Disclaimer: I don´t own Wheel of Time, but I do use direct quotes from the books in my story. Read and enjoy, I certainly am.
A New Face In the Wheel of Time
Looking around the museum I noticed a small statue of a man with his arms raised, a sword in one hand and missing his left. Other displays could have drawn my attention, a painting of a magnificent view of a waterfall, a small group of vases that were so intricately designed I thought they must have been done by a computer. The label by the vases said they were over four thousand years old, but the statue of the man with his arms raised seemed to draw me to it. It was his arms that drew me. His face had no detail, as if it had been scoured away rather than not there. The display said that it had only been added a few months ago, and that the results from its carbon dating had not come back yet.
But his arms, I thought I could see small snakes wrapping around his forearms and ending on the backs of his hands. No, not snakes. Dragons! I knew this statue! Well I didn´t really know it, but I knew where the inspiration for it had come from. I had only read the series twice.
The statue was about a foot tall, maybe a bit more and a rusty reddish brown color except for the dragons which were golden, the man, Rand al Thor, was wearing a coat of some kind that seems to have been brushed by the wind and was blown out slightly to the side, his pants were the same way. As I took a closer look at it, I blinked and thought I saw the coat and pants move slightly.
"I´m insane," I muttered to myself, but took a look at the coat and pants again, I was pretty sure they hadn´t moved, and I blinked again. The coat and pants DID move that time! Infact, as I watched they kept on moving as if the clothes were being blown about by a slight breeze. I took a step back and was going to point out the imposibility of a moving statue, then considered the fact that this may be some kind of joke, like a ´Candid Camera´thing.
"Kel 'Aridavin," the statue had spoken! "You are a long way from your time, do you wish to return to it?"
No one around me seemed to be able to hear the statue speaking, as a matter of fact, no one seemed to notice I was there either. They walked right by me, with hardly anyone in the museum they walked right beside me. One man even brushed against my roughly but didn't even look at me. I was bumped closer to the statue and nearly fell into it. Return to my own time? What was it talking about?
"Yes." The answer came unbidden from my lips, as if someone else had spoken for me. I clapped my hands to my mouth and held them there, stopping any other words that might want to escape.
The statue's arms dropped, and the world went white. I felt a presence all around me, as if I had been embraced by someone who had just thrown a warm blanket around me, there was an echo of an unrecognisable voice before it made sense to me, one that seemed as familiar to me as my mother´s, "My child, you are no longer needed in that time. My Will must counter the one who would oppose it. Be My Hand, and prevent calamaty from taking the world."
The surge of Saidar woke Moiraine from sleep, and she felt straight away that nothing about the flows of the Power were what she knew to be possible. Saidar felt as if it were merging with an invisible force and working in unison with it. The only other force that she could imagine that would work at all with Saidar was Saidin, the male half of the True Source. In an instant she was dressed and rushing out of her tent towards where the residue of the Power still remained. Lan was at her side the moment she was out of her tent and her heart skipped a beat when she realized that the flows were coming from Rand's direction.
The quick run through the Far Dareis Mai encampment around Rand was interrupted by several Wise Ones coming to investigate as well. The Maidens who had been guarding the Dragon´s tent were crouched around a body, "What happened here?" Moiraine's melodious voice calmed all the women huddled around the body and there was enough light to see that the body was a man.
"We do not know, Aes Sedai. There was a flash of white light, and then this man fell to the ground." One of the Maidens said, although the one who had spoken could not be distinguished among the growing crowd of Aiel women.
Moiraine looked down at the fellow, and the first thing that surfaced amoung a mass of confused thoughts was that he was wearing very odd clothing. Nothing she had ever seen before, and did not think anyone else had ever seen either. He had on a loose black shirt made of a material she did not recognize, and she knew that even in the faint light of the moon she would have been able to make out almost any fabric. The weave was strange, not one she recognized either, and his pants seemed to be of a tough blue cotton. What he had on his feet could only be described as shoes, but they were even more foreign than his shirt and pants. He lay on his stomach so she could not see his face but she expected him to look as different from anything she had seen as his clothes were. Rand came from the tent then, she was surprised it had taken him so long to react to what had happened. He was still tucking in his shirt but she imagined that he was holding Saidin, and was not hurrying because he believed the situation under control. Aviendha came out right after him, dressed in the white blouse and skirts of the Wise Ones.
Grabbing the unconscious man by the shoulder, Moiraine gently turned him over and studied his face. He did not have any traits that would name him of a particular nation, a strong chin that may have named him Domani was cancelled by his pale skin, his largish eyes may have come from Tear, but then his broad shoulders could have been Aiel. Most interesting was his ears, they ended in points, rather than curving like normal human ears. She didn't have time to worry about his ears now though.
"Who is he?" Rand asked, his voice was cold and emotionless.
Not answering at first, Moiraine looked at the man's face, rather than his characteristics, a very young man, but a man. She felt a flutter in her middle and noticed his whole face for the first time, instead of picking it apart. He was beautiful, not merely handsome. Lan moved to one side so she could see him from the corner of her eye, a reassurance or a reminder? Then what it was about him struck her, it was his face.
"Get a pallet prepared, and put it in my tent," it was an effort to keep her voice steady, one of the Maidens spoke quickly to a Gai'shain and she ran off to do as the Aes Sedai had requested. "Lan, carry him. I want to be there when he wakes so I can question him."
"When he wakes," Rand's voice had emotion in it again, "I want to be there as well."
Nodding, Moiraine let Lan lift the man up and followed him as he followed a Gai'shain to the tent she and Lan slept in. More Wise One's were coming down to the camp of Maidens and she and Lan ducked quickly into her tent to avoid being cornered by one of them.
The Gai'shain was still laying out the pallet when they ducked in, and left as soon as she was done. Lan laid the unconscious man on the pallet and Moiraine embraced Saidar, warding the tent against eavesdroppers.
"Who is he Moiraine," Lan's voice was hard, but not cold. He looked at her with the question in his stone carved eyes.
"I do not know Lan, even if I did I would not say yet. I felt the Power being used but Saidin must have been used as well because I felt an incomplete weave. If both parts of the Power were used, and in the unison I felt Saidar being used, it could only be the Forsaken."
Lan had his sword drawn, even though she did not know how in the confines of the tent, and had it pressed against the man's neck. Pressing her hand against the flat of the blade she moved it away from his neck and looked at him with a small smile on her lips. He looked at her with the stone hard gaze he seemed to have been carved from and did not blink. They were both thinking the same thing, what could this man have done to anger two of the Forsaken? Why had they not killed him? And if it wasn't the Forsaken...
Rand came into the tent, pushing aside the tent flap and letting in a blast of cold air. In the excitement of the evening she had not realized how cold it was outside and even if she could ignore the cold, it still affected her body. He closed the flap behind him and fastened it to the ground. Looking at the two of them, he turned his attention to the man on the ground. In the lamp light she could tell that he was young, Rand's age or a little older. His shirt was decorated with words she did not recognize and designs that she imagined were foreign to anyone on this or the other side of the Dragon Wall.
"The Forsaken?" Moiraine had expected him to demand to know what she knew, even expected him to tell her to leave now, but she did not expect him to be so calm and calculating. "I felt Saidin being used, a massive amount of the Power," he paused as if trying to decide how to say what he wanted to.
"It felt incomplete," Moiraine finished for him, "I felt the same with Saidar."
Rand looked at the man, and then looked at Lan, "It felt like," he shut his mouth, grinding his teeth, "it felt like Saidin was being woven with something I couldn't feel, as if it was working in complete unison with something invisible. But how can that be? Moiraine, you said they work in opposition and unison, this was perfect unison."
The three fell silent, none saying any more until the man stirred. Moiraine dreaded his waking, it was his face.
My head felt fuzzy, but when I opened my eyes I was looking at three people I did not know, dressed in a way I didn't think anyone did anymore. One was a woman I couldn't put an age to, for a moment she was as young as me, then older, and back again, but her eyes were too knowing to be young. The other two were men I wasn't sure could be real. One was wrapped in a cloak that shifted colors, a Gaidin's cloak. How did I know that? His face was all hard planes and angles, seemingly carved from stone. His expression gave as much away as the rock I had compared his facial features to. The other man was as stony faced as the first, but he had red hair and grey-blue eyes while the man I had thought was, Gaidin I think it was, had dark hair and dark eyes. The faint light of the single lamp didn't let me see much more.
"Where am I?" I asked, and they seemed startled for a moment.
The red haired man spoke, but his words were gibberish to me. It might as well have been French or Russian, I couldn't have understood either any better. I did hear one name though, Mat. At that my ears pricked up, Gaidin was the Old Tongue for warders in the Wheel of Time! The man with the face of stone left the tent and the woman looked at me as though I was an insect she would like to dissect, and then figure out how everything worked. Neither spoke, but the two did share several glances.
"Do you not speak English?" I asked them both, "French? Russian? German?" A strange feeling came over me, and I looked at the woman. "No, no that's not possible." She must have seen the look in my eyes because she stared even harder at me. The Wheel of Time, a series I had read a while ago. Most of the books were still fresh in my mind, if not completely. "Moiraine?" She jumped, and the red haired man looked about as pale as he could go. She turned to him and they gibbered at each other for several minutes. "Moiraine Damodred, of the Blue Ajah!" They both looked stunned, I looked at the man, at his arms, at the dragons on his arms, "Rand al'Thor! The Dragon! How is this possible!" My eyes had gone just about as wide as they would open, I was as tense as I could get. I felt like passing out, I was loosing my grip on reality and slipping into darkness, but I fought against it. "Gaidin! Lan Mandragoran! How is this possible?" Darkness took me as Lan brought a man I could only guess was Mat Cauthon into the tent.
It seemed only a moment and I was awake again, four faces staring at me. If they called Mat, was I speaking the Old Tongue? "Mat Cauthon?"
He looked about as startled that I knew his name, even though Moiraine had most likely told him that he knew their names, and opened and closed his mouth several times before he spoke, "How do you know my name?"
"I," oh well you're a character in a book I read, I know exactly what has happened to you, what will happen to you, and what you have thought whenever Robert Jordan chose to write from your point of view. "I don't know, I looked at faces and names pop into my head. It's as if I know you, but I don't at the same time."
Mat spoke to Moiraine, Lan and Rand, probably telling them what I had, and some more from the looks of it, and then he looked back at me, "Now I've done it, now they know I speak the Old Tongue, what have you gotten me into? Who are you? Moiraine says it was the Power that brought you here, and won't say any more than that. I'd suggest you keep your mouth clamped shut but she´ll get something out of you before the night is over or she'll let the Wise Ones at you. Blood and bloody ashes! How could they know I speak it?"
This was the Wheel of Time! I knew this world, I had read the books! How was this possible? Unless this was the most bizarre dream I'd ever had. Rand, Lan, Moiraine, and Mat all looked at me as if I was some kind of serpent, and then I felt like vomiting. The urge to empty myself of everything I had ever eaten grew and grew until I turned away from them and threw up, but it wasn't food. Blood, so much blood that I was sure I had no more in my veins for my heart to beat. It had begun coagulating so the hardened flecks tore at my throat, tears streamed down my face from the pain, my stomach tried to rip itself apart to be empty.
After what seemed like an eternity it was done, I shuddered so badly it was worried it might be a seizure. Moiraine put her hands on my head the second I had it turned around to look at them, and I snapped taunt. My muscles strained so hard I felt like I was going to snap in two. Words filled my head then, words and phrases from a language I didn´t know, whole conversations flew back and forth faster than I could follow. It hurt just trying to catch one word out of the thousands rushing through my brain. Along with the barrage of words, I felt as if my 5 senses were being stretched into 6 or 7. I felt an awareness of something beyond my view, something just beyond the corner of my eye that if I turned fast enough I would catch a glimps of. Pain came then, I had been in pain before but not like this. It was an exhaustion pain as if my body had been pushed past it´s limits in a way I didn´t know how to acomplish. My whole being seemed to be drained of any energy that I could ever or have ever possesed and I hurt so badly! Death would have been preferable at that moment and I was about to scream out and beg for it when I felt the pain leeching from my body.
Wheezing, the breath coming back into my lungs as I collapsed on the ground, I sucked in air greedily. "What," I had to breath in-between each word, "did, you do," another breath, "to me?"
"He can speak normally now!" Mat said, "Well you don't need me, I'll just," Lan still held him by the shoulders and Mat was unable to leave.
"He can," Moiraine agreed, "and it would be nice to have two Ta'veren here to question him." Ta'veren! Rand was the most powerful Ta'veren the Tower had ever heard of, and if it was working for him he made people say things they normally wouldn't have except for the one in one thousand, even one in ten thousand chance that they might have.
"Ta'veren, I know what ta'veren are. What you have to ask yourselves though, is whether you want the answer that I would only give once in ten thousand re-runs of this moment?" They all looked at me now, no longer semi-focusing on the others. I wished I could stare at me at that moment, I hadn´t even intended on saying that! Ta´veren was working on me right then! "I'll answer your questions but I don't want to be forced into it, it's always easier to ask nicely." Moiraine just looked levelly at me. I wanted to tape my mouth shut, Lan and Rand still looked carved from stone, and Mat just looked as though he wanted to leave very badly.
The Aes Sedai wasn't put off in the slightest, "Very well, answer me this. You appear in the night, wearing those strange clothes and speak the Old Tongue. Then when I touch your skin you speak our own language. I understood some of what you said to Mat, though much of it was lost in translation." Mat's eyes opened wide again, it seemed most of tonight was going to be wide eyed and pale faced. Rand and Lan alone did not change in expression, "Do you know where you are?"
"Assuming that certain things have taken place, and the fact that we are in a tent, we are either in the Aiel Waste, in Kinslayer's Dagger, or in Cairhien on your way to the capital where the Shaido are besieging the city.
A white aura that had surrounded Moiraine from the moment I was able to look up after the pain suddenly made sense to me. She was holding Saidar, and I saw thin strands of Spirit, Air and Fire encircle the tent and add to a barrier already there. Right then I just about passed out. "I see the aura of Saidar around you," Her eyes went wide and I knew for sure, Lan took a step back, Rand looked visibly shaken, and Mat looked like he wanted to sick up. I felt a surge of something coming from Rand, and I looked at him knowing instinctively what it was, "I can feel Saidin in you." Rand looked like he had taken a blow, and I felt nothing from him anymore. The void and Saidin had fled him. "Moiraine," I was scared, there was too much happening, I was going to pass out again. Too much to make sense of anything, I hadn't meant to babble like that or act a fool in front of these people. "What is going on, how can I see Saidar in you, and feel Saidin in Rand."
"I don't know," the glow that surrounded her was the last thing I saw before I fell into darkness.
Okay, I´ve updated this chapter and changed a few things, not much but it makes it easier to read and adds more background to what´s going on. I figure I´ll update a little each week, on Monday´s unless things change here, so look for these disclaimers at each chapter. If I don´t finish a chapter I´ll put a notice where I´ve gotten to. That will be for you and for me because I have to do this in an Internet café and have no way to save stuff.
Hasta luego!
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