In which memory stirs at thoughts of long ago…
Winter winds swirled around the travelers, plucking at cloaks and whistling mournfully through the trees. The two of them pressed on, bent low over their horses’ necks, determined to reach their mark despite the weather. They followed only the man’s general sense of where his Aes Sedai was. He was a Warder and an Asha’man in his own right. His wife and bond was still far away, but he and his companion, another Aes Sedai, and an old friend, grew closer with each passing hour.
Davian and Iseul argued about stopping to make camp for the night. Both were eager to press on, but Iseul had no wolf-senses to find a safe path through the dark, and she knew that neither of them could go on day and night without rest and the warmth of a fire. They stopped in the end, making camp well into the night, and rising well before dawn, a compromise Iseul was more than willing to agree to. The days continued like that, stretching into weeks, and then months. A storm caught them in the mountains, snowing them in for days. Winter had long lost its grip on the land by the time they neared Thendranor, and Davian could tell exactly how far away Cadaela was.
* * *
Joram glared into the small looking glass that hung over the wash stand in his room. His mother’s eyes looked out from beneath his father’s brow, both set in a lean face that echoed theirs, but was his own. The razor scraped the last bit of dark reddish hair from his jaw and he set it down on the wash stand, his hand shaking. He scooped up his sword belt from the bed and fastened it around his waist. Daggers followed, slipping into their sheaths. The thick quilt from his bed was rolled up tightly, and saddlebags were stuffed with dried meat and travel bread. He threw his thick woolen cloak around his shoulders and pinned it, then took up his saddlebags and bedroll and set out toward the stables.
* * *
Damned if they’ll leave me behind. Each long stride carried him closer to his horse, and to outright disobedience. He had never, in anything important, disobeyed either of his parents before. They were Aes Sedai and Asha’man, and as such deserved respect, from everyone, and foremost their own son. But in this, his father had been wrong. Sick with worry, perhaps, and too distracted to see that Joram had been right. He’ll see eventually, he told himself. When we find her, and he needs me, he’ll know I was right, and we’ll save Mother together.
The chestnut stallion had been a gift from his parents on his sixteenth birthday. He and Cheyn knew each other quite well now, and the horse whickered softly as Joram unlatched his stall. It wasn’t long before horse and rider had slipped out of the Tower grounds and picked up Davian and Iseul’s trail up into the mountains.
* * *
The inside of Teia’s window was damp, the beaded moisture resulting from the warmth of the brazier she held her hands over. She reached out once more to wipe clear one thick pane, then rubbed her hands together over the coals again, staring out the window. She glanced down at her hands. They were white, and no longer bore the marks of the rings she had once worn. She wondered sometimes if she really had worn them, or if she had only imagined it.
She looked out the window again, dreaming of home. She sometimes remembered a dusty room full of leather books and potted plants, and sometimes there was a man there, and a little boy, both darkly colored. Her husband and their child. Sometimes, she thought the boy must be older now, nearly grown, and others she thought he had only been as tall as her waist when she had left him. She shook her head, tears of frustration filling her eyes. It was so hard to remember, and she wanted to so badly. All she could remember clearly was that she had not always been there, that it was not right for a woman to be kept on a leash. Someday, she would be free again, and Meris would pay.
(to be continued)
