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Chapter Text

Moridin strides into the star-shaped Chamber of Bonds, feeling the eyes of the Eelfinn — the eight on the pedestals, and more in the darkness, unseen — on him, tracking his every movement. They are right to be wary; he has slain a number of them on his way here.

Diplomacy has never been one of his strongest points.

He looks at the two women floating in the air in the centre of the chamber, suspended by something that isn’t the One Power. Lanfear, and the Aes Sedai who had gone through the doorway ter’angreal with her, Moiraine Damodred.

“You have come for the Daughter of the Night,” one of the Eelfinn hisses.

Moridin doesn’t see a need to deny the obvious, just shifts his gaze to the one who had spoken.

“A price must be paid,” another says, and others speak up one by one in that sibilant voice they all share.

“The demands must be met.”

“A sacrifice must be given.”

“I will have Lanfear,” Moridin says quietly. “Then I will leave this place and nothing or no-one will try to impede me. In return, I will leave you alive.” There is whispering, and even holding saidin he cannot make out the words. Then…

“No.”

“The price is not equal to the bargain.”

“A sacrifice must be made!”

Moridin suppresses a surge of anger; he believes he could fight his way out, but this istheir realm and he cannot be certain. He did prepare for this possibility. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it, but he does have another bargaining chip.

“Very well,” he says, his voice tight with anger. “I will give you a memory of death, and of resurrection.” He raises his hand to forestall any replies. “Then, I will have Lanfear, and I will leave this place untouched.”

“Done!” all eight Eelfinn chorus eagerly, and the shadows seem to echo the word for much longer than they naturally should. The eight jump down and approach Moridin, at once eager and cautious. One of them takes Moridin’s head between its hands—

“You are destroyed!”

Al’Thor’s face, wild light in his eyes.

“You are undone!”

Fear and confusion and blinding rage—

The light of Callandor. Searing pain.

Delusions of immortality shattering.

Blackness.

A place where there is no difference between a blink of an eye and a millennium.

Oblivion more complete than the dreamless sleep of being bound in the Bore; nonexistence.

Something he only recognised as ‘peace’ when it was ripped from him again.

A gasp of breath.

“Your name is Moridin.”

Awareness; of death, of life, of the self, of the body, of the absence of pain.

Yet—

Pain of a different kind.

Disappointment; crushing, overwhelming, debilitating—

“Enough!” He staggers a step backwards, breathing hard. “Enough,” he repeats, more calmly. Around him, the Eelfinn are retreating. The glowing mist surrounding one of the women begins to fade. Moiraine Damodred. Anger fills him, driving out the lingering remnants of the memory of his resurrection. “She is not the one I want,” he snaps. “You will not fool me out of this.”

The hissing and whispering around him sounds disappointed, but the mist slowly envelopes the Aes Sedai again. Moridin isn’t sure but he thinks he can see her blink slowly, watching him as though curious. He turns his attention to Lanfear, who is now completely free from the mist and descending slowly to the floor of the chamber. She is awake, too, and watching Moridin with her face twisted with fury.

Moridin makes no movement; he simply draws saidin and channels—

Lanfear has barely time for surprise. Her body crumbles as the bolt of fire hits her in the chest.

The hissing in the shadows sounds almost like laughter.

Moridin turns his head slowly, looking around, but none of the Eelfinn seem inclined to approach him. He smiles coldly. “I changed my mind.” With a delicate net of Air, he draws the Aes Sedai out of her misty confinement. “I’m taking her, too.”

Laughter turns into animal shrieks of fury. The shadows are alive with the Eelfinn, crowding in on all sides—

Moridin channels, almost distractedly, and the closest of the creatures disintegrate while he wraps the Aes Sedai in his cloak and adjusts his grip on her before setting out towards the place where he had entered.

Chapter Text

Moiraine wakes up to find herself shielded. She has no idea where she is, only that the place is definitely not her prison in the world beyond the doorway ter’angreal.

The room is richly furnished though the colour theme is dark and oppressive. The heavy curtains and tapestries covering the walls make her take a moment to notice that there are no windows or a door. The impossibility of that puzzles her but she files it away in the back of her mind as a mystery she can’t solve right now. On a more practical note, she notes that she’s wearing a thin shift; it’s not as much clothing as she’d like, but it’s better than the nothing she’d been wearing while held by the Eelfinn.

As she gets up, she finds a dressing gown folded over the back of the chair by the desk. Red is not her colour but she supposes she can’t afford to be picky; her mysterious host has provided her with the means to be decent, and she’s endured worse indignities than not wearing her preferred colours. More surprisingly, she finds the angreal bracelet on the desk. Whoever brought her out either didn’t know what it was, or was content to let her keep such a powerful item of the Power… and the latter option doesn’t seem likely. After all, it would take a very powerful individual to defy the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn, and a knowledgeable one at that to get away with it.

She turns around when she hears a sound like soft footsteps behind her. A beautiful, blond young man stands by the door — there is a door now? — looking at her with a knowing smile on his lips and… She nearly takes a step back when she notices the man’s eyes; they’re completely black, unnaturally so, and if she’d had any lingering doubts about the nature of her host, she can now tell with some confidence that they’re not anyone she wants to be associating with.

Yet, does she have a choice?

For now, no.

What must be endured, can be. She raises her eyebrows as she looks up at the creature. “Well?” she says, grateful to her two decades as an Aes Sedai, which has trained her to maintain her composure under stress. “I presume you had a reason for coming in. Further, I might venture a guess that I was brought here for a reason, and your barging in without knocking—” as if there had always been a door to knock on “—might have something to do with that reason.”

The creature simply smiles. Moiraine wonders if it knows how to talk at all.

“Very well,” she says with a condescending nod. “Take me to your master.”

The creature bows slightly — Moiraine is absurdly sure the gesture is mocking — and turns on its heels, without looking to see if she’s following. She follows.

The hallways through which she’s led are cold and draughty. There are no obvious sources of light and the stone of the walls and the floors is black but somehow she can see everything clearly. She resists the urge to wrap her arms about her torso; she won’t display such overt signs of discomfort in the presence of her eerie guide.

They pass no doors, and seem to pass through none; suddenly they simply arrive in a room that is empty except for two chairs by a fireplace. Someone is sitting in one of the chairs, and from the way the black-eyed creature seems to defer to him, Moiraine assumes that he is her mysterious host.

The man is tall and seemingly young, though Moiraine knows the appearance can be deceiving if he’s a channeller. He has black hair and strikingly blue eyes, and something of the Borderlands in his features, perhaps Kandor or Arafel. He’s gazing absently into the fire, and it suddenly occurs to Moiraine that there doesn’t seem to be any warmth emanating from the roaring hearth. He raises one hand to his chest, touching something hidden under his white shirt, and Moiraine feels a strange sensation like something caressing her very soul.

The man smiles. “Moiraine Damodred,” he says, his voice smooth and dryly amused. “Welcome. Please,” he gestures to the other chair, “sit.”

Moiraine inclines her head slightly, but remains standing. “Thank you. I would prefer to know why you have brought me here.”

“I said sit!” The transformation of his voice and the sudden rage twisting his face take her by surprise, and Moiraine takes the seat quickly. The man smiles again, as though the outburst had never happened, and a black dot drifts across the blue of his eyes, first one, then the other. “That’s better. Wine?”

Moiraine blinks at the small table holding a tray with a bottle of wine and two tall glasses. She’s relatively sure the table wasn’t there just a moment ago, and definitely not the wine. “If you insist,” she replies, and nods graciously as she accepts the glass that floats over to her.

“Good.” The man brings his glass to his lips and takes a sip. “This Age has some fine vintages, wouldn’t you say?” A thin smile, bordering on condescending. “Of course, you wouldn’t have anything to compare them to.”

“Indeed,” Moiraine replies, trying not to show her alarm at the implications of his words. If he has sampled the vintages of another Age, he must be one of the Forsaken. Not that this is entirely surprising; it is difficult to imagine that anyone but one of the Forsaken could live in such a strange place and command a staff of such eerie creatures, yet hearing it outright is another thing entirely. Perhaps against her better judgement, she takes a sip of her wine as well. “Are you planning to answer my question?”

The blue eyes regard her for a while, completely unreadable. “I may.”

Pressing the matter further will probably do no good, so Moiraine tries a different approach. “What might I call you?” she asks, keeping her tone coolly polite though not deferential. Until informed otherwise, she’s going to assume that she’s a guest here; she’s certainly not being treated like a prisoner, apart from the shield still blocking her from the True Source and the fact that she’s been provided only a dressing gown for clothing.

“My name is Moridin,” the man replies.

“Death,” Moiraine says, half under her breath. A small smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. “How quaint.”

This doesn’t seem to warrant a response; the man who calls himself Death drains his glass and pours himself another one. Moiraine resists the urge to fidget, instead leaning back and relaxing as best as she can. It seems like this meeting might take a while.

In the end she walks out of that room not much wiser than she’d gone in. Moridin told her about the thing he now carries in a delicate gold chain around his neck, the mind trap. Moiraine never knew such a thing could possibly exist, but she believes what he told her; she has felt his touch when he fiddles with the curious pendant. She’s not yet sure if she believes what he said about the process being irreversible. Her believing that escaping was futile would certainly be to his advantage, and therefore he might be lying about it.

There are other things she’s not sure about either. He claimed to have brought her out of Sindhol — that was apparently what the realm of the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn was called — on a whim, with no real plans to use her. That may be true. He didn’t say anything about possibly having developed such plans since then, and only smiled when she asked. She doesn’t find that terribly encouraging, but she can’t dwell on it too much.

She needs to figure out where she’s being kept.

Back in the room with no doors or windows, she has to acknowledge the possibility that it may be impossible without permission from her host.