She had touched on a hazardous topic, she realized. Egwene had been injured a month and a half ago in Cairhien, on the day Moiraine and Lanfear died. The day Lan vanished.
"The Wise Ones say she is getting better," Nynaeve murmured sleepily in the dark. For once she did not sound as if she had followed the path to Lan. "That’s what Sheriam and her little circle say, and they have no reason to lie even if they could."
"Well, I wish I could look over Sheriam’s shoulder tomorrow night."
"As well wish —" Nynaeve stopped for a yawn. "As well wish the Hall will choose you Amyrlin while you’re about it. You might have that one, granted. By the time they choose anyone, we’ll both be gray-haired enough for the job."
Elayne opened her mouth to reply, but with the other woman’s example, it turned into a yawn too. Nynaeve began to snore, not loudly, but with dogged persistence. Elayne let her eyes drift shut, but her thoughts tried to remain focused in spite of herself.
The Hall certainly was being dilatory, the Sitters meeting for less than an hour some days and often not at all. To talk to one, you would think she saw no urgency, though of course the Sitters for the six Ajahs — there were no Reds in Salidar, of course — did not tell other Aes Sedai what they discussed in session, much less an Accepted. They certainly had cause for dispatch. If their intentions remained secret, their gathering surely no longer did. Elaida and the Tower would not ignore them forever. Beyond that, the Whitecloaks were still only a few miles away in Amadicia, and rumors had begun of Dragonsworn right here in Altara. The Light alone knew what Dragonsworn might get up to if Rand had no control over them. The Prophet was a good example — or rather a horrid one. Riots, homes and farms burned, people murdered for not showing enough fervor in support of the Dragon Reborn.
Nynaeve’s snoring sounded like cloth ripping, but in the distance. Another yawn cracked Elayne’s jaws; she turned on her side and snuggled into the thin pillow. Reasons for dispatch. Sammael sat in Illian, and it was only a few hundred miles to the Illianer border, far too close with one of the Forsaken. The Light alone knew where the other Forsaken were, or what they were scheming. And Rand; they had to be concerned about Rand. He was not a danger, of course. He could never be that. But he was the key to everything; the world truly did bend itself around him now. She would bond him, somehow. Min. She and the embassy had to be more than halfway to Caemlyn by now. No snows to slow them. Another month yet for them to arrive. Not that she was concerned about Min going to Rand. What was the girl thinking of? Min. Sleep slid over her, and she slid into Tel’aran’rhiod…
… and found herself standing in the main street of silent night-shrouded Salidar, with the moon gibbous overhead. She could see quite clearly, more so than moonlight alone would have allowed. There was always a sense of light in the World of Dreams, from everywhere and nowhere, as if the darkness itself had some dark glow. But then, dreams were like that, and this was a dream, if not any ordinary dream.
The village here reflected the real Salidar, but in strange facsimile, more still than even night would make it. Every window was dark, and an air of emptiness hung heavily, as if no one occupied any of the buildings. Of course, no one did, here. A nightbird’s reedy cry was answered by another, then a third, and something made a faint rustling noise as it skittered away in the odd half-light, but the stables would be empty, and the picket lines outside the village, and the clearings where sheep and cattle had been gathered. Wild creatures there would be in plenty, but none domesticated. Details changed between one glance and the next; the thatch-roofed buildings remained the same, yet a water barrel would be in a slightly different place, or gone, a door that had stood open was closed. The more ephemeral a thing was in the real world, the more its position or condition might change, the less firm its reflection.
Occasionally motion flickered in the dark street, someone appearing and vanishing after a few steps, or even floating across the ground as if flying. Many people’s dreams could touch Tel’aran’rhiod, but only briefly. Which was lucky for them. Another property of the World of Dreams was that what happened to you here was still real when you woke. If you died here, you did not wake. A strange reflection. Only the heat was the same.
Nynaeve stood there in an Accepted’s white dress with the banded hem, impatient beside Siuan and Leane. She had the silver bracelet, too, though it would not work from here to the waking world; it still held Moghedien, but Nynaeve, out of her body, would not be feeling anything through it. Leane was regally slim, though in Elayne’s opinion her barely opaque Domani gown of thin silk detracted from her elegance. The color kept shifting, too; that sort of thing happened until you learned what you were doing here. Siuan was better. She wore a simple dress of blue silk, with a scooped neck just low enough to show the twisted ring on a necklace. On the other hand, lace trim sometimes appeared on the dress and the necklace changed from a plain silver chain to elaborate pieces with rubies or firedrops or emeralds set in gold, with earrings to match, then back to the plain chain.
That was the original ring hanging around Siuan’s neck; she appeared as solid as any of the buildings. To herself, Elayne looked just as solid, but she knew that to the others she seemed slightly misty, like Nynaeve and Leane. You almost thought you might see the moonlight through them. That was what using a copy did. She could sense the True Source, but as she was, saidar felt tenuous; if she tried to channel, that would be meager too. With the ring Siuan wore, it would not be so, but that was the price of having secrets someone else knew and you did not dare have exposed. Siuan trusted the original more than Elayne’s copies, so she wore it — or sometimes Leane did — while Elayne and Nynaeve, who could use saidar, made do.
"Where are they?" Siuan demanded. Her neckline swooped up and down. The dress was green, now, the necklace a strand of fat moonstones. "It’s bad enough they want to stick an oar into my work and row as they please; now they make me wait."
"I do not know why it upsets you for them to come along," Leane told her. "You like watching them make mistakes. They do not know half of what they think they do." For a moment her gown slid dangerously close to transparency; a close torque of fat pearls appeared around her neck and vanished. She did not notice. She had even less experience here than Siuan.
"I need some real sleep," Siuan muttered. "Bryne tries to run me breathless. But I have to wait on the pleasure of women who’ll spend half the night remembering how to walk. Not to mention being lumbered with these two." She frowned at Elayne and Nynaeve, then rolled her eyes skyward.
Nynaeve gripped her braid firmly, a sure indication of temper working. For once, Elayne agreed with her wholeheartedly. It was more than difficult being a teacher with pupils who thought they knew more than they did and were far more likely to call down the teacher than the teacher was to get away with calling them down. Of course, the others were far worse than Siuan or Leane. Where were the others?
Movement appeared up the street. Six women, surrounded by the glow of saidar, who did not vanish. As usual, Sheriam and the rest of her council had dreamed themselves into their own bedchambers and walked out. Elayne was not sure how far they understood the attributes of Tel’aran’rhiod yet. In any case, they often insisted on doing things their own way even when there was a better. Who could know better than an Aes Sedai?
The six Aes Sedai truly were beginners in Tel’aran’rhiod, and their dresses changed every time Elayne looked at them. First one was wearing the embroidered Aes Sedai shawl, fringed in the color of her Ajah and with the white Flame of Tar Valon a bold teardrop on the back, then four were, then none. Sometimes it was a light traveling cloak, as to keep dust off, with the Flame on back and left breast. Their ageless faces showed no signs of the heat, of course — Aes Sedai never did — and no sign they were aware of how their clothes were changing, either.
They were as misty as Nynaeve or Leane. Sheriam and the others put more faith in dream ter’angreal that required channeling than in the rings. They just did not seem wi
lling to believe that Tel’aran’rhiod had nothing to do with the One Power. At least Elayne could not tell which were using her copies. Somewhere about them three would have a small disc of what had once been iron, scribed on both sides with a tight spiral and powered by a flow of Spirit, the only one of the Five Powers that could be channeled in your sleep. Except here, anyway. The other three would be carrying small plaques once amber, with a sleeping woman worked inside each. Even if she had all six ter’angreal in front of her, Elayne would not have been able to pick out the two originals; those copies had gone very well. Just the same, it was still copying.
As the Aes Sedai came down the dirt street together, she heard the tail end of their conversation, though she could not make head nor foot of it.
"… will scorn our choice, Carlinya," fiery-haired Sheriam was saying, "but they will scorn any choice we make. We might as well stay by our decision. You do not need me to list reasons again."
Morvrin, a stout Brown sister with gray-streaked hair, snorted. "After all our work with the Hall, we would have a hard time changing their minds now."
"As long as no ruler scoffs, why should we care?" Myrelle said heatedly. The youngest of the six, not many years Aes Sedai, she sounded decidedly irritated.
"What ruler would dare?" Anaiya asked, much like a woman asking what child would dare track mud on her carpets. "In any case, no king or queen knows enough of what passes among Aes Sedai to understand. Only the sisters’ opinions need concern us, not theirs."
"What worries me," Carlinya replied coolly, "is that if she is easily guided by us, she may be as easily guided by others." The pale, almost black-eyed White was always cool, some would say icy.
Whatever they were talking about, it was nothing they wanted to discuss in front of Elayne or the others; they fell silent just before reaching them.
Siuan and Leane’s reaction to the newcomers had been to turn their backs on each other sharply, as if they had been having words interrupted by the Aes Sedai’s arrival. For Elayne’s part, she quickly checked her dress. It was the proper banded white. She did not know how she felt about that, appearing in the right dress without thought; she would have wagered that Nynaeve had had to change her garb after appearing. But then, Nynaeve was far more intrepid than she, struggling against limits that she herself acquiesced to. How could she ever manage to rule Andor? If her mother was dead. If.
Sheriam, slightly plump and with high cheekbones, turned tilted green eyes on Siuan and Leane. For a moment she wore a blue-fringed shawl. "If you two cannot learn to get along, I vow I’ll send both of you to Tiana." It had the sound of something said often and no longer really meant.
"You worked together long enough," Beonin said in her heavy Taraboner accent. A pretty Gray with honey-colored hair in a multitude of braids, she had blue-gray eyes that constantly looked startled. Nothing surprised Beonin, though. She would not believe the sun came up in the morning until she saw for herself, yet if one morning it did not, Elayne doubted that Beonin would turn a hair. It would just confirm that she had been right to demand proof. "You can and must work together again."
Beonin sounded as if she had said that so often that she hardly thought of it. All the Aes Sedai were long since used to Siuan and Leane. They had begun handling them as they might have managed two girls who could not stop squabbling. Aes Sedai did have a tendency to see anyone who was not as a child. Even these two who once had been sisters.
"Send them to Tiana or don’t," Myrelle snapped, "but don’t talk about it." Elayne did not think the darkly beautiful woman was angry at Siuan or Leane. Perhaps not at anyone or anything in particular. She had a volatile temper remarkable even among Greens. Her golden yellow silk dress became high-necked, but with an oval cutout that exposed the tops of her breasts; she wore a peculiar necklace, too, like a wide silver collar supporting three small daggers, hilts nestling in her cleavage. A fourth dagger appeared and was gone so quickly it might have been imagination. She eyed Nynaeve up and down as if searching for fault. "Are we going to the Tower, or aren’t we? If we are going to do this, we might as well accomplish something useful while we are about it."
Elayne knew why Myrelle was angry, now. When she and Nynaeve first came to Salidar, they had been meeting Egwene in Tel’aran’rhiod every seven days to share what they had learned. Which had not always been easy, since Egwene was always accompanied by at least one of the Aiel dreamwalkers she was studying with. Meeting without a Wise One or two had taken some pains. In any case, all that ended when they reached Salidar. These six Aes Sedai of Sheriam’s council had taken over the meetings, when they had had only the three original ter’angreal and little more knowledge of Tel’aran’rhiod than how to reach it. That had been just when Egwene was injured, which left Aes Sedai facing Wise Ones, two sets of proud resolute women, each suspicious of what the other wanted, neither willing to yield an inch or bow her neck a hair.
Of course, Elayne did not know what went on at those meetings, but she had her own experiences to go by, and fragments dropped here and there by Sheriam and the others.
Aes Sedai were sure they could learn anything once they knew there was something to be learned, usually required the respect due a queen, and always expected to be told what they wanted to know without delays or quibbles. They had apparently demanded answers about everything, from what Rand was planning to when Egwene would be well enough to return to the World of Dreams, to whether it was possible to spy on people’s dreams in Tel’aran’rhiod or to enter the World of Dreams physically, or bring someone into the dream against their will. They had even asked more than once whether it was possible to affect the real world by what you did in the dream, a pure impossibility they apparently doubted. Morvrin had read a little about Tel’aran’rhiod, enough to come up with plenty of questions, though Elayne suspected Siuan supplied her share. She thought Siuan was angling to attend the meetings herself, but the Aes Sedai seemed to think it concession enough to allow her to use the ring as an aid in her work with the eyes-and-ears. Aes Sedai interference in that work was what upset her.
As for the Aiel… Wise Ones — the dreamwalkers, at least, Elayne was aware from her own encounters, not only knew just about everything there was to know about the World of Dreams, but looked on it almost as a private preserve. They did not like anyone coming there in ignorance, and had a rough way of dealing with what they saw as foolishness. Besides which, they were a closemouthed lot, apparently fiercely loyal to Rand, unwilling to say much more than that he was alive, or that Egwene would return to Tel’aran’rhiod when she was well enough, and more than unwilling to answer questions they considered improper. Which last could mean that they did not believe the questioner knew enough yet to hear the answer, or that question or answer or both somehow violated their strange philosophy of honor and obligation. Elayne knew little more of ji’e’toh than that it existed, and that it made for very peculiar, very touchy behavior.
All in all, it was a recipe for disaster, and Elayne thought it very probably was served up fresh every seven days, at least from the Aes Sedai point of view.
Sheriam and the other five had required lessons every night in the beginning, but now there were only two times they did so. The night before meeting the Wise Ones, as if to hone their skills one last time before a contest. And the night after, usually tight-mouthed, as if to work out what had gone wrong and how to counter it. Myrelle was probably already seething over tomorrow night’s disaster. There surely would be one of some kind.
Morvrin turned to Myrelle and opened her mouth, but suddenly there was another woman among them. It took Elayne a moment to recognize Gera, one of the cooks, in those ageless features. Wearing a green-fringed shawl with the Flame of Tar Valon on her back and weighing no more than half what she really did, Gera raised an admonitory finger to the Aes Sedai — and was gone.
"So those are her dreams, are they?" Carlinya said coolly. Her snow-white silk dress grew sleeves that hung in points over her hands, and a high tight ne
ck under her chin. "Someone should speak to her."
"Leave over, Carlinya," Anaiya chuckled. "Gera’s a good cook. Let her have her dreams. I can see the attraction myself." Abruptly she became slimmer and taller. Her features did not really alter; she wore the same plain, motherly face as always. With a laugh she changed back. "Can’t you see the fun in something for once, Carlinya?" Even Carlinya’s sniff was cool.
"Clearly," Morvrin said, "Gera saw us, but will she remember?" Her dark, steely eyes were thoughtful. Her dress, plain dark wool, held the steadiest among the six. Details shifted, but so subtly that Elayne could not really say what was different.
"Of course she will," Nynaeve said acerbically. She had explained this before. Six Aes Sedai looked at her, eyebrows rising, and she moderated her voice. A little. She hated scrubbing pots, too. "If she remembers the dream, she will. But only as a dream."
Morvrin frowned. She ran Beonin a close second in wanting proof. Nynaeve’s long-suffering expression was going to get her in trouble, whatever her tone. Before Elayne could say anything to take the Aes Sedai’s attention from Nynaeve, though, Leane spoke up with an expression close to a simper.
"Don’t you think we should go, now?"
Siuan snorted contemptuously at the timidity, and Leane cut her eyes at her sharply. "Yes, you’ll want to have as much time in the Tower as possible," Siuan said, diffident in turn, and Leane sniffed.
They really did it very well. Sheriam and the others never suspected that Siuan and Leane were not simply two stilled women clinging to a purpose that might keep them alive, clinging to the edge of what they had been. Two women childishly at one another’s throats all the time. The Aes Sedai should have remembered that Siuan had had the reputation of a strong-willed and devious manipulator, and to a lesser extent so had Leane. Had they presented a unified front, or shown their true faces, the six would have remembered, and looked hard at everything the pair said. But divided, spitting rancor in each other’s face, all but groveling to the Aes Sedai and plainly not even aware of it… When one was reluctantly forced to agree with what the other said, it lent extra weight. When one objected on obviously frivolous grounds, so did that. Elayne knew they used the pretence to guide Sheriam and the others toward supporting Rand. She just wished she knew what else they used it for.
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