Dhall - Handout 34
“So... you return once again. Have your memories left you as they have so many times, Restless One?” Dhall took a rasping breath, then broke out in a fit of coughing. Despite the wet hacking his quill never blotted the page he had been writing on.
“No, Dhall,” I smiled softly, and he returned with a gaze that spoke of his weariness with the world, “You’ve always said I would return here... that it’s the way of all things flesh and bone.”
“Such are the fates of those who follow you, Restless One”, he wheezed with a dusty laugh with little humour in it.
Dhall turned to look at Arvid, and his voice became if anything even more ragged, like the crumbling of deadleaves, and rasped: “A would call Dark One, Forsaken, but that honour belongs to your Lord, does it not? Of course, time has robbed your of your memory, as it has for all of you, who follow in the wake of the corpse and the shadows he leaves behind. In your case at least, I can bestow a measure of clarity. Attend”.
Dhall beckoned for Arvid to come closer and the pages of the large tome in which Dhall had been writing shimmered and blurred. The rest of the Ka-Tet unconsciously came closer so they also could read what the scribe had written. When the text cleared, they commenced to read and their reading went beyond mere words into shadowed visions of the past ......“once the greatest servant of the Light, he looked into the heart of the Dark and tumbled into despair. ‘Betrayer of Hope’ they named him, and he served the nameless Imprisoned God, the Lord of the Grave, who even now strived to bring an end to this world, and all the worlds, and usher in the Eternal Night”
...The tale was told by Dhall but his voice had passed beyond the Eternal Boundary, and the Ka-Tet felt a chill on their souls, the chill of death, the chill of utter negation, a chill spreading from insight the sliver of darkness buried in their hearts, and a there issued a collective moan of grief, fear, and despair.
A tall scarred man, his features hidden by a hood which told a tale of many weeks and leagues, sat in the tavern nursing his battered tankard - a few swallows of the local ale left behind as the gleeman tuned his harp. A grand instrument for a dusty flea-speck village and its rustic occupants.
The gleemantook a drink to wet his throat and in a low but tuneful voice began to sing:
“The colours of his morning,
The darkness of his night;
Little graves that gave no warning,
A sun that brought no light.
He saw his whole world breaking,
That tortured soul I met;
In the prison of his making,
The man who can’t forget.
I can still hear the way that he cried,
for the ones he was missing;
I can still hear the way that he cried,
for the ones he had lost.
He saw them in the rivers,
He felt them in the rain,
In dreams he heard them whisper,
The truth that is his pain,
He caused the whole world’s breaking...”
The hardened young noble, already a legend, sat cross-legged before his students. He rang the bell, and a note clear and high broke the silence. The noble lit the taper on the incense in the brazier, and began to speak:
“The men of the Borderlands consider loyalty their essential duty. Who that is born in this land can be wanting in the spirit of grateful service to it? No Borderlander, especially, can be considered efficient unless this spirit be strong within him. A Borderlander in whom this spirit is not strong, however skilled in craft or proficient in learning, is a mere puppet; and a body of warriors wanting in loyalty, however well ordered and disciplined it may be, is in an emergency no better than a rabble. Remember that, as the protection of your homelands and the maintenance of their defence depend upon the strength of its arms, the growth or decline of this strength must affect their destiny, lest they be swept away by the tide of the Dark; therefore neither be led astray by current opinions nor meddle in politics, but with single heart fulfill your essential duty of loyalty, and bear in mind that duty is weightier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather. Never by failing in moral principle fall into disgrace an bring dishonour upon your name...”
The lithe young Wise One cradled the dying Stone Dog in her arms. Blood was spattered over his battered cad’in’sor. His spears were broken and his arms twisted and broken. With his dying breath, blood bubbling on his lips, the young warrior urgently whispered raggedly in her ear: “Leafblighter means to blind the Eye of the World, Lost One. He means to slay the Great Serpent. Warn the people, Lost One. Sightburner comes. Tell them to stand ready for She Who Comes With the Dawn, tell them”.
She recalled as a prideful Maiden stepping through the rings in holy Rhuidean, watching the history of her ancestors unfold... and she felt each and every one one of their tears and their impotent rage as the world of verdant green and cerulean blue which they had shaped burned and blackened before the corrupting heat of the Dark Sun, the Dragon roaring its triumph over the Breaking of the World...
The haughty Accepted stood stiffly in her new robes of glistening white, seemingly one with her marble skin. Only those not familiar with Aes Sedai froideur would, however, fail to see the tightness around her eyes as she recalled her recent experience in the basement of the White Tower. Three times she passed between the strange ter’angreal in the shape of a twisted doorway. She was shocked by what she saw – shocked in a way that her steely resolve and icy heart had not prepared her. She looked West to see the mountain against the setting sun.
“And it came to pass in those days, as it had come before and would come again, that the Dark lay heavy on the land and weighed down the hearts of men, and the green things failed, and hope died. And men cried out to the Gods, saying, O Lights of the Heavens, Lights of the Worlds, let the Promised One be born of the mountain, according to the prophecies, as he was in ages past and will be in ages to come. Let the Prince of the Morning sing to the land that green things will grow and the valleys give forth lambs. Let the arm of the Lord of the Dawn shelter us from the Dark, and the great spear of justice defend us. Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time”.
The hooded “tinker” slipped unnoticed through the eaves of the fabled topless towers. His halfman’s information was good, and his quarry was completely unheeding as he and his companions waved their invitations to the Sun Palace. The man slipped into the inn around the corner, confident now of the quarry’s movements. There in the stables, wreathed in shadow, he changed his clothes for those of a rich dandy with pomaded hair. Emerging back into the taproom, he paused for the song sung by one of the chanteuse:
“Give me your trust, said the Aes Sedai
For on my shoulders, I support the sky
Trust me to know, and to do what is best,
And I will take care of the rest.
But trust is the colour of a dark seed growing,
Trust is the colour of a heart’s blood flowing,
Trust is the colour of a soul’s last breath,
Trust is the colour of death.
Give me your trust, said the queen on her throne
For I must bear the burden all alone
Trust me to know, and to judge, and to rule
And no man will think you a fool.
But trust is the sound of a grave-dog’s bark,
Trust is the sound of betrayal in the dark,
Trust is the sound of a soul’s last breath,
Trust is the sound of death.”
Tossing the coin and catching it, he laughed and whistled softly as left, a skip in his step. The black flecks of sa’a flickering across his eyes as he anticipated the denouement to his activities this night ...
It took some timefor the Ka-tet to be conscious of the silence broken only by the Dhall’s quiet wheeze. “You have cast your net wide, Restless One, to draw the Forsaken One and bind him with your darkness, like and yet not like to his.”
You did not answer. Your mind was still swimming with revelation – somehow, you felt your visions were filtered through Arvid.
Dhall then turned to my companions:
To Dak’kon he said: “Hail, Chained One. Have you found a way to live beneath Two Skies, or is your heart still riven in twain?”
To Esmae he said: “Hail, Scorched One. Do you feel the great void growing in your heart, where what was once a garden has become a lifeless desert? Have you found the seeds of your dreams that you planted long ago, to await the return of the stars and the waters of the heavens?”
To Eilana he said: “Hail, Lost One–tossed upon the waves of fate until she came onto a far shore, far from the light, speaking a dreadful oath in the darkness – do you remember the face of your Father?”...
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Later that night, you are burying one of your companions, one who had been with you through battle after battle, never questioning, never complaining, never fleeing. Now their lifeless body was before you. The others could not read your expression as you allowed dry dirt to stream from your hands into the body and for you to intone: “May you shelter in the palm of the Creator’s hand, and may the last embrace of the Mother welcome you home”.
You know you spoke for yourself as much as for your companion.
-------
“And sometimes the Wheel bends a life-thread, or several threads, in such a way that all the surrounding threads are forced to swirl around it, and those force other threads, and those still others, and on and on. That first bending to make the Web, that ista’veren, and there is nothing you can do to change it, not until the Pattern itself changes.”