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]

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."

[blue_ajah]

"Is it more vulnerable because it is more brittle, or less flexible, perhaps?" she asks.

It is strange to be talking about spells woven with decay and death and parts of a physical body, but it is as they have discussed previously - Harrow's work draws from the power released at the end of the natural process, rather than at its creation. Even Ages both come and pass with the turning of the Wheel of Time. For the time being, the Aes Sedai is content to learn more.

"I can see how it would be something to which one could become accustomed," she adds. "If the pattern at the heart of the spell remains similar, then it may be only a matter of adjusting the parts of it."

She is already thinking how she might try to adapt this type of notation to describe the basic weaves taught to novices in the White Tower.

[we_bring_hell]

"No--because it is less individual. A blood ward, tightly constructed, cannot be penetrated without the blood of the creator or perhaps one of her descendants. A passive blood ward, once dried, can lie in place for millenia and only react to thanergy brought into the system, extending its life."

"The Sealed Tomb has one such ward, drawn by God Himself to contain what is buried there and protect the sepulcher from tampering. The potency that lingers in the blood is of course incomparable."

And Harrow walked past it when she was twelve but she doesn't want to talk about that!

"Exactly--it is a case of establish baseline parameters and then saying, 'do such-and-such until a criteria is met.' The notation itself does not need to record loop after loop of the baseline parameters. To invoke the power, of course, you must hold those details in your mind for the duration, executing the changes at the key moments. That is the difference between reading a notation and casting it." If Harrow knew anything about musical notation she might make a comparison here, but she sure doesn't.

She finds a fresh sheet of paper and begins to transcribe the notation from her incomprehensible code to a (currently still incomprehensible) mass of numbers and symbols. It is an improvement insofar as the glyphs are recognizable, though.

[blue_ajah]

She thinks of blood on the rocks at Shayol Ghul, but no hint of her thoughts reaches her expression.

"The process of invocation that you describe is not unlike constructing a weave," she says. "A difference, perhaps, is that I manipulate the flows of power into configuration rather than holding them in mind only - but it may be a minimal one."

Depending on how Harrow handles thanergy, of course.

[we_bring_hell]

"A notation of your magic would require indicating the type of energy, I imagine," Harrow murmurs, busy drawing. "There are five types, correct?"

"Many practitioners use compasses--a bit of a traditional gift for the young necromancer," she adds, as she free-hands two large circles in order to blatantly show off.

"Much of this notation refers to the two fields overlapping--that part is not really what matters--although if you are interested in entropy or senescence fields, they are archetypal examples of their kind. Ultimately, however, we want to abstract out the way this casting neutralizes the interaction without requiring a moment to moment intervention."

[blue_ajah]

"Correct," she confirms. "Spirit, Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. Most common weaves use only one or two flows. Very few use all five."

She tilts her head, considering the drawing that Harrow is rapidly and skillfully rendering.

"In the usual manner of things, what requires such intervention?"

[we_bring_hell]

"In theory, if I were casting two spells at once, if I foresaw two conflict elements, I would simply adjust it on the fly. Like directing traffic," she says, although the Ninth House's tiny spaceport could not accommodate more than one shuttle at a time if it had ever needed to, which it had not. "But in two overlapping fields, those moments of interference crop up everywhere, and of course the point of a field is to not require intervention, to create a standing pattern within in an area rather than a specific target."

She lays one diagram over the other and holds them up to the light. "Do you see? Where the patterns would cross and disrupt each other? The heart of this theorem is solve that problem, not just for these two spells, but systematically for any two spells.