by Sarinda » Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:40 am
Origin Story: “To Ride Lightning”
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose above the great Aryth Ocean. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
Whipping past islands with harsh crags, over archipelagos and atolls, the wind blew east. Where it blew, the water churned and waves crashed, sending sea spray into the air. The wind crashed towards land, nearing the mouth of the River Andahar, where three-masted Sea Folk skimmers and rakers cut like blades swiftly through the water. The wind lessened as it headed inland, lessened but never died, towards the nation of Tarabon, by the port city of Tanchico. It whistled past bare-chested men, unloading fish and trade from far-off lands, and women wearing thin, clinging gowns with transparent veils draped across their faces.
Sarinda’s dark silk cloak rippled in the wind, and she reflexively hugged it closer against her ebony skin as she stepped off the gangway of the Wave Chaser onto the docks below. Summer had recently arrived, but the day felt unseasonably cool for her tastes. She looked up at the sky and frowned at the dark gray clouds blocking the sun’s rays. “A storm will come today,” she predicted. There was an ominous feel to the wind that nagged at her, and her eyebrows furrowed.
Sarinda walked in step with her father, a boulder of a man with hard muscles and a harder stare. Talam din Rovan Wild Wave ignored the wind altogether, stubbornly moving onward with discipline and purpose. Still, he gave a sidelong glance at her and harrumphed in irritation. He carried numerous quality fur pelts over his shoulder and a small chest in the crook of his arm, which she knew held exotic Tairen spices that were worth more than their weight in gold. “If it pleases the Light,” Talam said in his usual rough voice, “it will hold off long enough for us to make trade here. The Light shine on us here, and we can secure olive oil and these fringed rugs that the Taraboners are known for, and we will make a sizeable profit in Falme, if not Bandar Eban.” Talam walked briskly ahead, and as he did, the throng of people flowed and parted before him. Her father had been known to nearly bowl someone over once.
“If it pleases the Light, Cargomaster,” Sarinda inquired hesitantly, her voice breathy as she hurried to keep up, “what is my role in this trade?” She knew that she risked breaking of custom if she pressed him too hard in public; it would be improper to question the actions of a man at his station, no matter whether he was her father of the blood or not.
Talam arched a thin eyebrow and gave a stern look, but he slowed his pace just enough for Sarinda to catch up with him. “Your Sailmistress” -- that would be Nalene din Tsoran White Star, her mother of the blood -- “has instructed me to take you, if it pleases the Light, so that you can observe and learn more about matters of trade and customs in these lands. If it pleases the Light, she believes it may broaden your perspective, and complement the training you are receiving from our Windfinder.”
The two Sea Folk stepped aside as a large draft horse trotted by, pulling a wagon filled with fresh fish, unloaded from a nearby ship owned by the shorebound. Sarinda wrinkled her nose, and not only from the smell of the fish. She despised horses, and gave this one a wide berth. The Light shine on her that she would never need to ride one of these beasts. She did not trust them. Sarinda looked back towards the docks, feeling a longing to run back to the Wave Chaser; being on land was agony. She looked ahead, towards the fortresses surrounding the harbor. They were on the Calpene Peninsula, the southernmost of the three jutting into the harbor and the closest to the bay. “If it pleases the Light, Cargomaster, are we heading to the King’s Circle?” She nodded to the large assembly arena among the buildings just north across the channel to the nearest peninsula. It was the largest of the three.
“No,” Talam replied dismissively, instead waving her on as he moved towards a smaller arena on the peninsula before them. “The Great Circle might be the smallest of the three,” he explained, “but it can still hold thousands of people, many of whom will offer a premium price for the goods we have in Wave Chaser’s cargo hold.”
Sarinda replied with a skeptical expression, but she held her tongue. She shivered as another cool breeze blew towards the shore with a whistling howl. She looked up at the clouds, frowning once more. At that moment, she blinked in surprise as she saw the shape of a large bird flit between the clouds and disappear as fast as she had seen it. Only, the bird was a pale grayish color, and at this distance, it would have to be extremely large. She had never heard of such a creature that would fit its description. Had her eyes deceived her?
Before she could ask her father about what she had seen -- Talam had a surprising amount of knowledge about the fauna of the lands where they traveled, more than many of the shorebound -- Sarinda heard murmurs and then gasps behind her. She quickly turned around, and her breath caught in her throat. “By my father’s heart,” she murmured.
Out at sea, a thick and ominous fog rolled towards the shore, like a wall of smoke creeping along the water’s surface. The wind howled again, but she knew this was no ordinary storm; she did not need her Windfinder training to know that much. “If it pleases the Light, all will be well,” she intoned like a prayer. “All will be well, and all manner of things will be well, if it pleases the Light.”
“Perhaps we should seek cover,” Talam suggested, placing a hand protectively on Sarinda’s shoulder, but he did not move, eyes still transfixed on the fog.
The fog rolled into the bay, and onlookers around her began to rush towards cover from the nearby buildings. One woman reached down reassuringly patted her crying child. “It will be alright, yes? No need for tears.” The young girl, no more than three or four years of age, still cried and cling to her mother’s skirts for comfort. The woman hushed her child and scooped her up, a worried look on her face as she made her way towards the Great Circle.
Suddenly, the bows of three greatships cut their way like a knife out of the wall of fog. Sarinda gasped. She had never seen ships of this kind before. They were three-masted, like a raker or a skimmer, but unlike any Atha’an Miere ship she had seen, they had ribbed sails that were sharply angled rather than square, bloodred in color. The fog dissipated almost instantly as they came visible, as if melting away in a scorching sun. An entire fleet of greatships came into view out at sea, fanned out in a line, already forming a blockade around the bay. The three greatships already in the bay slowed as they turned to face a line of ships moored to the docks. Including the Wave Chaser.
On the dock of the lead greatship, a line of women emerged from its hold, standing in pairs. Among each pair, one wore an ankle-length dark blue dress with crimson panels and silver forks of lightning bolts. Each such woman wore a silvery bracelet, connected to a chain that ended in a collar around another woman standing beside her, like a leashed dog. She had never seen anything like it.
Sarinda felt a terrible pang in her chest, and tingles across her skin, as the water began to churn.
She had only learned the basics from Relanna so far on how to embrace and channel the One Power, enough that she was beginning to sense saidar being channeled but could not see the flows like her mentor assured her she soon would. But she knew beyond a doubt that somehow, these leashed women were all channelers, all weaving the Power in concert to deadly effect.
Ships groaned, timber snapping, as a whirlpool erupted in the bay. Smaller boats capsized and were pulled under in moments. Larger boats wobbled as their decks flooded, fighting helplessly against the force of nature to stay afloat, but they, too, had their hulls breached from the force of the whirlpool assault. She distantly heard men screaming.
More channeling. Sarinda watched with horror as flames erupted in the air like an Illuminator’s nightflower, fanning across the unlucky ships still floating intact in the bay.
Talam threw his entire armload of pelts to the floor, tossing the Tairen spice chest without so much as a second glance to the pile of dried herbs that scattered in the wind. “By the nine winds and Stormbringer’s beard,” he cursed. “Nalene!” He ran like the wind itself, feet pounding on the docks as he sprinted back to the Wave Chaser. “Nalene!”
Sarinda found herself running after her father, but she knew in her heart that they were too late. She wailed as flames roared along Wave Chaser’s sails and charred the deck. Tears streamed down her face as the water roiled, splashing over the raker and sending men and women, her friends and family, sprawling into the bay. Others dove off the Wave Chaser as he groaned, whined, and then snapped. Water rushed into him, and he began to slowly overturn in the water. Talam fell to his knees, voice hoarse from yelling in anguish, and he beat at his chest with a fist as tears ran down his face.
Something snapped within Sarinda. Her screams, first fueled by sorrow, now turned to rage. Turning her gaze towards the greatship and the leashed women, she instinctively surrendered herself to saidar. A torrent of power, the One Power, flooded into her, and in that moment, she found clarity.
She began to Weave the Winds.
Relanna had told Sarinda that her Talent to control the weather was unusually strong, even among the Atha’an Miere, and that some day when she was fully trained, she had the potential to rise to the station of a Windfinder to a Wavemistress, perhaps even the Mistress of the Ships herself. Sarinda was not yet fully trained, but what she lacked in discipline today, she made up with resolve in spades.
Sarinda wove cables of Air and Water, thicker and thicker, even larger in size than the rigging used for the sails on her mother’s raker that was already sinking into Tanchico Bay. Drawing more deeply from the True Source, she directed the cables with a cry into the heavens. She swirled the flows around each other, creating her own cyclone of Air and Water, and as she did, the clouds rumbled and turned gray, then black as night, blotting out the sun. Through the center of her swirling weaves, she wove a single ribbon of Fire.
The women must have been able to sense her channeling, even at that distance. One wearing a silver leash around her neck turned and pointed towards the docks, shouting something that Sarinda could not make out.
The woman did not realize that she was already dead.
The hairs on Sarinda’s arms stood on end, and she felt a physical tingling throughout her body as the air suddenly crackled and hummed. She did not flinch as a bolt of lightning struck the woman dead on, dropping her sizzling corpse to the greatship’s deck. Thunder roared as two more flashes of lightning struck, wreaking havoc on the ship and sending more of the women flying. Sarinda channeled even more Air, and a violent storm erupted, fierce winds blowing across the greatship and hurling dozens of soldiers into the bay. Only then did she notice the men were wearing helmets that looked like monstrous insects’ heads, as if they were peering through some beast’s mandibles. She shivered.
Sarinda felt someone channeling. Another bolt of lightning struck down at the ship, but she frowned as it stopped without warning in the middle of the sky, as if striking an invisible dome now shielding the ship. One of the women wearing the lightning-panel dress lifted her hand, and a leashed woman turned her attention towards the decks again. Sarinda gasped and scrambled backwards, eyes wide with panic. Saidar slipped away in her fear, leaving her utterly defenseless as the ground began to erupt in a spray of wood, earth, and fire. Just as the weave neared her, Talam leapt and barreled her over, and she gasped in pain as he flung her to the ground, yelling her name.
Her vision flooded with darkness as her consciousness slipped away.
-=+**+=- -=+**+=- -=+**+=- -=+**+=- -=+**+=-
Sarinda stirred with a groan.
She thought she was dead, at first. She coughed feebly and tried to move, but she felt crushing weight across her entire body. She was entombed in debris made of wood, paving brick, and dirt. Screams and weeping still echoed from somewhere, and she thought she distantly heard steel clashing on steel. An alarm was finally sounding, bells ringing in the distance, for all the good it would do. She was unsure how long she had lost consciousness.
Not daring to touch the Source or channel, not knowing how many more of those strange leashed women might still be alive or nearby, Sarinda strained and finally pulled her arms and shoulders out from the wreckage enough to free her legs one at a time. Miraculously, none of her bones seemed broken, and although she had a few gashes along her forearms and face, none felt serious.
Sarinda moved to push a final piece of debris out of the way so that she could stand up, but as her hands touched something warm, she froze, her heart sinking.
Sarinda rolled over the body and prayed that she was wrong, but her plea went unanswered. Talam’s eyes stared up at the cloudy sky, unblinking in death. Shards of wood the length of her arm had pierced his ribcage, and his skull was sunken from a blow to his head.
Sarinda turned away from the corpse and began to sob as bile rose up her throat, and she retched, emptying her stomach onto the street. Unbidden images of her father flashed through her mind, memories of him teaching her how to swim, of being thrown giggling into the air and being caught in his strong arms. She thought of her mother, a brave and peerless soul, and her brilliant mentor Relanna, both of whom were very likely killed or captured. She wept, losing all sense of time, as the weight of her grief threatened to drown her like a tidal wave.
The sound of footsteps fastly approaching jarred Sarinda back to the present moment, and she forced herself to choke back her tears. But when she peeked out from behind a cracked open crate, she was relieved to see no soldier or leashed woman, but a single horse, who neighed as it tried to navigate the debris. It pranced away for a moment as she quietly stood up, snorting nervously, but it settled quickly and stood still, watching her with large glassy eyes.
Sarinda saw that the sun had not moved much since she had last seen it. The greatship she had assaulted with the Power was half sunken in the bay, but not fully capsized, and the other two greatships had moored already and were unloading large exotic beasts the likes of which she had never seen or imagined, that she could only assume must be foul creations of the Father of Storms. Above the city, she saw several of the large bird-like creatures she must have seen before the attack, but now a group of them were flying in formation; against all logic, each had a rider mounted on its back. They were far larger than the horse standing beside her, with leathery gray skin and an impossibly wide wingspan. She shivered involuntarily and silently prayed to the Creator for a blessing of safety.
Steeling herself, Sarinda clenched her teeth and forced herself to look back at her father’s lifeless body. There was no time for proper burial rites, but she could not leave him like this, either. She gently placed a hand on Talam’s chest and pulled back the collar of his vest. There around his neck, hanging on a beaded leather cord and tucked under his shirt, was a smooth blue pebble. She had given it to him when she was just a babe, so young that she was not even sure if the memory was her own or a recollection Talam had told her. In all her years, she had never seen him without the pebble around his neck. For as hard as he was on her in public, Sarinda knew that her father had loved her with all his heart.
Wiping tears from her eyes, Sarinda removed the cord and placed it around her own neck. Gently, reverently, she pulled Talam’s body over to the edge of the docks. With a push and a quiet splash, his body fell into the bay and began to slowly sink into the depths. “The Light illumine your soul,” she intoned somberly, “and the waters take you peacefully.”
Sarinda had no time to lose. If she lingered here, she risked certain capture, or death. She turned to the horse and crossed her arms, scowling, hesitating. She knew she had no choice, but for a moment, she considered how swimming across the bay to the mainland to avoid detection must surely be easier and safer than riding this beast.
She approached the horse, wincing in anticipation as she gingerly reached out for its reins, sure that it would try to nip at her or rear back in fright. To her surprise, the creature simply blinked and trotted forward, nuzzling her hand. Perhaps this one had at least some type of training, and she did not risk immediate death climbing onto it.
Sarinda threw herself onto the beast, and to her surprise, it tolerated her scrambling unceremoniously up into the saddle tied around its torso. She awkwardly threw her arms around its neck, clung with all of the might remaining in her, and took a shuddering breath. “If it pleases the Light,” she begged it, “go, take us away from here, please. I need you to run like lightning.”
She yelped involuntarily as the horse sprang into a gallop and clapped a hand over her mouth, but somehow, amazingly, no one gave chase. “The Light illumine me, and see me safe to my journey’s end,” she whispered, hugging the horse’s broad neck. She looked up and followed the sun west; she would need to give the city a wide berth, but once she got away from it, she could double back east and south, back towards the Sea of Storms. If the Light shone on her, she could find passage to Ebou Dar, or Illian.
“If it pleases the Light, all will be well,” she intoned once more. “All will be well, and all manner of things will be well, if it pleases the Light.” She did not try to wipe her tears away; she could not do so without losing her grip on the horse, regardless. All she could do was repeat her prayer, over and over, until her throat was raw. The Light shine on her that it would be enough.
[b]Origin Story: “To Ride Lightning”[/b]
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose above the great Aryth Ocean. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. But it was [i]a[/i] beginning.
Whipping past islands with harsh crags, over archipelagos and atolls, the wind blew east. Where it blew, the water churned and waves crashed, sending sea spray into the air. The wind crashed towards land, nearing the mouth of the River Andahar, where three-masted Sea Folk skimmers and rakers cut like blades swiftly through the water. The wind lessened as it headed inland, lessened but never died, towards the nation of Tarabon, by the port city of Tanchico. It whistled past bare-chested men, unloading fish and trade from far-off lands, and women wearing thin, clinging gowns with transparent veils draped across their faces.
Sarinda’s dark silk cloak rippled in the wind, and she reflexively hugged it closer against her ebony skin as she stepped off the gangway of the [i]Wave Chaser[/i] onto the docks below. Summer had recently arrived, but the day felt unseasonably cool for her tastes. She looked up at the sky and frowned at the dark gray clouds blocking the sun’s rays. “A storm will come today,” she predicted. There was an ominous feel to the wind that nagged at her, and her eyebrows furrowed.
Sarinda walked in step with her father, a boulder of a man with hard muscles and a harder stare. Talam din Rovan Wild Wave ignored the wind altogether, stubbornly moving onward with discipline and purpose. Still, he gave a sidelong glance at her and harrumphed in irritation. He carried numerous quality fur pelts over his shoulder and a small chest in the crook of his arm, which she knew held exotic Tairen spices that were worth more than their weight in gold. “If it pleases the Light,” Talam said in his usual rough voice, “it will hold off long enough for us to make trade here. The Light shine on us here, and we can secure olive oil and these fringed rugs that the Taraboners are known for, and we will make a sizeable profit in Falme, if not Bandar Eban.” Talam walked briskly ahead, and as he did, the throng of people flowed and parted before him. Her father had been known to nearly bowl someone over once.
“If it pleases the Light, Cargomaster,” Sarinda inquired hesitantly, her voice breathy as she hurried to keep up, “what is my role in this trade?” She knew that she risked breaking of custom if she pressed him too hard in public; it would be improper to question the actions of a man at his station, no matter whether he was her father of the blood or not.
Talam arched a thin eyebrow and gave a stern look, but he slowed his pace just enough for Sarinda to catch up with him. “Your Sailmistress” -- that would be Nalene din Tsoran White Star, her mother of the blood -- “has instructed me to take you, if it pleases the Light, so that you can observe and learn more about matters of trade and customs in these lands. If it pleases the Light, she believes it may broaden your perspective, and complement the training you are receiving from our Windfinder.”
The two Sea Folk stepped aside as a large draft horse trotted by, pulling a wagon filled with fresh fish, unloaded from a nearby ship owned by the shorebound. Sarinda wrinkled her nose, and not only from the smell of the fish. She despised horses, and gave this one a wide berth. The Light shine on her that she would never need to ride one of these beasts. She did not trust them. Sarinda looked back towards the docks, feeling a longing to run back to the [i]Wave Chaser[/i]; being on land was agony. She looked ahead, towards the fortresses surrounding the harbor. They were on the Calpene Peninsula, the southernmost of the three jutting into the harbor and the closest to the bay. “If it pleases the Light, Cargomaster, are we heading to the King’s Circle?” She nodded to the large assembly arena among the buildings just north across the channel to the nearest peninsula. It was the largest of the three.
“No,” Talam replied dismissively, instead waving her on as he moved towards a smaller arena on the peninsula before them. “The Great Circle might be the smallest of the three,” he explained, “but it can still hold thousands of people, many of whom will offer a premium price for the goods we have in [i]Wave Chaser[/i]’s cargo hold.”
Sarinda replied with a skeptical expression, but she held her tongue. She shivered as another cool breeze blew towards the shore with a whistling howl. She looked up at the clouds, frowning once more. At that moment, she blinked in surprise as she saw the shape of a large bird flit between the clouds and disappear as fast as she had seen it. Only, the bird was a pale grayish color, and at this distance, it would have to be extremely large. She had never heard of such a creature that would fit its description. Had her eyes deceived her?
Before she could ask her father about what she had seen -- Talam had a surprising amount of knowledge about the fauna of the lands where they traveled, more than many of the shorebound -- Sarinda heard murmurs and then gasps behind her. She quickly turned around, and her breath caught in her throat. “By my father’s heart,” she murmured.
Out at sea, a thick and ominous fog rolled towards the shore, like a wall of smoke creeping along the water’s surface. The wind howled again, but she knew this was no ordinary storm; she did not need her Windfinder training to know that much. “If it pleases the Light, all will be well,” she intoned like a prayer. “All will be well, and all manner of things will be well, if it pleases the Light.”
“Perhaps we should seek cover,” Talam suggested, placing a hand protectively on Sarinda’s shoulder, but he did not move, eyes still transfixed on the fog.
The fog rolled into the bay, and onlookers around her began to rush towards cover from the nearby buildings. One woman reached down reassuringly patted her crying child. “It will be alright, yes? No need for tears.” The young girl, no more than three or four years of age, still cried and cling to her mother’s skirts for comfort. The woman hushed her child and scooped her up, a worried look on her face as she made her way towards the Great Circle.
Suddenly, the bows of three greatships cut their way like a knife out of the wall of fog. Sarinda gasped. She had never seen ships of this kind before. They were three-masted, like a raker or a skimmer, but unlike any Atha’an Miere ship she had seen, they had ribbed sails that were sharply angled rather than square, bloodred in color. The fog dissipated almost instantly as they came visible, as if melting away in a scorching sun. An entire fleet of greatships came into view out at sea, fanned out in a line, already forming a blockade around the bay. The three greatships already in the bay slowed as they turned to face a line of ships moored to the docks. Including the [i]Wave Chaser[/i].
On the dock of the lead greatship, a line of women emerged from its hold, standing in pairs. Among each pair, one wore an ankle-length dark blue dress with crimson panels and silver forks of lightning bolts. Each such woman wore a silvery bracelet, connected to a chain that ended in a collar around another woman standing beside her, like a leashed dog. She had never seen anything like it.
Sarinda felt a terrible pang in her chest, and tingles across her skin, as the water began to churn.
She had only learned the basics from Relanna so far on how to embrace and channel the One Power, enough that she was beginning to sense [i]saidar[/i] being channeled but could not see the flows like her mentor assured her she soon would. But she knew beyond a doubt that somehow, these leashed women were all channelers, all weaving the Power in concert to deadly effect.
Ships groaned, timber snapping, as a whirlpool erupted in the bay. Smaller boats capsized and were pulled under in moments. Larger boats wobbled as their decks flooded, fighting helplessly against the force of nature to stay afloat, but they, too, had their hulls breached from the force of the whirlpool assault. She distantly heard men screaming.
More channeling. Sarinda watched with horror as flames erupted in the air like an Illuminator’s nightflower, fanning across the unlucky ships still floating intact in the bay.
Talam threw his entire armload of pelts to the floor, tossing the Tairen spice chest without so much as a second glance to the pile of dried herbs that scattered in the wind. “By the nine winds and Stormbringer’s beard,” he cursed. “Nalene!” He ran like the wind itself, feet pounding on the docks as he sprinted back to the [i]Wave Chaser[/i]. “Nalene!”
Sarinda found herself running after her father, but she knew in her heart that they were too late. She wailed as flames roared along [i]Wave Chaser[/i]’s sails and charred the deck. Tears streamed down her face as the water roiled, splashing over the raker and sending men and women, her friends and family, sprawling into the bay. Others dove off the [i]Wave Chaser[/i] as he groaned, whined, and then snapped. Water rushed into him, and he began to slowly overturn in the water. Talam fell to his knees, voice hoarse from yelling in anguish, and he beat at his chest with a fist as tears ran down his face.
Something snapped within Sarinda. Her screams, first fueled by sorrow, now turned to rage. Turning her gaze towards the greatship and the leashed women, she instinctively surrendered herself to [i]saidar[/i]. A torrent of power, the One Power, flooded into her, and in that moment, she found clarity.
She began to Weave the Winds.
Relanna had told Sarinda that her Talent to control the weather was unusually strong, even among the Atha’an Miere, and that some day when she was fully trained, she had the potential to rise to the station of a Windfinder to a Wavemistress, perhaps even the Mistress of the Ships herself. Sarinda was not yet fully trained, but what she lacked in discipline today, she made up with resolve in spades.
Sarinda wove cables of Air and Water, thicker and thicker, even larger in size than the rigging used for the sails on her mother’s raker that was already sinking into Tanchico Bay. Drawing more deeply from the True Source, she directed the cables with a cry into the heavens. She swirled the flows around each other, creating her own cyclone of Air and Water, and as she did, the clouds rumbled and turned gray, then black as night, blotting out the sun. Through the center of her swirling weaves, she wove a single ribbon of Fire.
The women must have been able to sense her channeling, even at that distance. One wearing a silver leash around her neck turned and pointed towards the docks, shouting something that Sarinda could not make out.
The woman did not realize that she was already dead.
The hairs on Sarinda’s arms stood on end, and she felt a physical tingling throughout her body as the air suddenly crackled and hummed. She did not flinch as a bolt of lightning struck the woman dead on, dropping her sizzling corpse to the greatship’s deck. Thunder roared as two more flashes of lightning struck, wreaking havoc on the ship and sending more of the women flying. Sarinda channeled even more Air, and a violent storm erupted, fierce winds blowing across the greatship and hurling dozens of soldiers into the bay. Only then did she notice the men were wearing helmets that looked like monstrous insects’ heads, as if they were peering through some beast’s mandibles. She shivered.
Sarinda felt someone channeling. Another bolt of lightning struck down at the ship, but she frowned as it stopped without warning in the middle of the sky, as if striking an invisible dome now shielding the ship. One of the women wearing the lightning-panel dress lifted her hand, and a leashed woman turned her attention towards the decks again. Sarinda gasped and scrambled backwards, eyes wide with panic. [i]Saidar[/i] slipped away in her fear, leaving her utterly defenseless as the ground began to erupt in a spray of wood, earth, and fire. Just as the weave neared her, Talam leapt and barreled her over, and she gasped in pain as he flung her to the ground, yelling her name.
Her vision flooded with darkness as her consciousness slipped away.
-=+**+=- -=+**+=- -=+**+=- -=+**+=- -=+**+=-
Sarinda stirred with a groan.
She thought she was dead, at first. She coughed feebly and tried to move, but she felt crushing weight across her entire body. She was entombed in debris made of wood, paving brick, and dirt. Screams and weeping still echoed from somewhere, and she thought she distantly heard steel clashing on steel. An alarm was finally sounding, bells ringing in the distance, for all the good it would do. She was unsure how long she had lost consciousness.
Not daring to touch the Source or channel, not knowing how many more of those strange leashed women might still be alive or nearby, Sarinda strained and finally pulled her arms and shoulders out from the wreckage enough to free her legs one at a time. Miraculously, none of her bones seemed broken, and although she had a few gashes along her forearms and face, none felt serious.
Sarinda moved to push a final piece of debris out of the way so that she could stand up, but as her hands touched something warm, she froze, her heart sinking.
Sarinda rolled over the body and prayed that she was wrong, but her plea went unanswered. Talam’s eyes stared up at the cloudy sky, unblinking in death. Shards of wood the length of her arm had pierced his ribcage, and his skull was sunken from a blow to his head.
Sarinda turned away from the corpse and began to sob as bile rose up her throat, and she retched, emptying her stomach onto the street. Unbidden images of her father flashed through her mind, memories of him teaching her how to swim, of being thrown giggling into the air and being caught in his strong arms. She thought of her mother, a brave and peerless soul, and her brilliant mentor Relanna, both of whom were very likely killed or captured. She wept, losing all sense of time, as the weight of her grief threatened to drown her like a tidal wave.
The sound of footsteps fastly approaching jarred Sarinda back to the present moment, and she forced herself to choke back her tears. But when she peeked out from behind a cracked open crate, she was relieved to see no soldier or leashed woman, but a single horse, who neighed as it tried to navigate the debris. It pranced away for a moment as she quietly stood up, snorting nervously, but it settled quickly and stood still, watching her with large glassy eyes.
Sarinda saw that the sun had not moved much since she had last seen it. The greatship she had assaulted with the Power was half sunken in the bay, but not fully capsized, and the other two greatships had moored already and were unloading large exotic beasts the likes of which she had never seen or imagined, that she could only assume must be foul creations of the Father of Storms. Above the city, she saw several of the large bird-like creatures she must have seen before the attack, but now a group of them were flying in formation; against all logic, each had a [i]rider[/i] mounted on its back. They were far larger than the horse standing beside her, with leathery gray skin and an impossibly wide wingspan. She shivered involuntarily and silently prayed to the Creator for a blessing of safety.
Steeling herself, Sarinda clenched her teeth and forced herself to look back at her father’s lifeless body. There was no time for proper burial rites, but she could not leave him like this, either. She gently placed a hand on Talam’s chest and pulled back the collar of his vest. There around his neck, hanging on a beaded leather cord and tucked under his shirt, was a smooth blue pebble. She had given it to him when she was just a babe, so young that she was not even sure if the memory was her own or a recollection Talam had told her. In all her years, she had never seen him without the pebble around his neck. For as hard as he was on her in public, Sarinda knew that her father had loved her with all his heart.
Wiping tears from her eyes, Sarinda removed the cord and placed it around her own neck. Gently, reverently, she pulled Talam’s body over to the edge of the docks. With a push and a quiet splash, his body fell into the bay and began to slowly sink into the depths. “The Light illumine your soul,” she intoned somberly, “and the waters take you peacefully.”
Sarinda had no time to lose. If she lingered here, she risked certain capture, or death. She turned to the horse and crossed her arms, scowling, hesitating. She knew she had no choice, but for a moment, she considered how swimming across the bay to the mainland to avoid detection must surely be easier and safer than riding this beast.
She approached the horse, wincing in anticipation as she gingerly reached out for its reins, sure that it would try to nip at her or rear back in fright. To her surprise, the creature simply blinked and trotted forward, nuzzling her hand. Perhaps this one had at least some type of training, and she did not risk immediate death climbing onto it.
Sarinda threw herself onto the beast, and to her surprise, it tolerated her scrambling unceremoniously up into the saddle tied around its torso. She awkwardly threw her arms around its neck, clung with all of the might remaining in her, and took a shuddering breath. “If it pleases the Light,” she begged it, “go, take us away from here, please. I need you to run like lightning.”
She yelped involuntarily as the horse sprang into a gallop and clapped a hand over her mouth, but somehow, amazingly, no one gave chase. “The Light illumine me, and see me safe to my journey’s end,” she whispered, hugging the horse’s broad neck. She looked up and followed the sun west; she would need to give the city a wide berth, but once she got away from it, she could double back east and south, back towards the Sea of Storms. If the Light shone on her, she could find passage to Ebou Dar, or Illian.
“If it pleases the Light, all will be well,” she intoned once more. “All will be well, and all manner of things will be well, if it pleases the Light.” She did not try to wipe her tears away; she could not do so without losing her grip on the horse, regardless. All she could do was repeat her prayer, over and over, until her throat was raw. The Light shine on her that it would be enough.