The Grey Tower

Elia stood before the door to her room, one hand pressed flat against the wood, her other hand on the handle. Apprehension filled the Shienaran. Beyond this door was her room, the room she would reside in until she earned the ring of an Accepted, or until she was put out of the Tower. Each option seemed equally likely. That wasn’t the source of her anxiety. No, she had been assigned to a double room, which apparently wasn’t always tradition here, and her roommate was on the other side of the panelled door.

In the White Tower, she also had a roommate. A woman a year or two younger than her, but with all of the self-importance and arrogance that came from being the daughter of a High Lord of Tear. Originally that had seemed a contradiction, a proud Tairen novice. Tear despised everything to do with channelling. From another source, Elia had learned that girls with the ability to channel were bundled off to Tar Valon in ships or wagons the moment someone discovered their talent. An ignominious start on the journey towards becoming an Aes Sedai. None of that indignation had affected Jinett. No, her scorn had been directed at the wilder.

Treated like a cuckoo in the nest, Jinett had made life unpleasant for Elia. Jinett knew of her block, and also knew of a hundred different ways of breaking the calm she needed to channel. Not that she would have channelled in retort, not without the presence of an Accepted or an Aes Sedai. Elia followed the rules strictly, and respected the hierarchy around her. Other novices played pranks, sometimes directed at the servants, sometimes at an Accepted, or rarely an Aes Sedai. Elia balked at those antics. Accepted and Aes Sedai were there to ensure that each woman would be trained to use the One Power safely. That, above all else, was what Elia wanted.

She removed a hand from the door handle, and pulled her thick braid of red hair over her shoulder. Jinett had been bad, but the training had been worse. If her former roommate had thrown scorn on her, some of the Accepted had outright loathed her. For being a wilder. They castigated her as ferociously as they pushed her to learn. That, more often than not, meant that she couldn’t achieve the serenity she needed to channel. When she was able to touch saidar, the blessed light that suffused her spirit with a wondrous warmth, it had been to no comment of approval. Failures were focused upon, whereas successes were ignored. Realising that she was picking at the end of her braid nervously, she threw it back in place along the center of her back. Light, please shelter me from that. There is nowhere else I can turn too.

Elia closed her eyes, and slowly breathed in through her nose. She was getting more fearful, not less. She practiced a technique that one kinder Accepted had taught her. If she could govern her breathing, she could pull her emotions into check. There was no reason to anticipate that the other novice would be malicious, or even impersonal. Light, her roommate may not even be in their room. There was a picture in Elia’s mind now, of a novice standing touching a door with her eyes closed. It looked plain foolish.

Opening her eyes, and taking a lungful of air, she pushed down on the handle and opened the door.

The small room looked as if it had been abandoned for weeks, the lack of dust the only indication that it had recently had an occupant. Sinead stood near the door, a pile of books in one arm and a small satchel of the personal belongings she was allowed to have as a novice in the other. She had lived in that room for nearly seven years, as close as she could estimate. She had watched other women arrive, study, laugh, cry, and move on to become Accepted from the solitude of the space, all while she remained, frozen by her own unease. She had not appreciated the chamber as much as she should.

Mirin Sedai had decided her isolation must end, and assigned her to a double room near the front of the novice quarters. You have had more than enough time to wallow in your sulk, she had said that morning, and I will tolerate no further such nonsense from you. Collect your things. What could the Aes Sedai possibly know of the inner struggle that ate at sinead's heart? Wetlanders knew nothing, understood nothing, had no honor, no pride, no shame. She had not intended on sharing her opinion with the woman, but out it had come, and Mirin had reached for her riding crop. Sinead had barely noticed the physical blows, but the shame of losing her temper stayed with her long after the Aes Sedai had departed.

She walked out of the room and closed the door, hearing the latch click. She had left many things behind in her life- childhood, Far Dareis Mai, wayward lovers, the Wise Ones, the Three-fold Land, the foundation of all her beliefs- and now the one place that had been a haven in the storm. She held her head high, red curls falling well past her shoulders, and strode away to find her new residence.

The new room had two of everything but the wash stand, but seemed only a little larger than the old. It felt cramped and cold with the same sterile, empty feel hers had had at the end. She had expected to find a room that already held another novice, and paused for a moment to check the number engraved on a plaque. Curious. Why move her to share space if she had no one to share it with? Perhaps her new roommate did not yet know she would be sharing quarters. Who will it be?

Sinead busied herself with placing her books in a neat line at the very front of her desk, held up on either end by stone figurines she pulled from the satchel. She placed her writing kit next to it, with a fist sized lump of sandstone she had brought with her from the Three-fold Land holding her blank writing paper down. She would have preferred to place it all on a low shelf, or even directly on the floor, but both Illyria and Mirin had insisted that Aiel or not, her belongings must remain on the table. They could not force her to use the chair, however. That she placed against the wall by the door. Perhaps her new roommate would have a use for it.

She knelt to put her satchel in the trunk at the foot of her bed, but twisted expectantly when she heard a noise outside. The door opened slowly to reveal a woman with red hair in a long braid, and eyes as green as Sinead's own. For a moment, the Aielwoman's heart rose. Had another of her people joined her after all? Had Mirin- no. This woman was short and soft, pale-skinned and slender in her natural beauty. Wetlanders with red hair were rare indeed; where had this one come from?

Struggling to quell the disappointment she felt, Sinead inclined her head in greeting. "I am Sinead," she said simply. "Are you to be my room mate?"

Compared to the novice’s rooms in the White Tower, this room was a palace. Elia would have gazed around in wide-eyed wonder, if not for the other woman who stooped at the end of one of the beds.

At first, Elia thought she was glancing into a mirror, but that thought ended quickly. Curls of red cascaded around piercing green eyes, but where her face was pale and unblemished, the other novice’s was coated with a liberal covering of freckles. Are those scars? There were lines of white against that tanned skin, and Elia couldn’t think what else they could be. Those couldn’t possibly have been inflicted here. She hoped that was true. Oh Light...

Still kneeling on the ground, the other woman spoke. “I am Sinead. Are you to be my roommate?” Confusion overwrote the fear that had been building. That accent. Elia had a particular talent for impersonations. Not something she shared often or freely, not any more, but she had cultivated a wide range of voices and accents. But not this one. She couldn’t place the woman.

“Yes, I am.” A warm and sincere smile covered the Shienaran’s face. She stepped into the room, closing the room quietly behind her. “My name is Elia Darrow.” She held off on adding ‘from Fal Dara’. That was not out of spite, because she couldn’t place that accent. No, she was ‘of the Grey Tower’ now, and that seemed redundant given the situation. She bobbed a curtsy. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sinead. I hope we can be good friends.”

Sinead cocked her head to the side thoughtfully. Darrow....the name sounded familiar, but she could not place it. With the places she had traveled and the number of people who lived in Hama Valon alone, she could have heard it anywhere. "I see you Elia Darrow," she said formally, but then she allowed herself to smile at the unexpectedly lovely woman who had broken her solitude. "I would like that as well," she said. After a momentary pause, she added, "do you need help with your things?"

Elia shadowed her throughout the day. Remembering her own first days at the Tower, Sinead went out of her way to ensure that the other red-head knew where to find key locations, and who to ask if she did not know. Although Sinead attended more advanced classes than a new novice might, she felt it did no harm for Elia to sit in until her permanent lessons had been arranged, so they did that together as well. They talked amiably when free to do so. Sinead struggled to overcome her reservations in the face of Elia's friendly questions, but found herself oddly hesitant. She had made few friends since arriving at the Grey Tower; how could this woman simply accept her when the others had not?

She went to bed expecting that her new roommate would treat her with disdain by the end of the next day. However, when they met for dinner that evening Elia greeted her with the same smile, and a question about her day. A week of similar incidents passed before Sinead finally began to realize that the wetlander had meant what she said about friendship. Most of Sinead's reticence faded after that, although she still kept her history close.She did not know when -if ever- she would feel comfortable sharing what had happened to her in Rhuidean.

Elia, the Aielwoman thought one morning as they knelt together scrubbing the floors in the Brown Ajah's quarters, was remarkable in many ways. Sinead smiled and glanced at her friend, admiring, for a moment, the poise she maintained even with a scrub brush in hand, and the beauty that could not be marred by a smear of dirt on her forehead. "You are not like the other wetlanders," the older woman commented, pushing a coppery lock out of her face with the back of one wet hand. "You behave as if you carry the honor of your clan, the same as an Aielwoman would. Have you heard of ji'e'toh, beyond what wetland rumors say?"

Elia tried to ignore the dull ache in her arms, tried to put it down as character building, but quietly she missed her time spent outside the two Towers. Somewhere into her second week at the Tower, she was back to washing pots and folding laundry, or scrubbing floors as she was doing now. At least she had Sinead as company. The Aielwoman was reserved, or possibly that was just how Aiel were as a people, but she didn't balk from Elia's friendly questions and affable manner.

She glanced up from the floor towards the taller woman. She was a most unusual friend, if Aiel understood friendship in the same way wetlanders did - that was the Aiel term for anyone west of the Spine of the World. Sinead had a lot of odd phrases and words. "I see you" seemed to mean "Hello", and Elia had got accustomed to that greeting whenever they met for lunch or supper. She had taken to saying it herself the last couple of days. Then there had been "sleep well and wake", although the Shienaran had no idea why the "and wake" was needed. Sleeping well was easy enough; the Aielwoman barely snored. Strange sayings, yet quaintly refreshing.

Elia had a lot of questions rattling around in her mind about the Aiel, and about Sinead in particular - the scars on her body chiefly. She found herself biting down on her tongue about it though. Sinead never brought up anything about her people or her past, even as Elia spoke of tales about childhood and Shienar. If the Aielwoman was unforthcoming, she had to respect that, and the unspoken reasons behind it too. There were truths Elia herself didn't wish to speak about, or even think about. Jinett came to mind. She shuddered inwardly, then refocused on the brush in her hand.

A shadow crossed over the two novices as they went about their chore, which resolved itself into a pair of boots and dark trouser legs. She was too busy to look up immediately, and the Ji walked past them without pause. It was uncommon to see Drin or Ji in this part of the Tower. Warders certainly - those sculptures of rock and iron made flesh with their ever-changing cloaks - but not Ji'alantin. Sinead had a body that would have suited being a Warder. Maybe all Aielwoman were like that; Elia knew that some Aielwoman were warriors.

She peered backwards, then rose to her knees to twist to stare down the corridor. The Ji'alantin was of moderate height, with broad shoulders and a self-assured gait. Nothing too remarkable there, but his head was a shaggy mane of dark red hair. He moved, peering at something in his right hand. Gold glittered on a finger that was too short- Ravak! She knew her long-lost brother was a Ji'alantin, yet the sight of him still shocked her. She gaped at his departing back, until he rounded a corner and was lost to view.

With unwillingness, she turned back to her scrubbing. Sinead wasn't watching her, or at least wasn't watching her now. Maybe she saw nothing of her reaction to Ravak. A few minutes of more scrubbing passed, before the silence was broken. "You are not like the other wetlanders." Elia glanced up at a pair of emerald eyes that considered her with striking penetration. "Have you heard of ji'e'toh, beyond what wetland rumours say?"

Elia beamed openly, thoughts of her wayward brother vanishing. Maybe she's finally opening up. This was the first time Sinead had mentioned anything Aiel-ish. But what was ji'e'toh? That was the Old Tongue. Elia knitted her brows in thought. Ji was honour, as in Ji'alantin; that meant brother of honour. And Toh stood for duty. Honour and duty? Sinead gave a little shake of her head, a diminutive expression from such an imposing figure. Elia didn't realise she had said the words out loud. "It stands for honour and obligation."

It was Elia's turn to shake her head. "I don't believe I do," she said slowly. She knew that the Aiel were not the savages that most of the world thought they were. Her father had taught what little of the Aiel he knew, and he had said they had a particular outlook on the world that was as peculiar to us, as our culture was to them. That didn't quite explain away the Aiel War, and her father had no more of a clue about that then anyone.

Honour and obligation. That seemed a bit like Shienaran duty, maybe. Elia rose to her knees again, feeling her spine straighten with aches and pains. She wanted to bite down on her tongue again, but the Aielwoman had raised the subject. Desire for an answer, finally!, made her speak. "What can you tell me about ji'e'toh, Sinead?"

Sinead blinked. Despite her assertion that Elia was not like other wetlanders, her interest in ji'e'toh took the Aielwoman by surprise. She scrubbed for a minute longer, wondering whether she wanted to walk the path she had just set herself. It was inevitable that if she shared this much, more questions would follow. Could she talk about the Three-fold Land with a wetlander, or would that simply make the mess in her mind that much more confusing? There is no end if you never begin, she told herself.

"Ji'e'toh is the code by which my people live and die," she said quietly, fixing her attention on a spot on the floor. "Our entire lives are dictated by our ji, or lack thereof." She scrubbed at the spot vigorously, but it would not come up. "It is up to the individual Aielman -or woman- to determine whether their actions have caused loss of ji. If they determine it has, it is also up to them to request the right to repay the toh they have. Ji can be lost, and toh paid, in many different ways."

"What is a specific way?" Elia asked. Sinead looked up at her, caught off guard yet again.

She hesitated, realizing both question and reaction gave a very specific opportuntiy to explain. "Were you Aiel," she said, carefully putting the brush down and straightening to look Elia in the face, "I would have toh. I made false assumptions about your probable reaction to what I told you. Because I was wrong, my ji was lowered. I might ask to pay my toh by finishing your portion of this floor, or fetching you dinner for a few days, or asking you to beat me. Once the task was complete, my ji would be intact, and we would continue as if nothing at all had happened- in fact, we would never speak of it again." She glanced down at her work again.

"There are differing degrees, of course" she added after a pause. "Small quantities of toh are easily repaid. Larger things require greater measures. For example, if a warrior is touched in battle she owes toh to the one who touched her. The only way to repay that toh is to become gai'shain." She glanced up at Elia. "That means 'sworn to peace in battle,'" she clarified. "Gai'shain may not carry weapons, nor wear anything that a warrior might wear. They are robed in white, and make themselves of service to the one they owe toh to. This lasts for a year and a day only." Sinead scrubbed blindly for a moment on her white-clad knees, her mind rushing down the familiar twists and turns all over again. "When the year and a day ends, the gai'shain resumes their former place in society. There is no greater shame than speaking to one of the gai'shain as one would a warrior, or of speaking to a warrior about what happened while gai'shain. One does not exist to the other."

She took a breath, envisioning a rose in bloom to steady herself. "Those are two possible extremes," she said. "There are many variants between, and....many facets, that reflect across the clans. Most importantly, however, is our desire to bring honor to our Clan by our actions- a trait you seem to share." She smiled at her friend. "It is not something I have seen in many wetlanders; many of them are quick to blame others and make excuses for their shame."

The vision of a huge set of scales filled Elia's mind. One pan held a person's ji, whilst in the other sat a person's toh. That how she imagined it. Too much toh and the scales would tip. No, that wasn't what Sinead said. It was one scale, with ji and toh counterbalancing against a person's own sense of propriety. That couldn't be all there was to it. What happens if an Aiel doesn't care for ji'e'toh? She wanted to give voice to that question, but she still was muddling through the rest of what Sinead had said.

Why does - would - Sinead owe me toh? Her brow furrowed again. There was a refreshing feel to the Aiel's boldness at times, but admitting that she had doubted Elia's response was a trifle upsetting. What had she meant by false assumptions? This had to be part of the reason Sinead had only now opened up about her people. The Shienaran wasn't sure whether to be elated that she had won over the woman's trust, or disheartened that others had made her feel this way. Sinead had previous roommates before Elia came to the Tower. Surely they all hadn't made the woman feel unable to open up. She thought on Jinett, the Tairen wretch she had shared a room with in the White Tower, and suddenly she wasn't too convinced by her own reasoning.

The idea of beating Sinead for ill thoughts was positively galling. Nothing thought about merited such a reaction, if no voice or action had been given to it. There had of course been times that Elia had wanted some foul act to befall someone, mostly her brother, but she wouldn't think to apologise for it, or seek to make amends for just thinking about it. Light, that's barbaric. Maybe something of the Aiel being savages was true. Maybe toh accounted for some of those, maybe all of those scars that Sinead wore. She shuddered, and rubbed at her arms for comfort. The woollen dress chafed angrily against her dry skin.

There were other thoughts, other questions she wanted answers to. Why does a warrior owe toh for merely being touched? Why would anyone willingly put up with being an indentured servant? How could you add "only" when you were losing a year and a day of your life? Many thoughts, too numerous to think through fully. Elia realised she was still kneeling, sitting on her legs and doing nothing by staring into the distance. She leaned forward to get back on hands and knees, and gasped as her numb legs tingled painfully as blood rushed back into them.

She blurted out the next thing that came to mind, to distract herself from the torment in her lower limbs. "So you just forget about the offence as soon as toh is paid? If I were to damage something of yours, say one of your stone figures, and I paid my toh somehow, you would simply forget what I had done?"

Sinead’s lips twitched at Elia’s shock, her mind happily distracted from her years-long dilemma. “My figures are dear to me, but they are only objects,” she said simply. “If you broke one and felt you had toh, I would likely ask you to clean up the mess. After that….yes. It would be as if it never happened. What would be the point of holding onto grief? It would not put the pieces of the trinket back together, and would cause a rift in our friendship.”

She touched the other girl’s shoulder, as good as a hug for an Aielwoman. “Your friendship matters more to me than any piece of stone ever could, Elia Darrow.” The wetlander still looked confused and unconvinced, but she nodded slowly.

“We live together,” Sinead added after a long moment. “We can speak more on ji’e’toh if you have interest. You are the first to ask since I came to the Tower, and it is good to speak of home.” Sinead blinked, disconcerted by her own honesty. She had not intended on allowing that to slip.

“I would like that.” The two women smiled at each other, then as one they looked at the rest of the hall and sighed. So many floors…

---

In the time following, Elia learned of the Aiel and Sinead learned of Shienar. She still held her internal conflict close to her chest, but every day she spent with the wetlander she could feel it loosening, becoming easier to bear. At last the night came when she crawled into bed and realized that she had not thought on the issue of gai’shain. For an entire day she had simply been Sinead, and the world had not ended.

The next day as the two women walked to their morning classes together, the Aielwoman asked a question on a topic that had been bothering her for some time. “Elia, you speak of your brother as one who is dear to you. I know of him, but have yet to see him. What can you tell me of your Ravak Darrow? Have you seen him since coming to the Tower?”

Elia looked up at her friend with a soft smile. She was a little surprised that it had taken Sinead this long to ask. It was hard to talk about her past without including Ravak; you couldn't just imagine your brother and confidant away. Try as you might. That thought held little of the anger that it once did.

She bobbed her head slightly. "Yes, I've seen him." She held in check the bundle of emotions that had come with that encounter. "He's not quite the same boy who left Fal Dara," she said softly. That was almost word for word what he had said. Pulling her braid over her shoulder, she played their conversation through in her mind again.

"Ravak was always a good boy, a good man now I suppose. If you think I'm honourable, then he must be doubly so. As I've said before, all Shienaran men train with the army, and join the army if they don't have other skills. Well, Ravak joined and he did the training, but he wasn't the greatest soldier. Not by a league." She rubbed at her arms comfortingly.

"So Rav left Fal Dara during the middle of the night, to seek better training elsewhere. Here, it seems." Some wonder they had missed one another at Tar Valon. "Duty means everything to him. He could have stayed, and served as a wall guard, or maybe a guard at a borderpost. But he knew, if he found someone to train him, he could do more for Shienar, do more in the war against the Shadow." A fervor had built up as spoke. She shared Ravak's passion as if it were her own. In truth, since her journey with the One Power began, she knew she now had an opportunity to fight the same enemy alongside her little brother. They hadn't broached that topic yet, but it would come up later.

She sighed a little, still discontent about how their first reunion had gone. "If you see him now, well, I confess that he made the right choice about running away." Now that was hard to say, but it was self-evident in the man that Ravak had become. It was quite the transformation. "He only looks a little like the boy I know, now. At least, if you ignore the face. Built up like any Gaidin or Gaidar, although he's a Ji. And he's got hard too. I guess all soldiers turn grim over the years, but he's aged so much in that regards." Not that this would stop her mothering him, if required. The damned man still hasn't sent a letter home! She was gripping the end of her braid, and flipped it over her shoulder. Frustration was getting the better of her, so she went through the familiar breathing exercise to relax herself.

Sinead watched Elia as she spoke, turning each word over carefully. She had picked up on how much Elia loved her brother, but had not realized exactly how close they had been until that moment. She missed him terribly, she thought, watching the Shienaran's hands flex on her braid. It still seemed odd to her that the two did not meet more frequently. Was it a wetlander thing, or had Ravak's decisions strained their relationship?

"Ravak sounds like a formidable young man," Sinead said, forcing her thoughts away from the Three-fold Land to safer ground. "It is not easy to come by that kind of strength of will." She smiled. "He must think very highly of your family if he faced his own weaknesses in order to bring honor to the Darrows....and that he has succeeded is even more telling." Did Ravak Darrow have the same red hair and green eyes as Elia? She tried to imagine a male version of Elia, and found her eyes crinkling in amusement. She simply could not picture Elia's pretty face on a man's body.

Sinead's thoughts shifted to her own brother. The last time she had seen Liam he had been a tow-haired adolescent boy tagging the Thunder Walkers whenever they would let him. What had happened to him? Abruptly the knowledge that she had been in the Grey Tower for seven years hit her. Liam would have seen at least twenty summers by now, surely one of the Thunder Walkers himself, fierce and tall as he danced the spears. Will I ever see you again, little brother?

"Something troubles you," Elia commented. They were nearly to their classroom, Sinead realized with a shock.

The Aielwoman hesitated, struggling with the pain in her heart. Finally she said simply, "I have a little brother as well. I haven't seen him in many years, and I realized that he is a man grown now. He might even have a wife. I may not ever know." She smiled slightly.

"I am glad you both found your way here, Elia," she said warmly. "Family should not be separated."