Okay, I have this fanfic mostly written, and will be attempting to put one new bit out every week. This fanfiction is set in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time world setting. The setting and any characters that are not original characters are fully the property of Robert Jordan, his widow (Harriet Rigby), his estate, his posthumous co-author/successor (Brandon Sanderson), and his publishers. At the end of each chapter I will post a guide as to how to pronounce terms and names appearing throughout, along with brief definitions. At the end of the story will be an appendix compiling all of these together.

But it was -a-beginning...

Sylantia Naltorr sat in the chair and wished for a book to read as the wind fluttered the rainbow striped hem of her white dress. She watched the gate as diligently as a Novice, but as an Accepted her mind tended to wander toward the pursuits she wanted to follow if (when!) she were raised to the shawl. It was no secret that she favored the Brown Ajah, and she didn't mind that nearly everyone in the Tower knew it. So she was finding ways to make the task interesting by making a game of counting the stones in the wall by the gate, when the boy limped through it. He fixed his eyes on her, as a thirsty man in the desert would fix his eyes on an oasis, and steadfastly walked toward her.

Out of respect for his struggle, she stood but remained by her chair. When he got to her, he lifted a stone cylinder.

"Message. Moiraine Sedai," he said, as though that was everything that needed said.

And really... it was. Sylantia nodded to him and gently guided the weary boy to her chair. He shuddered as he sat.

"I will take the message to Moiraine Sedai, you sit and rest," she gently told him.

His reaction was not quite what she expected.

He threw back his head and laughed, then snorted at her and held the stone cylinder out to her. She reached out to take it and had to turn away and be violently ill.

Spitting out the foul remains of what had once been lunch, she looked askance at him.

He shrugged, and said, "You can't take it, I can't let it go."

She frowned but had an idea. She trotted over to where she could see the Warders-in-training practicing. Then she saw Moiraine Sedai's Lan there instructing them, so instead of asking one of the men to watch the gate while she fetched Moiraine Sedai, she cast a quick glance at the -- now sleeping -- boy and jogged over to the edge of the training circle, waiting to get his attention.

After a few moments, he caught her "subtle" tries to get his attention and stepped over toward her.

"Yes?"

The girl swallowed hard. She would never get used to this gruff man. "A... a message,"she began, "for Moiraine Sedai."

"I shall take it to her," replied Lan Mandragoran. However, the meek girl's response startled him -- though you'd never have known that from looking at him.

"No."

He turned to look at her now.

"It... it must be given directly to Moiraine Sedai. I already tried to take it to deliver and regretted it," she explained with a grimace of distaste.

Lan nodded. If it were to be given to Moiraine, it would be given to Moiraine. Why was this girl telling him?

"I cannot leave the gate unattended, and I thought..." she said, refusing to let herself stare at the ground while talking to the man.

Ah.

"I will inform Moiraine, Accepted Sylantia," he responded and turned back to the training.

It was her turn to be startled. He knew her name? But she was just another Accepted! Unless... unless the stories of how protective he was were true. Stories of how he not only knew everyone in Tar Valon on sight, but knew their history and how likely they were to try to harm Moiraine Sedai so he could stop any such thing from happening. She felt sick again, and it had nothing to do with touching the tube. She went back and rather than make the poor boy get back up, she stood behind her chair and continued her vigil.

Moiraine had given the exhausted messenger boy a silver and sent him off to an inn to rest, but she would be summoning him back that evening to find out if he knew more about the situation. Which, of course, depended on the message she had yet to read. It turns out that the cylinder was a message tube -- and a ter'angreal -- of that she was certain. It even made Lan ill when he touched it, and the boy couldn't let it go until Moiraine herself touched it. She hadn't as yet given much thought to the message that must lie inside, as she had been trying to study the tube. She picked up the tube once again and turned it over in her hands. Surely she needn't break it open to get the message out? As soon as the thought occurred to her, the tube seemed to slide apart, one end out of the other smoothly. A light blue scrap of parchment wafted to the floor as she looked on startled, holding the two pieces of the message ter'angreal. She set the halves into a hidden niche below her bed, and retrieved the message.

Moiraine,

as you've no doubt realized by now, I've finally used my marker. There is a situation here that I cannot describe as anything but dire, and it needs to be kept more secret than anything any Aes Sedai has ever held in a darkened corner of her soul. I would not call you to me with such a favor if there were any other choice, but I am convinced that only you, and Siuan perhaps, will know who can handle this situation carefully enough to avoid exposing a secret that could destroy the White Tower. My guess is that you will know as soon as you arrive and are appraised of the situation who to call upon. Yes, even with this ter'angreal guarding my message, I dare not reveal it unless absolutely certain that no possibility of this information being allowed into the wrong ears exists. Please come as soon as possible... If this works out the way I envision, you could have some new Novices to take back to the Tower with you.

Aranessa

She folded the message neatly and slid it under her bodice next to her hip. She ran through the centering exercises that had become habit since her long ago days as a Tower Novice, then forced herself to walk sedately to the window and sit instead of simply dashing over and curling up as she wanted to do. She stared out the window of her room and thought about the contents of the message. Thought hard.

At the Sailor's Rest, purported by the innkeeper to have the softest beds in Tar Valon, Saren politely refused a meal and collapsed into one of those beds. Truthfully, though, he wouldn't have been able to tell you how soft they were. From the moment he came in contact with the down-stuffed mattress he slept a dreamless sleep. When he awoke, he felt better than he had since Lady Aranessa had given him the tube...

"Please, Saren," she had said, "forgive me. This will be a hardship on you, but it must be done this way. Take that tube to Tar Valon. Release it only into the hands of Moiraine Sedai, as it contains a confidential message."

"Don't worry, 'Nessa," he had answered so cheerfully, "I'm strong enough to make it all the way to Tar Valon, don't grief yourself on my account."

She smiled wanly and kissed him on the top of his head before sending him on his way with another murmured apology. It wasn't until hours later when he had wearily stopped to rest that he discovered that to let go of the odd cylinder was to have the world spin around him and shift back and forth under him as though on the deck of a ship on rough seas. He had to keep a firm grip on it at all times to avoid the feeling. So for the entire long journey from Cairhein to Tar Valon, he had avoided inns and houses, anywhere that anyone might see the tube and try to take it from him. He hadn't slept until he was so exhausted he had no choice for the entire trip. The first he had slept was under an overhanging rock three days after he had left Cairhein in the distance. He had collapsed and the sharp rocks digging mercilessly into his legs and back hadn't mattered as he had drifted into sleep.

He hadn't any idea when he woke of the amount of time he had slept in his own pool of vomit and bile, but it was not a pleasant way to come awake. after shaking off as much of the ichor as possible, he noticed that the shadows hadn't really lengthened all that much, but he moved onward anyway. He didn't even want to think about the encounter near the Dragonmount. And then he was there. He vaguely remembered the girl in the white dress giving him a chair, and then the lady in blue was there, and said she was Moiraine Sedai. It must have been true, because she was able to take the tube -- which she called a ter'angreal. She had seemed happy about the blighted thing, well, as happy as any Aes Sedai ever does, anyway.

She had handed him a silver and told him where to go, and to not leave Tar Valon until she had been able to "interview" him. If the Aes Sedai wanted to pay for him to recover in a fancy inn instead of a root cellar at the local stables, he wasn't going to complain. When he woke up, he stretched, then winced at the pain in his weary-sore muscles. He dressed and then slowly went down the hall, down the stairs, and into the common room to see if there were still anything to fill his belly. The Innkeeper's wife gave him a bowl of quite tasty stew -- better than anything Lerie could make, anywhat. He was scraping the bottom of his second bowl when a large man in a cloak you couldn't quite look at walked into the common room. Saren had a tickle in the back of his memory of this man being there when he gave the tube to Moiraine Sedai.

The large man looked right at him, as though he had known where in the room that Saren would be sitting and merely nodded. Saren somehow knew that this meant that the Aes Sedai, Moiraine Sedai, was summoning him for his "interview" now. He drained the last of the water from the mug sitting next to his now-empty bowl, nodded to the Innkeeper's wife and slid off his stool and went to join Lan.

"Aranessa?" asked Siuan, "After all these years? This is important, then."

Moiraine watched while her old friend stood and began to pace sedately back and forth, thinking of the implications this brought. She paused and smiled slightly, paced back and forth a few more times, and then stopped as she began to form a weave that was both recognizeable and strange to Moiraine. Once finished, five small threads broke off and flew for an arm's length before vanishing. Siuan Sanche looked up to the face of her bemused old friend.

"We thought a lot of those short-message weaves we learned as Novices would be useless once we were raised, remember? Hah. I use them more as Amyrlin Seat than both of us combined ever used them as Novice and Accepted together!"

With a chuckle, Moiraine simply waited. It wasn't but a moment more when Leane Sharif gracefully entered the chamber. Her blue stole marked her as Keeper of the Chronicles raised from the Blue Ajah, but her smile at seeing the two within marked her as being their friend.

"We are waiting on four others. They will go with you, Moiraine. They have earned my full trust, and three of them will be accompanying you. Since the message mentions Novices, I've also summoned Sheriam."

The other two nodded and Leane situated herself standing behind Siuan's chair, as the Amyrlin re-seated herself. It was only a short time before the other four women arrived one after the other, with Sheriam being the last in the Chamber.

Moiraine surveyed the three that would be traveling with her. She subtly measured herself against them, and knew they would be deferring to her. With that, she smiled warmly at all of them and nodded each time Siuan looked to her to verify the story about the message as she knew.

When the meeting was done, there were three in the Tower that knew where the other four were going when they left the next morning. Siuan Sanche, the Amyrlin Seat; Leane Sharif, the Keeper of Chronicles, and Sheriam Bayanar, the Mistress of Novices. Traveling to Cairhein would be Moiraine Damodred of the Blue Ajah and her Warder Lan, Ramene Embrall of the Gray Ajah and her Warder Yorn, Adeleas Namelle of the Brown Ajah, and Vandene Namelle of the Green Ajah and her Warder Jaem. Of interest to note were that Adeleas Sedai and Vandene Sedai were twin sisters.

Saren felt much better with food in his belly and having slept some. The large man had to be a Warder, likely Moiraine Sedai's. He never had understood what a Warder really did, though.

"Are you Moiraine Sedai's Warder?"

"Yes."

"Are you Moiraine Sedai's husband?"

"No."

"My name is Saren, what's yours?"

"Lan."

"Are you Moiraine Sedai's servant?"

"No."

"Is it true a Warder will die for the Aes Sedai he protects?"

"Yes."

"You're taking me to her now, right?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever had to --"

"Enough. You will hold your tongue until you are asked questions."

He hadn't said it gruff, or even loud. He had, in fact, answered the questions in an even tone that seemed neither interested nor bored. But there was something about how Lan said that last, despite lack of anything Saren could identify, that made him certain that the best course was to follow that... well, order.

The boy hadn't really known anything about the situtation that prompted the message from Aranessa, but had insight into the ter'angreal that had been used as a message tube. Not a pleasant device, but effective to guarantee that a messenger would fight not to be compromised. Moiraine decided as she dismissed the boy that she would have to get Aranessa to show her how to use the ter'angreal. She spent the remainder of the evening packing appropriately for a trip to Cairhein, and included the ter'angreal in her chest.

The next morning, the four Aes Sedai and the three Warders set out for Cairhein on horseback. Moiraine had given Saren enough silver to stay in Tar Valon for another three days, and have enough left to hire passage back to Cairhein. He would be leaving for Cairhein about the time they arrived there. She was puzzled about what was going on, but knew better than to attempt to discern before finding out facts.