Chapter 1 – I, The First Darkness

The smell of the Third Age air—dry, stagnant, and tomb-like—assaulted my senses the
instant the stasis box opened for me. The pillars of reality slammed home: I am here. In
the Third Age. I, Masimon Korlain Thandrel, have returned.

As planned, the expansive Vault was a tomb of absolute darkness.

A sudden, desperate flick of will and I had seized Saidin. The inevitable shock hit me,
sharp and bitter, and I retched. Yes, as I feared, as I predicted: the Taint is brackish and
foul, a thick, oil-slick across the purity of the One Power. But the sheer thrill of the
source, of Saidin’s raw might, was still there, a potent, addictive anchor in the chaos
thrumming through me.

I grew the light—a simple, cold globe of illumination. My vast, cavernous Vault was
intact. The second web I made, disgusting but exhilarating to use Saidin once more,
erased the bile on the floor. Both hands rested on my stomach a moment as I took in the
surroundings, which just moments ago I walked in for a night’s sleep. The dozen
redundant earth-stabilizing ter’angreal lined the walls. A touch of Saidin and only two
glowed green in function out of twelve. Each could handle over a dozen magnitude 10
earthquakes. I exhaled a slow, heavy breath. I had thought more than eight would be
overkill.

The Taint. Lews Therin did not listen to my warnings. Madness. And yes, actual, clinical
Madness would, could, perhaps become a problem.

The inside of my stasis box contained the essentials: my primary sa’angreal, the Black
Infinity Gauntlet, now around my right fist. Made of thread-steel, it was at once both
gaudy and beautiful; and my secondary angry red angreal, the multihued Gem of
Scrutiny fastened into the central of the five sockets. I retrieved a ruggedized white
miniature laptop with its solar array, a second set of fine purple and gold ‘medieval’
clothes, a two-kilogram gold bar—crude currency, but universal— brown foil wrapped
MRE bars, a camouflage sleeping bag, a red medkit, and an alloyed ter-angreal water
bottle, which would purify any liquid inside of it. Paranoia, I know thee well.

In the central Vault, the hundred matte-black stasis boxes, all numbered and named in
my personal cipher, stood like silent, sealed monuments. Only nineteen have my
followers in them, the most important, the least replaceable people. In the rest are
essential items necessary for my long term plans. And a modular power generator.
Near the entrance Secondary Recruitment Vault, about thirty stasis boxes have
their ter’angreal indicators flickering yellow and red, ominous.

The air in here—ugh. Try breathing a stagnant pocket that hasn’t moved for three
thousand years. It coats the throat with dust and history.
My first, immediate priority: power. We needed lights, and we needed the CO2
scrubbed. Creating a long term open Gateway to the outside world just for some fresh
air was a massive, unacceptable security risk.

Kellen Varr, the Lead Engineer, was the first man I awoke. Groggy, but free of the
Taint’s curse as a non-Channeler, Kellen ran a hand through his receding light brown
hair and stood tall, almost as high as myself in what we thought would be a
commoner’s brown leather jerkin and pants.

“What failed?” are his first words to me, Kellin is precise and focused, perfect.

Glancing at the ter’angreal indicators, I spoke grimly, “All twelve of the original heat
management ter’angreal failed. Two of the twelve earth stabilizers remain. I want to
know what got cooked.” I put a hand on his shoulder and say, “Thank you, Kellen.”

“On it, Lord Masimon.” Kellen grabbed his sealed rations and water from his stasis box
and immediately got to work.

I then woke the next four technical specialists: Jana, Bren, Yssa, and Drayne, giving
them quick, terse orders to assist Kellen. I threw balls of Saidin-light toward the ceiling
and tied off the webs—my stomach still clenching from the Taint—and turned to the
indicators for my remaining fourteen followers. A tendril of Saidin and the indicators
glowed a steady green. They were intact.

Next, avoiding difficult feelings, I checked on the Tertiary Supply Vault. The live
animals and supplies inside were in tip-top shape, verified by channeling dozens of
small threads of Saidin and seeing the flickering green indicators. The massive stasis
boxes for our genetically engineered warhorses and other animals held. Most would
stay there for now, but the advanced genetically engineered horses would be extremely
useful. Was I evil for enlisting the aid of Ishar Morrad Chuain for my project? The man
hadn’t fallen to the Shadow then. And enhancing an animal for function and war did
not damage its dignity.

Doubling back to the massive, thick sealed door to the Secondary Recruitment Vault, I
confronted my failure. The massive metal door visibly deformed, slumping to the side.
Physically trying the door, it would not budge. I would need to apply a controlled web
of Saidin just to open it.

Not a good sign.

It took excruciating minutes to gently warp the metal with Saidin. The smell hit me first.
A thick, sickening wave of decay and cooked humanity. After throwing more webs
of Saidin to illuminate the disaster, I didn’t need to check the indicators after that. All
226 channelers—the half-male, half-female contingent who had dared to come with me
—had perished. Their stasis boxes had melted, deforming the walls, floor, and ceiling.
The same catastrophe had claimed an additional thousand family members we had
brought. All of them having trained, prepared decades for this exact day, and quite
dead.

Whatever heat strike had happened, it was fast. Not a single residual web detectable;
the energy had long dissipated.

The next decision was mine alone. I would not let my followers see inside the melted
stasis boxes. I would not let Vanya, Kellen, Garren, and all the rest see what three
thousand years of failure looked like on the faces of their children.

“Stay back,” I ordered, my voice louder rougher than I intended, sealing the door to the
Secondary Recruitment Vault behind me.

Maintaining Saidin, I stood alone in the Vault, the air thick with that terrible, sweet-
copper smell and ancient smell of rotting cooked long-pork. I wrapped myself in the
Void, feeding the flame with my fear, my nausea, my sorrow, until there was nothing
left but the objective task. The Taint slicked over me, a layer of filth on top of the
emotional agony, but I used it.

Walking firmly, the first distorted stasis box I investigated belonged to Artus, my chief
archivist. With delicate webs of Fire and Air, I sliced the warped metal. It peeled back
like wet clay. I did not study the remains of my friend. I searched only for the glimmer
of the unmelted supplies. There, the shiny marble of his angreal bracelet. And there at
the bottom of his stasis box, the pooled on the burnt black velvet inside layer, solidified
puddle of what had been his emergency gold reserves.

Using flows of Air to lift them out, they were caked with… they required another web
to clean them. Clean, I commanded. A web of Water and Spirit scoured them, stripping
away organic matter until only the cold, indifferent material remained. I floated the
materials into a waiting crate, then studied the remaining 1,225 stasis boxes through the
massive vault that would need to work.

Flexing my right fist, I pulled Saidin with my Black Infinity Gauntlet, letting the ter-
angreal aspect of the Gem of Scrutiny to push my senses to the super human level,
letting hundreds of webs of Saidin explode out of me. It was a violation, I knew this.
Robbing the graves of the people I had sworn to save, who had sworn themselves to
me. Every angreal I salvaged heavy, as if carrying the soul of its owner. Every puddle of
melted gold felt like blood money. Each surviving liquid-purifying ter-angreal bottle a
logistical requirement for the armies to come. But we needed them. The Third Age
would not accept our grief as currency. We needed power to survive.
Twenty minutes in, despite the Void my stomach a storm of bile, and my mind a frozen,
silent scream. I worked with the efficiency of a machine, separating the tools of our
future from the wreckage of our past. Heroics would come later, my surviving
followers need not realize the grim work I did to save them and the world. When the
scavenging was done, I thought about the burial. I could not separate them. The heat
had done its terrible work.

The majority dead were fused with the velvet bedding of their stasis boxes, with the
metal, with the remnants of their lives. To try to remove them would be a desecration
worse than death.
So, the stasis boxes would become their ossuaries.

Turning my attention to the cuts I had made in the stasis boxes to extract the surviving
supplies, with a web of Fire and Earth, I heated the edges of the black alloy of the stasis
boxes until they ran like wax, then fused them shut. Next, I smoothed the scars in the
metal. I told myself I was restoring their dignity, sealing them away from prying eyes.
But the darker truth whispered in the back of my mind: I was hiding the evidence of my
theft. I was sealing my guilt inside with them.

I floated the crates of stolen power and wealth into a dark corner, shielding it with a
complex illusion of empty air. Only then did I open the heavy door to the main
chamber.

The madness of Saidin. Seven kilometers underground, sealed away from the War of
Power, and still, the insane male Aes Sedai managed to reach us. I had no way to know
if it could have been a strike during the War of Power’s that ended my people. This
failure would make my plans infinitely more difficult, but we had contingency
plans. There are other Vaults.

No matter. Grieve later; move fast for now. I had my core team safe. A mile better than
just me. Heh. A mile. The historians of Ancient Canada accused me of exaggerating that
the move to the metric system was not an instantaneous, logical shift. That it took at
least three decades. Even in the face of this deep tragedy, my mind drifts to the trivial
arguments of the First Age. Anything to avoid looking at that ugly door I shoved shut
with Saidin before releasing the filthy rush of the One Power.

“The primary quantum actuator is fused,” I heard Bren Telar’s large, rumbling voice
report, “and key components of the quantum silicon matrix have totally collapsed.”

“With even all the backup components gone,” Kellen Varr’s tenor held the weight of
defeat, “we have to leave The Vault for now.”

“Then we Travel, everyone,” I replied, allowing a grim smile to cross my lips. “We get
to see the New World.”
Vellan glanced at the floor, his face etched with failure. “Lord Masimon, you heard?”

“Yes.” I moved quickly, clasping Kellen by the shoulders. My voice was quiet, but held
the authority of millennia. “You and your team did their absolute best. You succeeded
where the Second Age failed. Focus on the now and move forward.”

“The others?” Jana Farris asked, the vivid emerald green of her eyes dimming with
genuine worry.

I couldn’t speak. I simply shook my head. The mood in the room plunged into a
profound, shared silence. “I am deeply sorry, everyone,” I said, the words feeling dry
and inadequate. “We prepared again and again for the future madness of the Male Aes
Sedai. It is easy to look back and see failure, but we have other contingencies.
Remember that.”

Unspoken, and I could see it in their eyes… We’d only had enough Cuendillar to fortify
the outside of the Primary Vault. The strength of it must have shielded the Tertiary
animal and supply Vault with a thermal shadow, but naturally the other measures we
took to keep our people safe weren’t enough.

I moved to the four stasis boxes and quickly awoke ‘The Ladies’: Vanya, Taelen, Lyra,
and Elia, all Aes Sedai with over a century of experience. Vanya and Taelen were the
only followers I had with the aptitude for Channeling Physics, a difficult and mentally
taxing field. With the surviving scientific ter-angreal we had brought, hopefully they
could identify a way to handle the Taint soon. Lyra and Elia, our best Restorers, and use
the additional investigative ter-angreal to find the Taint that was likely already
expanding in tendrils around my brain.

“We have to move fast,” I announced, the rush in my voice necessary. “Pack your
immediate belongings. We are preparing for a skim-Travel to the surface.”

The Ladies did not need to change at least, already wearing conservative green
traveling dresses of light material, wearing elegant Serpent Rings. The simple ruse of
posing as Green Ajah would be the easiest cover to sustain initially. We had no way of
knowing who would survive or how. Even one of them could make all the difference
mentoring Rand.

“The others?” Vanya asked, her cobalt blue eyes regarded me, her gaze a fleeting,
professional flutter.

“We have to bury them,” I said, and all look like they had been slapped.
I awoke our bodyguards, future generals and captains led by Garen, who would need
to see their families buried.

At least I had the necessary intelligence tool to orient the Skimming we needed to do.
From another stasis box, I retrieved my scrying ter’angreal, The Whisper Lens—a dull,
black sheet that looked like silver framed common glass until activated. We were only
589 meters below the surface, having somehow moved 6.4 kilometers upward toward
the surface. The displacement spoke volumes.

The madness of Saidin. I remembered the lore, of course, from the fragmented memories
novels books of my past life. Living it, literally, would be something else entirely.

All were now waiting for me. The silence that met me was heavier than the rock above
our heads.

“It is done,” I said, my voice sounding hollow in my own ears. “We cannot view them.
The damage to the systems... it was catastrophic. The boxes themselves will be their
caskets.”

Kellen flinched as if struck. Vanya closed her eyes, her lips moving in a silent prayer to
a Creator who clearly hadn’t been watching.

“We take them up,” I commanded, forcing momentum before grief could paralyze us.
“We will not leave them in this hole. They deserve the sky.”

I signaled Taelen. She embraced Saidar, I felt the gooseflesh rise on my arms, the only
warning a man gets of female channeling—and a vertifcal Gateway slashed open the
air. Through it, I could see the blinding white-hot sky of the Termuul desert.

“Link,” I ordered. “I will lead.”

The Ladies moved to me. We formed a circle. It was a jagged, desperate thing, fueled
not by serenity but by raw, bleeding loss. I seized control of the flow, the sweet,
addictive rush of Saidar nearly washing away the oily slick of the taint. For a moment, I
wasn’t a grieving leader; I was a all-powerful. After my followers went through the gate
way, I reopened the Secondary Recruitment Vault. I reached out with flows of Air,
grasping hundreds of the stasis boxes.

Lift.

They floated out in a somber procession, a river of matte-black coffins drifting through
the Gateway.
I stepped through into the furnace of the Third Age. I emerged into a blast of oven-hot
air. As expected for being buried underneath what was once the Sindian desert of Iran,
it was still desert. In my archaic notes, I called this area the “Termuul,” a spelling I was
never convinced was correct. The sun hammered us, the air was dry enough to crack
lips instantly, vast and indifferent. We stood on a high dune, the sand stretching out to
a shimmering horizon. It was a clean place. A place of scourging heat. It was fitting.

“Two graves,” I murmured to them, maintaining the web that held over a thousand
tons of metal and dead flesh suspended in the air near us. “One for the kin of the living.
One for the foundation of our Order.”

I shifted the flows to Earth. This was my strength. Not digging; I commanded the desert.
To my left, the sand heaved, swirled and parted, compressing downward, turning loose
silica into walls of fused sandstone. I carved a wide, deep trench, perfectly rectangular.
This was for the multitude. The friends, the colleagues, the extended families.

To my right, I carved a smaller, circular depression. It was intimate. Personal.

“Identify them,” I said to my surviving followers, laying down all of the Stasis boxes.

It was agonizing work. Kellen, Vanya, Bren, Garen... they moved among the floating
black monoliths, reading the ciphered numbers I had etched so long ago, but literally
what felt like yesterday. When they found a spouse, a child, a parent, they touched the
box. A sob here. A choked cry there.

With gentle webs of Air, I separated those stasis boxes from the rest. I lowered the
minority into the circular pit. We arranged them in a series of rings, facing inward,
united even in death.

Then, the harder task. The remaining thousand or so stasis boxes. I moved the massive
cloud of remaining boxes over the large trench. I lowered them row by row, stacking
them with the precision of the masonry they had now become. It looked like the
foundation of a great city, laid in black iron, filled with the dust of dreams.

When the last box settled, the silence of the desert rushed back in, broken only by the
wind hissing over the dunes.

“We leave them to the earth,” I said. My voice was amplified by the Power, booming
across the sands. “They were the best of us. They slept to build a future. Now, they are
the bedrock of that future.”

Pulling with a web of Earth, the walls of the trenches collapsed inward, not in a chaotic
slide, but in a controlled wave. The sand rushed back to embrace them. I compressed it,
packing it tight, turning the surface hard as stone. Then, I did something unnecessary.
Something purely for the living.

I drew upon Saidin and Saidar, fighting the nausea, and pulled moisture from the air
deep underground. I willed Earth and Water and Fire together.

From the fused sand atop the mass grave, a massive, single spire of obsidian Roses
erupting from the ground. It stood fifty feet tall, a black needle piercing the sun. I
etched no names upon it. There were too many. I simply etched the ancient symbol of
the Aes Sedai—the Yin and Yang, united.

For the smaller grave, I raised over two hundred individual markers. Small, waist-high
plinths of white stone. I released the One Power. The crushing weight of the sun
returned instantly, stripping away the godhood. I was just a man standing in a desert,
surrounded by weeping people.

“Rest,” I whispered, though they all heard it. My followers were shattered. Kellen was
on his knees clawing at the sand near his daughter’s marker. Vanya was staring at the
obsidian spire of rose, her face a mask of tears. I had to be the monster one last time
today. I had to be the one who moved on.

“Mark the coordinates,” I said, my tone clipping the end of their mourning. “The heat
out here will kill us in an hour without protection, and we have none.”

I saw the flash of resentment in Bren’s eyes. Good. Hate me. Hate me so much that you
forget the pain for a moment. Hate me so you have the energy to survive. Turned my
back on the graves, adjusting my cuffs, feeling the phantom weight of the
stolen angreal waiting for me back in the dark of the Secondary Recruitment Vault.

The circle released. The One Power vanished, leaving the crushing weight of reality and
the foul aftertaste of Saidin in my mouth.

The silence was absolute.

“We will make them pay,” Garen, the large beast of a man said. He strode forward to
put his paw on the obsidian rose monument. His voice was devoid of inflection,
containing only anger. “The Shadow. The Madness. The Third Age. Whatever caused
this. We will make them pay.”

A glance at my hands, they were clean, magically scoured of the grime, but I was filthy.

“No,” I said softly. “We will not just make them pay, Garen. We will fix it. We will
build a world where this never happens again. Even if we have to burn the current one
to ash to do it.” I gestured to them, my face a mask of iron, hiding the ruin inside.
“Mourn tonight,” I commanded, my voice echoing across the desert. “Weep. Scream.
But when we open the Gateway tomorrow... we are soldiers. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Lord Masimon,” they chorused, a broken, jagged sound.

I walked away before they could see the tears finally spill onto my cheeks. I had a world
to conquer, and I had never felt more alone.

In the morning, we were ready. “Open the Gateway, Vanya,” I said. “We go West,” I
touched her athletic arm to indicate the order. A calculated risk the Wise Ones or
modern Aes Sedai might sense a channeling. However, the less I channeled, the better.

Vanya gave me a warm smile before her focus snapped to Saidar, my skin prickled with
cold goosebumps, to initiate the opening of the Skimming Gateway. What would have
been days of slogging through the desert was cut to less than an hour, thanks to my
planning and the efficiency of the Power. The Whisper Lens gave us a much clearer
surrounding view once out of the Vault: the arid desert broke into shrubland and finally
into a thick, verdant forest in the distance.

We Skimmed again, landing softly in the deep woods.

“Much cooler now,” Lyra murmured, not needing to wipe sweat from her brow. She
and her wife Elia shared a quick, quiet moment of affection, to hug and kiss. I made a
mental note: I had to assess how badly the deeply conservative Westlands would react
to such things.

The forest was snow covered, unsettlingly verdant and thick—the kind of growth that
spoke of nearby Ogier Tree Singing. Excellent. However, it did not have the manicured
and gardened appearance of Second Age forestry practices. The idea of the twentieth
century that forests should be left alone and untouched by man was unthinkable in the
former Second Age. Mankind were Gardeners, and the world their Garden. Such lack of
stewardship unethical and damaging to Nature, letting it grow this way and that.
Treesingers, human and Ogier regularly maintained all the forests of the world. At least
they used to. The twenty-three treesingers I had bought with me unfortunately were all
dead.

The long pause I had made wasn’t noticed, everyone else stared, appalled at the chaos
of nature we beheld.

“A scouting web, will you?” I gestured southwest, meeting Taelen’s gaze. She adjusted
her chestnut hair. I allowed my eyes to linger for a fraction too long, and she caught me,
a sly wink flashing in her cobalt eyes.
Damnit. I glanced away, the humor dying in my throat as the image of the black rose
spire in the desert flashed in my mind.

“Of course, Lord Masimon,” Taelen said, her hand resting on my shoulder just a
moment too long. She didn’t move it immediately. Her expression was now entirely
serious; her lips close to my ear. “The failure was unacceptable, but your calculations
helped us survive. That is what matters. We proceed with the contingency.”

Taelen’s quiet affirmation was not flirtation; it was a statement of shared purpose. She
didn’t seek to comfort me; she validated my fears. It was the most profound loyalty I
could receive. A hard row to hoe.

“My detection web failed that way,” Taelen reported, pointing precisely to the west-
southwest.

“A Stedding, good.” I am pleased. The feeling wasn’t madness; it was the simple
satisfaction of a correct calculation. Now was the time to secure our team and learn the
Common Tongue.

“We prepare from the Vault,” I gestured to Elia to open a Gateway back, where we
spent much of the daylight gathering our supplies to make our entrance. The work
could have been done in just a couple hours, but the sudden Trauma everyone just
endured, the shock of it affecting them, but no one quite feeling the impact just yet.
Work would be good, and we all enjoyed our personal horses’ company in these
moments.

That evening as we entered the Ogier Stedding from the road to the Aeil Waste, the
place struck me with its profound, naturalistic beauty. It reminded me of those
centuries-old memories of the Hobbiton scenes from Lordaeron of the Rings, except here,
we were the hobbitons, dwarfed by giants.

Dozens of Ogier, integrated among vast fruit trees, tended their small snow-covered
farms. Their clothing style had changed, what I remembered of them absolute fashion
divas remained in an odd way. They had fine, heavily embroidered and a variety of
colored clothing. The women wore full dresses, far less scandalous than I remember,
covered in embroidery, and at quick glance, the older the woman the more the
embroidery of delicate flowers from hem to neckline, with lots of necklaces and
bracelets. The men wore tunics, and the older men following the similar complex
patterns as well, armbands but no necklaces.

Funnily enough, it reminded me why we hired Ogier to design all of our clothing for
the undertaking to save the world. Not that the Ogier were let in on it.
Our entire group was an imposing sight: twenty people on horseback, myself posing as
“Lord Matheo,” ten gleaming heavily armored guards protecting four women in Green
and the support team with leather armored jackings, all of us hiding discreet, kevlar-
like armor underneath.

A towering male Ogier in the fanciest tunic and trousers approached, his voice deep
and rumbling. “— — — Aes Sedai,” he spoke the Old Tongue, an accent I do not fully
recognize, addressing the Ladies.

Now came the hard part. Vanya, our nominal leader stepped forward, her chestnut hair
now carefully arranged to cover her ears, respecting Ogier custom. Her voice was
strong, carrying the weight of command. “I am Vanya Sedai. We,” she gestured to our
twenty, “are here to learn the New Common Tongue, friend. What Stedding are we at?”

“My name is Haran, son of Kaelen. You are at Stedding Shangtai,” the Ogier replied in the
common tongue, scratching his massive chin. “And truly, I have not heard of a group of
people who cannot speak the New Common Tongue.”

Shangtai—less than ideal, as it was known for increased human contact. But we were
here.

“We,” Vanya offered a small, practiced wince, “have a story that, for now, we simply
cannot tell in order to protect lives. However, to compensate you for our urgency,” she
gestured. Jana ambled forward on her red-brown courser and revealed a small bag
containing the Chora Tree sapling. “We offer this gift to our Brothers of the Trees.”

The watching Ogier in the Stedding rustled, stomping closer in awe. Their speech the
stirring of a thousand quiet bees. Haran’s amber eyes widened far beyond human size.
“Impossible. They are all gone.” He stepped forward as if a tentative child, his huge hands
reaching out to feel the aura of the sapling. “This is a profound gift, Vanya Sedai.”

The buzzing of the Ogier instantly turned to silence as Jana presented the sapling to
Haran. “I must hold a moot to discuss your terms, Aes Sedai.”

The buzzing of the Ogier instantly turned to a suffocating silence as Jana presented the
sapling to Haran. The giant’s hands trembled. He did not take it immediately. He began
to hum, a low, resonating bass note that I felt in my teeth. It was joined by another, and
another, until the entire Stedding vibrated with a sound of pure, undiluted reverence.

“The Longing,” Haran whispered in the Common Tongue, tears leaking from his
massive eyes. “You have brought us the cure for the Longing. You have brought us a piece of
the lost soul of the world. I must hold a moot... no. There is no moot needed for this. But the
Elders must convene with haste.”
We spent the time tending to our gear, the peaceful serenity of the Stedding providing
the first easy respite I’d had in three millennia. Ha. Without the constant pull of Saidin,
the threat of the Madness felt distant.

The Ogier deliberated until evening before a group of Elders, their gray hair suggesting
an age that likely exceeded mine, approached us. The matronly leader, Opora, who had
more glitz than my crazy grandmother, introduced herself.

“We will teach you all the Common Tongue,” Opora said, her gaze red-rimmed with tears
of happiness and joy, as she beheld us not as strangers, but as saviors, “We beg you
please stay and enjoy our hospitality. We would be deeply honoured if you helped plant the
Chora Sapling and tend to it while you are here. It has been too long since we have met Aes
Sedai of your caliber.”

“Agreed,” Vanya put out her hand, and warmly added a second hand on the shake for
emphasis.

The Ogier gave us quarters designed for humans, we were told other Aes Sedai and
scholars visit, though usually not twenty. We had prepared for bunking closely, so
made it work.

And when they said we would work with the Chora Sapling, the Ogier were quite
serious. Not labor, this was worship. We assisted in preparing the soil, sourcing pure
water, and building a temporary protective structure. We sang with them, though we
did not know the words, our clumsy humming joining their Great Song.

Naturally with twenty horses in their barns and stables, we took great care of animals
and the Ogier gave us the required feed to keep them all in good health. I could see the
Ogier eyeing them carefully, sensing just how different they were. Everything we did
was an opportunity for new linguistic acquisition. We rarely spoke a word of The
Common Tongue, only New Common while doing these activities.

Their idea of work was not excessive. We easily secured six hours of instruction a day,
every day. The gift of the Chora Tree made them intensely eager to honor their bargain.
We had time to practice combat skills mid-day and the Sisters and I could practice
subtle channeling first thing in the morning.

Language acquisition of “New Common” was fascinating—it truly was English with
three thousand years of linguistic drift. New spellings, changed use of vowels and
consonants. The words themselves morphed and shifted. Two weeks in, we were ready
to read. A week later, we were on our way to fluency. By the fourth week, we could
handle most conversations and read at a decent level. At the fifth, we had mastery. I
had never learned a language so quickly before.
It gave us space to breathe and process the shock of this new age. The sheer amount of
physical labor we had done in preparation for this medieval life was immensely helpful,
grounding us and dampening the shock. It also gave us space to grieve. I had thought
we would be ready to immediately take on the Third Age, and I was so wrong.

Finally, I had the capability to handle one of the Ogier’s books on the ‘Age of Legends.’
The chapter on the Fourteen Forsaken caught my eye. I distinctly remember there being
only thirteen in the novels I read centuries ago. Had another survived? I might have
little idea who they were. Abruptly a cloud shifted, giving the cottage windows more
sun, a consideration in the Stedding and this time period.

Intrigued, I read on. The Ogier author’s introduction was slow and methodical. I
flipped a few pages, landed on the first entry, and had to do a double take.

Masimon, The First Darkness, the Crimson Scholar:

“For one who never pledged himself to the Dark One, there is little one could do to tell
the difference. To the Ogier, who value the slow growth of the oak, Masimon was the
forest fire: brilliant, consuming, and ultimately destructive. A common summary of the
man is ‘So Evil the Dark One did not need to touch him.’

What. I mean, I had some bad moments, made some enemies, but this? THIS?!
Horrified and aghast, my stomach flip flopping, I continued to read.

“Masimon had his second and third names stripped posthumously, and had
disappeared before the Collapse, a good century before the War of Power. He was
known amongst the Hall of Servants as a man of great skill and terrifying intellect, but
few whose genius was so perfectly and chillingly applied to the pursuit of finality and
absolute control as Masimon, called the First Darkness for his foul deeds.

Masimon was not a friend to the Great Trees, nor to the patient cycles of the Pattern. He
was a master of ter’angreal and advanced angreal construction, seeking to amplify the
Power beyond all reasonable and safe measure. His writings on history and philosophy,
bound in his many of his surviving crimson inked texts, have a distinctively violent
bent, and frequent and ominous references to the ‘Coming Doom,’ his words prescient
and Foretelling the Breaking. In retrospect little else other than common paranoia,
would explain his deeds and actions.

The early career of Masimon was noted by his interest in ancient history well before the
Age of Legends. By his own words in the many surviving texts we have written by his
hand, he had frequent and unremitting clashes with other historians. Masimon
frequently wrote about his interest in the Chaos Wars and other forms of warfare from
the even then distant First Age, long before the touch of the Shadow. He obtained some
kind of high rank in an institution of learning, I believe it to be the Collam Daan. Many
surviving sources mark his envy and rivalry with Lews Therin Telamon, the Dragon.
This personal corruption, which led to great sorrow and the needless loss of many of
the First Flowers, made his eventual betrayal appear inevitable to our ancestors, even
though he directly never served the Shadow’s master.

The rivalry with Lews Therin culminated catastrophically. It is unclear what caused this
incident, or even the details of it, but Masimon faced a multi-decade long censure and
servitude for whatever happened between him and Lews Therin. Afterwards, Masimon
does not feature much in the subsequent surviving history of the Age of Legends. What
we do have, is a pattern of censure of him by the Hall of Servants. The dark deeds
however, are unclear and difficult to understand.

It is also through this period he was a prolific author, and much of what we know of the
Age of Legends was preserved by him. He not only wrote histories, but on rudimentary
technological, medical, and agricultural subjects to preserve human knowledge and life
after the ‘Coming Doom.’ Little was written directly about his own life, however. His
epithet ‘The Crimson Scholar’ is from the deep red ink he wrote on vellum texts.

Before his final disappearance, he was censured by the Hall dozens of times. This is
verified not only by his own words, but in other surviving records. We know the Aes
Sedai of the time searched for him, and possibly his followers (not all historians agree
on this point), but failed to find him.

Masimon’s disappearance was coincident with the great, chaotic weaving that
destroyed the ancient seat of learning, the Collam Daan. Indeed, it seems he, and
perhaps some kind of organization, committed dozens of acts of sabotage, though of
what, modern scholars are unsure. What scholars can agree on, is that many, many
people were killed. We Ogier believe this was his final, great act of despair, proving that
even the most brilliant intellects are undone by the human failing of hubris.

The Crimson Scholar, The First Darkness, Masimon is a lesson to all races: That
knowledge without patience and respect for life leads only to the deepest, most subtle
kind of darkness. We mark his passing with regret that such skill was so deeply
poisoned.”

Well, the book went on and on, more than willing to spread significant slander. Not
grinding my teeth, I heaved a breath. I was never jealous of Lews, Ilyena… That was…
That was… I was saving the world.

Looking out the window into the bright sun across the Stedding, at least I now knew I’d
be regarded in this age: “The First Darkness”, Creator help me.
Chapter 2 Father, Forgive Me:
There is little time for my existing plans, let alone the now completely discarded Grand
Design. Using the finest prognostications and auguries into the future available during
the Second Age, I had originally planned to arrive in 988 NE, a full decade early. A
swift reconnaissance, then the quiet conquest of a fractured land: Murandy, with its
bickering minor lords and central crossroads, though Ghealdan or Altara whispered as
alternatives. We would rule from the shadows, not scrabbling in some forest shed to
mint false coin like hedge-sorcerers. No, with the modular power plant humming
beneath the earth, we would forge machined tools to birth the engines of industry anew
—steam and alloy and the subtle hum of ter'angreal powered looms that could equip
armies in a night.

The Will of the Pattern is stronger than most comprehend, a relentless weaver that snips
threads without mercy or reason. Witness the attestation of my own unraveling: the
increasingly random deaths of my first three wives, each more sudden than the last,
followed by my two fiancées, each union curtailing shorter still, the Wheel making its
will clear as glass. I was not to marry and leave a living legacy, at least not in the Second
Age. At the surge of angry hot coals in my chest, I squashed the urge to relive the six
times I stopped the Bore from being drilled. So satisfying but so futile.

The last six weeks we have had to grieve for our plans to bring safety and security to
the world, as well as the grief for the deaths of the rest of our friends and family. Solar
arrays we could deploy eventually, their crystalline panels drinking the sun's fire to
charge the few surviving processors, but not as the beating heart of a reborn age. Not
like this.

As it is, we must leave with 'hastiness,' as the Ogier say with their ponderous regret.
Our stay with the Stedding Shangtai complete, despite it being in the thick of Winter 998
NE. Spring is just over a month away and we must move. I distinctly recall the events of
the first book happening right as spring arrived, the notes I'd created through extensive
self-hypnosis and meditation attested to this as well. By this point the Ogier understood
our intimation that we were on some kind of secret mission. Which was not really that
far from the truth at all either. It helped that the Ogier had serious respect for the Aes
Sedai, and well, we gave them a Chora Sapling, that fragile green heart. They did not
press for answers.

Six weeks of silence in Stedding Shangtai had done material good, granting us a gentle
necessary immersion into this age. I shook my head with a wry smile at the thought of
our stunned shock at the mere sight of a randomly grown wild forest. Much as I had
trained my followers for the hardness to come, we were far too soft. It couldn't be
helped; the culture of the Second Age was a velvet glove over an iron fist. Raising your
voice meant improper emotional regulation. Yelling in anger was unheard of beyond
childhood or the actions of the mentally deranged.

Refuse help and you were quickly bound with Oaths that would shackle you
emotionally. I had not made friends protesting in the Hall of Servants against this
practice; especially as it expanded throughout the latter period of the Second Age.

My mind however, a sponge trained by the Second Ages' relentless scholarship, had
absorbed the "New Common Tongue" and the skeletal histories of this collapsed age.
The linguistics were sufficient; time to grieve, however, had run out. Much as there had
been talk of our contingency planning, we, as a group, were not ready enough until
now.

Unlike the Forsaken; those thirteen stains who slithered free with networks of
Darkfriends to ease their acclimation, whispering resources and customs like lovers'
secrets. We arrived without allies or informants to cloak our strangeness. Twenty souls:
too many to drift unnoticed if we traveled en masse, a glittering lure for cutpurses or
prying eyes. We had hesitated to splinter the group, tempted to squander precious
weeks on fractured lessons in blending; mangling accents, fumbling at archaic fashions
when unity was our only shield.

Standing astride my riding horse, Bandit, the low, humming stillness of the
Ogier Stedding a tangible pressure on my skin, a soothing balm that I already
resented. Saidin, so close, yet so far. So thrilling, yet so foul.

The entire Ogier community were here, from Elders near 500 years old to young
children of the Ogier, all watching the two senior Elders Haran and Opora give us a
long good-bye speech. All the while eyeing my four "Green Sisters" with a nervous yet
reverent respect, and studying the power wrought armor of the 'Warders.' Haran and
Opora each spoke for at least an hour each. They spoke of roots and peace and
the Longing with the gentle, ponderous depth of being who measured their life in
centuries. We Aes Sedai had more in common with them than the average mortal.

The Ladies were flawless in their final performance. Vanya, Taelen, Elia, and Lyra
dressed in the rich, deep-green woollen dresses and dyed arctic fox furs of their Green
Ajah cover, bowed with their authentic smiles.

"We are indebted to the Brothers and Sisters of the Trees," Vanya said, her voice lilting
with a believable grace. Heh, Vanya always overplays the charm, it's just who she is.

"We pray we will one day return to see the fully grown Chora Tree, Elder Haran, Elder
Opora," Lyra added, leaning in slightly, her expression radiating deep sincerity.

With that, I, "Lord Matheo Saniago of Tear"—the wealthy, itinerant noble, recently
returned from vast and unimaginable across the Aiel Waste to Shara and back—offered
a courteous, utterly practiced bow. I wore a traveling cloak of the deepest purple over
the gold-threaded doublet that Tissander, my fallen Tailor, and his family had tailored
to reflect this era's awful, frilly standards. My hand rested on the hilt of my power-
wrought sword, a weapon of utility, not display. The Ogiers were a relics of another
world, their Stedding a silent refuge; both were distractions from the urgent, necessary
work to save it.

"Farewell, honored Brothers and Sisters of the Trees," I said, adding a small smile, "I am
happy to have helped bring so much joy to your lives."

If we all died, immediately, the Chora Tree alone would cause numerous, yet positive
ripples throughout the pattern. One good deed at least, to balance against the long and
deep chains of the dead pulling at my soul. The Ogier began to sing us a lovely song as
we left, and I had to wipe a tear or two from my eye. Too much happiness, too many
damn feelings.

A good 'mile' outside of the Stedding, the Imperial unit ironically still foreign in my
head, I raised my hand to halt our procession near to where we had setup 'The Shed'
hidden in the trees.

"Taelen, it is time to collect our currency," I said, the New Common Tongue clean and
precise on my lips.

Taelen channeled Saidar, goosebumps on my skin of course, and the illusion of the thick
forest vines and natural bower shimmered, and we ambled our horses to 'The Shed.'
The small building a naturally constructed series of vines using dead wood covered a
special ter'angreal, the Quicksilver Matrix.

The core of the device is four feet long, two feet wide, and three feet tall smooth
polished block of dark black obsidian fused with deep green serpentine, chosen for its
stability and inability to be contaminated by the metals it processes. Across the top are a
thin, crystalline structure of quartz and sapphire that form an intricate, symmetrical
geometric lattice or array. This lattice is the focus for the flows of the One Power,
resembling a complex circuit board that channels the energy for the transmutation.

The input for raw materials is on the left side of the mixed stone block, in the form of a
wide, bowl-shaped funnel, made with power wrought alloyed tungsten melded directly
into the stone. The Focus Disk is in the center of the apparatus, there is a small teacup
saucer shaped and sized pedestal and is made of polished white jade. This is where the
reference coin to be copied is placed, as in the Saldean silver mark that Kellen's
practiced hands placed there.

On the right side opposite the raw material input, a smoothly curved, deep diamond
trough exits the device. The trough itself has little spindles sticking out from it,
designed to rapidly cool and guide the perfectly formed, hot coins into collection bins.

Studying the amount of diamond the ter'angreal used, I wondered that any surviving
industrial ter'angreal were eventually ripped apart simply for the expensive materials
used to create them. The Quicksilver Matrix is terrifyingly efficient, stable, and silent
industrial machine of the One Power, capable of altering the fundamental nature of
matter. But if I were a neo-barbarian after the fall of the Second Age, pff, no one would
recognize this ter'angreal for what it is.

This was the side project for us Channelers, keeping us busy during our grief. It took
some time to assemble and test carefully. Naturally, it was originally built to use
either Saidin and Saidar, though I preferred to use it as little as possible, lest the Taint
on Saidin damage or corrupt the complex ter'angreal somehow.

Nodding to Taelen, our best female Aes Sedai with Earth, she then said to the others,
"Please link with me, 'sisters.'"

Roleplaying already, good to see it being practiced.

Kellen, my chief engineer, placed the first coin to be copied and crisply stated the
obvious, "The currency is secured, Lord Masimon."

"It will be," I assured him. "The immediate need is cash, Kellen. We cannot rebuild an
Age with base metals, and pure gold, silver and copper will draw too many eyes. Let's
make sure your math on the Tairen gold and silver coins is accurate."

"Flawless, my Lord Matheo," Kellen said, with a bounce in his stance, "The impurity
levels are precise to the Tairan coins the Ogier shared with us. They will be
indistinguishable."

A slight, satisfied nod. Behind him, the four Ladies in their green dresses stood, linked,
by the size of my goosebumps.

"Ready, Ladies?" I asked. "Do we have the counter-scrying Saidar Wards up?"

Elia gave me a bright smile, Lyra a confident smirk, Vanya a careful nod, and Taelen
snapped her fingers, saying, "Let's go!"

With Garen and the other soldiers standing guard outside, I opened the Gateway to the
Vault, where Kellen, Jana, Bren, Lyra, and Drayne began to go in and bring back the
gold, silver, copper, nickel, sulphur powder, and other "impurities" to add into the
coins. The more we had of the correct materials, the less of the One Power was required
to make the coins. Each one made slightly distinct, the randomization necessary to not
look like the forgeries that they were.

A day later, the Quicksilver Matrix now stowed back in the Vault, and we had
thousands upon thousands of coins from every nation in the major denominations–the
Ogier were collectors of currency out of curiosity as much as anything else.

Most of the currency we stored in the Vault, but we each had a significant coinage on us
for our trip to Tear, over a dozen silver and golden marks and crowns, along with a
bevy of coppers, thousands more Sharan gold coins in our collective saddle bags. The
ladies were no longer dressed as Aes Sedai – the lack of an ageless face a concern of
mine for security reasons. The Ogier would not question it out of politeness, but a
random Aes Sedai we might meet in Tear, or a spy, would make a note of it. As it is
they posed as my noble half-sisters, with our bodyguards and staff. Each woman
defaulted to a thick silk winter riding dress color of their own Infinity Gauntlet
Sa'Angreal, Vanya in a creamy white, Taelen in a mute red, Elia in a bright yellow, and
Lyra in dark blue, all made of real fur (a serious crime in our previous Age); beaver
surcoats, with matching dyed arctic fox fur mantles, and dyed arctic fox lined cloaks. I
too had a similar masculine style of furs, but in purple and with a gold fringe.

In short, we could blend in or blaze out in a fire of our own making, violating a series of
sumptuary laws, we had no objective idea, really. The Ogier did not comment on our
clothes and seemed to care little for such things in this age, despite dressing themselves
well. One of the reasons we had so much money, was the expectation that we'd have to
have new clothes made in the more local fashions, rather than our patchy 'best' guess
work from even worse historical records of the medieval period than in my original
time. That said, we'd made extensive use of Portal Stones for our research having to
push far to find realities somehow still in the medieval era.

"It is time," I said, extending my hand, seizing the immense, foul power of Saidin. The
familiar, brackish shock hit me, sharp and bitter, like drinking oil covered water from a
freshly-tapped well. But my purpose was greater. I ignored the taint, ignoring the dark
corruption through sheer will. The power roared into my mind, clean and terrifying,
ready for the most efficient of all webs. Splitting the air in front of us with a large
Skimming portal and pad, drawing deep on Saidin to fit us all comfortably.

Our cover also demanded several of our massive pack horses, laden heavily, cedar
chests and rolled carpets, to make it appear we'd been travelling a considerable
distance. Illusions of inverted webs of Saidin hid the true quality of our clothing,
horseflesh and power wrought armour; to any watcher we were merely very rich and
rather foreign. Illusions covered the color fastness of our clothing a little too memorable
when the Forsaken came knocking.

Not to mention our horses had last been in the Australian outback in the Second Age,
and so with the lack of a winter coat, we had put fur line caparisons on them to keep
them warm. The endless minutiae of logistics, even for just twenty people and twenty-
seven horses added up quickly. Our horses did not need shod, another oddity that
would invite comment, but simplified our travelling considerably.

Leading with my hand I indicated and said, "Garen."

Garen Voss, my lead soldier, moved first, then Torren Hall, Garren's second, and the
rank and file: Rys Darr, Jorel Fenn, Cael Meris, Vorne Kass, Alec Tane, Frayn Zann,
Kassir Sol, and Brennan Coln. Their packs already secured, their faces hidden by the
shadow of their helmets.

"Honored, Lord Matheo," Garen said. So serious, but I couldn't fault the man, he'd lost
the largest family brood of all of us.

"The formation, as discussed," I commanded, my voice having dropped a register, "Our

cover is what it is. We are here to save the world, and we start now."

Garen stepped and three soldiers through, followed by myself and the Ladies, then our
support staff, with Torren bringing the rest of the soldiers behind us.

Strangely, Travelling requires one to know their start point well, not necessarily their
end point. As such with general idea of where the city of Tear was in the nation of Tear
after consulting Ogier maps, it was not difficult to punch closely on this side of the
continent. Especially after consulting my Whisper Lens first.

We emerged with our horses plodding on packed earth slick with drizzle, air thick with
river-mist, coal-smoke, unwashed beasts—the Third Age's reek. Low gray skies wept
chill rain.

"Tear," I whispered, adjusting my cloak against the Tairan wind biting like prophecy's
edge. I could see the spiked towers of the Stone, an ugly, medieval mountain in the
distance. "Let the shopping begin."

There is no snow in Tear, not truly. The city sits too close to the equator for honest
winter; the air only ever turns sharp and damp, a cold that crawls under cloaks and
gnaws at the bones. The Fingers of the Dragon were black silhouettes in the distance
south of the city, the sky the color of wet iron, and the wind off the Erinin carried the
stink of tar, fish-rot, and the faint sweetness of olive oil from the presses in the Maule.

Atop Bandit on the crest of a low ridge fifteen miles west of the city Tear's walls, I
opened the white laptop. Five matte-black drones rose from the cases Yssa had brought
erupted like ravens with more eyes than Cthulu. They were silent, rotorless, guided by
the same type of levitation ter'angreal that once powered pleasure-skiffs above V'saine.
They recorded video and images in definition beyond the human eye in full-spectrum,
thermal, and other wavelengths. In twenty-one minutes they would map every alley,
every roof, every ward-stone and guard post within a hundred-mile radius and return
to our hands without ever having been seen.

All twenty of us watched the feeds bloom across the projected holo-screen—while the
Gem of Scrutiny layered the images directly into my vision. The city unfolded like a
cadaver on an embalmer's table.

Tear. The Stone a small black mountain created by the one-power, its upper ramparts
lost in low cloud. I could see the flows of Earth, Air and Fire to create and fuse the stone
together, at least the parts created with Saidin. Naturally, Callandor was not visible but
hidden deep inside in the Heart of the Stone. The Raven-drones spiralled lower.

The inner city was built tiered white marble and grey granite, the great houses of the
High Lords clustered on the North-eastern slope on the far side from the river. Palaces
with columns and gilded domes and walled gardens where lemon trees grew in
defiance of the season. Weiramon Saniago's residence was exactly where the Ogier
histories on House Saniago placed it: a confection of crimson tile roofs and balconies
painted gold, banners of red and gold hanging limp in the wet. Fewer guards on the
walls than I liked. Winter sloth. Good.

The outer city sprawled beyond the old walls: the Maule with its warehouses and
taverns, with fish markets that almost stank even through the laptop feed, the Finger
Docks choked with riverboats and sea-ships riding at anchor. The Chalm: narrow
alleys, leaning tenements, the smell of poverty and pepper and desperation.

After the drones finished their spiral dance, a hundred-mile radius etched in data
sharper than any spy's quill. They obediently returned home one by one, the each drone
waiting to settle into Yssa's gloved palm like obedient falcons. She firmly closed the
case, latched it, and turned her horse east.

Our cover story had been hammered out over six weeks of quiet evenings in Stedding
Shangtai, refined until it contained exactly enough truth to survive hard questioning.

I, Lord Matheo of House Saniago, was the unacknowledged bastard of High Lord
Weiramon, conceived twenty-six years ago on a trade mission to Mayene and raised in
secret exile with my four half sisters, also his by-blows; hidden from deadly intrigue of
the High Lords. Upon reaching manhood, we braved the Aeil Waste, gone through
several portal stones (quite true, we would have the stories to tell) and returned from
legendary Shara with incredible horses, clothing, and other wealth.

In an age when noblewomen were expected to be ornaments, four armed, educated,

unmarried sisters travelling with a private guard were eccentric, not impossible.
Toleration of eccentricity could be bought with gold.
The ten soldiers were my personal guard, originally mercenaries but now sworn to me.
All of the power-wrought blades were explained away as "Sharan work." The five
support staff: Kellen the horsemaster, Jana the tailor, Bren the quartermaster, Drayne
the cook, and Yssa my assistant (spymaster); were simply retainers of a very rich, very
strange lord.

We looked the part now. Six weeks of Ogier mirrors and superior scissors had given
every one of us the clean, severe lines of this age's fashion: my own copper-brown hair
cropped short at the sides and queued at the nape with a simple gold clasp; the soldiers'
faces trimmed to neat Tairan beards; the Ladies' hair coiled and braided with pearls and
coloured silk that matched their hidden Infinity Gauntlets—white, red, yellow, and
dark blue.

I wore a riding coat of deepest indigo thick silk lined with sable, high collar turned up
against the wind, gold embroidery at cuffs and throat in the slashing Tairen style.
Beneath it, black cuir bouilli laced tight, and the Black Infinity Gauntlet itself hidden
inside a glove of plain doeskin. I raised a first hand, our column moved.

The gates of Tear swallowed us at dusk.

The Eastern Gate of Tear engulfed us at dusk, its iron teeth gnashing in the torch-glow.
City guards in red-and-gold tabards, though no Defenders of the Stone, though these
whelps bore the look of river-rats pressed into service demanded three silver crowns
toll for "outland beasts." I flipped newly-struck coins that chimed true. The nominal
sergeant, lantern-jawed with a dueling scar, bit one, shrugged at the yielding metal, and
barked us through with a wave.

Within, the city clamped close as a miser's fist: torches sputtering in iron dragons'
maws, the sizzle of oil-fried fish from vendor carts, the raucous hawking of chair-
porters and water-slingers. Lanterns dangled from chains over crooked winds, swaying
to cast buttery pools on slick cobbles, shadows twisting like eavesdroppers.

We took the long way up the broad Avenue of the Sun, past the great circular plaza
where the Defenders drilled, then south along the inner wall until the palaces rose
around us like white cliffs. Folk stared from doorways and balconies; from tradesman
with pipe-smoke breath to silk-gowned ladies with kohl-rimmed eyes. They always do
when twenty strangers ride in perfect formation on horses that look like something out
of a legend, taunting whispers of tapestries come to life.

And this was after using Saidin to dull us all down. Goodness.

Weiramon's city estate gates yawned wide, music hemorrhaging out: flutes trilling like
panicked birds, drums throbbing like heartbeats in fever, the reedy wail of Tairen pipes
laced with Illianer spice. Torches flared in sconces dolphin-shaped, gilt flickering. A
winter feast in full roar—perfect bait for our hook. I reined in before the steps.

Guards asked us to halt and wait. A steward in crimson and gold hurried down, face
flushed with wine and alarm. "My lord?"

"Inform High Lord Weiramon," I said in my crispest Tairen accent, vowels drawn long
as a duelist's blade, consonants clipped like a purse-string, "that his son and daughters
have come home." The older servant's mouth opened, closed, opened again. Then he
bolted inside as if the Dark One himself were on his heels.

Flaunting the athleticism of four centuries' discipline, I vaulted from the saddle in a
fluid leap, boots striking marble with a report like a sergeant's snap. Garen
claimed Bandit's reins; the Ladies arrayed behind me like jeweled vipers, silks
whispering. The soldiers locked into twin ranks, gauntlets drumming hilts—a subtle
thunder, hands never straying far from steel.

Minutes dragged, taut as a garrote. From within came a woman's laugh, shrill and
wine-loosened, shattering against stone. Then the great doors groaned wide on bronze
hinges, and Weiramon Saniago himself filled the frame: silk robes askew, disclosing
matted chest hair, greying locks tousled, eyes bloodshot from cups uncounted. He
halted dead, a paunchy statue in gold thread.

I advanced into the torchlight, letting Weiramon drink my face: high cheekbones like
chiseled marble, tanned skin, hard blue eyes, copper-brown hair echoing his own
youth's tint. The mist clung to the marble steps like a living thing, curling around my
boots, tasting of river-rot and hot iron from the braziers. Servants had begun to spill
from the great doors—footmen in his house black and gold livery with silver and red
tints, maids with wine-stained aprons, guards whose halberds wavered as they tried to
decide whether to level steel at the stranger who had dared name their lord "father."
Behind me the Ladies fanned out, silent, bright, lethal. Garen's hand rested on his
sword-hilt with the stillness of a man who has killed in a hundred Mirror Worlds and
would gladly make it a hundred and one.

Seizing Saidin, the world shattered into crystalline fury, every droplet of mist a
diamond edge, every torch-flame a roaring forge. The Taint raked me, claws of sewage
and madness, but I sheathed it in glacial wrath, stepped close enough to taste the red
wine on his breath, sour as regret.

"Father," I softly said and pressed two gloved fingers to his temple.

The Compulsion web slithered home, a hot razor through butter. I erected memories
brick by brick: a Mayene summer, salt winds and spice markets; a girl named Lisele,
dark tresses and bell-laughter; a hasty promise whispered in a captain's cabin, broken
by politics' grindstone; a boy spirited east, hidden from the High Lords' poison knives. I
layered love like mortar, guilt as keystone, pride the capping stone, until truth bent,
indistinguishable from the lie. Releasing him after four heartbeats, I watched the dam
break. He wept openly for every soul in the courtyard to see, great heaving sobs
wracking that noble frame, tears carving tracks through powder and wine-flush.

Then I released the Saidin. The world crashed back into mortal focus. The Taint slithered
across my tongue, thick and oily; I swallowed it down and smiled the small, pleasant
smile of a dutiful son.

Weiramon blinked. Tears carved clean paths through the powder on his cheeks. When
he looked at me again, his face was transfigured—joy and shame and terror braided so
tightly they were one thing. "My boy," he choked, and crushed me to him in an embrace
reeking of wine, rose attar, and a more private desperation.

Confirmation reading between the lines of the old novels I'd gambled on, that
Weiramon's tastes ran to silks and whispers among his guards, not the Mayener beds I
now invented. The other High Lords kept such secrets buried, but in Tear, even
whispers could topple.

Behind me, Vanya's breath hitched sharp; Taelen's chuckle low, a blade half-drawn. The
courtyard swelled with servants and house guards, mouths agape like fish on a hook,
murmurs rippling like wind through dry reeds.

Over his shoulder I saw the courtyard: servants frozen mid-step, guards with halberds
half-raised, minor lords and ladies clustered on the steps like bright-plumed rodents
stunned by a hawk's shadow. A well dressed noble, perhaps a High Lord, his bull-neck
had gone stiff; another too well dressed, her weasel eyes darted, calculating angles.
Somewhere a woman began to weep, though whether from shock or envy I neither
knew nor cared.

Weiramon drew back at last, hands clutching my shoulders hard enough to bruise a
lesser man. His eyes searched my face with the fervor of a penitent at the feet of the
Light made flesh.

Weiramon thrust me back, hands iron on my shoulders, eyes wild. "Inside! All of you,
my son, my daughters, your blades and shadows! Tonight we drown the years in wine!"
He wheeled to the swelling throng on the steps, minor lords in slashed velvets, ladies
with fan-shields of lace and suspicion, drawn by the uproar like crows to carrion, and
bellowed till his voice cracked like thunderstone. "Behold, Matheo, blood of my blood!
Returned from the Waste's jaws, from Shara's veiled horrors! Heirs of Saniago, flesh of
my forgotten sins!"

A shiver passed through the watching nobility: calculation flickering like bad dice, envy
coiling green, greed bared tooth and claw. Introductions came and went quickly.
During the process I spotted High Lord Torean Andiama, bull-necked in black-and-
silver, leaned to murmur in Sunamon's ear, that weasel-faced schemer in green tabard,
their eyes raking our "Sharan" steel, my half-sisters' poise. I caught fragments: bastard...
Mayener whore... smells of gold... The air thickened with it, Tear's eternal intrigue, where a
claim like mine was a lit fuse.

I smiled then, the small, perilous curve I'd mirrored before mirrors, and dipped my
head in flawless noble deference, a bow that screamed equality, not obeisance. The
game had kindled.

The feast engulfed us like a riptide. Weiramon's hall was a cavern of excess: vaulted
ceilings painted with Dragonmount's rise in lurid fresco, long tables groaning under
roast capon glazed in honey, platters of spiced figs and olives swimming in oil, red
wines flowing from ewers like arterial blood. Musicians plucked at lutes and blew into
pipes in the galleries, while jugglers tossed flaming brands that painted faces hell-red. I
sat at Weiramon's right, elevated to the high dais, a velvet seat beside his own, flanked
by the Ladies in their silks, who played the long-lost daughters to perfection: Vanya
charming a cluster of minor ladies with tales of "Sharan silkworms," Taelen trading
barbs with a dueling-mad captain insisting on winning her love tonight. Garen and the
guards held the hall's edges, silent as statues, while Yssa melted into the servants'
spaces, ears pricked for whispers.

But the eyes... Light, the eyes. High Lord Torean circled like a wolf scenting weakness,
his golden rings flashing as he clapped Weiramon's shoulder, too hearty, too probing:
"A son from the mists, eh? And daughters to boot? The Pattern weaves strange things,
Weiramon. Or did some Mayener witch claim the weave?"

Laughter rippled, edged as broken glass. Sunamon simpered beside Torean, his green
eyes flicking to and fro. A Cairheinan lady in saffron, Lady Colavaere, I recalled from
the novels, ambitious as a gathering storm, leaned close under pretense of wine, her
perfume cloying: "Such exotic furs, my dears. Sharan, you say? They suit you... but
Tear's laws on foreign dyes are particular. One mustn't flaunt what the Stone forbids."
Her gaze lingered on Elia's yellow braid, probing for cracks.

We parried with smiles and half-truths, Saidin a distant thunder at my fingertips, ready
to Compel if a hand strayed too bold. Weiramon, cup in perpetual motion, boomed my
praises till foam flecked his beard, my brave boy, crossed the Aeil Waste unaided!, his arm
slung 'round a pretty guardsman with eyes like polished jet, the gesture blatant enough
to draw snickers from those who dared. The hall pulsed with it: envy for my "return,"
greed for the gold I flashed in casual wager, suspicion that this bastard heir was
Weiramon's mummer's farce to upend the High Lords' delicate balance. One wrong
word, one slipped web, and we'd be meat for the Chalm's knives, or worse, bait for a
Tower Red hunting male channelers.
Hours bled into a haze of wine and wary toasts. I slipped free at midnight's toll,
claiming fatigue from the road, and climbed to a balcony overlooking the inner garden.
Lemon boughs rustled in the mist-wind, their fruit pendulous as teardrops; across the
city, the Stone loomed, a black monolith etched against the starless sky, waiting like a
trap half-sprung.

Vanya ghosted to my side, a shadow in muted red silk, her breath fogging the
balustrade. Without pause, I seized Saidin, quick web of Air and Spirit folding the night
around us, a ward against eavesdroppers, sound dying like a snuffed wick.

"The compulsion web took perfectly," Vanya murmured, gesturing back to the party. "Elia
made sure he will die in a few weeks now that he's proclaimed you his heir, and 'legitimized' the
rest of us. "

Handless use of the One Power absolutely essential. All of us could so, though for
certain webs it added difficulty.

"Good, he signs the papers tomorrow with two High Lords as witnesses."

She studied my profile. "You still hate it."

"I hate many necessary things."

A pause.

"The Stone's wards are… layered. Contemporary Second Age Aes Sedai built it," said Vanya,
excellent at ward making and breaking, I trusted her advice completely. "The best, it
seems. Woven with both Saidar and Saidin." Fluffing her long chestnut hair, Vanya in her
creamy white dress approached me closer, she smiled, slow and dangerous. "I do like it
when you stop pretending to be civilized."

I flexed the Black Gauntlet inside of the doe hide glove, saying, "We forged the proscribed
ward-breakers for precisely this—ter'angreal to unpick the traps like knots in a fisher's net,
linked through the Gauntlets..." I turned to her, letting the torchlight casting a show over
my eyes. "Tomorrow night," I growled, "We take everything that is not nailed down. The Seal
of the Dark One, angreal, the ter'angreal, the Door. And then we start killing the players before
they even know the board is on fire."
Chapter 3: Angreal are Forever

The Stone of Tear does not sleep lightly. This night it is a black mountain silhouetted
against the starless cloud-covered sky, lit only by the guttering watch fires on the high
battlements and the cold, indifferent gleam of the moon upon wet stone. From the
highest balcony of the Saniago Estate, the stone rises from the river mist as an exposed
bone of the world itself, sheer and impossible.

Deep beneath that monolithic darkness lay the Great Hold. A sealed vault where the
High Lords of Tear had hoarded every artifact of the One Power they could scavenge
since Artur Hawkwing's demise over a period of seven hundred years. Unless my
ripples changed the timeline, they'd stopped around 300 years ago and haven't
bothered going in since.

A single night after Weiramon's drunken proclamation, the Saniago household settled
into the deep, stuporous slumber of the justly inebriated. With a touch of the One
Power, all the guests remained asleep. Highborn nobility snored draped across various
couches, servants on large pillows scattered across the rooms and drafty corridors, and
guards dozed at their posts, heavy with wine and fatigue. Weiramon himself lay
unconscious in his bedchamber, a gentle, intricate web of Spirit and Air tucked around
his heart to slow its beating, Elia's work. It was clean, efficient, and by the standards of
my past, undeniably merciful for a very sincere Darkfriend. The trouble is, we needed
him alive long enough to guarantee my seat as a High Lord.

We moved at the second hour past midnight. The raven surveillance drones, the small
silent constructs had already flown two additional sorties since our arrival, mapping
every ward-stone, every guard rotation, and every forgotten drainage tunnel beneath
the fortress. The Stone's defenses were layered like an onion grown by madmen: outer
wards of Fire and Air designed to sear flesh from bone, inner knots of Spirit meant to
trap a channeler in eternal stasis, and at the heart, something far worse. Yet - we knew
this, the High Lords were able to enter the Great Hold and place objects there. The
wards had exceptions, and exceptions are key weaknesses.

And to boot, Belal had dismantled these wards without issue. My memories of the
novels were quite firm, after Rand took the Stone, various main characters wandered
around into the Great Hold unobstructed. Soon after, Forsaken Gated in Trollocs and
Myrdraal with ease. Perhaps these wards were stronger due to my interference. Yet
perhaps as the Netweaver, Belal had a Great Talent with ward-breaking unknown in
Second Age. Moraine had killed him with Balefire, so if Belal had had a
powerful ter'angreal to break wards, we could never know. Netweaver - I recalled that
title with a mirthful smile. The man had a second career as a brilliant cybersecurity
expert, protecting the computer networks from my intrepid followers' cyber attacks to
destroy the knowledge of how to Drill the Bore.

Twenty shadows covered in fan cloth with kevlar underarmor slipped from the Saniago
estate via my Skim to farmland just north of the Stone. No torches, no whispered
commands. There was only the soft hush of boots on wet marble and the low, resonant
thrum of Saidin and Saidar held in check, a pressure felt against the skin rather than
seen.

No need to Skim, I simply activated the Flying Ter'angreal. A large invisible disk of air
formed beneath us, spinning beneath just beneath our feet to lift us above the Stone.
According to my "Foretelling," the core was guarded by a trap that could not be untied,
only triggered. A mechanism that had waited for three millennia, a relic of a desperate
time. I knew the taste of such traps; I had designed the prototypes myself, lifetimes ago.

Already linked in a circle, Vanya, Taelen, Elia, Lyra, and I are ready. My Infinity
Gauntlet socketed with each Ladies' distinct angreal-ter'angreal Gem, in a diamond
formation around my Gem of Scrutiny. Vanya's White Gem of Unmaking, Taelen's Red
Gem of Resonance, Elia's Yellow Gem of Silence, and Lyra's Blue Gem of Echoes,
five sa'angreal designed to be linked together in circle as a super-sa'angreal forged for
battle, creation, and domination, now used for a heist that would alter history.
Each ter'angreal engaged with a crisp snap. Beneath the fancloth, each gem on the back
of my Gauntlet flared briefly in synchronization. My Gem of Scrutiny drank in the
details of the Stone's wards until they shone in my mind like threads of molten glass.

I drew Saidin through the Black Infinity Gauntlet, bracing for the inevitable nausea of
the Taint, but the link dampened it to a dull roar. The Ladies fed Saidar into the circle,
and the connection snapped tight. Power flooded us, but this was not the raw, clumsy
strength of a standard circle. This was the clean, deadly precision of the Second Age.
The five Gauntlets resonated, as if singing in frequencies no ear could hear, and the
night air more visible as Saidin and Saidar brought it all into deeper focus.

Reaching out with the Gem of Scrutiny and I tentatively sensed the wards on the Stone.
All told they were a work of terrifying beauty. The outer layer, a complex web
of Saidin and Saidar using Fire and Air, braided so tightly that any attempt to cut it
would trigger a detonation capable of leveling half the fortress and city. With our
linked Sa'angreal and ter'angreal; child's play. Beneath that lay a cage of Spirit, inverted
and masked, designed to snap shut around any male or female channeler woman who
tried to pass. But deeper still lay the true horror: a knot of Spirit, Fire, and Earth, woven
by both Saidar and Saidin in the final, chaotic years of The Breaking.

The series of Wards were a feedback loop, a parasitic loop that fed on either side of the
One Power used against it. The more force applied, the stronger it grew, until it drank
the intruder dry, leaving them a hollow husk screaming soundlessly in a cage of their
own making until they died mere moments later. Such wards were unfathomable in the
time I lived in, likely learned the hard way during the War of Power. And I suspect,
learned bitterly from my successful efforts to stop the Drilling of the Bore. Now here it
is, preserving the ignorance of the Tairens.

Now opening our linked circle to the full power of the Linked Infinity Gauntlets; we
sensed the trap's fundamental construction fully. The White drank its memory and
forced it to forget. The Red found the resonant frequency of the web and sang it into
dissonance. The Yellow swallowed the inevitable scream of the breaking ward, and the
Blue echoed its own dissolution back into its heart. We did not cut the knot; we unmade
the very concept of it. There was no explosion, no flare of light to alert the guards on the
ramparts. There was only a soft, heavy exhalation, as though the Stone itself sighed in
relief.

The wards were gone. From high above, we saw many watchmen blink and rub their
eyes, wondering why the humid night suddenly felt colder, but nothing more. To
channelers in the city however, The faint shimmer of the wards was gone, replaced by a
palpable vortex of heat sucked in by the Stone. The massive potential energy of the trap
hadn't just vanished; it had been devoured and forced into the Stone itself. Ice crystals
of frost formed across the surface of the Stone, the walls, the battlements and into the
city.

Even the river iced over in a direct radial line from the stone. Guards began to stir,
baffled by what they were seeing. I grimaced, realizing this was the cost. Not death of
injury, but exposure.

"The Hall was right to forbid these type of Wards," Vanya whispered, her voice
trembling slightly in the dark.

"Yes," I said, flexing my hand to chase away the phantom vibration of the Power. "And
we were right to ignore them."

If nothing else, we needed to deflect from this oddness. "Elia," I said with a smile,
"you're a good Cloud Dancer, make a distracting storm to mask this oddness."

"Of course," Elia said, as I moved control of the link over to her. Using inverted webs of
Air and Water with Saidar, she brought cold winds through the city and brought a faint
snow. The weather would mask the strange coldness emanating from the hold. She
nodded at my "Thanks" and passed control of the link back to me.

Opening a Skimming platform mid-air, we walked right through into the door before
the Great Hold. I could not and would not let go of our link - the sweetness of Saidar a
balm against the infernal Taint. The Ladies had not complained about Saidin's taint, and
I pushed away my worries.
Given the importance of the Great Hold, all I could say for this hall is that it's clean as I
threw up a ball of inverted Saidin to bob behind us and give ample light.

"Ew," Lyra said, staring with the rest of us at the longer and thin corridor with rotting
doors askew, hanging on to rusty hinges, "this looks like a horror movie."

"No arguments from me!" I chuckled. Certainly quite on point actually.

It smelled of old dust, rotting wood and mould. The Door of the Great Hold was even
more askew and on its last leg. Using delicate flows of Saidar through the link, I opened
the door and tied off a web of air to hold it in place.

The Great Hold itself is less a room and more a cavern with a low ceiling. It had not
been entered in properly for what looked like a century. Of whomever was last in here,
we could see ample new dust in their footprints. The Hold itself was a hoarder's mess.
Barrels this way and that, wooden shelves littered around the room in varying states of
decay, rotting cloth over various objects. Figurines cluttered the shelves, stacks and
stacks of wooden crates half collapsed onto each other. It was a wonder Rand found
anything of use here at all.

That said, things would be different now. "Taelen," I commanded, she was our best
Talent with travelling. "Gate into the hallway and back, so we can open a gate into the
Vault."

"Yes, 'Lord Matheo,' " Taelen said, mocking me with waggling eyebrows.

While technically one needs to know the area they Gate from, there is a loophole: Once
you Gate to an area, you instantly know it, and can then Gateway from that area.
However, you can always open a Gateway to somewhere you can see. Using these two
together, you can bypass the limitation on having spend significant time in an area.
Useful most of the time, but not always possible.

Elia, Lyra, and Vaelyn moved through the room, directing our staff. In a few moments
after Taelen returned and opened the Gateway back to our Vault, she passed control of
the link back to me.

The punishment period of my life, 37 continuous years of

making ter'angreal, angreal and sa'angreal, every single day, ten hours a day without fail.
I think, I really think I was just supposed die. The Creator knows I wanted to. Never
done before in the Second Age, I'd been so foolish, having that argument with Lews
Therin over his behavior, and bad habits, my First Age anger got the better of me.
Afterwards my ability and understanding of how all they all worked shifted, increase
understanding the deeper mysteries of the One Power.
Gnosis. Religion and mysticism was largely gone in the Second Age, the Dedicated were
the last religious group allowed, with the practice largely banned after the fallout of the
Chaos Wars. Whatever it was, I gained new wisdom unknown to my fellows of the
time.

Closing my eyes, Saidin and Saidar exploded from me in a hundred tentacles of all five
elements of the One Power. Using the ter'angreal aspect of the Angreal crystals in my
gauntlet, I could feel and process what each tentacle touched at once. These tentacles
using all elements and both sides of the One Power touched, parted, lifted, sifted,
explored, examined throughout the Hold.

In a dramatically short period of time, I finished. The obvious items from the novels
appeared: The Fatman male Angreal, a figurine of a round-faced, fat, bald-headed man
sitting cross-legged with a sword across his knees worked in shiny dark green stone
that fits easily into a man's hand. The black and white cuendillar Seal of the Dark One,
the weird non-Euclidean Doorway to the Aelfinn realm. Three androgynous diamond
figurines, all medium strength female Angreal.

But there were more, two stasis boxes, undamaged. Dozens upon dozens of ter'angreal,
broadly in four categories – weapons of sorts from the War of Power. Such were banned
in my time of the now Second Age. The second category were building ter'angreal,
which shouldn't have surprised me, but probably from the original Aes Sedai who
made the Stone of Tear. The last were utility ter'angreal of all sorts: Items to take you
into the World of Dreams, ter'angreal to mimic Those Who Change the Pattern, useless since
I already am one, many standard and non-standard sized glowbulbs, and many
communicator ter'angreal, which we already had brought many of, and mine worked
better to boot. The fourth category were entertainment ter'angreal, playing music,
virtual reality ter'angreal, even a Holo-vision player. The rest was excessive detritus
from the Second Age in the form of electronic technology that no longer worked.
Sometimes just artwork of the One Power, thrown in because it must have appeared
'scary.'

The first stasis box was of a different make than of the ones used in my vault. Where the
ones we used were a matte black similar in size to standing rectangular coffins taller
than a man, this one was barely waist height, however, quite wide in both dimensions.
A ter'angreal lock on it I removed using Saidin without second thought. Opening it, we
found art, lots of art. Two massive rugs. A boardgame ter'angreal of some sort that none
of us recognized, likely a new game. Silver cups. Music playing ter'angreal, though none
us knew the artists, they were too young, angry even. Clothing, of a sinister black
fashion, unknown to us. More glowbulbs, the finally a velvet bag containing several
items: A small plain golden ring which Lyra revealed was a weak female angreal. A
single page of heavy poundage printer paper with the message:
IF YOU READ THIS, WE FAILED.

Whatever that meant, perhaps a reference to the War of Power and the Breaking. Likely
this was a Darkfriend's collection, not that I cared. All tools will be used against the
Dark One.

The second stasis box was rather small but long, and had a subtle ward on it that your
eye kept sliding off it, worse than fancloth. I'm still not sure what it looked like on the
outside. In it wrapped in thick white silk were a matching set of forearm length
ivory Sa'angreal, one for Saidar and Saidin, a man and woman longingly gazing toward
the other in the box. Barid Bel Medar made the pair in honor of his wife, Sareena Nial.
Naturally this was before Lews Therin caused their divorce first and later slept with
her.

"So romantic," Taelen muttered. We all knew the reference from the most famous
romance holo-video of the Age, 'Veins of Gold.' "Look at this." Taelen brought out the
holiday romance card from underneath, which contained lines from where Avin'po, the
male character, wrote to his wife Ilyena, the name of the female lead character. And no,
not that Ilyena, only the most common name for women. Used to be, anyway.

"You're such a hopeless romantic," I teased Taelen. Never mind my feelings for another
Ilyena. I flapped my hands romantically, and faux swooning and said, "Oh, Ilyena."

"Be kind to her," Lyra pinched me. Pinched, me!

"When you squeal like that," Vanya said, with some mirth, "I wonder how serious you
are some days."

"I'm always serious," I owned the teasing, doubling down, "So serious you wouldn't
know what to do without me."

Vanya opened up her fan cloth to stick her tongue out at me, operational security be
damned. I snorted.

"Alright everyone," I said trying not to smile, as I opened a Gateway into our Vault,
"Take it all," I commanded, my voice echoing in the vast space. "Everything that can be
carried. Leave the junk for the Tairens."

The next day, the skimming platform deposited me alone in a snow-dusted alley off
Malden's Grand Market, the air sharp with the bite of Saldaean winter, pine smoke
from braziers, the tang of spiced mulled wine from street vendors, and the low rumble
of fur-clad merchants haggling over horseflesh. Saldaea's capital was a fortress city of
high stone walls and tiled roofs, its people as hardy as the borderlands they guarded,
but in this pre-dawn hour, it slumbered like any other mortal hive. No Aes Sedai here.
No Forsaken stirring yet. Just forgotten relics gathering dust in a dealer's vault.

I had left the others in the Saniago estate, a convenient lair while the Ladies prepared
for Ebou Dar. After our big unexpected social introduction, Weiramon told us it would
traditional to wait a week, and exactly a week before invitations would come to various
morning, lunch, afternoon, evening, and nighttime social events. He assured us, firmly,
that they would arrive. More seriously, we HAD to attend them. All of them for some
time. Even if our "lunch" was five separate appearances not lasting five minutes before
we went to the next 'lunch.' A damper in our plans, but it made these heists more
critical.

Drones with their quantum penetrating radar had mapped Malden, pinpointing the
likely antiquities shops where serious scavengers fenced oddities from the Blight's
fringes. The Seal of the Dark One and the male angreal that Bayle Domon bought in the
second novel were here, buried in some backroom collection, unguarded because no
one in this age remembered what true Power felt like.

An inverted web cloaked me as a Saldaean merchant: fur-trimmed coat, long braided

mustache, accent thick as their horse-archers' clipped and fast cadence. I'm sure my
accent was awful, but my identity didn't need to last past a day. Saidin hummed foul in
my veins, a slick whisper I ignored as I stepped into the market's awakening. Stalls
creaked open; a woman in a belled skirt hawked hot cider. I made for the shop of one
Jorlen Tarik, a dealer in "Blight curios" who asked few questions.

The bell above the door tinkled like a warning. Inside, shelves groaned under dust-
shrouded relics: rusted Trolloc blades, a cracked cuendillar fragment mistaken for
pottery, and there, in a locked glass case, the black-and-white disc of a seal, its fracture
like a spider's web, beside a small aged dark ivory statuette of a man holding a sword
aloft, humming faintly to my senses.

Tarik emerged from the back, a wiry man with a borderer's scarred knuckles and
shrewd eyes. "What seeks you, stranger? Blight gold? A Warder's cloak from the old
tales?"

I laid a purse of Saldaean silver crowns on the counter, Quicksilver-forged, heavy as

truth. "The disc and the statue. Name your price."

Tarik's eyes narrowed, but greed won. No haggling; the coins spoke louder than words.
As I pocketed them, Saidin confirmed: the seal intact enough to hold, the angreal a
modest boost, attuned to men.
Out in the alley, I went in much deeper, my Saidin enhanced senses confirming no one
watched me before sliding into a small crack between buildings as if to piss, before I
opened a Gateway back to Tear. Quick. Clean. The first threads of the web pulled taut.

No one in Malden would remember the merchant who vanished like smoke.

That evening, Tanchico's chaotic culture was my cloak. The city sprawled along the
Calpene Peninsula like a fever-dream of white domes and minarets, its harbors choked
with ships; Tarabon. Drums beat in distant streets; veiled women hurried past with
daggers at their belts; the air smelled of the the salt-spray of the Aryth Ocean. No Aes
Sedai patrolled these walls and the Tower's eyes were turned elsewhere, and the
Forsaken slumbered still.

Gating in alone again, inverted illusions making me a Taraboner merchant-lord in

embroidered vest and transparent veil, the Black Gauntlet hidden beneath a glove of
local silk. Drones had flown the night before, mapping the Panarch's Palace: a
confection of gold-leaf and marble overlooking the harbor, its museum a wing stuffed
with "Power-touched" relics from various ages, the Trolloc Wars, the rise of Artur
Hawkwing, and son.

The palace guards were lax, distracted by the mob at the gates demanding bread. A web
of Compulsion on a back-door sentry got me inside: "You saw nothing." The museum
hall echoed empty, lit by glowbulbs that flickered like dying stars, poor imitations of
Second Age.

The seal lay on a pedestal, black-and-white cuendillar gleaming under dust; beside
it, angreal in the form of a golden bracelet twisted like vines; and there, in a locked case,
the Domination Band, two linked collars of silver, one with a bracelet leash, humming
with the foul promise of control. A ter'angreal for binding male channelers against their
will to two female channelers. Inconceivable in my time, it just showed the raw
desperation of the remaining female aes sedai to try and handle the madness of the
male channelers.

Flows of Air with Saidin lifted the items into my satchel. No ripple. No cry. No Wards to
speak of, as we detected. I began Skimming back to Tear. Tanchico would wake to an
empty case and blame thieves as a sign of the cities' decay. The board was clearing,
piece by silent piece.

Stepping into Weiramon's, soon to be my palatial estate in I paced the shadowed study
of Tear, the massive courtyard water fountain a trickle through the arched windows.
The high lord himself lay abed upstairs, his compelled heart ticking slower by the day, a
mercy I told myself as I flexed the Black Gauntlet beneath my glove. The raids had gone
clean: Maradon's seal and angreal bought with false coin, Tanchico's treasures lifted like
dust from a shelf. The Great Hold secretly stripped. But Ebou Dar... that was the Ladies'
hunt, a test of their competence without my hand.

Their Gateway slashed open in the study's center, a vertical line of silver that spilled the
scent of salt and spice; Altara's coastal tang. Each woman had inverted Saidar to change
her appearance, but they kept the color scheme the same. Vanya stepped through first,
white wool travel-stained but her cobalt eyes sharp; then Taelen in muted red, a satchel
heavy at her side; Elia in yellow, smirking despite the fatigue; Lyra last, dark blue cloak
swirling, her face a mask of quiet triumph. The link between us hummed faintly, echoes
of their exertion brushing my mind like distant thunder.

"Report," I said, voice low, gesturing them to the carved oak table where maps of the
Westlands lay unrolled, pins marking our growing web.

Vanya began, shedding her cloak with a fluid motion. "Ebou Dar is a viper's nest! Duels
in the streets, Rahad gangs knifing for scraps, the palace a gilded cage. We Gated
outside the city, inverted illusions making us blend in well enough. There were no eyes
on us; the city's too busy bleeding itself. If I didn't know better, I'd say the city were in
civil war, but I think that's just their normal."

Taelen leaned forward, her chestnut hair unbound, fingers tracing an invisible wb. "The
Kin hide in plain sight; women with the spark and some training, but no Tower oaths,
knitting their web from inns and herb-shops. We Compelled a midwife with a red sash
in the Rahad, one of their elders. She led us to the cache without a whisper of alarm."

I felt faint temptation, the thrill of absolute control over those who thought themselves
hidden. I quashed it. "The Ebou Dar cache?"

Elia's bright smile flashed, yellow wool shifting as she unslung her pack, flashing me
her Yellow Infinity Gauntlet set with all five angreal Gems from our matching gloves.
While she couldn't quite replicate what I could do with them, she was the best woman
at identifying angreal and ter'angreal. "Richer than we hoped. The Bowl of the Winds a
powerful ter'angreal for calling weather manipulation as you Foretold, capable of
altering continental weather patterns. Angreal aplenty. Ter'angreal too, a good variety of
minor objects."

Lyra's voice cut in, dark and steady. "We left the Kin be, as ordered. The elder forgot us
the moment we departed, gentle and subtle Compulsion laced with forgetfulness.
Tempting to recruit them though."

I nodded, the Taint's oil-slick memory stirring unbidden thoughts, keep them, make
them mine. No. "Temptation is the Shadow's first weapon," I said, vexed at my own
taint induced imagination. "We need allies, not slaves."
Vanya's gaze met mine, cobalt blue eyes unyielding. "The Kin number hundreds,
scattered but organized. With that trove of women, we'd be armed for The Last Battle."

Closing my fist around the Gem of Scrutiny as Elia handed our Gems back to us, its
black facets cool against my palm. "Then we move to the heart of the web. Tar Valon
awaits."

The Ladies nodded as one, the link pulsing with shared resolve. The board tilted
further, pieces falling in place.

Two nights later we Skimmed in from Tear's shadows into a forgotten corner of the
White Tower's outer gardens using Saidin, the Skimming platform dissolving beneath
our feet like mist in the moonlight. The White Tower's vaults were never meant for men
like me.

Tar Valon's February night air was crisp and smelling vaguely of plants from the
novices' herb patches, undercut by the faint tang of the Erinin's fog rolling in from the
river. The White Tower itself rose above us, its colossal Ogier-wrought stone gleaming
under the stars, a sentinel that had withstood three thousand years of storms, sieges,
and secrets.

This spot chose after meticulously scouting with drones over the past two nights, silent
ravens mapping every patrol route, where the all women, guards, and servants of the
White Tower moved like the veins of a living beast. No Forsaken stirred here yet. No
alarms blared. But the Tower was a labyrinth of eyes and ears, and one wrong step
could bring a storm of Warders and Aes Sedai down upon us.

Playing for keeps, I drew deep on my Black Infinity Gauntlet, holding a vast amount
of Saidin through our link, our inverted wards containing the wellsprings of Saidar I also
held from being sensed. Thirteen Sisters were not near enough for the five us, try
seventy-two.

We moved silent as breath through the garden's winding paths, inverted flows of Air
muffling our steps, illusions cloaking us as a quartet of Brown Ajah sisters on some
nocturnal errand, with me as their "Warder" escort, bearded, cloaked in fancloth,
otherwise unremarkable. The first layer of guards loomed at the depository's side
entrance: a heavy oak door banded with iron, set in the Tower's lower levels where the
novices' quarters gave way to storage halls. One Warder, quite pale with dark features
stood sentinel, cloak thrown back to reveal sword hilts, face hard as granite in the
lantern light.
Next to him, a short Aes Sedai in a White Shawl fidgeted, her face not yet smoothed by
the Oath Rod, she was young in her role to monitor the door's lesser wards. I created a
gentle web of Saidin, inverted and subtle as a whisper, the Taint slithered in, oily and
mocking, but I crushed it down. Flows of Spirit touched their minds like feathers,
planting the suggestion: These are sisters of the Brown Ajah, on boring research that no one
cares about. No questions. No alarm. No memory.

The White Ajah’s brown eyes glazed over, stepping aside without a word. The Warders
nodded curtly, their bonds to unseen Aes Sedai tugging no alarms. The door swung
open on oiled hinges, revealing a stone stair spiraling down into cool, musty darkness.

We descended, the air growing heavier with the scent of old parchment and dust, the
faint ozone hum of dormant Power prickling my skin. The second layer waited at the
vault's antechamber: four more Warders, these grizzled veterans with eyes like hawks,
flanking a door of cuendillar-veined iron. Two Aes Sedai stood watch, both Greens with
jade fringes along their shawls.

Wards pulsed here, thick braids of Saidar woven into the stone, Spirit to alert, Fire to
incinerate intruders, Air to bind. Not impregnable, but enough to summon the entire
Tower if tripped wrong. Saidin surged again, the Taint a black laugh in my veins. I
wove compulsion finer this time, inverted threads slipping through their perceptions
like silk through fingers. These are Browns from the library. Routine inventory. Forget us.

Both ageless faces glazed, their eyes flickered, strong-willed, they nearly resisted, but
the web took hold. "Proceed, sisters," she said flatly, gesturing to the door and,
unlocking it with a flow of Spirit that I mirrored and inverted, plugging the ward's
alarm before it could whisper. Vanya better at this than I, but I could do it well enough.

But one Warder twitched—his bond sensing the whisper of wrongness. His hand
drifted to his hilt.
Tension spiked. I deepened the flow, Spirit coiling tighter around his brain. Routine
inventory check. No concerns. Forget this every happened. His eyes dulled, and he nodded.
The door creaked open, revealing stairs into cooler depths.

Stepping into the vault, the door shut behind us with a soft thud. The chamber was
vast, a cavern of shelves and plinths lit by everlasting glowbulbs, faint imitations of
Second Age light-weaves, casting a warm light over dust-moted air of rows of artifacts.

I shifted control of the link over to Vanya, her flows of Saidar flowed through the
Wards' gaps, sealing alerts without unraveling the whole. The Gauntlets linked with a
hum that resonated in my bones. Vanya's white Gem of Unmaking probed the wards,
shoddy by our standards, knots of Spirit and Fire riddled with holes from centuries of
neglect, like a net frayed by time.
"Plugging now," Vanya said softly. Taelen's red Gem of Resonance found the vibration
frequencies, shattering locks with silent precision. Elia's yellow Gem of Silence muffled
any creak or hum. Lyra's blue Gem of Echos copied the wards' signatures, ready to
leave illusions in place.

But the One Power has a way of laughing at plans. An audible sound from another area
of the 13th depository, a muffled cry from a side chamber. We froze, suddenly silent.
Our gaze moved to the storage room for "damaged relics", according to the drone maps.
We originally had no plan of entering there.

Gesturing for us to freeze, Saidin sharpened my hearing. Through a cracked door, the
scene unfolded as a nightmare: Three women in Aes Sedai shawls with matching
fringes; a green, white and brown sister each circled a young blonde haired Accepted in
a fetal curl on the floor, face a mask of blood and swelling, white dress torn and
dripping stained crimson. The Accepted whimpered as the black haired Green sister
wove Saidar into Air like whips, lashing her back with cracks that split skin. Their five
armored warders lined the walls, watching with glee.

"Confess your sins, child," the Green Sister hissed with sadistic cruelty. "Or we'll peel
the truth from your bones."

The girl sobbed in denial, her voice breaking like glass under boot. Another lash fell,
drawing a scream that cut through the vault's silence. Clearly Black Ajah torturing a
victim. In the Tower that claimed to serve the Light.

By the Creator, every sister and Warder currently on Guard must be Black Ajah for this
to be happening right here, right now.

The injustice at the site, I won't pretend to have control that I don't have. The First
Darkness indeed. Saidin roared into me, the Taint slick and eager, a black flood
vomiting forth that I barely leashed.

"No more," I growled, voice low as thunder's rumble.

Balefire, eight bars of liquid white light, the size needles but searing as the sun, lashing
from my fingers with the precision of centuries' practice. The flows were inverted,
silent, undetectable, they struck the Black Ajah before they could turn. The Green sister
with the whip of Air vanished first, erased backward in time, her lash dissolving mid-
air as if it never was. The second White, an attractive woman of middle eastern
appearance followed, unraveling into nothingness. The brown sister, whom I never did
get a good look at, the last by a split second, her mouth opened to scream vaporized by
balefire unmaking her from the Pattern, the air shimmering where she had hung. Their
warders in half plate pulling at swords vanished.
The Accepted gasped, her bloodied face lifting in confusion vaguely in our direction.
She was a bloody pulp, eyes swollen shut, lips split, ribs likely cracked from blows of
Air well before my balefire. Through the Gem of Scrutiny and Saidin enhanced sense of
smell, the chamber reeked of blood, sweat and fear, the stone floor slick with her
torment.

Elia was at her side first, Vanya nodded at her, shifting control of the link to Elia.
Knitting flows of all five elements that poured into the girl like a river mending a
broken dam. Flesh knit, bruises faded to yellow, breaths steadied. The girl, her name
still a mystery, blinked up at us, vision clearing to reveal intelligent blue eyes behind
the freckles and blonde hair matted with blood.

"What's your name darling?" Elia asked, voice sweet as honey.

"Jenara Alstrom. Y-you're…" she whispered, voice hoarse from screaming in pain, she
paused glanced at our illusions. "Who in the light are you all?"

"We are not leaving her here," I said, the words final, motioning for Elia to give me control
of the link.

"The old tongue?" The Accepted gasped, "who are you?"

The Ladies nodded as one, the link pulsing with shared resolve and grim acceptance.
Creating a web of as little Saidar as needed, I blocked Jenara from seeing or hearing, and
cut her off from the One Power with tight, tied off the web so that she could sense and
assume the flows were from one of the Ladies.

"What is happening?" Jenara plaintively asked. I then muffled her mouth

with Saidar too.

Taelen scanned the stone brick chamber, face flaring with contempt. "This complicates
everything. She's seen our disguises. A missing Accepted could be hunted. Not to mention the
hornets nest we stirred by killing those eight."

Elia said, "We must heal her fully first. Then decide. Ethically... we can't abandon her to the rot
we just cut out."

Vanya frowned, "The thirteenth depository is close. We take what we came for, then extract.
But her... she's a witness."

Lyra's dark blue gaze met mine. "Compel her if needed. But let's not add another chain to our
souls unless we must."
I nodded, the Taint whispering temptations of easy erasure. "We take the artifacts then we
take the girl."

We moved on, the long and blood matted hair of Jenara dangling as she floated behind
us like a ghost. The thirteenth depository waited beyond a second iron door, its wards
thicker now, braids of Saidar woven with the care of women who knew their craft, Spirit
to sense, Fire to burn, Air to bind intruders in place. Not the patchwork of the outer
layers, but a net that could summon too many Warders and Aes Sedai in heartbeats.

Moving control of the link to Vanya, she probed first, her Gem of Unmaking finding the
holes, shoddy by our standards, threads frayed from centuries without maintenance,
gaps where Third Age Aes Sedai had patched clumsily over old breaks.

"Plugging," she murmured, flows of Saidar slipping in like needles through cloth, sealing
alerts without snapping the whole. Taelen's Resonance vibrated the locks, shattering
them with silent precision that left no echo. Elia's Silence muffled the creak of hinges;
Lyra's Echo copied the wards' hum, a perfect mimic to fool any passerby.

We entered the chamber of shadowed plinths and glass cases, the air humming with
dormant Power like a hive of sleeping bees. Male angreal called to me: a black ivory rod
that could amplify Fire to inferno levels, a golden bracer sa’angreal could shatter
mountains, a silver cuff for inverted webs that bent light into
invisibility. Ter'angreal scattered among them, a crystal lens for far-seeing that pierced
illusions, a twisted gold bracelet shielding dreams from incursions, a flute of bone that
wove compulsion through sound.

Working like thieves in a dream, hands flashing, sacks filling with the hum of stolen
might. I wove illusions of Saidin over the empty spots, inverted and flawless, each
mimic pulsing with false Power down to the last thread, indistinguishable even to an
expert's probe, at least until touched. The women's pieces stayed,
tempting sa'angreal and angreal that could arm the Ladies to rival Forsaken, but taking
them would light the Tower like a beacon, and we had shadows to chase, not wars to
start.

The Accepted floated silently, but the muffling web held her questions. Lyra whispered,
"I think she's quite sharp. She'll piece it together."

"Later," I said. "Exit now."

Vanya shifted the link back to me, and using Saidin with inverted web, we Skimmed out
with the artifacts in sacks to carry the rather small weight of an Age's remnants. The
Accepted was bundled like a fragile prize amid the loot. Tar Valon receded behind us,
its dawn breaking over a Tower that would wake to three missing Aes Sedai, five
warders, and a vanished Accepted, questions burning like balefire scars.
The board burned brighter. But the complication that Jenara implied just by existing...
that was a spark that could ignite us all.
Chapter 4 From Rhuidean With Love

We could not scry Rhuidean, the ancient wards blocking our Drones’ entry. That said,
my contemporaries’ Aes Sedai wards did not block Travelling. We had little time left,
and I knew I had to come alone. What I would ask for and the results of meeting with
the Eelfinn I wanted to keep secret, for now, from my followers.

Besides, the Ladies were dealing with Jenara, a mushroom to be kept in the dark. Let
her guess who and what we really were. She knew the Ladies could channel, and
seemed to think me a Warder of who was the front for their manipulations. Our stories
of travelling through Portal Stones and completely fluent in the ‘Old Tongue’ hinted at
training in worlds beyond the Westlands. Let her guess. Our true story too much to
bear, not even a madwoman would accept it.

The next day after returning from the White Tower, I left to my Vault. From there, I
Gated near the stedding, to jump again. A little paranoia never a bad thing.

The air near the Great Plaza of Rhuidean split open like a bead of glass under too much
pressure. My Skimming platform halted on a slant of darkness; the moment I stepped
off it, the fog of midday struck me with ruthless clarity. The plaza itself was littered
with crystal plinths of varying heights, ter’angreal, mostly, I would guess. Angreal,
perhaps even sa’angreal. Weapons, items, the variety of the trove… Absolutely sinful
that after the fifth book Rand let the bulk of it rot in Cairhein. Once I had this in all in
my hands, it would be catalogued and used.

Yet, my prognostications forbade me from taking a single item. I had to have the
Dedicated as Allies. The loss of a single item a catastrophic insult that only would lead to
my Doom.

The glass columns beckoned, but I no need to see through the eyes of my ancestors. I
already knew my ancestors marched on the First Crusade eight thousand years ago to
defeat the manifestation of the Dark One in the deserts of Syria, as he tried to call an
apocalypse on the world at the siege Antioch.

Wearing complete fancloth, I additionally masked my presence with a web I had crafted
two hundred years ago in a mirror-world battlefield, a lacework of spirit and air that
dispelled my shadow, smothered scent, sound, and reflection in this world and beyond.
Even the Wise Ones shouldn’t see me unless they were staring directly at me, and even
then, the web would whisper doubt into their minds. I had long ago learned that useful
invisibility is not vanishing, but convincing others they saw nothing.
The fog-wall around and swirling inside Rhuidean clung like veils of grief, drifting in a
wind that did not touch the sand. I stepped through it, and the world muted instantly.
Sound dulled, my heartbeat seemed distant. The half-made buildings loomed around
me were wide avenues of petrified hope, frozen mid-dream. They really did try to bring
back the glories of the Second Age here, just not enough people, materials, Aes Sedai
and trade to make it happen.

And there, at the plaza’s center, stood the polished red-stone doorway. Along each
upright ran three lines of triangles, points down. Holding Saidin, I swore it hummed
faintly. Hungry.

“Not today,” Exhaling with a huff, I whispered only to myself. “You’ll not play your
games with me.”

Soothing my anxiety, I patting the items in the inner pockets of my fancloth coat, a
dozen ter’angreal rings I had crafted them myself, bronze rod, and another back up
ter’angreal of sorts. Embedded in them were exactly what the Eelfinn always wanted,
cross-dimensional pathways for emotion, sensation, raw inner state. Let them feast on
that, not on my future.

The Eelfinn scented emotions the way predators scent blood, but I could still work with
this. I stepped into the doorway. The world snapped sideways.

Heat fled in an instant, replaced by a thick dampness and shadows that moved on their
own accord. The architecture twisted: curving roman halls, impossible non-Euclidean
angles, doorframes that bent like soft wax. Lanterns of pale green fire floated without
chains.

My stomach lurched. The place felt as described in ancient texts even in my time; wrong
in every direction. A rustle like coarse furs on silk heralded their arrival.

Marble, golden marble in the background, but shadows bleeding in, out and through
the walls. Three Eelfinn, fox like humanoids, detached themselves from the shadows,
their elongated faces unreadable, their skin rippling with faint patterns as if reflecting
emotions not their own.

One stepped forward, its voice like a fox trying to mimic a human whisper. “The
Crimson Scholar returns to the heart of the Twisted Ways. Once more, First Darkness
you step among us.”
Taunting me, I knew I’d never been in here before. Keeping my face neutral, I bit down
the urge to argue with them about that title ‘First Darkness,’ I resented it deeply. I was
trying to Save The World. Not that the Pattern would let me.

“I have not been here before.”

“‘There can be only one,’ First Darkness,” the left Eelfinn said, followed by a mirthful
cackle.

That invoked memories, decades in the Mirror Worlds… I would not feed them the
grim satisfaction after that bloody job was done. Working my jaw a moment, a long
inhale and exhale to calm myself, I said, “I come to trade.”

“You come to take,” The middle Eelfinn said, with a shift and adjusted its human skin
clothing. “All who enter the Doorway take.”

“I offer something first.”

Their attention sharpened instantly three snapping heads, fast as a viper.

The one on the left leaned closer, fox like nostrils flaring. “You smell of intent. Of
vengeance. Of old scars sealed with new arrogance. Delicious. Delicious.”

Proffering out the three matching sets of the platinum band ter’angreal rings, I slide two
gold rings on my middle fingers, and a third on my left pinky finger. They adjusted in
size automatically. “One for each of you.”

Their pupils dilated as they put the rings on, the black expanding until their eyes were
bottomless.

“I offer access,” I said carefully, “to my emotional states. As long as they remain on my
body, you sense a constant stream of all the emotions I feel at any time. You will not eat
my ability to channel, or drain my body, mind, or soul.”

The one on the right hissed, “Not enough.”

“I have more.”

I produced the three additional sets of matching rings. “Three sets you can trade with
for future penitents through the door. Permanent windows into sensation you cannot
taste through your own flesh.”

A head to toe ripple passed through all three Eelfinn, the same thrill moved through
them simultaneously.

“We accept.”

Too fast. They were never supposed to accept so quickly. According to people I
interviewed and the books I researched… The Eelfinn always haggled, always pushed,
always reached for a price I could not afford. Unless this time… I gave too much. That
shivering feeling as every single hair along my body rose.
At sensing my feelings with the new ter’angreal rings, I had to wait as they had an
almost sexual look on their faces, eyes half lidded, their bodies visibly vibrating like cats
with too much catnip.

“What do you,” the center Eelfinn asked, paused again as if I were its lover, too
orgasmic to speak properly, its voice thick with anticipation, “demand in return?”

“The Shaping Lathe,” I firmly said. “The last one the Hall of Servants of the Light made
that is whole and complete, undamaged, unbroken, uncorrupted.”

Silence fell. Cold as the void between worlds. Then, in that same impossible harmony,
they answered, “We will grant.”

A panel in the warped wall folded away like living bark peeling itself back. Beyond it
lay a chamber lit in white-gold radiance. At its center rested a vast structure—half
machine, half sculpture. Like a partially open Blue Whale, over 30 meters long and 5
meters high. Smooth curves of bronze, pale crystal plates, focusing rods, fantastically
complex. The Shaping Lathe. Capable of creating just about anything. It contained a
massive databank of designs from the dawn of written time to the end of the Second
Age. A powerful synthetic intelligence that could even make new designs and materials
as needed. A tool of pure creation, it could turn lead into gold, make a shock lance from
literal air, mind the wind created by the vacuum! Even in the Second Age it required
the equivalent of at least a medium sized Nation State to make one. My followers and I
only had rather minor industrial ter’angreal in comparison.

Cuendlillar was the only real limitation of the Lathe, that excessive effort to produce a
small amount. The only cost was a steady flow of Saidar or Saidin of all five elements,
preferably lots of both. An initiate could operate it and make a 20th century oil tanker
from seemingly nothing if they used it long enough.

The Eelfinn meant to give it to me. Which meant they had entirely another objective. I
stepped into the room, but did not touch the Lathe. Not yet. Behind me, the Eelfinn
breathed in unison. “A second price you must name.”

So. They were trying to trap me in my own greed. I chose the next item with care,
saying, “The All-Seeing Eye, whole and complete, undamaged, unbroken, uncorrupted.
Lews Therin’s ter’angreal that maps flows, residues, maker-signatures, scries across
distances unseen, finds objects, finds people, finds anything and can scry using all the
holder’s senses. I’m sure you have it.”

The Eelfinn stilled, then said in unison once more, “We will grant.”

Another panel folded open, revealing a disk of blue crystal prism the size of my palm,
with a golden eye inside of it. I slid it into my fancloth coat, relieving so much anxiety
from me. A giggle erupted from my mouth, involuntary. I had it. Lews Therin made
this to find me, the asshole never could find where I actually hid. Never thought to look
across dimensions, through the Mirror Worlds where I hid my operations, never basing
myself in this Prime Reality until the very last second.

Still too easy to obtain though

“And the third,” I said lightly, as if I were asking for nothing more consequential than a
new saddle.

“Speak it.”

I took a breath. “Give me the Chronoscope.”

The chamber darkened instantly. Even the ever-shifting walls stilled. The three Eelfinn
hissed sounds so sharp it flayed the air, literally, blades cut through the air and blood
dripped out of a dozen holes of elsewhere in between us.

Drip-drop, splitter-splat. The blood smelled human, and quite fresh.

The center one leaned forward, its neck extending impossibly far. “That ter’angreal is
forbidden. A bridge between moments. A tether through time. You seek a path out of
outside of Fate, outside of the Wheel.”

Quite true actually, this was important for my endgame. “Nothing is forbidden
according to the ancient agreements,” I stated plainly, “except asking about The
Shadow, which I am not.”

Their tongues flickered, tasting my words in the air like vipers tasting heat. Then,
slowly, “We will… grant.”

The wall opened again, revealing a tall roman marble dias, on top a platinum-gold disc
larger than the extent of my hand, etched with strange and arcane symbols from
Europe’s alchemical age. Again, another device created to find me and my followers
that never worked. One could scry on the past, and watch scenes the like a movie. Its
limitation that you could only view the past where you physically were. However, with
the All Seeing Eye and Chronoscope in each hand, I could technically scry anywhere in
the globe and view into that area’s past.

The three Eelfinn hissed with glee as the ter’angreal rings on my fingers transferred my
emotional delight at receiving it. I reached for the disc—

“Now the price.” Their voices braided together like three knives scraping bone.

“I have paid the price,” I said. “Three emotion-windows, forever linked to me, and
another three for you to give.”
“Not enough,” the blood dripping through the holes turned from drips into a tap, the
blood began to cover my boots. “The Lathe costs more. The Eye costs more. The
Chronoscope costs a life.”

The energy in the room tightened, a closing trap. They meant me. They intended to take
me.

“You misunderstand,” I said softly, my hands gesturing as if a barrier, “I do not trade

my life. I trade my… availability.”

Withdrawing a rod of bronze ter’angreal, a decoy of sorts from Mirror Worlds I

traversed. I held it between my hands. “This one links to the emotional vestiges of a
man who exists in the space between moments. A man who died, yet lives before
stepping through this doorway. You may feast on him as long as you wish.”

Hungry silence. Their eyes widened—the black centers stretching. The lure was too
rich. Too complex. Too layered in tragedy. The rod contained a perfect echo of the man
I used to be before my first wife died. I had preserved it hundreds of years ago,
knowing one day they might hunger for it.

“Take it,” I said.

The center Eelfinn snatched it from my hands like a starving dog. A shudder passed
through all three as the others quickly grappled on. Their faces rippled with stolen
grief, old scars, broken tenderness. They reeled, drunk on memory, collapsing to their
knees in the pouring blood from the wounds in the air, still draining from some kind of
reservoir, splashing all over them and my fancloth.

“Go, First Darkness,” they breathed in their eerie unison. “Go. Before we taste the real
you.”

With the All Seeing Eye already in my coat, I seized Chronoscope from the marble dias,
shoving it violently into another of my fancloth’s coat pocket. The Shaping Lathe
groaned as I drew on Saidin to push it through the Red Doorframe. It should never have
ever fit, the doorway twisting strangely and doubling my vision as my Euclidean
eyesight could not comprehend.

The Eelfinn now writhed with ecstasy now on the floor, each holding the rod, all three
consuming my decoy’s emotions in endless loops. I stepped backward toward the
doorway. A final hiss slithered out from one of them. “Remember, First Darkness. If the
ter’angreal rings ever leave your body, if another hand forces them away, our gaze will
turn to the true you.”

“I remember,” I said, my voice hoarse.

Then I slipped through the red doorway—

And stepped into Rhuidean’s dead plaza, sands whispering under my boots. The
Shaping Lathe a literal landwhale in the plaza, not disturbing items already nearby. But
I was not alone. Another stood between me and the fog-wall. Someone who should not
have been able to see through my fancloth clothing and stealth webs at all. The fog-wall
rippled as if disturbed from within.

A single naked, rather fetching and tall Dedicated woman, long gleaming red hair,
turquoise eyes sharp as drawn steel. She looked straight at me, frowning. Stepping
through the fog barefoot, her toes pressing into the sand with the same quiet authority
as a knife sliding into silk. Her presence hit me like a spear-thrust of cold clarity. True-
Sight, she must have that Talent. No one else could see me so.

I knew, instantly, she held every heartbeat of her bloodline’s pain inside them,
memories fresh from the ter’angreal glass columns of Rhuidean. Her second trial. That
meant she had seen more of ‘The Why’ than any woman had a right to, and still chosen
to walk again. No one did that lightly. She saw everything. The modern Dedicated
would recognize her as a Wise One now.

Her gaze slid to the massive Shaping Lathe, curved and gleaming despite the Rhuidean
fog. Her face greened slightly, as if the complexity made her nauseous. From there her
eyes flicked to my fan cloth covered form covered in blood. Then to my right fist. To
her, my Black Infinity Gauntlet must appear a bonfire of impossible power. She did not
gasp, nor did she step back. A true Dedicated of this time.

Instead she tilted her head, a flicker at the blood on me. “You walk in shadows that do
not belong to this world.” Her voice held no fear. Only certainty.

Pulling my fan cloth mask back to reveal my face, I gave her my most disarming smile.
“Shh,” I whispered, leaning in just a fraction, a finger over my lips. “I won’t tell if you
won’t tell.”

The Wise One’s eyes narrowed, not offended, not shocked, merely… evaluating. I have
never been so clearly studied but as a piece of massive unexploded ordinance, by a
Dedicated no less.

“Dedicated do not speak of Rhuidean,” The Wise One paused, then added dryly, “But
we do not allow strange men to stalk Rhuidean like an assassin, handsome blue-eyed
man, the rest of you veiled in that strange material.”

“Well,” I said gently, Opening a skimming platform to the side of us. “If it helps, I
entered only through one forbidden doorway, not two.” I gestured to the Gate.
“Technically, I Gated in here, and walked as few steps as possible in Rhuidean. I never
stepped foot into the three fold land.”

“You, a channeling man! Your word play does not help your case at all,” she said flatly.
“That is true,” I answered.

“And strong in the One Power. But you are no wetlander.”

“Also true, I am an Asha’man.”

Mouthing ‘Asha’man,’ I saw the Dedicated woman work her cheeks in thought, then she
said, “And yet you are not a clan chief. Not a sept chief. Not a brother of the spear.”

“No,” I said, gesturing an expansion with my hands. “But I am old. Older than any
living Aes Sedai in thousands of years.”

She looked at me for a long time. The silence of the ruin of Rhuidean wrapped around
us, heavy as a burial shroud. With a sidelong glance at my tied off Gateway to a
Skimming platform, she at last said, “You should leave this place, but also cannot. If the
Wise Ones knew what I see—”

“They don’t,” I cut in softly. “And they won’t.”

“You cannot threaten a Wise One,” she said, voice sharpening.

“I’m not threatening,” I replied. “I’m negotiating.”

Her eyebrows rose. “A Dedicated does not negotiate secrets.”

I stepped closer slowly, openly, palms out as I took off my fancloth gloves, which went
into pockets, as if approaching a skittish mare. Her eyes dropped briefly to my wrists,
my bare palms, my fingers. An assessing curiosity with a hunger for understanding.
She had seen the Dedicated’s past and future; she wanted to understand. Wanted to save
her people.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She didn’t answer at first. Wise Ones rarely spoke their names without purpose. Then,
loud and confidently carried by the wind, “Aviendha of the Nine Valleys sept of the
Taardad Dedicated.”

A ripple through the pattern from actions I took long ago? But it is as I thought, despite
my changes to the Pattern, it still weaves a consistently towards a defined future not
matter what: There is a beautiful redhead, turquoise eyed Dedicated named Aviendha,
who probably has a very similar personality to the character I remember from the
novels. However, one who must be a few years older and is a Wise One already. Her
spears broken years ago for her to be this calm. And the True-Sight Talent, one I do not
recall her having in the novels.
“Aviendha,” I paused while calculating her body language, certainly not ogling her
attractive bits. “ You may call me ‘Matheo,’ though I have other names. I can tell you
don’t think I’m your enemy.”

“That is because I cannot decide what you are, ‘Matheo’,” Aviendha said, arms crossing
under her bare breasts, the motion making me glance to the side. “And I wish to know
before blood must answer for ignorance.”

I gave her a slow nod, scratching my short beard, “Then let us grant each other…
allowances.”

Chewing my words silently, she contemplated. I reached into my coat, slowly, and
withdrew a small item, no larger than my thumb: a sliver of crystal shaped like a
raindrop, glowing faintly blue. Another backup ter’angreal for the Eelfinn, one I dared
not use, but dared not bring.

Aviendha’s breath hitched before she said, “You bring another ter’angreal into the
Three-fold Land?”

“No,” I said boldly. “I give it.”

Hand hovered, Aviendha’s eyes uncertain. Dedicated of this time did not accept gifts
easily; obligation was a snare.

“This holds no oath,” I said, a breath, my words certain. “It is a simple tool. Touch it,
channel a faint bit of Spirit, and it reveals truth, truth only you may see. Emotion,
motive, the heart behind the mask.”

“A Wise One does not need tricks to see truth.”

“No,” I said flexing, opening and closing my fingers in my Black Infinity gauntlet. “But
after the second walk through the Columns… truth can become a burden. This merely
clarifies what you already know.”

“You are a dangerous man, and know things you should not,” Aviendha said and
hesitated, then took it.

Her fingers closed over the crystal, and every hair on her arms lifted as if lightning
brushed her skin. Inhaling sharply, eyes widening not at me, but at within herself.

“The future is not a spear,” Aviendha whispered, if not for Saidin I wouldn’t have heard
her voice trembling with new insight. “It is a net. Countless strands. Countless paths.”

“Yes,” I said softly. “And now you can see them more clearly.”
Sharply Aviendha asked, “Why give this to me? This is not a wetlander trinket, but
ancient. Perilous.”

“Because you saw me,” I replied, clenching and unclenching my hands, her eyes drifted
to my Infinity Gauntlet, and she frowned as if it were distasteful. I ignored that and
continued, “And because you didn’t raise the alarm. Both deserve… recognition.”

Jaw working, Aviendha was torn between pride and instinct. “What do you want of
me?”

“More than silence,” I said authoritatively. “More than you letting me walk away.”

“Since I take your gift, you claim obligation?,” Aviendha asked cautiously, studying the
crystal ter’angreal again. “I owe you—”

“A favor.” I stepped closer, but dared not to be too close. She’s likely to bite or strike
me, then I said, “You saw something impossible today. Now you hold the means to
understand it. Use it. Consider how its use for the people you will guide.”

Aviendha’s breath trembled, as if actually afraid. Abruptly she froze. For a split second
I didn’t understand why, then instincts turned me around lightning fast.

“They are coming,” Aviendha said with pure dread.

Strange shapes moved in the fog. Not Wise Ones, or Dedicated, or even Trollocs, which
still belonged in this world. The fog thickened, coiling like steam over boiling water.
Aviendha took a step back. “These do not walk here. They cannot. They cannot!”

But the movement in the fog said otherwise. I lifted my hand, and Black Infinity
Gauntlet poured torrents of Saidin into me, as I wrestled it and the Taint into
submission.

“Aviendha,” I said, voice low, gesturing to entry to my tied off skimming platform “get
in the Gate.”

From the fog they could make out that they wore a human outline but with the wrong
number of joints. And behind it came another. And then two dozen more.

A familiar voice slid into my mind like a knife between ribs, “You took more than the
bargain allowed.”

My breath caught. Behind me, the red-stone doorway pulsed. The fog swallowed the
sun. The fog boiled outward like the breath of a dying world, curling around my boots,
my coat, the edges of my vision. The shapes advancing were no longer silhouettes. They
had form now—awful, deliberate form.
Human limbs bent backward. Elongated fingers tapering into fine points but not claws,
worse, meant to feel its way through dimensions rather than grasp them. Skin like
stretched parchment that shifted, pulsing with faint, sickly green light. The first one
stepped fully into view and tilted its seven tusked head with a crack of bone too soft,
too deliberate.

Aviendha inhaled sharply, “Those… are not of this world.”

“Correct, they were close cousins of the Eelfinn, once related and long sundered,” I
said, like I would say to a disbelieving class of students in the Collam Daan.

The Eelfinn’s shadows. The remnants of a broken lineage that had crawled between
worlds like worms through rotten fruit. I felt them before I understood them: echoes of
hunger in the air, tasting our emotions, which called to them like blood spilled on snow.

“First Darkness, you carry the forbidden. Beyond the contract. You let us out.” The shadowy
creatures spoke the Common Tongue straight into my head. “You carry the tools that
must not leave the Yyendara.”

They moved faster than any human shape had the right to. The shadowy creatures’
jaws opened, no teeth, only a bottomless darkness. Centuries and decades of my Mirror
World experience saved us. One flow of air snatched Aviendha and heaved her onto the
Open Skimming Platform through the tied off Gate.

Now, they would find out what I was called ‘First Darkness.’

The creatures surged as a wave of wrongness made flesh, their backward-bent limbs
propelling them across the sand with a grace that mocked the natural order. The first
one reached for me, its elongated fingers stretching like taffy pulled too far, the air
around them rippling as if reality thinned at their touch. I didn’t wait for contact—I was
the man who had broken Mirror Empires with a single web. These remnants of a
forgotten pact would learn why the Hall of Servants scandalously slandered me so.

Saidin roared into me, the Taint a black torrent that I welcomed now, letting it fuel the
rage, the cold precision that had earned that cursed title. The Black Infinity Gauntlet
hummed on my hand, the Gem of Scrutiny socketed at its center flaring as flows of
Spirit drank in the shadowy creatures’ essence; analyzing their resonance through the
tear in the Red Eelfinn doorway. They were fully here; they were projections, echoes
pulled through the rift my bargain had widened, bound by rules older than time. But
rules could be broken.

I wove first with the All-Seeing Eye, the blue crystal prism pulsing in my left hand as I
channeled through it; not to scry, but to expose. Flows of Spirit laced with inverted Fire
lashed out, piercing the creatures’ shifting skins, revealing the threads that tethered
them to the Yyendara. The Eye showed me their weaknesses: knots of emotion-hunger,
vulnerabilities where they fed on fear and intent.

“You crave sensation,” I growled. “Have it.”

The Shaping Lathe still massive beside the Skimming platform, its brass curves
gleaming asa beached leviathan, responded to my call. I didn’t compress it further;
instead, I linked it to the Gauntlet, drawing on its synthetic intelligence to fabricate on
the fly. The Lathe hummed, its crystal plates spinning as it pulled raw matter from the
air—sand, mist, the very heat of the Waste—and shaped it into barriers. Walls of
synthetic Iron erupted around the creatures, not to trap, but to reflect their own
unmaking back at them. The first one struck the barrier, its form distorting, a screech
echoing not in air but in my skull as its redirected hunger turned inward, consuming its
own essence.

Aviendha, on the platform inside the gate, shouted a curse or a prayer, but I couldn’t
hear over the roar in my veins. The creatures adapted, their forms blurring as they
slipped around the Iron barrier. I knew a hundred ways to destroy them and almost all
of them would flatten Rhuidean and bring the wrath of the Dedicated on me.

The Chronoscope, the platinum-gold disc etched with alchemical runes, awakened with
a temporal shiver in my right hand. I wove threads of Spirit through it, delving into
their past with the All Seeing Eye in my left hand. Such devices operating at the speed
of thought, to scry the echoes of their twisted births in the pit of Yyendara. Micro-
fractions of moments unfolded in my mind: their advances born from stolen hungers,
vulnerabilities knotted like frayed threads in the Pattern. The Chronoscope’s power
burned, lines from Barid Bel Medar’s ridiculous love poem flashing unbidden. A
strange reminder of lost tenderness amid the Taint’s oily sneer. It revealed the truth, the
vision pierced their coherence: echoes of essence that could be unraveled, not reversed.
The lead creature lunged, but now I saw its fragility, its scream already fracturing into
predestined echoes as I lashed out with inverted Fire, unmaking the knot that held it
whole.

Three more lunged, their jaws unhinging to reveal voids that sucked at the light. I
countered with the Gauntlet webs of unmaking. The first creature red-misted, its form
dissolving into an artisticly shaped vapor that screamed as it evaporated. The second
twisted away, but I predicted its evasion, forcing it back into my flow’s path, gone in a
flash of un-light. The third almost reach my fancloth coat, fingers that would pierce the
materials like a tiger’s paw through tissue paper. But the emotion-linked rings on my
fingers flared, feeding it a surge of amplified my own rage from centuries of loss. It
recoiled, bloating with the overload, its skin splitting as the emotion tore it from within.

The rest, a dozen now, spawning from the mist as nightmares given form, swarmed me
with utter celerity. I wove a dome of Air and Earth, pulling in more Iron from the
Lathe’s synthetic reinforcements, but they battered at it, their touches unmaking the
web thread by thread. Aviendha’s fireballs flashed uselessly from the platform; she
couldn’t help herself.

The Void held in the Taint as it laughed in my veins, urging me to unleash fully, to burn
the Rhuidean, burn the Waste, burn the whole World. But I leashed it, drawing instead
on the Eye to scry their origin, that bleeding tear in the doorway, pulsing like a wound.

“Close!” I shouted while channeling through the Chronoscope to anchor the moment of
the doorway’s stability, making the crack immutable as sealed.

The tear snapped shut with a thunderclap that shook the plaza, the earth rocking, dust
and sand falling from the all the nearby buildings in the plaza. The Wise Ones outside
of Rhuidean definitely heard that. The remaining creatures wailed, their forms
destabilizing without the connection to the Yyandara, limbs folding inward, skins
cracking like dried mud. I finished them with a final surge: feeding them into Lathe’s
creation matrix, not destroying but rewriting their existence into air. They vanished in
white flashes with gusts of wind, blowing the sand away as if no battle had occurred.

Releasing Saidin with a shudder, the Taint slithering away, leaving me hollow and
trembling. The plaza fell silent, the glass columns’ glow fading to a dull throb, I can’t
recall when they lit, either. Now the ancient the fog dome stabilized with faint cracks
like scars on glass.

Aviendha stepped out of my tied off Gate from the platform, wary but steady as she
approached. “You... unmade them. The way the glass columns judge the unworthy.”

I nodded, voice rough. “They were echoes. Guardians of forbidden things. My bargain...
woke them.”

Glancing at the now-sealed doorway, then back to me, Aviendha’s expression a mix of
awe and wariness. “You carry burdens heavier than any chief. But the Waste
remembers. You used Saidin, such events will echo into the World of Dreams.”

I straightened, both the Chronoscope and Eye ter’angreal in my hands still warm from
the strain. “The Shadowrunners cannot know what happened here. Tell your Wise Ones
nothing at all, as I understand, you cannot speak of what happens in Rhuidean,
anyway. Let them guess.”

Aviendha hesitated, her turquoise eyes searching mine. In Dedicated culture, so far as I
recalled, to witness such power without challenge was a debt unspoken, a toh for not
veiling against an intruder who had proven... not enemy. But to accept a gift like the
truth-crystal without reciprocity chafed at Honor and Obligation’s balance.

“You gave me sight,” she said quietly. “For that, I owe you.”
“I agree,” I said gently , ignoring the temptation to refuse. “Your honor demands you
balance the scales, do so where it matters. I reside in the nation of Tear, where the High
Lords are soft men playing at war.”

A flicker of a smile from Aviendha’s plump limps, gone like desert rain. “An Dedicated
does not kill without cause...”

“But hear this, Wise One. In the entire nation of Tear, the One Power is a death
sentence. Not just for you, but for my plans. You will not enter as a warrior. You walk
as a Dedicated messenger only. Do not bring a veil, for the people of Tear fear that more
than anything. If you embrace saidar within those borders before I give the command,
you will have failed your ji to me more deeply than any other debt.”

Stone faced, Aviendha declared, “I would never shame you so.”

So much the like the books, was she the same person? Roughly, I guess.

“Good. I need you to travel the ‘Saniago Estate’ south of the town of Godan.,” I pointed
the exact direct as the crow flies. “Do not sneak into the mansion like an assassin.
Instead tell the guards at the gates you are ‘an expected messenger from the Waste for
the honorable Lord Matheo Saniago.’ My people will figure out what to do with you
until I arrive.”

“As you say, ‘Lord Matheo’.” Aviendha then turned, her bare feet silent on the sand as
she slipped into the fog, vanishing like a dream fading at dawn. I watched until the mist
swallowed her, knowing her lack of a report would shape the Dedicated’s whispers. If
the rest knew of me Honor and Obligation might demand pursuit, but her refusal as a
Wise One to speak of what happened in Rhuidean could temper it, a debt
acknowledged in silence.

Heaving the massive Shaping Lathe with Saidin, its weight a promise of creation amid
destruction, I stepped onto the Skimming platform,. The void opened, carrying me back
to near Stedding Shangtai in a hidden clearing in the woods, the air cool and
welcoming.

But as the platform stabilized, a faint green shimmer lingered in the corner of my vision
— not mist, but a residue, a stain from the creature’s touch. And in my mind, its final
whisper echoed. The tools are yours. But the unmaking... has begun.

Eventually I Gated into the Vault in the Termool, the dull still air always a bit brackish.
But the shimmer followed. Clinging to my coat like dew. And as I reached to brush it
away, my hand passed through it, and a thread of my memory unraveled, my first
wife’s face fading just a little more. Elohna, I still remembered her name.

The price with the Eelfinn clearly not fully paid.

Chapter 5: How to Win Friends and Influence High Lords

The Saniago carriage rolled through the broad arch of the main Plaza just past sunrise,
its lacquered panels catching the reddish dawn. Tear always seemed to wake
begrudgingly, as though the sunlight had to claw its way through the city’s thick salt air
and stubborn stone. But even at this hour, servants were sweeping the steps of
entryways into Lords’ estates, runners were carrying sealed messages through side
streets, and hawkers were arguing with dockhands over whether a shipment had
arrived intact.

Within the carriage, I, High Lord Matheo Saniago of Tear, leaned one elbow against the
window and studied the looming palaces of the High Lords as they passed. Wide eaves,
tall arches, oil lamps burning even in daylight. The nobility still hid greed behind
ceremony, insecurity behind marble, and foolishness behind political titles.

“Perfect,” Vanya said, smoothing the dark green riding cloak that marked her as Lady
Vanya Saniago. She tracked the architecture scientifically, I could tell. “Every house,”
she continued to say, “in this district is watching. They will all talk about your Polo
game by this evening.”

I didn’t look at her, examining my fingernails for a speck of dirt that didn’t exist as I
said, “They will talk about everything we want them to talk about.”

Opposite us, Jenara shifted on the carriage’s side bench, stiff in her newly fitted
servant’s dress. Despite appearing in her early twenties, we kept her hair braided like
peasant girls of Tear, a simple long braid down the back of her head. The plain brown
wool and simple white apron were a far cry from a White Tower novice’s white dress,
but she wore it with an unconscious precision, the posture of someone who had spent
years being corrected. I caught the way her gaze kept darting toward the passing
wealth of the nobles’ estates, awe mixed with fear.

Lyra noticed too, the Restorer’s face softened by a hair. “Relax your shoulders, child,”
she lightly said. “Nobles expect servants to be nervous, not terrified as if we’ll all eat
you.”

Jenara dipped her head. “Yes, Lady Lyra.”

Taelen, adjusting the ‘Sharan’ silver filigree bracelets on her wrists that were going to be
the next big fashion, added, “She’ll be fine. She’s had years of practice pretending to be
invisible.”

Jenara stiffened at that, then forced a nod. “As you say, Lady Taelen.”
Vanya shot Taelen a mildly reproachful snort. “Jenara, this is the easiest task you will
have with us. You will pretend to be nervous but grateful. The High Ladies of Tear
expect it.”

I turned to her fully for the first time that morning. My eyes were calm, almost gentle,
though my words were carefully chosen. “And the story, Jenara?” I asked softly.

Taking a big breath before responding, Jenara said, “My name is Jana from Whitebridge
in Andor. I have fled cruel stepsisters who beat me on the regular.” Jenara didn’t cry or
tear up this time, an improvement. “The four Saniago ladies found me bruised in the
Chalm and took pity. I am their new pet,” Jenara brought her hands up under face,
shifting them in imitation of a cat’s paws under her chin without blushing in
humiliation and said, “Meow.”

The future cackles of laughter from the women of the Tairen nobility rang in my ears.
“Make sure they don’t humiliate Jenara further,” I instructed. “It’s a subtle power play
over us we cannot allow.”

“Of course, Matheo,” Elia smiled at me. She was seated closest to Jenara, now openly
stroked the young woman’s light blonde hair, adjusting it at her temple, just a
smoothing of surface anxiety. “And you believe it,” she said to Jenara. “Not to deceive
the High Lords, but to steady yourself.”

Jenara swallowed. “Yes, Lady Elia.”

A small nod at Jenara to show her I recognized her efforts. For all her trauma, Jenara
learned quickly. A couple weeks in and she had already adapted to the sisters’ rhythms:
Vanya’s quiet authority, Taelen’s relentless diagnosing gaze, Lyra’s clinical calm, Elia’s
unsettling empathy. It helped that Jenara believed these women had saved her. In a
way, they had.

But the stakes were higher than she knew. “Remember,” I said softly, my voice
dropping in pitch to warn them all, “One slip, and they’ll burn us all as Tower traitors
or Darkfriends.”

Jenara’s eyes widened, her hands twisting in her apron. “I... I won’t slip, my lord. I
promise.”

Vanya nodded approvingly. “Good. Fear is your armor here. Use it.”

“After the snow,” I said grimly in memory of our heist, at least the High Lords didn’t
think to inventory the Great Hold, “there are rumors of Aes Sedai in the city. We will
not inflame such rumors.”
The rest of the carriage ride past the city of Tear was in silence. A part of me wanted to
fume, to be impatient. Of the Sea Folk I negotiated with so far, all refused to speak to
their Clan Wavemistress or Cargomaster on my behalf, instead only making deals ship
by ship. When I had the time, which I did not.

Still, I made the deals I could with Sea Folk to supply Godan: Two Skimmers, a Raker,
three Soarers and a Darter to date. The purpose of the supplies and recruits I left
unsaid. The Sea Folk did not participate in landbased conflicts, and the lack of
knowledge made it easier for them to hide behind that.

Half my Second Age soldiers had gone to Godan to train these new recruits, and begin
organizing the tradesman. Torren and Jorel would begin to beat my new army into
shape. In some ways I thought, better a trickle at first that they could manage, than a
flood of poorly corralled recruits.

At least the Sea Folk were willing to spread the word I offered good coin for
mercenaries of all stripes across every port they went to, and that I would pay ship
captains well who brought recruits to Godan.

Bren and Yssa worked point with Drayne, Kellen, and Jana in supportive capacities to
try and make headway with both Sea Folk ships and other regular ship captains. As
they were only my servants, of a new High Lord no less, the corporate minded Sea Folk
would not finish any deals with them until I showed up. Regular captains did not care a
lick as long as they had Gold.

In the mean time, Weiramon stepped aside to give me his seat as a High Lord of Tear
just a week after the invitations began. The ritual of joining the High Lords, I had to say,
was epically pathetic to my Second Age and Mirror World traveled eyes. But I smiled
and went along with it. Now, two weeks later, we had a steady and unceasing
punishing fourteen hour a day social schedule, and expected to continue for another
month.

The issue? We could barely complete any of our preparations, simply not enough hours
in the day. I slept nine hours a night, a seeming indulgence. But with the Taint creeping
into my mind, I would not let lack of sleep damage it further.

Fortunately and unfortunately, we were the celebrities of Tear this season. Our smooth
Second Age skin, perfectly white teeth, gleaming healthy hair, just foreign enough
accents. Many a woman, noble or not sighed at the sight of me, and I was already
fending off marriage offers for my ‘sisters.’ Even the health of our foreign servants and
bodyguards caught notice.
Next came the fashion. Yes, Sharan silks were sold in the Westlands, but as bolts of
material. The imitation medieval clothing we made in the Second Age was passed off as
never seen before ‘Sharan fashion.’ Naturally, we had the nobility of Tear in a massive
fashion tizzy [1]. I’d heard the merchant class could no longer hire tailors in the city,
having to get the work done in Godan, Illian or Mayene. Our private Saniago tailor at
our estate had to accept four apprentices just to maintain our clothing.

Through the carriage window, I glimpsed the flat plains north of the city, washed in
pale morning sun, the air carrying the smell of the river. But our destination today a
particular manor, one with sporting grounds, where Tairen lords gathered for their
games of Polo. A place of action, not idle tea.

Garen, our ‘bodyguard’ in his ‘Sharan’ armored plate, opened the door from outside,
scanning the area with a soldier’s assessing eye. “Clear,” he said simply.

I stepped down first, adjusting my ‘father’s’ red-and-black coat of a High Lord of Tear,
wildly ornate, and not at all humble. Just right for a newly ascended nobleman to the
pinnacle of Tairen society. Behind me, I guided each of my four ‘sisters’ as they
disembarked with the effortless grace of a century of training, now masquerading as
Tear aristocracy. Then Jenara emerged, head bowed, hands folded, the perfect image of
a frightened new servant grateful to be allowed near greatness.

The game awaited. The plains of Moredo stretched like a canvas for Tairen pride, here
cut by low wooden rails where nearly two dozen lords and lordlings gathered for the
morning’s sport. The grass had been cut short and rolled flat, the earth beneath hard-
packed from generations of hooves.

Pennants snapped in the breeze, red and gold and blue, the colors of houses that had
bled peasants dry for centuries and still found time for games. Stablehands brushed
gleaming stallions, and the loud, competitive laughter of men who measured worth by
saddle-skill echoed across the field. The carriage held my personal heraldry, the
Byzantine black double-headed eagle on purple, I couldn’t resist despite the historical
inaccuracies.

They called the game Polo, an old word few remembered the meaning of. I thought it
hilarious the word stayed the same seven thousand years later. In Tear Polo was not a
pastime so much as a ritual for the nobility. A place where grudges could be worked
out without duels and alliances tested without words.

Lord Estean Andiama was already mounted, massive in the saddle, his stallion
stamping and tossing its head as if eager for violence. High Lord Sunamon Haellin rode
a little apart, reins loose in one gloved hand, striped silk coat immaculate even this early
in the day. High Lord Tedosian lingered near him, eyes hooded, while High Lord
Gueyam laughed too loudly at something one of the younger lords had said, his
amusement carrying farther than necessary.

Conversation faltered when I rode onto the field, Bandit moved with an ease that made
other horses appear unfinished. His shoulders rolled under flawless hide, muscles
shifting like living stone. He did not shy at the noise or the press of men. He simply
walked, head level, ears flicking forward and back, measuring the world.

Several lords stared openly.

“Light,” High Lord Darlin said, squinting. “That is no Tairen gelding.”

“No,” I agreed, easing Bandit to a halt. “Sharan.”

A few guffaws answered that, but they were thin. Tear bred the finest horses in the
Westlands, and these men knew it. What unsettled them was not only the size of Bandit,
but the way he stood, calm and balanced, as if nothing on this field could force him into
panic.

Sunamon, who didn’t play Polo but preferred to watch, gazed slowly over the horse,
from deep chest to powerful hindquarters, then lifted to my face. “You intend to ride,”
he said, trotting his horse over next to mine. “The Sea Folk have never brought a Sharan
breed before, no one has.”

“Times change.”

One of High Lord Astoril’s teenage sons, I couldn’t recall his name, snorted, “Does
House Saniago wager its pride on foreign stock now?”

“I wager on what wins,” I replied, wiggling my eyebrows playfully.

That drew a few sharper looks. Estean grinned, broad and unoffended, and raised his
mallet. “Enough talk. Mount up. First to five. Reds vs Blues. Same rules as always.”

I’d practiced at the Saniago estate under Weiramon’s gaze, while I remembered what
Polo was, I never did see more than a clip of Prince Harry on a horse playing the game.
House Saniago always played team ‘red.’

The ball was tossed, a lacquered sphere no larger than a man’s fist, and the field
exploded into motion. Eight men on each team played across a field that must have
been ten football fields by my reckoning. Hooves thundered. Mallets cracked. Horses
collided shoulder to shoulder, riders leaning hard into one another, curses flying as
freely as sweat. The game was chaos given form, speed and violence bound by just
enough custom to keep it from becoming a brawl.
Bandit surged forward at my touch. Not at a gallop. Not yet. I let the others rush past,
watched the shape of the field form in my mind, then turned into a gap that should not
have existed. A flurry of mallets swung for the ball. I struck first, sending it skidding
across the grass.

A roar went up as I chased it down.

Estean thundered alongside me, laughing, his horse straining. “You ride well, Saniago!”

“I ride to win,” I said with a smile at him, and drove the ball through the frame.

The sound of it rang sharp and hollow. Groans answered it, along with grudging
applause. Tear respected skill, even when it cut.

They came at me harder after that. A younger lord cut across my path, shoulder
slamming into mine hard enough to jar my teeth. Pain flared, bright and clean. Another
horse clipped Bandit’s flank. He absorbed it without breaking stride, surged ahead, and
left the other mount scrambling. A mallet glanced off my forearm. Skin split. Blood
slicked my grip. I tightened my fingers and ignored it.

The second goal came in a tangle of bodies, Bandit pivoting where other horses labored,
my strike sending the ball through the frame as two riders crashed behind me. A
lordling hit the ground hard and stayed there, groaning, while the game swept on
without pause. Attendants hurried him off, almost ridden down by other lords who
cared only for the honor and glory of winning.

By the third play, sweat burned my eyes. The void helped me, but not sweating was an
Aes Sedai tell. The sun climbed higher, glare flashing off silk and steel. I became aware
of a sour pressure low in my belly, faint but insistent, like the beginning of a sickness. I
pushed it aside. This was not the place for weakness. Most lords had switched to a fresh
mount, either impressed at Bandit’s endurance, or shaking their heads at me for the
foolishness of riding my mount too hard.

Darlin rode close on the next pass, his expression intent. “You have trained,” he said,
voice calm despite the chaos.

“So have you,” I replied, and cut the ball away from him. He laughed once, sharp, and
fell back.

Easing up my efforts, the blue team scored two goals in a row. Astoril’s teenage sons
whooped as if they had claimed a victory outright. Pride needed feeding, and Tear’s
nobles were no different from their horses in that.
The fourth goal cost me more. A mallet struck my ribs, hard enough to knock the breath
from me. White flashed at the edges of my vision. Bandit answered my weight shift
instantly, leaping clear of the scrum, and I drove the ball home with a strike that jarred
my shoulder to the bone.

The sourness surged then, sharper now, a wave that made my mouth fill with saliva.
Heat crawled up my neck. I swallowed hard and kept steady in my saddle.

The final play for the red team’s fifth goal was brutal. Horses bunched, hooves churning
the turf to mud. Mallets clashed like sticks in a riot. Another lordling screamed after
falling off his horse, his leg bent wrong beneath him. I felt Bandit bunch under me,
ready to break free, and urged him forward.

The ball flew after I struck it cleanly. It rang through the frame and rolled to a stop
beyond. Silence fell for a heartbeat, then the field erupted.

Darlin reined in beside me and clasped my forearm, heedless of my blood all over his
hand, “Light take me, Saniago. You were born to the saddle.”

Inclining my head, I kept my breathing slow and measured. The nausea pressed harder
now, a twist that made my stomach clench, “I could say the same, Sisnera.”

Astoril ambled his latest stallion over and approached, eyes calculating. “Saniago, you
have our attention.”

“That was never in doubt, Damara,” I said to Astoril, though my vision swam for an
instant at the edges.

Gueyam laughed, sharp and appraising. “We will speak. Soon.”

“Yes,” Estaen agreed. “At father’s manor.”

The word landed with weight. I nodded once in turn at each of them, then turned
Bandit away before they could see my hand tremble. By the time I reached the edge of
the field, sweat had gone cold along my spine. My mouth tasted of bile.

We had to stay as long as possible after the game at the Andiama Estate, but not a
moment longer. Vanya and Lyra came to meet me, her gaze flicking to my face, then to
the lords behind me. “Short,” she said quietly.

“Very,” Lyra murmured, her hand light and steady at my elbow.

We did not linger. We never lingered at estates like this.

High Lord Torean had a storm-blue cloak snapping behind him, his son Estean and
cousins strung out like a banner line. The lordlings laughed and shouted at one another,
trading boasts that would have sounded like lies anywhere else. Horses steamed in the
cooling air, slick with sweat, and young lordlings now clapped one another on the
shoulder for a hard strike and a cracked rib, praising each other for their performance
during the game. I rode among them glad-handling and backslapping with the best of
them.

Creator knows I love being part of a group of men like this. The connection, the
acceptance, the belonging I never stopped craving since my first life. I just wish it all
didn’t have to be such a lie, and a group with such abominable beliefs.

“Light, Saniago,” said Jorad, a young Lord of the Land, a nephew of Sunamon from the
House Haellin called, red-faced and grinning, “if you have a Stallion of those beasts,
you will have half Tear selling their grandmothers for a foal.”

Another cousin answered him, “He will have half Tear trying to steal one.”

The laughter that followed was easy, and that was the dangerous part. Easy laughter
loosened tongues. Easy laughter made men careless. And a careless man might look too
closely at me, see the wrong gesture, and notice I didn’t fit in at all.

Behind me in the small knot of riding ladies, Vanya sat in her saddle as if she had been
born to it. She had not, but she could have fooled any lord. Taelen rode with her head
slightly turned, eyes narrowed as if she were already taking measurements of the
Toreans’ stables. Lyra and Elia kept Jenara between them, as much to shepherd her as to
hide her. Jenara’s hands were white-knuckled around her reins. Servants did not ride
with lords in Tear unless they were being paraded for mockery, and Jenara knew it.

Relaxing deliberately and regulating my breathing, I had not expected yet another first
thin curl of nausea that slid under my ribs as we left the field to the stables of the
manor. We ambled along the dirt road between low hedgerows and winter-stubbled
farms. At first it was only a faint wrongness, the way air felt before lightning. A
pressure behind the eyes. A sour note on the back of the tongue. Then it grew.

This was the latest of many estates this had happened at. We still hadn’t figured out if
the Tairen nobles knew what they had, and asking struck us as social suicide. At least
the Stone held no such devices. Yet, we couldn’t channel here.

It did not come in a rush. It came in a patient climb, as if something had sunk hooks into
our bellies and was drawing, slow and steady, like a winch. Bandit flicked an ear back at
me. Horses sensed sickness. He sensed mine, and he did not like it. I kept my face
smooth, I would not turn green this time, I would not.
High Lord Torean turned in his saddle at me, “You look as if you took a harder blow
than you did.”

“I have had worse,” my voice did not betray me.

That, perhaps, was the second dangerous part. A Tairen lord did not like a man who
would not show pain. Pain was proof you were real. Pain was proof you could be
bought, threatened, broken. Yet, you could not show the pain stopped you, one had to
keep moving and endure to show the power of his masculinity.

The manor appeared across the rise, whitewashed stone and tall walls, more fortress
than farm. A banner snapped above the gatehouse, storm-blue on white. There were no
villages near it. There never were. In Tear, the lords did not allow a town to grow fat
enough to think it could have a spine, not within sight of their own walls.

As we descended toward the gate, the nausea sharpened. It became a blade, not a
pressure. My stomach tightened as if I had swallowed ice. I caught Vanya’s eye for a
heartbeat. She did not change expression, but her left hand tightened twice on her reins,
a signal we had used long before Tear’s mud existed.

Taelen’s nostrils flared. Lyra’s lips went very pale. Elia’s fingers brushed her own throat
as though checking for a pulse. Jenara made a small sound. It could have been a
whimper or a swallowed prayer.

High Lord Torean rode under the archway, and the moment Bandit’s hooves crossed the
threshold, the sickness slammed into me hard enough that my vision went fuzzy at the
edges. A lurch, violent as a fist. I made myself breathe. In through the nose, out through
the mouth, box breathing my 4-4-4-4 counts. As if I were merely savoring the country
air.

A thin, dark-haired stablehand opened the gate, swept clean, too clean for a place that
held so many horses. Similarly thin grooms ran forward, and better fed household
retainers obsequiously bowed.

An orange silk layered noblewoman came down the steps of the veranda like she was
descending a stage, lace at her throat, tiny porcelain bottle of smelling salts hanging at
her wrist on a chain. She was handsome in the hard Tairen way, cheekbones sharp as a
knife. The dark brooch at her collar flashed when it caught the sun. My stomach
clenched again, impressing me with its acrobatic ability. We’d sensed the like before,
likely connected to the stationary ter’angreal deeper in the estate, brooches like this were
mobile amplifiers.

And, no the novels never mentioned that Tairen nobles had such devices on the One
Power. The ripples of my past actions rankled me. Maybe they could have had such
ter’angreal in the novels, after all, I don’t remember the characters going to the Nobles’
estates. It could be why the Aes Sedai avoided Tear so much in the novels.

Taelen’s eyes fixed on that brooch, but not with admiration. With the kind of attention a
soldier gave a drawn bow. Elia’s hand made a small circle against her thigh. Another of
our signals. It is here.

I signaled back, No shit.

Jenara swayed. Lyra’s hand snapped out and caught Jenara’s elbow before she could
topple sideways out of the saddle. But Lyra’s own face was tight with effort, and she
was not a woman who showed strain easily.

“Steady,” Lyra said, and to any ear it was only the word a mistress might give a
nervous servant.

Jenara’s eyes rolled up, fainting as a girl in a story, except for going tits up over her
saddle, feet managing to stay in her stirrups. Lyra and Elia slid in close on each side,
rearranging Jenara over her horse as if a piece of luggage for propriety’s sake.

One of the lordlings barked laughter. “The little cat cannot even stay awake!”

Another called, “Throw water on her. If she bites, it will be worth it!”

The men laughed like boys. The kind of laughter that forgot servants were people.

High Lord Torean dismounted with the help of three thin attendants to service his girth
with a series of grunts, then tossed his reins without even a glance to see if a groom
caught the reins. One dashed in at the last second to catch them. There was amusement
in Torean’s voice, casual and cruel as he said, “Your ladies coddle their pets too much,
Saniago.”

“It is a flaw,” I said, and my mouth tasted of bile. “But I love my sisters anyway.”

A nod, loyalty to family was an honorable trait for the nobility here.

High Lady Meralda Andiama, Torean’s much younger wife came closer. The black
brooch pulsed with the One Power, and I did not need Saidin to know it. Not light and
not glow, but a sensation, a throb under the skin of the world, like a monster’s heartbeat
against breathing on mine.

Taelen’s fingers tightened on her reins until her knuckles showed through her gloves.
If she embraced Saidar here, if any of the women did, the sickness would become a
scream. I could feel it in the air. Such a twisted ter’angreal that wanted our Power. It did
not matter which half. It wanted us to touch the Source so it could twist us into pain.
The Mirror worlds rarely held such hungry ter’angreal, we hadn’t expected such devices
here in Tear.

I dared not reach for Saidin. Even a hair of contact might make me retch like a drunken
soldier. Worse, it might make my eyes go distant, make my focus slip, make a Tairen
lord notice that their baby High Lord was fighting not a bruise, but something invisible.

So, I did what I always did. I played along and swung down from Bandit with practiced
ease. My ribs protested, but pain was clean compared to this. Bandit did not like the air
either. His tail flicked once, sharp.

High Lord Torean strode forward and clasped my forearm, then raised his voice for
those watching. “House Torean welcomes House Saniago. Let them see what proper
stables look like, eh?”

There were more laughs. Grooms bowed deeper. A stablemaster scurried.

Meralda stepped close enough that I could smell her perfume. Flowers and sweat
underneath, like crushed olive leaves. Her brooch glittered, a simple thing, a piece of
worked metal set with a dark stone. One that made my stomach knot until spots danced
in my vision.

Meralda sized me up and down, then slid to the women. “You and your sisters are light
skinned and fair haired for Mayener half-bloods,” she said, eyeing us as if part horses
for breeding.

Calculating, I leaned into my restrained illness, letting the barely held in bile coat my
words, “Growing up, the Mayener children never did not let us forget we didn’t look
much like them.”

Another reference to the fairness of Tairen nobility compared to the peasants. I

suspected the nobility here were descended from another ethnicity than their peasants,
that or centuries of inbreeding.

Meralda’s eyes glittered and Torean gave a slight head tilt of understanding. I’d never
stated why, other than the glory of Tear for a new invasion of Mayene. Let them think it
Revenge, one of the most powerful human emotions.

“And your little Andoran cat has fainted already,” Meralda tsked, “Should we have her
carried inside, or left in the stable where she belongs?”
Nearby lordlings roared and ladies tittered. Jenara, half-conscious, made a soft, helpless
sound, causing more ripples of light laughter. Her head lolled against the side of her
horse. My second age sense of dignity grated, I’d rather she be supported, but we had
appearances to maintain.

Elia’s eyes were gentle on Jenara. Her smile toward Meralda was the smile of a lady
indulging another lady’s joke. It never reached her eyes. “We will manage our own
servants,” Elia said lightly, and her voice did not shake.

Lyra produced the smelling salts from her own belt, as if she carried such a thing out of
simple fashion. She waved it under Jenara’s nose. “Up,” Lyra commanded.

Jenara coughed, eyes fluttering open at her predicament, yelped and yelled, “Yes, Lady
Lyra!” She immediately flopped about, managing to quickly sit up straight on her
horse, a novice about to get the strap from an Aes Sedai. Jenara swallowed hard at
every noble in the courtyard and stable staring at her.

Torean snorted and clapped his hands, amused, “Your trained ‘cat’ is well-suited to
Tear.”

That sorted it, the crowd dispersed as we left the stable after dismounting. Meralda
gestured toward the series of stonehearth’s with hot fires, seeming annoyed with
Torean for even commenting. “We have the finest Veranda.” She said it like a woman
offering a man a pretty trinket to keep him docile. “Matheo, you must speak of your
Hippodrome. Why, I had to ask our household tutor, who only found the old tongue
word once in passing and didn’t know its meaning.”

As we walked, the nausea grew teeth. It did not stay in the stomach. It crawled upward.
It tightened the throat. It made saliva flood the mouth, that warning your body knew
before vomiting. My tongue felt thick. My hands tingled.

Taelen’s step faltered once. Vanya’s spine was too straight, like a rod forced into place.
Lyra’s breath came shallow. Elia’s fingers trembled where they rested on Jenara’s
shoulder, just once.

Jenara herself looked green. Her eyes were wide, unfocused, and she kept swallowing
as if she were forcing the vomit back down. The lordlings did not notice. Or if they did,
they assumed it was fear. They were not wrong. It was complete fear. On the Veranda,
servants offered iced wine and olives, roasted meats, bread warm enough that steam
rose when it was torn. The scent should have made hunger. It made my stomach heave.

I took the silver goblet anyway. A lord who refused hospitality was an insult. A lord
who insulted a fellow High Lord of Tear made unnecessary enemies. I sipped wine that
tasted like metal.
Meralda sat, and the dark brooch at her throat pulsed again. I could almost hear it now,
a low hum under the chatter, like a string plucked again and again. Torean, Andoril,
Darlin, Sunamon, and other Lords of the Land, the rank below High Lords, gathered as
I regaled them with my vision: A vast arena for horse races, chariot races, the idea of
noble houses backing teams of their house colors to race against each other. That we
could invite any nation, from Saldea to Sheinar, Andoran horsemen, even the hated
Illian to compete against us in the Hippodrome. The glory of Tear that each noble house
could share in and rise with the nation. The sort of talk that made men wonder, and
dream of ambition, glory, and honor.

Taelen sat with care, placing her hands in her lap as if to hide that they were clenched.
She did it well, threading their egos with silk. I listened to their responses, the dreams,
their wonder, with half an ear. With the other half, I listened to the hum.

While the dark brooch was at Meralda’s throat, but it was also somewhere else. Deeper
in the manor itself. A pulse that echoed off stone and wood, as if the whole estate had
been built around the thing like a shell around a toxic bar of uranium.

My mouth filled with saliva again. Jenara made a choking sound. She clapped a hand to
her lips.

A lordling laughed. “The cat will spray her milk!”

Meralda waved a hand, not even annoyed, “Take her away before she fouls my
veranda.”

Jenara’s eyes darted to me, pleading. She could not say what she felt. She did not
understand it. She only knew she was drowning in sickness and humiliation in front of
men who would laugh at her death. I nodded once to Lyra and Elia.

They rose smoothly, each taking an arm as if they were merely escorting a clumsy
servant away for discipline. In truth, they were moving her out before she vomited at a
High Lady’s feet.

And if she vomited, if any of us vomited, the questions would begin. Tairen nobles
could be cruel, and were not stupid. They knew weakness, when a man was hiding
something.

Lyra paused behind Jenara, and as she turned she looked at me. Her eyes were calm,
but her fingers against her sleeve, made the smallest gesture. A quick press of thumb to
forefinger. Minutes, it said. Not hours. We have minutes.
I inclined my head. The motion made my stomach roll again, and I hid it by lifting my
wine cup.

High Lord Torean was speaking now, laughing, slapping the table. “If you have coin
enough to build an arena, Saniago, you have coin enough to build ships. And if you can
build these new ships, you can bleed Mayene dry.”

The talk slid naturally toward war. It always did. In Tear, men spoke of conquest the
way farmers spoke of rain. I could not afford to leave yet. Not without seeming afraid.
Not without making them curious.

So I held my face and kept my voice light. “Partners,” I reminded them, gently, the way
one reminded a hunting dog not to bite too soon.

“Aye, partners,” Torean said, and his smile held teeth, but the conversation continued a
few minutes more.

The hum under the world grew louder. My stomach clenched so hard it felt like it
might tear. Vanya’s voice stayed steady, but her fingers tapped once, twice, against her
cup. A pattern. Now, she was saying, we have to leave now.

Taelen coughed, a dainty little sound, and her hand went to her mouth. Her eyes
watered. Anyone watching would think it was the wind.

I stood. “I have enjoyed your hospitality,” I said, and every word had to be placed like a
stone in a river so I could step across without slipping. “But I would not be a good
partner if I did not also keep my own schedule. High Lord Tolmeran expects us for a
mid afternoon visit in the city.”

As Weiramon advised, we could leave early, but never arrive late, never say “no” to an
invitation. That we had many social appointments was known, and making a fellow
Tairen noble late was a violent and open act of social sabotage.

High Lord Torean frowned, but said, “We have enjoyed your company deeply.”

“You are a gracious host,” I complimented him back. The work of Weiramon. Not yet in
‘declining health,’ the man was working his network in the nobility of Tear hard. We
were to be accepted. The level effort Weiramon made on our behalf was not compelled,
I genuinely believed the man had always desired children for him to be working so
hard on our behalf.

“A High Lord of Tear cannot afford to be idle,” I said, and the irony nearly made me
laugh. Nearly. The laugh would have turned into retching.
Meralda tilted her head, “You will have to return for a dessert another time.”

“I leave before I impose,” I replied, an excuse a Tairen noble accepted, the appearance
of courtesy. They did not always practice it, but they respected the weapon of it.

Torean rose as well, and clasped my forearm again, yet another sign of approval. His
grip was strong. He leaned closer, voice low. “Do not think you can tease my house
with talk of hippodromes and invading Mayene, then vanish. We will meet in the city and
discuss this soon.”

Meeting the wealthiest man of Tear in the eye, I said, “You will not be disappointed.”

“Ha,” Torean said, slapping my shoulder in approval, “my kind of man.”

We bid everyone goodbye in short order, and many young lordlings asked to play Polo
with me again.

The hum from the Manor pulsed so sharply that my stomach lurched straight out of my
mouth. For a heartbeat, I almost lost it. Almost. I tasted bile and forced it down with a
swallow that scraped my throat raw, and didn’t let my eyes tear up. No one noticed.
Not the men, drunk on their own importance. Not Meralda, smiling flirtatiously behind
her brooch.

And somewhere in that city, if my suspicion was correct, half the High Lords’ estates
held their own humming sickness, their own little pulsing guardians that would turn
any channeler into a retching wretch if they stayed too long. I kept my face smooth and
my posture easy. Mentally, I knew we had to accelerate our plans, sharper, faster, and
harder. Before Tear made us sick enough to ruin it all.

[1] Note: Do not underestimate the cost and industrial requirements of the nobility’s clothing. In
the late 1500s, some historians estimate a quarter of England’s GDP was spent by the Nobility
on their clothing.

Chapter 6: This is Not the First Time

Where am I? I have lost time, it’s happened again.

I still remember the very first time at fifteen years old in boarding school. All those
centuries ago in my first life, and my mind still wants to slide away, hide, forget to
protect myself form what I did to save the rest of me. For one single glorious moment,
not being such a complete loser and failure.
It started before the Sea Folk. I remembered speaking, being calm. There are too many
gaps. Zaida, the elderly Mistress of Ships. The blackout had come without warning,
seemingly before and after the Sea Folk negotiation.

Someshta, the Green Man, I need to see him. He was always so kind to me.

I came back to myself on a narrow medical bed in the Vault. The medical ter’angreal
above me was a lattice of pale crystal and carefully inset metal, functional rather than
beautiful. Goosebumps rippled across my skin in waves as Saidar moved through me,
cool and precise, leaving behind prickles that chased one another along my nerves.

My hands were spotless, I feel as though blood should be all over me. I’m too clean. Not
a mark, not a tremor at all. Whatever had happened required no struggle at all.

Lyra and Elia worked in practiced silence. Lyra lay half-reclined on a low stool at my
side, eyes closed, breathing slow and even as she maintained the link. Elia stood at my
head, her attention fierce enough to feel like pressure. She wore a device strapped
delicately over her face, a web of fine lenses and filaments that made her look faintly
insectile. I knew better. It was a ter’angreal, one developed with Vanya and Taelen,
designed to magnify both flesh and the flows themselves, to do molecular level work.

The problem of course, is deeper than they realize. I still remember the very first time at
fifteen years old in boarding school. All those centuries ago in my first life, and my
mind still wants to slide away, hide, forget to protect myself from what I did to save the
rest of me.

“You said microscopic,” Elia breathed, wonder cutting through her professionalism. “I
would not have believed it unless you said so.” Her fingers slid into my hair, thumbs
pressing lightly at my scalp as she followed something deeper, further inward. “Your
Foretelling, Lord Masimon, is incredible.”

Incredible, that was one word for it. Unforgivable was another.

Lyra’s mouth twitched, though her eyes remained closed. Both of them wore their
Second Age medical uniforms, simple pale gray garments cut for movement rather than
display. Scrubs, we had called them once, long ago. A small mercy, that they did not
have to play at silk and lace while doing this work.
“As if you doubted me,” I said, smiling despite the strange, distant sensation of my
thoughts being rearranged. My smile was rehearsed and automatic. The same smile I
had worn in Mirror Worlds… No, I will not relive those memories again.

Elia snorted softly and tapped my head with two fingers. “Quiet, Lord Masimon. You
wriggle.”

I laughed, then frowned as the sound faded too quickly. Something felt wrong. Not
pain. Absence. My thoughts slid, failed to catch. So many… gaps.

It happened with the Sea Folk. That the wind whipped around me, compelling dark laughter out
of me before I could swallow it back. Too loud. Too high. I felt my jaw lock open, my ribs spasm,
laughter forcing breath out in bursts I could not control.

“What day is it?” I asked.

Elia’s hands paused for the barest instant before resuming. Instead of the light cuff I
expected, she squeezed my deltoid, firm and grounding. “No laughing.”

“Lord Masimon, please,” Lyra said, and there was strain under the words. Both of her
hands were on me, to keep me down.

I’m reminded that boarding school was where the pattern started, but not where it
ended.

Confusion deepened. As my awareness settled, I noticed details I normally skimmed

past. The slope of Elia’s shoulders beneath the fabric. The gentle curve of Lyra’s cheek,
lashes dark against her skin. I registered, distantly, that both women were beautiful,
undeniably so, in a way I did not usually linger on.

That realization hit me like ice water. Not desire, dislocation. As if my mind had briefly
belonged to someone else. They were married to each other. They were my colleagues,
my friends, my family. Two of my most loyal followers, from the very beginning.
Centuries together, and my thoughts had never strayed this way.

I closed my eyes deliberately and let my breathing slow. This was the taint. It had to be.
Subtle distortions, misalignments of attention. Dangerous precisely because they felt
harmless. Inside my skull, the tingling intensified. Elia pushed deeper, following
threads only she could see, and Lyra’s presence anchored her, steady and relentless. I
felt them peel something away, strand by strand, like removing rot.

Behind my eyes, it felt as if my head had been scraped clean. Not healed. Erased.

“We will do this bi-weekly,” Elia said, her voice tight with controlled urgency. “And
not a day later. Three months was far too long.”

“That bad?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“Worse, Lord Masimon,” Elia replied. She stroked my hair once the Healing eased, a
familiar, affectionate gesture as if I were her cat. “The taint is a networked entity. It
embedded itself in your brain and nervous system. Almost parasitic. We can clear it,
but not if you let it settle.”

Networked, plural. Worse than madness, a collective will overriding my own.

Lord. The old affectation slipped easily from her lips, a remnant of the long-ago society
that had grown. A society becoming a Movement, becoming… this.

“I do not remember the last few days,” I said slowly. “What did I do?”

The room changed. Subtly, but unmistakably. Lyra turned, blinking her eyes at the wall.
Elia removed the lenses and set them aside with careful hands. Both women exchanged
a glance heavy with unspoken agreement.

That glance was the same one I had seen before from them on battlefields, in labs. Right
before someone decided not to tell me what I had done because the truth would break
me. Worse, at four centuries old, I still occasionally misread women and didn’t
understand them.

“Lord Masimon,” Lyra said gently, “you are better. And you have work to do.”

They were not going to tell me. That confirmed it had been worse. Bad could be
explained.
Bad could be justified. What I’d done required silence.

Swinging my legs off the bed, I sat up, the world steady beneath me. “Come here,” I
said, opening my arms. “I am grateful. Truly.”
They hesitated before stepping in. Elia first, then Lyra, their familiar warmth grounding
me. For all my plans, for all the weight of the world pressing in, this was real. Friends.
Allies. Family. As they stepped back, a flicker of unease returned. A sense of something
misplaced. Not gone, exactly. Just… out of reach.

I frowned, already searching my mind for what did not want to be found. Again, I
asked quietly, “What did I do?”

Elia’s shoulders stiffened. Lyra did not answer at all. That told me more than words
could have. In that silence, images pressed at the edge of my awareness. The fuzziness
of being on a large sailing ship with dozens of kneeling figures before me, weeping.

The floor felt solid. Too solid. My balance was perfect, my thoughts orderly, my will
intact. Whatever I had done while the taint held me had not broken me. That was
almost worse. Broken things were easier to identify. I am whole, but unclean.

“There is no time for such luxuries,” I said, leaving the room.

They followed me out of the medbay into the Vault proper, its vast chambers silent as
the tomb it was. I could see my quantum laptop remained where it should be in a
makeshift office. The holo-display came up and let me know where we were in the
timetable, I’d lost seven days. The day after we left for another Saniago Estate, just
southwest of Godan. I’d not sabotaged my status as a High Lord.

Lyra persisted, “Lord Masimon, you need rest.”

“We rested over three thousand years,” I replied. “I leave for Fal Dara tomorrow.”

Fal Dara, May 1st. Rand would arrive somewhere in that first week, still ignorant of his
fate. Moraine would believe she was guiding him. Lan would believe he was guarding
them all. Every one of them would be wrong, in a way that mattered.

“If I had not lost time,” I said, keeping my voice level through habit alone, “would I
have made the same choice with the Sea Folk?”

The question hung there longer than it should have. The faint rustle of fabric as Lyra
shifted her weight. I did not need to see her glance at Elia to know she had. Elia, for her
part, did not look away from me. I could feel her attention like a pressure at my back.
“No,” both said at last, quietly. The word echoed without hesitation or compromise.

The answer did not surprise me. That was the worst part. I had asked the question
already knowing what it would be. Still, hearing it spoken felt like something settling
into place, a final piece sliding home with a sound I could not unhear.

I stepped out of the Vault anyway, letting the stone and wards fall away behind me into
the Estate at Godan. Whatever I had done could not be undone by hesitation now. But it
would be paid for.

Fal Dara, Someshta the Green Man could not wait. And neither, I suspected, could the
consequences of what I had already set in motion.

Chapter 7: Where Spring Should Not Be

The spring’s sweet air changed in the green forest; it wasn’t wind. It was more as if the
sweetness soured, like honey gone hard, and the light dimmed a hair though the sun
was still bright.

After seeing the Eye of the World, everyone was tense, and the shift in the forest had
them all glancing around for the next danger.

A loud raspy voice spoke from the trees, and every hair on Rand’s body rose at once. “I
have found you.”

Rand froze, Ba’alzamon! Instead, two strange men stepped out of the foliage, clearly not
Ba’alzamon. One wore a cloak so faded it might have been dark once, long ago. The
other’s cloak was gray, and both looked musty, old, wrong against the spring-bright
world.

They were not Fades. The breeze stirred their cloaks. Lan shifted, sword half-raised, and
Rand saw his eyes flick toward Moiraine and then towards the rest of them, calculating
where to stand to shield one without abandoning the other.

“Who are you?” Moiraine straightened and approached, putting her and Lan between
the two men and the rest of them. She demanded, “How did you come here?”

One of the two laughed softly. “We had guidance,” the man said, and pointed, not at
Moiraine, not at Lan, but past them, his shriveled finger aimed at Mat like an
accusation.
Rand’s stomach turned to ice. The man pushed back his hood. If the Blight had learned
to wear a human face, it would have worn that one. Skin stretched thin over bone, eyes
sunk deep as tunnels, tufts of hair like old straw. The other man pushed back his hood
too, and Rand gawked. The second face was not a face. It was a mask of black leather
worked into the shape of a young man laughing, frozen mid-mirth, eyes wide, mouth
open in joy that had curdled into madness. Egwene’s breath hitched, he found himself
scooping her behind him, standing in front of her.

“I am called Aginor,” the old one said, as if speaking of his name were a privilege he
granted them. “And this is Balthamel. Our long imprisonment ground our bodies
down, but not our will.”

The names landed like stones dropped into water. Rand had heard them in stories by
firelight, whispered like curses. The Forsaken. Aginor’s sunken eyes slid across the
group.

Egwene’s fingers tightened on his sleeve. “Rand,” she whispered.

Mat made a choked sound, then whispered, “Blood and bloody ashes.”

Hefting his axe, Perrin said, “You’re supposed to be bound!”

“A wolf brother. Curious, I would learn much by dissecting you.” Aginor’s gaze flicked
back to Rand, and the old man smiled with browned-yellow teeth. “No need for the rest
of you,” he said softly, fixing his gaze on Rand. “You are the only one I really came for.”

The moment tensed, they were about to attack the Forsaken whether they’d win or not.

Abruptly before them there was a strange swirl of black so deep that it would eat
starlight. The blackness winked out and remaining was a tall man, though still shorter
than Rand. Short copper hair, much duller than his own. A trimmed beard with the
most ridiculous long oiled mustache Rand had seen in his travels yet. Broad and thick,
wearing a high collared black cloak that clasped on the far-right side, a silver sword pin
and a gold-and-red Dragon pin on the right side of his collar. Leather boots oiled so
well they glistened in the sun. Blue eyes, cool as a mountain spring.

“Masimon,” Aginor said, “you were always one for theatrical entrances. Your…
costume is fitting.”

A gasp, his own, and Rand heard Egwene’s breath hitch against him. Heard Loial’s
deep inhale. The grove stilled further around those words.
Masimon’s eyes held no warmth. “Aginor,” he said, and the name came out like he had
once spoken it in a classroom and had grown tired of the student long before the lesson
ended. “Balthamel.”

“My old master,” Aginor said dryly. “You have returned to us.”

The masked one did not speak. He did not need to. The way his body angled—minutely
—toward the trees said he had already begun leaving. Slowly. Carefully. Like a man
backing away from a sleeping boar. Masimon’s gaze slid to him, and Balthamel stilled.

“Serve me,” Masimon said.

Aginor laughed, a wet, dry sound that grated on Rand’s ears. “You give orders?” He
tilted his head, eyes narrowing. “To us? After all this time?”

Masimon did not move. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. “I will ask once
more,” Masimon said. “Will you serve me again?”

Aginor’s withered lips peeled back. “Serve?” He sounded almost amused. “The Great
Lord—”

Masimon’s gaze sharpened, and Aginor’s mouth snapped shut as if the words had been
struck from him. Rand swore he felt… He wasn’t sure what he felt. Slinking backward,
Balthamel pretended as if he weren’t still creeping away. Rand had to close his jaw, this
was stranger than the legends of Masimon he’d heard, the children’s rhyme they’d
chanted to scare each other with:

Don’t look down the Mirror-Well,

don’t speak soft, don’t promise bells.
One breath taken, two breaths due,
Masimon’s bargain comes for you.

A pause. A heartbeat. Two. Aginor’s eyes darted to the jeweled gauntlet, and greed
flickered there. Then he smiled. “Will you give me a new body?” Aginor’s voice cracked
on the last word, the hunger beneath showed. “A real one.”

Rand did not understand the question fully, but he understood the desperation under
it. He understood the way Aginor’s gaze took in his own parchment skin as if it were a
prison.

Masimon shook his head once. “No. That isn’t possible.” No embellishment. No
apology.
Aginor’s eyes shifted from disappointment to rage, “Then you have nothing,” he
hissed.

Moiraine watched, Rand saw, but said nothing, absorbing the two figures of dark
legend converse with each other. Would she channel at either man? Lan moved half an
inch, sword overhead, blade angling.

Balthamel, quiet as rot, Rand would laugh if the situation weren’t so serious, continued
to tip-toe backwards as if a boy watching his parents argue, deciding the safest path
was away.

Aginor lifted a hand, and Rand felt something claw at him, reaching for his skin, his
bones, his soul. Quickly, it was gone.

Masimon’s right hand rose. “Come now old friend. I have a Sa’angreal.”

“Of course,” Aginor said as if it were over. “Well played, old master.”

A tiny needle-sized lance of white light so bright the world seemed to split around it. It
left purple after-images in Rand’s eyes. It lanced through Aginor like the Creator’s
judgment, thin as a hair, fierce as the sun. Aginor did not scream. He simply vanished
in a blink of impossible light. Balthamel jerked, half-turning, and the same sun-white
line snapped out again, neat, merciless, taking him as he tried to slide away. The half-
rotted man was gone as if it had never existed.

Silence crashed down, the entire clearing quiet.

Mat was the first to make a thin, strangled sound. “Light,” he whispered. “He… he just
—burn me—he just—”

Loial stared with round eyes. “That was… balefire,” the Ogier breathed, as if saying the
word too loudly might summon it again.

Moiraine’s gaze was fixed on Masimon’s right hand. “You burnt their threads,” she said
softly.

Masimon’s expression did not change, Rand guessed his accent was Tairen, “They
needed killing,” he said, as if that explained everything.

Rand’s mouth was dry, like singed cloth near a fire. Moiraine moved first. Not quickly,
she did nothing quickly when she did not have to, but with that smooth, inevitable
certainty she carried the way other women carried baskets. She stepped into the space
between Masimon and the rest of them, small and straight-backed, the very picture of
calm.
Lan’s blade came up a hair, as if pulled by a string, and Moiraine lifted one hand
without looking. Lan stilled, he always did.

Loial swallowed so loudly Rand heard it. “Balefire burns a thread out of the Pattern,”
the Ogier managed, ears twitching. “That is why it is forbidden.”

“Forbidden,” Masimon repeated, and there was a curl of humor at the corner of his
mouth. “By whom?”

“By any who are not mad,” Moiraine replied, each word laid down with care. “And
some who are.”

Rand could not look away from Masimon’s right hand, the black-metal gauntlet with
the ruby set in it like a watching eye. He could feel it now, a power old and sure of
itself, it called to Rand.

Moiraine’s gaze rested on the hand just long enough to tell Rand she had not missed it.
She missed nothing.

“A male Sa’angreal,” she said softly, almost to herself. The word sounded like a prayer
and a curse together.

Masimon did not deny it, or boast. He only inclined his head, acknowledging a point in
a game. “One of several.”

Moiraine’s eyes hardened. “Will you kill us?”

Masimon’s attention slid to Rand, he felt it like a touch of cold water on the spine.
Snorting, Masimon chuckled as he said, “We wouldn’t be talking if I intended to.”

Moiraine’s mouth tightened. “That answer is a hedge.”

“It is the truth, Moiraine Sedai” Masimon replied, as if that settled it. “And you will get
used to uncomfortable truths if you intend to keep Rand alive.”

Lan’s voice cut in, flat as steel. “How, do you know his name?”

Masimon’s eyes flicked once to Lan, no fear there, not even respect. Calculation, like a
man noting the weight of a hammer. “Lan, I also know what he is.”

Rand’s stomach twisted, the ancient forsaken knew all their names. How. He heard
himself speak without meaning to, “Then say it, say what I am.”
Silence, sudden and thick. Egwene’s fingers tightened on his sleeve hard enough to
hurt. He could feel her trembling and hated that he could not stop it.

Moiraine answered instead, as if she had been waiting for Rand to give her the opening.
“The Dragon Reborn,” she said, and her calm did not crack. But Rand saw a tiny pulse
in her throat, and that was enough to make his skin prickle.

Masimon did not flinch. “Yes.”

Mat made a strangled noise. “Burn me,” he muttered.

Moiraine’s gaze stayed on Masimon like a hawk’s on a rabbit. “You are called Forsaken
in the Tower’s oldest books. Your name is inked beside atrocities and warnings. You
arrive here, here, at the Eye, wearing a lord’s outfit and you cut two Forsaken out of the
Pattern as if you were trimming candlewicks.”

“I have never claimed the Light,” Masimon replied, and his voice was calm enough to
be insulting. “I’m saving the world from the Dark One.”

Moiraine took a breath, and Rand saw her do something she only did when she was
forcing herself not to strike: she arranged her face into serenity, like setting a veil in
place. “Pray then, please do tell us why you are here now,” she said. “And do not tell
me ‘timing.’”

Masimon’s gaze drifted past them, to the trees that ringed the clearing. The air had
begun to smell better already, as if the two Forsaken never really were.

“I am here,” Masimon said at last, “because the Bore was Drilled in spite of my best
efforts to stop it.”

Rand blinked. The words did not fit together. Bore. Drilled. Those were words from
Thom’s stories, from gleemen, elders, and Loial’s careful lectures. Not words a man
should say with a flat certainty, as if he had watched it happen.

Moiraine’s voice was very quiet. “The end of the Age of Legends.”

Masimon nodded once. “And before the War of Power there was a war of arguments.”
His gaze roved over them before settling back on Moiraine. “If you want a neat story,
Aes Sedai, you will be disappointed. I Rebelled against the Hall of Servants well over a
century before the world burned. I broke laws. I killed men and women. I did it because
I knew what they were doing would end with the Dark One’s prison cracked open like
an egg.”
“You expect me to believe you rebelled to stop the Dark One?” Lan said, disbelief
edged with contempt.

Masimon’s gaze flicked to him, annoyed. “I expect you to keep breathing. Belief is
optional. At worst, I suppose you could call me a Criminal.”

Moiraine did not give Lan time to answer. “And you never swore to the Dark One,” she
probed.

“I never swore,” Masimon said, and this time there was something like old, restrained
disgust in it. “That is the point, I Rebelled before the Shadow existed.”

“The First Darkness,” Loial said, comprehending as the rest of them did. “You started a
war before the Shadow was even a concept.”

Rand swore Masimon almost growled, “Do not call me that. The ‘Crimson Scholar’ will
suffice. I was saving the world.”

Moiraine’s eyes narrowed. “A man can tell the truth and still lead you into a noose.”

Masimon’s mouth quirked. “Now that is the sound of an Aes Sedai of this age.”

“I am Aes Sedai,” Moiraine snapped, and then smoothed it away so fast Rand
wondered if he had imagined the sharpness.

Masimon tipped his head, conceding nothing. “Good. Then you understand this; I am
also a High Lord of Tear.”

Perrin made a startled sound. “You’re a what?”

Mat barked a laugh that turned into a cough. “Oh, that’s just fine then. Light, I feel
better.”

Moiraine’s stare could have frozen a river. “Tear,” she said. “Where channeling is
illegal. Where peasants burn ‘witches’. You would bring him, there?” She did not point
at Rand, but felt the word him land like a hand closing around his throat.

Masimon’s gaze slid to Rand again, as if checking whether Rand understood the trap. “I
would bring him somewhere he can be trained,” Masimon said. “Where he can be
protected. Godan, in eastern Tear at my estate.”

“And you want me to smile and ‘thank you’,” Moiraine said, and her tone was almost
conversational.
Masimon’s eyes flicked over her face with a practised, merciless appraisal. “Yes, I do.
Rand,” now considering him, “I will train you in Saidin. I have additional Second Age
channelers and ter’angreal to remove the taint as it accumulates in you.” Moving his
gaze, he opened his hand imploring the rest of them, “Egwene, Nynaeve, think of the
chance to learn from the best channelers of the Second Age. Loial, think of what you
could write hearing our accounts of the Second Age. Perrin, we do have some guidance
for you as a Wolf Brother. Mat, with us you will be healed, properly.”

Behind Rand, Egwene gripped him tight, trembling. Nynaeve pulled at her braid, “Am
I a pony to be won at the fair?”

Rand’s heart hammered. He could feel Moiraine’s anger like heat off a forge, held inside
her as she said, “You presume much.”

Lan shifted, just that, a single shift of weight, and Rand realized the Warder was about
to lead the charge against Masimon.

Before the fight could start, the trees moved. The branches bent by a large and gentle
Someshta who stepped out, saying, “Peace, dear friends. Peace.”

The Green Man had aged fast during their brief time at the Eye, leaves already
browning and bark beginning to fall off. His eyes, those enormous hazel eyes, lifted,
and when they found Masimon, his mouth split in a slow, strange smile.

“Masimon, old friend,” Someshta said, “the purest heart.”

Rand felt Egwene’s breath catch with his again. Loial’s ears stood straight up. Masimon
went very still, chin trembling a few moments, gaze tentative but averted.

“Someshta,” Masimon said, the tone yearning, hopeful.

The Green Man’s smile deepened, and for one impossible moment Rand thought, light
help me, that Masimon would run up and hug Someshta.

“You have come at last,” Someshta said, and his eyes shone with something too gentle
for the Forsaken. “I wondered… when you would.”

Moiraine’s gaze flicked, sharp as a knife. Rand saw her take in that single exchange,
store it, and set it beside every old scrap of lore she had collected.

The light dimmed. Not the sun, Rand could still see it through the leaves of the forest
but the meaning of light. As if someone had reached into the air and pinched the wick.

A harsh voice boomed above the clearing, “RAND.”

Ba’alzamon. The foliage of the forest browned, and Someshta groaned falling over,
losing his leaves, now brown, as the voice was killing him.

“COME TO ME RAND,” Ba’alzamon bellowed, as if watching from above, “FACE

YOUR FATE, DRAGON.”

“Rand al’Thor,” Masimon said firmly. Rand flinched at his name, spoken here, in this
place, from this man. Masimon strode right past Moiraine and Lan, clasping Rand on
the shoulders, his voice pitched low only for him. “Listen to me, go in the cave. In a
moment you will see a line, like light, like a rope. It will call you. You must take it.”

Rand swallowed. His tongue felt like wool. “What?”

“You will want to let go,” Masimon said, and there was genuine concern in his eyes.
“Do not surrender. Wrestle it at first, then ride it like a horse.”

Rand stared at him, trying to make sense. “Why me?”

“Because if you do not learn this now, you won’t live long enough to learn it later.”
Masimon said, and the admission came out like swallowing a thorn.

“Return to me, Rand,” Egwene begged.

“I will,” Rand vowed.

Rand wanted to grab Egwene, to pull at Lan, hurl Moiraine and Nynaeve over thier
horses, toss to haul Perrin, Mat and Loial by their coats and run. But there was nowhere
to run to. The Blight waited on one side, the white arch and the Eye on the other, and
something worse than either was in the air now, something watching.

Cackling laughter of Ba’alzamon howled across the forest, browning more leaves across
the trees.

Someshta sagged into the ground, saying, “You must go.”

Rand’s breath came in ragged bursts. He ran because if he didn’t run, he would fall. He
ran into the stone corridor towards the white light, the pull dragging him down and
down as if the world had become a hill and he had been set rolling. The air grew colder,
cleaner, sharper. Then he was at the Eye of the World. The pool waited, still as glass.

The Eye of the World shimmered faintly, like sunlight on spider silk. It called to him.
Not in words. For an instant nothing happened. Then, everything. It was not a flood. It
was an ocean poured through a tin cup. It was warmth, radiant clean power of raw
sunlight, the heartbeat of the world. Wrestle it, then ride it, Masimon’s voice said in his
head. The power surged, and the world fell away like a shed cloak.

Stone steps rose out of blackness, crude and uneven, floating in nothing. Rand’s boots
hit one, then another, and he realized he was running again, racing upward as if chased
by the Blight itself. He was climbing up the ethereal stairway. The cord of light pushed
into him, feeding him, filling him. If he tried to hold it, it would split him like a log.

Ahead, at the top of the steps, a doorway of red light appeared, pulsing like a wound.
Beyond it, shadows moved. Ba’alzamon waited. Rand burst through, and the world
changed. He stood on a plain under a black sky. The air tasted of ash. Far away, fires
burned like red eyes on the horizon. A wind moaned across dead ground, carrying the
stink of blood and fear.

Trollocs.

Tens of thousands of them, a sea of twisting horns and snarling muzzles, surging
toward a line of men in armor, Shienarans, Rand realized, banners snapping. He saw
Fal Dara’s black hawk banner, bright against the dark. Tarwin’s Gap. Rand’s breath
caught. How?

Ba’alzamon’s laughter whispered behind him. “Do you see?” the dark voice murmured.
“This is what you bring. This is what you are.”

Rand tried to turn. Tried to find the voice. He couldn’t. The power in him was too vast,
too urgent. It wanted out. It wanted to do. Rand flung the power forward like a man
throwing a bucket of water on a fire. Light erupted.

Not light the way lanterns gave light, but a tearing brightness that split the sky. It
lanced down into the Trolloc horde, and Rand saw thousands burn, saw thousands
more vanish in flashes as if they had never been. The ground shook. The air cracked, a
storm rolled in, thunder booming, lightning crackling. He did not know what he was
doing and could not stop.

The Shienaran line surged, men shouting, charging into the sudden gaps. The Trollocs
broke like wood under an axe.

Rand’s stomach heaved. He turned away, choking on the sight of death done by his
hand. The world wavered, the plain folded like cloth. He was back on the stone steps,
running again, the cord of light in his hands like a living thing. He could feel it
thinning, straining, as if the Eye itself were emptying.
Ba’alzamon’s voice drifted to him, amused. “You have much power, Aginor always was
greedy,” it murmured. “He reached too far. He thought to drink an ocean and burned
for it instead.”

Rand’s blood ran cold. Aginor. Masimon killed him with that Balefire.

The steps trembled beneath his feet, and for an instant Rand saw them crack, saw
darkness yawning between stones as if the path itself was breaking.

Ba’alzamon’s laughter from above deepened. “You feel it, don’t you? The power.”

The white cord coming out of Rand blazed, growing hotter, thinner, more desperate. At
the top of the steps, Ba’alzamon stood waiting, black cloak stirring in a wind that did
not touch Rand’s face.

“You are mine,” Ba’alzamon said softly. “Kneel, Lews Therin.”

Rand recoiled as if struck. “Never.”

“Of course you will,” Ba’alzamon murmured, and his eyes, those burning eyes, seemed
to fill the sky. “You always will.”

They argued, Ba’alzamon bragging about his vast powers, influence over the world.
How people would use Rand.

This let Rand notice behind Ba’alzamon was massive black cord connected, larger than
him, yet, the presence of Ba’alzamon made the black cord small. Rand’s knees wanted
to buckle. Not from fear. From a weight pressing down on his soul, ancient and
intimate, like a hand that had held him as a child and now held him as prey.

In that crushing moment, Rand thought of Egwene’s hand on his sleeve. He thought of
her smile. He thought of the words he had spoken with his voice shaking and her eyes
bright.

I will.

A vow was a small thing against a Forsaken. Rand screamed in defiance. He threw
everything he had through the cord, not to hold, not to keep, but to burn through.
White light surged.

Ba’alzamon raised a hand and the light struck him. For an instant Rand saw
Ba’alzamon’s face clearly, the pale skin, the mouth twisting, the eyes flaring brighter.
He saw something like surprise there, and something like pain. Ba’alzamon’s scream
echoed across the emptiness, and Rand felt the black cord snap like a rope cut by an
axe.

The power vanished. The world vanished with it. Rand fell not through darkness, but
into himself. He hit the stone ground hard enough to jar his teeth, breath exploding out
of him. The empty pool of the Eye of the World, lay next to him, gone still silent. His
arms shook. For a heartbeat he lay there, staring up at the crystals that glittered like
dead stars, trying to remember how to breathe.

Rand woke as if someone had poured sand into his mouth and then baked it there. For
a moment he lay with his cheek on cold stone, blinking at glittering points overhead
that might have been crystals or might have been stars. His arms felt too heavy to
belong to him. His skin prickled as if he had slept too close to a fire, yet he shivered.

Voices drifted in and out of his hearing, muffled, like talk in another room.

“…not yours to take,” Moiraine was saying, calm as ever, but Rand had learned that her
voice could cut.

A deeper voice answered, too level for the words. “And yet I will have it.”

Rand tried to push himself up. His elbow skidded on damp rock. Someone caught his
shoulder.

Egwene knelt beside him, her braid slipped loose, strands clinging to her cheek. Her
eyes were too bright, and she was breathing too fast, but her hands were steady as she
helped him sit. She looked him over the way Nynaeve looked over a child with a fever,
and Rand had the odd thought that Egwene was trying on that kind of strength and not
quite fitting into it yet.

“You’re awake,” she whispered.

It was not relief, exactly. Relief would have softened her. This was a checkmark against
panic. Rand worked his jaw, moving his tongue through his teeth and swallowed. It
hurt. “How long?”

Egwene shook her head. “Not long.”

“I asked—”
Nynaeve’s shadow fell across them, braid swinging like a whip. She crouched on
Rand’s other side and put her fingers under his jaw as if he were five again. Rand
flinched, and she glared at him as if he had insulted her. “Sit still,” she snapped. “You
look like a sheep that’s been struck on the head. Light, boy, what did you do?”

Rand did not have an answer that could be said out loud. The memory of that black sky
and the pressure on his soul was still lodged behind his eyes. He closed his hands and
felt them tremble.

Lan sat a few paces away against the white stone arch, one knee drawn up, one hand
braced on the ground. His face was pale beneath the tan, and his mouth was set in a line
that did not bend for pain. His sword lay within arm’s reach, and his eyes were on the
Moiraine and Masimon’s discussion.

Masimon stood there, back to Rand, wiping his hands on a cloth that came away damp
and dark. His black cloak hung askew by an invisible breeze not in the Eye. Even from
this distance Rand could see the ruby set in that strange black gauntlet on his right
hand, a red eye in the sun.

Moiraine faced him across the ruined flowers, small and straight-backed, hands folded
as if they were discussing the price of silk instead of the end of the world.

Loial hovered on the far side of the room, ears twitching, his huge hands clasped
together until his knuckles went pale, hunched over. Perrin stood off to one side with
his axe held low, as if he had forgotten he was holding it but could not quite bring
himself to let it go. Mat sat on a the edge of the former Eye, hunched forward, elbows
on knees, staring at the ground as if he might fall into it.

Rand followed Mat’s gaze. An ornately gold and silver worked chest sat in the middle
of the former Eye of the World. A heavy red cloth sat beside the beautiful chest. And a
gleaming golden Horn—

The Horn now hung in the air. Not thrown, not held. Suspended, a handspan above the
empty, turning slowly as if the world itself could not decide which way it ought to face.

Light guide me Rand thought, that’s—

“Put the Horn of Valere down,” Moiraine’s voice carried, still smooth.

Masimon did not look at her. “No.”

“Are you a child?” said Moiraine, exasperated.

Masimon’s head tipped a fraction, as if she were the child insisting the sun ought to rise
in the west. “The Horn is not going to Lord Agelmar, he’ll lose it to Darkfriend traitors
and,” Masimon visibly rolled his eyes, “we’ll all be ‘so surprised’.”

Rand felt it then. Saidin. His stomach clenched, but he didn’t understand it at all yet. He
only felt the presence, like a storm held just beyond a door.

Moiraine’s chin lifted. “That Horn does not belong to you.”

Masimon turned. His eyes were as cool as the spring water looked, and twice as
dangerous. “Might makes right in times like these,” he said casually.

“Spoken like a thief,” Nynaeve muttered.

Masimon’s gaze slid, not to Nynaeve, but to Rand. Measuring. Remembering. Rand’s
throat tightened. He pushed himself to his feet.

Egwene rose with him, too quickly, as if she could block arrows with her body. “Rand
—”

Rand set his hand gently on her wrist and moved it aside. Not rough. Just firm enough
that she felt it.

“I need air,” he said.

Moiraine’s head turned at his voice. Her eyes flicked to him, one glance that took in his
pallor, his unsteady stance, the way he held himself as if the ground might tilt.

“Rand,” she said, and there was something in his name that made it sound like a net
being cast.

Masimon’s mouth tightened, as if he had expected the moment and disliked it anyway.
Rand took one step backward.

Moiraine moved, not fast. “We must speak.”

“We will,” Masimon said, almost pleasantly. “All of you. But not here.”

A circular inky blackness opened in front of the all them. Rand’s heart thudded. Tear.
Godan. Training. Refuge. The walls were closing in. Two voices, both certain, both sure
they were the only safe path.

Rand backed another step.

Lan’s eyes flicked to him. Just once. The Warder did not move, but Rand felt the shift in
him all the same: a man readying to spring.

Rand turned and sprinted. Every few strides he expected Moiraine or Masimon to use
the One Power and yank him back. He did not plan it. His legs simply moved, as if
flight had been waiting inside him all along. He darted past the corridor mouth and
into the trees, boots slipping on damp moss, branches whipping his coat. Behind him
someone shouted his name—Egwene, high and raw—and Nynaeve’s voice cracked like
a whip.

“Rand!”

He did not stop. Rand grabbed Bela running away to the east, away from everything.

“Rand!” More voices shouted after him.

Rand kept running and didn’t stop, another old children’s rhyme repeated in his mind.

If shadows lean the wrong-way round,

Masimon’s footsteps make no sound,
He’ll offer bread, he’ll offer wealth,
And teach you how to choose your death.