The Letter

[Jay Carpenter]

The sword was placed in his hands. Jai swallowed, unblinking. He caught the weight, but only to keep the sword from clattering to the floor.

It was stunning. The grip was still taut. The dragon etching still impossibly detailed. The shine on the blade reflected his own face back up at him. For a moment, he held it as if imagining what it would be like to actually wield it. But the vision was sacrilege. It was another man’s sword. Another man’s symbolism. Lythia Sedai clearly valued the weapon for the one it represented. That value wasn’t for Jai.

A chill swept his skin. He shouldn’t be here. He laid Shadow’s sword near the anchor on which it was retrieved and let his own pommel become the rest for restless hands.

He was standing at attention, one hand behind his back and the other positioned upon his own property when Lythia Sedai returned. He was ready to beg for an answer. Or at worst, bolt out the door and search the halls of the Ajahs on his own. Likely his luck would land him straight on the doorstep of the Reds straight away.

But rather than begging, Jai was speechless with the news. He blinked, finding himself all the more frozen. Not a single twitch but a tightening of his fist behind him. He’d barely processed the information that Nythadri wasn’t even here when the Green mentioned Andreu.

She’d not said the name. Not said how he died. But she knew. His mouth was dry, and the cage bars slammed shut around him. Running felt like a great idea. But the problem was, he couldn’t bring himself to blink let alone take a single step.

“So, it’s true,” he finally said. Suicide was Jai’s worst nightmare for his older brother. Andreu deserved better. The last time Jai saw him, they’d fought, Jai claiming to be the betrayer of their family, and Andreu looking horrified.

He’d not realized he’d sank to a chair until he found his face in his hands. Heat rimmed his eyes. But before they spilled, he seized saidin just to burn away the pain. Lythia Sedai confirmed everything he’d come to validate from Nythadri. He had no further reason to stay in the Tower. There was only one place left to go.

He scrubbed a hand through his hair and rose, ready to thank her and get the hell out of the Tower.

[Lawrence Monday]

Lythia witnessed less and less of the madness as the years passed. The older Asha’man that endured so many years were scattered on the wind. The younger ones never knew the wasting of the mind that their predecessors did. It spoke to Jai’s age and grit that like Shadow, he touched the source before the cleansing. She watched Jai squirm like a spider caught in a glass. It drew the length of her brow low, but she couldn’t tell if it was concern or curiosity that made her stare.

She hurried to her feet when Jai tried to go. He was still as a pond one moment and a raging waterfall the next. “Asha’man, wait,” she called and hurried to catch him at the door. “Where will you go next? When Nythadri returns, do you want me to give her a message?” She peered up into his eyes, conjuring every ounce of concern she would muster, trying to ease the shifting storm inside.

He said only one word, “Moridrosin” * and Lythia nodded, knowing exactly what he meant.

As soon as he was gone, she departed herself, this time in search of Kekura. 








*Old Tongue for The Green Graves. Written with permission.

[Jay Carpenter]

Knowing his family’s penchant for security, and with good reason, Jai was able to spot the street-clad watchers positioned on the blocks around his family’s bank building. One leaned against a wall smoking a pipe. Another was seated outside a café, devouring a drink. A third was trimming vines from an ornate wall. Jai's hood was pulled up as he searched, blocking the sides of his face. The sky dripped a soft rain since he’d entered the Tower, but he was glad for the weather. On a sunny day he’d have to channel a shadow weave to avert curious gazes from penetrating the cowl. It was the kind of thing he learned when spying on the Seanchan. It helped an otherwise ungodly tall man blend in with the ordinary. A nobody. A slump and slight limp helped.

Today he navigated the narrow Tar Valon streets with an agenda. Hoods weren’t allowed in the city for fear of hiding the faces of a Fade. A wise rule that was adopted from the borderlands following the battle of Tar Valon, but it was loosely enforced, less so when it rained. The streets were narrow and the city guards of the white flame worried about the island walls and gates and less about the inner parts of the city. Jai navigated unbothered even when he passed so close to the pipe smoker that the scent of tabac filled his nostrils with annoyance. He never enjoyed pipes. Hard liquor was always his favored vice. Until recently anyway. But given present circumstances, he considered stealing the security man’s drink. There were more that watched everyone watching the bank than he remembered. Seemed Zakar took up Andreu’s paranoia since their brother’s demise. Not that he was wrong for doing so.

Jai waited under the eaves of an herb shop feeling heavy as the clouds. It was the first time he’d beheld the bank since his infamous departure all those months beforehand. He’d not bring himself to go up. Nor would he kick that hornet’s nest. But neither could he bring himself to peer into the highest windows for fear of who may be peering out of them. Ghosts were everywhere. He shivered and pressed closer.

The steps to the bank were unchanged as the marble and granite on which the buildings were constructed. He could imagine Zakar’s carriage depositing him along the curb, his brother hopping to keep the draining water from his shoes. The building never changed. Except during one significant circumstance. The thing that Jai came to see for himself.

Near the entrance were two torches bracketed to the wall. Glass orbs kept the rain from dousing the ongoing fires, which would dance for the next week in honor. Between the torches was a slab of granite. On the sidewalk beneath was a stone altar holding flowers.

He cautiously approached, pulling the hood lower even as water dripped to his chin, and closing the cape around his shoulders so none would see the glint of pins or sway of his coat. Rows of names were carved into the swirling stone. The oldest one was marked at the top: Jai’s namesake. The man whose decisions changed the fates of all his descendants. Asad Kojima. The wife he left Malkier to find was below his, with the date of her death forty years following her beloved. A channeler she was, though turned out of the Tower, she lived unnaturally beyond her twilight years. She outlived their children.

Jai had a hand to his heart as he read the list of names. Downward they climbed, but always the direct descendants of Asad plunging down the middle. The lowest and freshest of names was recently carved. One hand on his heart and another grazing the letters, his chin trembled. Heat watered his eyes despite the chill on the air, and there was a pit of emptiness not even saidin could fill.

He jumped when a voice spoke, "Jai? Is that you?” a woman said.

A weight touched his arm, and Jai spun aside, a snarl of the One Power wrenching his face into all the hatred within. The woman gasped and retracted her hand, only to part her full lips into a shocked smile moments later.

“Jaslene?” he whispered, horrified that she found him like this. The power released and his face softened. She nodded, trying again to put her hand on his arm. Her hair spilled out from the edges of a hood, but the cape could not hide the protrusion of a big belly out into the rain. Jai stepped back from her like he may harm her delicate state by sheer proximity. Steps backward. Then off the curb and into a splash of rain water. The ghosts of his bloodline were one thing. Facing her though. The light faded. He scrunched his eyes shut and gasped for air that made it impossible to catch in the lungs.

“Jas, it’s my fault, it’s my fault,” the words broke between sobs. Andreu’s despair haunted so hard that he had to end everything just to escape the pain. Jaslene looked heartbroken. Of all the people to not know the truth, he wanted to scream into the void of reality and tell her. But Jaslene was too pure, too innocent to believe the worst. The horrible part was that the worst was the truth. A truth Jai couldn’t face for another second. His chest caved in and hope splintered. He opened a gateway and ran without looking to see if she even tried to stop him. He couldn’t know either way. If she did or didn't try to stop. Both would break him.

The gate opened into a forest with the city of Tar Valon lost behind the treeline. He sank to his knees, rain pounding his back. But it wasn’t into mud. It was upon the ledge of a mausoleum that panged his kneecaps with the hard fall. The torches here weren’t so protected as the public ones in the city. They were doused by the rain, cold and dark as the shadows of the surrounding tombs.

Andreu’s body would be buried naked and without any shroud or treatments in the way of borderlander tradition. Their mausoleum in Moridrosin was nothing more than a monument documenting the existence of a Kojima line. One of many great Tar Valoni families were remembered in these green woods over the last three thousand years. A crest was carved and painted into the stonework. Asad’s sword was featured heavily, something Jai couldn’t bring himself to look at. The fresh dirt of a recent burial was nearby. He’d been here before when his father’s father passed to the next life. He’d not understood the meaning back then of what they said to the grave. But this time, as he stood on the spot where Dru’s body was nestled deep in the dirt, Jai whispered the requisite words and wished they were true with all his heart.

“May the last embrace of the mother welcome you home,” he said, lighting the dead torches with a knot of One Power that would withstand even the harshest rain. There he sat a weary sentry over the grave until the sounds of footsteps nearly made him jump out of his skin.

Saidin raged into his grasp as he took up a defensive posture. He had to assume it was a mourner of the dead. Another grief-stricken loved one left behind. There were other sites near the Kojima’s. But only Andreu’s was fresh. He waited, lump in his throat for them to reveal themselves.

Such was his surprise to find it was an Aes Sedai. She was lean and imposing, hands of dark skin and adorned with tattoos. Her face was smooth as the night sky within the lay of a red cowl. She paused some steps away, just looking at him as if it was the most perfectly normal encounter in the world.

Jai relaxed his grip on the One Power, but only slightly. Instead, he wiped the dampness from his face, glad for the rain to hide anything else on his cheeks. A chill swept his skin then, a sudden one that he knew not to be from the air, but before he could react, the rain slowed to a sprinkle, then a drizzle and ultimately paused altogether. He looked up at the sky and pushed back his own hood. Though it did little good. He was nearly soaked to the bone. In the freshly scrubbed air, the Sister revealed herself.

“Asha’man Kojima,” she nodded her head in a way that Jai almost thought to be deference. It couldn’t be respect. Surely not from a Red. “My name is Kekura Sedai.”  

[Kemala]

The place that she sought was one that Kekura had never before visited despite all her long years in the Tower. It required her to hire a carriage, which significantly slowed the journey. The whole way out of the city she worried that the Asha’man was already gone. The Wheel wove their encounter, of that she was sure, and if it willed this plan to unfold, it would do so. So Kekura’s worry wasn’t a lack of faith that she was meant to be the Amyrlin Seat, but that her rise was going to be delayed significantly. She was ready to have this be done. The Seanchan went unchecked for far too long.

She was dropped at the edge of Moridrosin, which encompassed a hill and walking paths into the woods. It was a hike up, and she checked over her shoulder a few times to check her proximity to the Tower. The rain pattered the carriage the whole way, but it was only a few minutes out in it that Kekura was annoyed. If it wasn’t for her natural sea legs, she would have slipped in the mud multiple times.

Finally, the flicker of light caught her eye and she knew that in this rain, only one thing could sustain fire, and it wasn’t the sense of saidar fueling it.

The Asha’man was tense as a stonefish poised to strike. Her first impression was one of a lost boy, but she couldn’t help but see the outline of Tayigi Lionfish, the long-lost son she encountered in the Black Tower upon her most recent visit. He must have recognized her as a Sister, she thought, but before she lowered her hood, a weave of Wind and Water reached toward the clouds and the rain halted.

“Asha’man Kojima, my name is Kekura Sedai,” she said as she pushed back her hood. She wore a red wool cloak with yellow and white stars around the edge. Her hair was pulled tight into dozens of small braids. A chain across the cheek connected gold earrings to her nose ring.

“I know I have disturbed you and it is wrong to do so. Please allow a few minutes to listen to what I have to say. It concerns King Daimon and a plot by the Tower that I think we have the ability to halt.” She paused on that to make sure that she had his full attention and that he was receptive to the story that would follow.

Cautiously, she continued. “I have been informed that a colleague of yours and a woman of the Tower will become a Seanchan slave, Trista Gaidar. Given as a gift from the hand of King Daimon to the Seanchan High Lord he entertains as we speak to be his property. His property,” she emphasized that horrid last word.

“This is an abomination. This one transfer of a human life to be owned by a man will start a tidal wave that won’t stop with the Gaidar. Who is next?” She couldn’t help but keep the heat from her voice, but she also knew that the threat to the gaidar wasn’t enough to win his allegiance.

“If King Daimon goes through with this, he will be the Seanchan pawn forever, and if he doesn’t, he’ll be the Tower’s pawn forever.”

“Help me stop this flood before the first drops fall.”

[Jay Carpenter]

The first day he met Nythadri, he warned her of Daryen’s plan. Following what felt like a lifetime of events later, Jai begrudgingly accepted the truce with the Seanchan. Wars started and wars stopped. He could sleep at night with that reminder. Well, mostly sleep at night. Better if he pushed his body and mind to their limits every day, starting with a training session with Trista from dawn until she’d beaten him into submission. It was amazing how good she was with the sword. Jai told himself that he didn’t hold back because she was a woman. But then again, Jai only lied to himself (allegedly). Maybe he did hold back because of who she was. Maybe Jai’s obsession with executing the perfect forms made him vulnerable. Trista once said that she could always count on him to not deviate from what was taught. Light blast her insights. Even when he tried to be sloppy and improvise the forms, all he did was end up on his back all the swifter. It meant one thing, against an opponent who did not know his weaknesses, he almost always triumphed. Against someone who knew him well, he was as good as dead.

The Seanchan truce he lived with for the past few months. But old wounds ripped open when High Lord Sivikawa’s entourage unloaded upon Bandar Eban. Damane were mostly kept out of sight, out of respect for Daryen’s way of life, but Jai knew they were there. It was what he was trained to do, sniff them out and exterminate young girls like they were an infestation. He felt the eyes of the sul’dam on his back when he crossed the yards. He heard their whispers and saw their motions. It was a matter of time before they learned to collar male damane. He told Daryen as much. And all this time, Jai worried endlessly that Daryen was going to be their prized slave. But instead, according to the supposed truths spouted by this Sea Folk Aes Sedai, it was Trista herself to be the trophy on display.

He searched the Aes Sedai and their surroundings as if some sort of prank was being pulled, but in his racing heart, he believed that Kekura Sedai believed what she said. He closed his eyes momentarily, imagining the tree trunks around them. He’d counted them endlessly. Counted the branches splaying apart from the main trunk. Memorized the patterns of woody division. Compared one tree to the next, seeking growth patterns. But their roots dug into his brain and took a gripping hold. His head wanted to break apart. Numbers swirled and the lines of branches splintered like black lightning inside his lids.

He’d seized saidin in almost the exact same slip of control as that first time in the Tower the day he met Nythadri. Light where was she? Where was she when he needed her? He wished he could reach out through the void and snag the edge of her dress, or graze the dark velvet of her hair, just long enough to make her turn and look. To settle him with a glance.  The trees were shaking, though Jai didn’t feel it. The last of the leaves were released. Rain shivered from their branches. He could feel the roots diving deep, the stone of Dru’s headstone, the pillars of the mausoleum.  One yank of the power and they would all come crumbling down. How ironic, that the Asha’man warrior of the Dragon Reborn would be the one to literally destroy their family’s past.

But the tremors passed without event. Dru’s fate wasn’t for Jai. He’d not come so far and survived so much to end his life without making the sacrifice worth something. He’d at least take out a legion of shadowspawn. Maybe walk into Lord Sivikawa’s quarters and rend the Seanchan to bloody pulps, sit down, and add to the mess with a slash of the wrists. That would be worth it. Daryen though. Daryen would suffer. Nythadri would suffer. He couldn’t do it to them. And this was on the word of what? One random Aes Sedai?

Jai’s anger was redirected. To her. “You are wrong. Dar–  King Daimon would never do such a thing,” he said.

Her response was simple. “When it happens, and it will happen, find me here. If the Hall calls upon you, they may want your testimony. I’ll do everything I can to prevent that from happening,” she said. When it was clear Jai wasn’t coming to take the note she offered, she laid it on the ground and departed.

The rain returned when the Sister left. What bubble she’d woven to halt it was twice-fold unleashed now. All the better since Jai’s tears were washed away by the storm. Finally, he grabbed the paper and disappeared through a gateway.

[Kemala]

Kekura did not truly know his strength; did not truly know if she could overcome any outbursts should one arise. The boy was a churning storm on the horizon. She’d calmed many a tempest, but this was a force she could not track. The only warning signs were the settling of an unnatural stillness. When the ground began to tremble, surprise made her steady her steps. She turned to brace the trees from uprooting and settle the stones from crumbling, but it passed, thank the Light, and the Asha’man was returned from whatever edge he’d sailed.

Anger betrayed his expression. Anger at her. She braced again. This was the madness, she realized. Not even Lennox was so volatile, she recalled, finding herself surprised to wish he was there to help contain this threat. But Jai contained the rising storm, redirected it elsewhere. Kekura did not relax her readiness.

He answered, “You are wrong. Dar–  King Daimon would never do such a thing.”

Kekura’s pounding heart was suppressed through sheer will. She had to be steady where he was not. She had to be sure when he doubted.

“When it happens, and it will happen, find me here. If the Hall calls upon you, they may want your testimony. I’ll do everything I can to prevent that from happening,” she said. As soon as her Eyes and Ears informed her the gift was given, she would make her way to their meeting place. All Jai had to do was let the gifting occur and tell her that it was done through Daryen’s will. Light, she couldn't let this man within 100 leagues of the Hall of the Tower. They would tear him apart. 

“It’s the only way to save him,” she said, laying the paper on the ground before departing. She knew something of love and allegiance. Enough to recognize it in another being. Even one haunted by the remnants of the taint.