd stalked through the Gardens and was on the Tower's outskirts, in a quiet glen in the trees where a river lent the air a certain coolness and the grass was long and smelled sweet, like the summer that was so slow in coming this year. It had rained earlier, and the air was pregnant with the smell of fertile soil. The sword was a demanding mistress and had left him panting and dripping sweat: he was vaguely glad that it wasn't yet gnat season. Tired and heaving for breath, he dropped into the grass and stared into the sky.
What was wrong with this life? Sarkaska, the man who looked Shienaran but could be from anywhere, belonging to only himself? Why did his life need complicating, and how could he know what he wanted?
Why was it, now that he was faced with his heart's desire, he really had no idea what it was at all?
The Blade in Your Mind
It was on one of autumn's dying exhales, a day of dreary gray and rotting black, that he realized that he had spent a year in the Training Yards. A year: that was so many days blended into an exhausted paste, so many long, sleepless nights, so many days spent with blisters on his palms from the abrasion of leather-wrapped hilts. It had nights of broken bones, and days of blood and fire. Yes, he'd felt pain now, and known fear and frustration to lay cheek and jowl together in a cradle, twins identical to the eyelashes.
The Aes Sedai was still in Shienar. There had been one cryptic message in late summer, a missive suggesting that his...grandfather...would soon be dead. Perhaps he was now. If he was, Sarkaska regretted it: the inability to ask that one question was the blade in his mind. He was literally haunted by his need to know why...why and who, and how, and not so much when or where, but one question needed the other five for support.
Who was he? And why was he? Where could he go? What refuge was there for him? What was there to relieve the loading tension in his brain? He had to know, but there were no answers. Or, rather, there were answers, and he was trapped here, far from them. Yet, he had had no choice but to flee Shienar, and now he had no choice but to stay where he was...wanted? Not really. Needed? Only as much as any other untrained sword could be.
Here he was, a Shienaran warrior of one and twenty, being protected by women and the Gaidin who served them. True, the women were Aes Sedai, but did that shrink the size of the skirt he hid behind, or increase its diameter? Was he weak, or strong? He realized that he was clenching the blanket in his fist so tightly that it would crease and wrinkle, and returned it haphazardly to the cot he'd just risen from. It was night and he was supposed to be asleep, but this was not the first night he'd spend in contemplation rather than in slumber.
He slid out between the guards, nodding a greeting to his own instructor, who lounged indolently against the building. There might be trouble fo other trainees who escaped the coop after dusk, but Sarkaska always came back and was much less troublesome out than in. Like an alley cat, he needed his moonlight forays, although unlike said feline, they rarely ended in a screaming fight and kittens a few weeks later.
Tonight he had a goal in mind. There was a lake at the Tower's base, a broad expanse of star-speckled black reflecting the sky above. Sarkaska had made the lucky discovery of a barely-seaworthy rowboat tied to a listing jetty, and now, some nights, the man who had never seen a sea sat alone in the boat in solitary splendor. At first he had thought this peace: now he knew that it was grief.
He locked the oars into the boat's splintery sides and pushed into them with his shoulder. As he rowed, fire burning madly up to his shoulders, he let his mind run in furious circles. It all came down to the future, and the decisions he had not made. Could not make.
The man he wouldn't face.
The mother he didn' know.
The Aes Sedai he did not trust.
The lordship he didn't want.
The future he couldn't divine.
Dropping the oars, Sarkaska laid back, and stared into the stars with eyes that could not weep.
Right. Uh. Yeah....I wasn't done in May, and while I've been wrangling the girls, I had been trying to plot where he could go.
Vision Quest
His body felt heavy and his eyes had the gritty feeling that said they'd been closed just long enough to be not long enough. Had he been asleep? Moving slowly, he propped himself up in the rowboat, bringing his booted feet back inside the small craft. He was longer than the boat, and so, he tended to pour over a bit when he laid in it. It didn't bother him: what bothered him was the cold bath you got if you moved quickly and foolishly. He'd only done it once.
For some reason, it seemed something to be proud of. Like a baptism, he had been immersed, shocked by the chill of the water. He had emerged changed, weakly vomiting water on the rocky shale to lay there, panting and what...almost grateful. But why grateful? What had nearly drowning taught him, except that he wanted to live? Any fool could tell you that he wanted to live, so what separated him from that maddening crowd? If you dropped a man in water, he learned to swim. If you dropped a man into the mess that was his life...well...what then?
He turned back to lay supine, his feet perched on opposite sides of the rowboat's tiny gunwale. There were no answers in the stars, but he kept staring at them, anyway. Brilliant points of diamond fire glistened in some arcane code, lulling him away from his real problems. Light, even his problems lured him away from themselves: he had buried them deeply, ruthlessly, for nearly a year. Whenever he found his mind dwelling on Shienar, he worked harder, pursued reckless dares, closed himself away from the world a bit more.
Brick by brick, Sarkaska was walling away the Rage. Strangely, though, he was finding life intolerable without it. He had needed the ignorance. He couldn't survive with the memories in his mind. Except, of course, that he was, and he had been for some time now, if only by ignoring it as much as he could. And the Rage did not want to go. Now, instead of hiding his own experiences from him, it injected them all with rank, bitter hatred. He could only dwell on himself - who, what, why was he? Would he never know? Could nothing explain?
He'd done the most rudimentary research himself. He'd gone to the library, bothered a Novice to read aloud to him from the meager collection of volumes that Kimra had listed on a sheet of vellum. There had been so little of it, but he knew what little the Aes Sedai had known, short of her prior knowledge of his...his family. She had told him nothing of interest, save that he looked a bit like his mother - that was all he had. Yet, the Aes Sedai was not lying, nor was her story unsupported. It was true that he had a claim to the lands and titles of House Kol...but he did not know if he wanted them. What good was it to have the lands and titles, when he would still be of bastard birth, and worse yet, a product of possibly the foulest sort of beginning?
And there, laid bare, was the problem. Custom shunned those whose parents were unwed, and even more, denied those of strange origin. By assuming any title affiliated with that Shienaran House, he would have to claim his birth, and by doing so, he lost the last of his self-respect. It was a fragile dilemma: on one hand, there was shame but a life of comfortable means. On the other, he had to choose his path and gain his own tools. At the crux of either choice was the advantage of the other decision: did he want money, security, and whatever peace was due the lord of a once-great House? That the Aes Sedai would deliver what she had promised was undebatable: she had the King's ear, and possibly, by now, everything but his...father's...head. Yet, he could leave this place, and forget becoming a Gaidin.
He rebelled at the thought, but it was not that the inhabitants or schedules of the life he lived now had ever appealed to him. He had stayed from desperation, a situation that was now averted. The Creator had, perhaps, sent him a blessing, but did that mean that Sarkaska could not wish it away? Life had been simpler without the knowledge he had now. Everything had been better, wrapped in the oblivion of the Rage. The scales were off his memory's eyes, but not to any good effect.
What he needed was a sign. A vision. A quest, even. In the stories, the hero had a vision at the nadir of his dilemma, a portent that had him pushing onward. What would he give to be a character in some bard's tale! Freed from the pressing confines of a life that he shouldn't have, he could gain everything he ever wanted, be anything his heart desired.
All he had was all he was.
Suppressing a sigh as false dawn pearled the sky to the east (or perhaps it was true dawn, he wasn't sure how long he had slept) Sarkaska rowed the skiff back to shore and rose, sore, stiff, and tired, to greet the day. It, like the night before it, loomed over him like the shadow of something unspeakable.
This Path of Thorns and Thrones
He wasn't a good student. He'd be the first to admit that, and half a dozen disheartened Ji would second it (and be thirded by exasperated Gaidin.) Yes, he had all the qualities of an excellent Trainee: he was tall, broad-shouldered, a veritable horse for the back-breaking work that the Gaidin gave haphazardly to their own proteges. The trouble was the crux of his own personal dilemma: Sarkaska had no desire to commit himself to one path. Perhaps he wanted it all. He preferred to think that he wanted none of it.
Either way, he was in trouble.
Choices. Everywhere Sarkaska turned, someone offered a choice. One as innocuous as porridge or eggs for his breakfast might seem insignificant, but still, he felt a paralyzing panic. Head down, he followed his successor through the breakfast queue, not deciding what he wanted. Here, at least, he was humored: a bowl of grey paste nestled next to a yellow mass of eggs. Why his life couldn't cooperate so nicely, Sarkaska had no idea. How much easier it would all be if he could just plod through and have what he wanted - or even the knowledge of what he did want.
He was stranded on his own path of thorns and thrones.
Long ago, he had been banned from all but the most patient instructors' classes: accidents happened around him far too often. Sometimes, he sensed that he was on his final chances with the Gaidin, but on days like this one, that suited him. It would be a choice he didn't have to make, then: a future decided for him. What more shame could there be than he already owned? What would being sent from Hama Valon in shame really cost him? He had no friends and several enemies, and he had the Aes Sedai's sworn oath that he was of Shienaran blood and would be cared for by his own.
Why couldn't that make him happy? A comfortable life was more than most men had the promise of, and long ago, the allure of being a Gaidin=trained warrior had worn off, soaked in the sweat of singing muscles and burning breaths. And still, he refused to leave the Gaidin: nothing held him except routine and familiarity, but those were bonds of steel for Sarkaska. Ties of blood, he had none, really, and ties of gold were easily severed, and the Tower's hold on him was less than either. He was...waiting. Waiting for purpose and form, as void and blank as steel before the forge.
Breakfast was over an hour finished, by the position of the sun, and Sarkaska had wandered from the lessons on spear held this morning. The introductory lessons bored him: nothing held his attention long but the sword, the horsebow, and the warhorse. He was not yet master enough to rate his own horse to train, and without one, his lessons could not progress much farther. It was a strange mixture of fear and trust that broke a horse to you: much like the process of teaching a child, although Sarkaska knew nothing of that. To him, babies happened to other people.
Currently, he was sitting on an old anvil in the corner of the stables, his chin in his palm, a shovel leaning against one long leg. Anyone knew the way to rate further training in horses was to work, and anyone who thought they'd be rewarded instantly was a fool. He mucked out stables and mechanically forked hay into troughs, taking the occasional nuzzle from a velvety muzzle as his payment. The animal warmth of the horses was soothing, the smells familiar and the air was warm as a blanket. Before he knew it, his eyes were aching and heavy, and the anvil, although a seemingly uncomfortable seat, became a handy bed for the exhausted and lonely.
He slept, and he dreamt.
The Vicious Circle Defeated
He woke up with one, overpowering urge: not the typical one that involved a quiet corner in the lavatory, but a new one - escape. In his typical way, he weighed his options - there weren't many, so it only took a rash second. Quick as a wink, he'd unlatched the stable gate for a horse, gathered its reins in his hand. It might be thievery to some, but to Sarkaska, it was liberation, although he wasn't sure the horse would see it that way. Still, it was a better companion than the jumble in his mind, and the velvet muzzle nuzzled his hand hopefully.
The horse was used to him: he rode and walked it most days, and fed it apples when the bin in the stables filled with the bruised windfalls still had a few left to filch. Sarkaska was pretty certain it was the only being alive that looked forward to seeing him every day, which only went to prove his point. This was not a place he was needed. Galvanized to an action at last, he did not pause to consider its repercussions: he leapt in head first without knowing the depth of the water.
Did he choose to be a lord? No. Did he choose to be a Drin'far'ji on his last chances? No. He rejected both! He would make a new life, seek a different path. There was precious little he could do, besides joining an army or pledging to be a merchant's guard, but he didn't think of that, either. He'd never been long on foresight. Like an animal, he lived in one moment without considering the next: proof that he had been soft before he came, but fancied himself hard.
He busied himself with tack, saddle, and bridle. The horse stood patiently, used to the business of being ridden. Now thinking ahead, Sarkaska gathered the reins in his hand, and led the horse from the stable. At first, he followed the path from the building to the yard that the horses used for exercise and pasture when the sparse green grass grew. As he became more bold, he turned the gelding and led him instead to the open gates leading into Hama Valon.
This was where his flight should have ended, but chance intervened: a noblewoman and her retinue were on the causeway, carts, wagons, horses, and carriages everywhere. Sarkaska drew his cloak tightly around him and pulled up the hood, exciting no comment in the fine, misty drizzle. As the Lady's party lurched forward, Sarkaska slipped free of the Tower's long shadow, the accusatory finger of its silhouette seeking him out for punishment.
He did not let himself feel regret.
Slapping the horse's muscular flank with one broad hand, Sarkaska galloped from the vicious circle of future and past.
Among the Falling Leaves
It was nearing moonset, and he was no longer riding the horse. It plodded behind him, its bulky warmth a comfort at his back as he strained to put distance between himself and the Tower. Adrenaline and fear had yet to give way to Sarkaska's brand of common sense, and at the moment he was terribly high on nerves and success. There had been some tension earlier in the evening, when Sarkaska realized he had no coin, food, or clothing other than what he wore, but he had surprised himself.
Now, his belly was full of rabbit he'd caught himself, the horse had chomped grass and some early carrots Sarkaska had dug up more from curiosity than from any desire for rabbit stew. He was surprised at himself mostly for never having had the idea to do these things for himself before: had he always been helpless? Why hadn't caring for himself ever been an idea he'd entertained?
He estimated that there were twenty leagues between himself and the Tower, now: far enough for sleep. His body was alert, though, and his mind racing and fumbling - he couldn't rest, so he hadn't tried. And anyway, there was a light in the trees ahead. Sleeping here would be suicide. Tying his mount to a tree, Sarkaska crept through the shadows. From tree to tree he moved, liquid in his litheness, his feet mere whispers on the bed of dry leaves and decomposing wood underneath. He felt pretty great about his woodscraft skills until he heard the first barks.
Now, Sarkaska had heard a lot about Tinkers, but he'd never seen them before. He froze against his tree, trying to focus and find the dogs in the gloom with eyes robbed of nightsight by the blazing bonfire. He couldn't be sure it was Tuatha'an out in the dark, but the chances were high: the wagons were boxy and low, and the moonlight only subdued colors that would make an eyeball bleed in daylight. It was either Tuatha'an or a traveling circus, and the music wending through the trees made him more sure of Tinkers than traveling bards.
Softly, he moved around his sheltering tree, well out of reach of the tied dog. The dog growled and barked, but it was too late to keep from attracting attention. Sarkaska had stayed out of the dog's reach for two reasons, one being his fear of being bitten, and the other, his fear of scaring the Tinkers.
The girl who reached fearlessly for the head of the huge mastiff didn't seem afraid. Her gaze swept him from head to foot, taking in the sparring leathers he wore, the battered boots on his feet, the plain woolen cloak of a rich chestnut. She wore a blue skirt and a red top, both bright � more properly, both garish. A dark red thing held her hair off her face, but the light wasn't good enough to distinguish color. Boldly, they stared at each other: Sarkaska felt a sudden, wild urge to sweep her up and carry her away.
However, he'd learned not to follow those wild itches: they only got him in trouble.
�You ran away in a hurry,� she drawled, her voice carrying an accent he'd never heard before, soft and flat. �And you like to think you're a warrior, don't you? But your hands are still soft and so is your heart.� She flounced off, taking the dog with her. Sarkaska, startled to silence, simply stared after her. After a few steps, she turned back, frowned at him, and gestured.
Well, this was a picklement. First she insulted him, and then she gestured at him to come along, regal as any Aes Sedai and twice as stuffy! He followed his first instinct under her withering stare: he stuck out his tongue.
She burst out laughing.
�Mind you don't lose it,� she bubbled, leading him toward the fire and the people gathered there. Sarkaska could only blink at the sudden turnabout in her features: she had seemed forbidding, dark and nearly imposing. And here by the fire, she was just an ordinary girl: she shot him a secret smile as she slid into place beside a matronly woman stirring a kettle.
�A stranger,� she said, dramatically, gesturing at Sarkaska. �His name is...� She frowned at him, and some of the imposing came back.
�Sarkaska,� Sarkaska admitted, his shoulders hunching defensively. Everywhere he went, his name stained him. Nobody knew why, but everyone recoiled: he might as well say his name was Black Plague, for the response might be warmer. He dared a look around, and met only polite interest. What, didn't they know? His new hostess moved over to empty a space for him to squeeze in beside the warmth of the bonfire, and gave him a conspiratorial smile.
�I'm Berra,� she said. �This is my mother, my father...� Her introductions were rapid, jumping from face to face around the fire. Sarkaska gave up trying to remember when faced with the rapid-fire hail, and simply nodded a greeting to each. She went on to explain that they were a day or so away from a stedding, which she described with such glowing tones that Sarkaska could only wonder what was waiting there for her. Surely just a home for Ogier (storybook characters that they were) wasn't that exciting. He tried his best to avoid the questions thrown his way, still unsure about what he'd done, just beginning to feel the first twinge of regret. Maybe he had been hasty.
Maybe he had read too much into what he was, where he was, what he was becoming.
He declined the vegetable stew he was offered, politely explaining that he had eaten, but ended up eating it anyway. Berra's mother had a stare on her that could shame an Aes Sedai. And the stew was delicious. He said so and was rewarded with another portion.
�I used to have a brother,� Berra said, watching him eat with amusement. �He left. Some pretty girl in a village. She wouldn't leave, so he stayed.� Her face was sad, and Sarkaska was waiting to hear how he had died. When he asked, confused by her gloom, she laughed at him.
�He is Lost,� she said, smiling, �because he left the wagons. We can't stay in one place, it's not the Way of the Leaf. But you could stay,� she offered. �You make my mother feel like she has a son, and...� Her answer trailed off, ending in a blush. �I think we were in Saldaea too long, because I sound like a farmgirl.�
Sarkaska hadn't heard a farmgirl say that before, but flaming Light if he was going to miss the chance to.
And then, he realized what she'd been hinting at.
Regret and Astronomy
He had slept by the fire, and he had slept alone.
Berra had cast eyes at him a few times, but watching her made his chest ache. It wasn't just the notion of holding her body: the silhouette under her bulky skirt and bright shawl was slender, and her face was fair. Nor was it the notion of holding her heart: he thought he could do that. She was pretty to look at and she talked like a bird flew, naturally and quickly. Her laugh was musical, and he didn't think she'd look odd anywhere. He could love her, he was sure. The trouble was all around them, but mostly inside of him.
The more he thought about the world, what lay behind him and what lay before him, the more he knew his heart wasn't his own. Yes, Berra's offer was lovely, and so was she, and he wouldn't mind crawling into her bed tonight, but accepting it was wrong. She'd welcome him, wrap around him, perhaps even conceive another cursed bastard � and he would leave. He wouldn't mean to, maybe, but one day, the desire to go would build up, and he'd escape. Hadn't he just proven that, running from the Tower?
The worst part was that he couldn't even explain what he had done. He'd never had much reasoning for anything in his life, but there were drawbacks to working on instinct. On his back, he stared into the stars. Some of the wise said you could read the future in them, but all Sarkaska saw was sparkle. It took him a minute to realize that the iridescence was tears.
He was homeless, alone, lost, and wandering. The charm he counted on to skate him through life was wearing thin, and worse, he didn't care. He had the nagging feeling he was missing something serious, something huge, but every way he examined his problem, he came to the same conclusions. Simply put, he didn't feel he should be alive, but he was darned if he wanted to die. There was no real reason for his life, and no definition for it. Everything he tried, he failed.
Why, then, did his life keep opening new doors? He left home, he found a new one. He left that one, and immediately, there was another, which he was going to reject out of hand. There was no helping that, although a part of him lusted for the camaraderie of the Tuatha'an bonfire. Before he had known the truth, a part of him had embraced the idea of children, a home, a wife (okay and a mistress. After all, he was a lusty man.) He had a slender stipend from his mother's estates that had gathered in value as he grew, and if he called upon it, he supposed he could even be reckoned as a wealthy man.
Yet, he didn't want wealth, and he cared nothing � truly � for the title. As he laid, staring woodenly at the sky, his eyes open in defiant denial of the tears in them, he knew where he had to go.
Shienar was calling.
A strange, sudden peace settled over him, and his heavy eyes closed. His sleep was deep and dreamless.
Reflections on a Horse's Backside (I)
In the end, he crept away like a beaten dog. Moving silently, he rolled up the blankets (stolen, because what man ever thinks ahead?) and likewise stole his breakfast from the cold stew in the kettle. It was still dark, and the camp was finally silent: He'd thought they'd play music until dawn, but when the moon had sunk behind the mountains, the music had died away. Firelight, he supposed, wasn't the best for seeing strings. And Berra had not come to him in the dark. For a while, he'd supposed she might, but her mother was wise. Maybe she could see that Sarkaska would go. Or perhaps Berra had seen that herself.
Either way, he thought he was alone until he reached the slumbering horse. In the predawn stillness, a second pair of hands clutched the bridle, a bright hood dimmed only by the grey light through the trees betraying their owner's identity. His heart broke a little at the sight of her, conflicted and confused, conviction warring with the desire for the familiarity of home. Silently, they faced off, her wide eyes pooled with moisture and his filmed with guilt. They'd traded no promises or kisses, and still, she called him to task.
It was just like a woman. How could she make him guilty for doing what he'd promised to do � nothing?
�You can't come,� he told Berra, his fingers cradling her chin instead of the horse's tack. �You'd cry, and you'd miss your mother, and there's war in the Borderlands.� And I'd love you, and you'd get sick, and you'd die, and I'd be cursed a million times. He pried her fingers from the horse with the gentlest of care and pushed her from its side. �We only met yesterday. You'd hate me.� Maybe it was true. He slid up over the saddle, stuffed his feet into the stirrups. With a heavy heart, he twitched the bridle, and the horse stepped away, flicking its ears in irritation at interrupted dreams.
He did not let himself look back.
The excitement of the day before had worn off, and autumn lent the land a dreary brown monotony. It was hard to remember exactly what he was doing, or why it mattered. Indeed, after turning over the picklement he'd put himself into, it was best not to think at all. Giving the horse his head, so long as it remained north and west, Sarkaska considered the shattered pieces of his life. It was as if someone had a knife to him, but his worst enemy was himself. Every time he made a home, started a life, he squashed it and smothered the breath from it.. He had been excited to be accepted as a trainee to the Gaidin, before he'd realized Aes Sedai were part of the bargain, anyway, but look at the mess he'd left there. He'd earned a place at his father's table through sheer luck and tomfoolery, and he'd left in the night. There had even been the merchant, between there and here, and he'd crept away from that, too.
How could you be brave if you were always running away?
What kind of courage did it take to face his past?
Was it an apology that Sarkaska wanted to give, or to take? And why should he be the sorry one? It was not his fault that he had been born, and even less his fault that he'd been conceived. He had uncles who could manage House Kol: why did he want it? He didn't need its incomes, didn't need its history, didn't need the shelter it could provide. He'd already determined that once. Instinct said that if he turned back, submitted himself to Caden's ire (and it would be volcanic) he'd find a place in the ranks. Sure, it would be licking the rawest recruit's blistering boots for a few months, but in time, he would earn forgiveness. He might even hope to earn trust.
And still, the horse headed north and west. Shienar was the siren singing him to his death on the rocks. He would find the source of this damnable flow, and strangle it closed. It wasn't murder on his mind, but more of a homecoming. He didn't want to make a future while haunted by the past. Lay his mother in her grave, lay his father � grandfather � in another, and make a clean breast of the sow's ear he'd been given. The old man was dying. Perhaps he could linger long enough to tell Sarkaska what he did not know.
It wasn't so bad, to ride forever into the sun, Sarkaska mused, but he felt no warmth.
Scar Tissue
On the first day of his third week of avoiding the Tower's seemingly nonexistent net set to snare him, Sarkaska came to the river. To be honest, it wasn't the first river he'd come to, as the tributary streams that riddled Cairhien like the veins they were flowed frequently and swollen with the heavy fall rains. His escape from the Tower was feeling a great deal less triumphant than it was sopping wet, and the leaden grey of the skies mirrored his mood.
He had left all of this in his past for a reason. And you had to beware an Aes Sedai's gifts if you had to beware their words, and only a fool believed what an Aes Sedai said. Certainly their Oaths claimed they couldn't lie, but the truth you heard and the truth they said were frequently two different things. He was coming to grips with the fact that he'd run from his future with nothing to his name but a promise he had no faith in and a past he didn't want to claim.
And when you'd run from where you belonged and you were too proud to turn back, what was there? He was too frightened for suicide, too stubborn to give up running to turn back and submit himself. He needed another option, and there was nothing before him but water, as broad and flat as far as he could see.
It was enough to make a man really wonder if your name suited the trend of your life: his translated to "cursed bastard," and certainly he had the worst luck of anyone he'd ever met. Usually, he ignored that and just kept plodding forward, but a river this large was an insurmountable obstacle. He could raft it or ride to the north, where the city was, to take the ferry, or he could sit here on the bank and wait for someone to come along and clean him up.
Someone would, of course: Sarkaska had no doubt of that. The trouble was, he didn't want to go back to allowing his life to happen without him: that was ninety percent of why he was sitting here, a stolen horse chomping grass beside him, staring at a river that separated Cairhien from Shienar. He was almost there, nearly to his goal, but still uncertain of what he was even doing.
The Rage had propelled him to run, and he had done it blindly, thinking that he'd have the answers he needed by the time his boots touched Shienaran soil again. Here he was, the breadth of the River Erinin away, and he was as lost as he'd been the night Berra had fed him supper. Perhaps he'd been a fool to leave her, but he knew he'd done the right thing to go.
He could make smart decisions. Still, what he had here was a morass of quandaries. Taking a deep breath, he led the horse on a path parallel to the river. He knew he was paralyzed by the past and afraid of the future, and this present problem was of his own making. He'd been a fool, and this was the cost of stupidity. He'd pay the complete toll, and then...and then what?
Lords had duties, marriage and peasants, lawkeeping and Blight raids. He wasn't averse to the Blight raids, but the rest was over his head, and he didn't want a wife. In fact, he didn't want to be a lord, and he was sure of that, but there was a need for him as one. What he didn't know was what he wanted, and until he had that answer, he couldn't turn back.
Yet, the urge to was strong.
Her. I'll look for the Aes Sedai in Fal Dara, he thought, the sudden solution blooming in his mind like a miniature sun. She can manage the flaming thing, since she arranged it. And I can go... He swallowed, thinking of Caden's wrath. But I want to go back, he told his fear.
I really have no choice but to pay for what I get, he schooled himself, soothing the already placid horse beside him. Still, the thought of having somewhere to go and a plan for when he arrived was putting spring into his tired step.
"Just a few days," he told the horse, his voice cracked and thick from disuse, "and we'll be...home."
Strange to consider a building he hated home, but it was the one place where he was who he was, not what history had made him.
Shienar was the last time he'd think of himself as the Cursed Bastard. From now on, he was going to leave his conflicted self behind and find a new one. Clutching the bridle in one zealous hand, he pushed onward. There was not much of the daylight left, and he had far to go.
Feeling as tender and stretched as scar tissue, Sarkaska rang the ferryman's bell.
