The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long passed, a wind rose in the rocky hills of the World’s End. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings in the Wheel of Time. But it was A beginning. 

 

The wind gusted down from the hills, redolent with the salt of the Dead Sea. It swept down over the great plains, passing prosperous towns and the isolated pockets of tithe forests. It swirled across the faubourg, past taverns, mills and the shops of small craftsmen. It soared over the ancient walls of Barsine, fluting through the golden spires that reflected the afternoon sun like aurite mirrors.

 

The wind fluttered the leaves from the cherry trees in the courtyard of the Library of Kelcis, ruffling the pages of a book being read by a woman on a stone bench. Lysabel Paeron, Aes Sedai of the White Ajah for less than a year, regarded the tome on celestial navigation carefully. It was strange to be outside of Tar Valon for the first time in most of a decade, almost as strange as the Oaths that still clung to her skin like a dress that should have been put aside a season ago. The older Sisters told her that the feeling passed with time and experience. Lysabel had been in Barsine for nearly three months as a guest of Lord Protector Malwin. Malwin’s son was in the early stages of outfitting an expedition to sail west beyond the seas explored by the Athan’mire. Lysabel had written to the prince when she had heard of the venture, describing what she thought the land masses south and west might be, based on analysis of maps from before the Breaking and the comparison with modern charts, such as they were. As a result she had been invited to come to Barsine to aid in the preparation, mostly by translating and updating what little literature survived that discussed navigation. Prince Kefin had been on the verge of asking her to join him in his endeavor, but she had forestalled him. The First Light probably wouldn’t approve of her sailing off the edge of the world, and she wanted to be able to claim she hadn’t been invited. That wasn’t the same as saying you weren't going after all. The ships were being built in the port cities along the coast. Kefin had taken her to see them. The craftsmen of Jaramide had out done themselves, they were great rakers in the Sea Folk tradition, but larger and three masted, built heavy for the deep sea. Lysabel herself had aided in fusing in place the copper plating on their hulls and talked with the ship masters over sail configuration and lading. Initially the craftsmen had been skeptical of a woman, and an Aes Sedai at that giving advice, but she had been born on the shores of the Arryth, down south on the Shadow Coast and was no stranger to the sea or seafaring. The fact she was excited to learn had taken her along way, that and the fact she was a pretty young woman always willing to buy a nice meal while discussing keel design and windage requirements. 

 

The idea of the upcoming adventure tantalized her. There was so much yet to be discovered, or yet to be rediscovered. What relics of the Age of Legend might she recover? She had even given some thought to how she might use Saidar to see what lay beneath the ocean, though her drawings and sketches on the matter were a long way from being fleshed out. There would be time yet, as they couldn’t sail before the middle of spring with any hope of success. That meant perhaps another six months of study and preparation, a time that seemed at once too short and too long.

 

“Aes Sedai,” a man said in a tone that suggested this was not the first time he had said it. Lysabel looked up to see one of the Library Custodians standing before her with a frown. He was dressed in the emerald green coat of his office and had the heavy gold chased baton at his waist. These days the batons were ceremonial but in more turbulent times the Custodians had been expected to use them to defend the precious knowledge within their walls from mobs and looters.

 

“Yes…. Ynald is it?” she asked pulling his name for a brief introduction months in the past. A memory for faces and facts was a trait her White Ajah mentors had approved off. The Custodian seemed a little taken aback that she knew his name. Some of the officiousness went out of his eyes.

“Ah… Ynild Aes Sedai,” he replied, correcting her pronunciation slightly. Lysabel looked down at her book, noticed a leaf had blown in between the pages and brushed it away. She dearly wanted to return to her reading but the quickest way to deal with this interruption was to see what the man wanted. No Custodian would trouble an Aes Sedai without cause, no matter how many irritated looks they shot each other when they thought she wasn’t looking.

 

“What is it Ynild,” she prompted, feeling the flash of irritation at having been made to ask. The White Ajah valued logic and control above all things but that didn’t mean its Sisters lacked emotion. Lysabel was proof of the opposite, she valued the discipline because it helped her not to switch at a man simply because he interrupted her reading and then made her prompt him. 

 

“There is a man who wants to see you,” he informed her. Lysabel repressed the urge to strike the man. Was it too much to ask for a prompt and succinct report. Who was this man? What did he want? From whom had he come? Why are you wasting my time by reporting it to me in the smallest increments possible?

 

“Is this all the information you have on this person? His gender and his desire to see me?” Lysabel asked. By the flinch she got from Ynild she hadn’t been quite as successful at keeping the chill from her voice as she had hoped.

 

“Uhhh… he says he needs to see an Aes Sedai. Should I send him away?” the Custodian’s words tumbled over each other in what was becoming a panic.

 

“Bring him too me, it seems easier than dragging every detail of the matter out of you,” she said, closing her book in irritation.

 

“But Aes Sedai, he dosen’t have an introduction I cant just bring him within the walls and…”

“Bring. Him. To. Me.” Lysabel enunciated with the exaggerated precision one uses when addressing a child, and the coolness one uses when a dinner guest has thrown up on ones shoes. The Custodian reeled back as though struck.

“At once Aes Sedai!”

[@POOHEAD189]