Ji'anna's Story

She walks with the careful steps of age, no longer striding through the halls of the Tower with the confidence of youth. Her once unruly curls, once a deeply burnished auburn but now silvered and dull, are kept confined in a tight bun at the nape of her bowed neck. The sparkle has departed her gray eyes; indeed, they are now hooded and secretive. Her name is Ji’anna... She was once Head of the Yellow Ajah.

She keeps to herself now. All of her contemporaries of that time - the beginnings of the Trolloc Wars - are long dead. It is said, the life left her eyes the day she lost her Warder, Benjamin Al’Garve... Though he died of advanced age, with his wife and children and their children, at his bedside, Ji’anna was never the same. Theirs was a story rich with the history of the Trolloc Wars, beginning with the epic battle of Rhanime Naille...

But the true story here is not of the Trolloc Wars, nor is it the story of Ji’anna and Benjamin...

Ji’anna Sedai, orphan, abandoned, discovered through serindipitous chance by a Yellow Sister in a backwater garrison town in far-off Almoren. The true story is Ji’anna, herself.

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There are no beginnings to the Wheel of Time, but Ji’anna’s beginnings can be found in the Three-Fold Land, the Aiel Waste...

A woman named Avala, of the Bent River Sept, had the great fortune to find love. Love that consumed her soul and caused her to lay the bridal wreath at the feet of her beloved - Joren. But, before the marriage could be sanctioned by the Wise Ones, Avala disappeared. Joren was beside himself with anger and fear, declaring loudly that she had been stolen by another clan or Tinkers or dragged away by the wild beasts that shared the Waste with the Aiel. The weeks and months passed, and Avala was given up for dead. It was, therefore, a great surprise when she returned to her home in the cliffs of Bent River, her belly greatly distended. She was with child...

Joren was mortified. The child was not his. Had Avala been raped? If so, by whom, and he promised retribution on the head of the man who had dishonored her... on him and all the beast held dear! Avala refused to speak to her betrothed. She refused to identify or explain to anyone who or what had taken her from Bent River. The Wise Ones hammered at her day and night, fearing above all a war between the clans, but to no avail. Avala remained silent.

It was the decision of the Wise Ones that Avala had brought her shame upon herself; she had also brought shame and danger to her home and her clan. They named her dai’tsang. They stripped her of her clothes and belongings in the presence of her former betrothed and her family. She was whipped, then given the coarse, black robe to wear over the shredded skin of her back.

It was no wonder that her child came that night.

All alone, with no assistance from anyone, Avala gave birth to a squalling, healthy daughter. She cradled the squirming bit of flesh in her arms and cried. All the tears she had refused to shed when taken from her home, when she learned of the identity of her captors and the threat they posed to her people, when she learned she was pregnant and then was returned to the Bent River Sept to be condemned by those she cherished - all the tears spilled out on the auburn curls on her daughter’s head. She named her child, Ji’anna - the “ji” for honor. Perhaps the only honor the child would ever know...

It was the opinion of the clan that the sins of the mother should be visited on the daughter; Ji’anna knew no love except Avala’s. While a dai’tsang is never given anything useful to do, no one wanted anything to do with her bastard child. She was allowed to keep her and raise her... but the Wise One’s denied her the right to tell her child that she was her mother. Avala, being Aiel, would not dream of going against their restrictions.

As it happened, they had very few years together. Banished to the outskirts of Bent River, Avala and Ji’anna lived alone in a rude tent, with only castoff clothes for the child and old carpets for bedding. Food would appear outside the tent each morning; not from kindness but because her presence was not welcome among the people in her clan. The only face she regularly saw, other than her daughter’s, was Joren’s.

He would come to her tent in the darkness, whispering vile epithets, demanding that she spread herself for him, beating her when she refused. As Ji’anna grew older, the visits became more frequent. Sometimes, Avala was unable to stop his attack; he would threaten Ji’anna with death, or worse, if she didn’t comply. With no one to champion her, Avala was lost. Through it all, Ji’anna would cower in the darkest corner of the tent...

It was in Ji’anna’s seventh year... the visits from Joren mysteriously stopped. The bruises on Avala’s face began to heal and Ji’anna actually heard the woman she shared her strange life with laugh and sing... They enjoyed a few months of peace.

Until that night... The night of fire and smoke, the night she - Ji’anna - was wrested from the sheltering arms of the woman named Avala, and dragged into the night by the man named Joren. She saw Avala cut down by a short spear, saw her black-robed form crumple to the white sand. Ji’anna’s fear and rage at exploded and her last sight of Joren was as he was clawing his burning clothes from his body, and his hoarse cries followed her as she ran into the darkness.

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Was it the Hand of the Creator that guided the small girl to the camp of Almorenin soldiers? Was it? Certainly, she would have died otherwise. Was it the Creator’s Light that guided LaTrelle Vandulay to Sanna’al to remove the child from the careless custody of the Lady Jaynan? If Ji’anna had died in the Aiel Waste, unloved and unlamented by the people who abandoned her, would the world be different now?

I, Deandra, Keeper of the Flame of Tar Valon, the Amyrlin Seat, believe that it would be. Ji’anna is my mother, and I hold the power of the world in my hands.