Chapter 1 – A Wayward Witch
It had been going so well.
“They're gaining on us, Moiraine. Without our mounts, it won't be long until they overtake us. Whitecloaks are no Borderlander trackers, but they will find us eventually, no matter how well we hide. We must split up if we wish to have any chance of slipping away unnoticed.”
Splitting up, of course, meant that Lan went off to distract their pursuers. While the warder doubled back and worked his skills on the army at their heels, leading them east, the Aes Sedai headed into a forest to the south. The bond grew weaker as the day passed and the distance between them increased, but her warder's mind never let slip its confident, infallible strength; like a mountain of assurance, the knot of emotions in her head that was Lan remained undisturbed. With no enemies on her tail, she set to make her way through the dark forest's maze of evergreens on foot, without considerable haste.
Lan was several miles away when night fell, leading the Whitecloaks away from her even as she made ready to rest for the night. In a small clearing she cleared the mossy ground with the Power, and laid out her bedroll on a large, flat rock. With a well wish to Lan, she wove a ward to hide her presence from beings of the Shadow around herself, and quickly fell asleep, exhausted from the heavy march.
Unfortunately, she made a mistake few channelers live to regret; she fell asleep holding the Power.
And perhaps even more unfortunately, she was an Aes Sedai of considerable strength, who had made her campsite atop a Portal Stone.
When Lan a few hours later felt her almost vanish, with only the faintest hint of a connection remaining in the back of his mind, he could not understand what had happened to her. However, he had faith in his mistress, and knew her to be capable of handling her own almost as well as he. After taking only a few moments of pause, hiding behind an impossibly bent tree, he discarded his worries and resumed playing the wild goose for the Whitecloaks; knowing that whatever she had done, it had taken her far, far away from their pursuers. Now he needed only lose them again, before returning to meet her in Cairhien. His mission complete, Al'Lan Mandragoran set off like a two-legged wolf, running silent as a shadow through the night.
When Moiraine Damodred woke up the following morning and discovered she was holding saidar, she cursed herself for her foolish sloppyness. “Blood and ashes, woman,” she muttered to herself as she collected the sheets of her bedroll into a small bundle with a few strands of Air, strapping it to her back under the one saddlebag she'd managed to hold on to. “Next you'll be riding off in your sleep.”
As the sense of loss that came with releasing one's grip on the Power came and passed, she began to suspect something was wrong. Looking around her, she noted that the forest was a great deal different from how it had been when she'd gone to sleep. Her ward had not been disturbed, but there was not a single evergreen among the trees surrounding her; she was no scholar on flora, but she was fairly certain birch did not grow as far north as Kandor. Then again, I was fairly certain there were no Whitecloak legions as far north as Kandor either, and look where that landed me.
She shook her head for a second, wiping her brow of sweat as she did so. And stopped. I'm sweating? She looked around, and for a second allowed herself to really feel the air. It was warm. Very warm. Far warmer than ever a high summer had seen in southern Kandor, and until yesterday only the first hints of the Borderlands' meager summer had been visible. Aes Sedai were normally not affected by heat and cold too much – they had ways of dealing with that – still the dress she wore was no thin silken thing, but a long, sky blue velvet with divided skirts for riding, well lined and embroidered. The trek through the forest had not sullied it all too much – Moiraine, like most Aes Sedai, remained graceful regardless of he situation – but with the sweltering heat that struck against her now, she could well soon find it to become so.
With a thought, she sought Lan in her mind. The normally so dense knot of sturdy confidence was now a mere echo of its former existence. She was relieved to feel that the bond was still there, their link still unbroken, but what the night before had been a few miles muffling the calls between their souls, was now a distance much greater than she could discern.
She took a careful look around the clearing, inspecting her surroundings. There's no heat like this in Kandor, nor any forests like this one. And Lan might as well be on the other side of the Aryth Ocean for all of what I can feel from him.
Drawing on the Power again, she felt around her campsite for any residue she might have left behind. It would be just perfect if I'd managed to rediscover Traveling in my sleep, now wouldn't it. Unfortunately there wasn't anything aside from the tiny amount left by the ward, and some messy, scattered patches of whatever she'd thrown together while sleeping. Next to the delicate weaving of her ward, they looked like balls of thread that had comforted all too many kittens. She sighed heavily. Well, no Traveling in those, for sure.
She shook her head as she got to her feet, dusted her dress off and started off through the sparse undergrowth of the verdant green forest. “Where in the Light is this place,” she wondered aloud as she crossed a small creek. “And how did I get here? Is this another ploy by the Shadow?”
She steeled herself at that thought. No matter what tried to stop her, she had a mission to complete. Nothing in the world would stand between Moiraine Damodred and the Dragon Reborn – and the Light save those fools who tried.
-/-/-/-/
“I'm telling you, sis, she was there! I saw her run past me as I was out to fetch water! Her eyes were the finest shade of violet I've seen in my life, her coat blue as the sky itself, and her mane...”
Lepid Stride listened with a bored look to her brother repeating the story of how he'd seen the most beautiful mare in the world yet again, as they made their way through the lumberyards. Celestia's mane, can he not simply let go?I know his fanciful head, she's likely nothing more than a fairytale he dreamed up while sleeping at the job, and forgot about making up the next day! But Zephyr Rose was persistent in his pursuit of this “Iris”, to the point where he'd started trying to maroon her into helping him search during her days off work. She'd agreed this time, if only to prove his fancies for what they were, so he could stop fooling about with this nonsense.
The younger of the two pegasi stopped his rambling eventually, when they started approaching the area where he'd reportedly seen the mare. They made their way off the many roads and paths that permeated the Whitetail Woods, and instead started trekking through the sparse undergrowth of the forest.
A few miles in, though, Lepid saw something that made her stop: a patch of blue was moving in the bushes ahead, and she thought she could see hints of a few of the other colors her brother had mentioned. Huh, she thought, surprised. Maybe there was some truth to this story after all. What sort of girl would be wandering around these parts, though? Is she lost?
She shook her head and nudged her brother, who had clearly been looking in a completely different direction. “Zephyr. I think I've found something. There's something blue, moving about in the bushes up ahead.” Zephyr's ears perked, and his wings shot to attention in an embarrassing display of excitement. “What! Where? Show me!”
She rolled her eyes, but pointed it out to him. He peered and peered, but it took several seconds – she was the one who'd been a scout in the Royal Guard, after all, not him – before he finally spotted it, at which point his eyes went wider than saucers. “It's her! It's her! I'm sure of it! It must be! Come on, sis!” He burst into a gallop, charging straight through the thorns and brambles between him and his target. “Damnit Zephyr, you'll scare her!” she yelled after him as she took to her wings and tried to catch up with her lovestruck sibling, carefully dodging every branch and trunk of birch the forest threw in her way.
It wasn't long until she reached her brother, who had found himself separated from his target by an enormous hackberry thicket. She touched down beside him, her eyes thick with fury. “Tartarus take you, Zephyr, what in Celestia's name do you think you're–“
She was interrupted by the loud sound of branches breaking ahead of them, and they both
looked up to witness the most peculiar creature she'd ever seen climb out through the hackberry's branches. It had a coat of sky-blue that hung about its body, with a night-black mane and the oddest markings all over. Its face looked almost painted, and had a shade of light, light pink. It stood taller than both of them, rearing up on its hind legs and spreading the branches of the bush with its pink-white claws. Its eyes were wide, and it stared at them with a look of obvious surprise.
“What in the Light-”
“What in Celestia's-”
Two female voices rose at the same time, and cut off the instant they heard the other. They only stared at each other, now, gaping as wide as their mouths would go.
Well, Lepid managed, this just got a lot more interesting than finding my brother's fairytale marefriend.
Author's Note
Hello everyone! This is a short piece I wrote up tonight, because I've been reading way too much Wheel of Time than I can handle lately. This is, as you may notice, a WoT crossover, and it starts somewhere in the middle of Book 2 (The Great Hunt). I hope you enjoy it.
