Summerside

[Sirayn]

Looking back from a glacial Borderlander winter, where she found herself months later in a parlous state, her seventeenth summer struck her as a haze of sunshine and comfort. Of course she’d been accustomed to a life of luxury and that summer did not strike her as anything out of the ordinary. As the only daughter of a loving House she’d been spoilt from the moment she was born; almost from her first steps she’d begun learning to be a wife to her future husband and a mother to her future children. A mere youngster herself, she’d been promised early to the son of a neighbouring House, and when they’d both come of age they’d been allowed to meet a few times before they wed. She remembered it with a bittersweet clarity.

 

Barely sixteen, she’d prepared painstakingly for their first meeting. Her maid had helped her put all the womanly arts she’d learnt at her mother’s knee into practice; like best silver, she’d been polished until she shone, and when she’d looked in the mirror, for the first time she had seen a pretty young woman rather than a child. And by one of those strange, magical little coincidences … the first time she met her future husband her heart turned over and she realised that this was something like a miracle. Not that it mattered either way; love was something for stories, real life required her to wed for the political good of the family, and like a good daughter she was devoted to the good of the family. But she’d always been lucky and when she most needed it that luck gave her contentment like a gift. In the weeks leading up to her marriage she’d been as happy as she’d ever been in her life.

 

Then the Tower struck like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky and left everything she knew to burn. She’d caused a little burning herself, in revenge and in a bitter kind of justice, but what she truly sought lay far away from here. And while the ashes of the life she’d hoped to share with her husband cooled round her … she’d realised, like a hand twisting at her heart, what she had to do.

 

The episode with the oil lantern had given her a matter of hours before she had to leave. Half that time she spent hiding in an abandoned cottage still scarred by the wildfire war while shouts and lantern light played all about her. The occasional wink of light off her wedding ring had caught only her eyes so far but, though it left a bitter taste on her tongue, she slipped the ring off rather than risk discovery. A moment only she turned it over while wandering lights made tiny sparks from its smooth gold curve -- herself picturing her new husband, the children she’d planned, the ruined future she might never get back -- before she dropped it onto a chain and let it lie hidden. It felt like a small defeat.

 

Once the search had been called off she prepared as best she could. First she went home. Her obscure fear that she might come across her husband and her in-laws here, where they had been staying before everything went up in flames, quieted when she glimpsed how silent and desolate the entire site was now. Searching the still-smouldering rubble of half their house unsettled her; for weeks afterward she could still imagine the ash and dirt on hands scorched by the remaining heat; but she needed to recover whatever provisions and possessions she could if she was to make it to journey’s end and therefore she did it.

 

By the first light of dawn, a pale and colourless wash across the eastern sky, she had already left the smoke behind. If she kept the sun rising in front of her and cut tight round the Mountains of Mist as they lowered their weary heads to the plains she could reach the southernmost border of Saldaea in a matter of weeks, Kandor in months. After that … wit and intelligence could only get her so far. After that it was up to perseverance and dumb luck.

 

Anjen

 

[Sirayn]

A keen reader, her head stuffed full of Farstrider’s Travels, Anjen had imagined somehow that journeys meant camp-fires and singing and eccentric fellow travellers. Afterward she looked back and had to smile. Her seventeen years had so far included being soft and spoiled and loved unconditionally; she had had no idea that those sweet memories were about to be crowded out by the most brutal, relentlessly demanding challenge she had ever undertaken.

 

Everything conspired against her. The summer drew out until everything withered. She ran out of money, starved and slept under hedges, sold everything precious she’d had and still couldn’t find coin, wore through her good boots and couldn’t afford to replace them, realised there were at least two easy ways of getting money and that she was too principled for one and too married for the other, finally earned a few coins as a scribe, went for several days without seeing another person, nearly broke half her fingers with a single mistimed punch in a rough town out toward the border, had a knife held to her throat as a result, got into trouble with the local watch, got out of it by desperate pleading … just in the first weeks of her journey.

 

By all rights Anjen should have given up a hundred times over. Once or twice she came perilously close to it. It never got better. But she got harder.

 

In time she reached the border itself. Once she looked across a river like a line of white fire in the sunlight and saw Saldaea laid out in all its harsh beauty she knew she had found the point of no return. She had never been so far north before and the appeal of crossing half the Borderlands for an uncertain reward diminished even further at the sight; vast plains stretching as far as her eyes could see, mountains so colossal they clawed at the sky, capped whitely with snow though the heat had lingered into autumn. If she crossed this winding river she bound herself to a course that would eventually take her to Kandor and whatever she found there. If she turned back now … maybe she could seek another path. Find her husband, beg him to go into exile with her.

 

But why should she? She’d done nothing wrong! Nobody had and yet the Tower had swept their pieces off the board in a single gesture. She didn’t even know why those Aes Sedai had taken such a violent dislike to her House after they’d spent time under her own roof. No self-respecting person would slip into exile with her husband, make a quieter life for herself and give up on justice while her father and her brother languished in jail. In a better world it would have been their job to make everything right -- but her House had no more free sons. It had only her. And she had inherited their obligations.

 

She found a glass window and made use of it as a mirror, straightened her unruly dark hair with a careless rake of her fingers, unlaced her bodice an inch and smoothed the thin Domani fabric over her hips, tried out a brilliant smile on her reflection. Then she sauntered toward the border guards on the bridge. They watched her sideways; northerners had many merits but resistance to Domani charms had never been one of them and when she laid a delicate hand on the nearest one’s arm he twitched. She turned up that practised smile another notch to watch him colour. “Could I beg your attention a moment, good sir?” Her voice had gone low and husky. He nodded, keeping his eyes on her face with what looked like an effort. “I hope to go to Kandor by way of your fair land and I-“

 

“Kandor?” He frowned, momentarily distracted even from the striking combination of Domani woman and Domani garb. “That’s no place for a lady to travel. Especially now. You have guards, m’lady?”

 

“Certainly,” she lied. “These are troubled times and I plan to present myself untouched to my husband when we meet again. He-“ she allowed a brief pause, biting her lip in not entirely feigned feeling, “he’s always been a fiery one, and when he heard that the Shadow had taken Chachin, well, nothing would do but that he join the Light’s resistance. Is it … bad out there?”

 

“Bad? It’s a bloody nightmare, begging your pardon, m’lady. If we were further east I could show you the columns of refugees making their way out of Kandor. Those motherloving Darkfriends are killing everyone they come across. Chachin is swarming with them, it’s not safe to love the Light within fifty leagues of the city, it’s -- look, lady, can’t you stay home?”

 

“No, I can’t.” It was a near automatic response. Blood and bloody ashes! She frowned over this unwelcome news. Perhaps she ought to get herself the guards she’d lied about so smoothly … but where would she find the coin? She couldn’t afford to pay her own and they certainly wouldn’t risk themselves on a hazardous jaunt into the Borderlands for nothing. If she attached herself to a merchant train of some sort … the likelihood was that they also would charge for the privilege. The only resource she possessed in unlimited qualities she had reserved for her husband’s benefit and she had no intention of crossing that line. She chewed her lip, smiled inwardly when the small gesture drew the guard’s gaze, then startled herself with her own stupidity. The Border Patrol! Heavily armed Borderlander warriors whose sole purpose was to defend Saldaea and all Light-fearing people who passed through. She surveyed her target with new interest.

 

Her light touch slid into an equally light grip and she turned slightly away from the others, drawing her new friend with her into a more private conversation. “Sir, I must go to Kandor. I must! My guards-“ briefly she grasped for a good story, “are only contracted to this border and I lack coin to pay them further because … our family fell on hard times. I need my husband back and I’ll get him if I have to drag him out of Kandor by the ear. But I need -- protection. Is there any way-“

 

“Oh no, you don’t,” said her erstwhile saviour, looking alarmed. “Not with a Border Patrol. What about the rules? What about common bloody-“

 

“I’m with child!” It took no effort at all to put outrage and fury into her hissed undertone. When she thought of her husband and the children she might never have all due to an Aes Sedai’s whim, that all the Tower had had to do was put a finger on the map where her old estates had stood and decide that that family should go on no longer, it filled her with enough ire for twenty people. And it should have been true. By now it could have been true, she could have been genuinely with child, in fact … for all she knew she actually was. The thought lit such hope in her that she had to look away and get herself under control. “Sir, I throw myself upon your mercy. I must get to Kandor and I’ll do so if I have to walk every step of the way -- on my own, carrying a child, hounded by the Shadow -- but still walking, I tell you!” She twitched the dusty hem of her skirt to indicate the terrors of walking. “But I fear the dangers that I might meet out there, and as for my baby … and I wouldn’t be of any trouble, I swear, if I could just come with you-“

 

“Dear merciful Light.” The guard looked as if he wanted to beat his head against the nearest wall. “Have you ever seen a Border Patrol before? Been to the Borderlands? Have you ever even seen a battle, for the Light’s sake?”

 

She remembered fire in the night, the taste of smoke bitter and heavy, the sudden desperate scramble for escape. “In -- a manner of speaking.” Damn it, she could read it in his face, he wasn’t going to fall for that one. How under the Light was she going to make it into Kandor alive? “A little. I’ve been in a fight or two. Hit this one person.” Anjen flexed her still-healing hand reflectively. “Turned out he had a knife. Not the smartest move to make.”

 

His eyebrows went up. “What did you do then?”

 

“Hit him again.” Then screamed for help. Then dived behind the nearest upturned table. Then beat him with a chair until the local watch turned up. Then got thrown in jail.

 

“This is one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever heard in my life-”

 

“Perhaps you could help me make it a little less stupid,” suggested Anjen with a well-timed but somewhat desperate smile. “Sir.”

 

“No! You’d slow us down. You’d be useless when the Trollocs come down. And you’re-“ he waved a hand in the direction of her hypothetical child. “This is -- we can’t -- look, just no!”

 

Anjen glanced over his mailed shoulder and across the river to the Borderlands. The brilliant, colourless clarity of the sky lent a sharp quality to the air; she had to be seeing several hundred square leagues’ worth of country just from this vantage point. How many more would she have to cross to reach Kandor? By herself among the Shadowspawn? It would be madness. Suicide. She’d do her family no good at all by dying on some Light-forsaken plain far from her home. “As you say, sir.” She smiled, keeping her bitterness on the inside. “I’ll have a go all the same, I think. Thank you for your-“

 

“Are you mad, woman?” The guard looked as desperate as she felt. She’d been rather counting on it; all the stories told of the famous Borderlander gallantry toward women and, while lying and deceit was a poor return for it, manipulation was one of the only skills she could rely on. “Kandor? Alone? In your condition?”

 

“I am a loyal wife, sir!” Her voice sharpened despite her best intentions. “I’ll be in Kandor in a month’s time if I have to crawl there across broken glass. And you can either help me or stand aside!”

 

“Oh, for the Light’s sake!” Her many charms had evidently been forgotten. “Damn it. I’ll have to talk to my superior.”

 

“I’ll just wait here, shall I?” Anjen arranged herself artfully on the low wall.

 

“You do that.” He went in search of decisions.

 

Anjen

 

[Sirayn]

My dear husband,

 

You will not be expecting this letter from me; in the circumstances I thought it better to be considered dead. The deception was necessary. Had my survival been known, I am quite certain I would never have reached the border. But I live, I am safe and well if far from home, and I have every intention of returning to your side as soon as possible.

 

I cannot put my plans to paper; this letter may be intercepted and I do not know the codes my father used in his private communications. Suffice it to say that I seek to prove our family’s loyalty to the Light. I hope with all my heart that you are as convinced of our innocence as I am -- but I will pursue this cause whether you also follow it or not.

 

Please know that I did not leave you lightly. I have a duty to my own family as much as to yours and to the one we were to make together. And I will return just as soon as my work is done. I ask nothing of you: by our standards I have demanded enough that you accept my absence; but you will never be far from my thoughts.

 

To our future together.

 

She bit the end of her pen, considered the potential drawbacks of sending a letter signed with her real name, and instead signed it simply your loving wife. Completed, the letter looked short and unsatisfactory somehow; she had the silver tongue a little, as all Domani women should, but when faced with a blank page and the opportunity to confess everything to her husband all her words dried up. How could she summarise her arduous, lonely travels? Or the pale, flawless beauty of Saldaea laid out before her? Or her work to convince the Border Patrol, perhaps the first time she had tested her Domani skills in the field, or how she’d felt that first night when she took her wedding ring off and hid it? No, even if she had had the secure codes with which to communicate such details she didn’t know how to express it. Everything would have to wait until she got home.

 

If she got home. The sheer scale and difficulty of the journey ahead daunted her; she couldn’t imagine herself, a well-educated Domani lady as skilled at the trading table as she was unskilled at defending herself, dealing death to Darkfriends and worse. As for Trollocs … she’d imagined them half a story, something to terrify children, and to be confronted by the possibility of actually meeting some put cold fear in her heart. Her conversation with the guard earlier had sparked that small thought in her that she could genuinely be with child for all she knew and if she’d been even a little convinced of it she would never have exposed any potential child of hers to Fades. And even if she got to Kandor, in all the chaos and the confusion, how could she possibly find whom she sought?

 

It couldn’t be as bad as the Border Patrol had told her. That just wouldn’t happen. Ever since the Breaking the great northern defence of the Borderlands had stood firm against the Blight; monsters out of song and story might roam the Blight, but the brave Borderlander men held them back, and nothing would ever happen to her beloved home while Saldaea and Kandor and little Arafel and strong old Shienar stood against the Shadow. The north would never break in her lifetime, not with all the southern nations behind it and the Tower’s white hand to steady it … a thought that twisted her mouth in sudden bitterness and she began to stuff the letter into its envelope with quick rough gestures.

 

Then her hands stilled. She had considered the possibility of interception even before she started writing the letter. But what if it arrived safely? Her departure had been circumspect, so long as one assumed that the court fire was the work of some disaffected sympathiser, and intended to give the impression that she had either perished in the fires or perhaps at the hands of over eager townsfolk. She pictured her husband in the estates they should have ruled together -- in the gardens where their children should have grown up -- wearing whites perhaps, mourning for her … and she began to frown.

 

To inform him would be to force him to lie on her behalf. She didn’t consider for a moment that her husband might turn her in; she would never have betrayed him and she expected the same in return. Yet he would have to keep this deception for months, perhaps even a year or more, and Anjen had no idea how well he could lie to his own family and to anyone who asked. Could he do that? She had never yet met a man content to stay at home and wait while his wife went off adventuring on their behalf. It challenged their masculinity or some such rubbish. And if this letter could be traced back to the border town where she had put it on a mail coach … if people there remembered a pretty Domani girl whose speech betrayed her station and who had thrown herself on the mercy of the Border Patrol … perhaps he might even follow her.

 

Into Kandor! Light but she hoped he had more sense. Surely he would; nobody went to Kandor right now if they could avoid it. He wouldn’t know for certain … but then again, neither did she know for certain what reception she would find in Kandor, and she had set herself to the task with great determination. It would be idiocy for her husband to follow her. He ought to know better. Yet …

 

Blood and bloody ashes! She’d write from Kandor itself, if any mail still ran from there, and then even if he came after her like a lunatic he wouldn’t have the chance to enter Kandor before their paths crossed. Muttering in an unladylike fashion, she shredded the letter she had meant to send and scattered the pieces. They fell like white blossoms into the river far below.

 

“Lady?”

 

Her new friends were considering her with some suspicion. Anjen treated them to the most dazzling smile she could summon, not impressive given her mood, and dusted her hands off as though she hadn’t just torn up expensive paper and dropped it into the river. “Kind sirs, if I could have just one more moment to plead my case-“

 

“No need.” They sounded short. She deduced that her shameless manipulation hadn’t gone down too well even if proper Borderlanders could never resist a lady in distress. “Can you ride?” An eager nod; like any proper Domani child she had learnt to ride as soon as she had taken her first steps. This only furrowed brows further. Somebody was looking for any excuse to get rid of her. “Please understand that this is primarily a fighting company. Our purpose is to defend the helpless and the innocent. That means battle. You cannot be allowed to compromise that. If we run into trouble-“

 

Her pulse was beating faster. “I’ll flee. Like a coward.”

 

This venture earned her harder stares still. “How soon can you leave? And exactly who are you again?”

 

Protection! Her heart leapt. If she had secured the Border Patrol’s company, at least until she reached some well defended part of Kandor, she was gold. Her smile went warmer still. “Tomorrow. Tonight. Now.” Anjen gestured expansively with her now useless pen. “If you can go, I can go. And my name is …” Momentarily she searched her imagination. She had given herself a new secret name, to replace the one she dared not carry, but she had given others to everyone she met; it did not do to leave the same name behind her like a trail even if it was a false name. She plucked one from the air. “Keffria, sir. Thank you! I am so very grateful-”

 

“I bet you are. Tomorrow at dawn.”

 

Success. She positively beamed. “Yes, sir!”

 

Anjen