Lord of Chaos

by Robert Jordan

  Nynaeve put a hand on the lid — the hinges would open smoothly — and pushed it up. There was not even the hint of a squeal. Inside, two heavily rusted swords and an equally brown breastplate with a hole eaten through it lay atop a tangle of cloth-wrapped parcels and what seemed to be the refuse from somebody’s old clothespress and a couple of kitchens.

  Elayne fingered a small kettle with a broken spout. “Not weeks, but the rest of the night, anyway.”

  “Once more?” Nynaeve suggested. “It could not hurt.” Elayne shrugged. Eyes shut. Need.

  Nynaeve reached out, and her hand came down on something hard and rounded, covered with crumbling cloth. When she opened her eyes, Elayne’s hand was right next to hers. The younger woman’s grin nearly split her face in two.

  Getting it out was not easy. It was not small, and they had to shift tattered coats and dented pots and parcels that crumbled to reveal figurines and carved animals and all sorts of rubbish. Once they had it out, they had to hold it between them, a wide flattish disc wrapped in rotted cloth. With the cloth stripped away, it turned out to be a shallow bowl of thick crystal, more than two feet across and carved deeply inside with what appeared to be swirling clouds.

  “Nynaeve,” Elayne said slowly, “I think this is . . . “

  Nynaeve gave a start and nearly dropped her side of the bowl as it suddenly turned a pale watery blue and the carved clouds shifted slowly. A heartbeat later, the crystal was clear again, the carved clouds still. Only she was certain the clouds were not the same as they had been.

  “It is,” Elayne exclaimed. “It’s a ter’angreal. And I will bet anything it has something to do with weather. But I’m not quite strong enough to work it by myself.”

  Gulping a breath, Nynaeve tried to make her heart stop pounding. “Don’t do that! Don’t you realize you could still yourself, meddling with a ter’angreal when you don’t know what it does?”

  The fool girl had the nerve to give her a surprised stare. “That is what we came to look for, Nynaeve. And do you think there is anyone who knows more about ter’angreal than I do?”

  Nynaeve sniffed. Just because the woman was right did not mean she should not have given a little warning. “I’m not saying it isn’t wonderful if this can do something about the weather — it is — but I don’t see how it can be what we need. This won’t shift the Hall one way or the other about Rand.”

  “’What you need isn’t always what you want,’” Elayne quoted. “Lini used to say that when she wouldn’t let me go riding, or climb trees, but maybe it holds here.”

  Nynaeve sniffed again. Maybe it did, but right now she wanted what she wanted. Was that so much to ask?

  The bowl faded out of their hands, and it was Elayne’s turn to give a start, muttering about never getting used to that. The chest was closed, too.

  “Nynaeve, when I channeled into the bowl, I felt . . . Nynaeve, it isn’t the only ter’angreal in this room. I think there are angreal, too, maybe even sa’angreal.”

  “Here?” Nynaeve said incredulously, staring around the cluttered little room. But if one, why not two? Or ten, or a hundred? “Light, don’t channel again! What if you make one of them do something by accident? You could still — ”

  “I do know what I am doing, Nynaeve. Really, I do. The next thing we have to do is find out exactly where this room is.”

  That proved to be no easy task. Though the hinges seemed solid masses of rust, the door was no impediment, not in Tel’aran’rhiod. The problems began after that. The dim narrow corridor outside had only one small window at its end, and that showed nothing but a peeling white-plastered wall across the street. Climbing down cramped flights of stone-faced stairs did no good. The street outside could have been the first they had seen in this quarter of the city, wherever that was, all the buildings as near alike as made no difference. The tiny shops along the street had no signs, and the only thing marking inns were blue-painted doors. Red seemed to indicate a tavern.

  Nynaeve strode off searching for some landmark, something to pinpoint their location. Something to say what the city was. Every street she came to seemed like the last, but she quickly found a bridge, plain stone, unlike the others she had seen, and lacking statues. The center of its arch showed her only the canal, meeting others in both directions, more bridges, more buildings with flaking white plaster.

  Suddenly she realized she was alone. “Elayne.” Silence, except for the echo of her voice. “Elayne? Elayne!”

  The golden-haired woman popped around a corner near the foot of the bridge. “There you are,” said Elayne. “This place makes a rabbit warren look well planned. I turned my head for an instant, and you were gone. Did you find anything?”

  “Nothing.” Nynaeve glanced down the canal again before joining Elayne. “Nothing at all useful.”

  “At least we can be sure where we are. Ebou Dar. It must be.” Elayne’s short coat and wide trousers became a green silk gown with spills of lace dangling over her hands, a high elaborately embroidered collar, and a narrow neckline deep enough to show considerable cleavage. “I can’t think of another city with so many canals except Illian, and this is certainly not Illian.”

  “I should hope not,” Nynaeve said faintly. It had never even occurred to her that a blind search might take them into Sammael’s lair. Her own dress had changed, she realized, to a deep blue silk suitable for traveling, complete with a linen dustcloak. She made the cloak vanish, but left the rest.

  “You would like Ebou Dar, Nynaeve. Ebou Dari Wise Women know more about herbs than anybody. They can cure anything. They have to, because Ebou Dari fight duels over a sneeze, noble or common, men or women.” Elayne giggled. “Thom says there used to be leopards here, but they left because they found Ebou Dari too touchy to live with.”

  “That’s all very well,” Nynaeve told her, “but they can run each other through as much as they want for all I care. Elayne, we might as well have put the rings away and just slept. I couldn’t walk back to that room from here if I was to receive the shawl when I got there. If only there was some way to make a map . . . ” She grimaced. As well ask for wings in the waking world; if they could take a map out of Tel’aran’rhiod, they could take the bowl.

  “Then we will just have to come to Ebou Dar and search,” Elayne said firmly. “In the real world. At least we know what part of the city to look in.”

  Nynaeve brightened. Ebou Dar lay only a few hundred miles down the Eldar from Salidar. “That sounds a very good notion. And it will get us away before everything falls on our heads.”

  “Really, Nynaeve. Is that still the most important thing to you?”

  “It is one important thing. Can you think of anything else to do here?” Elayne shook her head. “Then we might as well go back. I’d like a little real sleep tonight.” There was no telling how much time had passed in the waking world while you were in Tel’aran’rhiod; sometimes an hour there was an hour here, sometimes a day, or more. Luckily, it did not seem to work the other way, or at least not as much anyway, or you might starve to death sleeping.

  Nynaeve stepped out of the dream . . .

  . . . and her eyes popped open, staring into her pillow, which was as sweat-damp as she. Not a breath of air stirred through the open window. Silence had fallen over Salidar, the loudest sound the thin cries of night herons. Sitting up, she untied the cord around her neck and unstrung the twisted stone ring, pausing for a moment to finger Lan’s thick gold ring. Elayne stirred, then sat up yawning and channeled a stub of candle alight.

  “Do you think it will do any good?” Nynaeve asked quietly.

  “I do not know.” Elayne stopped to muffle a yawn behind her hand. How could the woman manage to look pretty yawning, with her hair a mess and a red wrinkle from a pillow marring one cheek? That was a secret Aes Sedai ought to investigate. “What I do know is that bowl may be able to do something about the weather. I know a cache of ter’angreal and angreal has to be put in the right hands. It’s our duty to hand t
hem over to the Hall. To Sheriam, anyway. I know if it doesn’t make them support Rand, I’ll keep hunting until I find something that does. And I know I want to sleep. Could we talk about this in the morning?” Without waiting for an answer, she doused the candle, curled up again and was breathing the deep, slow breaths of sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  Nynaeve stretched out again, staring at the ceiling through the darkness. At least they would be on their way to Ebou Dar soon. Tomorrow, maybe. A day or two, at most, to ready themselves for the journey and stop a passing riverboat. At least . . .

  Suddenly she remembered Theodrin. If it took two days to get ready, Theodrin would want her two sessions, sure as a duck had feathers. And she expected Nynaeve not to sleep tonight. There was no possible way she could know, but . . .

  Sighing heavily, she climbed out of bed. There was not much room to pace, but she used it all, getting angrier by the minute. All she wanted was to get away. She had said she was not very good at surrendering, but maybe she was getting good at running away. It would be so wonderful to channel whenever she wanted. She never even noticed the tears that began leaking down her cheeks.

  Chapter 14

  Dreams and Nightmares

  * * *

  At the sight of Nynaeve and Elayne, Egwene did not step out of the dream; she leaped out. Not back to her sleeping body in Cairhien — the night was too young yet — but to a vast blackness filled with twinkling pinpricks of light, more by far than the number of stars in the clearest sky, each sharp and distinct as far as the eye could see. If she had had eyes here, that was. Formless, she floated in the infinity between Tel’aran’rhiod and the waking world, the narrow gap between dream and reality.

  Had she possessed a heart here, it would have been pounding like a mad drum. She did not think they had seen her, but what under the Light were they doing there, in a part of the Tower that held nothing of interest? On these nightly excursions she carefully avoided the Amyrlin’s study, the novices’ quarters, even the Accepted’s quarters. It always seemed that if Nynaeve or Elayne or both were not in one of those places, someone else was. She could have approached Nynaeve or Elayne, of course — they certainly knew how to keep secrets — but something told her not to; she had dreamed of doing it, and it always seemed a nightmare. Not the sort that woke you in a cold sweat, but the kind that made you twist fretfully. Those other women. Did the Aes Sedai in Salidar know strangers wandered the Tower in the World of Dreams? Strange to her, at least. If they did not, she had no way to warn them. No way she could take. It was all so frustrating!

  The great spangled ocean of darkness swirled around her, seeming to move while she stood still. A fish at home in that ocean, she swam confidently, without really needing to think about it any more than the fish did. Those flickering lights were dreams, all the dreams of all the people of the world. Of all worlds, places that were not quite the world she knew, worlds nothing like it at all. Verin Sedai first told her of those, the Wise Ones affirmed it was so, and she herself had glimpsed things, peeking in, that she simply could not credit, not even in a dream. Not nightmares — those always seemed washed in red, or blue, or a murky gray like deep shadows — but filled with impossible things. Better to avoid them; clearly she did not belong in those worlds. Peering into such a dream was like suddenly being surrounded by broken mirrors, everything whirling and no way to tell up from down. It made her want to empty her stomach, and if she did not have one here, she would again on stepping back into her body. Sicking up was no way to wake yourself.

  She had learned a few things alone like this, added to what the Wise Ones had taught her, even ventured where they would have barred the way. And yet . . . She had no doubt she would know more, much more, if she had had a dreamwalker looking over her shoulder. Telling her that this was too dangerous yet and that forbidden altogether, true, yet suggesting what to try as well. Long past the simple things, easily puzzled out — well, not exactly easily; never that — she had reached a point where she could reason the next step on her own, but they were steps the Wise One dream-walkers had taken long ago. What took her a month to master for herself, they could teach in a night, in an hour. When they decided she was ready. Never until then. It galled so, when all she wanted was to learn. To learn everything. Right now.

  Each light looked identical to every other, yet she had learned to recognize a handful. How exactly, she did not know, a thing that irked her no end. Even the Wise Ones did not know that. Still, once she identified which dream belonged to which person, she could find that person’s dreams again like an arrow to the target, no matter if they went to the other side of the world. That light was Berelain, the First of Mayene, the woman Rand had put in charge in Cairhien. Looking into Berelain’s dreams made Egwene uncomfortable. Usually they were no different from any other woman’s — any woman interested equally in power, politics and the latest fashion in dresses — but sometimes Berelain dreamed of men, even men Egwene knew, in a way that made Egwene blush to remember.

  And that slightly muted glow over there was Rand, his dreams guarded behind a ward woven of saidin. She almost stopped — it piqued her that something she could not see or feel could shut her out like a stone wall — but instead let it pass. Another night of futility held no attraction.

  This place skewed distance the way Tel’aran’rhiod did time. Rand was sleeping in Caemlyn, unless he had jaunted to Tear, a thing she very much wanted to know how he did, but only a little way from his dream, Egwene picked out another light she recognized. Bair, in Cairhien, hundreds of leagues from Rand; wherever Rand was, she knew for a fact it was not Cairhien this night. How did he do it?

  The field of lights streaked by as Egwene darted away from the Wise One’s dream. Had she seen Amys and Melaine as well, she might not have fled, but if the other two dreamwalkers were not asleep and dreaming, they could be dreamwalking. One of them might be where she was, even ready to swoop down and haul her out of the dream, or into the dreamwalker’s own dream. She doubted she could stop them, not yet. She would be at the other’s mercy, just a part of her dream. Holding on to yourself inside someone else’s dream was hard enough when the dreamer was an ordinary person with no idea what was going on, although no harder than getting out before they stopped dreaming of you, which they were unlikely to do before waking with you actually there in the dream. With a dreamwalker, as aware of her dreams as of the walking world, it was impossible. And that would be the best part of it.

  It dawned on her that she was being foolish. Running was useless. If Amys or Melaine had found her, she would be somewhere else already. For that matter, she could be racing right toward them. The rush of lights by her did not slow, it simply stopped dead. That was the way here.

  Vexed, she considered what to do next. Aside from teaching herself what she could of Tel’aran’rhiod, her main purpose here was to glean a few scraps of events in the world. At times it seemed the Wise Ones would not tell her whether the sun was up if she could not see for herself. They said she must not become agitated. How could she avoid it, fretting over what she did not know? That was what she had been doing in the White Tower; trying to pick up some hint of Elaida’s intentions. And Alviarin’s. Hints were the best she had been able to find, and few of those. She hated not knowing; ignorance was like suddenly going blind and deaf.

  Well, the whole Tower was off her list now; it had to be when she could no longer be certain which parts were safe. The rest of Tar Valon had been struck off already, after the fourth time she nearly walked into a copper-skinned woman, this time nodding in satisfaction as, of all things, she studied a stable that seemed freshly painted blue. Whoever she was, she had not dreamed herself into Tel’aran’rhiod for a moment by accident; she did not vanish, the way a casual dreamer did, and she appeared made of mist. Using a ter’angreal, obviously, which meant she was almost certainly Aes Sedai. Egwene knew of only one ter’angreal that allowed access to the World of Dreams without channeling, and Nynaeve and Elayne had that
. The willowy woman had not been Aes Sedai long, though. Quite beautiful — and wearing a scandalously thin dress — she appeared Nynaeve’s age, not ageless.

  Egwene might have tried following her — she might be Black Ajah, after all; they had stolen dream ter’angreal — but balancing the risk of being found out, even captured, against the fact that she could tell no one anything she learned, not until she could talk to Nynaeve and Elayne again, not unless she discovered something so dire that everything depended on it . . . After all, the Black Ajah was Aes Sedai business; quite aside from any other reasons for keeping secrets, she could not tell just anyone. It was no choice at all.

  Absently, she studied the nearest lights in the blackness. She did not recognize any of them. They held absolutely still around her, shimmering stars frozen in clear black ice.

  There were too many strangers in the World of Dreams lately to suit her peace of mind. Two, but that was two too many. The copper-skinned woman and another, a sturdily pretty woman who moved with a purposeful stride, blue-eyed and with a determined face. The determined woman, as Egwene thought of her, must be able to enter Tel’aran’rhiod on her own — she seemed solid, not carved from fog — and whoever she was, for whatever reason she was there, she was about the Tower more often than Nynaeve and Elayne and Sheriam and the rest put together. She seemed to appear everywhere. In addition to the Tower, she had nearly surprised Egwene on her last trip to Tear. Not on a meeting night, of course; the woman had been stalking about the Heart of the Stone muttering to herself angrily. And she had been in Caemlyn on Egwene’s last two trips.