Autumn Lights & Tears

[Sirayn]

Even for an Aes Sedai veteran it had taken less than five minutes for the infirmary to get too oppressive. It brought too many memories; firelight and blood on her hands, like red ribbons in the water, she had always hated seeing children in pain. Her sisters in gold had taken the survivor in and he’d get no better care anywhere than with the Yellow Ajah, so with the Light’s luck there would be no more deaths tonight, but what a bloody mess. Defenceless children assaulted inside Tar Valon’s walls while the Tower slept! So much for the protection those trainees were entitled to.

 

Rain sheeted down the windows and matched her mood for greyness as Sirayn made her way through the Tower; at this hour the corridors still hummed with activity though few got in her way. She had gone by the Mistress of Novices to keep her informed and find out where she could track down her quarry. Strictly speaking it wasn’t her job, but she had been present at the last, and where had the Green Ajah been when blood was being spilled on their own ground? It added shame to her unsettled mood. The knowledge that she brought news as black as the sky overhead did not improve her either. Someone was going to face a nightmare very soon.

 

Class was just ending when she found her way to the correct hall. As white-skirted children flooded out Sirayn waited, composed as a painting, nothing outward to show what she had witnessed … or what she brought. The sister teaching the class stopped for a brief word but she got rid of the other woman as soon as she politely could. Here came her target: a brown-haired, brown-eyed Shienaran, pretty enough, but delicate looking. “Accepted Faile al’Rahien.” She kept her voice even. “Come with me, please.”

 

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah

[Guest Faile1987]

~Faile~

 

Sometimes rain looks like the Creator´s tears pouring down from the sky, spilling their liquid on us playing like children on this earth, ignorant of anything but our daily simplicities, not knowing anything about the source for the tears of heaven falling down on us. We don´t know why. But if we could, would we want to know the reason why?

 

Shaking her head slowly in silent refusal, Faile suddenly found herself confused by her own line of thinking. A line that had led her far, far out of the same dull classroom she spent most of her days as Accepted of the White Tower, outside in the pouring storm and even beyond. Eyes gazing out of the high windows without appearing to see anything, the flickering of lightning writhing on her blank face as it struck in the air, she kept her features expressionless, not even feigning interest on the tutor´s voice droning on and on about something related to the history of the White Tower, though if you would ask her for the exact relation to it, she certainly would need as much time to tell you why this was important for you to know, as she had spent talking already.

 

Yet Faile didn´t even find it in herself to get out of her stupor when class had finally come to an end and she rose with the rest of the Accepted around her, yet still she didn´t even seem to notice anything going on around her. She was somewhere else and everything around her touching her only on the surface she still knew that something wasn´t right. Yet this wasn´t important for now. She just had to-

 

“Accepted Faile al’Rahien. Come with me, please.”

 

It was a Sister, Green Ajah, she thought to recall, who finally jerked her out of her own musing striking her somewhat surprisingly and...unsettling as she looked at her dark eyes fixed on her face, not moving an inch, nor dropping that even stare until she complied, finally bobbing a belated curtsy.

 

"What can I do for you, Aes Sedai?", she asked in an attempt of composing herself, yet only feeling even more like the mousy novice she thought had left behind donning the striped dress.

[Sirayn]

A well-spoken child, it appeared, if none too quick to curtsey, with Shienar on her tongue and the Borderlands written in her bones like a language few could read. She stored away the smallest details to distract herself from the task at hand; this should be handled sympathetically, by an Aes Sedai who knew her, but instead all this Borderlander child had was her. Given her own record in showing the proper sympathy it could be said that the Tower had failed Faile al’Rahien in this as well. But she did not linger on it. Someone had to break the news and it might as well be her.

 

“You and I have some business to attend to, Accepted.” Business was a cold term to put to someone’s untimely death, but to spill the truth now and cause a frenzy in public would benefit nobody, the child deserved at least to hear in a secluded private place where nobody would see her grief if she did not desire it. “Come now. Talk later.” Leading the way Sirayn headed smartly to the Mistress of Novices’ office. Here thousands of women had begun their first journeys into Tower life; at the moment it stood silent, having been emptied for just this purpose, and the door opened at a light touch. She indicated for the Accepted to enter and closed the door behind them, sealing them into coolness and quiet.

 

Rain hammered against the windows in a steady thrum. Somewhere out there a small body lay broken, most likely the blood had already been washed away, and someone would have to bring it in … perhaps even them if she thought it would do the child any good. As for now the memory made her frown. Sirayn drew the curtains, shut out the storm, spoke without turning. “You knew the boy Danian Grey, correct? A Tower Trainee?”

 

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah

[Guest Faile1987]

~Faile~

 

She had known something was wrong from the frist instant the Green Sister had spoken to her and she had noticed that cool, level-gaze of her steel-grey eyes. Not unfriendly, certainly, and yet their stare had imprinted itself in her, making her feel cold somehow, the feeling of utter wrongness not only seeping into her slowly like small droplets of water, but rushing into her with the wild force of a stream she was about to lose control over at any minute.

 

The stream only gained power as Faile realized that the Green Sister was leading her away, straight to the Mistress of Novices´ study. Whoever she was, she was short of one hand, she noticed dimly, an impression however that didn´t linger long on her perception as everything seemed to become of little importance while her mind was racing, spinning around the source for that strange summon on this even stranger day when they suddenly came to a halt and the final click of the door closing behind her put her thoughts to an abrupt end as the Sister finally turned to her, deciding to finally speak.

 

“You knew the boy Danian Grey, correct? A Tower Trainee?”

 

For a moment her heart seemed to stop.

 

"Knew?", she asked breathless, feeling like that moment stretched to an eternity of her mind just stopping at one thought. One name.

 

Danian.

 

Knew.

 

What did she mean by that? Knew. An icy shudder rolled down her spine, but Faile wasn´t even feeling it. Her body seemed to have become numb, not even being aware of her voice shaking as anything else seemed to shake inside her, as if the pillars on which her mind seemed to rest were shaking too, about to fall down in an instant.

 

"Y-yes", she finally managed, the feeling of something being wrong attempting to choke her. "I-I..", I love him, she wanted to say, but something stopped her, making her angry and ashamed of herself unlike ever before. Not even now she was able to admit it.

 

"I do", she finally got out, "But what do you mean knew? Is...has something happened?"

[Sirayn]

Not a fool, this child, not by any means. According to her memory Accepted only associated with Tower Trainees for one reason, but Faile al’Rahien stopped short of saying so. Perhaps wiser instincts prevailed upon her to hold her tongue; love and trust held the dark rust colour of death. And she had already picked up on the tiniest of errors … Had the past tense been intentional? Even the speaker did not know. Sirayn did not understand people, couldn’t grasp the simple social courtesies others took for granted, and no doubt her explanation would have all the grace of a lead weight. Far better that the child realised it for herself than that some idiot Aes Sedai spelled it out for her in all the wrong ways.

 

Silence drew inward on the tiny room like a smothering hand. Gesturing toward the nearest chair, she herself took the Mistress of Novices’ seat without another word, facing Faile al’Rahien across the polished table; enough time for her to prepare her next words properly. Only subtlety and sympathy would do. She had neither. For once she felt very old indeed. “Something has happened.” She stuffed down the fear that she was going to mess this up spectacularly; there was a time and a place for doubt. Instead Sirayn watched her quarry, her gaze steady, unmoving. “Not long ago. But too long by half. As I heard it, so I will pass it on to you, who have the right to know.”

 

Old words, ritual words, and she reached for cool language to distance herself from everything. “Why they came, who they were, even how many, nobody knows. They came from Tar Valon proper, so we think, but they may have entered the city by any number of ways. Nobody even knows if they encountered the Grey twins by mishap or design. Maybe when he wakes the boy Dorian can shed some light on this … and wake he will, by the Yellow Ajah’s magic, though by all rights he should have died today.” Perhaps he would have preferred it. She knew the intensity of blood ties herself.

 

“Your Danian and his twin, the boy Dorian, fought an unknown number of assailants. Some are dead. Others fled. It appears that Danian took his injuries while saving his brother.” As well that the Yellow Ajah had intervened. She did not hold with children sacrificing themselves for nothing. “If that’s any consolation.” It wouldn’t be; she kept her tone flat accordingly. “You should know that Danian died as a warrior, bravely, honourably and well, in service to the Tower and in loyalty to his twin. His watch is over now. But he will not be forgotten.”

 

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah

[Guest Faile1987]

~Faile~

 

If she hadn´t already sat down, she was sure her knees would have given way under her on hearing what news the cool, grave voice of the Sister bore, her features all unmoving, calm Aes Sedai composure as she kept on talking. And talking. And talking. Light, Faile suddenly wished she would just shut up. Stop telling her this. As if telling things that had already happened could prevent them. Telling her how bravely "her" Danian had died.

 

Died.

 

The ultimate word struck her like a blow to the heart, as if the sword that had ended his life was about to put a stop to her own now as well. A final stop as it had put one to his.

 

Dead.

 

Faile couldn´t speak. She couldn´t even think straight, lacking the mere ability to grasp what the Aes Sedai just told her in that placid voice, calm as a lake on a spring morning. A spring morning that couldn´t hide the clouds forming on the horizon, clouds that soon would burst in thunder and lightning as Faile´s temper was about to crack the tightness that was gripping her heart all of a sudden, queezing it like you would an orange, greedy for its juice.

 

But she wouldn´t let her. Her. Yes.

 

"Who says I can trust you?", she suddenly burst out, her eyes glaring at her hostile and burning with the dark fire of distrust. The fire of someone who knew what it meant to be deceived or made to tell things she knew she should have kept a secret.

 

This wasn´t the only time the White Tower had tried to keep her and Danian apart. Vivid memories about the garden and the Mistress of Novices herself catching her permeated her mind tearing at her already strained temper until she barely could restrain herself from yelling.

 

"You lie", she said as calm as she could manage. "I never thought the White Tower would go that far. I never imagined that anyone could be as false and cold."

[Sirayn]

Despite her general discontent with this scenario Sirayn herself was no stranger to grief. She had lived long, and Aes Sedai ageing being a curse as well as a blessing, she had buried those she loved on many an occasion; she might even call loss an old friend, it had accompanied her on some of the most difficult and desperate missions of her life. So she had been prepared for a number of responses … denial, disbelief certainly, perhaps even anger, though it would take a brave Accepted to turn on an Aes Sedai in that manner. Had she been asked prior to the meeting she would have said that nothing Faile said in reply could startle her.

 

Unfortunately she hadn’t anticipated that Faile al’Rahien was a conspiracy theorist. It appeared she had been wrong to conclude the child was no fool; if the other thought for a moment that she would go to all the trouble of escaping the First Oath, possible but dangerous and time-consuming, simply to disturb some Accepted she had never met before then Faile had a greatly overstated view of her sadism. She bit off several caustic comments on the intelligence, or lack thereof, revealed by that little hypothesis. It would not be fair. The child grieved, whether she knew it yet or not, and it did not become an Aes Sedai to speak sharply in this situation.

 

To be called cold as if it were an insult puzzled her. Aes Sedai were supposed to be cold; they lived separate lives, above and beyond ordinary people, and if the Last Battle was to be won they could not afford such luxuries as sentiment. Obviously she was cold. One day the child might know the truth of that. Cold words, cold tone: “Believe it or not as you choose. I am merely here to inform -- and inform I will. By the First Oath, I speak no word that is not true, and I tell you Danian Grey is dead.”

 

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah

[Guest Faile1987]

~Faile~

 

Long forgotten her feet-shuffling, mousy days as a novice seemed, forgotten everything she had been taught about how to behave in front of a Sister, everything of the teaching she had received during the last years of her live spent in the White Tower, suddenly seemed to have fallen off her like a coat that had been worn for too long.

 

Reasonability. Humility. Deference. Respect. All that seemed not to matter anymore as her temper - and her anger - took the best of her and without being aware of it, her emotions seemed to boil over spilling out right in front of her without her even being aware of her behavior of its consequences.

 

The Light burn her if she cared. Not now. For now only one thing filled her mind and might well be that this one feeling, this one thought might cause her destruction, but it so, so be it. For one thing she knew. One thing. Three Oaths or not. Danian wasn´t dead. Couldn´t be. Mustn´t be.

 

No, she refused to believe it. Never. Not now and not like that.

 

"Aes Sedai never lie, Child. Always remember the boundaries of the Three Oaths as you walk your path to the shawl. Three Oaths will bind you as well one day and there is no way to break them. None."

 

Faile knew the truth of these words, perpetually having been repeated to her, imprinting themselves in her memory as clearly as if she would read them ink on paper. There was no doubt. Never. And yet...

 

"I...I don´t...", she shook her head, cutting off, herself, taking a deep breath to get out what she wanted the Aes Sedai to know. "If he is dead, I want to see him with my own eyes, Aes Sedai. Thee Oaths or no. I want to see him."

 

She swallowed, wondering how she had managed to keep her voice so calm when asking, demanding, to see him. To see what couldn´t be true. To see what she feared might be true.

 

Might.

 

Light, Danian...

[Sirayn]

A morbid request and one which, at first glance, she was disinclined to grant. The dead held no secrets; life escaped so suddenly, with the last gush of crimson blood, it left no further information even for the most desperate mourner. She knew and recognised a desire for certainty, proof enough to convince anyone, hard facts to begin the long dark journey into grief but … if the Accepted sought comfort then Faile al’Rahien would not find it out there in the relentless storm. How did it benefit anyone to brave the pouring rain, the mud and cold to see a body, a broken shell, no longer housing even the slightest spark of life? Dead was dead. And no matter how many tears she shed the child could not raise her dead.

 

But then it occurred to her that some day -- inevitably, if she were frank with herself, though the thought twisted at her -- someone would bring her the same news about Lyssa. Maybe something as simple as an accident in training; she could never be certain, of course, the links between them made her Lyssa a name on so many black lists; perhaps the strike would come openly, perhaps not. Her daughter would be just as dead whoever’s hand dealt the blow. And she would want to see her daughter’s body. No, she would have a right to see her daughter’s body, to touch her cold brow a final time and see the truth for herself.

 

Only an idiot would let a distraught child near the body of her sweetheart, but thinking of Lyssa frequently made her an idiot -- like the false, cold liar she was -- and she found herself saying: “As you wish. Let’s bring Danian in from the cold.” Outside the storm doubled it assault. Wind and rain lashed the glass window. The skies had darkened still further and when she glanced outside she couldn’t even see the outline of Tar Valon through the deluge. She looked over the child’s white wool and her own heavy skirts and shook her head; they were both going to end up drenched. It was a small enough price to pay.

 

“Out then.” They left the Mistress of Novices’ office; it bore no marks of their passing, untouched as if they had never even been there, and silent like the grave. Due to their location and the swirl of crowds as novices filed to their chores and classes it took her a good five minutes to find the nearest exit from the Tower. Once she did so Sirayn pushed open the door only to be greeted with a wash of howling wind which sought to rip the door from her fingers; she looked out into the gale, grimaced, and strangled out the urge to ask why the child was so eager to add some more lives to the storm’s tally. Instead motioning curtly for the Accepted to follow she stepped outside.

 

Rain hit her like a cold hand. It seeped through the layers of cloth she wore, soaked her skirts, trickled icily down the back of her neck. Since nobody could hear her anyway Sirayn permitted herself a muttered curse as she slammed the door and started into the storm. The child a barely seen shadow at her elbow, they forged onward across the open ground, found their way into the welcome cover of the yards; a high wall shielded them momentarily from the worst of the weather. The veiling rain slackened, just a moment, and before them lay a huddled shape.

 

She had never seen Danian Grey alive. Death had crumpled the boy like parchment; maybe he had been tall and strong once, she couldn’t tell, but right now he lay white and lifeless as a puppet with the strings cut. He had bled a great deal. Red still tinted the puddle he lay in. A fitting end for a brave boy, she had said that before, but the falseness of it twisted at her now. There were no fitting ends for children who met violence.

 

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah

[Guest Faile1987]

~Faile~

 

She came to a point when she barely felt the rain anymore. Though she was drenched enough already not to feel anything anymore as cold and numbness crept up her body seeming to slow her motions as well as her thinking down to crawling slowness, passing by in what seemed to be an eternities. Many eternities. Eternities that made her mind hook on things she didn´t want to think about. Couldn´t allow herself to think about.

 

As moments went by in aggravating slowness, Faile al´Rahien, Accepted of the White Tower had to admit that she was afraid. Mortified. That she...

 

No, she didn´t believe her. No matter what the Aes Sedai might try to tell her about the Three Oaths and being bound to speak the truth only, Faile knew well that there were many ways to evade those truths if only you were deft and experienced enough. No one could be more deft in the false game of schemes and deception than Aes Sedai. No one could have more time to gather as much experience as would be needed to master this particular art than Aes Sedai, blessed - or cursed - with an unnaturally long life given to them as they worked with the One Power.

 

The same would happen to her once, Faile thought and the mere admission made her quiver with cold, anger and helplessness. For what use was a long life if yo uhad to wander through it without ever knowing love? without ever really having experienced it´s pleasures with the one you wanted to grow old with, because he had perished way before his time?

 

Swallowing hard, she scolded herself for being a foolish little milksop. She didn´t need to worry about anything the Aes Sedai had told her, because it hadn´t happened. Couldn´t have. And if...if...she would have known if. Felt it. Somehow...It just couldn´t...

 

But then she saw him. The bundle curled up on the ground, forming an awkward angle as it lay in a puddle of rain and mud and blood. His blood, the blood of the one she had fallen in love with so madly, without seeing reason, without paying heed to rules. with no regrets for anything that had happened. They had lived through so much already. Punishment. Pain. Tears. And love. A love that couldnt´have gone yet, not like that...

 

For one single moment the hope penetrated her mind that this boy might not be Danian after all...His twi n Dorian however...she knew how hard they were to distinguish...maybe...

 

But those empty grey eyes staring up at her, bare of any spark of life, weren´t Dorian´s white murky ones. No. Faile had known it as soon as the thought struck her. It was Danian who was dead, Danian, not Dorian, Danian, who she would recognize between a hundred Dorians, Danian who she had loved so much...gone...leaving nothing behind but a lifeless corpse, that her fingers brushed over carefully as though being afraid to hurt him when she knelt down beside him, not paying any attention to mud and blood soaking her dress even more.

 

It didn´t matter now. All that did matter lay in her arms now as she pressed his eyes shut softly, kissing his cold brow for one last time as she cradled him in her arms slowly rocking back and forth, a soft humming tune on her lips as she held him tears now running freely, mingling with crusted blood and dirt on his pale face.

[Sirayn]

An old song had once held that rain washed away sins as well as tears, but she’d been an irreverent child with no love for folklore when she’d heard it, and now she knew better than to think anything cleansed guilt and grief. She’d had her fair share of both over the years. Images still stamped on her memory: fire and blood and chaos, a cold ring pressed into unfeeling fingers, the colossal form of Tear on the horizon on a stormy night, a woman kneeling to her, secrecy and despair; she’d become immune to it in a way, so hardened that each fresh loss had little outward effect on her, but that was a gift given to few.

 

The child Faile al’Rahien had never had the chance to prepare herself for this kind of blow. Was it the first time she had lost someone? Difficult to judge amid the hammering rain and the subtle tint of scarlet in the water pooling round them, but that kind of grief came only once or twice in a lifetime, as shocking as it was sudden. She watched them together, brown head bent over black, arms tight round a boy who would never feel them again, and found it hard not to remember another child dying inch by bloody inch beneath her hands … the cries and the stitches like black spiders and ribbons of red blood in the water. But that child had survived while Danian had not. Older times, older memories.

 

Nothing if not patient, she waited while the rain came down and the chill leached all the warmth from her, waited until the cold had set into her old bones and she began to reconsider the wisdom of being here at all. It seemed improper somehow to interrupt the child’s grief, but Aes Sedai need not be concerned with propriety if it suited them, and she broke in without compunctions. “Let’s get him out of the rain. The armoury.” Her nod toward the hulking building close by, merely a shadow glimpsed through the distorting rain, did not seem to have been noticed. She managed to keep her resignation and irritation on the inside. Time to get their hands dirty then.

 

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah