Penny

WoT: The Dark One's Own Luck.

Mave felt a weight lift unexpectedly from her chest at Ali’s words. Compulsion was a forbidden weave, punishable by the most severe sanctions. Officially the art had been lost but unofficially… well it wasn’t uncommon for a wilder’s first weave to be some form of it. Make a boy like you, make a parent buy you a dress or a pet. Mave’s first weave had been a weak form of compulsion and she had talked with other novices and Accepteds, gathering pieces of information on how it might be done. Even so it was nothing like what Ali and others believed.

“Well if your...if your…” Ali stumbled over the words, obviously reluctant to say something outloud and make it true, even though the facts, as he knew them, were infront of him.

“If your an Aes Sedai, can’t you, I don’t know, hurl fire at it and kill it?” he asked. Mave nodded her head.

“I could,” she agreed, “but as I said if it is killed here others will come.” At first Mave had believed the thing to be following her but the more she thought about it the less sense that made. It could have been asking about Ali to find her, having seen them on the road, but if it knew who she was then there as no way it would have come alone. A fade was a deadly threat to even the most experienced swordsman, but only the feeblest Aes Sedai would fail to blast the thing to ragged bones.

“So what do we do?” Ali asked, moving his staff from hand to hand in obvious agitation.

“I can drive it off,” Mave said after a moment, she took her eyes of the fade and looked full at Ali, her dark eyes boring into him like augers.

“But you will need to leave the Two Rivers,” she said with implacable resolve.

“Once we are away from here we can dispatch it, but for the sake of your family and your village we need to leave this place tonight.”

Damned to the Depths

Calliope stumbled back as the troll swung its massive fist into the wheel, showering the foggy darkness with splintered timber. Incanting quickly she wove a sphere of silence around the vessel, abruptly cutting off sound that might pass to other ships questing for them in the fog. Calliope didn’t think there were other mages out there but she didn’t want to do anything further to give away their position. Instead she drew her own slender blade and thrust at the back of the trolls leg as it focused on tearing Markus limb from limb. The sharp steel turned on the things tough leathery skin, flexing the thing steel of the blade.

Cursing she turned to find a bill hook or a firelock in time to see an Arad stumble through the magical fog. He was naked from the waist up and clutched a scimitar that looked as though it weighed as much as she did. Without hesitation she lunged at the man, her light weapon too quick for the corsair, caught him in the right side. He stumbled back, blood bubbling from his lips. The rapier point opened his throat and send him tumbling over the rail into the water between the two ships. By their cries more corsairs were swarming onto the deck. She could hear Sketti roaring down in the waist and could hear the whistle thunk of his axe as it chopped through something meaty.

The troll howled in rage and pain as Markus struck home, though even that was hard to make out in the gloom. Another corsair stumbled out of the mist but this one was clutching a wound in his chest, dying from a pistol shot. Calliope seized one of the pike like boat hooks and turned to find Markus on the trolls back, stabbing down between its shoulder blades while the thing twisted its ape like arms to try and tear him free. Putting her slight weight behind it she thrust the boat hook into the knotted muscles and tendons of its left shoulder and was rewarded with a howl of pain. It pivoted to swat her but she stepped back, letting the hook, still lodged in the things shoulder swing free. Blood was pouring down its back from where Markus was chopping at it. She knew that fire was the best thing for trolls but a fire on a ship at sea was at least as deadly to the crew as it would be to the beat.

A freak gust of wind cleared enough of the fog that she could glimpse the enemy ship snugged up to them with grappling lines. Set into the railing were a number of small swivel guns. Glancing about she seized a loose line and leaped fluttering out over the gap where the ships tumbled home and landing on the deck. Most of the crew were away now but a few startled pirates looked up in shock as she landed cat like on the deck.

The deck of the enemy galley was a narrow walkway that ringed a large open waist in which two banks of oarsmen could be seated. The fog was too thick for Calliope to see how many of the crew were still at their posts. She was in the process of prying up the swivel gun when a sudden rush of air warned her and she pivoted aside as a turbaned man with a heavy scimitar rushed at her out of the gloom. She ducked under the blow, driving her shoulder up into the man's bulging stomach, they both went down in a tangle of limbs and prying fingers. Calliopes sharp fingernails raked the mans neck bloody, but he outwiehed her by a hundred pounts and he rolled atop of her pinning her to the deck. In desperation she grabbed for the nearest object and her hand closed around a two pound ball for one of the swivels. The mans fat fingers closed around her throat and he howled with triump a moment before the steel ball caved in the side of his skull and he slumped to the side, oozing blood from his nose and babbling stupidly. Gasping for air Calliope pulled herself to her feet and grabbed the fallen scimitar, finishing the man off with a quick thrust to the heart. With the heavy blade in hand she began to work her way aft, severing each of the grappling lines with a swipe of the heavy blade. The enemy corsair was pulling away from the Witch as the cabled tethering the ships were cut and timbers and ropes creaked under the strain.

“Wait!” called a voice from behind her and Calliope spun, scimitar gripped in both hands. Behind her was one of the small forward masts that the ship could use to hoist a spanker if she needed to tack hard. Affixed to the mast from a rusting metal hook was an iron cage a little bigger than a man. Inside of the cage was a dusky skinned man of Arad descent. He was dressed in what had once been fine silks, but the fabric was soiled with blood, salt and the man's own waste. His face was badly beaten but even so he had the sharp aquiline features of Arad nobility.

“Take me with you, I can pay my weight in gold!” he begged in a thick Arad accent. Calliope’s only reply was to swing her scimitar at the lock that held the door shut. It was poorly crafted and split like timber as the heavy steel blade cut it free with a shower of sparks. The fellow tried to jump free but his limbs were obviously atrophied from long imprisonment in his tiny cage and he collapsed face first onto the deck. Calliope hauled him to his feet and tried to ignore the stink. The remaining boarding lines were giving way with a series of musical twangs as the tension on each rope became too much to hold. Rushing to the aft she grabbed one of the lines not yet pulled taut and tied it around the prisoners silken girdle. Another Corsair rushed her and she split his head open with the Scimitar, abandoning the blade as it lodged in his skull. In a final act of pique she kicked over a bag of powder that had been bought for one of the cannons, spilling the grey powder over the coiled cordage and sail cloth, then whispered a word. Fire sprang up in a sheet, engulfing powder and cord in a moment. The prisoner screamed but Calliope had already severed the line, it jerked them both into empty air as the Witch staggered free of her attacker, the fire already spreading over the doomed corsairs decks.

Spinwards to the Marches

“Sure,” Kyra said in a neutral one, sipping at the synthetic whiskey without particular relish. She had drunk much better stuff but she had drunk worse as well. At least they bothered with the flavoring here, on Harbriger they had just bled ethanol right out of the hydraulic lines. Newcomers sometimes died from gulping the stuff down without realising that it would suck all the moisture out of their throats. Drinking was a useful addition to almost any cover, but typically she would have had a neutralizer tab in her stomach to suck the kick out of whatever she was forced to drink.

“Anyway, what is the worst thing that can happen? You accidentally shoot a bunch of law enforcement officials?’

Augustine snorted in what might have been amusement or disgust and then raised his glass in salute. Kyra clinked the plastic tumbler against his and took a drink. She didn’t know quite what to think of the man. When they had first met his mind had been open to her, guarded in the way that a man who keeps his own counsel is guarded, but now he was shielding his thoughts, hazing her out as it was termed. That implied a remarkable degree of paranoia, even if, in this case, it was justified.

People had funny ideas about what ‘witches’ or ‘jaysers’ were capable of. The later name was derived from the technical name of the condition Jayeen-Sarkova Syndrome though it was still a derogatory one. Alot of that was Union misinformation, put out to both scare and mislead the public. The condition was poorly understood other than it passed through mitochondrial DNA and was thus passed down by the mother. Males with the defect were unknown, victims of spontaneous abortion during the early stages of fetal development. While abilities varied in strength Kyra was at the higher end of the spectrum and had sufficient control to keep things under wraps. Some jaysers were terrifyingly powerful, but borderline insane, unable to control their access to the thoughts of others. Most of those were indefinitely incarcerated in special Union psychiatric facilities, kept comatose except when they were needed. It was another reason she didn’t drink too much, losing control was a very bad idea.

“I would have said that the Union working with the Great Houses was impossible, but I know that they would do just about anything to prevent another war,” Kyra said, mentally running through the various intelligence reports she had read before taking her leave of her former employers. Though the Union was technically a kind of federal republic, years of warfare had concentrated powers in a junta of senior fleet and army officers. The SAC, or special advisory committee, ran Union policy by the simple expedient of controlling the armed forces and were wise enough not to make too much of a point of it. The Sack, as they were commonly known, were concerned that the economic burdens of renewed war would bring down both the Union and its opponent in a galactic collapse that might hurl humanity back into the dark ages before interstellar flight. That meant that if there were Fleet vessels in orbit, it was either the unlikely or the unthinkable. Kyra was an optimist in her way.

“They got any warrants out for you in particular?” she asked, getting to the point of the conversation at last.

WoT: The Dark One's Own Luck.

Ali’s bravery in the face of the monstrous thing shook Mave briefly from her fatalistic composure. He was willing to battle it with only the staff in his hands. Perhaps it wasn’t so surprinsng, his staff had seen of the bandits afterall and the simple folk of the Two Rivers solved problems with the simple tools they had, not much given to fretting or worrying about the unnatural.

“You can’t kill it with a staff,” Mave said quickly, “even steel is uncertain.” Ali merely squared his shoulders and reached for the door handle his face set. Mave wasn’t entirely sure that his belief the thing was after him specifically was justified but she couldn’t let him throw his life away. Fortunately the truth was evident enough in her state of detached contemplation.

“Even if you do it won’t save your family,” she said and Ali froze with his hand in mid reach. He looked back at her uncertainty, it was too dark to tell for sure but there was a look of suspicion in his eyes that cut into her. It had been the right choice to keep thing from him, secrecy was always the right choice the Tower, and in this case Mave, believed, but it still hurt.

“What do you mean?” he asked, glancing from her to the fade with quick flicks of his maroon eyes.

“It isn’t acting alone,” she explained, her eyes tracking the things progress.

“Others will know what it knows, other fades, shadow eyes,” she went on. Ali was looking at her with dawning horror, though his grip on the staff remained firm and strong, not giving in to the panic the thing beyond the ward engendered.

“If this one dies, others will come here seeking you.”

“How do you know this?” Ali demanded, an edge to his voice that she couldn’t quite identify. Mave made a gesture towards the frustrated Fade.

“See how it dosen’t approach any closer,” she said, seeming to avoid the question though that wasn’t her intent. The time for secrecy, at least on this matter, was fading quickly. Ali flicked a glance at the shadow figure as it moved up and down the invisible line.

“If it wants me why dosent it come in? Some of the stories say you have to invite evil into your house…” Mave shook her head in dismisal.

“If only that were so,” she said with a sad smile. For a few heartbeats she was silent and then she plunged ahead.

“I have placed a ward around your home,” she explained in a quiet sombre voice.

“It dosen’t keep it out exactly but it would be blind if it stepped over the threshold, the Eyeless fear blindness as much as they fear anything. An irony.”

Ali didn’t look scared, which probably wasn’t a good sign.

“A ward?” he asked deliberately, obviously knowing enough of what that implied that it confirmed his suspicions. Without speaking, Mave reached into her pouch and withdrew the golden ring she carried there. The intricately carved golden circle caught the firelight, reflecting the image of a snake devouring its own tail. She slipped it onto her left ring finger, quite improperly for an Accepted who were supposed to wear it on the left. It was unlikely anyone outside of the Tower or a few scholars at the Royal Courts would know the difference.

“I am sorry Alidrin Baldyr,” she said simply

WoT: The Dark One's Own Luck.

“Not as lucky as I,” Mave responded truthfully and she raised herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him briefly on the lips.

“Besides you never know,” she said, though as the words came out she knew that they were a lie. Even if she survived this insane quest of hers, the likelihood was that she would be stuck in the Tower for the rest of her natural life. Good reason or not, runaways were not treated kindly in the White Tower. Even if she managed to attain her shawl after all that her duties would not bring her to this remote region and if they did, well it would be years from now and Ali would certainly have settled down and started his family by that point. He must have read something of that in her eyes because his initial blush died away as suddenly as it had appeared.

“I’m sorry I… I should get some sleep,” she said after a moment and glided gracefully into the room that Ali had given her and pressed the door shut before he could responde. Leaning her weight against it she sank down with her back to the door, her finger in her pouch, tracing the outline of the serpent ring that she had given up so much to win.

An unearthly scream woke Ali from his sleep. It was a sound that no human or animal could make and before he could dismiss it as a dream or a nightmare it came again, a hissing rending cry of murderous frustration. Wearing only his bed clothes he burst into the livingroom seeking his staff. Mave sat cross legged on the floor, wearing only her shift. Her dark eyes glinted in the light of the dying fire which cast her skin in a ruddy amber hue, like fire striking off brass. Her eyes were fixed on the window which rattled with a third scream.

Outside through the glass the dark rider could be seen. Froth dripped from the mouth of its evil looking steed as it pawed at the air, responding to the frantic jerks its rider inflicted upon it. The rider seemed possessed racing up and down some invisible line that only it could see. Outside the wind whipped the trees into a tumult but the black cloak that shrouded the rider did not so much as twitch.

“Light burn me…” Ali said, there was fear in his voice but also anger. This man or this thing had been haunting his steps for days and had now come onto his property in the middle of the night. He reached for his staff but Mave’s hand shot out and seized his wrist before he could touch the weapon. Her fingers dug into his flesh almost painfully and her eyes never left the rider.

“Don’t, you couldn’t best it,” she said quietly. Ali looked at her in shock.

“It?” he asked, the tremor in his voice letting her know that he had his on suspicions. Her eyes flicked towards the books on the shelf. The Travels of Jain Farstrider were there she recalled, although she couldn’t read the binding in the darkened farmhouse.

“It is a creature of the Shadow,” she said, feeling as she spoke the words that she passing a point of no return, shedding the innocence of the last few days like a cloak.

“A Myrddrall, it is called,” she said with the solemnity of a funeral bell tolling. The creature continued to race back and forth at the invisible barrier of her ward, screeching in frustration and whipping its dark steed to a lather..

WoT: The Dark One's Own Luck.

Mave caught Ali’s arm as he turned to go her eyes on the darkening sky. Beltane was the new moon and so the thin sliver of silver of the previous night would be entirely absent. Ali tensed uncertainty under his grip and gave her a questioning look, obviously a little relieved to have an excuse to hesitate.

“If we are going to go back to the farmstead tonight, we should get going,” she said quietly her voice strangely intent.

“It isn’t a night we want to be on the road after dark,” she said, her voice quiet and intense. Ali stared at her in perplexity.

“Why not,” he asked glancing about. All around them the villagers continued their happy celebration, making her obvious concern seem all the more out of place.

“I’m not sure,” she replied with her usual infuriating lack of information, “But if we aren’t going to leave soon we should stay at the inn.” Ali threw up his hands.

“We can't stay at the inn tonight Mave, all the rooms have gone to the peddlers and the gleeman,” Ali pointed out. Mave, unfamiliar with the village, hadn’t considered that. Families from farms that were too far to make the trek were also in town overnight, meaning that their wouldn’t be any spare beds.

“Then we should leave quickly,” she repeated, hefting the leather pack she had bought. She had an uneasy feeling that she had tarried too long here, the peddlers hadn’t had half of what she had wanted but it was too late to worry about it. Ali glanced back at the inn obviously torn between whatever it was he needed to do and her urgings. At last he took her arm in his and they headed out of the village.

They didn’t speak much as they made the now familiar trek down the forest trail. Darkness was already beginning to close around them and wisps of cloud veiled the stars save where odd breaks permitted an occasional glimpse. Despite Mave’s fears they reached the house without incident, though she thought even Ali was glad to bolt the door behind him.

“So you are going to leave tomorrow, he asked as she set her pack down and he piled some kindling in the fireplace and struck it to flame with a flint, blowing gently until the fire caught and began to spread over the twigs and branches.

“I think I had better,” she said with a ghost of a smile.

“The Wisdom and your Evelyn will probably be here with torches and pitchforks if I don't, plus your family will be coming back and you won't have space for me.” The words were a little sad, she had enjoyed her time with Ali. He was handsome and brave and dependable in a way that no one had been since she had signed her name into the Novice Book years ago. She was going to miss him.

WoT: The Dark One's Own Luck.

Though Mave was pleased to be away from Evelyn and her theatrics, she was less than pleased to be made the center of attention. The last thing she wanted was word of her location to filter back to those who were hunting her. Still there was no practical way to refuse without causing more of a scene. The gleeman nodded happily and moved off to begin starting his performance. Mave glanced down to the sword at her hip. It was a simple thing, a short steel blade with a leather wrapped hilt. Negotiating with the peddlers hadn’t gone well. The villagers had their own craftsmen who did most of the work, peddlers primarily bought in exotic luxuries like silk thread and copper sheeting, which the locals used in their own crafts. Books and parchment and other such things made up the bulk of the trade.

“I learned to use a knife as a girl,” she explained. Domani marriage and courtship rituals involved the use of special marriage knives and most people learned the basics of using one, at least as a game. Mave didn’t truly need a weapon, she had the One Power, but something that caused an opponent to hesitate could be very useful. The sword wasn’t much longer than a marriage knife, but she didn’t intend to try to use it for anything like fencing.

“Your.. umm.. Bethrothed is very forceful,” she said after a moment, giving Ali a teasing look. Her eyes tracked the Wisdom as she strode across the green to acost two young boys who were up to some mischief.

“THere seems to be a lot of that going around in Tarren’s Ferry.”

WoT: The Dark One's Own Luck.

Mave offered Evelyn a slight Domani bow, the kind which competing suitors exchanged as a sign of mutual respect. Evelyn, as ignorant of the veiled insult as anyone else unfamiliar with Domani custom, merely made a slight Hurrump sound as she dragged the protesting Ali away. Mave didn’t envy him the tongue lashing he would likely receive from the Wisdom, particularly after the altercation the previous evening, but this was Ali’s life and she didn’t expect it would prove fatal.

The village was a riot of color and pageantry. A great table had been laid out over the green, covered with a half dozen tablecloths of splendid reds and whites. Great barrels of porter, piles of fruit and sliced meat had been piled on wooden platters. Here and there were meat pies, pastries and cakes were stacked alongside pots of boiled vegetables. Loaves of bread some of them still steaming, where stacked beside crocks of fresh churned butter and jar after jar of jams and preserves. Pitchers of cider and water sweetened with fruit juice and honey glistened with condensation, clearly having been bought from cellars where they had been kept cool.

Men and women were stacking plates and filling tankards and chatting happily. It was clear that this was a day to which the whole village looked forward and marked the end of the long winter. Mave saw Mayor al’Kagan dressed in an impressive sash of old but well cared for silk. He was speaking animatedly to a gleeman in a patched cloak. Everyone was dressed in their best clothing and Mave, with only her cast off dress to wear, was the odd one out. None the less she was still a center of much interest, a group of girls seemed to hover about her, nervous to ask questions until one plump bloned finally blurted out.

“Are you really marrying Ali?” A barrage of questions followed that Mave answered as best she could. No she wasn’t marrying Ali, yes he had saved her from bandits, yes he was staying at his house, no she hadn’t beaten the wisdom with a bunch of thistles. Yes this was really the best dress she had to wear.She moved through the knot of girls with grim determination heading for the peddlers. There were a pair of them, both standing before wagons which groaned with everything from pots to books to bolts of cloth. A number of goodwives were haggling with the peddlers though Mave had the impression that these were late comers who had missed the early trade. She picked the older looking peddler at random and approached him as a woman hurried off with a roll of lace.

“Ah what can I do for you miss?” he asked, eyeing her dress as a clear sign that she didn’t have much to trade.

“I need a backpack and a knife or short sword,” she said bluntly.

“New boots as well, if you have them. I also need a map, flint, a tinderbox and a new dress if you have one.”

“And how will you be paying for all this miss?” the Peddler asked, “We usually trade on account for bales of wool and…” He fell silent as Mave pulled her pouch from her belt and jingled it significantly. They got down to business.

Mave was just sitting down to enjoy a pie and a slice of bread, trying to ignore the looks from the village women, speculative or disapproving depending on whether they had boys or girls or perhaps husbands with wandering eyes, when she was interupted by a near shriek.

“You hussy!” Mave paused with her pie half way to her mouth. Evelyn was standing across from her, chin raised and hands on hips.

“You do plan to steal him away dont you, that’s why he won't marry me!”

Mave pictured herself as a flower, petals slowly opening to the sun. Finding serenity. Saidar beckoned her but she merely wanted to compose her mind.

“For the last time,” she said in a cold quiet voice.

“I’m not here to steal anyone away…”

WoT: The Dark One's Own Luck.

“Truly?” Mave asked as she sat down in one of the comfortable chairs and pulled off the wollen leggings she had been wearing. Crossing her long golden limbs she took the proffered bowl of oatmeal. Weariness was settling into her bones, though in truth the Weaving she had performed had been more taxing than the evenings travel and the dancing combined. Now, by the light of a warm fire, she felt foolish to have bothered with it. Surely her suspicions were nothing more than that and the rider would turn out to be some disgruntled customer of the family business or some such. She had wanted to return to the farmstead so that if things went poorly she would at least not have to worry about innocent bystanders, save for Ali of course, and he had proven that he could take care of himself.

“Well I grew up outside Bandar Eban…” she talked for a time about the wonders of the port city and then about the manor that her family had brought with the money from their trading ventures. Nobility was a fluid thing in Arad Doman and in a few generations the Kashana’s would probably give themselves titles and airs to match their wealth. If Mave hadn’t been taken off to the White Tower, she doubtlessly would have been another brick in that climb, a marriage alliance to a house with ancient title but failing fortunes. She didn’t share that part with Ali naturally, nor did she allude to having travelled to Tar Valon. He didn’t seem to mind, he was a good listener eating up the stories she told him of the vast Almoth Plain or of the storms she had seen on the Aryth Sea and the shipwrecks she had visited on the rocky coast. He was a handsome man, strong and muscular and very different from most of those she had met. The odd shade of his eyes was captivating as well and she could easily understand why he had been the center of attention for the marriageable women of the village. Less understandable was why he was still single when the average age of marriage was low. Possibly this Evelyn she had heard of had plans in that regard. Well in a day or so she would be gone and her disruption to his life would be over. It made her inexplicably sad, he was the closest thing to a friend she had enjoyed since she passed through the arches. Unless you counted Velma Sedai, who while mysterious and intense was hardly friendly.

The fire had burned down low by the time they finished talking and Ali made one last round to check the window latches. Mave doubted he would have bothered but it was obvious that the strange rider wasn’t far from his mind either. For her own part she was comfortable that her wards would keep them safer than the strongest door in the Two Rivers would but she couldn’t share that information. Finally it was time for bed and she gave Ali a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek, an act which made him blush almost the shade of his eyes.

“Thank you for today Ali, I had a wonderful time,” and with that she vanished into her bedchamber and lay down to sleep.