Chucky & Janica
2011-08-02 14:38:05 UTC
Credits:
Original story stolen from: Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time
Original Parody stolen from: the Afrj Monkeys (Storytime, circa 1999)
Special thanks to: Brandon Sanderson, as before, for reviving my
interest in the series and putting a bit of ginger in my arse to
actually get this series done simultaneously with, or preferably
before, he does. Now I just have to hope somebody out there still
cares about reading it
Extra Special thanks to: Janica, for still caring about reading it
Special achievement in this section: I've been spelling Shaidar Haran
wrong for something like ten years, but now I'm starting to correct
it. Although maybe for parody purposes I should spell all the names
wrong
*****
The White Tower was a strange and frightening place these days. Well,
if Seaine had to be completely honest, it had been strange and
frightening almost as long as she could remember, and had probably
been strange and frightening since long before she'd arrived and taken
novice white - and that had been what Shaidar Haran would refer to as
a ball-tearingly long time ago - but it had reached new heights of
strangeness and frighteningosity in recent weeks. Or months. Or hours.
Part of the problem was that time seemed to have stopped working
in the classically-understood sense. Aginor explained this, insofar as
Aginor explained anything, by theorising that matter and energy were
the same thing on a quantum level and that when balefire destroyed
matter it was rearranging matter and energy backwards through time,
which was ultimately forming a space-time depression ... it was
usually at about this point that somebody else stepped in and said
"the Pattern did it", putting the audience out of their misery.
It wasn't that time went faster, or slower, or suddenly skipped
to the past or the future in various areas, although that did seem to
happen occasionally and was usually put down to "bubbles of the Great
Lord" and the people who experienced them were generally grateful that
all they had to suffer was big hair and bad clothes for a few minutes
before the present reasserted itself and they could go and change.
Bubbles of the Great Lord could be far worse. Seaine had witnessed one
incident where a group of Accepted had *literally* been attacked by
big hair and bad clothes, and sometimes she still woke up screaming.
No, usually time was just very vague. Nobody really knew *when* they
were. It made it easier to maintain a narrative timeframe, Moridin
insisted, when you didn't need to worry about things happening in
sequence, or about how many hours, days or weeks took place between
one event and another.
Seaine tended to ignore the Chosen when they started talking
about narratives and plots and character arcs, because it made her
uncomfortable. It was all related to this mysterious "fourth wall"
Moridin seemed to be intent on breaching, which was somehow even more
terrifying than the Bore itself, or the veil of the dead that Aginor
and the other Chosen were piercing more deeply every day with the
unwilling - and increasingly unwitting - help of Idrien Tarsin.
Not many places in the White Tower were quite so strange and
frightening as the second basement, where Seaine, Saerin, Pevara,
Yukiri and Doesine had opted, for reasons that now escaped Seaine, to
do their questioning of Talene. Part of the reason for their decision
was also part of the reason the place was so spooky - the Chair of
Remorse.
"Tell me," Seaine said, checking her parchment, "are you a
Darkfriend?"
"You know I am!" Talene snapped, shifting uncomfortably in the
Chair. "You're one too! We're all Friends of the Dark!"
"Hm," Seaine said.
"That's true," Yukiri admitted.
"But we've got her all strapped down and stuff," Pevara said,
"don't you think it would be neat to give the Chair a try?"
The Chair of Remorse had once, according to Shaidar Haran, been
part of a larger set of ter'angreal called The Feast. Other items had
included a Chair of Melancholy, a Chair of Nostalgia, a Chair of
Inexplicably Claiming To Be Your Best Friend, a Table of
Forgetfulness, and a whole dinner set of Surliness, Sleepiness,
Nausea, Talking in Gibberish, Getting Mad About Stuff And Then Crying
And Hugging People In The Bathroom, and various other things. Seaine
suspected this was one of Haran's obscure jokes. For a Halfman, he had
a bizarre sense of humour - most bizarre of all was the fact that it
even existed.
"Yes," Seaine said. "Yes, I do."
The four Black sisters channeled. Talene - the other Black
sister, Seaine supposed - started to squeal.
*****
The Wheel of time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that
become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten
when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the
Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose
in Far Madding. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither
beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was
*a* beginning. It was also, as far as Forsaken_1 could see, nowhere
near strong enough to pick him up and deposit him in Oz, which was
what he had idly been hoping from the moment the errant breeze had
ruffled his chameleon-cloak.
"Isn't he just the most beautiful, perfect little prince you ever
saw?" Elayne gushed. She had done something to the weird ter'angreal
device using a 'Well', and since stabilising the life-signs of the
baby had been doting on it in the most creepy way. Even Forsaken_1,
something of an authority in the area of doting on things in creepy
ways, found it disturbing. Frankly, the only thing he wanted anyone to
do using a well was throw the little squirming abomination down one.
"It looks like one of those Navigator things out of Dune," he
opined, because it seemed to be the nicest thing he could say about
the foetus in the canister.
"He's precious," Elayne burbled, not hearing a word Forsaken_1
had said - as he'd known she wouldn't. Elayne had figured out how the
canister worked almost automatically, as if she had been tending to
grotesque little bobbing jar-babies all her life, and had even begun
'accidentally' planning how to make ter'angreal that she thought might
do similar horrible things. At the moment, of course, she was limited
by Far Madding's equivalent of a no-fly zone and the importance of
keeping the One Power flowing into the canister through Cadsuane's
Well.
"Yeah, precious," Forsaken_1 agreed with a grimace. "He does sort
of look like Gollum, too."
Cadsuane herself mainly seemed pissed off about the loss of her
weave-blocking ter'angreal, which had been given to her by a man under
circumstances that had made Forsaken_1 obscurely uncomfortable hearing
about in anecdotal form. It was somewhat akin to the knowledge that
your parents must have had sex at least once in order to produce you,
but otherwise no further detail was even slightly welcome. Sharing a
certain amount of Cadsuane's emotions and sensations through the bond
was bad enough, and he didn't need bawdy anecdotes about card games
and dancing challenges to make it worse. Strangely, when he glanced at
the awful old bat and their eyes met, the feeling of annoyance from
her lifted and she grunted in slight approval, pride swelling through
the bond. Well, he had to admit, he was about the best Warder money
could buy and his move to get them all to safety after Lanfear had
attacked them had been nothing short of genius. Even if it did make
things a bit difficult for some of their much-reduced party.
"How's Taim?" Min, sitting huddled in the doorway of their
private apartment's balcony, spoke up one of the few times Forsaken_1
could remember since they'd arrived and Cadsuane had Indian-burned
their way into the relatively opulent accommodations.
"Nothing much more I can do for him now," Cadsuane grumbled. "I
tried sending out a message through the World of Dreams last night,
but no matter how many times people say it has nothing to do with the
One Power, I just can't seem to take it seriously in this place. I
can't Heal him any more than I have, and we need the saidar in the
Well for ... that thing," she shrugged. "And the spare Well doesn't
hold enough saidar to do anything like what we need for Taim. With any
luck, some of the Wise Ones caught the message and passed it on, and
we'll get some backup within-"
The door to the apartment burst open. Min cringed, and Forsaken_1
jumped through the balcony doorway to defend the innocent, only
slightly disgruntled to find that the needlessly sarcastic Davram
Bashere, the Wheel of Time's answer to the Monopoly Guy, was there
ahead of him.
Instead of the attack he'd been expecting, however, Forsaken_1
found himself confronted by an Aiel Wise One.
"Elayne Trakand," the imposing woman declared, "I am Nadere. You
must come immediately to attend the first-sister ceremony with
Aviendha."
"The what?" Elayne blinked, turning away from the canister but
running her fingers across the glass in a disturbing caress.
"I haven't the slightest fucking idea, you dozy-eyed blonde
slut," Nadere said. "Strip naked and come with me."
"Now you're talking," Forsaken_1 said, shrugging out of his
cloak.
*****
Contro really didn't understand any of what was going on, but everyone
kept telling him it didn't matter and he didn't need to understand, so
he supposed that was alright then. It was a very confusing series of
events, and he hadn't been paying attention to most of them, and most
of the people who had tried to explain them to him had said bad words
and gone away for some reason. It wasn't very nice of them to say bad
words and go away, especially since they hadn't taken him with them.
The whole gang had, however, taken him with them when they left
Salidar at last, and now they were near Tar Valon. That much, at
least, he knew even though he wasn't entirely sure whether Tar Valon
was a city or a country. Maybe, he thought, it was both. Like the
Vatican, or Mexico City, or Cardiff.
Contro laughed. "Vatican!"
"What?" Egwene, Debs and Janica were sitting around a table in
what Debs called 'the tent o' war', the pavilion they'd set up shortly
after making the full-scale move from Salidar. They were talking to
Egwene about something, but Contro didn't really understand it.
"Vatican," Contro explained. "It sounds like 'Fattycan'."
"I see," Janica said, and turned back to Egwene. "The issue we
currently face is, you were supposed to be Amyrlin but I was raised
instead. The effect has been much the same so far - the only problem
is, we need to figure out what you were likely to have done as
Amyrlin, because we ... well, we don't have access to Foretelling or
any knowledge of the future like that. The potential future."
"Ye're losin' 'er," Debs remarked. Egwene smiled politely.
"Think of it as a World of If," Janica said, "one we need to
stick to as closely as possible in order to maintain the Pattern and
keep bubbles of evil from occurring."
"Bebbles if we're lucky," Debs added.
"Fattycan," Contro repeated, stuck his finger into the hole that
was all that remained of his ear after he'd lost it somewhere, and
laughed. "Ha ha ha!!!"
"In that World of If, you were raised Amyrlin instead of me,"
Janica continued, "and in order to maintain the Pattern, we need to do
as much of the same things as you would have done, if you were
Amyrlin. It gets complicated from here, though."
"Isn't it already complicated, Mother?" Egwene asked diffidently.
She was, at present, a novice and would be raised to Accepted as soon
as they were able to get her to the testing ter'angreal. Or so Contro
seemed to recall hearing.
"Not compared to how it's going to be," Janica said. "In the
World of If we need to stick to, you were raised to the Accepted and
then spent some time with the Aiel Wise Ones learning to be a
Dreamwalker, pretending all the while to be a full Aes Sedai. You
learned the Aiel ways of ji'e'toh, and were then recalled to become
Amyrlin in Salidar. You then took over and were on your way to
becoming a fairly effective Amyrlin, and you got us on our wee tae Tar
Valon, but then we haven't read any further. I mean, we could see no
further into the World of If," she took a breath. "So what we need
from you is, basically, to know how you think you might act in those
conditions, to perform the siege and help take back the White Tower
and depose Elaida."
"Tha's all," Debs grinned.
"Think of it as a spontaneous response test," Janica pursued.
"Just say the first thing that pops into your head, how you would
react," she glanced at Contro. "Like he does."
"Like I do what??!?" Contro asked. "Honestly, I don't know what
this has to do with me anyway!! Why am I here??"
"Because every time you go outside, somebody punches you in the
heed," Janica replied. "And because we need you to perform emergency
tickle-tums on demand when we meet wi' other Aes Sedai," Cyberwollf,
hearing this, gave a languid wag from the floor in one corner.
"So you wish for me to tell you how I might act in your place,
Mother," Egwene said, "if I were in your place but had also spent time
learning Aiel ways before becoming Amyrlin."
"Exactly."
Egwene paused to think. "No bloodshed," she said thoughtfully,
"there could be no fighting between Aes Sedai and Aes Sedai, or the
Tower will never be whole again."
"Aye," Debs said, "but we've got thes army-" Janica waved her to
silence.
"We could besiege the island," Egwene said, "but no fighting, we
would have to make the Aes Sedai in the Tower accept defeat and accept
you - uh, me - as Amyrlin on our terms. Ideally, I could get inside
the Tower some way and continue my training as an Accepted or a novice
or something, all the while undermining the leadership and continuing
to act as though I were Amyrlin - the Aiel training I underwent would
prepare me for the hardships of the constant visits to the Mistress of
Novices this would bring down on me. Then, I could save the Tower in
some dramatic way when danger threatens, maybe some attack from a
mutual enemy, like your, uh, Seanchan friends. The enemy snatches away
Elaida leaving me as the only alternative as Amyrlin, and leaving the
Tower Aes Sedai in a position where they have to accept our return,"
she laughed. "This is fun. While we're playing make-believe a perfect
scenario, we could turn the harbour gates to solid lumps of
cuendillar."
"Could we, by gum," Janica murmured.
*****
Forsaken_1 returned to their lodgings, pleased with himself yet again
although it had taken some time to get over his disgruntlement at not
being part of the first-sister ceremony. Being pleased with himself
seemed to be a recurring trend, which was good. Better than the
previous recurring trends of annoyance, frustration, gross-out and
unutterable horror.
"Well, I finally tracked down Aviendha," he reported, "she came
in by gee-ay-tee-ee-doubleyou-ay-why at the edge of town, and went
straight to the Wise Ones and-"
"Foreskin," Brigitte said patiently, "the authorities and
townsfolk of Far Madding are against channeling, but there are none of
them around so you don't need to hide it. And even if you did need to
hide it, spelling out the words would only work if they were three
years old."
"I was operating on the assumption that they were illiterate
medieval peasant types," Forsaken_1 explained.
"Based on what?"
"Based on who got us out of that mess and saved us all except for
Stifler and Alanna and Loial when we were all about to be slaughtered
by an enraged Forsaken?" Forsaken_1 bristled.
"How much longer are you going to keep milking that?" Birgitte
snapped.
"Quite a while," Forsaken_1 said, "since I think there's quite a
lot of milk in the concept of me saving all of our lives except
Stifler and Alanna and Loial with my quick thinking and bravery, and
it's not going to run out of milk any time soon."
"Well just so you remember, Mazrim Taim is also very close to
dying," Birgitte pointed out, "especially since we're stuck in this
no-reception area for the One Power and Elayne took Cadsuane's last
fully-charged Well to fix up the baby in the jar for some reason."
"Yeah, I was wondering about that," Forsaken_1 said. "You're her
Warder, didn't you have any idea she was going to get all maternal?"
"It's not 'maternal' I'm feeling through the bond right now,"
Birgitte muttered, "and it disturbs the Ghûl out of me."
"Yeah, well," Forsaken_1 coughed uncomfortably. "Anyway, about
Taim, that was why I was telling you about Aviendha. Cadsuane said
maybe if someone bonded Taim again, that'd help keep him alive. It
worked for me, after Moiraine..." he trailed off, theatrically
spluttering in unhappiness before he realised it wasn't going to win
him any sympathy hugs through the medium of which he might achieve a
cupping of sideboob. "...fell into the Ways fanny-first and vanished,"
he concluded.
"You think Aviendha should bond Taim?"
"Well, even with Stifler gone, Elayne is a bit full," Forsaken_1
said, "and Cadsuane doesn't want to bond any other Warders right now."
"That's not such a big impediment when you stop to think that
Aviendha isn't even Aes Sedai," Birgitte pointed out.
"The first-sister ritual will also bind Elayne and Aviendha
together," Forsaken_1 said, and paused a moment to place the mental
image in his Mental Images Hall of Fame (Drooling Fanboy Masturbation
Material Wing), "and offer a sort of a link so Elayne can technically
say Taim is her Warder without lying."
"I still don't understand why I have to do this," Elayne said,
sitting close to the table where the foetus-canister stood, creepying
up the entire room. She was still wearing the heavy cloak the Wise One
had given her after insisting that she strip and receive a spanking
for some reason, and she looked rather sulky about the whole thing. "I
can't be the only channeler capable of making a bonding weave. Why
don't the Wise Ones just make him a Warder and keep him alive that
way? Better yet, why don't we go and find Nynaeve and have her Heal
him?"
"Because we're hiding from Lanfear," Cadsuane stumped into the
room, hair trinkets swinging and tinkling. "I filled up the Wells
again, but that's about as much time as I want to spend out of Far
Madding until we can be sure Lanfear won't find us. I got the distinct
impression that she was annoyed when we last met."
"Was that when I-" Forsaken_1 began.
"Yeah, don't push it, Foreskin," Cadsuane growled. "Elayne, get
in there and do the stupid ritual. The rest of the Wise Ones are
waiting," she tossed one of her baubles to the snooty young woman. "If
they need to use the One Power, just make sure they use it carefully.
What's in there won't last long."
Elayne harumphed and strode from the room, pausing once to look
back at the canister with the disgusting foetus in it. Then she went
into the adjoining room, closed the door, and both Cadsuane and
Forsaken_1 breathed a sigh of relief. Cadsuane crossed to the adjacent
door and looked in on Taim, while Birgitte and Gaidal took up
positions outside the room Elayne had just entered.
However the ritual proceeded, not much of it was apparent from
the main room. Birgitte and Gaidal seemed a little weirded out from
time to time, and Cadsuane muttered something about Aiel wilders who
didn't know their elbows from their arseholes, but all in all it went
quietly and - as far as Forsaken_1 could tell - successfully. Elayne
and Aviendha emerged a short while later, the former in her cloak and
the latter in her habitual gai'shain white, each of them looking
pleased with themselves in spite of the numerous slap-marks clearly
visible on the parts of their bodies Forsaken_1's eyes could reach.
Not that he was reaching.
"Now, we should lend our strength to Mazrim Taim," Elayne said,
and Aviendha, with the same off-putting meek silence with which she
had greeted Forsaken_1 at the gateway earlier, nodded and together
they crossed to Taim's room. At about the same moment, the front door
of the apartment opened and Bashere strode in, bristling with anger.
"I don't pretend to understand how the World of Dreams works-"
"Good," Cadsuane said, "because that would be strange."
"-but I know that Lanfear is supposed to be some sort of
diabolical genius where Tel'aran'rhiod is concerned, second only to
Ishamael himself," Bashere continued, his voice tightly controlled.
"And, since you have been using the World of Dreams to talk to the
Aiel Wise Ones and arrange these little parties which they're just
gatewaying into willy-nilly, isn't it fair to say that you're making
it easy for Lanfear to find you?"
"Come back with that attitude of yours when she actually *has*
found us," Cadsuane suggested.
"How about I come back right now?" Bashere snapped. "Far Madding
is entirely surrounded."
Cadsuane jumped to her feet. "Surrounded by what?"
"Wish I knew," Bashere grunted sourly.
*****
It had proved rather more difficult than Morelin would have believed
to acquire a guided tour of the Tor offices in Los Angeles, although
she had to admit that once the sales clerks took a good look at the
small crowd she was trying to buy tickets for, it was hardly any
wonder they had asked her to leave and take her skinny freaks with
her.
"Well, that was fun," Ilya said cheerfully as they wandered out
and across the street to a nearby park. "I'm going to chase
squirrels."
"I'm going to chase joggers," Cooper Two said, and followed the
eerily-similar-looking Russian in among the trees.
"I really wish you wouldn't," Morelin called, then gave up.
"Ah, let them go," Robert E said expansively. "They might get
arrested. At least Ilya wouldn't be able to get out of prison if they
locked him up, and being on the receiving end of a few strategic
shankings and a bit of sodomy might quiet him down."
"Like when we beat him with soap-filled socks," Wubbles said.
"He slept well that night," ~Brian~ reminisced.
"Good times," Wubbles smiled.
"Guys," Morelin said, "let's try and stay focussed," she'd had
plenty of experience, not only with Ilya and Coop over the past days
and weeks, but also with Shannon, a man with an attention-span
measuring in nanoPlancks. "We have to get into those offices, so we
can get to the bottom of this whole Wheel of Time contest thing, and
see about getting Cooper Two back where he belongs," she paused and
added, "and get the others back, if they're in trouble."
"Sounds like a good plan," ~Brian~ said, "except we're stuck out
here."
"With *him*," Robert E added darkly. Ilya pranced through the
park nearby, burbling about the luminous Banana King, and Ratatouille
Strychnine and his mean Hungarian forte-piano dance song.
"Maybe there's a back way in," Morelin mused. Evening was
falling, and public parks were no place for Cooper Two at night. They
were no place for him during broad daylight either, but night was
worse. "Let's go."
The alley behind the L.A. Tor offices was the usual mess of
piled-up garbage and overflowing rubbish bins, some of them marked for
glass waste and plastic waste in that same lazily, misplacedly
optimistic way people in the service industry said "have a nice day".
There were also several large bins for paper waste, some of them
marked "excess clothing descriptions (Jordan)" and so on. After
climbing over these for a while and having a short but unfulfilling
scuffle with a small pack of Next Book Nerds, they concluded there was
no rear entrance.
At the mouth of the alley, however, they were confronted by a
figure immersed in shadow.
"If you are seeking a means of entering the building, I can be of
assistance," the figure said. It was a woman's voice, with the same
mix of wisdom and patience that Morelin had come to know from their
time staying with Mrs_1. Unlike Mrs_1, however, this woman's patience
was neither infinite nor kind.
"Who goes there?" Wubbles struck a pose at the front of the
group. "Friend or foe?"
"Or Peter?" Ilya put in. "He's sort of both."
"I am merely offering assistance," the woman said.
"Why?" Wubbles frowned.
"Let us just say, I had a dream."
"That's a fairly creepy explanation," ~Brian~ noted.
"Do you know a way in?" Morelin asked, not really caring who the
shadow-shrouded woman was as long as they got moving.
"Just after closing time on certain nights, I have it on good
authority that the owners allow a large truckload of toilet tissue to
be backed into the delivery hangar," the woman waved a coat-clad arm,
"for Darryl Sweet to make draft book covers on. It just so happens
that tonight is such a night, and I know the young man driving the
truck. He will stop for a cigarette at a strategic location and time,
and you will be able to climb in among the paper which is not, I
hasten to add, currently soiled."
"Really?"
"From there, once the young gentleman has completed his
tobbacionary interlude, he will proceed to make his delivery and you
will be inside the offices," the woman concluded. "How you avoid the
security guards at that point will rather be up to you, but I imagine
you shall find a way."
"Alright," Morelin said, seeing that Ilya and Coop had already
lost interest in the conversation and even the other three were
beginning to look glassy-eyed, "take us to this truck."
*****
"When my husband catches you," Berelain said, "he's going to turn you
into a rug. Wolfbrother or no Wolfbrother."
Satters bared his teeth, but without much hope of it having any
effect. To be honest, he was beginning to wonder if he'd wound up in
the wrong plot thread and where, if anywhere, it was going to end up.
He was increasingly sure it was going to be somewhere ugly.
He was, technically, along with the Shaido who had kidnapped
Faile, except of course the similarities to the plot ended with ... in
fact, they didn't even begin. There was a loose connection, he
supposed, with the losing side at Dumai's Wells, but there was no
Faile and, technically speaking, no Shaido either.
Instead, the strange lurching grey mutants who had escaped from
the bubble of evil at Dumai's Wells had teamed up with Padan Fain and
some more mutants who might have been Aes Sedai or Younglings or
Whitecloaks or anything, really - two-legs were all beginning to look
a bit samey to him - and they had kidnapped Berelain, for reasons that
currently escaped him but may have been some sort of feeble
instinctive attempt to cling to a plot long since warped beyond
recognition.
"You'd better hope he catches us, then," Satters satisfied
himself with saying, although he had a nasty feeling this wasn't the
cutting, hardcore sort of comeback he'd wanted to say and which had
sounded so good in his head. He bared his teeth again. "Bitch."
"That's not an insult among our kind," Berelain pointed out.
"You're not an insult among our kind," Satters shot back
triumphantly.
"Keep moving there," Fain trotted up alongside and pointed
imperiously at Berelain. "I would hate to have to force Galina to Heal
you again."
"I'll force Galina to Heal *you* again," Satters snarled, but his
heart wasn't in it. Fain waved cheerily and moved on. "I don't like
that guy."
"You're part of his band," Berelain pointed out.
"Yeah, but none of us like him," he said, "or each other."
"Sounds delightful."
As if to underpin those words, one of the Shaido - he thought it
might have been Therava - shambled up and strode alongside them
through the dust.
"We have been joined by some more of our kind," she announced,
following a couple of very uncomfortable minutes spent walking
side-by-side.
"Shaido, Aiel, humans?" Satters demanded specifics gruffly. "Vile
grey wobbly mutant-things?"
"That last one," Therava replied, after giving it a moment's
thought.
"Great," Satters grumbled. "More of them. Where did *they* come
from? I thought Aginor stopped making you guys."
"The Jonine sept had escaped the fighting," Therava said, "and we
found them quite easy to ... convert."
"You can make *more* of yourselves?" Satters tried not to gasp.
It was so girly.
"Most living things can," Therava replied simply, "although it
requires no little power on our part," she turned to Berelain. "You."
"That *is* an insult among our kind," she growled.
Therava ignored the woman's cold fury. "Padan Fain carries an
angreal with him," she said. "You will steal it from him and deliver
it to me. If you do so, we will allow you to go free."
"Really?" Berelain blinked and looked at the lurching figure
suspiciously.
"We no longer need you, as fresh and far more suitable bodies
have become available to us," she spread her bent, clawlike hands.
"And besides, you are like this one," she gestured at Satters. "You
are already infected with something, that makes our own implantation
difficult if not impossible. You will go free."
"What about me?" Satters asked. "I'm no good to you either."
"We have not at any point really cared what you do," Therava
said. "This is not likely to change. But you *will* get us that
angreal."
"You want to get away?" Berelain murmured in outrage when Therava
had shambled off ahead. "You helped capture me!"
"I don't have to explain myself to you," Satters snarled.
*****
Angamael and Lanfear stood on the hillside, looking dubiously over the
force arrayed in preparation for attack. A bigger collection of bumpy,
bulgy, nasty-looking things Angamael had not seen outside of a Star
Trek convention. "So these ... what did you call them?"
"Nesters, or Colonies," Aginor replied happily, "although some of
the techs have taken to calling them Quartermen."
The Quartermen had been produced almost entirely in vacuoles, a
vast number of which had apparently sprung up from Angamael's balefire
experiments on the Pattern - something he liked to let everyone
believe was totally intentional. They bred very fast, particularly in
the vacuoles where months passed in mere hours, and when some of the
vacuoles popped and vanished into utter, horrifying nothingness, it
was no big loss of resources.
They were almost like Trollocs, with the same looming stature and
bestial faces, except they were as pale and pasty and hairless as
Myrddraal, and had no eyes. Their bodies were twisted and malformed -
in a word bumpy, bulgy and nasty-looking - the animal heads Trollocs
possessed twisted and hideous even before you put the eyeless stare on
top. All in all, they looked like something Giger might have a
nightmare about after eating too much rich food.
They were also, according to Aginor, sewn up with their bodily
cavities filled with a mixture of dirt, manure, and eggs from some
sort of scarab-like grave bugs from the Blight that had been further
treated with Thakan'dar water. They were the true weapon, and the true
reason for the name of the creatures.
"They will fight like a Myrddraal, and go down as hard as one,"
Aginor was saying, "but they have the strength and bloodthirst of a
Trolloc, with none of the Halfman's creativity. They're just tanks."
"Okay."
"And when they go down, the bugs come out," Aginor went on.
Angamael had seen a demonstration of that. He didn't want to see
it again. Certainly not close-up. "And the bugs are poisonous?" he
asked.
"As a Thakan'dar-wrought blade," Aginor said. "The effects are
almost exactly the same. The bugs will kill and feast on any living
thing they can find, and give most non-living things a good chewing
while they're at it, but they only live a short time outside of the
Colony, and they cannot breed anywhere but inside a living Nester's
body. Still, they are very resilient while they're still alive, very
difficult to destroy even with the One Power - most weaves will have
little effect, and they are too diffused to use balefire on unless you
use a huge beam ... and none of *that* even matters under the
influence of this ter'angreal," he patted the massive guardian object
beside which they were standing. Beside, and carefully on the
One-Power-friendly side of. "I would say six or seven Nesters,
Quartermen, would be enough to completely depopulate a town like Far
Madding. Pull down most of the buildings, too, for that matter."
"How many do we have?" Angamael asked.
Aginor consulted a file. "In this first batch, three hundred and
eighty."
"And they will destroy everything but leave us alone?" Angamael
stressed.
"They are linked to the Great Lord just as all Shadowspawn are,"
Aginor replied, "they will not attack one of the Chosen or a Dreadlord
or a Myrddraal even if they were wading knee-deep in the bugs.
Trollocs might be a different matter, but we have lots of those. And
we didn't bring any with us anyway."
"So we go in and take back the canister," Lanfear pressed, "and
leave the thieves to be devoured?"
"Well, if you like," Aginor shrugged. "Or, since they'll be
helpless and we're the only ones who can keep the bugs away, you can
capture them and do what you like to them later."
"Just remember the rules," Angamael said, raising an admonitory
finger. "No hesitating, no lingering or gloating, no drawn-out and
unwitnessed tortures, and absolutely no exposition before killing
them."
"Of course, Nae'blis," Lanfear inclined her head.
Howling in rabid fury, the Quartermen poured into Far Madding.
TO BE CONTINUED
C&J
Original story stolen from: Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time
Original Parody stolen from: the Afrj Monkeys (Storytime, circa 1999)
Special thanks to: Brandon Sanderson, as before, for reviving my
interest in the series and putting a bit of ginger in my arse to
actually get this series done simultaneously with, or preferably
before, he does. Now I just have to hope somebody out there still
cares about reading it
Extra Special thanks to: Janica, for still caring about reading it
Special achievement in this section: I've been spelling Shaidar Haran
wrong for something like ten years, but now I'm starting to correct
it. Although maybe for parody purposes I should spell all the names
wrong
*****
The White Tower was a strange and frightening place these days. Well,
if Seaine had to be completely honest, it had been strange and
frightening almost as long as she could remember, and had probably
been strange and frightening since long before she'd arrived and taken
novice white - and that had been what Shaidar Haran would refer to as
a ball-tearingly long time ago - but it had reached new heights of
strangeness and frighteningosity in recent weeks. Or months. Or hours.
Part of the problem was that time seemed to have stopped working
in the classically-understood sense. Aginor explained this, insofar as
Aginor explained anything, by theorising that matter and energy were
the same thing on a quantum level and that when balefire destroyed
matter it was rearranging matter and energy backwards through time,
which was ultimately forming a space-time depression ... it was
usually at about this point that somebody else stepped in and said
"the Pattern did it", putting the audience out of their misery.
It wasn't that time went faster, or slower, or suddenly skipped
to the past or the future in various areas, although that did seem to
happen occasionally and was usually put down to "bubbles of the Great
Lord" and the people who experienced them were generally grateful that
all they had to suffer was big hair and bad clothes for a few minutes
before the present reasserted itself and they could go and change.
Bubbles of the Great Lord could be far worse. Seaine had witnessed one
incident where a group of Accepted had *literally* been attacked by
big hair and bad clothes, and sometimes she still woke up screaming.
No, usually time was just very vague. Nobody really knew *when* they
were. It made it easier to maintain a narrative timeframe, Moridin
insisted, when you didn't need to worry about things happening in
sequence, or about how many hours, days or weeks took place between
one event and another.
Seaine tended to ignore the Chosen when they started talking
about narratives and plots and character arcs, because it made her
uncomfortable. It was all related to this mysterious "fourth wall"
Moridin seemed to be intent on breaching, which was somehow even more
terrifying than the Bore itself, or the veil of the dead that Aginor
and the other Chosen were piercing more deeply every day with the
unwilling - and increasingly unwitting - help of Idrien Tarsin.
Not many places in the White Tower were quite so strange and
frightening as the second basement, where Seaine, Saerin, Pevara,
Yukiri and Doesine had opted, for reasons that now escaped Seaine, to
do their questioning of Talene. Part of the reason for their decision
was also part of the reason the place was so spooky - the Chair of
Remorse.
"Tell me," Seaine said, checking her parchment, "are you a
Darkfriend?"
"You know I am!" Talene snapped, shifting uncomfortably in the
Chair. "You're one too! We're all Friends of the Dark!"
"Hm," Seaine said.
"That's true," Yukiri admitted.
"But we've got her all strapped down and stuff," Pevara said,
"don't you think it would be neat to give the Chair a try?"
The Chair of Remorse had once, according to Shaidar Haran, been
part of a larger set of ter'angreal called The Feast. Other items had
included a Chair of Melancholy, a Chair of Nostalgia, a Chair of
Inexplicably Claiming To Be Your Best Friend, a Table of
Forgetfulness, and a whole dinner set of Surliness, Sleepiness,
Nausea, Talking in Gibberish, Getting Mad About Stuff And Then Crying
And Hugging People In The Bathroom, and various other things. Seaine
suspected this was one of Haran's obscure jokes. For a Halfman, he had
a bizarre sense of humour - most bizarre of all was the fact that it
even existed.
"Yes," Seaine said. "Yes, I do."
The four Black sisters channeled. Talene - the other Black
sister, Seaine supposed - started to squeal.
*****
The Wheel of time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that
become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten
when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the
Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose
in Far Madding. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither
beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was
*a* beginning. It was also, as far as Forsaken_1 could see, nowhere
near strong enough to pick him up and deposit him in Oz, which was
what he had idly been hoping from the moment the errant breeze had
ruffled his chameleon-cloak.
"Isn't he just the most beautiful, perfect little prince you ever
saw?" Elayne gushed. She had done something to the weird ter'angreal
device using a 'Well', and since stabilising the life-signs of the
baby had been doting on it in the most creepy way. Even Forsaken_1,
something of an authority in the area of doting on things in creepy
ways, found it disturbing. Frankly, the only thing he wanted anyone to
do using a well was throw the little squirming abomination down one.
"It looks like one of those Navigator things out of Dune," he
opined, because it seemed to be the nicest thing he could say about
the foetus in the canister.
"He's precious," Elayne burbled, not hearing a word Forsaken_1
had said - as he'd known she wouldn't. Elayne had figured out how the
canister worked almost automatically, as if she had been tending to
grotesque little bobbing jar-babies all her life, and had even begun
'accidentally' planning how to make ter'angreal that she thought might
do similar horrible things. At the moment, of course, she was limited
by Far Madding's equivalent of a no-fly zone and the importance of
keeping the One Power flowing into the canister through Cadsuane's
Well.
"Yeah, precious," Forsaken_1 agreed with a grimace. "He does sort
of look like Gollum, too."
Cadsuane herself mainly seemed pissed off about the loss of her
weave-blocking ter'angreal, which had been given to her by a man under
circumstances that had made Forsaken_1 obscurely uncomfortable hearing
about in anecdotal form. It was somewhat akin to the knowledge that
your parents must have had sex at least once in order to produce you,
but otherwise no further detail was even slightly welcome. Sharing a
certain amount of Cadsuane's emotions and sensations through the bond
was bad enough, and he didn't need bawdy anecdotes about card games
and dancing challenges to make it worse. Strangely, when he glanced at
the awful old bat and their eyes met, the feeling of annoyance from
her lifted and she grunted in slight approval, pride swelling through
the bond. Well, he had to admit, he was about the best Warder money
could buy and his move to get them all to safety after Lanfear had
attacked them had been nothing short of genius. Even if it did make
things a bit difficult for some of their much-reduced party.
"How's Taim?" Min, sitting huddled in the doorway of their
private apartment's balcony, spoke up one of the few times Forsaken_1
could remember since they'd arrived and Cadsuane had Indian-burned
their way into the relatively opulent accommodations.
"Nothing much more I can do for him now," Cadsuane grumbled. "I
tried sending out a message through the World of Dreams last night,
but no matter how many times people say it has nothing to do with the
One Power, I just can't seem to take it seriously in this place. I
can't Heal him any more than I have, and we need the saidar in the
Well for ... that thing," she shrugged. "And the spare Well doesn't
hold enough saidar to do anything like what we need for Taim. With any
luck, some of the Wise Ones caught the message and passed it on, and
we'll get some backup within-"
The door to the apartment burst open. Min cringed, and Forsaken_1
jumped through the balcony doorway to defend the innocent, only
slightly disgruntled to find that the needlessly sarcastic Davram
Bashere, the Wheel of Time's answer to the Monopoly Guy, was there
ahead of him.
Instead of the attack he'd been expecting, however, Forsaken_1
found himself confronted by an Aiel Wise One.
"Elayne Trakand," the imposing woman declared, "I am Nadere. You
must come immediately to attend the first-sister ceremony with
Aviendha."
"The what?" Elayne blinked, turning away from the canister but
running her fingers across the glass in a disturbing caress.
"I haven't the slightest fucking idea, you dozy-eyed blonde
slut," Nadere said. "Strip naked and come with me."
"Now you're talking," Forsaken_1 said, shrugging out of his
cloak.
*****
Contro really didn't understand any of what was going on, but everyone
kept telling him it didn't matter and he didn't need to understand, so
he supposed that was alright then. It was a very confusing series of
events, and he hadn't been paying attention to most of them, and most
of the people who had tried to explain them to him had said bad words
and gone away for some reason. It wasn't very nice of them to say bad
words and go away, especially since they hadn't taken him with them.
The whole gang had, however, taken him with them when they left
Salidar at last, and now they were near Tar Valon. That much, at
least, he knew even though he wasn't entirely sure whether Tar Valon
was a city or a country. Maybe, he thought, it was both. Like the
Vatican, or Mexico City, or Cardiff.
Contro laughed. "Vatican!"
"What?" Egwene, Debs and Janica were sitting around a table in
what Debs called 'the tent o' war', the pavilion they'd set up shortly
after making the full-scale move from Salidar. They were talking to
Egwene about something, but Contro didn't really understand it.
"Vatican," Contro explained. "It sounds like 'Fattycan'."
"I see," Janica said, and turned back to Egwene. "The issue we
currently face is, you were supposed to be Amyrlin but I was raised
instead. The effect has been much the same so far - the only problem
is, we need to figure out what you were likely to have done as
Amyrlin, because we ... well, we don't have access to Foretelling or
any knowledge of the future like that. The potential future."
"Ye're losin' 'er," Debs remarked. Egwene smiled politely.
"Think of it as a World of If," Janica said, "one we need to
stick to as closely as possible in order to maintain the Pattern and
keep bubbles of evil from occurring."
"Bebbles if we're lucky," Debs added.
"Fattycan," Contro repeated, stuck his finger into the hole that
was all that remained of his ear after he'd lost it somewhere, and
laughed. "Ha ha ha!!!"
"In that World of If, you were raised Amyrlin instead of me,"
Janica continued, "and in order to maintain the Pattern, we need to do
as much of the same things as you would have done, if you were
Amyrlin. It gets complicated from here, though."
"Isn't it already complicated, Mother?" Egwene asked diffidently.
She was, at present, a novice and would be raised to Accepted as soon
as they were able to get her to the testing ter'angreal. Or so Contro
seemed to recall hearing.
"Not compared to how it's going to be," Janica said. "In the
World of If we need to stick to, you were raised to the Accepted and
then spent some time with the Aiel Wise Ones learning to be a
Dreamwalker, pretending all the while to be a full Aes Sedai. You
learned the Aiel ways of ji'e'toh, and were then recalled to become
Amyrlin in Salidar. You then took over and were on your way to
becoming a fairly effective Amyrlin, and you got us on our wee tae Tar
Valon, but then we haven't read any further. I mean, we could see no
further into the World of If," she took a breath. "So what we need
from you is, basically, to know how you think you might act in those
conditions, to perform the siege and help take back the White Tower
and depose Elaida."
"Tha's all," Debs grinned.
"Think of it as a spontaneous response test," Janica pursued.
"Just say the first thing that pops into your head, how you would
react," she glanced at Contro. "Like he does."
"Like I do what??!?" Contro asked. "Honestly, I don't know what
this has to do with me anyway!! Why am I here??"
"Because every time you go outside, somebody punches you in the
heed," Janica replied. "And because we need you to perform emergency
tickle-tums on demand when we meet wi' other Aes Sedai," Cyberwollf,
hearing this, gave a languid wag from the floor in one corner.
"So you wish for me to tell you how I might act in your place,
Mother," Egwene said, "if I were in your place but had also spent time
learning Aiel ways before becoming Amyrlin."
"Exactly."
Egwene paused to think. "No bloodshed," she said thoughtfully,
"there could be no fighting between Aes Sedai and Aes Sedai, or the
Tower will never be whole again."
"Aye," Debs said, "but we've got thes army-" Janica waved her to
silence.
"We could besiege the island," Egwene said, "but no fighting, we
would have to make the Aes Sedai in the Tower accept defeat and accept
you - uh, me - as Amyrlin on our terms. Ideally, I could get inside
the Tower some way and continue my training as an Accepted or a novice
or something, all the while undermining the leadership and continuing
to act as though I were Amyrlin - the Aiel training I underwent would
prepare me for the hardships of the constant visits to the Mistress of
Novices this would bring down on me. Then, I could save the Tower in
some dramatic way when danger threatens, maybe some attack from a
mutual enemy, like your, uh, Seanchan friends. The enemy snatches away
Elaida leaving me as the only alternative as Amyrlin, and leaving the
Tower Aes Sedai in a position where they have to accept our return,"
she laughed. "This is fun. While we're playing make-believe a perfect
scenario, we could turn the harbour gates to solid lumps of
cuendillar."
"Could we, by gum," Janica murmured.
*****
Forsaken_1 returned to their lodgings, pleased with himself yet again
although it had taken some time to get over his disgruntlement at not
being part of the first-sister ceremony. Being pleased with himself
seemed to be a recurring trend, which was good. Better than the
previous recurring trends of annoyance, frustration, gross-out and
unutterable horror.
"Well, I finally tracked down Aviendha," he reported, "she came
in by gee-ay-tee-ee-doubleyou-ay-why at the edge of town, and went
straight to the Wise Ones and-"
"Foreskin," Brigitte said patiently, "the authorities and
townsfolk of Far Madding are against channeling, but there are none of
them around so you don't need to hide it. And even if you did need to
hide it, spelling out the words would only work if they were three
years old."
"I was operating on the assumption that they were illiterate
medieval peasant types," Forsaken_1 explained.
"Based on what?"
"Based on who got us out of that mess and saved us all except for
Stifler and Alanna and Loial when we were all about to be slaughtered
by an enraged Forsaken?" Forsaken_1 bristled.
"How much longer are you going to keep milking that?" Birgitte
snapped.
"Quite a while," Forsaken_1 said, "since I think there's quite a
lot of milk in the concept of me saving all of our lives except
Stifler and Alanna and Loial with my quick thinking and bravery, and
it's not going to run out of milk any time soon."
"Well just so you remember, Mazrim Taim is also very close to
dying," Birgitte pointed out, "especially since we're stuck in this
no-reception area for the One Power and Elayne took Cadsuane's last
fully-charged Well to fix up the baby in the jar for some reason."
"Yeah, I was wondering about that," Forsaken_1 said. "You're her
Warder, didn't you have any idea she was going to get all maternal?"
"It's not 'maternal' I'm feeling through the bond right now,"
Birgitte muttered, "and it disturbs the Ghûl out of me."
"Yeah, well," Forsaken_1 coughed uncomfortably. "Anyway, about
Taim, that was why I was telling you about Aviendha. Cadsuane said
maybe if someone bonded Taim again, that'd help keep him alive. It
worked for me, after Moiraine..." he trailed off, theatrically
spluttering in unhappiness before he realised it wasn't going to win
him any sympathy hugs through the medium of which he might achieve a
cupping of sideboob. "...fell into the Ways fanny-first and vanished,"
he concluded.
"You think Aviendha should bond Taim?"
"Well, even with Stifler gone, Elayne is a bit full," Forsaken_1
said, "and Cadsuane doesn't want to bond any other Warders right now."
"That's not such a big impediment when you stop to think that
Aviendha isn't even Aes Sedai," Birgitte pointed out.
"The first-sister ritual will also bind Elayne and Aviendha
together," Forsaken_1 said, and paused a moment to place the mental
image in his Mental Images Hall of Fame (Drooling Fanboy Masturbation
Material Wing), "and offer a sort of a link so Elayne can technically
say Taim is her Warder without lying."
"I still don't understand why I have to do this," Elayne said,
sitting close to the table where the foetus-canister stood, creepying
up the entire room. She was still wearing the heavy cloak the Wise One
had given her after insisting that she strip and receive a spanking
for some reason, and she looked rather sulky about the whole thing. "I
can't be the only channeler capable of making a bonding weave. Why
don't the Wise Ones just make him a Warder and keep him alive that
way? Better yet, why don't we go and find Nynaeve and have her Heal
him?"
"Because we're hiding from Lanfear," Cadsuane stumped into the
room, hair trinkets swinging and tinkling. "I filled up the Wells
again, but that's about as much time as I want to spend out of Far
Madding until we can be sure Lanfear won't find us. I got the distinct
impression that she was annoyed when we last met."
"Was that when I-" Forsaken_1 began.
"Yeah, don't push it, Foreskin," Cadsuane growled. "Elayne, get
in there and do the stupid ritual. The rest of the Wise Ones are
waiting," she tossed one of her baubles to the snooty young woman. "If
they need to use the One Power, just make sure they use it carefully.
What's in there won't last long."
Elayne harumphed and strode from the room, pausing once to look
back at the canister with the disgusting foetus in it. Then she went
into the adjoining room, closed the door, and both Cadsuane and
Forsaken_1 breathed a sigh of relief. Cadsuane crossed to the adjacent
door and looked in on Taim, while Birgitte and Gaidal took up
positions outside the room Elayne had just entered.
However the ritual proceeded, not much of it was apparent from
the main room. Birgitte and Gaidal seemed a little weirded out from
time to time, and Cadsuane muttered something about Aiel wilders who
didn't know their elbows from their arseholes, but all in all it went
quietly and - as far as Forsaken_1 could tell - successfully. Elayne
and Aviendha emerged a short while later, the former in her cloak and
the latter in her habitual gai'shain white, each of them looking
pleased with themselves in spite of the numerous slap-marks clearly
visible on the parts of their bodies Forsaken_1's eyes could reach.
Not that he was reaching.
"Now, we should lend our strength to Mazrim Taim," Elayne said,
and Aviendha, with the same off-putting meek silence with which she
had greeted Forsaken_1 at the gateway earlier, nodded and together
they crossed to Taim's room. At about the same moment, the front door
of the apartment opened and Bashere strode in, bristling with anger.
"I don't pretend to understand how the World of Dreams works-"
"Good," Cadsuane said, "because that would be strange."
"-but I know that Lanfear is supposed to be some sort of
diabolical genius where Tel'aran'rhiod is concerned, second only to
Ishamael himself," Bashere continued, his voice tightly controlled.
"And, since you have been using the World of Dreams to talk to the
Aiel Wise Ones and arrange these little parties which they're just
gatewaying into willy-nilly, isn't it fair to say that you're making
it easy for Lanfear to find you?"
"Come back with that attitude of yours when she actually *has*
found us," Cadsuane suggested.
"How about I come back right now?" Bashere snapped. "Far Madding
is entirely surrounded."
Cadsuane jumped to her feet. "Surrounded by what?"
"Wish I knew," Bashere grunted sourly.
*****
It had proved rather more difficult than Morelin would have believed
to acquire a guided tour of the Tor offices in Los Angeles, although
she had to admit that once the sales clerks took a good look at the
small crowd she was trying to buy tickets for, it was hardly any
wonder they had asked her to leave and take her skinny freaks with
her.
"Well, that was fun," Ilya said cheerfully as they wandered out
and across the street to a nearby park. "I'm going to chase
squirrels."
"I'm going to chase joggers," Cooper Two said, and followed the
eerily-similar-looking Russian in among the trees.
"I really wish you wouldn't," Morelin called, then gave up.
"Ah, let them go," Robert E said expansively. "They might get
arrested. At least Ilya wouldn't be able to get out of prison if they
locked him up, and being on the receiving end of a few strategic
shankings and a bit of sodomy might quiet him down."
"Like when we beat him with soap-filled socks," Wubbles said.
"He slept well that night," ~Brian~ reminisced.
"Good times," Wubbles smiled.
"Guys," Morelin said, "let's try and stay focussed," she'd had
plenty of experience, not only with Ilya and Coop over the past days
and weeks, but also with Shannon, a man with an attention-span
measuring in nanoPlancks. "We have to get into those offices, so we
can get to the bottom of this whole Wheel of Time contest thing, and
see about getting Cooper Two back where he belongs," she paused and
added, "and get the others back, if they're in trouble."
"Sounds like a good plan," ~Brian~ said, "except we're stuck out
here."
"With *him*," Robert E added darkly. Ilya pranced through the
park nearby, burbling about the luminous Banana King, and Ratatouille
Strychnine and his mean Hungarian forte-piano dance song.
"Maybe there's a back way in," Morelin mused. Evening was
falling, and public parks were no place for Cooper Two at night. They
were no place for him during broad daylight either, but night was
worse. "Let's go."
The alley behind the L.A. Tor offices was the usual mess of
piled-up garbage and overflowing rubbish bins, some of them marked for
glass waste and plastic waste in that same lazily, misplacedly
optimistic way people in the service industry said "have a nice day".
There were also several large bins for paper waste, some of them
marked "excess clothing descriptions (Jordan)" and so on. After
climbing over these for a while and having a short but unfulfilling
scuffle with a small pack of Next Book Nerds, they concluded there was
no rear entrance.
At the mouth of the alley, however, they were confronted by a
figure immersed in shadow.
"If you are seeking a means of entering the building, I can be of
assistance," the figure said. It was a woman's voice, with the same
mix of wisdom and patience that Morelin had come to know from their
time staying with Mrs_1. Unlike Mrs_1, however, this woman's patience
was neither infinite nor kind.
"Who goes there?" Wubbles struck a pose at the front of the
group. "Friend or foe?"
"Or Peter?" Ilya put in. "He's sort of both."
"I am merely offering assistance," the woman said.
"Why?" Wubbles frowned.
"Let us just say, I had a dream."
"That's a fairly creepy explanation," ~Brian~ noted.
"Do you know a way in?" Morelin asked, not really caring who the
shadow-shrouded woman was as long as they got moving.
"Just after closing time on certain nights, I have it on good
authority that the owners allow a large truckload of toilet tissue to
be backed into the delivery hangar," the woman waved a coat-clad arm,
"for Darryl Sweet to make draft book covers on. It just so happens
that tonight is such a night, and I know the young man driving the
truck. He will stop for a cigarette at a strategic location and time,
and you will be able to climb in among the paper which is not, I
hasten to add, currently soiled."
"Really?"
"From there, once the young gentleman has completed his
tobbacionary interlude, he will proceed to make his delivery and you
will be inside the offices," the woman concluded. "How you avoid the
security guards at that point will rather be up to you, but I imagine
you shall find a way."
"Alright," Morelin said, seeing that Ilya and Coop had already
lost interest in the conversation and even the other three were
beginning to look glassy-eyed, "take us to this truck."
*****
"When my husband catches you," Berelain said, "he's going to turn you
into a rug. Wolfbrother or no Wolfbrother."
Satters bared his teeth, but without much hope of it having any
effect. To be honest, he was beginning to wonder if he'd wound up in
the wrong plot thread and where, if anywhere, it was going to end up.
He was increasingly sure it was going to be somewhere ugly.
He was, technically, along with the Shaido who had kidnapped
Faile, except of course the similarities to the plot ended with ... in
fact, they didn't even begin. There was a loose connection, he
supposed, with the losing side at Dumai's Wells, but there was no
Faile and, technically speaking, no Shaido either.
Instead, the strange lurching grey mutants who had escaped from
the bubble of evil at Dumai's Wells had teamed up with Padan Fain and
some more mutants who might have been Aes Sedai or Younglings or
Whitecloaks or anything, really - two-legs were all beginning to look
a bit samey to him - and they had kidnapped Berelain, for reasons that
currently escaped him but may have been some sort of feeble
instinctive attempt to cling to a plot long since warped beyond
recognition.
"You'd better hope he catches us, then," Satters satisfied
himself with saying, although he had a nasty feeling this wasn't the
cutting, hardcore sort of comeback he'd wanted to say and which had
sounded so good in his head. He bared his teeth again. "Bitch."
"That's not an insult among our kind," Berelain pointed out.
"You're not an insult among our kind," Satters shot back
triumphantly.
"Keep moving there," Fain trotted up alongside and pointed
imperiously at Berelain. "I would hate to have to force Galina to Heal
you again."
"I'll force Galina to Heal *you* again," Satters snarled, but his
heart wasn't in it. Fain waved cheerily and moved on. "I don't like
that guy."
"You're part of his band," Berelain pointed out.
"Yeah, but none of us like him," he said, "or each other."
"Sounds delightful."
As if to underpin those words, one of the Shaido - he thought it
might have been Therava - shambled up and strode alongside them
through the dust.
"We have been joined by some more of our kind," she announced,
following a couple of very uncomfortable minutes spent walking
side-by-side.
"Shaido, Aiel, humans?" Satters demanded specifics gruffly. "Vile
grey wobbly mutant-things?"
"That last one," Therava replied, after giving it a moment's
thought.
"Great," Satters grumbled. "More of them. Where did *they* come
from? I thought Aginor stopped making you guys."
"The Jonine sept had escaped the fighting," Therava said, "and we
found them quite easy to ... convert."
"You can make *more* of yourselves?" Satters tried not to gasp.
It was so girly.
"Most living things can," Therava replied simply, "although it
requires no little power on our part," she turned to Berelain. "You."
"That *is* an insult among our kind," she growled.
Therava ignored the woman's cold fury. "Padan Fain carries an
angreal with him," she said. "You will steal it from him and deliver
it to me. If you do so, we will allow you to go free."
"Really?" Berelain blinked and looked at the lurching figure
suspiciously.
"We no longer need you, as fresh and far more suitable bodies
have become available to us," she spread her bent, clawlike hands.
"And besides, you are like this one," she gestured at Satters. "You
are already infected with something, that makes our own implantation
difficult if not impossible. You will go free."
"What about me?" Satters asked. "I'm no good to you either."
"We have not at any point really cared what you do," Therava
said. "This is not likely to change. But you *will* get us that
angreal."
"You want to get away?" Berelain murmured in outrage when Therava
had shambled off ahead. "You helped capture me!"
"I don't have to explain myself to you," Satters snarled.
*****
Angamael and Lanfear stood on the hillside, looking dubiously over the
force arrayed in preparation for attack. A bigger collection of bumpy,
bulgy, nasty-looking things Angamael had not seen outside of a Star
Trek convention. "So these ... what did you call them?"
"Nesters, or Colonies," Aginor replied happily, "although some of
the techs have taken to calling them Quartermen."
The Quartermen had been produced almost entirely in vacuoles, a
vast number of which had apparently sprung up from Angamael's balefire
experiments on the Pattern - something he liked to let everyone
believe was totally intentional. They bred very fast, particularly in
the vacuoles where months passed in mere hours, and when some of the
vacuoles popped and vanished into utter, horrifying nothingness, it
was no big loss of resources.
They were almost like Trollocs, with the same looming stature and
bestial faces, except they were as pale and pasty and hairless as
Myrddraal, and had no eyes. Their bodies were twisted and malformed -
in a word bumpy, bulgy and nasty-looking - the animal heads Trollocs
possessed twisted and hideous even before you put the eyeless stare on
top. All in all, they looked like something Giger might have a
nightmare about after eating too much rich food.
They were also, according to Aginor, sewn up with their bodily
cavities filled with a mixture of dirt, manure, and eggs from some
sort of scarab-like grave bugs from the Blight that had been further
treated with Thakan'dar water. They were the true weapon, and the true
reason for the name of the creatures.
"They will fight like a Myrddraal, and go down as hard as one,"
Aginor was saying, "but they have the strength and bloodthirst of a
Trolloc, with none of the Halfman's creativity. They're just tanks."
"Okay."
"And when they go down, the bugs come out," Aginor went on.
Angamael had seen a demonstration of that. He didn't want to see
it again. Certainly not close-up. "And the bugs are poisonous?" he
asked.
"As a Thakan'dar-wrought blade," Aginor said. "The effects are
almost exactly the same. The bugs will kill and feast on any living
thing they can find, and give most non-living things a good chewing
while they're at it, but they only live a short time outside of the
Colony, and they cannot breed anywhere but inside a living Nester's
body. Still, they are very resilient while they're still alive, very
difficult to destroy even with the One Power - most weaves will have
little effect, and they are too diffused to use balefire on unless you
use a huge beam ... and none of *that* even matters under the
influence of this ter'angreal," he patted the massive guardian object
beside which they were standing. Beside, and carefully on the
One-Power-friendly side of. "I would say six or seven Nesters,
Quartermen, would be enough to completely depopulate a town like Far
Madding. Pull down most of the buildings, too, for that matter."
"How many do we have?" Angamael asked.
Aginor consulted a file. "In this first batch, three hundred and
eighty."
"And they will destroy everything but leave us alone?" Angamael
stressed.
"They are linked to the Great Lord just as all Shadowspawn are,"
Aginor replied, "they will not attack one of the Chosen or a Dreadlord
or a Myrddraal even if they were wading knee-deep in the bugs.
Trollocs might be a different matter, but we have lots of those. And
we didn't bring any with us anyway."
"So we go in and take back the canister," Lanfear pressed, "and
leave the thieves to be devoured?"
"Well, if you like," Aginor shrugged. "Or, since they'll be
helpless and we're the only ones who can keep the bugs away, you can
capture them and do what you like to them later."
"Just remember the rules," Angamael said, raising an admonitory
finger. "No hesitating, no lingering or gloating, no drawn-out and
unwitnessed tortures, and absolutely no exposition before killing
them."
"Of course, Nae'blis," Lanfear inclined her head.
Howling in rabid fury, the Quartermen poured into Far Madding.
TO BE CONTINUED
C&J