With apologies to Robert Jordan, whose books have occupied such a huge chunk of my time. I do not own any part of the Wheel of Time and the story below is written exclusively for entertainment. Admittedly, I do not know all the details of his complicated universe, so please forgive me for not having every nuance just right. While this is just another story about an Aes Sedai and her Warder, I hope anybody who reads it has fun.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Weaving Luck

Chapter 1: Sculptor of Weaves

By viggen

"Ghedlyn Sedai, do you think it's true what they say," Tavis mustered in his usual growl, "that the Dragon Reborn is now roaming the lands?"

Blinking several times, Ghedlyn paused as she walked her tall, dun-colored horse, Lorentz, then glanced distantly at her warder. Now that she thought about it, she had sensed the growing discomfiture of her guardian since they left that last village. The news stirred him practically to boiling. Confusing how the minds of some men turned over. "It would defy logic to guess," she finally decided, fingering her white fringed cloak. "It may be so. I do not know."

"But the Dark One stirs. Surely this unnatural heat is his evil. If the Dragon is in this world again," Tavis ventured, "should it not be time for us to return to the White Tower? Forgive me the suggestion." The thick necked bull of a man made it his duty to bring minutia to her attention. He wrapped himself more tightly in his stomach churning warder's cloak as he waited for her inevitable response.

The Aes Sedai walked a few steps before she properly deigned to answer. It could sometimes take Ghedlyn a half day to frame her speech and she spoke frequently in a monotone, "If the man of prophesy has arisen and is effecting this world, he will be drawing the countries to him to fight the last battle. This Age must be reaching its end. If I do not find insight into the steady state of the pattern soon, the upsetting of the age lace will make it impossible for me to finish my work."

Tavis lapsed into silence as he patted the black mane of his own horse, the aptly named Farstrider.

Ghedlyn was not tall as Domani went, with lighter skin than the usual brass and coal stained hair kept long, but bereft of style. She never noticed jewels or trinkets. Her almond eyes were big and far away, prone to distance and always searching. She lacked many of the seductive traits of her kin, both through her time in the Tower and through her distant nature. If she ever painted her lips, adjusted her hair or wore finer clothing, a vision of her would have set fits in the most chaste of man. But, her tan divided dress and baggy tunic rarely stayed clean, let alone rumple free and her white fringed cloak was threadbare from use. She would wear that set of clothing until it fell apart and probably not notice.

Since being raised to the shawl, Ghedlyn had never been as close to the interests of the Hall as most sisters and never fallen in well with the typical plans. Of her Ajah, often bookish and aloof as Whites tended to be, she far exceeded the standard. Her time cloistered away at her work, almost more like an obsessive Brown than a pondering White, had earned her few allies or confidantes and her not insubstantial strength with the power went frequently unnoticed. Her manner would never win a pivotal battle or sway a great ruler or negotiate some lasting peace between grave enemies, so she did what she always did. It had not been long before she simply strolled out of the Tower. Most sisters had probably long forgotten that one diminutive White, a silent doll perched forever in the corner, always watching.

In general, one White sister walking the world alone either demanded tremendous attention or was beneath notice, depending on whether that sister could be accounted fully sane.

Tavis grunted as she stopped in her tracks. He had grown used to it, since he had put up with it from the Aryth Ocean to the Sea of Storms, from the borders of the Blight and the Aiel Waste to the Mountains of Mist and well beyond. He had stood over her as she stooped down and glanced along the surface of a rock in the shadow of Kinslayer's Dagger, not looking at the rock, but tracing the texture of its face. He had crouched next to her as she sat fully clothed in waves at Illian, water lapping to her navel at the mouth of the river Manetherendrelle, eyes closed. He had stood by patiently as she stopped on the road to Far Madding, taking a step forward, then a step back and forward and back for a half hour without stop right at the boundary where she could sense the source, then not.

This time, it was a tree, as crooked as many things along the Blight Border. Of course, she did not know how long it had been since they left behind the edge of the Blight. Many interesting patterns there.

"Salidar is not too far that way," Tavis mentioned, by-the-by, "according to that message, some sisters were collecting there. If you believe the Tower is broken. Of course, the message was months old before we got it."

"Huh?" Ghedlyn had dropped Lorentz' reigns without a thought and walked up to the tree, head cocked sideways and jaw slack. She measured patterns on the bark with her fingers. Three by five by eight, steadily moving outward. The antisymmetry was in the roots, coiled and bundled over cracking dirt in the averse heat.

She stooped with a twig and began scratching in the dirt, sometimes casting glances up into the high stretching boughs. She never quite knew how quickly the array of sketchy symbols grew, a transform through a transform through a transform, from one function space to the next, pushing axioms forward and following repercussions as quickly as she could.

Tavis had come to stand over her quietly once again. He rarely made conversation when she went about her work -he had long since learned that she did not hear well when she found her muse. Ghedlyn did not know whether she sketched quickly or slowly, but only dimly realized that the twig had rapidly worn down to a nub. When the structure started to collapse prematurely, she scratched one line of equations out and applied another path of reasoning based on a different math. She bit her tongue while she worked.

Droplets of falling water pattered onto one symbolic furrow, filling it with water. Ghedlyn stopped her scribbling and watched. It was as if the logic itself had been dampened out. The dry ground hungrily devoured the wetness. More spots of wet appeared on the parched earth, circles that rapidly sunk in and vanished. She finally noticed the rain drumming down all around her, muddying her work. Ghedlyn blinked as she absorbed it. She had not realize that a spot of land twenty paces wide stood entirely cluttered with her scratchings. She had not noticed the tree of her inspiration grow quite so distant as she backed away on her knees. Falling water would soon obliterate all she wrought.

"So the drought has finally broken," Tavis said, baritone voice a reverent whisper.

Ghedlyn looked upward.

As always, Tavis had been there for her. Even as the rain began to fall, he had retrieved an oiled skin from a saddlebag and now held it over her, keeping the water away from where she crouched. How long he had been like that, she did not know. She blinked several times.

"How long has it been since rainfall?" she sat back on the ground, pulling in her tan riding skirts. She stared into the cloudy sky wondering where the rain had come from. Her question had not been asked quite properly, but she did not know how to retract it.

"It would be winter now," he answered, "it would be snow in the northlands, but the heat has been unseasonable. Maybe it has finally broken." He had both horses patiently by rein in addition to keeping Ghedlyn dry. "If you are finished here, we should find some better shelter, it looks as if this will be a downpour soon."

Ghedlyn leaned forward, poking her face from under the edge of his protection. Droplets of wet came down from so high, out of the stretching infinite swirls of gray, to plop onto her cheeks and nose. She squinted her dark eyes.

"Come on Aes Sedai," Tavis chuckled. He pulled the hood of her fringed cloak up to cover her head and gently lifted her to her feet with one burly arm, "a woman can drown staring upward into the rain with her mouth hanging open like that. Light knows I would be shirking my duty if I allowed such a thing." He draped the skin over her shoulders as added protection against the wet, then pushed Lorentz' reins back into her hands.

Fingers of lightning stroked to the ground not too distantly with great crashes as they began to walk again. Ghedlyn followed the squishing sound of her feet, from one puddle to the next. Dirt had already begun to form mud while the steady downpour deepened. Lorentz clopped ploddingly along behind her. Tavis did not protest their meandering course and only once complained about how soaked they were rapidly becoming. Otherwise, they continued in quiet but for the rain.

"That channeling," she said, stopping abruptly. She took down her hood so that falling water again washed over her head and face and down her neck.

"What?" Tavis had been looking at her. He mopped off his square chin with a thick hand and pushed trailing gray hair out of his eyes. "Do you mean the channeling to the south you felt a week ago?"

"No," she pointed into the rain. "Over there."

The expression on Tavis' face darkened. "It might be wise if we head another direction, then." He caught hold of her arm, slack against her side, and drew her off.

She looked over her shoulder as her feet blindly followed the burly Warder, gazing off toward the distant patterns. The weaves had an abbreviated, succinct style that lacked some of the polish of others she had seen. And she had seen so many. She once saw Wise Ones in the Aiel waste channeling when they did not know that she watched. She happened upon some Atha'an Miere Windfinders who came to consider her no threat and stood in amazement at the massive bundles of air they called down. Healers in the Mol Hara of Ebou Dar wove some of the most exquisite pieces in a blink, and become petrified to find an ageless face in their midst. Ghedlyn had seen so many types of channeling that any of her sisters would have been amazed. All her years away from Tar Valon had never been entirely aimless.

"It is different," Ghedlyn pulled her hand from Tavis' and stopped in her tracks. She squinted through the rain.

"Oh, light, I guess we go again, huh?" Tavis took the reins of both horses and doffed them into the saddles for easy access, though he did not tie the beasts up to prevent them from moving. Big black Farstrider and dun colored Lorentz looked on in that long suffering way, catching the Warder's mood and knowing they might soon have to run like the wind. Lorentz whickered a tiny protest.

The Aes Sedai and her Warder stood staring out into the sheets of rain, both soaked practically to the bone. The forest around them stood sparsely, filled with suffering trees and bushes on low, rolling terrain. Water beating down collected already into streams and washed dead earth into mud. Ghedlyn watched the weaves flung out, coming gradually closer. She could taste the women channeling to her bones. She blinked wetness from her eyes. Popping sounds and dull thuds reached them with an occasional flash of light.

"I hope you're certain about this," Tavis mumbled where he stood beside her. "I would hate to have to protect you from another trio of Myrddraal. Or another pack of veiled Aiel, for that matter. That your skin is in one piece continuously amazes me."

"It is different," Ghedlyn repeated. "Three channeling," she counted. "Or is it five? Two have bent phase in their weaving in a way as if they are linked. Sophisticated, but... anisotropic? It feels stilted, but it is new. I have not seen it before. One is wild, maybe unused to the source. Potentially very strong. All three are having difficulty with Saidar."

"Aes Sedai, you told me two days ago Saidar was behaving differently. That it made you a little sick. This is foolhardy business if you can't make your one defense work properly. Please tell me you've seen enough." Tavis flexed an elbow to loosen it and rolled his shoulder. He tensed his forearms beneath his steel bracers, the only armor he wore.

"Saidar behaves perfectly if you listen to its flow," Ghedlyn muttered consideringly. "It became destabilized in this area maybe a week ago."

"Whatever you say," Tavis responded, "I'm just a bit more worried about right now. We should at least try to hide ourselves, if not the horses."

Ghedlyn continued to stare out into the rain. She could hear the noisy scrunching of weary feet churning through mud. One of the pursuers looped out a weave of Earth and exploded the wet ground, eliciting a frightened squeal and panicked splashes. Tavis readied himself at that. Ghedlyn only knew what had happened because she could sense the weaves. She tasted saidar with such intensity that she need not always see a weave in order to tell what exactly it did; she smelled it and tasted it, heard it and touched it with every aspect of her senses to such a degree that it permeated the world around her even when she did not embrace the source.

A slender girl no older than early teens staggered out of the sheeting rain from behind the rise of a shallow hill. Ghedlyn could see that she wore only rags and was caked in such a layer of muck that she might have been mistaken for infant trolloc. She struggled into a limping, exhausted run, headed desperately toward a row of trees with huge gnarled roots. A carefully placed lightning bolt struck down from the sky and clapped through the first tree in the stand, forcing the girl to turn aside. The girl flung up her hands to protect her head against the shower of seared bark and ruined leaves.

Ghedlyn cringed at the thundering sound of the lightning stroke.

The exhausted youngster skidded to a stunned halt when she noticed Ghedlyn and Tavis. Then she ran toward them as if her life were about to end, "Help me please! Help me!"

"Now you've done it," Tavis exclaimed under his breath, "we're in it for sure."

Ghedlyn blinked several times, uncertain what to do. She hadn't quite expected this. Her only interest was in the weaves and the weavers.

"As long as we're here," suggested Tavis, "we should help the poor kid."

"I see," the White Aes Sedai nodded nervously, "yes. I see."

Huge men in lacquered armor burst over the shallow hill. Adjusting his insect shaped helmet, one dove for the fleeing child and landed on his breast plate in the mud. The girl changed her tact with a shower of spraying filth at the last second to avoid being tackled. Another leaped past his companion and got one hand on the girl's disheveled clothing as he skidded nearly onto his bottom. The girl tripped and fell, but barely scrambled free. A woman in a blue dress with red panels worked in forked silver lightning bolts came from behind the hill brandishing a length of silver that had a circlet on the end. She was followed by another two men in the strange armor.

"If we plan to help her," Tavis said, starting toward the men and girl in an unconcerned walk, "now is the time." He did not swagger or run, just walked at an appraising pace.

The man who dove onto his belly lifted himself and lunged from his knees to grab the girl by the ankle. She screamed piercingly as he brought her down. Ghedlyn grimaced and held her ears. The woman in the blue dress vaulted over the warrior holding the girl and straddled the poor child who squirmed and struggled. She brought the silver manacle to the child's neck.

"No! NO! NO!" the girl shrieked as if the metal would burn her on touch.

"Be calm child, this will be over soon," the woman drawled, then spat, "curses, I might as well collar a snake."

"I think she has other things in mind," Tavis grabbed the woman one handed by the neck from behind and dragged her bodily off the girl in the mud. With his free hand, he snapped the manacle she held smartly around her own neck and dropped her, "let us see you wear it instead."

When the warder let her go, she collapsed to her knees with a surprised look on her ghostly pale face. To Ghedlyn's amazement she keeled forward and began to vomit violently into the mud. Tavis completely ignored her.

As if he had all the time in the world, Tavis stomped down hard on the wrist of the man who held the girl and pulled her out of his grasp. The man refused to yelp, though he grimaced in pain and stared up angrily at the warder, "How dare you interfere!"

"Maybe I failed to step on you hard enough," Tavis quipped, flipping his color shifting cloak. "Go wait over there," he pushed the girl toward Ghedlyn.

"He is one of these warders we keep hearing of!" the other warrior in green armor made it back afoot, "bring the damane! We found another marath'damane, Seilara!"

"Ghedlyn," Tavis hunkered down slightly and opened his arms wide, as if awaiting an embrace from one of the four warriors he faced, "now might be a terrific opportunity for you to dump the bricks out of your shoes."

Wide-eyed, Ghedlyn quaked where she stood like a tree in high wind. The girl, scrabbling and falling to her knees, dove to hide behind her. Ghedlyn did not quite know what to make of the child's tears.

"Ghedlyn?!" Tavis turned slightly.

The fighting men in the strange armor unsheathed wickedly curved swords. One drove at the warder in the space of a breath, blade probing cleverly. Tavis never seemed a very quick man. He never cared to move much faster than Ghedlyn's eternally lazy pace and rarely exuded any urgency. Instead of leaping aside as any other fighter might, he stepped right in on the blade to meet it, catching it with the worn steel of his bracers. He slid the bracer down the blade until he could snatch the hand clenched at the hilt. He barely seeming to move as he flowed in under the arm and wrenched every joint his hands crossed along the way. A split second since he began the attack, he stepped through the man's crumpled knee, then bent him over backward by the throat. Tavis let the dead man fall without a sideways glance. No wild kicks like an Aiel, no darting steel like a Borderlander, just smooth, well timed, and lethally effective.

The three remaining soldiers thought to overpower the warder even as their comrade fell. Tavis turned a step and spun right through their midst, hardly maneuvering more than a hair to avoid a glittering edge there or an elbow here. His bracers sparked as they glanced aside swords which never quite seemed to reach him. He could fight all day without ever breaking a sweat, never hurrying or extending past the slightest movement, never out of balance or beyond range. The art was old and desperately uncommon, he once told Ghedlyn, though no less frightening to witness.

One man fell, neck opened by a sword stolen from his companion and already discarded. The next flipped onto his back and doubled around the warder's boot on his throat. The last made a feint with his sword and kicked to the burly warder's head with a blindingly quick foot. Tavis glanced the blade aside with a bracer and stepped inside the radius of the kick. He brushed the leg past his body, flipped the man clean around with a sweeping arm, pinned one leg to the ground with foot, and forced the former kick straight up into the air with a strategically placed palm. The green armored fighter ended up sprawled unmoving with his head under the warder's boot. Tavis did not linger over his handiwork. "Not quite the Aiel," he grumbled disappointedly to himself and flipped rain water from his colorshifting cloak.

"Archers, damane!" more insect helmeted soldiers had emerged into the clearing.

Another woman with a blue dress that had red panels marked with lightning bolts stood at the lip of the low hill looking down at them, "Is that a Shara fist? We did not expect to find such in this part of the world," she drawled in difficult speech. "No matter, it has its weakness. You might have walked away had you simply left us the girl. Still, with the marath'damane cowering behind you, it is unlikely. Kitti."

A woman in a gray dress cowered at her side. The two were linked by a silver leash that ran from the throat of the woman in gray to the wrist of the woman in blue.

"Not good. Ghedlyn," he hoarsely barked, "were you planning to let me die out here?!"

Ghedlyn gave herself a shake. "Interesting asymmetry," she murmured as the woman in gray embraced the source. The woman in blue seemed almost to be guiding it. The ground erupted in a thunderous boom with Tavis diving aside by a hair. She almost didn't notice the other woman still behind the hill who also opened to saidar. She nearly dropped to her knees in fear.

"Ghedlyn!" Tavis shouted at her as a woven blast of air slammed him flat to the ground.

A shield weave flew toward her. Ghedlyn's eyes widened at the structure, though almost too late. The sweetness of saidar came to her in the gust of a breath. She channeled a single spirit thread which she darted out and tied into a pattern on the thing reaching to ensnare her. She tied it off, "Maybe next time a little to the left," she mumbled around a swollen tongue.

"Mistress!" the woman in gray cried as if bitten. The shield weave crumpled on itself but refused to come undone, draped out like a paralyzed limb from its creator.

"Shield her!" the woman in blue pried into the gray, forcing out another shield, then another. Their synergy was more dazzling than two linked sisters.

With eyes the size of saucer plates, Ghedlyn addressed each weave in turn. She nipped with tiny spirit flows that she tied into every shield coming her way. "Right there? No. There? Um..."

In moments, both women channeling at her were struggling under the effort of simultaneously maintaining multiple weaves. They could not release the weaves they had already made! The woman behind the hill wailed in exhausted misery.

"It is an interesting asymmetry," Ghedlyn said as she stared at the extended weaves, her voice quivering, "may I see it again?" The style of channeling was not quite like any she had seen before.

"Now is probably not the time," Tavis lifted her and dumped her unceremoniously on her horse. "Would you do something to keep the soldiers off? Please?"

She fixated so strongly on the weaves, she failed to notice Tavis flooring two more of the warriors with insect helmets.

"Maybe if I..." Ghedlyn pondered.

"Now would be best."

"Um..." with all her strength, Ghedlyn wove earth to air to water into a tied off construct weave and dropped it into the ground. As an afterthought, she channeled threads of spirit and fire to link the weaves still extended from the two gray dressed women into her construct. It would last longer that way, she thought.

Tavis tossed the girl onto Farstrider's saddle and the blue dressed woman with the circlet around her neck ahead of Ghedlyn on Lorentz. He swung up behind the girl. "Go! Before they flank us!" he shouted and heeled Farstrider forward. A smack to Lorentz' rump brought the dun along with him.

Ghedlyn's weave unmeshed itself as they galloped away and changed the mud into something approaching stone, the soldiers' feet stuck within it. "Too much," she whimpered to herself as the effect spread steadily outward behind them and changed falling rain into snow.

She blinked several times sharply.

----

"One of these marath'damane who calls herself Aes Sedai and her warder?" Seilara tapped a finger nail with the tip of her dagger blade. She had close cut black hair and wore armor not too different from that of her men, "And they took down or disabled ten regulars, three sul'dam and two damane?"

"One of those sul'dam remains unaccounted for, commander," the guardsman lowered his insect helmeted head to avoid her gaze. His failure made him more than respectful. If he had been Deathwatch Guard, he would have met her levelly even then. But, if she had one Deathwatch Guard, maybe this catastrophe could have been averted.

"All over a single marath'damane child we were tasked to bring back by a member of the Blood? Another victory for the Ever Victorious Army. At this rate, we may all end up sold."

The guardsman bowed lower.

"Seilara," the blond sul'dam, Eashin, dipped her head, "this new marath'damane could be valuable. If we find and collar her, we will be rewarded. The channeling she used when we tried to shield her was unique -the first of its kind I have ever seen. Kitti and Ura are both suffering from exhaustion, we could not make them channel another wink if we stripe them to within an inch of their lives. It will take them days to fully recover. Nobody has ever used that defense before. Such knowledge would be a powerful asset to the Corenne."

"It could prove a helpful consolation," Seilara agreed, "but that does not alter which marath'damane the Blood sent us to retrieve."

End Chapter 1

This story is copyright Greg Smith 2005

Please do not use any part of it without my permission.