Chapter 1

In Darkness, a Beginning

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 in the early weeks of winter. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. This time, in darkness, there was a beginning.

His head hurt like hell. That was the first thought that shot through his mind after his thoughts emerged from the state of unconsciousness he must have had fallen into. Why? Yes, why? He did not remember the reason. In fact, the haze of his disordered thoughts revealed there was a lot he did not remember, and panic crept into him as he laid still with his eyes closed. A name! Damn it, he needed a name. No, he needed his name. Forcing himself to breath slowly despite his racing heartbeat he tried to listen into his mind. There were pictures that passed him by in a fog of colours and meaning, but he forced himself to concentrate, to dig, to search. His breath slowed down, as did his heartbeat, and despite the pain in his head a semblance of order seemed to return to the sounds and pictures in his mind. He waited some more, his face feeling the hard and piercing ground he rested on.

'No panic. Remain calm. Wait. Everything will be all right. You know who you are, don't you?' he asked himself, trying to reassure himself, and much to his surprise a name came up in his mind.

Genda.

Tarmion Genda.

It sounded familiar. No, more than that. It sounded right. He sent a silent prayer to whoever was watching over him and felt himself ease a bit. Well, that was a start. Now to the rest of it. He tried to concentrate, but all that came back to him was a blur of pictures and sounds that made little sense to him as he was.

Carefully, he tried to raise and turn his head so he could open his eyes without piercing his eyeballs on the rocky ground. The reaction was a sudden increase in the pain in his head. It had the same effect as if a madman was hammering against a set of huge bronze bells in his head, and it made him feel quite giddy. On the good side, he also felt his limbs and muscles, so what ever had happened had at least not paralysed him. He pulled his arms forward so he could press himself up easier, and decided to it another try.

Fuckin' hell, he was a grown man! A damn headache could not pin him to the ground. Or so he kept telling himself as he struggled with the pain and dizziness to at least get to his knees.

Opening his eyes, he found himself in what seemed to be a natural cavern. There was a fallow light with no obvious origin that put the place into a strange twilight. Tarmion rested like this for a few further moments until he felt secure enough to use his hands for something else but pillars to rest on. The pain was still there, but he realized that with ample concentration he could keep the dizziness at bay. His hand came back wet as he touched the back of his head, and what he had touched felt too soft for him to ease his concerns. The light made it not easy to discern colours, but given his state Tarmion had no doubts that the dark substance that now stuck to his fingers was blood, his blood. For brief moments his heart began to race again, and his hands trembled.

What the hell had happened? As if to mock his question the hammering pain came back in full. He bent over and had to empty his stomach. Gasping for breath he remained like this for some time, bowing over a pool of his own vomit, moaning, until he came to his senses again. He had no idea how much time had passed since whatever had happened that had left him here and he had awoken. Still, through the pain and the insecurity as a rational thought crept back into his mind: he was wounded, and he needed help. He had to find somebody – anybody.

"Hello?"

His voice sounded dry and raspy.

"Is there anybody who can hear me?"

There was no answer but an echo clanging back from the walls of the cave. Accepting his fate, he finally pushed himself to his feet, placing his arm against the rocks to steady himself. The small cavern had two exits were it shrunk to narrow passageways, but neither of them gave any indication whether it would lead outside. After a moment of hesitation, he took the one to his left. It was as good as the other one.

The corridors were natural, winding up and down, left and right in no particular pattern, widening into little caverns from time to time, then again shrinking to holes hardly allowing himself to crawl through. Here and there amethysts and other coloured stones peaked through the grey stone surface, adding to the already surreal atmosphere of the place. The prevalence of the strange, blueish light uneased him. It seemed to come from nowhere, even though he told himself he was moving towards its origin. Also, it was rather warm in here. He knew – where from, he ironically did not know or remember – that caves usually were rather damp places, often formed by water as much as by the earth itself. Yet here a warm and dry breeze blew.

He had been making his way towards the light long enough at that point that his legs had begun to hurt. His throat was dry, and his mouth tasted still like the mix of gall and blood he had vomited before. Taking a rest and falling asleep again started to look like a promising option again. He was tired, wounded and, yes, afraid. He rested his head on the wall, almost ready to sit down and embrace sleep when he heard it. A murmur, soft, still far away, going up and down like a sing-sang he could not – yet – understand. It was not much. He was not even certain whether this was not just his head playing tricks on him, but for now, it was a destination.

It seemed to take him forever. The path wound up and down and up again only to finally end in a long and soft sloping bend to the left, exposing the origin of the murmuring sounds he had heard. He stepped forward into a long cavern, easily fifteen metres wide and just as high as that. Three natural stone pillars cast dim shadows, and he carefully stepped into one of them.

He was no longer alone. In the centre of this cave a middle-aged man was singing and dancing. He wore robes of green and white that once must have been rich and elaborate, and golden jewellery and a necklace with an amulet with two interleaving circles of white and black. And his voice sent shivers down his spine.

"I'll sew myself, a shirt, of flesh

so warm, so nice, so fine, so fresh.

My needles - fair and hot - I've shown,

my shirt now needs a broach of bone.

I sing, I slaughter, cry, I dance,

like puppets I make bodies dance.

My love, so fair, her hair of gold,

I ripped her spine, her skull I hold..."

With strange fascination he watched the man dance around without any rhythm, singing his haunting tune.

He stopped in the middle of another bounce, balancing on one foot, then looked down on himself. His eyes cast off the veil that had covered them, he saw his bloodstained robes and began to tremble.

"Seaina, what have I done?" his tormented cry turned into a howl as his own hands tore at the flesh of his face as if trying to claw away a rediscovered memory. After his fingers had left deep scratches all over him, he slowly stopped and his moans turned into sobbing.

"Why cannot the Shadow erase me for what I've done. Done to her. Done to them – done to the world!" His voice rapidly changed from mourning to angry, and he rose again. „I curse you, Lews Therin Telamon. Do you hear me! I CURSE YOU! You brought that upon us, not me. NOT ME!"

Suddenly, as if he had heard some noise, he stopped his rant and raised his listening.

"Is there anybody?" He waited for a response, and Tarmion drew himself further back into the shadows, afraid, adrenalin rushing through his veins.

"I heard you! You hear me? I heard you!" Agitated, he rushed forward – right towards where Tarmion was. When he stopped on his heels, his head was less than an arm's reach away from him. Tarmion's heart almost stopped. But the man did not see him. He looked him into the eyes... and looked right through him. After a moment that seemed to Tarmion likes ages, he just turned around again as if nothing had ever happened and walked back to the center of the cavern. He looked at his bloodstained hands in disgust.

"It was your hands that burned them, that made me kill her... oh Seaina, love of my life. The blood is on my hands, but you are the killer, Lews Therin!" he yelled in agony and frustration. And without a pause he broke into a roaring laughter before he resumed his song.

"I'll sew myself, a shirt, of flesh

so warm, so nice, so fine..."

Two human skulls appeared. He held them by their hair and raised them to the level of his face, looking into their lifeless eyes and open mouths.

"They don't talk to me any more. Why does nobody talk to me?" He threw them to the ground an stomped his foot like a child, sniffing his nose. "I'm bored. I want to play now."

Then, suddenly, as if he had never existed at all, he was gone.

Tarmion, only then realizing he had held his breath for the longest part of that strange episode he just had witnessed, sighed deeply. What he had just seen had been disquieting in more than the very obvious way of a madman appearing out of in disappearing again into thin air. Lews Therin Telamon. The Wheel of Time. He could not give any reasons for it, but he suddenly was very certain that he did not belong here. It felt... wrong, just as the flash of insight telling him his name had felt right.

And yet, what choices did he have? Wounded, alone, frightened and displaced, all he could do now was set one foot before another and hope to see the end of it alive. Staggering forward again, he accepted his fate and made his way to the other side of the natural dome.

He had almost reached the part were it narrowed like a funnel again when he spotted the blond shock of hair of a small boy peaking at him from behind of one of the pillars.

"Is Caran gone?" he whispered carefully, searching the dome with frightened eyes.

Baffled by yet another strange appearance, Tarmion just answered him.

"The mad dancing man?"

"Yes, the singer. My mother says Caran Tureed is a bad man, and we should not go near him. What's your name?"

"I'm… . My name is Tarmion. What do you do down here?" he asked, doubting whether the boy was real or just a figment of his imagination, a result of his injuries.

"Hello, I'm Sero." The boy stopped in front of him, looking up at him sceptically. "You don't look good. I think we best go to mommy, she can certainly help you." He grabbed the grown man by the hand and started going.

Tarmion just followed him like in trance, simply being overwhelmed by the quite otherworldly experience. Blood-splattered madmen, little boys appearing out of thin air… maybe the hit on the head had driven him insane. He yielded up to whatever his fate might be and kept pace with the boy, never loosing touch with his hand. He felt real enough. Small, with keen blue eyes and wiry arms and legs and a voice full of curiosity, the child - wearing a longsleeved red tunic and trousers of the same colour – did not seem to be some kind of hallucination. None he could discern anyway.

They walked for some time – Tarmion had no idea how long or how far – and the boy, Sero, kept talking and asking questions during it all the time. The path was no better than the ones he had taken before, and he watched the ceiling like a hawk, fearing further injuries to his head. Preoccupied with this he did not realize that the blueish light's intensity had steadily grown during the last minutes of his trip. When he finally walked past a final corner he was greeted with the most bizarre sight he had ever seen.

Sero looked up to him, looked at his open mouth and pointed a finger.

"Avronfaracaldrelle," he declared confidently.

It was a name, even though Tarmion had no idea what it meant. Avronfaracaldrelle. Hundreds of houses, all in some state of ruin, covered a soft slope about half a mile in length and width in a huge cave, extending to a height of maybe twenty metres at its highest. On each of the four sides, the city seemed to have continued but had simply been buried under the rocky massif, the foundation walls of some still marking the position of a house where now mostly rubble was. Wide avenues were still recognizable, and here and there Tarmion discovered the remains of vegetation turned into stone. As if a giant hand had taken the city, ripped it from the ground and shoved it into a mountain.

And above all towered, nay, floated, like a miniature sun, a pulsating ball of blueish light. A soft buzz, almost inaudible, followed the sunken city, swelling and going down again with every pulse of light. It was calling him, calling him to come closer, to look, to listen, to feel. Slowly, like sunken in trance, he set one foot down before the other, and before he realized it, he was walking straight through the ruins towards the hypnotizing source of light. It seemed as if Sero was shouting something, but he did not hear him any more. There was only the light, and the soft buzz filling his ears. Neither did he register the scores of skeletons that littered the ruins. The light floated in the centre of the square of ruined buildings. It was calling him. Step by step, he climbed the mound of debris and rubble, ignored the fallen pillars and human remains that all seemed to point away from it, until he stood beneath it, the radiance hurting his eyes.

Under the blueish glow, it had irregular black ad white features and seemed to be rough, not round at all. It was drawing him closer, and inch by inch his outstretched hands came nearer to it, finally touching it. Heat shot through his arms. Tarmion looked surprised. He wanted to scream, wanted to take his hands off the glowing sphere, but he was paralysed. His arms, his whole body felt like liquid fire was racing through it . The buzzing turned into a high-pitched rattle, the pulse got more erratic, the light more blending.

When the intensity was close to blasting his eardrums, with a cracking sound as loud as thunder the world turned white for Tarmion Genda.