Room 99, Frozen Prior to Ch. 30

[we_bring_hell]

The room is spartan; sufficient to her needs. There is a single painting on the wall, painstakingly straight. It seems to be a mounted jigsaw puzzle of a tower at sunset. There is the faintest smell; some kind of organic ash, mixed with the oil of a mechanism. It's not unpleasant.

Her robe has somehow transitioned to the closet, and there's a skeleton on a stand in the corner; she recognizes the ribs. It grins at her familiarly. In the closet there are rows of long-sleeved shirts much like her usual habit, and some other shirts she frowns at. In a drawer there are trousers and spare niqabs and gloves and socks. Her journal is here on the desk.

This is all burying the lede: perpendicular to the white, crisp bed is a second one. There is also a set of free weights in one corner for some reason.

On the table by the bed is a device she only vaguely recognizes the function of, but it seems to be active. She presses the universal glyph for play. After listening to the strange yet familiar apocalyptic hymn, she lets the songs keep playing, but only the second one holds her interest.

She finds another CD in the drawer and puts it in; the first words send prickles up her spine; it's about running away and checking into a spartan room to hide from loss.

Half the words she hears mean nothing to her, but the other half pierce her through.

I write down good reasons to freeze to death
In my spiral ring notebook
But in the long tresses of your hair
I am a babbling brook

She plays it all the way through, and then again, and then again, and then again, and then she listens to the seventh song until she knows it word-perfect, even the words that are gibberish to her.

---

A new Milliways day finds Harrowhark at a table in the bar, studying her notes, black trousers and shirt and niqab. The key to room 99 is on the table before her, and she sings tunelessly under her breath, when that day is coming who can say, who can say. In Canaan House, time is frozen.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

"It was a bone construct," she says. "Gri--Gideon described it, and it sounds horrific, but if it's a skeleton I can take it apart. It's what I do. But I don't know who is controlling it. Someone has to be."

"It killed Baron Tattares in the basement laboratory. Gideon dragged Sir Chatur away, and they took refuge in one of the studies. Gideon held the only key." She sounds... not mournful, or weary, now, but angry. Angry at mysteries.

"They rested for a moment. A moment." She shakes her head. "It could have killed Gideon. As easily as it killed the little girl, it could have--or perhaps it couldn't. Perhaps Gideon Nav really is that hard to kill. When she brought us the body she was incoherent. And Septimus never even woke up until then."

Her eyes are beginning to sting.

"I thought Gideon would blame me, but it's worse. She blames herself. She just hates me. She asked to be released to protect Lady Septimus until it comes for them. As if we're all already dead and we should just pick who we want to be beside when we go."

She presses her fingertips to the fine ridge of her brow, pressing as if it will put her brain back in. "I told her no. And I said a lot of hateful nonsense beside, because she hurt me and I wanted to hurt her. But she is still who I want beside me when it comes, and she obeys me. For now."

"I am meant to be smart. I thought I was smart, and fearless, and ruthless, and unsentimental. I want to be that person I thought I was. I don't want to die. I cost too much." She presses her hands in again, fingertips to her brow, heels of her hands to her cheekbones, and wills her tears away.

[blue_ajah]

She remembers Lan Gaidin telling her, You are the hardest woman I know. And her own response: I am as hard as I have to be.

"What would have happened, do you think, if the Fourth and Gideon had been the ones left behind with Dulcinea Septimus instead of you and Palamedes?"

[we_bring_hell]

"I don't know," she says. "I truly don't know anymore. Perhaps she would've attacked them as I feared. Or maybe she's just a dying woman who somehow did something impossible with a meat puppet and means us no harm."

"Everyone else seems to trust her. Even when the Eighth stole her keys, he did it in the guise of protecting her from being harassed over them."

It's not as if she even has anything to stand on in mistrusting her puppet--she's been dancing her parents around Drearburh for years. Dulcinea Septimus is just better at it--mysteriously, suspiciously better at it, but that's all.

[blue_ajah]

"If you had it to do over, what would you do differently?"

[we_bring_hell]

Instantly: "I would tell Gideon what I knew. What I was thinking and what I feared. If I had told her from the start about Protosilaus there would be no question of jealousy."

[blue_ajah]

"Then it would seem you have learned," Moiraine says.

"I have said before that there are few secrets between Warder and Aes Sedai. It may be best for you to adopt a similar approach with your cavalier."

Her tone is calm and steady, but not unkind.

"Declining to release her from her service was not poorly done. Speaking hatefully to her ... well, I suspect you are well aware now of the damage an uncontrolled temper can do. Maintaining composure under all circumstances is part of training in the White Tower for good reason."

Dark eyes hold hers.

"They might have died anyway, Lady Ninth. Sometimes there are no good choices, or only hard ones. As smart as you are, you are not proof against mistakes. No one is."

Including herself, although she does not say that.

[we_bring_hell]

She exhales shudderingly. For a long moment she can only sit and try to catch her breath; she feels like she just climbed to the pinnacle of Drearburh.

"I thank you," she says, and then tries again.

"I know that you have asked me not to speak of debt," she says. "But no one has ever--I have been alone with a great burden, Moiraine Sedai. I was born to protect the Locked Tomb, and not even my parents truly understood what we were protecting. And they have been dead for. A long time."

Another secret gone. "I have been very alone. And I know now I had a companion at hand, if I had but seen it. But you are not the only other orphan of a dying planet." She smiles tremulously behind her veil.

"You have no reason to help me. You have no stake in my world. And for that reason I can trust you to see clearly. The Ninth House has no friends in the Empire. I had to leave the Empire to find one."

[blue_ajah]

"I shall hope that you will find others, as well," Moiraine tells her, and this time her voice is kind.

"I may have no stake in your world, but I have reason enough. You are not alone."

[we_bring_hell]

She is breathing more easily now, the first inexplicable panic of trusting someone passing.

"I will tell Gideon the truth. Somehow. It is... it's hard for me. The Ninth House is a house of secrets, and I carry so many."

Another breath. In. Out. Easy. No ribs gripping her chest but her own.

"I have been more open here because... because no one cares. There are no other Houses jostling for hegemony. The other inhabitants of Canaan House think me a close-mouthed and mysterious shadow cultist. I had to order Gideon to fake a vow of silence."

With her mind a million miles away, she says absently, "Once I released her, the first thing she said to Palamedes Sextus was that the first three letters of his names spelled Sex Pal. Weeks of cultivating an image as mysterious and sinister black nuns, gone immediately."

[blue_ajah]

Raven would be amused, she thinks.

"A deliberate counter to the silence and manner you forced her to portray, or merely her way of expressing herself?"

She sounds very wry, for some reason.

[we_bring_hell]

"No, she's always been like that," Harrow says, still far away.

"I really have been terrible to her," she says, sounding more present. "Not just lately. For years and years. When I tell her everything..."

She draws her knees up to her chest and loops her arms around them. "I guess we'll see." She doesn't sound scared; more fatalistic. Almost glad to have reached this point.

To whom can the Reverend Daughter give confession? Only her cavalier. And if her penance is to be drowned in salt water by Gideon Nav, so be it.

[blue_ajah]

"Yes," Moiraine murmurs, "I believe you will."

[we_bring_hell]

What might be an awkward silence descends, as Harrow sorts through the parting mists of her despair and Moiraine... observes this.

"There is something I wished to show you," she says. "If one of our conversations can survive my emotional breakdowns."

[blue_ajah]

"I should be interested to see it," she replies.

"You have been facing quite a lot, of late. I do not hold your emotions against you, Lady Ninth."

[we_bring_hell]

She looks down at her disturbingly bound journal and begins to flips through the pages. "We discussed the second trial, with the avulsion field. The thing that made it so difficult was that two destructive spells were created with entirely overlapping boundaries. It's something I would've considered impossible."

"I now have the theorem. It has the difficulty we discussed--away from this Window, I do not have the power supply to enact it for any constructive period of time. But it occurred to me that your power comes from an external source."

[blue_ajah]

"Yes," the Aes Sedai agrees.

"From saidar, the One Power, drawn from the True Source, which is indeed external for all that it is the force of creation itself and in a way inherent to life. It is what I believe you would term a source of thalergy, perhaps the greatest one."

She has an inkling of where Harrow may be leading with this observation, but waits to see, all the same.

[we_bring_hell]

She itches to scribble that down, but files in it her memory and continues with her point.

"Necromancy of course extends only to moving energy from life to death or death to a sort of life. But nothing about the theorem seems limited to spells of thanergetic nature."

"It may be something you can already do with your gifts, but I thought the theorem might have more value to you than it currently does to me."

[blue_ajah]

There is a flicker of surprise in the dark eyes, as she had not expected Harrow to make such an offer, especially not with something so hard-won.

"Perhaps we might examine it together," she suggests. "In that way, there may be something for both of us to learn."

[we_bring_hell]

She nods. "In any case, I will need to copy it out of my code."

"I have given it some consideration already, but I would welcome your perspective. I suspect what you call weaves, combining disparate types of magic, may be relevant."

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine nods, as well.

"It would seem likely. While there are some weaves that use a single type of flow only, there are also many that incorporate more than one. It is all saidar, but there are distinctions."

[we_bring_hell]

"There are distinctions between blood, spirit, flesh and bone magic, but they are related to how the magic is applied, not an intrinsic nature of the thanergy."

She finds pen and paper from the desk drawers, rather than using her own blood in this case. "Is there a method used in your practice for transcribing spells and, ah, weaves?" Since she's translating it out of her code anyway.

[blue_ajah]

"They are traditionally taught through demonstration and repetition," Moiraine tells her. "Some are learned through instinct and experimentation. Descriptions may be recorded in journals and books, but I do not think there is a method such as you imply."

The idea, however, sparks her interest greatly. What if there could be? What if there were a way to ensure the preservation of the White Tower's teachings in this fashion?

[we_bring_hell]

"No matter," she says. "I can show you our method." She begins to draw diagrams on the blank sheet of paper in ink.

"The fundamental unit of a necromantic spell diagram is a circle or spiral. The spiral reflects the slow decay of all energy, even thanergy, into an unusable state via entropy. A circle is a simplified diagram that shows only the starting state."

"'All orbits decay,'" she quotes. "A circle is a simple loop of energy patterns, while a spiral tracks that loop through its lifecycle and allows for interventions in the pattern at key moments. However, the greatest detail will still be found in the outer ring of the spiral. We use these circles both for notation and for casting, especially when we wish to set up a standing field or ongoing ward."

"Of course, in a physical ward, the shape must be traced in some biological medium that holds thanergy. Blood is good, bone lasts longer but is less flexible in the initial crafting. Flesh is useless for a long term effect, generally speaking, although I understand some flesh magicians have done interesting things with scarification..." She trails off, aware she has wandered somewhat from the point.

[blue_ajah]

She leans forward slightly as Harrow works, studying the diagrams with great care.

"And each symbol in this drawing, then, would represent an element and its position in your spell?"

Moiraine glances up as Harrow pauses.

"Weaves can be tied," she says. "As I did with the one we tested, before. It helps to keep them stable until they are unraveled, broken, or dissolved. However, the art and skill of embedding a weave's effect into a more permanent artifact was long thought lost, and even now is still limited to only a few."

[we_bring_hell]

"Yes. We call these elements ganglia. A ganglion can even be a notation referring to another simple spell, representing a sort of junction. But more often they are a simple change in the flow of energy."

"We also cannot form truly permanent artifacts. Bone is the best medium for anything long-term, and it is hard to shape, and will still grow depleted in time. And as a ward it is more... vulnerable, than blood."

"Of course, great circles and spirals are unwieldy for notation purposes. What I record in my journal is a sort of mathematical shorthand that would allow me to reconstruct the spiral and its ganglia. The formula must record the starting elements as well as the rate of decay, as measured by the tightening of the spiral. Once the starting elements are in place, you must only notate future ganglia and the length of the intervals between them."

"It sounds complex when I say it aloud, I suppose, but I have been reading spell diagrams since I could read English. At first you translate from notation to diagram to energy flow--drawing the spiral can help--but in time it becomes just a second language."