Mists

[Adrian Kane]

Arikan

There wasn't much else to do but think or sleep.  The latter was fitful, wracked with dreams of the exhausted and always ending with a pathetic jerk against the straps. The chains rattled loud in the booming silence until he remembered where he was.  The thoughts, however, strayed across a thousand different moments from his life.  As much as he wanted to escape, he’d rather the torturer just get it over with. It was better than the infernal waiting. He was going to die on this table, that seemed certain now.  Yet had he ever really expected any other way for it all to end?  Arikan had been no ignorant acolyte shocked with sudden sacrifice.  He defeated his share of the Great Lord's loudest coryphaei in his life.  Their howling choruses were silenced by his tactics. Their untouchable conductors overthrown by his ambitions; both replaced with someone better.  And yet here he was. All the more fallen. All the more alone.

He tried not to think about it, except that was all he could think about.

He ceased watching the arrangement of tools before the Inquisitor began.  Arikan found himself relying on concentration, eyes pushed shut like blocking the sight made it unreal. His fingers were smashed flat.  He was growing numb to the questions. Forgetting why he bothered resisting. It’s not like the Hand was going to let him go on good behavior.

So he talked.
"--Arikan,” he repeated, again, when asked his name. He had no family name. Or if he did, he long ago forgot it. Just Arikan.
 
He was born in Tear.
He said as much. Eyes closed hard, breathing steady. His voice didn’t shake when the Inquisitor asked for clarification, “—no, the city." He knew the Hand didn’t actually care about his name and city of birth. He wanted compliance. He wanted a tongue warmed up to responding when the more pertinent questions came.

He asked his age. Of the questions so far, the instinct to hold this answer to his chest was tight. Hiding his strength and experience kept him alive a long time. Yet as the Hand pulled an iron from the fire, Arikan swallowed. He really hated burning men alive. The smell was sickening and the bastards usually screamed loud enough to burst the ear drums.

“I don’t know,” he tried to explain. He honestly didn’t know his age. Like that last name, it was long ago forgotten. It wasn’t like he celebrated a nameday each year. The iron was pushed to the bottom of his feet. The limbs curled so hard the muscles in his legs cramped and seized. Smoke sizzled and the smell. The smell.

He answered fervently, desperately. “I don’t know! Near two-hundred I think. I don’t know the year!” It stayed. He answered! Yet the iron stayed. Why didn’t the Inquisitor believe him? Of all the things to lie about, this one wasn’t worth the fight. The Hand let him go. The iron pulling away flesh burned to its spike as it did. Then the Hand passed the orange metal near his face. So close he could feel the heat of it on his cheek. Sweat rippled down his brow. Pooling with the rest. His head rolled away, eyes squeezed shut, waiting for it to come. But the Hand pulled it harmlessly away.

The silence was filled with Arikan’s breathing hard and fast. The Hand clearly letting the wall built up in his head time to crumble back down again. Nothing happened, and the anticipation of waiting became too powerful, and he tentatively opened his eyes, seeking out the Inquisitor. The man was nearby, watching. Allowing his victim a moment for him to catch his rapid breath.

But truths about himself were one thing. Revealing the secrets of the Great Lord’s armies was quite another. Again. There were some things he simply could not say no matter the desire. He tried to explain as much. That if he bit off his own tongue, there would be no more answers for either of them. The Hand didn’t believe him, of course. Just like not knowing his age. So when Arikan’s own teeth clamped down, smothered the self-induced screams by the push of his lips, and blood came coursing out the corner of his mouth, the Hand started to believe.

He was left alone before he sliced through is own tongue. Arikan was legitimately relieved it didn’t come to that.

Arikan

When the Hand returned, he laid out his freshly cleaned tools as he had before. But the questions were different. He wanted to know about Arikan himself. Seeking the boundary between what loosed his lips and what made him start to bite off his own tongue.

He lost track eventually, talking about his movements through the nations like some shadow of a shadow.  Of which were lies or not.  Hazy details blurred in and out of focus.  Some answers he couldn't recall at all, others he was sure he'd offered carelessly, but accurately.  There were breaks as before.  Only long enough to allow him to recuperate enough will to cling to hope; fear drove accuracy better than apathy after all.  But the waves constantly beat down, wearing him away inch by inch like water on rock. The water ladle returned a few more times, wetting the vocal cords just as they stretched dry as old parchment and he lost his voice.

Every peaceful moment in his life was an act, he explained.  Part of the role he was invested in building at the time.  Arikan cared nothing for his many ‘wives’ - almost entirely darkfriends, every last one - nor for Lairona, the Black he was given by Moridin in ploy as his plan for Tar Valon.  He loathed bonding her, yet the subtle compulsion was easier to prod than constantly warring with her less than stellar intellect.  Her betrayal was the first step leading to this red slab. How he'd dreamt of creative revenge, but unfortunately the woman was already dead. “I’d give her to you if she wasn’t already dead,” he laughed weakly. “Maybe you can dig up the body, Hand? How’d you like that?”

As a High Lord of Tear during the decade before the Aiel War, Emorian Dimas had a wife.  A partner, really.  One who knew her sham-husband was a darkfriend and robustly engaged every opportunity he presented for her to advance herself through the Great Lord's favor.  Arikan happily used her enthusiasm to set up Amalric Tamison.  The ranking High Lord of Tear should have been the country's commander in the Covenant of nations to rise when the Aiel invaded Cairhien.  Amalric was shrewd, wise, futuristic, and cunning.  With twenty-five thousand Tairens at his back, Amalric would have ridden second--perhaps third--in command of the entire Alliance, depending on how many Shienar could afford to send south of the Border. “He was far too devout a man of the Light to give him an army,” he laughed. The last few minutes before Emorian died, Arikan explained his plans just to see the High Lord’s reaction. Ironic then that he was now spilling his secrets in the minutes before Arikan himself was likely to die. 

The weather held clear the afternoon Amalric sucked his last breath, dead in his seat on Lord Emorian's patio.  Blue waters of an afternoon bay rippled in the distance while stormclouds built on the horizon above them.  The two Lords meant to go hunting together: a trip fated to explain Amalric's end.  Channeling the man's heart to a rock would have been faster than poison, but that would mean missing out on their final conversation, and Arikan always enjoyed the honesty of such talks.  He owed it to the man, as well.  Emorian and Amalric had been friends after all; as much as a sower of chaos in a world of escalating order could charter.  Astoril Damara took command of the Tairen armies in Amalric's absence, and he conducted a fine, perfectly mediocre campaign.  Laman ran Cairhien into the ground.  Shienar withdrew from the Border.  The People of the Dragon watered the slopes of Dragonmount with their blood, and the hunt for the Dragon Reborn began.  Indeed, it had been a fine day High Lord Emorian Dimas retired to the history books. 

The ability to lay still frayed like old rope until Arikan clung by a thread.  Extremities were distant surges, islands of fire he could isolate in his mind and so endure, but the Inquisitor became increasingly exploratory.  Those proximal punishments outshone the darkness of comparison memory; the Pit was an old terror and this was here and now.  Trolloc spawn?  He pictured the valleys of the Blight and shook his head weakly, refusing to answer and hoping to choke on his own tongue.  The Inquisitor’s needle slipped between the joint of his knee, waggled just so. He howled. The tears real, nearly regretting the resistance to answer.  But not quite. So he went back to talking about himself.

From the dueling canes and lace cuffs of Tear a humbler identity followed.  Darius Stowyn was in western Andor five months before the real Stone fell to Aiel.  Those years were torment in the mundane.  An exercise in fortifying patience when it ran thinnest, and Arikan was a man who cultivated patience like a crop.  Fitting metaphor because Darius was suppose to be farmhand.  He learned on the job, as Arikan had little opportunity to till earth before, but the immigrant was praised for his accuracy and speed.  Channeling certainly helped the labor of turning those hillsides to fertile pastures, but its glory filled the months he obsessed over callandor after word arrived of the Stone's capture.  Who was the man able to possess the sword Arikan coveted as his own?  Was it taken at all?  Or did the Aiel circle below it like a pack of wolves afraid to approach the fire too closely? How the darkworld talked about the boy that would become the Dragon. A kicked anthill. Those few months were a bloody annoying pain in the ass. 

The months in plebeian squalor became clear when word of the Dragon's Amnesty reached the backwoods of western Andor.  Obediently, the loyal, hard-working Darius moved to the Black Tower, and Arikan easily behaved as the man fumbling with the One Power for the first time.  As a condemned man shackled by a taint he had never known, Darius both struggled and loved his position.  He was easily imparted a good deal of trust.

Taim of course was a personal threat, but Arikan had no need to accelerate the man's downfall.  He waited, patient as always, until the man brought disaster upon his own head.  The two following M'Haels were far too useful to the Light, however.  Whiteraven and al'Mere were both men of Andor, born to humble origins yet both destined for greatness.  They trusted Darius as kin in blood and as a brother in arms; the Black Tower lacked a sustainable leader ever since. He was pretty proud of that, even if the work took him away from more important efforts in the Blight.

Whose tenure followed al'Mere's?  It was hard to remember.  Then again, it was hard to concentrate on trivial details when pliers lifted nails by the bed. One by one. Starting with the smallest toe, moving inward, a fiery crescendo that left him struggling and kicking against the straps, but it was better than the burns. By then Arikan stopped long enough to realize he had no idea what he was saying, but apparently he was lying.  His torturer was also apparently not entertained by his creativity. 

Following grave success in the Black Tower, Arikan was pawned from one Chosen to another, however he had little awareness of their bartering at the time.  Demandred painted a glorious picture, and his servant leaped to emulate the general he wanted to become.  He eagerly cast off what shackles remained to his Asha'man name; and the mangled remains of an assassinated Darius was found in the riotous ashes of Andoran civil war.  His tender wife, Olivia, and their children had no hope of surviving without the champion father and husband to defend them.  One set of bones seemed to be missing from the aftermath, but something so small could easily have been ground to dust.  Nobody thought twice about a missing infant, including Arikan.

The Inquisitor frequently took things too far like he were plying his trade for the first time, and the delirium would heighten in response, but it seemed to Arikan the torment swung the other direction thereafter, and he attempted to revive some stamina.  He fought now with no less scrap of intent as he had when he was manhandled into this stank room, but the manifestation was decidedly weaker.  Insurgent hate and turbulent defiance carried him forward, but his body could only follow so far.

But insult him by saying any common darkfriend could go to Shayol Ghul? Arikan screamed his answer:

"--NO! YOU BLOODY IDIOT!”  He spat with outrage, "ITS WORTH!  YOU MUST BE WORTH THE TRIP.  WORTH THE ATTENTION.  WORTH THE HONOR!" 

“—Those cretins aren't worth the sack of blood they haul around.  Only the worthy go!  Those He needs.  Those He commands!”  Pride, fear, tumult and peace colored the sounds of haunted laughs which followed.  The Inquisitor was little amused, so Arikan smiled a crimson smile and explained.  “—And you—,” he bellowed, “—YOU get to play with me!  So take your time, ‘Hand of the Light’!  Because I am it!”

He strained then, lifting his head enough to accuse with arrowhead accuracy his torturer for truths in turn. Thoughts were stirred like silt, and he shook his head.

”—Where are your friends, Hand?!  Where are your strong arms?  Where is your Aes Sedai? You want to know about my kind?  Let's talk then!  But start with telling me about yours, because you are no Whitecloak.”  He smiled a red smile before falling back, heavy and exhausted, but dying to see the reaction on the ‘inquisitor’s’ face.