The First Age

It was the Light’s own blessing when Arikan finally stood to leave. Talin did not well tolerate conversation with others at the best of times, and this one had expired its merits the moment it no longer served her purpose. When the door closed and the abhorrent sound of his laughter faded, her gaze lifted to meet Kaori’s. For a brief moment her lips pursed in thoughtful silence. She did not pay much attention to the tight ball of his emotions; she well knew the sensation of his tumultuous conflicts. If his honour was stained, it still stirred potently when it concerned this juncture of their plans. Sympathy was not something Talin kept in great supply though. Given her general disdain it must be rationed to need. The arrangement between them precluded consideration of his feelings.

“It shouldn’t be possible,” she said eventually. And she might not have believed it but for the evidence witnessed before her own eyes. Had the dreadlord really meant to say so much? Lies were possible, she supposed, but his whole sorry monologue had reeked of so much emotion she was quite sure the outpouring had been genuine.

She stood soon after. The arm was still bothering her, earning a short sigh for the distraction. They had work to do before Nythadri returned, and she had no great desire to remain within the fort’s walls while Arikan made himself at home. But first, she needed to take a light-forsaken bath.

---

The courtyard was swathed in darkness, fallen darker still when the gate winked shut. None were expected; the lamps were not lit, as they had been the night before. The shudder of Nythadri’s heart was denied notice as she traced the route inside. If she acknowledged the panic, it would unravel her purpose, and she did not mean to let it. She caught the first servant she discovered by the arm, uncaring of the impropriety. The girl’s face was pale with fear, and shrivelled further upon the direction Nythadri asked for. A poor omen for what might have transpired in her absence. Where in the light was Talin? But for now she did not ask over her sister, just followed where the servant led.

The humid of evening dusk had fallen by the time Arikan stalked the courtyard between the fortress and the gate. The stench of animals and stables rose up to meet him, but he was accustomed to the working world, and for all the nobility of his clothing, he walked straight through the aroma without even so much as a grimace.

The sky had fallen to plums and blacks. The pin prick of stars would show soon. Beneath the swath of building darkness Arikan entered the stable where his horse was stowed. Hay dust and the pooled light of a single lantern met him there.

Despite a glance at the animal stabled in its stall, he walked prominently past it, going to the tack shed. The door rolled open on old hinges that labored like they were caked with rust. When his shape filled the doorway, a scrawny face looked back at him. It was the stable hand.

His eyes were wide as he scrambled to his feet. “My lord?” he asked with that stupid Illianer accent. He entered, pulling the door closed behind him. The tack room was cramped with both of them in there. The walls were filled with tools. Brushes, scrapers…

A slow study of the options landed his attention on a row of leather tools: mauls, bevelers, punches, skivers, stamps. The sorts of things used to repair saddles and hammer in stirrups. It was the awl, a handheld tool with a sharp metal point used for marking or piercing leather that he selected. Then he looked at the stable hand, who was watching these things with a mixture of confusion that slowly transformed to fear. There were certainly sadistic lords in the world, and perhaps he worried that the guest of his master was one such individual.

If he only knew.

Arikan sharpened his own accent as he spoke.
“Have you ever seen this?” he said, smoothly kneeing. There he used the point of the awl to draw a symbol into the dirt floor.

When he looked up, the stable hand was white as a ghost, and he promptly knelt to one knee.

“Show me,” he told the darkfriend. When he stood he kicked away the symbol he’d drawn and allowed himself be led away.

He was taken to the blacksmith’s hut. It was little more than a single room structure built against the cliff at the rear of the fortress. There was a half-wall leading along a narrow walkway between the cliff face and what he presumed to be the service exit from the kitchens. A glance over the side found nothing but darkness yawning below, but his study from the upper windows guessed it was a five hundred foot drop or more. Likely that was where the kitchen refuge was dumped as well.

“My lord do you desire anything else?”

He’d almost forgotten the stablehand was there.

He turned, awl still clutched in his hand and seized the one power as he approached. There was a gasp of realization and a short struggle. The man was dead before he stabbed the awl through the side of his neck, but on the off chance the body was found, they wouldn’t suspect a channeler. Plus no blood would spatter his doublet.

The cape swirled as he hefted the body over the side of the wall. The carrions would have a decent meal tonight.

A knock on the blacksmith’s door summoned footsteps behind it. There was no way of knowing the rank of the darkfriend that worked this backwater shop. It couldn’t be much more than a repair forge. Certainly nothing of significance was created there.

He was still holding onto saidin when a familiar sense of darkness flared to life inside.

The door shattered on its hinges. Wood sprayed forward and Arikan hid his face with the shield of his arm. A channeler emerged. He was taller than Arikan. Dark haired with slanted eyes and golden skin. The flows of a shield were already formed, but recognition stretched a sudden pause between both.

“Dark blood and flaming bones,” Valtin uttered, eyes wild.

A dreadlord. Hiding at the end of the world in Illian? Arikan snorted. Plans assimilating.  
“We have much to discuss,” he said and pushed his way inside.

An hour later, he was seated in the library again, eating the dry meal he himself brought on the journey. No matter what Talin said, he’d not eat anything he didn’t prepare. Especially not with so many flaming darkfriends on the grounds.

The servant led her back to the small library before promptly disappearing. Nythadri did not pause at the threshold, though it was with a forced step of confidence and not haste that she entered. Pale eyes swept. Her skin prickled with a discomfort she knew to be fear. Arikan was seated, but she did not go close; in fact she barely entered at all but to place a wall behind her back. Saidar whispered, but she did not indulge; it felt like a concession, and it would only give him satisfaction. None of this sat well with her. But when she had no choices but bad ones, the world could burn before she would fail to grasp at such thin salvation if it might save Jai.

“While you’ve been chasing dreams the pieces on the board have changed,” she said. Nythadri had never agreed to bring Elsae with her, just to return; a nuance she imagined he would not care for one bit once he realised how she bent his commands. But if what Talin claimed to be true really was, then this would test his dedication to his own word. For the plots that moved in darkness tonight could only be at the hand of the Shadow.

“Elsae is with Eleanore in the city; I have not broken my word. I've returned alone because tonight I believe shadows will push the Hall to depose Kaydrienne Lindelle from the Amyrlin Seat, and while we speak there is an Asha’man working his way through the wards of the Black Tower vaults, seeking a weapon that will aid him in the M’hael’s assassination. His mind is not his own.”

She was blunt. Her voice was level, but not entirely free of emotion. “Will you help me, Arikan?”

His name burned the tongue, but she forced herself to say it. Her gaze was intense, expression cold and inscrutable. Men like this did not capitulate upon being asked nicely. Beneath serenity she was tense with expectation. Light send he did not force her hand to something regrettable. Because for this, and for Jai, she would fight by all means necessary.

She returned faster than he anticipated, and almost immediately, his gaze shifted to the darkness behind her shoulder. It was empty.

His own fell to stillness while she hurried through the state of the world. Talin was right about her. Gone for two days and returned with more information than the Yellow could source in two months.

From the flatness that emptied his gaze of emotion, one particular phrase shifted his expression into swift thought. Deposing the Amyrlin Seat reeked of the movements of the Chosen. They’d done it before and would do it again, but according to Nythadri, it was but one move on a rapidly rearranging board. To coordinate the downfall of two of the light’s greatest channelers on the same night was respectable. Better, it was also a trail.

These things he considered, but they weren’t what tugged him to his feet nor cast cauldrons of fire to his eyes. Call it the hand of destiny or the Great Lord’s own luck, but he licked his lips with an eagerness that she would not have seen from the previously stoic dreadlord.

When he looked at her, he saw vulnerability. No, more. She was desperate.

He nodded in answer to her question: “No. But I will help myself.” A deft hand clasped the cape across his shoulder. For the first time in years he was going to return to the Black Tower, but this time, he would claim it as his own, and he was going to do it as himself.

“Go,” he told her, awaiting the portal he anticipated she would open, but before she could summon the power to her grasp and take him into the unknown, he paused at her side, looking down into the icy determination of her gaze with a warning embedded in his own.

“Don’t betray me,” he said.

When he stood so quickly her jaw flexed tight. If she’d given herself room to move backwards she might have, but instead she held her ground and watched him in turn. Eagerness washed the edges of his expression; enough to make her uncomfortable at what he might perceive. She did not look away. Perhaps there should have been some relief that he at least responded quickly, but Nythadri only felt the strain. The world twisted around her. Changed irrevocably at her own desperate hand. There was no way back now.

His warning was met with one of her own. For that she did not wilt, no matter how close he stood to stare down. Her investment could not be concealed; she didn't choose to let it.

“Then don’t give me a reason to.”

Saidar bloomed with a welcomed touch. As she wove the gate, she spoke again: “There was a Dedicated in the room when I left. He was unconscious. Should that no longer be the case, I will deal with him.” She did not want a death on her conscience. But that wasn't the concern clenching her stomach as the air split, and the room beyond was revealed.

[[Nythadri and Arikan to be continued at Point of No Return]]