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“An immense forest fire raging, and a hope that it might be put out by the sacrifice of a few glassfuls of water. They would be sacrificed."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras (tr. Lewis Galantière)
The sun filtered through the openwork windows as Moiraine channeled back into her room, cool.
The warmth of saidar vanished, and with it, the atmosphere charged with water and life that had surrounded them in the shed. Her footsteps sounded flat in the empty quarters, lacking in resonance, while the ever-present wind hissed outside.
The ward maintained on the room at all times while she resided in the Tower allowed her not to alert Lan of her return; her promise to come back before dawn, broken an hour ago, would no doubt draw him before long. Her sisters could not suspect her whereabouts and chance a break-in if her quarters were perennially cloaked. The eccentricity suited her cover.
Moiraine let the sensation of the absent bond sit inside her for a few minutes more as she busied herself around the room, gathering her hair up, laying out her clothes, and filling a basin with cold water. The fresh air penetrated every corner of the White Tower, no matter how stuffy its atmosphere had been. The cold had forged many a sister in the last three thousand years and would continue to do so until the world burnt.
Tomorrow, perchance.
She would not discard her shift yet, heavy with Siuan's scent still, with her pleasure and sweat, soon to be scraped for secrecy. The quiet stillness of her emotions kept close settled her mind for a while against the roiling enormity of the task before them.
It brought back memories of her girlhood, dark corridors filled with whispers, her flame for a novice burning in secret, her wariness of a Malkieri wanderer in the north.
Her hands broke the water's surface so the cold could excuse her trembling.
Coming to the Tower always led to cumbrous thoughts.
The water felt cool on her neck, across her thighs as she washed. The ritual of cleaning Siuan’s love from her limbs always carried a specific pain, distracting enough to be salutary in the moment. She was under no illusion that perception would remain, in the long term.
Lan had his own urges, impervious yet, that despite their decades-long familiarity she could not help but apprehend with amusement and a touch of fondness. This time, it would taste bitter and Moiraine was not eager to slip back into the bond.
The bitterness was not on her behalf, but in reaction to what she would have to impart to him. Knowing they had been walking toward that end for twenty years did not lighten the burden. They both had grown complacent out of endurance, though their resolve had never wavered.
Not wavered exactly, in Lan’s case. In the last few weeks, it had opened up in him.
There was a sadness to him that carried Nynaeve's name. Different from her own love-ridden body, heavy with the weight of an embrace years in the making, consumed too soon.
Lan’s sadness was growing roots.
The difference was stark when she resolved to unmask the bond after minutes spent in quiet contemplation.
As Lan had been reading, the lingering sensation of depth and focus startled her. She had not taken time to read anything but prophecies and ciphers for months. Poetry, it was, certainly, verses about longing and duty that skimmed his mind pleasantly. Tales of travels in unknown nations weighted down his bags when he needed hope, purpose.
Putting on a clean shift for the day, she sensed his smirk as he slipped inside, the quip dying on his lips the moment his mind fully apprehended hers.
“What is it?”
“We're going to the Eye of the World.”
She found looking at him in this instant intolerable and pulled at her undergarment with irritation.
The bond was quiet, listening.
“The Dark One is waking, and weak as he is, we can...” She inhaled before the Oath could catch her, turning to disguise her hesitation. Siuan's conviction failed her, so intent would have to do. “We will face him.”
His clothes hung perfectly on his frame, hadori in place as if he had not spent the night guarding her room in the drafty corridor. His face barely registered the change in plan, but a growing uncertainty took root in the back of his mind, along with a question he dared not ask.
“She doesn't know any more than I do. We will need to go, all of us.”
The thoughts shifted in his mind, out of reach for her, yet skirting his emotions enough for her to feel the ripples. He knew precisely what it meant for them.
“For what it is worth, I don't think it is Nynaeve. She's six years too old at least,” she added with a hint of mimicry.
Lan glared in answer, although gallows humor stirred him in the right direction, away from contemplation, into preparation.
His trust in her was also sound: there was still time — just enough, the span of a journey — to coax the Dragon into revealing themselves and sparing the others.
If nothing else, it would be the three of them, not one more, provided she could stir them in the right direction. Two Rivers folk or not, the Dragon Reborn was also Lews Therin Telamon, an echo still, and the little time had salvaged about the man suggested they would not let others die in waste.
Nynaeve had sworn no oath and would not follow, hopefully.
Lan and Moiraine had, to the Tower, to Siuan, to each other.
The easing in his posture suggested he took the quip for what it was: a genuine attempt at comfort on her part. If Nynaeve was the Dragon, there was nothing Lan could protect her from. Facing the Dark One would be an inevitability, although she would escape the madness.
Going to the Eye, being the Dragon meant dying now or later.
Moiraine could teach her, naturally, prepare her better, if only...
In times of peace, perhaps. Teaching was best imparted in peace, while Moiraine and Lan had been fighting a long war for decades.
There was no time, no peace left for them, but in the silence after Tarmon Gai’don.
Lan had sat on the bed beside her. His mind felt calm like water smoothed after a storm. Her musings on sacrifice rarely ruffled him, although she knew him to be insufferable when it came to hers. For now, his resolve was whole again, expecting, before the bond became alight with preparations.
“I will go to the bank with more letters-of-rights. These youths will not walk into Shienar looking like beggars.”
Horses, food, clothes for their companions; the journey to the Eye was long, even if she could facilitate it, which she will have to. Tave'ren as they were, drawing the pattern like a whirlpool, they could chance —
Were the risks she took hers, or was she just a thread caught in the heddles?
She was asking questions without answers, even for the Whites, to absolve herself.
Lan looked askance at her.
“I have a solution for speed, Light willing. The Ogier who found the boys.”
The sliver of satisfaction on his face mollified her for an instant: she could still impress him after all this time.
“I'll fetch him in the morning,” he gruffed and leaned on his thighs to rise.
She lifted her chin to stop him, amused.
“Request his presence. He is a young one. We do not him to bully him into helping us.”
The corner of his lips twitched. Of the two of them, the long-standing agreement settled she was most likely to do the bullying, yet only because his temper was marginally better than hers.
A feeling brushed her mind, tender, not hers, and she had to clamp down hard on the distraction.
As Lan went through the logistics of the morrow, she could sense his determination hit a block. Worry for her flooded the bond.
“We've settled on exile,” Moiraine added simply, staring ahead at the morsels of dawn through the window panes.
His grunt was resigned, no doubt already assessing the damage this would cause. He had friends in the Tower, although with each passing year and the shadows growing they were fewer and fewer. His visits weren’t frequent enough for him to weave ties with the younger recruits, however scant their number was.
Her allies were fewer. Twenty years of traveling the land and they would have nothing but a child to show for it.
At the end of everything, they would be alone.
His posture mirrored hers on the bed, slouching slightly. In these waking hours, after a night spent in vigilance with the bond masked, he looked his age — they probably both did.
Silver threads had started adorning his hair last year, a crown more rewarding for her than the Malkieri one. His urge to disappear had been so great when they met and after the events in Chachin their survival could not be absolute certitude.
She never dared to dream they would see each other grow old. The Wheel did not allow room for an after, despite her proffered longevity and his undying duty to Malkier. No, they would see the end of this age and fight among her sisters and their warders at the Last Battle.
The oath kept her from stating it would be over soon.
This vexed her.
The expectation grew in him, protective. He wanted to be by her side.
“I will go to the Hall on my own,” she whispered absently and his hand contracted on his thigh.
She didn't need to rebuff him. It would break traditions and draw more eyes to them. The prospect of displaying more than necessary brought nothing but discomfort, and displaying too much to distract from her destination was already necessary. He had others to care for and knew this.
The Last Battle coming, her sisters would have better to do than investigate where they had disappeared.
Where they had died.
There was no honor in death for her; there was for him and it was worse. Decades in the past, when she was young and believed herself to be some herald in a novel for the ages, she contemplated her death with terror but pride. He never disabused her, although he trained the terror out of her soon enough, but now...
Now.
Perhaps, there had to be honor in death, for him at least. She couldn't bear to have him throw away his life for —
She pushed her anger away. It was no use letting guilt unseat her so close to their goal. She would need Lan until the end. Lan by her side, his strength and intelligence, meant stacking the odds in their favor. They would be, after all, nothing but guideposts for the Dragon, stepping stones for them to save or end the world.
Images of old bones intruded on her thoughts, artifacts of ages past that used to be breathing creatures roaming the world. The ground swallowed so many in the Breaking that she knew the dust in some parts of the world was made of their bones entirely.
She had youthful fancies, before, of dying in battle tangled with Lan's body, as her spirit would wait to seek Siuan again.
How ironic for their journey to end in the Blight of all places, where she had taken a warder.
He took only an oath there and she a whole being to tend to, to repair, to sustain.
A warder, her warder.
Her responsibility.
Having him to protect her wasn't such an assurance now that the pattern of the Age was unfolding.
A companion in dying wasn't so sweet a succor anymore. Who she was had been who they were for a while now, long enough for other people to build a life, learn a trade, raise children, grow old together.
She thought of Nynaeve, of the life the Wisdom had sparked in him, in more ways than he could fathom yet, stubborn as he was. The young woman had gifted him an alternative to dying for someone, living for them.
Moiraine could fathom the attraction of such thoughts.
Yet, the cost of failure was too steep, their death, their agony much more acceptable. If they failed, innumerable people would die. The Panarch’s palace and the creatures there stood, a reminder of what once was, but how many people were swallowed by the Earth, by the water, their bones ground to dust, leaving nothing?
If they failed, there would not be anyone to unearth their bones.
And if they succeeded, it was still not their victory.
Even death would not bring them peace. They would have to die hoping the Dragon would make the right choice.
Hoping, just so.
Nynaeve, if she survived, would have to learn, and perhaps Lan would take comfort in imagining her following his path in faith.
Thinking of Siuan under such terms, alive to mourn her and continue their fight, was tolerable.
In the last twenty years, in the last hundred of partings, she instilled the lesson in herself. With hope, Lan managed to do the same and not resent her for the sentence enforced on Nynaeve. She could not read his thoughts, still. His true beliefs were like the Void he embraced often, a distant conjecture to her, only grasped in aftershocks. Her connection to the source was not much different to him.
Feeling his despair at the prospect of losing Nynaeve would unmoor Moiraine completely.
Her reflections had gone on for too long, leading his quietness to grow into ferocious attentiveness, all turned toward the bond.
His dark eyes were studying her with rueful intent, the crease over his brows a manifestation of his perennial annoyance at the wall between them.
Before parting, Siuan had kissed her brow gently, releasing her from the expectation of more vulnerability before it ended.
Lan had not taken such vows.
The bond burnt, streaks of despair fed back into her as a fire licking logs doused in oil.
She did not have to request his presence for the remainder of the night, and the utterance of such a need would have offended him. Twenty years ago, she would have said a prayer for Lan, for herself. Failure rid her of that sentimentality, continuously, over decades. Try as he might, death would be the end of their journey together.
Being together, for tonight, would have to do.
She relented and clasped his hand on her thigh, twining their fingers.
“Tomorrow, Gaidin, we ride on. For now, we can be here.”