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Sirayn
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Posts posted by Sirayn
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Having finished with the Canain boy she had been expecting to return to her original partner -- peel him off the latest in his succession of redheaded love objects, warn him that she was always watching him, perhaps dissuade him from poisoning anyone … and find out what information he had gained from Aran’s little agent. Indeed, when she cast a glance across the dancefloor, she found Corin bloody Danveer and his new paramour without any trouble at all. To nobody’s surprise they seemed to have taken to each other. Perhaps she ought to warn him about the dangers of canoodling in public as well.
In one of those unfortunate little coincidences she moved away from the boy Fior Canain, intending to cut in and remove her partner from the temptation of so many unattended glasses, such pretty redheads and so little critical supervision, only to spot another teenage troublemaker slinking off. She fixed Estel’s wretched son with an unnoticed but icy stare: why she had to tolerate so many lackwits around her she had never figured out. No rest for the wicked. Thoroughly irritated, she wound her way through the crowd, beginning to wish she hadn’t worn the seven-striped shawl like a banner, and slipped out after the halfwit boy.
Evidently it was her lucky night. The only person for whose intelligence she had such little respect that she did not believe he could possibly be an agent was staggering drunk -- not only that but still carrying another drink even now. She surveyed the miscreant with thinly disguised disgust. She had hated the drink ever since a little incident in Ebou Dar she never spoke of, and to find somebody so defenceless, made so graceless by the hard stuff repelled her. Did the boy have no control? No dignity? She kept her voice low, controlling her tone. “I believe I said it would be the rain barrel for drunks, young man.”
Faerthines had gotten roughly as far as say… a dozen stumbles and lurches out the nearest door, cradling his already empty cup like a small child. Very little went through his hazy mind except a certain revelry in being alone with a cup of… what used to be alcohol. That and pride for having managed to get so completely drunk in a roomful of Aes Sedai and his superiors without being caught.
Of course, the commanding, painfully familiar voice behind him stopped this as dead as if she had obliterated it with the Power. Of all the people to catch him, even Ginae would have been better! Light, it wasn’t even just that she was the Amyrlin Seat but the fact that she connected him with his mother. His Light-forsaken disappointment of a mother.
This mental debate was, of course, not seen by Sirayn, but the piteous whine, the stumbled turn-around- during which he managed to trip and fall flat on his behind- and the “Damnit.” were.
Night had closed darkly about them. Behind them the lights burned on in the great hall; a few solitary lanterns flung their shadows long across the street. She regarded the boy on the ground, quite impassive, only the slow open and close of her fingers to show any motion at all. And inwardly she worked hard to cut all the ties -- to ignore many and subtle connections to earlier times, to shades and memories … Many a year ago she had given her precious little children up to strangers. They had come back to her many years later, but strangers themselves, grown tall and unfamiliar to her. Neither had needed her for anything. Neither had wanted her.
Briefly she contemplated offering him her hand, helping him up, seeing that he returned safely to his quarters. A fool’s thoughts: he didn’t need her either. It would be far better if she simply ducked him in the rain barrel, as she had promised all along, and left him dripping and half-sober on the cobblestones. Instead she looked up and down the street, checking that they had no little observers, then leaned against the barrel of possible impending doom and folded her arms. Her voice remained level … even gentle. “Why do you not go to your mother, boy?”
Even in his inebriated state he noticed this odd change in Sirayn’s manner. His eyebrows drew down and his face was fixed in a stupid, confused expression as he sort of stared at her. Every so often, he tilted his head as if the new angle would somehow give him a better perspective and understanding of this sudden change in temperament. Reasons floated through his mind but were made slippery by wine and were forgotten as soon as they were thought.
Had she caught him sober, or asked the question using any other emotion, she would have gotten nothing out of him but an explosion of angry resentment. As it were, even from a person so foreign and aloof as the Amyrlin Seat, that touch of gentleness- even if feigned- was what he craved. He was an outcast, disowned by his mother, the disappointment of his mother and generally hated by his fellow trainees- beggars can’t be choosers and he took the scrap she dished out.
“Why? To be rejected again. To be told ‘you weren’t supposed to happen, you were a biggest mistake?’” Faerthines snorted sadly.
Her brows drew down in turn. Light only knew she knew the many perils associated with having children, especially for those whose highest calling must always be the Tower, but she did not hold with mothers taking their own sins out upon their children. Nobody had told her that Estel spoke to her son so harshly. She had no right to interfere here, she told herself that firmly, but … it didn’t seem right. Estel still had a son. A drunk and a fool he might be, but he lived, he was strong and healthy, why turn him away? Did she not see that some day he would die? That each day he still lived was precious -- a transient, passing gift which once gone could never be recovered?
A small and cynical part of her marvelled at the symmetry: she had been rejected by her children, he by his mother. She could no more discuss her beautiful, lost children than walk on the moon while it seemed his only friend was a bottle. How typical of the Tower. It demanded so much of them, set such impossibly high standards that only a machine could reach them, and when they fell short it turned on them. She didn’t even know what to say. How could she speak freely to a drunkard in a city full of spies? What was she even supposed to tell him anyway? She couldn’t be certain that his mother did love him; perhaps Estel was just that stupid or unfeeling that she couldn’t love her son.
Light spilled from the open doors behind them, lost itself amid the shadows and turning curves, outlining them only in the softest colour. Lanfir, she thought, Lanfir would have known what to say. Lacking her predecessor’s charm and certainty, all she had was the stupid fear that she might ruin this … possibility somehow. But she ventured it anyway. “Is that why you drink?”
Staying where he fallen to the ground, Faerthines curled him into a tight ball as if that could possibly protect him from drowning in his own shame. He averted his eyes from studying her when she began to survey him in turn as if probing him for the answers that were too painful to give. For all her gentle and what seemed understanding and his drunkenness, this would have been no more painful in any other situation, but neither would this had happened under different circumstances.
In response to her question, he nodded sheepishly like a child caught doing something he shouldn’t have been.
Half-shadowed, safe from scrutiny, she looked down on somebody else’s son and imagined. Even drunken and wretched in the mud … for reasons she did not quite dare examine … she could picture this boy as the most precious thing in the world. Her children had never looked to her for anything; she had given them up, tiny little babies, and years later she had gained back strangers. She had lost the best years of her children’s life. How could she call herself their mother when she had never sat by their cradles and rocked them to sleep, or sung them the old Andoran lullabies her mother had sung to her, or raised them after they fell or taught them their letters or showed them how to live honourable lives?
In a bitter moment she wondered if slow, stupid Estel Liones had any idea what she was doing to her only son, what she was losing, the black kind of future she was making for her little family. Surely even a halfwit Blue would have done something before now if she had realised … but how could she not look at her own son, a drunk and a wastrel, and not even ask him why he spent his time and coin so recklessly? If she knew how he responded to even the slightest touch of gentleness -- and for the Light’s sake, even Estel must have some scrap of love in her -- how would she still deny him?
She had no place here. Her seven-striped shawl might get her far in the Tower but it did not give her the right to interfere between family. Yet she craved her children, a chance to fix the irrevocable damage she had done, to fool herself she was not a failure as a mother and a woman. And the boy looked like a small half-drowned puppy. He needed her. She imagined that so hard it almost hurt.
She knelt, slow and careful, and held out her hand, not quite believing that this was even happening. “You don’t have to do that.” She kept her voice gentle. “Come to me.”
Even drunk, the awesome wonder of that moment didn’t escape him. Faerthines didn’t comprehend all the little nuances of the situations, such as being knelt with in his misery by the most powerful woman in the world or how, kneeling with a wretched, miserable boy, the Aes Sedai was truly fulfilling the title of ‘servant’ better than on her throne before which thrones trembled, but he did know that he was finding comfort and understanding in the most unlikeliest of places.
Lines of reality were fuzzed by his inebriated mind and seemed to him that the woman kneeling with him flickered between Sirayn and Estel or else both were kneeling there, sometimes it was a combination of the two meshed into one body. The two women shifted like the sands of the beach and like those sands, every time one receded it was immediately replaced by the other; he was never alone. Never alone again with wine as his tears and ale his regrets.
He had still been clenching the glass in his fist when he had fallen. It was shattered now and he clutched only the glass stem while the rest lay broken on the ground in a strange parallel to himself. Tears fell down his cheeks and silent sobs wracked his body while he let go of the cup to take the proffered hand.
Kneeling amid broken glass and mud, she held herself entirely still as his fingers closed over hers, though a part of her marvelled at the sensation; she had forgotten how it felt to touch somebody not because duty demanded it but because she wanted to. His skin felt rough and warm and real. It didn’t hurt. She couldn’t quite fit her mind around the concept that touch might not always mean pain or discomfort. But those cold old thoughts she banished -- by some strange miracle this child needed her, somebody else’s son, and this time she wouldn’t mess it up. She clasped his hand firmly, as she had done to someone else in a hazy hall not far from here, and drew him to his feet.
It had been long since she last dealt with a drunk. The fact that this half-Domani stripling towered over her did not make assisting him any more convenient, nor did the expensiveness of her white gown, but the former could be ignored and the latter cleaned if necessary. Harder to explain would be her absence from the ball. She cut a glance over her shoulder toward the busy room, calculated how many minutes it would take her to return the boy to his quarters, and gave up; they would just have to move fast.
Moved by a sudden, stupid impulse, neither the first nor last tonight, she slipped her fingers under a fine silver chain round her throat and lifted it over her head. A signet ring dangled on the chain: small, silver, and marked with the tree and crown of legendary House Damodred, it winked in the variable light. It pained her to let it out of her sight, when she had kept it so closely for so long, but … just for a little while it should be all right. She kept her voice steady. “I want you to bring this back to me. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, maybe next week. I’ll have time for you. Show the ring to my Keeper and we’ll make time. Now bend your head, boy, you’re too tall.” Careful, she lowered the chain over the boy’s dark head and dropped the ring beneath his shirt where nobody would see it. “Don’t let anybody see it, I’d have a hard time explaining. You will bring this back to me.” She put force on the words. “Soon.”
Maybe if she had let him live her son would have taken her hand. Nobody went so far under the Shadow that they could not be brought back into the Light. Maybe she could have done something, anything, instead of killing him. She would never know now. “Come on.” She steered the boy into an alley. “Let’s get you home.”
He eyed her quizzically as she reached for something around her neck. Sirayn kept piling surprise upon surprise as she explained that he was to meet with her in a few days’ time and to keep her signet ring as a sort of ‘pass’ to get obtain a block of her time.
It wasn’t until she asked him to bend down that Faerthines realised how small she was. Before now, he had never actually stood anywhere close to her. She had always been a distance off, either at the front of the classroom or at the front of the ballroom or else he had been lying on the ground. Now that he had some sort of perspective, it amazed him that she was so small; a full head shorter than he!
As she was settling the chain around his neck, a sudden urge to hug her came across him. He was already moving to do so when her commanding “Soon.” dissuaded him. Despite being the closest thing to a mother he’d had since his grandmother had died, if only for these few minutes, Faerthines was reminded that Sirayn was still ‘mother’ and it wouldn’t become the most powerful woman in the world to be seen hugging a drunken Tower Trainee.
Having sobered up mostly since this exchange began, he managed to whisper a clear “Thank you.” before being steered towards the nearest alley. In an attempt to make less work for the tiny Aes Sedai, the boy tried to take the first few steps on his own but ended up stumbling and nearly knocking Sirayn over in the process. Blushing crimson, and not just from the alcohol, he managed an embarrassed “Sorry.” Laying a hand on her shoulder, he took as much of his own weight as he could manage as they set off back towards the Yards.
Trust her least favourite woman to produce a giant of a child. Inwardly she grumbled but took his weight, or as much of it as her smaller frame could bear, without complaint. If she’d been born tall and strong like so many other Aes Sedai she wouldn’t even have noticed. Instead she braced her shoulder beneath his arm and they staggered onward together. She had had harder tasks than this by a mile … but few stranger than steering a drunk child home to a safe warm bed. She had never held with all this sentimental rubbish about Servants of All, about healing the sick and feeding the hungry and the whole hangover from the Age of Legends, but just for a secret moment she could see what the philosophers raved on about.
Being a person who only thanked others on pain of pain, and usually not even then, she did her best to appear unmoved to be thanked herself. It didn’t even matter, he was just a boy and this drunk he probably didn’t even know what he was saying, but … no, it meant nothing. She kept her voice even; it would not do to show any feeling. Let him think she rescued stray children and possibly birds with broken wings on a daily basis like some kind of demented Yellow Sister. “Don’t thank me. If you’d had the sense to be discovered dead drunk by any other Aes Sedai you wouldn’t be facing such a terrible headache in the morning … but no, you have to pick the Amyrlin Seat, who can’t heal so much as a paper cut.”
Healing featured high on the long list of skills she did not possess. Keeping her children safe, unharmed and happy was one of the few which ranked higher. But she didn’t have to let Estel bloody Liones make the same mistakes. She glanced up at the boy, all hazel eyes and hair the same shade of hazel curling against his throat, at the glint of silver half-hidden beneath his shirt, bit her tongue and assisted him onward into the half-light.
Good as she was at keeping her voice unemotional, Faerthines detected in the wording that the subject or Healing was something of a sore spot with Sirayn. Since she had done what no other had, show him this small kindness, he felt obligated to assure her of his gratitude. “I deserve the headache, mother. And besides,” he continued on, gentler “no other Aes Sedai would have done what you did.”
The boy lowered his eyes in submission, doing everything possible to show gratitude. He was a bit disconcerted that she hadn’t accepted his thanks the first time and Faerthines had to calm the rushing torrent of questions racing through his brain. She was the Amyrlin Seat; it was not his place to ask questions nor should he expect her to confer in him, a mere Trainee.
On reflection, she had absolutely no idea how a good dose of alcohol and an offered hand had transformed sulky, fractious Faerthines Talcontar into a boy full of affection and praise. Her own children had never wanted her assistance; she had given them all the care she dared, risked her career and their safety to keep them close, but they had turned from her. She couldn’t even speak to her daughter any more she was that unwelcome. Yet it had taken approximately thirty seconds to open up this child like a box of secrets using no more than a gesture. Could it be that Estel bloody Liones had never spoken gently to her son in his entire miserable life? Perhaps he did deserve the headache, she had little sympathy for drunks on the whole, but more likely it was his fool of a mother who should have it on his behalf.
One of these days she was going to grab Estel bloody Liones by the collar and shake some sense into her empty head. Being tall and blonde and beautiful meant precisely nothing when she couldn’t even keep her affairs in order. Perhaps she should lock the two in a room until they forgot their legions of inadequacies and insecurities; if she was very lucky indeed it might take the pair of them off her hands altogether. Light forfend that the Amyrlin Seat should have any actual work to do other than holding people’s hands. But she had given him her ring, for however brief a period before he returned it to her, and she intended to see that obligation to its end. “You’re quite right about the headache, young man. Deserve it if it pleases you.” The boy had certainly given her enough of a headache.
Fortunately for her back, not to mention her continued political survival, they came swiftly to the Warders’ Yard. Shadow and silence cloaked the familiar ways. She had not come back here since the first time she met Corin Danveer, and before that, when she recovered the belongings of her last dead Warder. Even then she had thought she might never need to return. It had never occurred to her that her next visit might be staggering along with a drunk boy whom she had sort of accidentally taken under her wing. A last wary glance around and she helped the boy the last few metres to the entrance to the barracks; it would not be proper for her to go inside, in fact she seemed to remember it was expressly outlawed, and much as the rules did not apply to her she didn’t want to break them where it could be traced back.
Briefly she surveyed her possible ward: luckless Faerthines Talcontar, unwanted by his mother, his only friend a bottle. She felt pity. The sentiment was quite alien to her. “Go on in, boy,” her voice a little gruff, “and don’t you forget to bring that ring back.”
Alone, she returned to the ball.
Sirayn & Faerthines
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Ooc: Many thanks to the charming Master Canain for the play!
Fior didn't even bother to hide the look of disgust on his face at the mention of Aran's name. "Know? Yes. Like? Not so much. I don't get along well with sadists." He cocked his head in thought for a moment before adding, "Why do you ask?"
Sadists! She began to see the Canain boy in a whole new light. Evidently she had been wrong to think that he was a liar and a flatterer, or possibly an empty-headed fool who had misjudged the tactical situation so gravely that he wanted to get bonded or, in her preferred terminology, commit suicide; clearly the young man possessed an unusual amount of perception. In fact, his insight into the blackened little heart rather than how many tankards of ale one could knock back made him a remarkably astute individual. If he didn’t ask so many unwanted questions she might have considered keeping this one.
The rest she disregarded; Sirayn was currently mastering the art of ignoring or subverting questions she didn’t want to answer. “All of a sudden you fascinate me, young man.” She put a dry twist on the words. “That’s quite a name to call a fellow man of the Tower.” Did he make Fior touch him too? Who else had nightmares about being trapped in too small of a room with someone who kept making them touch him? She bit off the question, though it twisted at her with a sudden, stupid desire to know; she wasn’t entirely sure she could control the discussion which would inevitably follow -- at least not without making a complete and utter fool of herself in public. “Has he insulted you?”
Fior eyed her carefully for a moment as she spoke. Her face still betrayed little, but he found it odd that the Amyrlin would be so casual about a trainee insulting a man already raised to the Red Cloak. He couldn't help but wonder if she was baiting him. If she was he'd likely be in a great deal of trouble. If she wasn't... now that was an interesting line of thinking.
"It's a name well earned. No, he hasn't insulted me... technically." He stopped speaking as he raised his arm, twirling her under it, behind his back, and returning her to facing him again. "I simply don't agree with his methods when it comes to handling those around him. Trainees in particular." He locked eyes with her and held her gaze steadily, carefully considering his next words. "But surely these are matters above your concern, Mother. You shouldn't let me trouble you."
Technically: the word covered a wealth of possibilities. Maybe the wretched man was blackmailing young Master Canain too, although she considered this improbable, unless the boy Fior had a penchant for stockpiling hazardous drugs as well. Sirayn did her best to imagine this fair-faced youngster hoarding a supply of forkroot but her imagination broke down. Procuring something like that took time, effort and contacts … not to mention a certain deviousness. She needed to see a little more from this one before she ascribed that level of effectiveness to a half-trained stripling.
Despite her best efforts she wasn’t entirely certain what to make of his last words. Perhaps she was being cued to drop the topic, possibly because the perpetrator of all these offences might be lurking at any moment, or maybe it was just a hook for her to continue. It wasn’t her job to translate the subtleties he was leaving unspoken, so Sirayn settled for a pleasant smile: “You’re quite right, young man, and I’d hate you to trouble me.” An interesting little aside, all told. She wondered how many more people had secret, well-hidden grudges against her least favourite midget. “Is the young lady a friend of his?”
The song was nearing it's crescendo, which meant that it would be over soon, and then Sahra would be back to pull him into her arms to dance away the remainder of the evening. He still had a few moments though, and mother here was begining to truly intrigue him.
"Sahra? Yes, she is. Though I imagine it's largely by virtue of the fact that Ursana's her mentor, and he trained under Aran. That's not to say that she doesn't get fed up with the way he handles certain things. I just think that she's so commited to the tower that she'll accept any punishment, just or otherwise, in order to see her training through. That and, well, Aran does have a certain charm when it comes to women." He smiled down at the slight woman in his arms. "But everyone's entitled to their own opinion, 'eh?”
So at least one of them was an agent. She didn’t like this new development at all. Not only was the young lady working for Aran, but her friend wasn’t even attempting to hide it … which fitted in with the senselessly brash way Aran liked to conduct his affairs but not with any kind of logic at all. It led her to strongly suspect that green-eyed Fior Canain had his own master -- but perhaps not one she knew of. That she cared for least of all. If she was to be surrounded by liars, flatterers and instruments of other powers she at least wanted to know who was stalking her so she could judge how harshly to deal with their minions.
“Charm when it comes to women?” Her dark brows rose a fraction. She hadn’t found him remotely charming. Offensive certainly, sadistic often, and skilled at applying so much pressure she wanted to crawl into the nearest dark corner and hide … even tolerable would be too strong a word. “I’ll take your word for it. Perhaps you know him better than I do.” Perhaps he had never felt the cold crawling horror of being trapped in a room with somebody who kept touching them. She banished the thought; it was an ill-judged memory to bring up while some stranger’s shifty agent twirled her like a doll. “I trust you two will solve your … differences when you both wear the red cloak.”
Fior raised an eyebrow at the older woman. "Somehow I doubt that. I simply don't like the man. I'll serve next to him, if I must, but I don't know that I could ever trust him. I'll always be half expecting to find his knife in my back."
As the music began to trail off and couples began to leave the dance floor, Fior spun the Amyrlin seat one last time, drawing her in close for a half-dip. Stepping back and holding her hand out before him, he smiled up at the woman the world called 'Mother'.
"I believe that ends our dance. It has truly been a pleasure talking to you. Perhaps we can do it again sometime?"
Frankly she didn’t blame him; if the boy knew that Aran preferred subtler methods than a knife he might have real cause for concern. But an Amyrlin Seat should not foster discord in her own ranks, even if one participant was the least discreet Darkfriend in the history of creation, so she did not confer her infinite approval upon the young man and possibly suggest that he get his own knife in first as a kind of pre-emptive self-defence, nor supply resources for the use thereof. Even if she wished somebody would kill the wretched Darkfriend so she could disclaim all knowledge.
In fact, all she did was step away as the music slid into a low diminuendo and the intricate protocols of partner-swapping began anew. For reasons as yet unknown to her he kept hold of her hand; she eyed her hand in his, four fingers and a thumb, the price of her independence, and stamped on the urge to pull away. Truly a pleasure? Yes, she bet the prospect of reporting all this to his master had young Master Canain positively thrilled. Now if only she could get him to release interesting information to her too they could both be pleased together.
His parting words puzzled her. Convoluted as her thinking might be on occasion, she recognised a cue to continue the conversation elsewhere when it was served up on a platter. Her first instinct was to inform him that she hadn’t fallen for that line since she was about sixteen years old, her second to murmur some open-ended platitude and make good her escape, but on reflection … why turn down a beautiful opportunity to learn more? The boy was practically begging her to use him. Somebody’s sinister agent himself, not to mention a gilt-edged chance to hit the bane of her life where it hurt, he was a tool she could use with a clear conscience to many a good effect.
Her mood improved markedly. She detached her hand from his, as courteously as possible, and bestowed at least half a smile upon her victim. “Now you mention it, perhaps I could find time for you in my schedule, Master Canain.” Let him ponder when and, indeed, if he might be summoned; maybe time would allow him to polish whatever story he planned to give her. “Have fun with your lady tonight. Good evening to you.”
Sirayn & Fior
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Ooc: Calen is wrong -- check out The Great Hunt, chapter 8, in which the Amyrlin Seat addresses Rand al’Thor as “boy” repeatedly during a formal audience. :P
Her dark brows rose only a fraction as, for reasons known only to himself, the Darkfriend boy went down on one knee and launched into what was possibly designed to be a display of how heroically honourable he was. The implication she read clearly: he intended to brave this out. Unfortunately however pretty his words, and however much he reminded her of another young Borderlander before she had ruined him, she found it rather hard to swallow.
She amused herself imagining the scenario he was about to sell her: this upstanding young scion of Malkier had perhaps fallen against a lantern, thus starting a fire, then coincidentally stumbled across a door guarded by Aes Sedai, whereupon a string of lies had inadvertently tripped from his tongue -- damn that tongue, he always seemed to lie somehow, he should cut it out and spare everyone the trouble! -- and then, as he had rested, the lockpicks he always carried had slipped into the lock and accidentally opened it, whereupon his curiosity had kicked in -- but of course, Mother, all boys suffered from this curse -- and he had of course wandered inside …
On reflection, she found it not so much amusing as offensive. Being lied to she expected; everybody lied, she had not met an honest man since she came to the Tower before she saw her sixteenth summer, the world brimmed with liars and flatterers. The white city thrived on them. It was business. But what genuinely stung her was that her intelligence should be rated so low, her wit discarded altogether that people should feed her such frankly preposterous lies. This young man who wore the hadori so boldly thought her such a halfwit that she couldn’t even draw the most obvious conclusion in the world. Perhaps everybody he had ever met had been fooled by his face and flowery language. She knew the type. She disliked them; it did something to people, to be young and strong and beautiful, she had never met a one who had not been poison.
Only a masochist would be won over by a face like hers. And her penchant for polite young men did not extend to Darkfriends. Coldly she ignored all the ceremony he had done his best to inject; a Darkfriend did not deserve any higher form of address, he should consider himself lucky to receive an audience at all. Instead delivered the kind of stare one would give an object under a magnifying glass for the purposes of dissection. “Young man, when I want to know what name you currently go by, I will ask you.” No doubt it would be even more of a lie than her own. “Spare me the truisms. I dare say you could fabricate a definition of standing ready which covers setting fires, lying to Aes Sedai and breaking into locked rooms, but it would merely protract the lie and I have a passing interest in the truth.
“You have already proven yourself a liar, an arsonist and a would-be burglar. I do not look kindly on these offences. But it is just barely possible that you are a pawn, of value to nobody, and proper punishment would be wasted on you. So I invite you to prove yourself a survivor. If you are especially convincing, you may even receive some limited degree of freedom, although I fear that your association with the Tower is doomed to take a less friendly turn whatever you say.” Since she was all sorts of a fool, it occurred to her in an unwary moment that this Darkfriend boy was somebody’s son. Perhaps before this night was out she would rob another mother of her son. It would be necessary, she knew that, and yet … she wanted done with killing children.
Damn it: she couldn’t keep her personal life straight but it was not going to interfere with her work. That much she could not permit. She had to be Aes Sedai. Grey eyes narrowing, she continued in the same even tones: “On whose orders did you break into that room?”
Sirayn Damodred
Amyrlin Seat
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You'll never live up to me
- "Awaken", Disturbed
The sheer self-indulgent idiocy rendered her temporarily speechless. She didn’t even know where to start: with the frankly offensive idea that she, who prized discipline and self-denial above all, had any similarity with a narcissistic Darkfriend-lover living an undeserved life of luxury; with the equal madness that was the concept that this was some high-minded revolt against oppression -- typical damn teenager -- instead of basic political necessity; with the concept that a Tower Guard would babble on about taking the easy way out as an excuse not to take a direct order from a high-ranking Aes Sedai; with this stupidity about Tar Valon being her home and therefore everything was sunshine and butterflies …
Why under the Light did such huge, intolerable stupidity survive? How could it be so hard for one person to follow an easy order when their rank and position and simple bloody survival demanded it? She just didn’t understand the selfishness, the idiocy of placing shallow self-concern above the very real prospect of being used as a game-winning pawn by Darkfriends. Did her wretched daughter ever even think about Darkfriends? Had the massive, world-spanning war to save the entire of mankind from a millennia-old evil passed her by completely? How could people just not care about their duty to the Tower, Tar Valon and the world?
If she didn’t calm down she was going to haul off and punch something. Preferably her stupid, suicidal daughter who didn’t have a damn clue what she was talking about. She was going to lose her little girl as well, both her children and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it except to continue this futile attempt. The wretched girl didn’t even know there was a world outside the bed she shared with a Darkfriend. Did she even notice anything other than sex, socialising and angering her mother?
It would not be proper for her to lose her temper with a Tower Guard in a semi-public situation. She calmed herself inch by inch, kept her voice level, her face a mask of Aes Sedai composure. “Let’s try a little hypothetical question, shall we?
“Let’s say you wake up tomorrow morning a hostage in a strange place. You’re outnumbered, unarmed, tied up, probably drugged and definitely helpless. There’s nothing you can do to defend yourself. No way out. There may even be Dreadlords around. Your captors cut off … let’s say a finger, something to up the pressure a little, and send it to me with a letter. Now in addition to being totally defenceless, you’re also injured -- and you’re only going to get more injured as more fingers are required. How are you, personally, alone and helpless, going to overcome a force of organised Darkfriends and Dreadlords in order to escape? Before I have to come get you?”
She knew damn well what her little girl could accomplish in such a situation. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Lyssa should count herself lucky if she survived long enough for somebody else to rescue her.
Sirayn Damodred
Pragmatist :P
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For reasons possibly related to her resounding lack of persuasive skill, at least on the evidence of all the times she’d failed to convince somebody to love her, Sirayn hadn’t truly thought that she would convince this strange and suspicious young man to spill all his secrets. So when he snapped at her that he had lost his memory and his identity in a wood near Tar Valon it caught her a little bit off guard. Perhaps she had improved so much at applying pressure, at the subtle interplay of tone and glance and positioning, that he had given up the truth … or maybe not.
His story struck her as so massively implausible that for a moment she didn’t even know whether she was supposed to believe it or not. She didn’t know a damn thing about this, but she did at least know that there were different types of memory -- semantic, episodic and procedural being the three that concerned her -- and the boy Moridin didn’t seem to have lost the right ones to be a real amnesiac. He sounded genuine. Unfortunately anger did not authenticity make and Sirayn knew herself that feigning a little wrath often got the opposition to back off. It all added up to something even more suspicious than she had anticipated.
Why would he lie? That at least she could answer in a hundred different ways. But why that particular lie? He hadn’t picked the right story to get an Aes Sedai off his back -- something sufficiently scandalous to explain why he had covered it up in the first place but not enough so to maintain her attention -- which led her to think that either he was very bad at it, an impression not backed up by the coolness it took to lie to an Aes Sedai at all, or he had intended her to see straight through it. If she took this story apart as well she might get to another one. But even then she couldn’t trust it. Perhaps the boy contained lies within lies like a giant lying onion.
He’d said that he didn’t understand the world. That brief line rang her alarm bells like nothing else. If he was lying, he had tripped himself up there … because amnesiacs ought not to lose that kind of memory. Episodic memory: the recollection of episodes from the past. Semantic memory: knowledge about the world around one. Somebody who received a knock on the head would lose the first kind of memory. But he seemed to be saying that he had lost both.
It was the wrong setting to prey further; the last thing she wanted was a scene in front of half a hundred wide-eyed children. Nevertheless, she considered herself equally as intrigued as suspicious just now, although she frankly had even less of an idea what was going on than she did before. “Young man.” Putting her head in her hands ranked alongside causing a scene in actions not to take in a busy class, so she restrained herself. “Do you expect any intelligent person to believe that?”
Sirayn Damodred
Retro etc etc
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One moment she had been poised for blood on the walls, serene in the knowledge that she had struck a much-needed blow for the Tower’s reputation, the next moment her victim inexplicably began to sob. Startled into frowning, Sirayn spared a moment to puzzle over the benefits of being able to crumple in tears on demand, but as the lightskirt wept all the harder something about the pitch and intensity of the sobbing called up memories … in the dark, hiding from everything, not knowing how she could ever live with shame like this … and she couldn’t convince herself it was feigned any longer.
It made her uncomfortable. Aes Sedai should not weep. Tower tradition stronger and older than law dictated that as far as other people were concerned Aes Sedai had no feelings at all. The sight of a fellow sister in tears disturbed her in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on; she should not be faced with this within the white walls themselves, it just didn’t fit. She didn’t even know this woman. A lifetime’s ice cold practice of Daes Dae’mar told her to take this unexpected prize, a glimpse of somebody else’s weakness, but for some reason she remembered her daughter -- a tiny warm weight in her arms -- and all of a sudden she lost her appetite for taking people apart.
She hadn’t realised that her tirade would upset a fellow Aes Sedai. In hindsight she couldn’t figure out why; she had meant to give offence, she had even wanted to, she had known that most people would be outraged and possibly hurt by her insults. It just hadn’t quite clicked with her that she might be successful. Half startled still, half guilty, she lifted a hand as if to touch the other woman, then dropped it quickly, embarrassed by her own stupid instincts. Aes Sedai should not give comfort. She didn’t even know how. It would be useless to try. She should just sit tight, wait for this fool to stop crying, then think of something suitably cutting to say to show that she didn’t give a damn about anybody’s tears. Anyone else would have done the same. Even to her little girl.
Later she didn’t know what thoughts had linked themselves into a chain in the depths of her mind to make her move even when she knew she shouldn’t. One moment she was sitting tensely, wishing she had never opened her mouth, the next moment she was beside Lavinya as though someone had pulled her strings like a puppet. One arm slipped round the small shoulders to pull her close and she stroked the soft red curls with her free hand. “Hush, it’s all right.” She kept the words to a low murmur, gentle with touch and words, as if even a stupid useless failure like her could soothe the tears away. And for a moment she closed her eyes, her cheek against a stranger’s sweetly scented hair, and pretended it was somebody else she held.
It wasn’t her daughter. It would never be her daughter. Lyssa didn’t even want anything to do with her and comforting somebody else as if it might get her forgiveness somehow, as if it could make up for not being a proper mother, was futile. Only she felt a little bit better just to hold somebody again. Had the Danveer boy felt the same? Did everybody need somebody weaker than them before they could be content with themselves? Bleak thoughts. She whispered nonsense to the young Aes Sedai and told herself she could do this with her little daughter any time she wanted.
Sirayn Damodred
Retro Head of the Green Ajah
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Taking the proffered hand, Fior swallowed his nervousness and bowed lightly. "If you please, Mother." He began to lead her towards the dance floor. As the slow waltz began to play, he bowed again, crossing his right leg behind his left and lifting her hand. As he raised himself back up he pulled her hand to the right, guiding her through a quick turn and pulling her close, resting his left hand on the small of her back.
His throat tightened as he began to lead her through the steps of the dance. This was the Amyrlin seat that he was handling... the most powerful woman alive. But she was so small. Almost frail looking. Taking a half-step back and spinning her again, her flowing white dress twirling up with the speed of the turn, he stepped under her arm and pulled her back towards him.
His mouth was dry and he opened his mouth in an attempt to make conversation, but nothing would come out. Closing it again, he simply focused on the rythm of the dance and continued to push the nervousness that he was feeling into a dark corner of his mind.
He bowed well, at least, though the fact that she couldn’t stop comparing every strange young man she met to her lost son unnerved her behind what she hoped was an impeccable Aes Sedai manner. One day she was going to pass a law against dancing; it involved far too much being held close and permitting people to touch her for her liking. Unfortunately people might begin to ask questions if she started outlawing forms of entertainment and if she banned everything that irritated her there wouldn’t be any time for hobbies like saving the world. So she held her tongue and let him lead her in the dance.
The boy turned out to be the strong, silent type. Either that or he had been born with some defect of the mind; at least she drew this conclusion from how he opened and shut his mouth like a fish without delivering a single word. Still, the art of making light and witty conversation with strangers was known to few, and she wasn’t exactly a master herself. Sirayn fixed her unfortunate partner with a cool grey gaze and sallied forth into the treacherous seas of small talk: “I am passing curious as to what crime you committed against the young lady to make her inflict the Amyrlin Seat on you.”
Fior couldn't stop the chuckle at her words, and the wall of tension broke inside of him. "Well, I wouldn't say it was inflicting, necessarily." He replied with a bit of a blush.
Guiding her through a turn, he spun her out away from him, stepping under her arm, and pulled her back into close position. "Truth to tell, it's something of an honor." Her face remained unreadable, and he couldn't help thinking that it wasn't fair. He was used to gauging people based on their facial expressions. A quick turn and a moment later, he added in explanation, "My mother trained here as a girl."
Another flatterer, she thought wryly, knowing full well that any situation involving an Amyrlin and a trainee by necessity had some element of compulsion. Inflict it certainly was. “Save your honour, boy. If you’re short on it I’d as soon you earned it by remaining alert and on guard.” On second thoughts, hearing quite how unnecessarily harsh her comment sounded even when devoid of the slightest inflection, Sirayn figured she might have made a slight misstep. No doubt the boy still had stars in his eyes and all the other trappings of youth that made him fit only for ceremonial purposes -- making her comment useless anyway -- but it was scarcely fitting conversation for a social occasion.
So much for the etiquette master. She had never been good with people; she preferred them faceless, nameless, just statistics and writing easily dealt with from a distance. Apparently even at a crowded social function she couldn’t disguise the fact that her attention was elsewhere … on the Tower’s security, on the Blight and, ultimately, on Shayol Ghul itself. Against this prospect the flame of casual conversation dimmed somewhat. “So,” she attempted to lighten her tone, “you have a family history of service to the Tower?”
Her initial comment bristled him a bit, but he decided to overlook it. He suspected that she wasn't very good at dealing with commoners, and he wouldn't be surprised if she was annoyed with his intrusion.
Sweeping her around him in a complicated turn made all the more difficult by her missing limb. Nevertheless, he pulled it off and turned back to face her. "I know that they recruited my mother as a girl, but she wasn't strong enough in the One Power to make it to the rank of full sister." As the music swelled he remembered something else. "Actually, every second son of my family comes here to train." Turning around and changing hands, pulling her through another spin that twirled her dress about like a schoolgirls, he pulled her back to him.
"If I have things my way though, I'll be the first in my family's history to become a Warder."
Had she not been in public she might have frowned to hear that his mother had been turned away because she lacked the strength to become Aes Sedai. That was another tradition she intended to overturn some day; she herself had made it to the ring by a whisker and the shawl by an eyelash, to the best of her knowledge she was still the weakest sister in the Tower, and it had only forced her to get smarter. In her opinion the One Power had very little to do with being Aes Sedai -- unlike, say, the ability to make small talk with a stranger on the dance floor while ensuring that Darkfriend partners did not poison anyone.
Become a Warder? Brows raised, she looked the boy over again, strangling out a succession of cutting comments. On reflection she didn’t think young Master Canain would be flattered by being asked why under the Light anyone would want to bond him any more than why under the Light he would want to bond anyone. “Really?” a polite murmur as Sirayn pictured this one in the mud and blood and chaos of Dumai’s Wells and wondered how long he’d last with Asha’man breaking the ground beneath his feet. Maybe he would hold once fully trained. Maybe not. But either way, what good would he do anyone?
People had failed to understand that the advent of Dreadlords, the Black Tower and Aiel channellers had fundamentally changed warfare. The sweetly romantic concept of the swordsman sworn to service might set all the novices to giggling, but the cold reality was that Gaidin no longer had a purpose and all the precious time spent training Tower Guards should be better spent amassing a force of channellers. Her theories had been proven right on the field at Dumai’s Wells when essentially every non-channeller they had brought, including one bonded to her, had been massacred by channellers. They just didn’t have a chance.
So she had little sympathy for that particular goal and just as much respect for the intelligence of those who pursued it. She kept her tone neutral: “I wish you the best of luck with your training.” She also wished he would develop some sense, or possibly mutate into a female channeller, before his choices killed him, but people had difficulty accepting their own futility. “Do you have anyone lined up to bond you?” Any idiot who either didn’t or refused to see that they would wind up just like her -- alone, grieving and wishing she had exercised some intelligence when there was still time.
Her face betrayed little, though he hadn't really expected it to. She was an Aes Sedai, after all. Her responses were short and polite, not really giving him much to react to. Fior was, admittedly, thrown off by her. He was normally able to make conversation with even the most laconic of characters, but she threw him, and that drove him to push at her. Even the Amyrlin seat had to be a person. She hadn't always been the most powerful woman in the world.
Guiding her through yet another complex turn, he smiled at her question. "No, not at the moment. Haven't really been looking all that hard. I figure things will happen when they're supposed to. Wheel weaves and what'not."
As their bodies parted, connected only by their hands, another thought struck him and it amused him enough to go with it. Pulling her back in close, he tried to keep the garish grin from his face as he asked, "Why, are you looking?”
The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. Her mother had told her that often, when she was just a tiny child, illiterate and happily so in the distant forests of her home. That just went to show how much her mother had known. Sirayn found it hard to believe that any inhuman driving force would intend for her to live, even to stand as Amyrlin Seat in the heart of the greatest organisation in the world, when so many others had fallen: when dark Jehanine de’Gavrielle, the Green Ajah’s brightest star, had been mistaken for her one black night and never lived to forgive her; when both her Gaidin had died for her own stupidity; when the last ever night was drawing close, the last great civilisations of man were falling and the end of the world was only a few years away.
She had never intended this either. She had been happy to serve Lanfir Leah Marithsen. Ironic that it had taken so much time, so much tension and not a little bitterness to work out just how much faith she had placed in the Tower’s saviour, golden Lanfir, the only hero they had ever needed. She had never willingly bent her knee to anyone but the rightful Amyrlin and, if she were honest with herself, she had never wanted that place for herself. What did she know about ruling? What did she know about anything but war -- war and winter and being harder and colder than both? Nothing. But it had fallen to her and this cup could pass to no other before Tarmon Gai’don came.
Against such thoughts she found it startling to be asked about her personal life. In fact startled was but the first of many responses; discomfort, aversion to discussing such a private matter, and the kind of old pain she had never learnt to deal with. The question hit far too close to the bone for her to take it quietly. She killed a number of sarcastic responses, but when she considered telling a little of the truth … that it was considered proper to leave a certain gap between the death of one’s last Warder and priming one’s next and that these were mourning colours for a reason … she didn’t even want to think about this in public much less talk about it. Sirayn substituted a chilly: “If I want my quarters in a state of disarray, my work interrupted at every opportunity and my every order ignored, I’ll get a puppy.”
It was clear to Fior that he had struck a nerve. Her Aes Sedai demeanor never dropped; he couldn't read the what or why of her response, but he could see that the subject of warders was one that she was not keen on. He pondered the matter for a moment, but it could be any number of reasons.
And there was the tickle in the back of his head. The one that told him to push the subject, to press that sensitive spot and force her to deal with whatever was bothering her. His common sense spoke against it, but as Sahra said, he never was very pragmatic.
"I'll keep that in mind for your next naming day." He said with a friendly smile. "Surely having a Warder has some merits."
On the one hand, she kind of liked it in a masochistic way when people took her sarcasm as it was intended and responded in kind. It showed courage as well as composure and she valued both qualities highly -- or at least she had done until her unwise weakness for polite young men had put her in a stranger’s bed forkrooted so heavily she couldn’t lift a finger. On the other hand, she definitely disliked having her personal affairs pried into. She had been harassed by some real experts and Sirayn considered herself to be uncannily good at uncovering duplicity in the most harmless-seeming question or, as others would put it, being paranoid.
Warders had no merits. If she was lucky they might occasionally behave like seeing her did not disgust them, but whenever she had let them try to comfort her, it had always been a prelude to a particularly unfortunate incident; a random act of violence, betrayal or worse. In her experience a Gaidin had an awe-inspiring ability to work out exactly when she most needed them and choose that moment to abandon her. That made them worse than a liability. Allowing oneself to rely on or even just to like somebody who could turn homicidal at any moment was just setting oneself up for a blow.
She hated even thinking about this. It just reminded her that in earlier years, before Sirayn Damodred, icily composed Amyrlin, there had been a coward who had permitted herself to be systematically mistreated and betrayed by the people she had stupidly put her trust in. She still winced to think of how fiercely she had grieved for her first Warder although he had chosen to kill himself as a last act of revenge against her. It didn’t take a genius to work out which precise moment her second Warder had chosen to abandon her. She wasn’t ever going back to that -- that dependence. Nobody deserved that level of trust.
Only fools got miserable over the consequences of their own folly. She didn’t believe in all this flower-child rubbish about talking about one’s feelings; emotions were to be mastered and, ideally, got rid of altogether. In fact, the only people who asked her meddlesome questions about her private life had almost universally turned out to be Darkfriends, which led her to consider Master Fior Canain speculatively. “I wonder, young man.” Even and calm, that was her, nothing to suggest that she had any feelings whatsoever on any topic at all. “Do you know a Tower Guard by the name of Aran? Are you a friend of his at all?” She rounded it off with a cool smile. If he was another of Aran’s bloody agents he had been found out.
Sirayn & Fior
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For a liar he was a very cool customer indeed. Had his story not been so strange and her instincts clamouring distrust so loudly Sirayn might even have been fooled by his outward manner; perhaps if she listened hard enough she might have detected a subtle intonation, or observed a moment’s fleeting expression which gave the game away … but he could have been listing his shopping list for all the guilt and shiftiness he showed. She admired it. As a sister of the Tower she had had many a year to perfect her composure and the boy Moridin did not share her advantages.
Now thoroughly suspicious Sirayn considered the possibility that his last lines were a hook of some sort and this was all some cryptic play in the Great Game. She couldn’t imagine that anyone would say straight-faced that lies were disrespectful except as irony or sarcasm. “Oh I don’t know, I think lying is sometimes inevitable.” Sirayn favoured her victim with a somewhat hard smile. “I’d lie to many people I respect if I could. I fear the Three Oaths limit many options … but that is the point, is it not?”
What made her so certain he was lying? Nothing concrete -- except maybe that name, Moridin, a name no sane person would bear to a city full of Old Tongue speakers. But so many subtler clues: the story he told, the words he framed it in, the strange and indefinable sense of danger she got off him … Sirayn gave serious contemplation to pulling this one in after class one day to carry out a prolonged and possibly colder interrogation. “Go ahead and tell me you speak only the truth, young man. I’d like to hear you say it.”
He listened as she stated her thoughts on lying. A hard woman indeed… She was far too casual about what she spoke of. He knew she was far from trusting him and yet she was so forward about something like that. What was she playing at? He hadn’t liked where this was going to begin with but now he was more concerned then ever. If she took dishonesty so casually what other things might she take casually? Calling guards to have him thrown in a cell, or worse…? She mentioned something about three oaths and he vaguely wondered what she meant by it. How did these oaths limit her? Could he use that to his advantage? He made a note to look into that on another occasion but for now it was useless as he had no way of knowing what she meant. Given her disposition he wondered whether she might have merely been making it up. Something to throw him off...
“Go ahead and tell me you speak only the truth, young man. I’d like to hear you say it.” He found himself at a loss for this. He hadn’t really thought on it but, had he really lied since coming here? Aside from the fact that his entire life was a lie. He knew Moridin was not his real name yet he used it daily. He knew nothing of his past and yet he had said things about himself as if he did. He acted as if he belonged here or as if he knew what he was doing though he was in constant fear of being discovered. But what was he supposed to do? How could he tell them the truth? Their satisfaction was not worth his life! Speaking the truth… Ha! He spoke what was necessary to stay alive! But he didn’t do what was unnecessary. Maybe it was time to re-evaluate his choice to remain in this city. This was the trouble only one woman’s questions were causing. There was still an entire city that had yet to take their shot.
“I never said I only speak the truth. But that doesn’t mean that I lie either. I don’t take a lie casually, nor would I lie to someone I respect.” He wondered about her and her conceptions of respect. He worried about it even more. Where was she going with this? He wasn’t certain he really wanted to know the answer to that question.
Every passing moment made him sound shiftier. No wonder all her instincts clamoured to take him outside and, preferably, stuff him in an unmarked wagon bound for snowy Kandor, where he could have some heroic but luckily unremarkable death far from Tar Valon. Unfortunately she had yet to gain the authority to accept or dismiss Tower Trainees based on only her whim … but if she did, shady-looking young men with sinister Old Tongue names would be top of her list for summary deportation to harsher climes.
“You don’t take a lie casually. You don’t lie to people you respect.” She kept her tone neutral, though frankly his performance deserved a little more sarcasm than she was prepared to show in a class full of chattersome children, and only raised her dark brows. “I see; you only lie within self-imposed, subjective parameters then?” Burn it; sarcasm it was. “Why, that makes you … just like everybody else!”
Sirayn thought it pretty damn unlikely that her dubious student could see the moral high ground from where he was standing. Personally she found the aforesaid high ground to be rather lower than the stories made it out to be, stony, infertile land and full of treacherous little quirks ... but maybe that was just her. “I feel reassured already. Since we’re making promises that set an old woman’s mind at rest, why don’t you go a step further and tell me all about how you’re not lying to me, personally, right now?” She prepared herself for the sad fact that whatever he said she wouldn’t believe a word of it.
Moridin & Sirayn Damodred
Tower Trainee & Retro Head of the Green Ajah
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You really know how to talk to a girl, don't you. :P
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Ha! I think not. :D
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Me! Me! I'd be awesome ... wait, I don't have a Black Tower character. :cry:
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If she had been a better mother perhaps she would have reached out to her surviving child in some way. She couldn’t in all honesty give the excuse that they were in public; even had they been closed away somewhere private she would not have done so. Partly she felt uncomfortable at the very idea of letting someone close to her. Partly she just didn’t know how. She had forgotten many skills she had once taken for granted -- laughter, comfort, the ability to speak openly about her own feelings -- and still never learnt how to be a good Aes Sedai. In retrospect she considered it an unequal trade … but a necessary one nonetheless.
Anybody could raise children. Even her own children did not need her; her son had lost his reason, his love of the Light and finally his life because of her and Lyssa would be far better off without her. She might like to dream of better times … making peace with the surviving half of her two little children, laying to rest the shade of the other, maybe even working out how to tell her daughter how intensely she loved her … but anyone could do that. Only she could lead the Battle Ajah right now and continue the quest an Amyrlin had once given her in greatest secrecy.
So she did not greet her daughter more gently, or ask how her studies were progressing, or inquire after the state of her love life -- and some day she would take a long, lingering revenge on the Darkfriend who had tainted her little girl -- or seek a private place where mother and daughter could embrace or take any of the thousand actions a mother should. Nor, in fairness, did she point out that somebody’s fleeting sense of comfort and well-being was not high on her list of priorities and that Lyssa would have to make sacrifices like everybody else had. Indeed she smoothed any trace of sarcasm out of her voice before she spoke.
“I realise that.” She kept her voice level, moderate in tone, empty of any feeling. It seemed rather twisted that she couldn’t find a moment’s warmth for her own children but … she just didn’t know how any more. Once upon a time she had wanted to learn. Now she knew better. “It is unfortunate that this move is necessary but I trust you will hear me out. Tar Valon is now exceedingly dangerous, for you more than anyone, and I think it unsafe for you to remain here any longer. There have been,” Sirayn picked her words with great care, “threats against you. If anything were to happen to you …” if the Darkfriend laid a finger on her, if she just vanished one morning, if a note surfaced instructing her famous Aes Sedai kinswoman what to do if she wanted the young lady to live …
A proper mother would go to her daughter’s aid, immediately, without a second thought. A cold-blooded Aes Sedai might send back a counter-offer and gamble on her child’s life. A real, old-school Aes Sedai, totally devoid of the trappings of sentiment, would tell them to do what they liked. And then burn the note. And if they sent her daughter’s fingers back, or even her head, she would feel nothing.
Try though she might, she didn’t know if she could be that good of an Aes Sedai. Not if they had her daughter.
“It could be awkward.” She concluded the sentence with her best attempt at diplomacy and no small misgivings. “I would prefer that it not happen. It is quite impossible to provide proper security for you in Tar Valon, given your current position, and it is equally impossible that you go unsecured. Therefore, as I said, I should like you to leave Tar Valon immediately.” Light only knew she didn’t want to return to the bleak times of never seeing her daughter, but in all honesty, they had never left; she just didn’t want to admit that her daughter wanted nothing to do with her. It was an unfortunate truth, but Aes Sedai did not delude themselves. “Get yourself posted outside the city. It matters not where. Somewhere where I can be assured of your safety and you can continue your training without fear of the consequences.”
It seemed inadequate somehow. A better mother and a better Aes Sedai would have handled this far more smoothly, accomplished what was necessary without ruffling any feathers, perhaps if she had been Lanfir everything would be fine. Only she wasn’t any good with people. She didn’t even know how to say that she missed her daughter terribly, that she couldn’t stand this coolness between them but didn’t know how to break it, that she hated the thought of her little one going away … but the prospect of that Darkfriend stealing her daughter in Tar Valon itself frankly made her blood run cold.
All out of smooth convincing words, quite incapable of expressing her true feelings, she offered in a somewhat small voice: “I could -- write to you.” It sounded remarkably useless. She bit her tongue, cursing herself. “Or -- not. As you wish.” Now she wished she hadn’t opened her mouth. Somebody like Lyssa wouldn’t want her crippled old mother pestering her anyway. “But somewhere away from Tar Valon,” she ended, a bit feebly.
Sirayn Damodred
Retro Head of the Green Ajah
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Another quality she disliked about Corin Danveer, since she was moving down the list, was how little she understood him. People had always been incomprehensible to her, governed by their own internal rules, neither logical nor even consistent by their own standards -- but as they went, the Danveer boy was a particularly confusing specimen. One day he would be ready to sit at her feet and learn. The next he turned into a homicidal Darkfriend bent on introducing her to forkroot’s more unique properties. On the same day he had knelt and begged her to kill him. The next he went back to acting as if she had treated him unfairly, the next he snapped at her in the infirmary, then when she brought him here to keep him under close attention he started to lie and flatter like any courtier …
It just made no sense. The inconsistency, the sheer lunacy of it all frustrated any attempts to compose a logical order from the madness; she had inferred that his apparent changes stemmed from the orders of a darker master, but even they, subject to the rules of their dark family, would act in accordance with some kind of plan. Unless that plan was to perplex her as much as possible -- perhaps in order to miss some crucial detail, but no sane person would expect her to give the boy a second chance to turn on her -- her soft-spoken young companion wasn’t even following a lucid plan of any sort. Either that or his Darkfriend master was the one suffering a slow slide into insanity.
Certain people being incapable of leaving her alone, she had figured that her instructions to lay off the lying would fall on deaf ears; it seemed improbable that even capricious Corin Danveer would so far turn upon his own path that from trying to kill her he would begin to follow her every command like a puppy. Her prediction proved correct. Her skills on the dancefloor were quite undistinguished, competent at best, not that she even needed access to the facts to know that the boy was a liar of monumental proportions. She had allowed him to feed her all sorts of lies because it comforted her to hear them, because she had heard the opposite so many times that she craved the slightest word of praise, but no more. It shamed her that an Aes Sedai should have fallen for sweet talk. That she consigned, along with the three words she had forbidden Seiaman to speak, to the land of things she would be better off not hearing again.
Perhaps he was just amusing himself. Maybe young men of questionable loyalty liked to mock bitter old women when they were bored. It was an oddly painful thought, which went only to show just how much of an idiot she was. Maintaining an impassive expression, she permitted him to spin her briefly, though she greatly preferred to keep more distance between them; most likely the boy shared her thoughts. She hadn’t killed him, she couldn’t face the prospect of killing another child, yet she didn’t know if she could let him live … young and fair of face, almost certainly a Darkfriend, working to some bizarre plan she couldn’t comprehend, and armed with everything she had taught him. Lanfir would have known what to do. Lanfir had never been confused or afraid or uncertain in her life.
Just in case she hadn’t had enough on her plate, two stripling children sidled up to them in what she considered a deeply suspicious manner. Next time she resolved to stamp the word DARKFRIEND all over her companion to gain a little peace in which to calculate her next move. Instead, wearing perfect Aes Sedai serenity, Sirayn contemplated the miscreants in question while wondering if her predecessor had been plagued by these little visitors while she was working; probably not, she decided, the golden Lanfir Leah Marithsen had charm enough that everyone remained at a dazzled distance. Only inferior brands of Amyrlin had their partners unashamedly stolen at the beginning of a formal ball.
It perplexed her both in itself and the brashness of it. She resisted the urge to look over at the boy to see if she’d missed something; handsome enough, she supposed, but she hadn’t noticed him driving crowds of strange women wild recently -- save perhaps that lightskirt Lavinya and the less said of that the better -- and she certainly couldn’t say he set her heart beating faster. Perhaps he exercised a strange and unnatural pull over redheads of every stripe. Other than that she couldn’t imagine why young women would risk an Amyrlin’s wrath over him. The boy himself being a Darkfriend, it gave her cause to wonder about these fresh-faced, smiling children and their own allegiance, though Sirayn deemed it possibly less than prudent to say so in public. Bemused, she gave up.
At least she need not be jealous. Not the stupid, wretched jealousy that had ground at her every hour that Seiaman had spent with another woman, poisoned her relationship with both parties and left her lonely and insecure for the Light knew how long. Occasionally, for reasons unknown to her, she had felt a twinge of possessiveness over the boy and certainly she had fumed at the prospect of him falling into the clutches of that hussy Lavinya, just because the latter had red hair and ample curves, but since he had turned out a Darkfriend anyway she hoped and expected never to feel like that again. So she had not the slightest reason to prickle a little bit that somebody younger and prettier and redder-haired had turned up yet again to interfere.
That being so, Sirayn presented them both with her most serene smile. “By all means, daughter.” Not only younger and prettier but taller as well, by a truly ludicrous nine inches, and far sweeter curves as well, though admittedly these were points she ticked off with almost everybody she met. No doubt they would have a great deal of fun together. And she certainly was not irritable about the whole business. “Enjoy yourselves. I trust Master Canain can amuse me for a short time.” A likely story. Most likely provide a distraction while his red-headed accomplice led the Danveer boy into wicked ways. Youth these days!
Dismissing the unfortunate pair with a slight nod, though she had to strangle a cold instruction to Corin Danveer not to poison anybody if he could possibly avoid it, with an inward sigh Sirayn turned her attention to a complete stranger. Borderlander, short for a man though still plenty taller than her, and painfully, unbelievably young like his red-headed friend … if her son had lived, would he be older than this now? Trying to remember how many summers her son had seen before his untimely death made her feel old and bitter. She had never grieved for him, hadn’t known how to be frank, and this was no time to find out. Keeping a pleasant if noncommittal smile Sirayn extended a hand to the young man: “Care to dance, Master Canain?”
Ooc: Hit me with a little paragraph on Skype if and when you’re ready. :)
Sirayn Damodred
Ye Olde Amyrlin
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It took some effort not to give him an incredulous stare and the newly named Raffiel, shaking off her old identity like a cloak as she had done to her only true name before that, managed only barely not to ask what under the Light he had against her. Immediately upon meeting her for the first time he had taken her for some cosseted fool who did not deserve his time, he who stood in a city full of starving, desperate refugees with neither homes to go to nor the food and shelter the Tower Guard took for granted, and in the intervening ten minutes he had advanced only to propositioning her like a common whore. Now he called her a simpering fool -- and this from a man who claimed to realise the Tower Guard needed replenishment!
The sheer half-witted prejudice of it all made her blood boil. Tonight’s little truth could not have been clearer had it been written in the snow in ten-foot words of fire. The Tower Guard needed new recruits … but not Domani ones, oh no, and certainly not women, Domani women had only one use and they were over-priced for that too. If she had been a strapping young Borderlander man nobody would have questioned her; northern men had not only the strength but the right to take this path. But because she had been born a daughter rather than a son, and she had the dark colouring of her native Arad Doman, self-evidently she was only here for some man to use and cast aside.
She just didn’t understand. Her father had brought her up right, when she took her first steps she had learnt that no matter how high she stood in Domani society it was still her duty to step aside for an Aes Sedai, and despite the fires and the burning and the stupid tragedy of it all a tiny, childish part of her couldn’t believe that an entire group -- the timeless Aes Sedai and their legendary companions, Tar Valon’s swords -- could be this bad. Could it be that Lothair Mantelar, of whose work she had heard tell, had had the right of it all along? That all of them were Darkfriends? Of course folk of the Light could be as malicious a pack of bigots as anybody else, she knew that all too well, but there wasn’t even any sense or logic here. It seemed as if this little show had been put on purely for cruelty’s sake.
As he stalked off, this nameless little worm who made mock of her intellect and her virtue for the sin of being a Domani female, raffish-Anjen stared after him in the snow and the darkness and seriously contemplated not following him. She had better things to do with her time than suffer a barrage of accusations from some jumped-up nobody with a chip on his shoulder the size of a town block. If it was truly necessary for her to join the red cloaks, if only for a short time, she could find somebody else who would be less repulsive in behaviour. But the stupidity of this had outraged her as well as upset her; tempting as it was to seek another way, she had not been brought up to take the easy way out, and the thought of slinking off like a kicked puppy offended her. Clenching her jaw she stalked after the object of her wrath.
To nobody’s surprise, this self-appointed hard man went straight to the nearest inn, where naturally he found a warm welcome and something to eat. The sheer hypocrisy of slandering everyone else and lamenting the hard conditions a Tower Guard lived in when the aforesaid Tower Guard never had to worry about where his next meal was coming from deserved to be pointed out, but Anjen strangled out the sharp comment he fully deserved; sweet, simple Raffiel, friend to everybody, would have neither the intelligence nor the inclination to point it out. The strain of holding back her usual acerbic commentary was going to consign her to an early grave. Perhaps she should have chosen a slightly cleverer personality … but no, that would never have worked, if the half-wits of the Tower Guard reacted this badly to a woman the Light only knew what they would make of a smart one.
Hungry though she was, she refused the offer of food. She knew people like him. In her estimation there was a better than even chance that he would wind up this little heart-to-heart by laughing off her ambitions, weak female that she was, and demand payment before driving her off the premises. Anjen refrained from rolling her eyes at yet another lecture on how difficult Tower Guard life was; she could see exactly what hardships they endured -- an inn, warmth, a full plate and the freedom to jeer at little girls and their fool’s notions. Choking down her ire, though she promised herself she wouldn’t easily forget how the Tower Guard behaved when they thought their victims couldn’t push back, Anjen did her best to look as half-witted as she could manage. Just model herself after this man and she should do fine.
Maintaining this particular sham was beginning to grate on her nerves no end. The likes of this maggot would never dare to speak to her if they knew who she truly was; only the red cloak and the knowledge that this town was stuffed full with friends gave them any courage. So much for the fine upstanding folk of Tar Valon. “Commitment, unpleasantness, my favourite words.” She gestured breezily to show what she thought of the aforementioned. Unpleasantness! Exactly how unpleasant was it to walk into what used to be an independent inn and know that Tower folk would give him a meal? How unpleasant to have a roof over his head and a warm bed waiting for him and the ability to harass and proposition strangers in the knowledge that they couldn’t fight back? Light forfend that the red cloaks should pull their heads free long enough to realise how easy they had it.
He had not earned himself a single scrap of honesty. She intended to give him no information whatsoever and he deserved every bit of stonewalling. “Family … nothing much to speak of.” It pained her to sound so dismissive, it was for her beloved family that she suffered this idiot’s attentions, but it would keep him off her back and besides Raffiel was far too stupid to have any troubles of her own. She had loved her parents dearly, she had had two fine brothers as well, and a newly-wedded husband she had left behind … “My mother was a whore,” she kept her voice smooth though her inner mother screeched in outrage. “You can imagine the rest.” Hobbies. She had liked to ride on her family’s estates. She played stones like a champion. As befitted a Domani lady, nobody could outwit her at the trading table, she had a head for figures and a shark’s instinct for a bargain, and her mother had been proud of her. Shades and memories only: that part of her life was over now. Raffiel kept smiling: “I like warm places, the occasional drink and pestering complete strangers on wall duty. Can I sign up now?”
Anjen
or possibly Raffiel depending on who you are!
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Lovely bio! Welcome to the crew. :D
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If she had to list all the qualities she particularly disliked about Corin Danveer, aside from her general aversion to Darkfriend poisoners, she might have begun with how he could bow and smile and look so innocent doing it. He styled himself as the very image of an honest Tower Guard, following protocol to the letter, when only she knew he had systematically planned and damn near executed her death. It felt like a kind of mockery: a sophisticated pretence, fit to fool everybody else, the subtext being reserved for her alone. She wanted little less than to spend her evening engaged in a sinister many-layered conversation with a murderous stalker, but when she looked around herself … at youngsters not normally out of white skirts, no more than children, and even older ones being careless of what they were drinking and who had been near it … no, she couldn’t take that risk.
Even so, famous Sirayn Damodred in her seven-striped colours had to steel herself to allow him to take her hand. She permitted so little touch that she just wasn’t used to it any more, the startling immediate sensation of unfamiliar skin against her own, and the self-imposed isolation only exacerbated her revulsion. Only the knowledge that she could not possibly flinch away in public with half a hundred people watching her kept her still and outwardly relaxed as the boy stepped in to put his arm around her; forcing herself immobile, her breathing controlled and even, she stamped out any sign of fear as the Darkfriend gathered her into close proximity. She felt everything too intensely: his hand on her back, only thin layers of fabric from her skin, his light grip on her hand, too much touch. She hated every moment. This had been a mistake, she shouldn’t have let her guilt trap her into this, she had no obligation to protect other people from their own stupidity, let them defend themselves for once …
Her son had been right to call her a coward. It shamed her that she claimed the title Amyrlin and yet she couldn’t even stand for somebody to touch her; at this rate it would be she, not her Basic Etiquette students, who earned herself a dressing-down. The sooner she learnt that Tower Guard trick and put away emotion forever the better. Focusing very hard on maintaining the proper composure, as was only proper from nominally the most powerful woman in the free world, she sought desperately for a distraction from just how much she hated being touched.
In case this ball hadn’t been strange enough already, the Danveer boy upped the bizarre factor by … flattering her. No stronger or wiser leader for the Tower? When he had planned to, what was his charming phrase, see how long he could keep her under forkroot before she went irretrievably insane? Perhaps if she somehow managed to forget who this boy was and how he had so abruptly and frighteningly turned on her, and a more cold-blooded plot she had rarely seen, she might convince herself there was half a chance he meant it. But, since she possessed slightly more than the intelligence of the average rat, she had no such illusions. She had never truly worked out why he had betrayed her like that or from where his mad, murderous plan had come. It seemed simplest and most logical to conclude that he was a Darkfriend, thus commanded by his masters, but she supposed there could be other reasons. But none of those reasons allowed for an abrupt and fantastic change of heart.
Music eddied around them as the dance slowed bringing them once more into close contact. She prickled helplessly, fear and disgust and aversion in equal measure, and wished she had the courage to walk out and damn the consequences; but the Light forfend that the Amyrlin Seat should ever break public expectations and she had condemned herself to this because of the stupid guilt she still carried. There would be no escape for quite some time … at least until she felt certain that nobody was at risk from her least favourite light-fingered poisoner any more. Still, although she dared not create a scene, she had no intention of indulging this mockery of a conversation any longer. “Spare me the false flattery, boy.” She kept her voice even and pleasant, tone carried much farther than words, but low enough for him alone to hear her response. “I recall that in my invitation I specifically told you to leave your usual tricks behind. By that I include your otherwise charming habit of flattering everyone fool enough to listen to you. I’ve no time for it, I know better.”
Strong and wise. Her mouth wanted to twist in bitterness, thinking of how well he had played her back when she had been fool enough to fall for his flattery, how stunned she had been at his unexpected attack … but she would never be weak like that again. The lonely and the half-witted, and she included herself in both categories, had some stupid desire for praise to fill up the empty spaces from everyone who hadn’t loved them enough; and that was how they got themselves preyed upon by skilled liars. For all she knew the boy would make a second attempt on her life later. In fact, for all she knew … he had one up his sleeve right now. Such were the rewards of Tower life. Retaining her smile, she devoted herself to the serious business of subtly keeping the young man in question away from unattended bottles and glasses.
Sirayn Damodred
Watcher of the Seals
Flame of Tar Valon
The Amyrlin Seat
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Uh ... what did you want me to do exactly? Ignore it? Give up on the WT getting to CC bios that need a WT CC? :?
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Sorry - where it says WT CC, it means WT CC. :P
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Once upon a time thirteen shadows had come for her at midnight and she had faced them in the half-light while beneath her feet, on a hundred different floors chaos had raged through the Tower. Her dislike for being woken during the dark hours by strangers dated back to that night: to surprise and confusion and dawning fear, thirteen against one in private where nobody would ever know, and the taste of defeat so bitter after all her hard work. So when an intricate web of wards set in her outer quarters snapped thread by thread, startling her awake, and the last heavy fingers of sleep clutched at her only to be pushed away by footsteps, she already half knew what she would see when she opened her eyes -- a light, a sea of shadows, thirteen in number arrayed against the gathering darkness.
Instead she found only darkness. Outside lay warning wards, but her bedchamber door had been warded hard enough to prevent entry rather than merely alert her to it, and here respectful of her privacy her visitors had stopped. “Mother? Mother!” They tapped on the door. Still wound about by dreams and fears and sleep, she resisted the urge to bury her head beneath her pillow and swear a lot until all the sound and movement went away. Instead she growled “Just a moment,” for once making no effort to keep irritation out of her tone, and channelled a brief sweet flash of saidar to light a candle beside her bed. Its wavering light threw long shadows across her room, a transient pool of illumination, holding back the dark.
Rapid if clumsy one-handed she pulled on a heavy robe and belted it shut over her plain shift. The mirror opposite afforded her a quick glimpse of a slim pale woman, hard-faced, with rumpled dark hair, and she straightened it with a brief rake of her fingers and crossed the room beginning for the first time to wonder what was going on. All sorts of possibilities prevented themselves … she of all people knew how fragile the Tower’s defences were, how incomplete despite their best efforts, and how many tens of thousands depended on their constant vigilance. Speculation normally led her to conclusions about a hundred times worse than the reality. She opened her bedroom door, blinking in the harsher light, and found herself facing the stranger who was her Keeper.
Coming from different sides of a political divide but united at least in name, the two Aes Sedai eyed each other: tall and short, fine-looking and plain, high-born and commoner, the mirror image of one another. “Mother.” Marajha Sedai dropped a curtsey, brief but formal, and she tilted her head in exquisitely calculated response. “Somebody has broken into the ter’angreal storeroom.”
Nobody without intimate access to her thoughts would ever know how close Sirayn Damodred came to speaking the one name she must never speak and betraying a lifetime’s worth of secrets. By sheer instinct she strangled out the name before it got to her tongue. But … dear Light … she knew fear now, fear and a thousand shades of memory.
Black Ajah.
It had begun this way a year and more ago. Plucked from her steady routine life, let in on the Tower’s greatest secret, she and the remainder of the thirteen Black Ajah Hunters had been set to a hunt none of them were expected to survive. The knowledge and its implications had weighed on her heavy ever since. As her last companions died off one by one, in suspicious circumstances more often than most, sometimes without word or warning -- even the ones she had known best, even the youngsters, even those she had raised with her own hands -- she had looked in the mirror every morning and known that the day would come when only she lived to carry forth the Black Ajah hunt. Of course she had taken steps to stave it off; hadn’t she taken the greatest risk of all and told Lanfir Leah Marithsen on the night of her raising? Hoping to see a second hunt raised which would dwarf the first? Yet her dreams had never been made real. Now everything had fallen to her: last survivor of the Black Ajah Hunt and maybe the last Amyrlin of all time, if she lived to see the Last Battle, for all indications were that the Tower might not survive it. The responsibility was all hers now.
She hated them. She hated their very existence, poisoning her beloved Tower from the inside, corrupting the hard work of centuries. One day she would take them apart herself, root out every last lying, scheming one of them, and put the entire Black Ajah to the sword. One day she would shout it from the rooftops that the Tower had once had its shadow, but that Aes Sedai had cleansed themselves for their own sake and that of the world, that they truly deserved to be the Light’s champions and to overhaul that madman child who called himself the Dragon, and when the Last Battle came they would be ready.
“Thanks for the warning.” She kept her tone dry. Inwardly she seethed. She wanted to demand to know who it had been, which Black Ajah members had worn friendly faces for so long, if she had known any of them … but her Keeper did not know anything of this blackest of all secrets and she dared not even intimate it right now. She settled for a suitably discreet: “Who was it?” If it had been a sister … if the Black Ajah had betrayed themselves in one glorious moment of stupidity … why cover up for them? Why hide their black, shrivelled little existence from the light when they couldn’t even keep their own affairs in order? And what, she wondered, would she do with a caught Black Ajah member?
That question was easy enough to answer. It had been a long time since the Chair of Remorse had seen any practical use. And if she couldn’t operate it herself, being as she was running short on fellow Black Ajah hunters now the Black Ajah had killed them all, she could think of one or two more direct ways of … starting a diplomatic dialogue.
“Some boy, Mother. Light only knows what he thinks he’s doing.” A boy? Her mind worked fast. Not a Black Ajah member himself then, unless the darker persuasion of Aes Sedai had mastered some very convincing forms of illusion, but a spy for them? Another stripe of Darkfriend? An agent for one of their many enemies? Her Keeper looked and sounded harassed and she didn’t even know about the Black Ajah implications: “It may be just a prank -- or …” she left a significant gap; everyone knew that a fair portion of the Tower’s strength resided in that innocuous little storeroom and no doubt half a hundred of their enemies would love to destroy it. “Will you speak to him?”
“Speak to him?” growled Sirayn, resisting the temptation to roll up her sleeves and get her hands … hand, damn it … dirty immediately. “I’ll hold the little bastard. See how long it takes him to sing like a canary.” There were Tower Laws governing all sorts of things these days, no doubt concocted by a bunch of soft-hearted liberals, and if she was entirely honest she didn’t know how harsh she could stand to be with the memory of her son still fresh in her heart, but she was damn well going to work on it. “Bring the wretch to my office. I’ll be along in a minute.” One definite advantage to being Amyrlin Seat, which at least balanced out being the target of every assassin in the known world, was that when she wanted somebody locked up until she could interrogate him … she got it.
She dressed swiftly. No doubt the boy wouldn’t mind, or possibly he wouldn’t even notice, but she had had it drummed into her that the Amyrlin Seat should be immaculate at all times; smartly dressed, orderly and every inch the most powerful woman in the world. In a few minutes’ time she made her way through the shadowed corridors, trying to work out what particular outlandish time it was, to her office. Her Keeper accompanied her talking of the strange happenings of the night: a fire, a breaking-in, a captive. Outside she paused a moment. The rooms still held more of her predecessor than her and she felt a stranger in them, but much less so, she hoped, than the future object of her wrath. She needed to immediately and ruthlessly establish the ascendancy here. Unless sufficiently scared the wretched boy might not talk. And talk he must.
Sirayn Damodred entered in a slam of doors, icy composure on her face, and skewered her victim with a glacial stare. The first surprise was that the Keeper had been speaking only the truth to call him a boy; though tall by her standards, he was scarce as old as her son, with hair the colour of gold and a face straight from ruined Malkier. The second surprise was that she recognised him. Once upon a lazy afternoon, perhaps, she had come across a Malkieri boy in the library somewhere … had spoken to him, an old Aes Sedai instinct to pry and question and gain information … and thereafter thought nothing of it. To come across the same child now shackled in her office and maybe a Black Ajah agent disturbed her in some way. He was far too young for these games. When she thought of her children … no, that was a dangerous path to walk at any time, and right now she had to be the Amyrlin to her fingertips.
“You have searched him and he has been disarmed?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Then the shackles will not be necessary. You may leave us.” The guards obeyed her and left her alone in an otherwise empty office with a Darkfriend.
Silent, a subtle movement perceptible only to another channeller, she warded the rooms against eavesdropping. Still silent she took her seat; a polished wooden chair, too hard for her old bones, or maybe that was a diplomat’s soft unfitness talking. Then she favoured her quarry with a remarkably cold stare. Darkfriend for certain, perhaps an agent of other powers as well, and helpless in Aes Sedai hands. Perhaps he feared her and the seven-striped shawl round her shoulders. It would be the better for him.
“Good evening, young man.” She kept her voice cool, toneless, betraying nothing but her authority. “Did you, perhaps, lose your way just now? Drop a candle? Stumble into some room or other?” Her eyebrows raised just a fraction. “One would have thought that the Warders’ Yard would teach basic navigation. Do you need a ball of string in future to lead you back toward the exit?”
Sirayn Damodred
Watcher of the Seals
Flame of Tar Valon
The Amyrlin Seat
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Corrine sighed, rubbing her temples as her fingers could massage away the sudden headache there. Her rooms were neat and orderly, even more-so than usual, and things had been set out for tea. Usually, those menial tasks calmed and mentally prepared the Blue for an upcoming meeting. Not so this time.
The old Taraboner sat in her armchair, head held in hands, suddenly feeling very tired. She walked a thin line, every woman who dared call herself Aes Sedai did but hers more so than most. Certainly her guest walked an ever thinner line and, with amusement, Corrine noted the far slimmer shoulders with which the new Amyrlin had to bear her load. Right now, and no doubt she would feel this way many times before this meeting was over, she would not trade her most worthless possession for Sirayn’s position.
White braids clacked together as she shook her head from a sort of amused exasperation. No doubt Sirayn was not altogether pleased with her little speech when the Hall had convened to choose the Amyrlin to follow Lanfir. There had been little choice in the matter though. Sirayn would have been raised and she would have been forced to stand anyway. All that mattered was that there would be no repeat of the events following her predecessor’s raising.
The newly-raised Amyrlin’s note had been short, stating only that she wished to meet in the Blue quarters. No hint at the purpose of the visit, no indication of where she, and the Blues as whole, stood with their new leader. No doubt this was the tiny woman’s plan to set Corrine off balance. Damn her, it was working.
Though anticipated, the knock at the door still caused the Blue to start. Forcing herself through Novice exercises to calm her nerves she made her way to the door. ‘Here goes.’ Was her only thought before she pulled the door open, immediately dropping a curtsy and completing the necessary formalities.
“Welcome, Mother. Do have a seat.” Taking her seat only after her guest had taken hers, Corrine played the perfect hostess and allowed neither her curiousity nor her nerves to show. “Tea?”
Corrine’dei Susten
First Selector
Wondering what the hell Sira wants
*
During her long and some would say chequered history Sirayn Damodred had crossed paths with innumerable Aes Sedai. From the book-lovers of the Brown Ajah to the logicians of the White Ajah and all the shades in between, she had offended, explored, fought with or against, sometimes admired or all of the above each of the seven Ajahs. Yet for an Ajah which shared such strong philosophical links with her own … her former Ajah, that was, and however much it stung to leave the Green Ajah behind she couldn’t afford that kind of slip in public … she had had comparatively little to do with the Blue Ajah.
She had been acquainted with a number of them. Half the younger generation she had taken on campaigns, with fiery Serena Morrigan her particular favourite, while others -- in particular she remembered Kartos Dal’Avier -- had joined her on the darkest task of their lives: the Black Ajah Hunt. But each had been a passing contact, save for those she had brought into the Order at a later date, and she had never had Ajah-wide business with them the way she had with other Ajahs. As far as she knew there was no logical reason whatsoever why an entire faction should take against her the way the Blue Ajah had.
Illogical reasons, however, they had in plenty. She had had the temerity to be raised from the same Ajah as her predecessor, Lanfir Leah Marithsen, causing all and sundry to conceive wild notions of a Green Ajah takeover. That one proponent of this should be the same Ajah which boasted so openly of having more Amyrlins than anyone else called their intelligence into question, but apparently Blue Ajah propaganda did not have to be checked for internal consistency before it was released, and maybe only Sirayn recognised its absurdity.
No matter the illogic, for her audacity in having worn a green shawl, she had to pay for a stranger’s crimes. She disliked having a total outsider and political spy forced on her as her Keeper, but for the sake of diplomatic unity she was prepared to tolerate it; perhaps she would never know why Lanfir had pitched a fit at the idea of doing the same and decided to disobey the Hall’s wishes. Indeed, she considered herself as ignorant as anybody else on the topic, but it was she who had to be punished as if it were somehow her responsibility. So although she had no intention of allowing a Blue Ajah plant to hamper her, she had taken the stranger as her Keeper and intended to behave with all the propriety her predecessor had lacked, and that should have been the end of it.
Yet for all this the Blue Ajah still seemed to hold a grudge against her. If she were two centuries younger, or maybe even one, she would have rolled up her sleeves, dragged a Blue Sitter out of bed and rattled some sense into their empty head until they started to see the sheer stupidity of their position -- the senseless, destructive hostility of hating her for her Ajah, for Lanfir Marithsen and maybe even for the Last Battle which everybody now knew was on the horizon -- but a sister of her age ought to observe the proper behaviour.
Instead of a dawn interrogation she had sent a beautifully polite note to arrange a meeting with their senior Sitter. She had dressed smartly, practised her most businesslike and noncommittal smile, and generally prepared herself for diplomatic battle. Unfortunately it was the kind of battle to which she could only bring her wits, and however highly she thought of herself she doubted her wits were as sharp as a good length of steel, but on behalf of her beloved and bitterly divided Tower she intended to at least put in a decent performance.
It seemed somewhat uncharitable to hope that Corrine’dei Susten, another complete stranger, had spent the time since receiving her note slowly stewing in anxiety. Perhaps it would make her a little more agreeable for once. She took her time heading to the Blue Ajah halls, finding the right room, then finally knocked; it did gratify her somewhat that the Sitter curtseyed so readily, something still foreign to her, so perhaps they could keep this little meeting down to a dull roar. Her smile was flawless, her nod calculated to the fraction. “Good morning, Daughter. I’m glad you could find time for me.” She took a seat, let the other woman pour tea for her, maintaining an expression of cool benevolence. “I thought you and I should … talk.”
The brief pause, the subtle and barely perceptible change of intonation, took the tension up a notch. She had no reading on this stranger whatsoever or on how much trouble might arise and Sirayn intended to find out. “I know a few of your sisters but by no means all. Perhaps you could give me an overview of Blue Ajah concerns, how I can best address them, and perhaps which sisters you feel would most benefit from a little attention … and perhaps responsibility. If I need a mission leading or a cause furthering or just a job doing … who would you recommend?” She sipped her tea, the picture of serenity, and waited to see if and how the other woman took the bait.
Sirayn Damodred
Watcher of the Seals
Flame of Tar Valon
The Amyrlin Seat
-
She burned the letter.
If pressed she might confess to a certain disappointment when she opened her new door and looked out on a letter, a trail of blood, silence. She hadn’t truly thought that Jaydena would just let the book of their story together be closed; not because she had any confidence in those supposed feelings for her, in fact she had none, but because she knew how little Jaydena respected anybody’s wishes but her own … and also, a secret thought, because she found it hard to imagine that this would work. Never having to deal with tears or tantrums again, never being labelled a coward and a craven, no more lying awake wondering what under the Light the other woman was playing at, never having to fear that this time maybe Jaydena would lose her temper for good and decide to wreak a little chaos.
But she’d hoped … just a little … that this time the Banner Captain would respect the boundaries set to her. That beautiful, flawless, ever-loved Jaydena could conceive of a world in which somebody didn’t want to see her any more. That she could listen to what the friend she professed to love wanted -- to be left alone to pursue their common cause, the only one that mattered, the Tower and hence the Light -- and think of something other than her love life for once. Of course she’d been wrong. But no surprises there. She’d been consistently wrong about Jaydena Mckanthur all along.
Frankly she didn’t even know what the other woman had been thinking when she wrote this letter. Supported her from afar? This coming from the person who had just opposed her to become Ajah Head? Did she think that being promised to Seiaman even mattered in the face of the Green Ajah’s oldest rule, one Sirayn herself would never even have considered crossing but which apparently her old friend gave no thought to, the breach of which was a scandal? As for the veiled threats … she had known all along that Jaydena could potentially be a danger to her. And after all the half-truths and the tears, the drama, the whole wretched mess … she had no faith in the other woman’s good will any more. The threatening letter only proved her right.
Hence, although perhaps Jaydena did not see the pattern of it yet, she had chosen to make certain. You will never question or undermine me. Everything you do is at my command. Jaydena had agreed to it and while the Three Oaths still bound her perfect Dena could no more turn on her than speak a lie. A promise that could not be broken, a tie which could not be severed … something, at last, she could rely on. She had no need to fear vengeance from her old friend and enemy any longer. It was over: she had won.
She let the ashes fall where they might and left.
Sirayn Damodred
Retro Head of the Green Ajah
-
Ever since her wedding night she had carried the knowledge that revenge was her duty as the last free member of her line. She kept an internal list of her obligations to remind herself daily; each day she spent out here in snowy Kandor was another day apart from her husband and her family, another day before she could return and set matters to rights, another day with no bloody progress whatsoever.
Every instinct she possessed clamoured to go home. Leaving her brother in a Domani jail and her House’s reputation in shreds had burned her; she had never spoken of the shame she felt at fleeing like a thief in the night, letting her family believe her dead or a deserter, but she kept it close all the same. Even being here made her a traitor. It had been hammered into her since she took her first steps that a Domani girl of high birth should become a wife and a mother, that her worth was calculated by how well she performed those duties, and here in Kandor she could do neither.
Having to live alongside loud, lewd red-cloaked halfwits and the sinister Aes Sedai into the bargain had stretched her patience to breaking point. Once she had held the Tower in high esteem; now, having seen her home burn for Aes Sedai trickery, she watched each red cloak pass her in the street and asked herself where they had been last summer. Yet even if she had known the right names all she could have done was land herself in some festering foreign jail. Frustration and bitter fury had been building up ever since.
So to be propositioned like a common whore by some lecherous idiot distinguished by nothing but the size of his sword hilt came very close to snapping her tolerance altogether. It hadn’t escaped her notice that the Tower Guard were a rough lot with nothing in their empty heads but drink and women, intellectually she’d known that a woman on her own would be a target, but she had never expected such an insult. As the daughter of a high House and a married woman to boot it outraged her; she nearly snarled that she charged for that kind of service.
On the other hand … to let her fierce Domani temper show would be to betray her true colours. She was beginning to find this man thoroughly disagreeable with his constant round of demeaning nicknames and lecherous behaviour but the Light forfend that she have the wits to be angered even by rampant male idiocy. So she choked down her wrath, with a mighty effort, and even forced herself to smile; preparing as she did so some light words that would defuse any immediate expectations but still leave the possibility open later if he made himself useful; she had no intention whatsoever of breaking her marriage vow but he didn’t need to know that.
Fortunately for both of them, including her continued pretence at good humour and simplicity, he dropped this particular display of stupidity shortly afterward. Being labelled little one by a man only an inch taller than her vexed her but it paled in comparison to taking her for some sort of scarlet woman. Her family had brought her up to act only with consideration; she forced the old bright innocence into her voice once more. “I keep telling you, sir, I just want to save the world.” She could stonewall just as long and hard as necessary. “My name’s Raffiel. Like Rafael, only more … raffish.” She summoned an attempt at a charming smile from somewhere, though frankly her hand itched to punch him, and even fluttered her long dark lashes dislodging bits of snow: “Since you’re inducting me into your fine order and so on, could we perhaps get in from the cold?”
Anjen
Tricksy lass
-
Her one-time apprentice still had the capacity to fascinate her. She had never put her finger on why: perhaps his intelligence, or the underhanded cunning she had built on with her Daes Dae’mar instruction, or maybe something about the strong planes of his face or the sound of his voice or the way he used to watch her … or something else she couldn’t quite define. Nor did she particularly want to know why. She had too many wretched memories of what happened when her private feelings clashed with standards of Aes Sedai behaviour to take that again. He was young enough to be her son ten times over, not to mention murderously evil, and somebody here had to place the Tower’s needs above their own.
Being in public, she thought it less than diplomatic to remove her hand as fast as she had offered it, and thus controlled the urge to pull away; but something about the way he patted her hand and smiled at her just then reminded her sharply of his fingertips against her cheek as she lay defenceless. She drew a slow breath, all composure on the outside, and crushed down the image. “I bet it would.” Her tone remained a shade on the barbed side. It had been a mistake to allow him too close to her when she didn’t know if or when she could get rid of him. So much for the Watcher of the Seals, the Flame of Tar Valon, the Amyrlin Seat: unnerved by having her arm held by a Darkfriend.
The sound of her new rank still rang foreign to her. It seemed beyond belief that a common child from nowhere special, and illegitimate at that, weak in the One Power and once disgracefully governed by her temper should ever come to wear this simple striped token about her waist and be announced as the Amyrlin. Nevertheless, it did not please her to hear her companion thinking the same. It took some effort not to point out that the obvious reason why Corin Danveer, Darkfriend poisoner, would like the sound of his Tower Guard rank was that he had come so close to losing it. Even now she didn’t know why she had spared him even that. It had been madness to let him go so freely … but when she thought of taking the Commander of the Tower Guard aside and explaining to him, a stranger of unproven loyalty, how shamefully weak and afraid she had been she went cold all over. She had never learnt a way to deal with fear and shame other than to hide it.
Doubt and self pity she put aside as silence and curtseying spread outward from her entrance. A long and politically challenging night lay ahead of her and, brevity being the soul of everything important, she had no intention of making any long speeches tonight. She pitched her voice cool and carrying: “Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the White Tower Ball. Tonight is primarily a field test for my Basic Etiquette students and I hope you’ll all help me keep an eye on them.” Briefly her gaze swept the crowd, finding dark Rossa in a beautiful shade of blue-green, a scattering of others. In a way the Danveer boy had been her pupil in this as in many other things. The difference was that she did not doubt his mastery of etiquette … and she also knew not to accept anything to drink from his poisoning Darkfriend hands.
Inauspicious as it would be for a drove of initiates to accept his tender ministrations and never wake again, or perhaps wake powerless in a strange place as she herself had done, she kept half her attention on the boy himself as she spoke. “They will be on their best behaviour. And fortunately for us all, should we need saving from a horde of ravening initiates, I spy the Mistress of Novices.” She spared a smile for Pia Sedai, a stranger to her still, but well spoken of by her young charges. “Far be it from me to keep you all from the drinking and the dancing. Have fun tonight.”
In a sweep of white skirts she vanished into the crowd. One imperious gesture summoned the boy Danveer to her side again; Light only knew what he might do if she let him out of her sight. “First dance, Master Danveer?” She only hoped that her performance as hostess was flawless enough to make up for the sudden petrifying flashes of memory … she forced the latest one away, face impassive, and ignored the crawling fear of his touch. It would be improper for the Amyrlin to hesitate in anything. The living personification of the Tower should be perfection itself.
Sirayn Damodred
Watcher of the Seals
Flame of Tar Valon
The Amyrlin Seat
-
Raisings had been problematic before, not least when a certain person not a million miles removed from Sirayn Damodred had faced the assembled Battle Ajah herself for her shawl, but she had expected that this would go smoothly and indeed it proved to. In general they needed sisters; in specific, though she would not have liked to discuss the reasons why in public, they needed this one. Today’s young recruit had shown much promise -- as a sister, a soldier and a diplomat, the proper Green Ajah skills, to be the guiding light in the storm -- and though she thought her old friend hasty to attach the tag of greatness so early, the conclusion was quite correct.
One by one her sisters had their say. In older times she herself would have given her verdict, she had an inclination toward cutting but fair comment on the public stage, but as Ajah Head she did not speak for or against recruits any more -- she merely judged, impassive as a statue, impartial like all Aes Sedai should be. Others spoke their piece now where she stood silent. The testimony given did not pose her any particular difficulty; to nobody’s surprise, and presumably to their recruit’s great relief although as always that Cairhienin composure did not waver, the long-held tradition of never rejecting someone on their second petition would be upheld again today.
If there was something she particularly liked about raisings it was the opportunity to grant somebody whom she held in personal respect the shawl they had earned. It took a moment’s calculation to pick her time to intervene, slow enough that everybody had had the chance to speak yet not enough to show doubt in their judgement, until Sirayn finally came forward herself. “Then I welcome you to the Battle Ajah. From this day forth you are one of us and when Tarmon Gai’don comes we will stand together against the Shadow.” Careful and ceremonial, she arranged a green shawl about the other woman’s shoulders, straightened it. Then she smiled. “Hail and well met … sister.”
Sirayn Damodred
Retro Head of the Green Ajah
Closer
in Legacy Saga Archive
Posted
Some time after the threat to her daughter, which as it turned out could compel her obedience but couldn’t force her past her instinctive fear of being touched, she decided to learn the Flame and the Void.
Emotion only shamed any right-thinking person. An Aes Sedai who could not stuff her own fear down enough to do whatever she had to might as well not wear the shawl. Everybody knew that the Tower Guard had this trick which killed stupid sentimentality; therefore she needed to corner some luckless victim and force him to teach it to her. That person’s identity she did not yet know, she trusted no Tower Guard as far as she could throw them after the past three had turned out to be homicidal Darkfriends, but she intended to find a suitably impersonal teacher anyway.
Until then she had plenty of challenges to surmount, such as quite how much the Darkfriend’s little exercises terrified her, and the mysteries of this whole inexplicable arrangement. No sane person would believe his lies about this being for her benefit; one did not blackmail and threaten people unless one had a seriously unpleasant plan for them. She found it offensive that anyone even fed her that line as if she were a one-year novice, possibly the only type young and gullible enough to believe it, but she did not know the mind of Darkfriends. All she knew was that he wanted to hurt her daughter and that whatever twisted satisfaction he got out of making her fail his stupid tests -- making her panic, freeze, slip up -- it was good enough to do it again … and again … and again.
So being instructed to fetch him the beloved’s bond frankly terrified her. She had far too much knowledge of unwanted bonds, of the particular crawling horror of having someone prying into her head against her will and knowing she couldn’t get rid of them, not to fear. Of course she could do nothing unless she wanted her daughter killed, the Order exposed and a full-scale war with the Black Ajah on her hands, but she hadn’t been able to force down her panic even for that, it was something quite automatic, and the old private fears had existed longer still. Maybe he didn’t even mean it anyway, she told herself, rather than spend all the time fretting herself speechless. Maybe it was just to watch her fear him.
She fetched the ter’angreal like a good puppy -- call me master, she remembered that, like she remembered how Kitten had closed that collar round her throat -- lying spectacularly about their purpose as much as the First Oath would permit, and brought them back to her self-professed master. She had once sworn that she would have no master but the Tower. In fact she got some homicidal blackmailing Darkfriend who seemed to like her scared, one perversion she did not share. But she handed them over, silently, and did not even step away from him, despite her instincts; what if it wasn’t just an empty threat, what if he really meant to put one on her, what if he ended up seeing everything … she took a slow breath, trying to calm the abject dread of having her most intimate thoughts and feelings exposed to a bloody Darkfriend, and said nothing at all.
Sirayn Damodred
Head of the Green Ajah
Progress was not a forthcoming result of the training that was held every day with Sirayn, or so Aran was willing to admit to himself. It was becoming clear that even after he'd given a solid kick to her stubborness when it came to attempting what he had set for her, there were still problems that were ensuring that success would elude them. She was simply paralysed by fear, automated for that matter. She could not stand a charge, she tried again and again but she could not do it. She would step up every time and it was becoming painful, she wasn't acclimatising and if anything, the repeated failure on her part to meet his charge was making it more difficult.
So, something different had to be attempted.
The encounter Aran had with Jaydena and the ter'angreal rings had given him the inkling to a possible solution. He'd had experience with the bond through them, he knew how potent they could be in affecting someone. The mingling of emotions and the open nature in which they were shared, they could also be used to strengthen one another. For him, the rings presented a two fold advantage when it came to dealing with Sirayn and her training. Firstly, she would be able to sense through the temporary bond that he did not intend to hurt her. Something that would hopefully go a long way to helping calm her.
The other thing was that he would be able to use his emotions to help stabilise hers. If he could pull it off, he could perhaps breach the wall and create a basic level of trust. Well, not trust, but give her the capacity to act and fulfill the task that he had set for her. If he could calm that storm that he suspected raged inside her mind for even only a few minutes, that would be an achievement in itself.
Securing the rings of course was a problem, but he'd been able to use Sirayn to do that for him. Of course it meant tipping his hand a little, but her reading of his intentions wouldn't be on the mark due to her suspicion. He just hoped that the depth of her paranoia didn't completely block his attempt to get through. If there was something that Sirayn had demonstrated, it was her ability to distort new information and revelation to confirm her pre-existing ideas. The root of Sirayn's true problem, it was also the reason his entrapment worked. Because she had initially presumed him capable of fulfilling his threats, any threats he had made following them were instantly credible.
But, even as he met with Sirayn and relieved her of the rings, he had hope that things could be circumvented and subverted, shattered and restored with the right pressure. Lifting the rings up before him, he tossed one back to Sirayn before slipping the one he retained onto his right ring finger. As he spoke, he was already beginning to prepare himself for the flood that would hit him, knowing that it would be of little use. All he could do was hold onto his emotions, keep them steady. "Slip the ring on."
Aran
Tower Guard
An icy finger inched down her spine; for a moment she simply stared at the ring, small and gold and ordinary, a cold circle on her palm. He had put one on. He wanted her to put this one on. Then they would be bonded until someone took it off. She touched the ring with her fingertip and imagined having a deranged Darkfriend in her head -- pictured him cracking open her good Aes Sedai armour, exposing her most private feelings to the light, raking through her fears and insecurities like a thief in a jewellery box -- he’d find out she was a coward, no doubt he’d get a good laugh out of that, and as for other, even more secret thoughts … anger and disgust and dismay, impatience and exasperation, shame and the stupid wretched attachment she still had to various people who hadn’t loved her …
Seiaman had got into her head and refused to leave. She remembered having a Warder who hated her, having her every feeling read like a book and used against her. It had been endless and infuriating and sort of heartbreaking in a way, when she would have done nearly anything to persuade Seiaman to love her, when she had never even been able to hide how much she hated it when Seiaman left her. Somehow the advantage had only worked one way. She had never been able to figure out the knot of foreign feelings in her head, or understand quite why Seiaman kept turning on her, or why she couldn’t just pick a position and stick to it. It didn’t make any sense. People didn’t make sense, bonding didn’t make sense.
Since the death of her last Warder, whom she had loved perhaps longest and best of all, she had never even considered letting anybody else into her head. She had enough difficulty with people standing near her, let alone rifling through her feelings to see what they could use against her. Her mind might be inadequate but it was a private space where she could harbour strange stupid feelings like her jealousy and possessiveness over Aramina, wanting to own her, wanting to keep her safely to herself. She had never wanted to bond again -- and she still didn’t.
It angered her in a sudden, stupid way. She wanted to break the ring, wanted to crush it, stamping out that Age of Legends trickery forever. Of course she didn’t want this; why would anyone tolerate some murderous Darkfriend mauling their innermost thoughts? That was exactly why he demanded of her -- to disgrace and frighten her, to make her still less an Aes Sedai, to teach her who her master was. Call me master indeed; it still made her seethe. She didn’t even have a choice. Cowards and cripples and failures didn’t get a choice about something as fundamental, as intimate as who they bonded.
If she got herself infuriated enough she might not be scared any more, and Light she was scared. She prized her privacy like nothing else; she had never wanted anyone to see what was beneath the semblance of Aes Sedai calm any more than she wanted anyone to see what was under her clothes. It was equally invasive, equally repulsive to her.
Since she didn’t have a choice she might as well get this sordid situation over and done with as soon as possible. Bracing herself, and clinging to her old and somewhat desperate hope that nobody would ever find out that she was afraid, she picked up the ring in unsteady fingers and forced it over her finger before she lost her nerve.
Sirayn Damodred
Head of the Green Ajah
The moment the ring slipped on Sirayn's finger, Aran's worst fear was confirmed, he was in no way prepared for what hit him. Anger was definitely at the forefront of those feelings. Searing anger that cut through him with a hatred that he wasn't sure he'd ever felt in such a way pervaded his mind and his very being. There was little mistaking how Sirayn felt about him at this point, not that he hadn't known before but that had been understood more on the intellectual level and empathised, this feeling was raw and it twisted inside of him this way and that with an uncontrollable fury that reminded him of the way saidin had been described to him. A fitting comparison considering the tinge of madness that drove the rage.
Yet this was only the shield for a much deeper emotion, stark raving fear. Even as she despised him with feelings so strong they tore at him, the fear behind it threatened to paralyse him. Waves upon waves of her abject horror of him and whatever she felt he represented sank into his very bones, leaving him with a chill that made every movement difficult, like the involuntary step he took back as if her emotions had struck him physically. The pincer attack of her emotions threatened to overwhelm him entirely but he had weathered emotions before, if not quite like this. Jaydena might have had her problems, and she had, but there had been a sense and an order to them that he had been able to easily identify that he couldn't find here. Then again, Jaydena hadn't possessed emotions nearly as strong in regards to him either.
"I need to sit down." A little pale, Aran lowered himself to the ground as he yielded. Resistance and rejection were not the way to deal with this, instead he let Sirayn's emotions wash over him and rather than clash with her, he accepted. Everything she threw at him, willingly or unwillingly, he received and in turn radiated his own feelings that he intermingled with hers. Calm, security, safety, an inner serenity that he had taken years to cultivate, stable emotions that would hopefully bring some sort of order and structure to the space within their minds that they shared. One couldn't attack, one couldn't defend, both things created barriers and instead he sought to discard them as he attempted to stabilise the bond as best he could.
Aran
Tower Guard
For a last precious moment she kept her private feelings to herself; the next a knot of emotions winked into being in the back of her head, a shocking, near tangible intrusion, as if someone had seized hold of her. She startled away despite her best attempts as though that might break the unseen grip -- but of course it didn’t work: no matter how much she made a coward of herself his alien, disturbing emotions would follow her everywhere. Light only knew she wanted to run. Having him in the back of her head felt far too close and she didn’t think anywhere this side of the Aryth Ocean would be far enough to make her safe again. She hated this and she hated him and nowhere was safe.
She had been braced for all kinds of responses, contempt most of all, but she had not expected him to step back as if she had struck him. The filthy blackmailing Darkfriends hadn’t thought twice about forcing an Aes Sedai into a bond against her will so why would he give a damn what she thought of him? He must have known that she hated and feared him anyway; she hadn’t exactly guarded her words. He was probably just winding her up so he could laugh at the stupid Aes Sedai. Narowing her eyes, she watched coldly as he sat down, hoping whatever troubled him would continue to do so.
He felt weak. Maybe that wasn’t the right word. Faint? Colourless? She was accustomed to extremes of fear and fury, forcing her weaknesses to serve her, so her shame drove her forward however craven she was. Next to the intensity of her own emotions he felt foreign but not striking -- his feelings were a pale shadow of hers. It didn’t impress her much. “How sweet,” said Sirayn coldly, bonded against her will for the first time in fifteen years. “You threaten little children with impunity but fall over because I don’t like you.”
Looking up at Sirayn, Aran simply raised an eyebrow as he continued to mingle his feelings amongst hers. His were passive while hers were aggressive, hers would wear themselves out, they were more subject to change. His, on the otherhand, were more static and constant, their strength was in their simplicity and her underestimation of them. Had it been that long since she had been bonded that she'd forgotten how subtle the bond could be? “Your feelings run far deeper than just me, I knew that before, its another thing to experience them. Is this where you always reside, in this maelstrom that I'm swimming in? You do yourself more harm than anyone else possibly could.”
The false bond transmitted a steady, soothing pulse. Seiaman had never done that; she didn’t understand it, didn’t want that or any part of him. It was all manipulation anyway. As Kitten had used pleasure and pain to control her, to wear down her resistance -- a vivid memory of shame and fear and defeat -- so did he. She hated Darkfriends and Dreadlords both, despised their filthy habits and their trickery and she wanted to get rid of this evil ring as soon as possible. “Do you often dispense advice to victims of your blackmail?” Her voice had gone low and harsh. She missed Seiaman, a stupid thought, but if she had to be stuck bonded to somebody who hated her it might as well be the one she’d come to love. “I’m amazed you find time between threatening their families.” Child killer. Darkfriend. In her head.
Frowning, Aran's emotions remained constant as she attempted to disturb the peace he gave through the bond. That and it was an attempt to try and feed her own emotions, he recognised the way her unstable emotions throbbed much in the way Jaydena's had when she had attempted a similar thing after she'd discovered who he actually was. "Has it ever occured to you that while others may have mistreated you, you might be the source of your own pain? I can feel the way you're using your thoughts to feed your anger, your hatred and the accompanying fear. Are those emotions truly so difficult to hold onto yet so necessary that you must actively stoke those coals to ensure the flames keep burning?"
Kitten had stroked her hair and spoken to her gently and forced sensations on her that she didn’t want, touched her bare skin, whispered to her. The slow realisation that this babbling Darkfriend was doing exactly the same left her cold. He had touched her as much as he liked, fed her lies a three-year-old would frown at and now he was trying Kitten’s gambit -- only lacking a collar he had to use a bond instead and his filthy Darkfriend feelings intruded where once she had kept her Gaidin. She wanted to throw his bloody ring away and hide; instead she had to stand here while he interfered with her, trying to override her emotions with his foreign ones, or he killed her daughter. The bitter irony of getting a lecture as well struck her. “Has it ever occurred to you that no sane person would listen to a person who’s threatened to kill their family?”
"Actually, if you think about it, its a sane person who does listen to someone who has made such a threat." Sirayn's emotions were roiling about with an unpredictable predictability, fed on what she focused on, propping up her self destructive rage to ensure she would never have to deal with the alternative, a peace that Aran wondered whether Sirayn had ever even known. Feelings like that eventually wore out, or they wore the person out instead. "You still haven't answered the question either, are those emotions truly so necessary that you must hold onto them? Other people manage just fine without such loathing, what makes yours so necessary? Not of me, but I think yourself. You would have to hate yourself to inflict all of that on yourself continually. Is it really worth it? Are you so truly deserving of such hate that you cut yourself with blades of your own imagining?"
Kitten had not beaten her. The nameless Dreadlord had had her fun, she kept her memories of being helpless and terrified to herself, but the fact was she had given the Dreadlord a false oath and the fool didn’t even know it. By no means did she have an uncontrollable desire to go around impersonating Forsaken -- convenient though the gambit had been -- but when a Dreadlord arrived to stop her doing something, who but a dupe or a coward would let her? She had absolutely no idea what this madman wanted, but if some filthy Darkfriend planned to pry into her most private secrets, she intended to force him to give her no other choice. She didn’t ever want to look back and think that she could have fought harder. “Do you kill my family if I tell you to practise your apparently burgeoning career in quack psychology elsewhere?”
"Do you take unnecessary risks with the lives of your family and followers? Pride is a fools game." Regarding Sirayn without a single trouble crossing his mind or heart, Aran continued. "It surprises me, after all this time, you still refuse to answer the questions you are posed. You do not have to even speak the answers, simply give those questions a chance. You need never fear I gain an advantage over you from them, therefore the alternative is that instead of fearing me you fear yourself. To live paralysed by that isn't living, its simply going through the motions. If you do not live, then whats the point of all of it?"
Her so-called followers had betrayed her and her family abandoned her. Her daughter and her someday successor both slept with Darkfriends and thought nothing of it. They should count themselves lucky all she did was risk them; if she had turned on them as they had on her each of them would now be reassembling their lives from pieces. This lying Darkfriend brought only ruin to her and everything she prized -- the trust she had been building with Aramina, such a fragile thing, the chance that her daughter might ever return her love. “The sole purpose of asking these questions is to gain an advantage over me. I have yet to figure out what precise advantage you gain from asking me what the point of life is, but I doubt a blackmailing would-be child-killer thinks I’ll answer his questions, so I’ll figure it out in the end.”
There it was, the flaw that crippled Sirayn so thoroughly that Aran wondered whether she could ever truly function as a human being. An intellectual acknowledgement of a previous frustration that he had somewhat resigned himself to, it disturbed him not as he simply flowed onto the next query that was obvious. "Answer this question for yourself then. How do you reason my effort to be an attempt to gain advantage over you if you cannot discern an advantage? That would be... well, like presuming the existance of Violetta's without having encountered them simply because it is possible that one may find kaleidescopic bunnies."
He was either mocking her or completely and irretrievably insane. She ranked patronising young men of approximately one tenth of her age slightly beneath blackmailers and child killers on her personal hierarchy of people who needed killing, but a combination of all three took a pretty high spot; she began to wonder if she could act fast enough to rescue Lyssa and, well, possibly overthrow the Black Ajah by force if she killed him. She did her best to ignore temptation. “You are my enemy. Everything you do is a hostile action.”
Raising an eyebrow, Aran was unruffled by the short response. It was a quick assertion on her part, one to justify her belief. As far as her reactions went, that one had been entirely predictable and fallen into the cycle of her limited reasoning that she had exhibited at various points during their association. "Interesting. By what reasoning do you determine me to be an enemy and my every action to be a hostile one?"
Her patience was now running very short indeed. “You blackmailed me and you threatened to kill my family. What more do you think I need, a letter of confession?”
Aran could sense her impatience, but he continued nevertheless. “Oh come now, you brought forkroot into the Tower and that herb does possess a rather limited range of uses. You'd be drawn and quartered for bringing such a thing into the Tower, yet my magical intuition tells me that you do not see your act as hostile to the Tower. Do you now apply a double standard simply because you cannot perceive another possibility, the same way that your sisters would not perceive another possibility if they were told of what you smuggled?"
She had brought forkroot into the Tower, at great cost and inconvenience, for the sole purpose of overthrowing the Black Ajah and if necessary seizing the Tower by force. On consideration, she didn’t think the majority of Aes Sedai would approve -- but then again she neither wanted nor needed their approval. She had enough Aes Sedai agents to get her work done. He could stand there and spill platitudes all he liked, and try to poison her good honest wrath with his alien feelings, but that didn’t make him any less a Darkfriend and a blackmailer who wanted to kill her little girl. “Think what you like.”
"Such is the curse of the looking glass." Aran didn't mean to let his pity filter through his feelings, but it did along with a touch of frustration. Crippled. Getting to his feet, Aran began to step away as he spoke. "Well, at anyrate its time for the exercise once more. Same challenge as it has been for the past couple of weeks. I charge, you sidestep and throw, we continue until you succeed." Aran could already feel the changes going on through the bond but he kept himself centred, absorbed her fear and returned his own feelings back through the bond to counterweight them. If there was a chance for success, now would be a good time for it to manifest itself. "Three, two, one."
Pity? It puzzled and infuriated her. She did not want pity or anything else; in fact, she had had enough condescension, transparent lies and nonsense to keep her seething for a month, so why he felt the need to mess around with her further she didn’t know. The only task she had set herself was to protect her people and the Tower -- Light only knew they needed a defender -- and instead she found herself trapped at the mercy of a homicidal madman who was stalking her daughter.
She hated the way he kept stuffing his bizarre emotions into her head. Her Aes Sedai education had taught her that to bond someone against their will was the worst violation one could commit against them, in effect rape, and to deliberately pollute her own feelings with his … she didn’t even have a word for it. It felt wrong. It felt filthy. It felt like an invasion. She didn’t doubt that was exactly why he did it -- to shame her, to make her powerless, to undermine her so she couldn’t even trust her own anger any more. No true Aes Sedai would tolerate this no matter the cost.
In case having her private feelings ripped open, tainted and put together differently for a Darkfriend’s amusement didn’t scare her enough, now he wanted her to fail this stupid exercise again. She really didn’t understand this. How much fear did he want from her? Did he get such satisfaction out of her that he wanted to keep doing this? She didn’t feel any enjoyment from him but that didn’t matter, she didn’t need to be led by the bloody hand to draw the obvious conclusion. She knew it was there. He was lying in wait for her just as Solin had done … silent, unseen and inexorable. She hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about Solin; a left hand, a surviving Warder and all her cunning hadn’t saved her. It was going to be the same all over again -- the One Power would fail her and she would be right back in that cave, in the shadows, cold and fire and iron.
Her pulse raced. She flinched back before he ever touched her. He had so much more strength than her it was ridiculous, she remembered how effortlessly Solin had handled her -- she pushed him away, stupid and clumsy and wrong, he was still too close and she just wanted to escape. She hadn’t even thought it was real at first. She’d snapped something sarcastic and Amiarin had hit her, she remembered the impact and the pain and being shocked speechless … she crushed down the memory, took a deep shaky breath and moved away before she hit something back.
Even as he received her clumsy push, Aran knew that his plan had failed. The frightening tempest that flailed him through the false bond was enough to confirm for him that it wasn't going to work, he had no chance of stabilising her emotions this way. A failed last gambit, Aran had made his decision before he even came to a stop. Turning about to Sirayn who was still recovering from the inner turmoil, Aran couldn't help it. He genuinely felt sorry for her and there was no way that he could hide that. As much as she had irritated him, as stupid as she had been and regardless of her selfishness and her distorted view of the world around her, that irritation had no chance of coalescing when he knew the depth of her.
He wasn't sure he could help her now, her trauma seemed so ingrained, had no one helped her? Then again, she pushed away all those who even suggested such a thing, and now Aran suspected that she was beyond his ability. What had worked for him would not work for her, the near certainty of failure contributed to the sadness he felt as he watched her quietly. Condemned to live like that, that wasn't life at all, while he had no special fondness for her, knowing that some like Aramina and Lyssa did and knowing that Sirayn was so crippled emotionally that she would never understand it... That was real tragedy, for all of them, and not being able to fix it was worse.
"It seems that not even trying to dilute your fear so you could garner enough confidence in yourself worked." That got a flash of emotion from Sirayn but Aran continued on regardless. "Perhaps one day you will overcome it, but that day isn't today. In the meantime, there is no more point to this." Holding up his hand, Aran plucked the ring off, doing so he could have sworn he felt a surge of relief and maybe a touch of sanity through the bond before it winked out. Tossing the ring to her, Aran added. "Today is over, tomorrow we revert to training with the dagger only. Grappling is beyond you, at least until something changes, so we shall do it no more."
Aran didn't need the bond to feel Sirayn's relief as he turned and left.
Sirayn & Aran