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 nods. It aligns with a thought--not even a thought, a sketch of a suspicion--she has been entertaining.

"Could I see another? Perhaps of Fire?"

[blue_ajah]

She inclines her head, and a golden corona of light springs into being around her as she opens herself to saidar.

Moiraine holds out both hands, and a tangle of threads made of brilliant red light forms into existence between her fingers. She shapes it easily into a ball of sorts, which she holds out for Harrow to examine.

It gleams like the flickering light at the heart of a flame.

[we_bring_hell]

"What are the... qualities of Fire?" she asks, reaching her gingerly towards the light. Her eyes are intent. "What is different in your conjuring of it?"

She chose Fire because fire has a sort of life; a sort of death, too.

[blue_ajah]

"I would not say there is anything especially different in the process of channeling, itself," Moiraine tells her.

She holds the weave steady, neither pushing it toward Harrow nor pulling back as if to warn her away.

"It is more a separation of the One Power into its components; isolating this flow from the others, distilling it into threads of itself alone. Channelers may be more skilled with certain of the flows, the Five Powers, than others. Men are often stronger with Fire and Earth."

"It feels -- vibrant, I suppose one might say, with a warmth to it that is more than that of saidar in general, quick and lively and energetic."

[we_bring_hell]

"Hm."

As she tries to lift the threads, she thinks of the deaths of fire; the snuffing out, the creeping chill. The cooling body. The light seems grey and sag at her touch, losing its coherency all together, and she pulls her fingers away hastily.

"No, that certainly isn't it."

She puts a hand to her fabric-swathed chin and thinks hard.

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine stabilizes the weave as Harrow draws back, and the red gleam brightens once more.

Dark eyes are thoughtful as she considers first the power she is channeling, then the younger woman.

"What does it feel like to you?"

[we_bring_hell]

"It feels like thalergy," she says. "But independent of a biological medium, and yes, a quality of warmth. Indeed, warmth is a quality of life that can radiate, as it were, from a body."

"I believe--I may be wrong--but I believe I had an affinity with Spirit. I changed it, yes, yet I did hold it, and of course spirit naturally transcends death."

"But converting all your weaves into Spirit is unhelpful. I am trying to conceptualize a way to flip it over into thanergy without losing that intrinsic quality of Fire. May I try again?"

[blue_ajah]

"Yes," Moiraine tells her, and lifts the bright tangle of threads closer.

[we_bring_hell]

She takes a breath and reaches again.

She focuses past Moiraine, into the distance, turning her mind of the heat of putrefaction and the blaze of the cremator; the burning incense and ancient fatty candle of the Ninth. Passing the thalergy through the fire and accepting the thanergy that comes out the other side, a sort of conceptual cremain.

A loop of the weaving passes onto her finger, the red light tarnishing and burning green like swampfire.

[blue_ajah]

Her eyes narrow with sudden sharp interest, the look in them intent and somehow nearly as bright as the light they are holding between them.

She can feel the shift in the weave, where it crosses from her hand to Harrow's and is held balanced between them, and she wonders if this is what it might feel like to channel saidin as well as saidar - although the comparison, she knows, is not entirely accurate.

Carefully, Moiraine untangles a few more of the threads from the whole and extends them toward the other woman.

[we_bring_hell]

She carefully, carefully accepts the threads.

The energy flows between them, but the thalergy to thanergy conversion is one way; she wonders if Moiraine will continue to be able to hold it once it's crossed into that domain.

Life to Death. Death to a sort of Life.

She's never really practiced the fission of thanergy the Fourth is famous for, but she knows the theory. She knows it's very powerful, and she is very, very tentative as she tries to re-ignite the ghost flame looping past her fingers.

[blue_ajah]

Something shivers, and for an instant, Moiraine nearly loses her grasp on the weave.

To envision a rosebud opening to light is one of the earliest of the novice exercises, and is often used to guide a girl through her first time channeling saidar, to explain how one should allow herself to let the power rush through her and direct it, rather than fight it or attempt to wrench it forcefully under control.

However, some few, some very few, of those who become Aes Sedai begin to channel untaught. These wilders first learn to reach saidar by instinct, adapting without thought.

Although it has been kept secret from most, Moiraine is one of these few.

Her eyes do not close; she cannot channel where she cannot see. They do, however, flutter nearly shut as she studies the weave through her lashes... and as she does so, the image of the rose in bloom forms in her mind and twists, taking on a strange, unearthly hue.

As it does, a loop of swampfire-green thread settles around two of the Aes Sedai's fingers.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow does not laugh, as such, very much. What she does now is not quite a laugh, instead it's an astonished and thrilled huff of breath. They are doing it, worrying at some boundary of magic she didn't even know existed until she came here, and now she is peering through that crack in the wall; and there is someone looking back.

"Can we add another? Or replace it? I think I may have the hang of it." Blood-sweat is forming on her brow, but she doesn't notice. "It's..." She licks her dry lips.

"Think not of the death of fire, but death mediated by fire. The purifying embrace of flame, carrying the dead beyond."

"I think I can do Earth. Earth should be--easy." She bares her teeth behind the veil.

[blue_ajah]

"The flame," she murmurs. "The flame and the void, and..."

Slowly, she pulls one hand free of the red-green tangle, and holds it out flat, palm facing upward.

Light sparks, and a much deeper, more vibrant green thread spirals into existence as though a plant has sprouted in her hand. It branches, tendrils reaching out like vines between her fingers.

[we_bring_hell]

She nods to herself, and reaches carefully for the green shoot. The light greys and browns where it touches her gloved hand. As she wraps it around her fingers and feels the energy transition coming, she partitions her thoughts--drawing on what she's learned from the theorem of the Eighth study--and alongside the blazing crematorium she sees a tomb.

(There is always a Tomb in Harrowhark Nonagesimus's mind.)

Ashes to ashes; dust to dust. Dirt falling on a coffin. The weight of stone. Minerals leaching into ancient bones. The embrace of the earth; the release of life into death and then back into life through the oldest magic of all.

She feels her nose start to bleed, but the grey-brown vine loops around her thumb and fingers and reaches back for Moiraine.

[blue_ajah]

She can feel herself starting to shiver, the threads in her fingers taking on a glimmer as her hands begin to tremble.

Ignoring the feeling of strain-- she knows her limits, and she has not reached them, not yet -- Moiraine focuses on the grey-brown branch as it stretches back toward her.

The Wheel of Time turns, and as it does, that which dies returns again to the world. Rand al'Thor's very existence is proof; the Dragon was Reborn. The Borderlanders' vow whispers in her mind and as it does, she whispers it aloud.

"Under the Light," she murmurs, concentrating. "By my hope of salvation and rebirth--"

The tendril twists around her finger and sprouts new spring-green leaves of light from the grey branch.

Moiraine glances up at Harrow, and her eyes widen at the sight of blood.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow is ignoring the blood; she does this all the time. She is staring at the green shoot.

"That's..."

Life to death; death to a sort of life, to something like life, to that boosts or sustains life. But death to life is...

"...Resurrection," she says hoarsely. "That's..."

[blue_ajah]

"Rebirth," she says, softly. "Death cannot be Healed, but what has died can be reborn."

The twists of still-gleaming threads remain tangled in both their hands, balanced between them.

"Saidar is drawn from the very force of creation itself."

[we_bring_hell]

"Rebirth," she repeats. "Yes."

Not even God could bring Dominicus back to life; Resurrection, undeath. The Houses are not the same. Harrow isn't--quite--the same kind of organism as Moiraine Sedai.

But this is the force of creation itself. She looks at the threads woven between them; at the re-awoken green and spark of red. "When something dies, it fertilizes the earth," she says slowly. "And new life grows there. This is..."

The thalergy is returning to her, looping, and going back through the transition. Now she tries to hold back the transfer; tries to let the thalergy flow through her hands and survive.

A twisted thread of red flame and green fairyfire twines through her fingers and back to Moiraine Sedai and she takes in a deep, shuddering breath. The nosebleed stops, the dryness in her mouth and eyes retreat, and she stands for a moment in the Light of Creation rather than the undead Light of Dominicus.





She passes out.

[blue_ajah]

The threads vanish as Moiraine drops the weave and quickly reaches for Harrow instead, trying to prevent her from falling.

She is not wholly successful; Moiraine is a small woman, and her physical strength is not excessive. She does, however, manage to slow the younger woman's collapse enough, and thus is able to ease her gently to the floor.

She snatches a pillow from the bed and places it under Harrow's head as she sinks to her knees beside her, then reaches for one gloved hand and pats it.

"Lady Ninth. Can you hear me?"

[we_bring_hell]

In a completely different reality that may only exist inside her head, but then again maybe not, a very similar scene is playing out. Here, though, the ground beneath her is freezing cold, so cold it comes out the other side and burns through the thin fabric of her clothes.

She can hear water moving in a tide that should not exist. The woman kneeling over her has hair that hangs in wet leaden hanks, that may be blonde or brown or any color at all. Her upper lip is touched by a delicate cupid's bow. Her eyes burn with amber light.

for a moment you went where i can't follow, love whispers the Body.

"I'm sorry," Harrow says thickly, the blood-crusted veil sticking to her mouth and lower face, clutching to the icy hand in hers.

[blue_ajah]

She does not pull away from the younger woman's grip, but presses Harrow's hand between both of hers, as if to reassure.

"We may have reached too far for a first attempt," she says, a little wryly.

[we_bring_hell]

it's all right, whispers the Body. i'm proud of you

She leans close and presses a kiss to Harrow's forehead, passing straight through the niqab and frosting the blood-sweat on her brow. And then

Light. Real life, as dazzling after the anti-light of her hallucination as the blaze of Creation after a lifetime of Dominicus.

She reaches up and peels off the veil, revealing her sharp little face, sticky with blood. "I... what did you say?" she says dazedly.

[blue_ajah]

"I said," she repeats, still wry, "we may have reached too far for a first attempt. Lie still."

The Aes Sedai rises and glides across the room to the bathroom, where she obtains a clean washcloth and towel. She wets the first with warm water, then brings both back to Harrow and offers her the damp cloth.

"Your nose bled," she says, by way of explanation.

[we_bring_hell]

"Oh that's not so bad," she says faintly. "Just thanergetic feedback." She sticks a finger in her mouth, bites down on the fingertip of her glove and tugs it off. She touches her ear.

"No aneurysm." She takes the cloth and mops her face.

"Moiraine Sedai," she says, grinning gruesomely with blood on her teeth, "I have done alien magic. Alien, thalergenic magic. I have surpassed all my ancestors." She slumps back onto the pillow.

"And you... have done necromancy. Congratulations."