Dawn and Reincarnation Part 4

Dawn rolled her eyes as Nynaeve glared at her. “Don’t give me that look, I had permission.”

“You left without telling anyone,” Nynaeve snapped then looked at Egwene who was trying not to be noticed in the corner of the reading room she’d cornered everyone in. “You certainly didn’t have permission to go.”

“I needed training,” Egwene argued, knowing Nynaeve was right about sneaking out but not willing to admit it.

Dawn cut in before Nynaeve could open her mouth to launch into a lecture, “Relax, we have the entire trip to convince her that signing up with the Tower is stupid then we’ll head home with an adventure under our belts, enough magic tricks to make sure we don’t die horribly and some stories to tell.”

Nynaeve glared at Dawn. “You think it’s that easy?”

Dawn pointed at Perrin who had been trying not to be noticed, something next to impossible for the wide shouldered man. “Have you seen Perrin’s arms? Any bandit that saw him and wasn’t completely insane would think twice about attacking us. If they actually attacked us, Mat is a demon with his staff and I’m good with a sword.”

‘Good doesn’t even begin to describe your level of skill,’ Lan thought as he listened to the argument, knowing they had to sort things out for themselves even if he’d rather be on the road.

Mat shifted uncomfortably as Nynaeve turned and glared at him. “I can take care of myself.”

“Unless someone decides to shoot you,” Nynaeve complained.

“We’re probably better shots,” Rand argued.

“This is pointless,” Dawn cut in before Nynaeve could launch into a lecture. “Something or someone brought the trollocs to the Two Rivers, there haven’t been trollocs this far south since Manatheran fell. They went to an insane amount of effort to hide a small army of shadowspawn just to attack an out of the way village.” She glanced over at Lan. “Maybe Moiraine is wrong, maybe they weren’t looking for my brother or the knuckleheads,” she ignored Mat’s “Hey!” as she continued, “But I’d rather get training so that I can burn every last piece of shit shadowspawn that comes into my home to ashes than cower and hope that they’ll just magically go away.”

“How do you expect to fight an army of shadowspawn?” Nynaeve asked.

“With magic, blood, sweat, tears and an army. I will not hide, I will not cower in fear of the dark. They came for my home, my friends and my family. I will not forget, I will not forgive!” Dawn stated coldly.

“You’re a farmer, you don’t know anything about raising an army.”

“You’re right but I can learn.” Dawn pulled a plain silver ring out of her belt pouch then turned to look at Moiraine. “How much do you think a noble would pay for a ter’angreal that wrapped shadows around a person so they were harder to see?” she asked as she slipped her new ring on her ring finger.

Moiraine forced her attention back to Dawn’s face as her eyes tried to slide off her face. “Depending on the noble and the location you could get anything from enough gold to comfortably retire for the rest of your life to being made a minor noble.”

Thom forced himself to focus on Dawn as he found his gaze sliding off her. He doubted most people would even notice if they weren’t aware of the ring. “Of course being stabbed in the back so they can steal it would also be likely in certain locations.”

Mat coughed as he looked at the silver ring Dawn was wearing. “For a ring that Dawn made?”

“What can I say, magic is awesome,” Dawn said as she slipped the silver ring off her finger. 

Thom shook his head. “You’re going to run into trouble with the Tower, they’ll claim that you found it.”

“I watched her make the ring,” Egwene spoke up. “Air, fire and earth for turning the silver penny into the ring and then lots of threads I couldn’t follow for turning the ring into a ter’angreal.”

Thom shook his head. “It won’t matter, they won’t believe her or worse they will. At that point, they’d consider some fairly drastic measures to recruit her, including staging crimes.”

Nynaeve scowled as she looked at Moiraine. “Is he wrong?”

“Some Aes Sedai might resort to drastic measures if they found out she can copy ter’angreal,” Moiraine admitted. “Either way, we’re wasting daylight.”

Nynaeve sighed as she realized she wasn’t going to be able to convince everyone to return home. “Fine, I’m coming with you then we’ll leave once it’s safe.”

Thom doubted the Tower let them go but there was no point in starting an argument that he couldn’t win.

“Good,” Lan said as he opened the door. “Let’s go.”

0o0o0

Tara frowned slightly as she watched Dawn spar against Lan. “Does she ever get tired?”

“Not really,” Egwene muttered as she watched Rand run through some of the exercises that Lan had taught him. She was a little jealous, they’d been riding through the countryside all day and her friend was still a bundle of energy. “She’s always a bundle of energy when she shows up in town.”

“Have you figured out what your talents are?” Tara asked, curious what Egwene had discovered so far.

“Not really, I just know that I can’t heal anything beyond a small bruise,” Egwene complained as she glanced over at where Nynaeve was talking with Moiraine about something.

“If it makes you feel better, I can’t either,” Tara admitted, knowing that everyone had different talents.

“It shouldn’t,” Egwene replied with a slight smile, feeling a touch better knowing that she wasn’t the only one that couldn’t heal people.

Dawn sighed as Lan managed to slip a dagger past her guard using his cloak to disguise it until the last second. “I really need to figure out how to duplicate your cloak.”

Lan’s lips curled into the smallest of smiles as he pulled the dagger away from Dawn’s throat. “I can’t see the Tower taking it well, they’d assume you stole it.”

“Sadly,” Dawn complained. “Sorry, thank you for helping me practice.”

“You’re welcome. It was interesting,” Lan replied, rather curious where she’d learned to fight like the wind. He’d had to put far more effort into winning than he really should have against a girl from an out of the way village.

Tara smiled at Dawn as she walked over. “Having fun?”

Dawn smiled at Tara and Egwene, they looked rather cute using Giles as a backrest as he took a nap or at least relaxed as she was fairly sure her dog wasn’t actually asleep. “It’s nice to have someone to spar against.”

“You’re remarkably good at it,” Tara said, rather impressed by Dawn’s skill with a sword as she was hands down better than anyone she’d ever seen before seeing Lan and her spar.

“Thanks, it’s a talent,” Dawn replied as she sat down on the ground in front of Egwene and Tara.

“Any idea what you’re going to do when we get to the Tower?” Egwene asked.

“I’ll probably turn around and head home or see what I can learn by wandering around the city studying residues. Either way, I’m not signing their book or following their idiotic rules. I’m not giving up the ability to make weapons to kill monsters just because some idiot might use them to stab someone in two hundred years.”

Moiraine spoke up, “The Tower has a large collection of ter’angreal that you could study if you joined.”

“Do they use more than a fraction of them?” Dawn asked curious how many ter’angreal the Tower actually used. “If I joined the Tower, they’d want me to duplicate ter’angreal nearly endlessly outside of chores and lessons about subjects I don’t care about. I’m sure they’d give me a pat on the head but I doubt I’d get paid.” She had a feeling they’d also try to stretch out her time as a novice and accepted so they had more say in her life.

“Aes Sedai receive a rather generous stipend,” Moiraine pointed out, knowing that Dawn had the right of it, the Tower would use every excuse they could dream up to keep her confined to the Tower if she signed the Novice Book.

Nynaeve snorted. “Which is most likely less than she’d receive for a couple days work making her stealth rings.”

“It also has the largest collection of ter’angreal in the world.”

“Where is the second largest?” Dawn asked, curious about other places she could learn to make magical items.

Thom spoke up, “The Stone of Tear is rumored to have a large collection of ter’angreal and possibly angreal but they don’t allow channelers in their city.”

Dawn smirked as she realized she could probably walk right into the Stone of Tear in the world of dreams as there wouldn’t be anyone to guard it. “It must be frustrating knowing they have an entire collection that the Tower can’t just steal.”

Moiraine smiled slightly. “It certainly frustrates some of the sisters though there isn’t much we can do about it considering we’re bound not to use the Power as a weapon except in self defense or in certain other cases involving darkfriends or shadowspawn.”

“That seems more than a little insane considering the Children of the Light hate Aes Sedai,” Tara pointed out.

“Would they really attack an Aes Sedai?” Egwene asked in surprise.

“There are certainly members of the Children of the Light that would attack a lone Aes Sedai if they thought they could get away with it,” Moiraine admitted. “Most Aes Sedai are smart enough to stay away from them.”

“If the Children of the Light are supposed to defend against the Dark One, why aren’t they up in the borderlands?” Dawn asked, fairly sure she knew the answer but curious what Moiraine and Thom had to say on the subject.

“They’re generally more concerned about dealing with darkfriends or at least supposed darkfriends than they are fighting shadowspawn. While I’m not saying they never catch any actual darkfriends, the number is certainly less than they claim.”

“Not to mention mostly accidental,” Thom added, not particularly impressed with the Children of the Light.

“In other words, they’re mostly thugs in armor?” Dawn asked, thinking about the Children of the Light she’d ran into helping Tara and her father’s stories from the Whitecloak War.

“A significant number of them are,” Moiraine agreed.

“That doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous,” Lan said as he walked over with Mat and Perrin following him.

“Someone needs to deal with them,” Tara said, thinking about the innocent girl the Whitecloaks had tried to hang.

“Most of the people they attack are simply people their neighbors have issues with or people they can get away with attacking. Of course, you have some people that join because they’re convinced that the Children of the Light are fighting the Shadow.”

Dawn shook her head. “Yeah, I’m not swearing oaths that prevent me from dealing with people I know will try to kill me or mine eventually.”

“There are a number of sisters in the Tower that claim the oaths allow people to trust Aes Sedai when they wouldn’t otherwise,” Moiraine explained.

Nynaeve snorted. “That is horseshit and you know it.”

Thom shook his head. “I have to agree with Dawn and Nynaeve, Aes Sedai are known to be untrustworthy and have gotten so good at twisting words the oath against lying means very little. Besides, you could tie someone up with weaves of air then let someone else stab them to death once they’re surrounded which means the oath against using the Power as a weapon is pointless outside of limiting their inclination to train for combat.”

“Considering the shadowspawn up north, that seems short sighted at best and deliberate at worst,” Dawn pointed out.

“There is some truth in that though some Aes Sedai would argue that things would be worse without the oaths.” Moiraine could think of a number of times things would have been a lot easier if she hadn’t sworn the three oaths but she doubted the Hall would appreciate her telling potential recruits that the oaths were worse than useless.

Dawn shrugged. “Either way, it’s enough to never sign my name in the Novice Book. It might be different if I didn’t have my threads and I couldn’t make magical items but I don’t see a reason to chain myself to the Tower when I can probably trade ter’angreal to get instruction and weaves from traveling Aes Sedai.”

“They’d probably just try to steal them,” Mat piped up.

“There are certainly some Aes Sedai that would make the attempt. We should be able to avoid some of that by talking to the Amyrlin and getting a letter.” Moiraine was fairly sure it wouldn’t stop all of Dawn’s problems but it might help and it would tie her to the Tower. Maybe not as deeply as the Hall would like but she had a feeling that pushing Dawn would end badly considering her talents and impossible strength in the Power.

“Worth considering,” Dawn admitted. “Either way, we should probably eat and then get some sleep considering we have another long day of riding ahead of us.”

“She has a point,” Lan agreed then turned to look at Dawn’s dog as he whined. “Something the matter?”

Perrin winced as he got a mental flash of a large group of trollocs in the woods. “Trollocs?”

Egwene leaned forward as Giles slowly stood up. “It’s okay, probably just the wind in the trees or something.”

Giles looked at Perrin, gave what might be considered a nod then ran into the forest back the way they’d come.

“Giles, get back here,” Egwene complained.

Dawn sighed as she got to her feet. “Great, he’s going to need a bath.”

“It might be nothing, I’ll go check,” Lan said as he headed into the woods, the growing darkness making it too dangerous to ride unless they didn’t have a choice.

Moiraine frowned as she heard a howl in the distance. “Eat fast.”

0o0o0

“How lost are we?” Mat asked warily as he ducked a branch. He wasn’t favorably impressed by the so called game trail they were following but it beat taking the roads considering the number of trolloc hunting horns he could hear from the south.

Dawn raised her bow and shot a trolloc that was watching them from across the stream a hundred yards downwind, catching it in the eye. “Not lost enough.”

Lan turned to look into the woods where she’d shot her arrow. He felt a shiver go down his spine as a black furred trolloc fell out of a patch of shadows a hundred paces away. He could just barely make out the dead trolloc with an arrow sticking out of his eye in the flickering moonlight. ‘I knew she was good but that’s insane!’ He seriously doubted he could have even hit the trolloc at that range on the back of a moving horse let alone hit it in the eye. “Where were you aiming?”

“Center of his left eye,” Dawn replied absently as she pulled another arrow out of her quiver and set it against the string. “I’m going to need more arrows at this rate,” she muttered as she scanned the woods in case something else was trying to spy on them.

“What did you shoot?” Rand asked, not sure he wanted to know.

“I noticed a Trolloc watching us,” Dawn replied softly as she continued scanning the surrounding area, not wanting to miss any more watchers.

“With any luck, they won’t cross the water,” Thom spoke up.

“They will eventually but it should buy us some time.” Moiraine peered into the darkness, more than a little surprised that Dawn had managed to make that shot without even touching the Power. ‘She’ll be Green for sure.’

“Less talking,” Lan snapped. “Dawn, take point, you can obviously see better than I can.”

Giles moved off the trail a bit and quickened his pace so that he was in front of the pack the growled softly to let Dawn know he could smell shadowspawn ahead of them.  

Dawn raised her bow as she rounded a curve and saw a dozen trollocs making their way through the woods surprisingly quietly. She dropped the trolloc in the back then grabbed another arrow and shot the one in the front as the trollocs shouted and charged, now that stealth was lost. She dropped two more trollocs before she jumped off Giles, tossed her bow to her left hand, drew her sword with her right and charged the group.

“Dawn!” Egwene snapped as she saw her friend charge at the monsters.

Rand quickly dismounted so he could keep his horse from trying to toss him off and run. “Stop that!”

“Calm down,” Tara grumbled as she quickly dismounted and grabbed her horse’s reins before it could run off. “Calm down!”

Mat absently steadied his horse with his knees as he worked on putting arrows in the trollocs coming toward them.

Nynaeve glared at the trollocs and reached out with cables of fire, setting several of them on fire and causing the six trollocs in the front to explode messily.

“If the fades didn’t know where we are before, they do now,” Moiraine complained as she watched Dawn’s dog rip the throat out of a wolf headed trolloc with a disturbing amount of glee while Dawn and Lan almost danced through the survivors, cutting them down quickly and efficiently. ‘The Green would love to have her.’

Thom put his throwing dagger back in his sleeve as he realized he wasn’t going to need it. “Where did you learn to fight?”

“My father taught me,” Dawn replied as she wiped the blood off her crystal sword on one of the trollocs then twisted around and blocked a black blade coming toward her head out of the shadows. She glared at the faintly glowing fade trying to push her blade into her then focused her magic and cut his head off with a thin blade of air. “Go fuck yourself.” She lashed out and cut the creature’s wrist off causing the blade to get tossed to the ground. She cut through the fade’s other arm then hacked through its legs.

Egwene shivered as she looked at the dismembered fade twitching on the ground that refused to die. “Where did you learn the wind blade?”

“It wasn’t that hard,” Dawn replied absently as she scanned the surroundings, wanting to make sure nothing was going to sneak up on them.

“Let’s hope that was the only fade close enough to feel Nynaeve’s channeling,” Moiraine said as she studied the dismembered fade.

Dawn went back to cleaning her blade off, not wanting any of the caustic blood on her blade for longer than it had to be. “Hopefully.” 

Perrin shivered as he heard several howls in the distance, getting weird flashes of wolves chasing down trollocs.

“We’re going to have to stop before we kill the horses,” Mat complained as he worked on calming his horse that was trying to move back from the trollocs.

“He’s right, we’ve been riding all day,” Lan cautioned.

Giles nudged Dawn’s arm with his nose then walked over to the stream and washed the nasty taste of trolloc blood out of his mouth.

“Good point.” Dawn walked over and dipped her crystal blade into the water downstream of Giles to get the last of the fade’s blood off her blade. “Hopefully that’s the last of the trollocs we have to deal with tonight.”

Moiraine listened to the hunting horns coming from the same direction as the howls. “Dawn, can you weave a bridge of air like the one you made at the Tarendrelle? If we cross the stream I can hide the tracks and we can ward the campsite. Hopefully they’ll search up and down the stream for a while before they cross.”

Lan doubted they’d be that lucky but with any luck they’d be able to catch a couple of hours rest before they had to press on.

Dawn reached out and created a bridge of air with a touch of fire and spirit for color that spanned the stream and led deeper into the forest on the other side of the stream. “Hopefully this way they won’t be able to figure out where we went.” 

“We’ll have to walk the horses,” Lan said as he started leading his horse toward the bridge.

“When did this become normal?” Mat asked sarcastically as he dismounted.

“Not sure,” Perrin admitted as he dismounted.

Egwene studied the bridge as the others crossed, wanting to be able to duplicate it if she needed to.

0o0o0

Dawn blinked as she found herself back at the farm, sitting on her favorite rock looking up at the twisted sky of the world of dreams. ‘Hopefully Moiraine’s wards don’t attract enough attention to be noticed.’ She took a breath then let it out as she tried to get her thoughts in order. It hadn’t been all that hard to put the end of the bridge down in a clearing that wasn’t visible from the water’s edge, the hardest part had been sleeping while Lan and Perrin kept first watch.

‘If Moiraine is right, they’re not going to stop looking for us which means we’re going to need some decent armor.’ She scowled slightly as she found her clothes changing into a suit of plate mail. She tried to stand up, only to find that she couldn’t because of the weight of the metal. “I guess there is a reason knights train for his crap.” She used the fact that she was dreaming to float up to her feet then took a couple clumsy steps to test her armor.

“Yeah, that’s not going to work,” Dawn grumbled. “I can’t move worth shit.” She focused on her armor, trying to adjust it so that she could move and quickly found that she didn’t know enough about armor to make it work. She focused and changed her armor back to what she’d been wearing when she went to sleep. “Okay, if I was a powerful magic user trying to hunt down a bunch of deranged channelers and I could make magical items, what would I make?”

“Ideally, something that could stand up to magic and was the next best thing to indestructible,” Dawn mused. “Sadly, I’ve got no idea how to make armor or heartstone. I wish I had a nice instruction manual. Huh, it can’t be that easy can it?”

She focused on creating an instruction manual and grinned when a leather bound manual appeared. “Ter’angreal crafting 101!” She gleefully opened the book then sighed as she realized the notes were in her handwriting and only filled a couple pages, covering her thoughts on the general process that she’d uncovered so far and specific notes on her stealth ring. “Okay, that’s less helpful...” she trailed off as she lost focus and the book vanished.

“Yeah, okay, that’s obviously not going to work though I should probably start a journal.” She conjured a pair of silver bracers and focused on them being bracers of defense. “Bracers of defense, bracers of defense…” she trailed off as she realized she didn’t see any treads above the bracers and couldn’t sense anything from her ter’angreal reading talent. “It was worth a shot,” she complained as she let them vanish. “Think this through Dawn, from what Moiraine said or rather didn’t say, the Tower barely uses any of their ter’angreal. They might have magical armor just lying around in a storeroom and not even realize it. What I need is a way to find the Tower’s stash or maybe a different stash of ter’angreal that they don’t know about.”

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” Dawn asked absently as she tried to figure out how she was going to find a set of magical armor that would fit her. She blinked as a voice said, “You are the fairest in the land.” She spun and caught a glimpse of a strange face in an antique looking silver mirror before the face and mirror faded as she lost focus. “I’m looking for armor not magic mirrors.”

She paused as she realized that she might be able to use the mirror to scry on ter’angreal if she believed hard enough. “This could work.”

0o0o0