Penny

WoT: The Dark One's Own Luck.

Mave munched her cheese thoughfully. Very glad to have a local guide who could point her to a barn that was safe to sleep in. In the morning they would see about horses. Steal horses most likely although she was reluctant to do so. The peddlers who had come for Beltane in this village probably had horses and they had fleeced the villagers badly enough that Mave didn't feel too bad about taking their mounts with a silver mark or two as compensation after the fact.

"You saved me if you remember," she told Ali with a smile, though in truth she could have killed the three men easily enough, but she wasn't comfortable enough with killing nor brazen enough when it came to the oaths to risk it if she didn't need too. She adjusted herself against a hay bale considering the man she had become entangled with. What wild rumors were flying around his village she didn't want to know. Absconded with some foregin trollop most likely. Evelyn would be furiors and she would be surprised if Valerie didn't raise a party to pursue them, although with luck the obvious road was north. According to the map she had purchased from the peddlers there was nothing south except a village named Emond's Field and that she planned to skirt to keep closer to the river.

"Ali, I know this is a strange question, but do you have any idea why the fade might have been interested in you? At first I thought it was following me, agents of the shadow did try to stop me in Caemlyn, but the more I think about it, the more I think it must have been after you. A single fade wouldn't have been a threat to me alone."

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Tychon led them into the small guest bedroom, packing his wife’s craft supplies away with a quick care that Rene found touching. Damaris practically clung to his leg and he didn’t object. Rene couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for the man. Judging by the dirt on his clothing he had been out there digging survivors out of the rubble, all the while feeling that his own child was dead. It must have seemed a miracle to have the girl back whole and healthy, Rene supposed that in a way it was. The whole Eastern Cross might be descending into civil war, but at least here, at this village, they had done something good. Of course that assumed that their presence didn’t bring ruin on their kindly benefactors.

“I’m sorry we weren’t expecting guests,” Tychon said, not for the first time, as he hastily cleared space on the bed for them. He gave Rene a measuring look when he thought the marine wasn’t watching. Tychon was no soldier, but he had the look of a man who had led a hard life, and recognised a dangerous man when he saw one. Rene didn’t think of himself as imposing but his genetic modification, aristocratic features, and the lean lithe grace that combat training imparted gave him a presence that marked him as someone to be wary of.

“So what kind of fuel do you need Sir Rene,” Tycon asked a trifle awkwardly as he finished stacking boxes into a corner. The bed wasn’t huge but still larger than the captains bunk that Rene and Solae shared on the Bonaventure. A handmade quilt covered it, green and blue with a pattern vaguely reminiscent of coral stitched into it with a slightly reflective thread. Carefully, Rene set his duffle bag in a corner, controlling his reluctance to set aside a weapon with some difficulty. You couldn’t be ‘on’ all the time, and trying to be was dangerous as well as pointless.

“Just Rene is fine,” the soldier objected, his current status in the Stellar Empire certainly didn’t grant him the right to the title, and even if it did, this wasn't a setting in which he would have insisted on formality.

“ And anything with an isotopic purity greater than .95 SD’s will be fine,” Rene went on. Starships reactors worked by combining any one of a half dozen different elements in a fusion reaction that was contained in a magnetic suspension rig. The actual material used for fuel didn’t matter so long as it was light and it was pure. Even advanced reactors couldn’t handle heterogeneous fuel sources because the uneven fluxes quickly magnified until the containment failed. Larger vessels had conditioning equipment which could homogenize the fuel but the space and cost of such systems made them impractical on small tramps like the Bonaventure. Tychon sucked in his lip.

“We keep liquid fluorine to stabilize the coral, it's probably pure enough for you, I know a guy who works there,” the man said with a nod of approval. The room was small and with three adults and a child present the air was close. Rene didn’t imagine that showers would be a priority any time soon, not without electricity to run the pumps.

“Will he sell it to us, we need quite a bit,” Rene asked. He had been prepared to steal fuel if they needed to but would have been just as happy not to run any unnecessary risks. Tychon’s grin grew broader.

“He will when I remind him that I pulled his nephew out of a collapsed warehouse. Don’t you folks worry, we won’t forget what you have done for us.” He bade them goodnight and headed for his own bedroom, half carrying half dragging his exhausted but excited daughter with him. Rene sank wearily into of of the chairs which had been cleared of the clutter of a decade, feeling the weariness and stress of the voyage settle into his bones. Solae smiled at him and crossed the room, she unbuttoned his salt crusted shirt and drew a moist towel from a dispenser in the first aid kit and began to wipe away the salt and sweat, the nearest approximation to a bath that was available in the present condition. Rene’s muscles twitched and quivered with tension and exhaustion. It had been a very long time since he slept for more than a snatch. He opened his mouth to speak, he wanted to talk about the communications station and about plans for getting the fuel to the ship but Solae silenced him with a kiss and continued to clean him up.

“I love you…” he mumbled, his eyelids suddenly very heavy. Solae put a finger up to his lips to stop him from speaking but his head lolled to the side as he slid into exhausted dreamless sleep.

WoT: The Dark One's Own Luck.

The travelled through the night, twisting down game trails and old half forgotten paths. It was nearly pitch black and although Ali had a lantern in his pack he never even considered lighting it. Mave had little fear that the Fade would return, at least not swiftly the tortured scream the thing had given when she bathed it in light wasn’t something that it would soon forget, but it was best to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the farm.

By the time they reached the river at Tarren Ferry, the first glow of morning was beginning to lighten the sky to the east. The river ran sluggishly through the ferry crossing but there was no sign that any of the boatmen were yet at their posts, probably sleeping off the worst of the Beltane ale. Worse still as the climbed a small hillock they could see people waiting at the ferry, families returning south to their farms after the festival.

“We can’t cross there,” Ali said with a frown.

“People would recognise me.” Mave marveled that despite walking all night and carrying her half the way, he still seemed fresh and energetic. Nor, for that matter did he seem unduly distressed at having to leave his home. Mave wondered what the family would make of the handful of silver she had left under the pillow of her bed, each piece stamped with the shining flame of Tar Valon. It had been a risk, but she couldn’t simply snatch away the breadwinner of a family. Carefully husbanded the coins would keep the family well for several seasons. Of course it might lead them to believe that Aes Sedai had abducted Ali, but even if that were so she trusted that his father would be too sensible to blab it about.

“Is there another crossing?” she asked, peering into the lightening gloom. It was still very cold, cold enough to mist her breath before her lips as she spoke. Even with the jacket she would have been cold, though she had mastered the trick of ignoring mere physical discomforts.

“Not for miles, as far as I know,” Ali admitted, “we tried to find the headwaters when I was a child, walked all day without it getting much narrower.”

Mave nodded in acknowledgement.

“Lets go down to the water, around the bend,” she said pointing to where the river turned out of sight of the ferry station. THey made there way down to the waters edge, picking there way through the thick forest. Ali had an instinct for it and Mave followed as closely as she could until they stood on the muddy bank. The water looked to be deep and even at the narrowest point they could see it was nearly a hundred feet across.

“We could swim it, or make a raft, but the current will probably sweep us around the bend before we can make it,” Ali observed.

“I have a better idea,” Mave said with a cryptic smile and then, raising her hand, began to channel. Flows of air and water, invisible to Ali, spread out from her hands like gossamer, settling down over the river. Ice began to form rapidly, growing like a crystal from where they stood and spreading over the water. The river instantly began to overflow the ice damn, like a cataract, but it would still be passable if they were careful. Ali looked impressed.

“Well I wouldn’t want to try it at mid summer,” Mave admitted modestly.

WoT: The Dark One's Own Luck.

“You should write something to let your parents know what has happened,” she said, astonished at how quickly he prepared to depart. Ali nodded and fetched a quill pen and ink. Mave had no idea if he was unique in being able to write or it was a common skill. She suspected anywhere books were this highly prized people at least learned the basics.

“Don’t be… you know… too specific,” she counseled.

“Dear Mama,” he narrated, holding the paper infornt of him, “I have run off with an Aes Sedai to fight a fade.” Mave laughed in spite of herself when she realized it was a joke. Ali grinned, though there was a grim quality to it.

“Now do you have a plan to get rid of the F… fa… that thing?” he asked, pointing to the dark figure still raging at the unseen barrier before it. Mave nodded, having spent the past few minutes thinking on the problem.

“Close your eyes,” she instructed Ali. He gave her a suspicious look.

“Will the witchcraft not work if Im looking at it?” he asked. Mave shook her head.

“No it will just hurt your eyes,” she responded.

“Oh.” He closed his eyes. Mave opened herself up to the True Source letting the joy of Saidar flow into her like a damn opening up. They Fade, able to sense channeling, especially when close by, paused in its ranting and looked straight at her. Mave squeezed her own eyes shut and wove flows of fire and air and spirit. A beam of light so bright, that even through her tightly squeezed eyes, she could see the outline of the window and the creature beyond, erupted from her hands. Anyone watching it would have been instantly struck blind and to the fade, a creature of darkness it was far worse. It shriked as though its soul were being torn from its body then it turned its horse and leaped into the shadows beyond the wall. In a moment it was there and then it vanished, seeming to fold and slip into the darkness like a phantom. Mave released the source and lowered her shaking hands. She hadn’t been certain that it would work, though she had read of such things.

“It is done,” she said in as Aes Sedai a tone as she could muster while blinking in the dark. Her night vision was completely washed away by the weaving.

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..