From: "Richard Boye'" <waldo@webspan.net
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 6:17 PM
Subject: TAN: Parody - Book 10 - "The Pages Fufilled"


 Just a little parody to help me blow off steam. Having off for a random
 weekday results in me having too much time on my hands, I guess.
 
 One day, I'll have to get around to creating my own characters and
 making them twitter and spurt. Until then, I dedicate this to Robert
 Jordan, master of strangely entertaining prolix and inexplicably
 endearing yet annoying characters.
 
 
 ------
 
 
 A Lioness Prowls
 
 Elayne sat at her dressing table, and made her pale, lovely face into a
 moue of displeasure. Her trim, maiden's figure was swelling,
 particularly at the waist, and her small, high breasts seemed filled
 with wet sand. "I do not care for being with child," she muttered to her
 own reflection, "let alone four." Just once she wished Min could be
 wrong, or if nothing else, more grammatically correct in her sentence
 structure. Light knew what the hell she actually meant by her "four at
 one time" comment. Queens of Andor most certainly did not have litters.
 
 She stood and smoothed her skirts over her blue wool dress, banded with
 vair at cuff and collar, and embroidered, incongruously with doves and
 white peonies, symbols both of chastity and purity. Why it seemed like
 just a week ago, she could still fit into her favorite little red riding
 dress. It was a smart, kicky little number and she felt emboldened while
 wearing it. Alas, it had been packed away into one of her commodious
 armoires, as were almost all of her sumptuous gowns, and now she was
 forced to hold court in flowing, almost shapeless dresses that for some
 reason, her seamstresses were intent on festooning with lace, and
 florets and silken bows. 
 
 When she caught her own fulsome reflection, she often thought that they
 were overcompensating, and trying to make her look, all appearances to
 the contrary, like a virgin. After all, she was without a consort, and
 prim Andorans did not approve of the young maiden queen getting knocked
 up. 
 
 Frail Essande, her Mistress of Wardrobes, insisted that she cease
 wearing her Great Serpent ring, or else she'd wake up one day and find
 her hands so puffy that she would need it clipped off, but Elayne put
 that away as an old woman's silliness.  Next thing, she'd try and tell
 her that she'd have to run to the bowls if she leaned over too far, or
 giggled too hard. She turned to the door when she felt Birgitte approach
 in the corridor.
 
 "Elayne," began the tall golden-haired woman as she entered without
 knocking, "we must speak." She had taken to doing that, of late, and
 Elayne was getting ticked. Just because she was bonded to the woman
 didn't mean that she wanted to share -everything- with the woman. That
 was a privilege reserved for Aviendha. Once you've slapped another woman
 silly while you were both stark naked, nothing was privy between you.
 Elayne ran an appraising eye over her warder and Captain General as she
 shut the door behind her. 
 
 She was tall, and well put together, with bright blue eyes and a braid
 so intricate that it became tiresome to constantly refer to it as such.
 She wore a short coat that was done in the colors of the Andoran flag,
 vibrant crimson and stark white, and voluminous blue trousers like some
 heroine of liberty from ages past. With Elayne's progressing condition,
 Birgitte developed an amazingly porous bladder, and an insatiable desire
 for pickles, no doubt another unforeseen affect of their bond.  That,
 and her midriff was bulging in a manner that mimicked Elayne's, which
 was just. freaky. Elayne chose not to dwell on it.
 
 "Good afternoon, my Lady Trahelion," she said with a false smile.
 Birgitte had finally chosen her own sigil to go with her new patent of
 nobility, a taut curved bow with a knocked arrow, all picked in silver
 thread against her blue cloak. Members of Elayne's Court often quirked
 an eyebrow at that, as they did at Birgitte's clumsy mentionings of her
 past lives, and Dyelin has even confronted Elayne with her speculations
 that she believed 'Lady Birgitte' to be Birgitte of Legend. Fortunately,
 they had put out that Birgitte was a Kandori, so there was no need to
 worry that people would guess her true identity. Elayne congratulated
 herself on her subtlety. No one would ever guess. Never ever. Nuh-unh.
 
 "The siege continues, Elayne," Birgitte said simply. "We are running low
 on foodstuffs, and they have blocked several of the channels that supply
 the city with water. I speculate that we will last another week, two at
 most." She flicked her braid. "Aviendha wishes you to know that she
 thinks that ridiculous."
 
 Elayne sighed. Her Aiel-born First Sister went on at great lengths that
 her people subsisted on cactus needles and sand, and were able support
 hundreds of thousands of warriors in the field with no supply trains.
 Alas, when the Creator made the Aiel, he bent the rules of human
 physiology so far as to break them into all implausibility. Aviendha
 also liked to mention that her fellow Aiel could run as far as a horse,
 and kick a mounted warrior out of the saddle, and even lay siege to
 fortified wall cities without engines or trebuchets, which Elayne knew
 from her study of military science and tactics to be impossible, and
 well, just stupid.
 
 "Has my brother arrived yet?" Elayne inquired as she sipped at her tea,
 which was too cool and nowhere near as sweet as she liked it. She made a
 mental note to have her table maid flogged. It is good to be the Queen.
 
 "No. Apparently, he still thinks you to be dead, and your letters and
 summonses to be works of forgery." She rolled her eyes. "Elayne, it's
 time to face the truth. Your brother is a moron."
 
 Elayne simpered. "I know. He always was, but Mother always told me to
 humor him. We often let him win at stones, and when he was a boy, we
 bought orphans for him beat with his sword so he would think he was good
 at fencing." She turned over a page in a ledger. "Very well, I'll name
 Doilan Mellar as my First Prince of the Sword. I trust him implicitly."
 She smiled to herself. Elayne prided herself on sharing her mother's
 keen judge of character, especially when it came to men. 
 
 ****************
 
 
 Matters of Propriety
 
 Tuon lay face down in her bedroll, as Selucia, her hulking dresser cum
 bodyguard, dug her thumbs in furrows down the smaller woman's
 dark-skinned back, resulting in a series of crackles and snaps that
 really worried Tuon. The strapping blonde woman, grunted, cracked her
 knuckles, and stood. "You are done, Highness."
 
 Tuon stretched like a cat in the sun, and stood, holding her shift up
 across her slight bosom. She scanned the inside of the garishly painted
 wagon in which she was confined, and scowled. The cabin was cramped and
 airless, with two small windows covered by iron grilles, and a narrow
 portal of a door in the rear that was barred from the outside. She was
 not used to such conditions. First, her Imperial Mother bade her travel
 to the ass end of nowhere to take possession of few renegade provinces,
 and then she was forced to deal with her new truth-speaker, the
 ominously named Anath, who gave her tongue-lashings of a sort that
 Neferi never did. Neferi was more gentle with her tongue, and more
 skilled. As if Anath wasn't enough, Tuon had been kidnapped, tied up
 like a raging grolm in estrus, and now she was being carted across this
 foreign countryside like a bushel of  cabbage. Granted, Tuon enjoyed the
 tying up part more than she should have, but a member of the House of
 Paendrag was used to better treatment!
 
 "I really think that this is going too far, Selucia," began Tuon as her
 robe was slipped over shoulders. "I know that the damane Lidya told me
 that I was soon going to be bound by a man who will be my consort, but I
 certainly didn't expect her to be so literal. I thought that the
 'laughing man with the curved spear stealing your heart after he
 captures your body' meant something else entirely. If that is the way of
 it, I am really worried about 'meeting the brown eye.'"
  
 "Hush, my lady," replied Selucia soothingly as she tied off Tuon's sash
 in an intricate fashion. She ran her fingers over Tuon's scalp, covered
 with a nubby black fuzz. "I beg my lady's forgiveness that I lack a
 razor to properly groom her, but it was taken from me." 
 
 Tuon sniffed at that. A bizarre habit she acquired since landing on
 these shores. Must be something in the air, like pollen, or cat dander.
 Back in Seandar she never sniffed when displeased. At home in her
 palaces and seraglios, she expressed her displeasure by having people
 impaled. 
 
 "No matter. I dare not present myself to these locals with a bare head
 anyway. They would know that a perfectly shaven head means a High member
 of the Blood, and such would cause me to loose much face if they saw my
 current state." Tuon regretted lying to her beloved dresser that way,
 but it was only a half-lie. Knowing that her servant would be forlorn at
 being unable to fulfill her duties, Tuon tried to console by telling her
 that she was better off letting her hair grow out. While it was true
 that she would loose face if her identity were known, she doubted any of
 these rough peasants would know what the bare scalp, the 'Sian'ayedh,'
 meant anyway. The very notion that she could loose face from that was,
 itself, ridiculous, Tuon mused, but then again, most of Seanchan
 behavior was governed by a bizarre and inscrutable code that was rivaled
 in stupidity only by that of the Aiel, or so she had read.
 
 
 ****************
 
 A Leather Strap
 
 Sheriam sat astride Wing, her sleek gray palfrey, as snow eddied around
 her fur-lined cowl and pooled in her charcoal skirts at her lap. She
 peered through the snow up at the vast bulk of the White Tower, hard to
 distinguish in the heady gray skies. We are here, she thought. It has
 come to this. Led to open war among ourselves by a nineteen-year-old
 farmgirl still picking hay from her shifts and knocking sheep dung from
 her shoes. We sure are dumb caricatures of educated and worldly women in
 power.
 
 Over to her left, Egwene al'Vere was deep in conversation with Lord
 Bryne and Suian Sanche, even as various Aes Sedai drifted in and away
 from the threesome, trying to penetrate the girl's ward against
 eavesdropping and steal a snippet of the conversations within. To think
 that Suian Sanche, who herself once sat in the Seat and made kings
 quaver and queens shiver, would take consolation by acting as the mere
 secretary of that girl! Sheriam would have thought that at the very
 least, she'd try using the girl as a puppet and rule through her, but
 Suian had said she was content to pen notes, deliver messages, and
 generally just fetch and carry, and Sheriam knew she couldn't lie.
 Otherwise, thought the flame-haired woman, we really fucked up.
 
 "Sheriam," called a mellifluous voice, "should you not be amongst them?"
 Sheriam turned to the tall elegant form of Lelaine Akashi approaching
 her, draped in a cloak of silvery fox over a crisply tailored riding
 habit of pewter colored silk. The refined Blue Sitter was a constant
 pain, and the very sight of her on her white palfrey turned Sheriam's
 bowels to porridge. With currants and honey. Never mind that Sheriam
 didn't like currants. At least Romanda Cassin was not with her. When the
 plump Yellow Sitter and slim Blue Sitter were together, they were so
 annoying Sheriam mercilessly gnashed and ground her teeth, which were
 little more than rounded stumps by now.
 
 "I have not been summoned, Lelaine," replied Sheriam somewhat tartly. 
 
 Lelaine lifted a dark brow at that, and then produced a narrow leather
 strap from a pocket within her cloak, studded with bits of iron.
 "Sheriam, you will go over there, or else I'll open up a can of whupass
 on you, right here." 
 
 
 -----
 
 Egwene al'Vere, Flame of Tar Valon, Watcher of the Seals, Amyrlin Seat,
 put her velvet-gloved hand to her eyes, shielding them from the glare of
 the snow, and scanned for Sheriam. Suian and Gareth Bryne were behind
 her, huddled close against the stiff winds, and making sucky-sucky
 noises with their mouths and tongues. Rolling her eyes, she let her
 eavesdropping ward contract, excluding her and enveloping that pair.
 
 Her long dark hair struggled with the winds from beneath its fillet of
 silver lace, and her thick mantle of costly Saldaean sables struggled to
 stay in place across her fine riding dress of lustrous silk, dark green,
 and richly embroidered in thread of silver and set with peridots and
 moonstones. Her army was looking worse for wear, she was afraid, with
 many of the soldiers forced to trudge onward with feet wrapped in scraps
 of leather and canvas, their boots long since worn out, the mounts of
 the cavalry looking gaunt and undernourished, and even her officer's
 cadre of Sheinarans looked rather ragged in disreputable coats and
 frayed cloaks, with often had been patched over in cloth of mismatching
 colors.
 
 She freed a lock of her hair from an emerald earring with a hand
 festooned with pearls and silver. If only there was some way of gaining
 access to more money. Those vast letters of rights Nynaeve had brought
 with her were long since exhausted, and even the various sums squirreled
 away by her daughters were depleted. She felt unsure if her army could
 breach the Shining Walls ill equipped as it was. Perhaps Sheriam had a
 few ideas, but if she did, she was too gloomy and sullen these days to
 be of much use. The woman was terse and silent, and moved like she was
 getting flogged nightly, which was silly. If she were, Egwene would have
 known who was doing such things and had that person scourged. As if the
 thought of Sheriam had brought her to Egwene's vision, she caught sight
 of her leaning in to Lelaine as the Blue Sitter was flipping a leather
 strap playfully in her hands and speaking forcefully. Certainly, Egwene
 would know if her Keeper was being abused by someone.
 
 ****************
 
 The Mark of a Woman
 
 Tenobia si Kozadi Bashere sat inside her camp facing her four maids,
 Nadali, Josevina, Balair and Tuti, as they prepared a warmed posset for
 her, and turned down her bed. Rubbing her hands before a brazier filled
 with ruddy coals, she thought of the events of the other day. A fifth
 woman, her senior attendant, Edne Garhet, busied herself at Tenobia's
 hair, long and silky and black as pitch, giving it its nightly one
 thousand strokes, which was time consuming, but she had heard that
 Andoran Queens consider bouncy hair to be the true mark of a woman. She
 had heard from her informers that those Andoran bimbos undergo hours of
 ministrations by their servants just so that their straw-like tresses
 would be soft, manageable and full of body. She was not going to let
 herself be outdone by some milk-livered southerner chits! 
 
 Elayne Trakand, who was no more than a few years younger that Tenobia
 herself, had come before Tenobia and her royal cousins, charming Paitr,
 creepy old Easar and the matronly Ethenielle, and had codswalloped them
 all into making a false invasion of Andor. Amazing really, with Elayne
 Trakand being merely the daughter of a dead queen, with little backing
 in her own lands. True enough, the girl made some effective claim at
 being Aes Sedai, but please. Where did the girl get those shoes, and
 that dress? Yeesh, they were awful. Tenobia sneered at the memory of the
 lack of elegance in the girl's attire. She herself never even left her
 garderobe without making sure that she was done up in her finest silks
 and gaudiest jewels. Her father, Kunad si Kozadi, had instructed her
 that she had not the head for statecraft, nor the heart for benevolence,
 so if she would be revered she'd have to do it by her style. 
 
 Which certainly was fine with Tenobia. Why bother making sensible
 decisions for the stability of her realm like choosing a respectable
 consort and producing an heir of her body when she could spend, spend!
 Just the other day, Lord Tazim of Edamas had presented her with a
 marriage compact proposing his eldest son as a match. True enough, the
 son Eduad possessed all that Tenobia desired in a man. He was tall and
 strong featured, could dance a minuet and galliard while juggling axes
 and scimitars, could ride down a cliff, could slay myrdraal with an
 oyster fork while reciting the entire Tahenire Cycle in High Chant, and
 could even tie a cherry stem into a knot with his tongue, yet her agents
 had just procured a chest of racy little nothings from Ebou Dar that she
 was just itching to try on!
 
 When Lord Tazim became insistent that she read his proposal, she had the
 man beheaded and his family dispossessed. Never mind that his fief
 protected many leagues of the Blightborder, she knew she looked just
 scrumptious in the plum colored shift with the breakaway straps. Now, if
 she could only find a man to wear it for in the marriage chamber...
 
 
 ****************
 
 Decision to Make, Actions Undone
 
 Alanna Mosvani tumbled out of bed, and hastily pulled out a night-robe
 of emerald silk embroidered with hogs and heifers in silver. She was
 forced to climb over the slumbering forms of Elza Penfell and Beldeine
 Nyma, with whom she shared this bed. The women were far too free with
 their elbows, and that made Alanna's unions with her warders all the
 more difficult. But not impossible.
 
 A sharp rap at the door came as Alanna was setting back her dark hair
 with a clip after dressing. Merise walked in without waiting for her
 assent, all in deep yellow silk, slashed with cream. Merise's warders
 stood in the hall bright-eyed and alert as chipmunks. Chipmunks with
 really big swords. Alanna tired of always comparing the gaidin to
 leopards or wolves. In her opinion, few creatures were so wily and
 dangerous as the chipmunks of her native Arafel. In the bed, Elza kept
 babbling in her sleep about the "Great Lord," and the "Chosen," which
 tweaked at Alanna's mind as significant, but she was often drowned out
 by Beldeine and her loud, muffled musing about her horse and how she
 loved him in unnatural ways. Ignoring them both as she set her cloak
 around her shoulders, she followed Merise into the hall, down past
 several doors and ultimately into a spacious sitting room done up in
 heavy gilt and bright blue. 
 
 Already seated around a table set for a morning tea were Cadsuane and
 Kiruna, who kept wiping crumbs from the table with an obvious twitch and
 nervous glances at Sorilea, who sat across from Cadsuane, messily
 devouring a crumpet. Two more women, the annoyingly boyish Corelle, who
 had the annoying habit of walking into a room laughing and a pair of
 bushy black brows that cried out for a tweezer, and Verin Mathwin,
 disturbing, enigmatic Verin, sat upon a divan, playing cats cradle. All
 five confronted Alanna with stares that could knock a rampaging horse
 off stride.
 
 In response, Alanna narrowed her eyes to smoldering slits of hostility
 and hurled lightning at them, with her hard, dark eyes. The other women
 sniffed and threw daggers at her with theirs, and smoothed their hands
 across their skirts, methodically arranging the folds of fabric. She
 stepped into the room, conscious of Merise's blue eyes boring a hole
 into the back of her skull like a drill. Cadsuane threw Alanna a glance
 that could have felled a mighty oak while Sorilea simply looked at her
 with a fiery intensity that should have set the drapes and tapestries
 ablaze. Corelle then set her wide blue eyes on Alanna's face with such
 invective that they could curdle milk.  A simple tablemaid in the livery
 of the Sun Palace, who had scurried in to refill cups, peered at Alanna
 so boldly that she could have cracked a fissure in the side of fortress.
 Alanna shrugged. This was how Aes Sedai said "Good Morning." 
 
 Having exchanged their pleasantries, they proceeded to discuss Rand, how
 to teach him laughter and tears, joy and sorrow, to be strong as a
 gorilla, yet pliant as a nerfball, how best to deal with Elaida and the
 Tower, and whether to ally themselves once again with Egwene al'Vere's
 rebellion. They argued, they sniffed, and they, ultimately, did nothing.
 
 -----
 
 Gabrelle Theraine rolled over and stretched languorously in the
 sumptuously appointed bed that she had come to share with Logain Ablar.
 Her dress and shift were thrown hastily over the back of a chest near
 the door, fully across the room. It was quite chill in the room, and not
 for the first time she wished she could simply channel a finger-wide
 flow of Fire in the hearth, and fill the room to bursting with heat. She
 missed the warm sun of her youth on the coast near Mayene. Barred from
 channeling a whit without Logain's say-so, of course, she was bound to
 do his say in all things, all the way down to her nightly duties of
 administering his buttermilk enemas and preparing the greased
 hard-boiled eggs that Logain so enjoyed making use of. Toveine had the
 task of feeding his squirrels and gerbils.
 
 Standing, she wrapped herself in Logain's blankets, richly brocaded and
 stuffed with goose down, and walked across the room just in time for
 Toveine herself to stride boldly into the room, accompanied by Lemai,
 willowy Desandre, fiery and ill-tempered Jenare, and pitiable Ayako
 Konshu, the lone White in the Black Tower who seemed to spend her days
 contemplating the 'logic of cheese,' whatever that meant.
 
 Toveine and Jenare sneered at Gabrelle's state of attire, while Lemai
 seemed to present her with an appraising leer. Lemai was like that,
 Gabrelle had learned, and was a close companion of one of the rare
 sisters with musical talent, a Red named Emissa Ethrege. 
 Desandre, serene and elegant even in her homespun brown woolens, stepped
 forward. "Gabrelle, you tart, put some clothes on," breathed the Domani
 Yellow to whom they had submitted. "I allow you in this council, but I
 will not do so if you continue to flaunt yourself so."
 
 Not to be cowed, Gabrelle simply dropped her blanket and walked in her
 nudity to her clothing, presenting them all a clear view of her backside
 with its inky tattoo that read "Backstreet Boys 4-Ever" in cursive
 script. When she had slipped her dress of her head and poked her head
 out, Desandre, who taken the only chair in the room, accepted a cup of
 cold tea from Ayako and began speaking, presenting plans and strategies
 for fracturing the Black Tower.
 
 Unfortunately, their conversations drifted to other things, and not
 surprisingly, as they had been doing for the months since they placed
 Desandre Ifamed at their head, they bickered and sniffed and,
 ultimately, did nothing.
 
 -----
 
 Gawyn Trakand turned over his sword, making it glint in the firelight.
 He rubbed it with a whetstone and then polished it with oil from a small
 clay bottle before sliding it into its tooled sheath of boar-hide at his
 waist. He slipped on his best boots, recently delivered by his man after
 a thorough blacking and centered his gilt belt buckle, a lion in mother
 of pearl, picked out against a disc of red enamel.
 
 Facing himself in the tall standing mirror in the room, he tugged at his
 red and green coat, thickly embroidered with golden briars and thorns,
 straightened his collar and the fall of snowy lace at his wrists. He
 smoothed his red gold curls with his hand, freshly washed and trimmed by
 his barber, and winked a blue eye at himself while pointing at his own
 image in the glass with the other hand and making tcha-tcha noises from
 the side of him mouth. 
 
 A forged summons from his dear, late sister Elayne sat beside a lamp on
 the table, alongside a fat sheaf of sworn letters by several witnesses
 in Amador who claimed to have seen his mother alive and well only a
 month past, well after Rand al'Thor murdered her. Also in that pile were
 a document that decreed that the world was in fact round, and a text
 that theorized a universal force, that the author, a Tarabonner scholar
 Ishaq Nuhdan, titled 'gra'veti' exerted a pull on all things equally.
 They had all come strung up in a bundle and lashed to a brick, red and
 weighty, upon which someone had writ largely in black ink "Here's a Free
 Clue, Dolt" before they had lobbed it at his head. Lies, all of it,
 filthy lies and delusions.
 
 Ignoring the heap on the desk, and focusing on his reflection, he
 imagined Egwene standing beside him, her dark beauty set off in ivory
 satin and adorned with pearls, as they exchanged vows before his Mother
 and her Court. Then he decided to leap to a hasty conclusion and
 ultimately, did nothing.
 
 
 ****************
 
 Epilogue
 
 Harrit Geordan crossed her arms beneath her breasts and sniffed. She
 raised a knowing brow and sniffed again. When she was done, she yanked
 her braid forcefully and then smoothed her skirts, soft green wool,
 across her lap and plucked obsessively at her the handkerchiefs tucked
 neatly up her cuffs. She tapped her foot impatiently and then hefted a
 small hand mirror and studied herself. Catching her own reflection, she
 practiced making augurs of her eyes, trying to hammer nails with her
 glare and setting her face in masks of determination that would look
 carved from snow, ice or other cold phenomena occurring in nature. She
 continued doing so until her husband, Robard, who had been feverishly
 scribbling down her every action and expression, had filled out ream
 after ream of parchment, enough to fill several volumes, instructed that
 she stop.
 
 She finally rose when Robard mentioned he could write no more, his hand
 withered from cramp, and she stood while her skirts settled themselves
 in pristine folds about her well turned ankles.
 
 Robard lit himself a pipe, and puffed happily as he bound up the reams
 of paper with stout cord, for their shipment down to Padric Heighdon,
 the printer who kept shop with his wife at the base of the sharp hill
 down the road. "Well, that's all for now." A chuckle. "I can't beleive
 anyone still reads this stuff." 
 
 Harrit sniffed and planted her fists on her hips, bristling like an
 angry cat. "Hold that pose," said her ox-headed husband, as he scraped
 off a new pen and started writing anew. "I don't suppose you could make
 your voice a smoky heat while you're at it?"
 
 FIN
 -- 
 Richard M. Boye'                   * waldo@webspan.net 
   UIN:9021244
"Let's put the 'fun' back in 'dysfunctional!'"