Hiding in Plain Sight

[Zixin Kao]

Valtin

She fell into his chest easier than he expected. Valtin didn’t push her off, but he was an unnatural source of comfort. He pat her back, but the seething accusation made him frown above the crown of her hair. He bit his tongue from snapping short in return. What did she expect? That he tell the Lord General to wait until Mira graced them with her presence once more? Who knew when that would be, and Val wasn’t suicidal. Lord Arikan wasn’t known for patience.

The buzz of the One Power tugged at Valtin’s senses. His neck snapped around on instinct, almost as fiercely as it had the previous night when Arikan arrived outside the hut. What a jolt of shock that was; at the time, he assumed the assault originated from an assassin that somehow found them.

Light crowned them all; a flickering flame that suddenly illuminated Mira’s art. If it could be called that. Dark blood and bones but some of her pieces could make him cringe. When he conquered his own castle someday, he’d frame the best pieces and line the front hall with them just to intimidate his enemies. It’d work. Especially the more gruesome ones.

So this wasn’t the sort of thing that Valtin was accustomed to doing: presenting people like some sort of light-cursed noble. His lord expected manners, though, so Val tugged Mira along, all but pushing her forward. He stayed close though.

Arikan was looking through papers. Valtin glanced at Mira, wondering if he should interrupt or not.
“My Lord, this is Miraseia,” then after a moment, he added, “Breakwater.”

Arikan didn’t look up. Had he heard? After another moment, he added again, “Sedai.” It was obvious she was Black Ajah, right? One of them? He frowned thoughtfully. Should he say more?

Arikan

The moment the flame brightened the walls, Arikan was drawn over. The scenes flowed from one to the next. He studied a face drawn with agony before stepping aside to examine the skeletal ruins of a town left in oblivion. The dead walked in another scene, the living fleeing in terror. He recognized trolloc camps sprawling open fields. Only to find himself staring into the face of a victim being torn to pieces alive for the cookpots. Forward and out the scenes changed. Large scale images showed massive destruction, yet up close, the faces showed torture, mutilation and death in the worst of ways.

The walls were not the only canvas. He picked up a piece of parchment that showed a fortress overcome by shadowspawn. It was almost innocuous compared to the horrors on the walls. A city occupied another piece, all but normal except that it was an island whose walls held back the blight. A city of the dark. Were these all the product of a mind broken with madness? He wondered as he examined many such drawings in the stack. Then, something caught his eye. The scene was a farmstead. Sheep were featured in the foreground, but the severed head of donkey was scrawled in the center; tongue limb, neck bloodied. A bolt of lightning ripped the sky and the barn in the background was shattered. He was unblinking, staring. Placing it aside, the parchment below it widened his eyes. The same farmstead, but the focus was on a figure sprawled unconscious on the ground. Threads of the One Power circled him in what Arikan could only fathom was healing. The figure was him.

His gaze was stone when he lifted his attention. Valtin’s voice went unacknowledged, and it was the Black Sister that he focused upon.

The Shadow relied heavily on the omens of prophecy. The Dark Book was filled with pages of accounts: words scrawled in blood, direction coveted by the Chosen; by the Great Lord of the Dark himself. He showed her the drawing of the farmstead where Talin found him. Arikan’s voice was direct. Expectant. “How long ago was this drawing created?” he asked. The answer, if she even knew, would tell how useful a tool she really was.