The Grey Tower

The sun had begun to set. Sinead sat cross-legged on the floor facing west, enjoying the splendor spread out before her through the glass wall of the Grey Tower. She had seen magnificent sunsets before; living in the Three-fold Land, every end of day came with its own vast patchwork of orange, red, and purple. Here, however, the skies were a different color, and sitting as she was high in the Tower, on the cusp between the White and Grey Ajah Halls, she had an unobstructed view.

As she bathed in the golden light the tall Aielwoman also studied, a book spread on her knees, one long finger tracking the words as she read. Next to her sat a pile of similar books, and a leather carrying case for her writing tools. She had so much to learn! History, philosophy, politics, the Old Tongue, geography, the manner and dress of each nation....the list went on. And all of that was in addition to her studies with the One Power, which filled her time and her heart with unbounding joy. Today, she read a treatise written by a Grey several hundred years before, on the state of the Borderlands. Although some would argue that the work was useless, given that Malkier had longsince fallen to Shadow, Sinead disagreed with that prognosis. Those who did not learn from history were doomed to repeat it, and in this case, she could almost see the pattern in the events that had transpired over the last two centuries.

Saldaea had done this, and in response, Arad Doman had done that. Kandor had failed to make good on a treaty, and as a result that city on the Shienaran northern border had fallen to the Blight, and because of that...she lost track of the connections, and swore. After a moment, she reached into her case and pulled out a sheet of paper and laid it on the floor. Dipping her pen into the inkwell she kept at her waist, she began to map out the connections, drawing a spiderweb of lines across the page as she added more to the sequence.

The sun dropped below the horizon, but Sinead barely noticed, save to turn the lamp on the wall up to light her work. She stopped frequently to reference the books she had brought with her. The map of connections spread, and as it did she added more paper, until eventually she sat before a sea of paper, pieced together into a haphazard square on the smooth wood floor. She still could not shake the feeling that if she could just find the key, the entire puzzle would come together.

"That is...quite remarkable," a voice said calmly, and Sinead jumped, then slumped forward, shamed beyond words. How on earth had a bloody wetlander managed to creep up on her? She gathered herself, then turned to look at the speaker.

"I see a pattern in the events I am reading about," she said, "but I can't make sense of it. I had hoped that drawing it out would help, but I think all I actually did was waste paper." She set her pen down, and pushed herself to her feet, bowing to her new companion. "Surely if there was a pattern, better thinkers and scholars than I would have noticed them."

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OOC: I need an interaction with someone not of Sinead's rank. I'm hoping to develop her more scholarly interests (as well as what she knows of the Ajahs). It doesn't have to be a long thread by any means!

Aelyn poured over the materials he was carrying in his arms as he walked from the Gray Ajah Halls to the White Ajah Halls. He had borrowed some manuscripts from summits between Andor and Amadicia that were rather hard to come across, because of the obvious contentions between Amador and any group of organized channelers. As he made his way back, he spotted a stack of books with a person attached to them. He furrowed his brow and noticed that the person was wearing a white dress, but not the complex, well-made ones that Aes Sedai in his Ajah wore. This was a simple novice dress. It was odd that a novice would come here to study. Usually, they only came here to run errands. Unless...was this girl sent here to sit next to a pile of books? No, something about that didn't make sense.

Why was this novice here in the first place? He walked slowly up to her and spotted her red hair and sun-colored skin. An Aiel, then. As he looked at the history books and treatises laid out before her, he began to see her reason for studying. If she had been in the Aiel Waste for most of her life before coming to the Grey Tower, she would need to learn much and more about this place. In front of her was a piece of paper with a web connecting events in history. She did have quite a lot to learn. At least she had some sort of a plan. He was not used to seeing novices and soldiers put forth so much effort to learn. Even if she was Aiel, most of them seemed to think they could learn the culture of the world beyond the Wall by pretending they already knew it, and besides which had deemed it inferior. This web she had made, though...

"That is...quite remarkable," he said, putting on his spectacles to get a better look at it. The girl jumped, then slumped forward, barring his view of the web a bit.

"I see a pattern in the events I am reading about, but I can't make sense of it. I had hoped that drawing it out would help, but I think all I actually did was waste paper."

"Well, no...patterns are a wonderful start," he said, crouching down next to her, looking at the paper, examining it. "I can see what it is that you're getting at. History, in its essence, is a story, and a story, in its essence, is a web of sorts. Why don't you explain to me your thoughts while making this?" he suggested calmly. "Perhaps we can connect the story lines and make something more coherent. I probably have some books I could lend you to help you out."

Sinead blinked at the Asha'man, surprised at his interest. She knew Aelyn from classes she had taken over the three years she had been at the Tower, but didn't think she had ever directly spoken to him. Could he actually, truly, be interested in the thread of....whatever it was...that she thought she could see? He didn't seem the sort to mock her, and he was examining her vast map with some curiousity. Asha'man cannot lie anymore than can an Aes Sedai.

Hesitantly, the Aielwoman sank back down, settling on her knees with her bottom propped up on her heels as she examined her work. "It started because I was curious about how the Borderlands came to be the force they are," she said. "The Blight is unstoppable; no human force should be able to keep it at bay for as long as those nations have, and yet....here we stand. There has to be an explanation, so I started to look, but I found something else, and it is perplexing. It's less a pattern, and more a series of...odd coincidences."

She moved her finger. "For example. Five hundred years before Malkier fell, Merisol Tigande wed Berin Meronne against her father's will. The story goes that her father had locked her inside and would not even let her walk in her gardens lest she escape prior to her wedding day to his chosen mate. By some twist of fate, a woman named Nakuri happened to be passing through Merisol's hall when the young lady needed help the most. She was described as "dark of hair and short of stature" by a passing gleeman. For some reason Naruki helped Merisol flee across five hundred leagues to her lover's home, against all odds and leaving no trace of her whereabouts. Because Merisol did not wed Tiroki Hadan of Shienar, when her father's forces met Myrddraal at the battle of Oakburn Vale they were overwhelmed and slaughtered." Her voice was dispassionate; war was a fact of life, especially with the Shadow. Her finger traced down. "If the marriage had occurred, there would have been more than enough forces to destroy the Shadowspawn, and the town of Oakburn would have remained in the Light. Had Oakburn remained...well, things would have gone differently in that area a few decades later, and if that twist of fate had gone a different direction, who knows what might have happened."

She tapped where she had written "Oakburn" on the paper. "Curiously, the governor of Oakburn had an unnamed adviser, a woman. She appeared out of nowhere, and the only record of her existence described her as small and dark. My source says her advice seemed sound in the moment, and yet bad luck dogged the town the entire time she was there. She vanished into the night a few months prior to the battle that destroyed Oakburn." The Aielwoman looked up at the Asha'man.

"I cannot help but believe that the governor's adviser and Nakuri are one and the same, and she deliberately took the actions she did in order to bring ruin to Oakburn. Yet...to the people of that time it was an inconsequential outpost; the ripple effects of its fall would not become apparent for another fifty years!" She shook her head.

"These people -the Shadow, I'm assuming- succeeded again and again, when all logic says they should have failed, and their successes are linked together by still more coincidental events. I gave you one example, but the pattern prevails through the books I have been reading, and it is baffling."

She paused, gnawing on her lip for a second. "Am I simply willing a pattern to existence, or is this a thing others have noticed? I don't believe in coincidences or chance, especially not a quantity of such instances over several centuries. Surely there is an explanation?"

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OOC: I literally just pulled all of that out of thin air to demonstrate that Sinead looks beyond the surface level when studying, but that doesn't necessarily means she draws the right conclusions from what she sees. You are welcome to play along, or outright refute her thoughts, or send her off on a wild goose chase...I'll play along with whatever. *lol*

Aelyn listened attentively to her explanation of the story of Oakburn. It was quite the tragic tale, and her theories on it were quite interesting as well. He hadn't really looked that far into the fall of Malkier, much to the chagrin of many of his colleagues from the Borderlands. He wasn't informed on the Aiel's beliefs either, really. He wasn't even sure if this young woman would even know what he was about to talk about.

"Well, it's very apt that you keep mentioning a 'pattern,'" Aelyn said. "Because it is the Pattern that drives the course of events through history. And, we can debate on whether or not this means that we have free will, but the fact that there are few, special people -- ta'veren -- that can change the Pattern to fit their needs, change people's minds by sheer force of their own will, proves that we, essentially, are threads in this Pattern. Now. If we go by that logic, we could say that Oakburn would have fallen whether or not Lady Merisol married her father's chosen suitor. It could have happened before, it could have happened after, and by any set of circumstances. Hypothetically, even if Oakburn had not fallen, the Pattern would have likely seen to it that Malkier still would have fallen in the end. You are right. Again and again, the Shadow slowly invaded and touched the lives of the people of Malkier in permanent ways. I do not know many of the details of the fall, I must admit, but I at the very least know that by the time it fell, the corruption ran deep. Corruption that invasive takes time, strategy, and manipulation on a massive level, especially for a Borderland nation like Malkier, standing so valiantly and so far into the Blight for so long."

He paused, noticing that he was getting ahead of himself. "What I am trying to say is that you have the right of it, uhh..." He narrowed his eyes at her, trying to place her name. Had this girl been in his classes? She had. What was her name? He did not have many Aiel in his classes. She had a singular name. What was it? "Forgive me, I can't place your name," he admitted, "but you still have the right of it, and I'm quite impressed that you were able to see the Pattern in events like this." Blinking, he finally remembered, snapping his fingers. "Ah, yes. Sinead! I remember you now. I always remember students whose papers don't make me shake my head in disappointment..."

~~~

OOC: He's excited now, he'll never shut up.

Sinead stared at him, surprised that he had taken her seriously. Of course, the Pattern is the Pattern, she thought as he spoke, but surely not all things are pre-ordained? Surely we have some form of choice? Remembering how and why she had come to the Grey Tower, she was suddenly not so certain. An inanimate object had shown her her future, and though she still could only remember glimpses of it, the overwhelming need to be at the Grey Tower remained solid and true. I could have chosen not to come, but to do so would have meant forsaking my honor, and that is no choice at all. Am I truly simply another peg in a game board?

He remembered her name, and that she completed her assignments. Her lips twitched upward, and her eyes crinkled as she nodded acknowledgement of his compliment."I am fascinated by such things," she admitted. "That such a small event all the way back here," and she touched the Oakburn note, "could have such a profound effect on the world as we know it...it boggles the mind. My roommate's eyes certainly glaze over when I speak of it." Then again, her roommate's eyes glazed over at pretty much everything Sinead said. She was not certain the other woman had brains at all.

"You say this is the Pattern," she commented slowly, surveying her notes, "and that Malkier probably would have fallen even if Oakburn had not been betrayed. You also said that corruption ran deep, and that it took careful planning for such to occur. If this is all a part of the Pattern, then that means the Creator must have allowed it to happen." Her heart hurt at that idea. "If that is the case, then surely he would only do so if the result of all of this evil is actually something good. But...what good could possibly come from the fall of such a great nation?" She chewed on the inside of her lip.

"Maybe I need to also map the good things that happened," she said thoughtfully. "Maybe the piece I'm missing is how the bad adds up to good. There are two sides to every coin, after all." She laughed, a short, light expression of amusement at herself. "I could spend my life at this work and never find the answer I seek, most likely."

Aelyn listened to Sinead's concerns about the Pattern willing the fall of Malkier to happen. It was rather depressing, when put that way. "Well, you could put it that way, that the Creator allowed it to happen, but I believe that the world is heading to another great event. We must not forget that the Pattern willed the Breaking of the World and the end of the Age of Legends. Not to sound like a Brown, but we lost so much knowledge, and we've only begun to bring it back to the forefront of research again. We must consider the dichotomy of Saidar and Saidin, the two halves of the One Power, and essentially what the Grey Tower comes to represent: balance," he said, a bit of excitement mixed in with his didactic tone.

"Malkier has fallen, but Saidin was cleansed. Those two events may not seem related, but you've already demonstrated just how complex the Pattern can be," he explained, gesturing to her web. "The Shadow may be active and on the mind of the populace, but there are other forces at work to make sure that there is a balance. Just like..." He looked around, mentally kicking himself for not reading further on Aiel culture. "That honor system the Aiel observe, which I know is much more complex than what I have been saying, but I do try to make lessons relatable when I can... Forgive me, I can't remember it as easily as I remembered your name."

Sinead was surprised when Aelyn brought up ji'e'toh, even if so informally. Does our code really exist as a mechanism to fight the Shadow The idea stole her attention away for long moments as her thoughts rambled through the twists and turns of meaning that such an idea could have. Save for the dat'sang, every action taken by her kin had purpose. Even the gai'shain worked to good purpose, though perhaps much harder than the rest of the Aiel. Perhaps that is because they are the ones visibly doing the Creator's work.

The thought disturbed her. She physically turned her head as she forced her thoughts to return to the present, where Aelyn was waiting with great patience and what she thought might be a hint of understanding for her to say something. "Ji'e'toh," she provided the name in an absent tone. "It means honor and obligation. I....think....I understand what you mean." The thoughts were still flitting around.

"It sounds to me as if you are saying that the Dark One -the Shadow- is more aggressive. Like- like the warriors of the Clans. It attacks, it asserts, it forces the changes it wants to see. On the other hand, the Creator is less aggressive. Like a Wise One, he-" she stumbled, but moved on, "- his moves are more subtle. He doesn't ram things through, he sets them up for long term efficiency, yes? There's ji'e'toh, the Three Oaths, the Heroes of the Horn, ta'veren..." she trailed off, thoughtful.

"I have enjoyed this discussion, Asha'man Aelyn," she said after a moment, "I have a good deal to keep myself busy with." Her eyes crinkled, as good as a grin of excitement from the Aielwoman. "You mentioned you have books....if it pleases you I would very much like to see them." She began to collect her papers into a pile, practically vibrating with the energy of her thoughts.

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OOC: I actually have had a lot of fun on this mad philosophical adventure. I'd like to squeeeeeze two more posts, if possible, so I can get a 6 post thread credit for Sinead's RR's. ^_^

Aelyn did not teach many classes. He would much rather sit in his study and concentrate on his own works, rather than try to reach out to students that usually did not respond. They were not interested in his way of thinking or his Ajah, and it was always quite plain. So, being engaged in an in-depth discussion with a novice about philosophy and logic, watching her light up to his words and listening as her thoughts clicked in place was a rare treat. It was something that made him re-think his stance on teaching. "Well, it can be argued that the Shadow is more aggressive in its tactics because men are naturally inclined to do good works, but the Shadow knows that men are also vulnerable in being twisted, if their souls are weak enough. Your thoughts on Wise Ones seem sound as well. Long-term efficiency is the best course of thinking for a large group of people, just as one must keep their morals and the Light in the souls for the long term, rather than the pandering of the Shadow."

Sinead seemed to dip into her own thoughts as she pondered other roles in the Pattern. Then she told him that she had enjoyed their discussion and wished to see his books. He was taken rather aback. He had never been asked to show a student his private collection of books, unless they were Accepted or Dedicated that wished to go into the Browns or his own Ajah. He smiled a little brighter. "I've rather enjoyed this conversation as well, Sinead," he said with a chuckle. "I'd be glad to show you my books, if you have the time. Ah, but... let's not leave these books lying here, shall we?" He seized Saidin and wrapped a good portion of the books in a weave of Air and began to walk to his rooms, expecting her to follow.

Sinead listened thoughtfully as Aelyn talked about the possible reasons behind the Shadow and aggression. Humans are naturally inclined to do good works? She wasn't sure she agreed with that. While the Aiel lived and breathed ji'e'toh, it was not a natural inclination to do so. Someone, sometime, had created the rules her people abided by, and others had refined it. She knew from walking the wetlands that without such a code humans generally behaved little better than da'tsang if they believed they could get away with it.

There were certainly exceptions. Those who had created ji'e'toh had certainly understood the necessity of doing right even when no one could see. The people of Cairhien who had shared water with the Aiel had understood....and then later had proven beyond any shadow of a doubt how temporary such an understanding could be. Her head hurt from her spinning thoughts. Treekillers. Her inner voice was both derisive and angry. Even knowing Larana Jintan, she could not entirely dismiss her feelings about what the Cairhienin had done to the great tree's daughter.

She was brought back to the present by Aelyn's surprised acknowledgment of her request for books. Had it really only been a moment or two? Her thoughts had consumed here to the exclusion of all else. She watched, fascinated, as the Asha'man gathered his books. She had only recently been able to reliably detect the use of saidar, and had grown used to seeing that glow; seeing the White's books floating through the air with no apparent support made her skin crawl. How utterly irrational.

He lead the way and she followed, hands folded at her waist and clutching the sheets that held her diagram of history. He seemed content with silence, and therefore she kept her mouth shut until he ushered her into his chambers. There she saw books -more books than she had ever known any single person to own- and could not help the delighted sound that escaped her lips. "What do you study?" She asked, the presence of so much knowledge distracting her from her own mental gymnastics. "I have read about the White Ajah, but as a novice I don't get much-" she cut off, realizing too late who she was speaking to. "I- I mean- what do you particularly pursue?"

Aelyn saw the look on Sinead's face as he gathered the books using Saidin. Women could not sense when a man channeled at all, but men could detect when a woman channeled by tingling on their arms. The One Power was truly fascinating, but it was perplexing sometimes, too. He strode from the halls to his quarters, books and novice in tow, and opened the door. He watched as Sinead lit up at his mess of a living quarter. He had a system to his books and studies, but one that looked like a mess to everyone else. He was glad to see a novice take such an enthusiastic interest in his studies, though. She seemed to forget her composure for a moment as she took all the potential knowledge in and began to speak to him a bit informally, but he had to give her credit. She did catch herself and correct her words. While he was enthusiastic as well, there was a certain decorum they both had to follow, as novice and Asha'man.

"Currently, I am taking laws and court cases of different lands and applying different philosophies to them, then testing other philosophies to the same cases to find the best fit, for a book that I plan to write. It's really more about compiling research and experimenting at this point." He hadn't even found time to study ter'angreal and angreal as he liked to do from time to time. He quickly went over all the books and notes that he had laid out in his head, a mental file of all this works. "Feel free to leaf through anything you wish. Just, please try to keep my place, if there is one to be kept." The members of his Ajah would sometimes hint that he should have a more logical system, but logically, if he could decipher his own system without extra organization, there should be no problem, if he was the only one to look at it. He now thought a bit more seriously about organization as he let a novice come into his rooms.