~Linten~

 

Run ..... have to get away. Have to find a place to hide, to escape. How did they find me? Light no not now, they can't .... cant have me. Not yet.

 

~Kill them boy!! Kill them all or they will you.~

 

“No!!! I can't.” No, they are just women. How can I harm them? The passageway wall behind him suddenly burst into flames and debris, rocks scattering from the smoking hole. There has to be a place to hide? Ducking through another door darkness enveloped him when he slammed the door shut. A thin tendril of fire melting the latch and hinges enough to render them inoperable. A small globe of light appeared over his hand; eyes searching for a way to escape. Darting through the opening in the far end of the room Linten ran down the hall, the sound of splintering wood behind him. Why won't they leave me alone!!

 

The hallway emptied into a dust filled room scattered with boxes and caskets. His eyes caught the presence of a crack in the wall under the stairway leading up to an upper floor. Linten pried the plank loose and then slipped under; already foot falls could be heard running down the hall. The globe in his hand winked out, thin flows of air setting the dust on the floor back to an untracked state. Darkness lasted only moments before three women burst from the hallway, globes of light hovering near them. His skin itched with the sensation of Saidar; a thousand ants crawling on his skin. No, light please no. The three women separated and began to search the room slowly, light and shadow moving in sinuous patterns across his face deep behind the stars. Please creator, please let them pass by me. Tears began to streak his face as they continued to circle; Saidin at his shaky grasp. The three met once more in the middle of the room, soft whispers floated from the gathering; his ears straining to hear.

 

Please creator, please hear my pra ... his silent prayer cut off as Saidin slipped from his grip; a glass like barrier forced between him and the One Power. “NO!!!” The scream ripped from his voice as unseen hands pressed him hard against the wall; the stairs in front of him splintering as the three women moved forward. Cat's with their pray cornered and trapped. “No ... No this can't be happening. Please no!” They moved closer, their hands closing around his wrists; flows of air holding him restrained from running, from fighting back. “No, Please let me go, please!” His voice cracked as more tears traced red lines down his face, dampening the collar of his shirt. Mirthless smiles painted their faces as they drug him from under the shattered stairs and tossed him into the middle of the room. Released he ran toward the hallway only to run solidly into an invisible barrier just before the entrance. “Come now, this is for the best. Be a good boy and stay still while we finish, you won't feel a thing .... for long.” A wicked smile bloomed on the leader as she motioned another forward. Panic seized Linten as he threw himself at the barrier between him and Saidin, the need to reach it a fever that took him completely. Then suddenly it was gone. Saidin remained like a sun just out of sight. The barrier that had been there gone from presence. But in it's place an infinite chasm he could not reach across. Stilled!!! “NO!!!!”

 

Believed reality wavered and became smoke; it's tendrils slipping through his fingers as he tried to grasp at some form of it. Slowly the smoke began to thin and give way to first sensations. Breathing, stiffness, fatigue. He hurt but did not hurt, was hungry and thirsty. Darkness still seemed to hold him; eye lids still heavy. But the darkness had changed, was different as if ... the voice had a new presence. No, no the voice was still there or it seemed like it would be. Only it was silent as if watching something warily, defensive, no scared. But why would it be scared? There was more, like eyes without sight, touch without fingers. Something else was in the darkness with him. Cautiously he probed at the new sensation in his head, rage, confusion. A mix of emotions seemed to emanate from it but rage above all. It was as if another was inside his head, as if ...

 

Linten bolt up right in his bed, Saidin leaping to his call and filling him to near bursting. He did not need his eyes to know where the other was who occupied his room. He could feel her, know her exact location; the web of air covering her before his head even swiveled to meet her eyes. Eyes brown and heated with an unfriendly fire. They seemed so familiar but cobwebs still held some of his mind; thoughts returning slowly. There had been a battle, a fight of steel and power, his hand moved unconsciously to his side. It felt strong again. But he remembered a weak and shattered mess, life leaking from the injuries to it. Like the sun's slow progression in the dawn of morning over the horizon memories returned to focus from the day before.

 

Confusion that openly held his face since rising began to change to shock. They had been found, the witches had sent a party of hunters to capture them; still them. His eyes swept back to the door. But they had fought, caught them off guard. So much blood and carnage, like the borderland all over again. They had fought and survived. His eyes moved back to the woman pinned in the corner by the net of air. But where? A picture off her face staring up at him tear streaked, Ged's head in her lap. Focus shifted to the prickly sensation that agitated the back of his mind, as if trying to draw his attention. They were connected?

 

Linten's eyes widened suddenly as the picture completed its self and everything became clear. “You!” He leapt to his feet fist high over his shoulder, “what have you done to me? Why are you in my head. Speak!” His free hand motioned and the net of air became shackles that hauled her up on tip toes and danced her quickly to stand within a foot of him.

 

~Faile~

 

She stood on the window of the room, eyes fixed on the bed hosting a figure thrashing and groaning intertwined in the sheets, struggling against the grip of a nightmare whose intensity surged through the Bond in mesmerizing images blazing with vividness and fear. Oh so much fear. Fear that dominated any emotion streaming through this link that it should have delighted her to watch him, helpless and scared witless. Yet her face stayed calm and unmoving, flat, cold eyes staring at the fair-haired figure that was so helpless in front of her. Only one touch with the Power, only one simple weave of Saidar would do for him. She knew and yet she didn’t move a finger against him. Killing him would have implied even the least bit of care for him, about what would become of him and she was far away from any such notion, even more as she was very well aware that the touch that would kill him would be her own doom as well and the Light knew she was quite a bit too fond of life to throw it away on a feeble streak of vengefulness. She would wait.

 

What else was left to her anyway? She had gotten herself her, manoeuvred into a dead end without any means of escape. Her situation was hopeless. Yet even hopelessness was way beyond her by that time. What use was there in despair anyway? She had cried enough, had lacked any wits or means of composure for the Light knew how long since she had first set foot on the Grounds of this ominous Black Tower that had welcomed her and her sisters with nothing but death. And yet she still lived. Despite everything she’d cling to that. To that and what she had and knew still would find out. It wasn’t over yet even though she had been lured into believing so before when she had been alone in the smoking remnants of the battlefield, Ged’s head still in her lap, unable to think of anything but tears and despair…

 

Maybe her concern for him had been the only thing that had made her cling to sanity and eventually return to reason though, now that she thought back on it. She knew and partly loathed herself for that very fact, that her uncontrolled emotions had delivered him the perfect target. He, whoever he was – Faile wasn’t even sure how much she cared about that minor detail, though she longed to know more – had just used the opportunity she had given him in one, well more than one, careless moment. The moment when she had let her weakness take the best of her and succumbed to her shock and grief about the loss of her Sisters, women she had hardly known, about the shock of what had awaited them here, though that too would have been obvious to a person who had reasoned with logic before, Light why had they been so blind? And last but not least for a remnant of a memory, of a vision in her Arches, something she should by no means be able to remember still, yet something told her she was right. That the man in front of her was indeed the man, the little boy her memory had made herself forget, spreading a maybe merciful shade of oblivion over what had happened that fateful night in the woods. And now of all times she had had to remember, a moment bound to crush her in so many way. A moment that made everything blur and stand still. She hadn’t even realized her mistake until it had been too late, until the shock of suddenly feeling a second ball of emotions flash inside her mind had nearly killed her. Then nothing anymore but despair…weakness…

 

She had tried to cling to Ged, had struggled against them as vainly as a bug struggling to get up from lying on its back. And yet she had refused to let them take him away from her again, now that it was almost over. Somehow inside her illogic reasoning she had figured that if they carried him away from her she’d never see him again, that he would simply be gone again, lost and irretrievable. As if he wasn’t about dead anyway when he had collapsed in front of her. Dead by her hands, even though she hadn’t struck the killing blow. Yet she had been responsible all the same. Guilty all the same. He had saved her for a price she doubted either of them was going to pay. And now? Now she stood there, without knowing if he still lived or had already passed on to the Mother’s Last Embrace. Now she stood here, watching this…Madman open his eyes, while silently and somewhat naively wishing that he had suddenly changed places with Ged and it was him who had lived instead of…

 

Confusing mingled with fear, bone-deep fear mingled the Bond, blocking every thought and even her own anger as she suddenly felt herself being jerked forward, facing the very expression of madness if she had ever seen it in this very man. Feverish eyes flickering with rage and contempt he nearly spat his question at her and instead of shying back, she suddenly felt her own fear gone, making way for anger and…something else. As unlikely as it seemed, as little as she felt like it, Faile suddenly felt herself throw her head back, breaking with laughter, humourless and yet genuine. For a second she doubted her own sanity, yet this was simply too ridiculous to deserve any different reaction.

 

“Light”, she tried to stifle her laughter, “You Fool…you light-burned fool…you stand here honestly trying to tell ME that it has been ME who made up this folly? Oh Light, you really do know nothing about what you just did, do you?” She gasped for air, laughter dying abruptly as she looked him in the eye, anger rising again and worse than before. “How ignorant must one be not to know the effects that a Bond has on you!”, she exclaimed, only barely fighting back a new burst of laughter, insane…no she wouldn’t give it any grounds now. “You Bonded ME without even knowing what you did to either of us?”, she shook her head. Light she really didn’t get it. She was more than halfway tempted to just run away, yet the Bonds of Air restricted her. No, she had gotten herself into it, so she’d have to get through it, no matter how. And if she had to kill him later, sealing her own fate, so be it. But she wasn’t done with him yet. Ignorant as he might be, there were a lot of things she was interested in. “So what did you think you were bloody doing? Did you think doing this was a child’s play? An experiment?”

 

~Linten~

 

Mirth bubbled up from her like a fountain spring massaging the confusion that still mingled his mind. Humor, what did she find so humorous about this situation. He would have thought it Aes Sedai trickery if not for the bundle in the back of his mind. It mirrored that which covered her face and left her short of breath. But Linten could not see the humor in this, in any of this. They had come to destroy the Black Tower and those loyal to the Dragon, but they had failed.

 

~Are you boy. Are you truly loyal to the Dragon and the good of the world. The good of even them.~

 

The voice held deep contempt for the women in stitches before him, had always seemed to. But the heat and the edge of urgency seemed missing this time. As if it too was uncertain about the knot that had joined them. Some thing he had done? His mind worked to find the memory, to find the piece of the puzzle she spoke of. Ged's head in her lap, her tears striping her face in lines of red. A hand full of hair, his hand closed in front of him as if it felt the fine soft strands once more. Finish it, a memory or need seemed to ebb out from the picture. A need to finish the battle, finish her life, find revenge before darkness took him from this time. A weave! There had been a weave, something he had witnessed there in the field. Several of his comrades had used it, even their leader, their highest in rank amongst the carnage. He had set the same weave. Why?

 

Thoughts and memories suddenly fled, an overwhelming sensation of anger surged into him from the bond, prickled the knot in his head and only seemed to restore the fires of anger that had cooled to a slight simmer with the mirth that had flooded it earlier. Eyes hard and level met her brown defiant gaze with equaled heat. She was his prisoner and he would give not an inch until she learned her place. A fledgling thread of humor tied itself around the anger coming through the bond but he ignored its presence. Fed heartily on the anger that surged in her to build once more the furnace of vengeance in his heart. The back of his right hand found the softness of her cheek with a fast hard blow; the connection causing her head to snap back and to the right. An instant later the shield slammed in place between her and Saidar to ensure she did not think to otherwise slip to further foolishness.

 

“You will know your place Sedai!” His anger twisting the the words as he leaned in past her face to her ear. “You will know your place before your time is up in this age I assure you. You server me now, and I serve the Dragon.” Like venom his whispers dripped from his mouth to her ear. The urge to hit her again held just on the outside. Anger, contempt, even spiteful joy flooded the bond from Linten. The shackles of air becoming unseen hands that forced Faile to her knees before him. Green eyes hard like unpolished stone regarded her flatly. “What was done is done, it does not matter the why. You will fit to your role now or I will bend you too it like a smithy. Do you understand that?”

 

The Shield crashed down on her with an impact even worse than the blow and yet she somehow couldn’t find it in herself to be truly afraid. Something inside her told her that she’d better be scared witless, yet the better part of her, maybe the better one, maybe the one that had gone mad and lost it already, decided that she needed her wits now more than ever and couldn’t have simpering fear corrupt her thoughts. Not now. Even when a part of her shrieked in panic and despair when the flow of Saidar, the flow of life itself was cut off from her, Faile managed not to let anything of this touch the Bond. Her face, stinging still, remained composed and if anything her eyes gave her true emotions away: true emotions that where decidedly dominated by anger more than ever, as if his slap and even more his Shield had triggered it, she let it flow through the Bond freely as she looked at him, a disdainful smile curling up her lips.

 

“So you think that little Shield of yours will do the trick?”, she asked, raising a questioning eyebrow as if surprised about his sheer naivity luring him into false safety. Safety that would hopefully make him careless at best, yet she couldn’t count on it. She would have to work on him. Make him crumble under her, while making him feel as if it was him who held the strings. The emotions that crashed upon her from the Bond told her that this would be more than a tough task. Maybe too tough for her, yet what choice was left to her?

 

Her smile widened however as she recalled the other kind of emotions that had been recurring to her from the Bond. His emotions. His fear, his nervosity, his sheer paranoia. Oh yes, he did fear her and even though she wasn’t in any position at all to give him reason to fear her, she would work with whatever he provided for her to use to tie the noose around his neck, tightening it until he would choke on his own emotions. Fear could be a killer and Light let it be his, not hers.

 

Coldly she stared up to him, not even bothering to struggle against his compulsion, Saidin keeping her on her knees. She wouldn’t give him grounds to triumph. No matter what it took. Swallowing her own fear – after all this man was clearly mad, the Bond telling her a truth, his eyes held clearly: madness that only waited to explode – and suddenly through her head back, laughing at him openly. Sometimes she wondered if she herself was still on the right side between sanity and madness, but that didn’t particularly bother her yet, baneful laughter shaking her shoulders as she still didn’t break his gaze. “Oh dear, boy, do you really think your “ability” will do you any good? Face the facts, it will kill you. It will be your death and you probably don’t have much longer anyway, so why worry about the White Tower”, she paused, facing him with a cool expression again. “Or what else do you fear? Fear so much that you need to do this” she almost unconsciously rubbed her burning cheek, “to a woman. A woman! Light, how scared you must  be to take it out on a woman”, her voice dripping with contempt before she rose to her feet again. “I’d be damned if I gave in to a weakling like you.” She turned around, making for the door.

 

Linten stood stolid watching her at first. The witch was far to composed save for the unrelenting anger that flooded the bond. Anger that fed Linten’s desire for suffering. This witch would know fear when he was done with her leash. She would know it or die in the learning. Even the cold anger in her eyes served only to heighten his own. There were ways the weaves taught to them to take life could be altered and used for persuasion. This is what the future held for his slave. The Dragon needed the witches, but they needed to follow orders. This one would give her life if need be for him to learn ways to create the needed persuasion.

 

If she die while bonded to him who would take note. He would have to make sure it looked like nothing more then her own doing. Tricky but if needed he was confident he could find a way to give the right appearance. It was all in how the evidence was portrayed. But death didn’t have to come to her at the start. He still had experiments that needed subjects, now that the yard contained several of her type. It was just a matter of securing the right number. An idle thought strayed across his mind. A question to ask her when the time was right and she was pliable enough.

 

Her words washed over him and as they changed they began to boil his blood, he let seething hatred flow freely through his side of the bond. The women was mad with her hysterical laughter, had her mind already cracked? Fear … what had he let slip through the bond from the nightmare that held its grip on him this morning. How much had she heard; the dark twisted scene in his mind given to voice from his treacherous tongue. He had to find a way to control those terrors, find a method to keep the dreams at bay until he could rewrite them. Each one had been different, but some even felt and tasted like reality. There was something wrong with his dreams surely. Perhaps if he approached Isha he would know what it was that made them different. The sudden appearance of her back, as if he was a child being dismissed, set the tinder dry composure a flame.

 

In two short strides he had her shoulders; spun her just before the door and pressed her to it firmly with his left hand as it squeezed around her next. “You know nothing of fear do you? We shall see how long you can hide the lie behind that ingrained mask the White Tower has chiselled into you. I will hammer it from you and introduce you to your true heart before I allow you the sweet release of death.” He could feel her hands at the one he had mated to the soft delicate skin of her throat. A little more added pressure and this could all be over; though he would have to explain the incident to Isha. A prospect that offered little comfort. Isha’s past was steeped deep in honour for women. Unto itself that was not a problem, the true flaw lied in the fact it included the witches as those honoured as well.

 

“This boy as you so eloquently put it will be the one you bow down to in servitude. Like a new filly I will break you. Make no mistake about that. You get to determine if it is with the sugar or the cane. But if your insolent tongue persists I guarantee it will be with the cane. Now get out of here while I change. But do not leave the common room. If I have to look for you I will ensure you do not sit well for a week!” He held the grip a moment longer before releasing her and turning his back. Saidin still held at the ready should she be foolish once more. But to add weight to his dismissal of the haughty woman while showing her that he was not afraid he released the shield as well.

 

If she embraced the One Power he would have her before she could weave her first. She scared him immensely. They all did, but he would not give them the satisfaction of knowing just how truly scared of them he was. His focus while his back faced her was split between awaiting the tingling sensation that would sweep over his skin should she embrace Saidar and keeping all forms of emotion dormant in the bond beyond annoyance. The only emotion he felt he could control enough to focus completely on.