Silent tears of humiliation began to stream down her cheeks. She wanted to kill Silviana, yet that would only mean a new Mistress of Novices laying the strap across her every morning until Elaida relented. Except that Elaida would never relent. Killing her would be more to the point, yet such killings had to be carefully rationed. Too many unexpected deaths would cause questions, perhaps dangerous questions.
Still, she had done what she could against Elaida. Katerine’s news of this battle was spreading through the Black Ajah, and beyond it already. She had overheard sisters who were not Black talking of Dumai’s Wells in detail, and if the details had grown in the telling, so much the better. Soon, the news from the Black Tower would have diffused though the White Tower, too, likely expanding in the same way. A pity that neither would be sufficient to see Elaida disgraced and deposed, with those cursed rebels practically on the bridges, yet Dumai’s Wells and the disaster in Andor hanging over her head would keep her from undoing what Alviarin had done. Break the White Tower from within, she had been ordered. Plant discord and chaos in every corner of the Tower. Part of her had felt pain at that command, a part of her still did, yet her greater loyalty was to the Great Lord. Elaida herself had made the first break in the Tower, but she had shattered half of it past mending.
Abruptly she realized that she was touching her forehead again and snatched her hand down. There was no mark there, nothing to feel or see. Every time she glanced into a mirror, she checked in spite of herself. And yet, sometimes she thought people were looking at her forehead, seeing something that escaped her own eyes. That was impossible, irrational, yet the thought crept in no matter how often she chased it away. Dashing tears from her face with the hand holding the message from the tapestry, she pulled the other two she had retrieved out of her belt pouch and went to the writing table, standing against the wall.
It was a plain table, and unadorned like all of her furnishings, some of which she suspected might be of indifferent workmanship. A trivial matter; so long as furniture did what it was supposed to do, nothing more mattered. Dropping the three messages on the table beside a small, beaten copper bowl, she produced a key from her pouch, unlocked a brass-banded chest sitting on the floor beside the table, and sorted through the small leather-bound books inside until she found the three she needed, each protected so that the ink on the pages would vanish if any hand but hers touched them. There were far too many ciphers in use for her to keep them in memory. Losing these books would be a painful trial, replacing them arduous, hence the stout chest and the lock. A very good lock. Good locks were not trivialities.
Quickly she stripped off the thin strips of paper wrapping the message recovered from behind the tapestry, held them to a lamp flame and dropped them into the bowl to burn. They were only directions as to where the message was to be left, one meant for each woman in the chain, the extra strips merely a way of disguising how many links the message had to go through to reach its recipient. Too many precautions were an impossibility. Even the sisters of her own heart believed her no more than they. Only three on the Supreme Council knew who she was, and she would have avoided that had it been possible. There could never be too many precautions, especially now.
The message, once she worked it out, bending to write on another sheet, was much as she had expected since the previous night when Talene failed to appear. The woman had left the Green quarters early yesterday carrying fat saddlebags and a small chest. Not having a servant carry them, she had performed the task herself. No one seemed to know where she had gone. The question was, had she panicked on receiving her summons to the Supreme Council, or was there something more? Something more, Alviarin decided. Talene had looked to Yukiri and Doesine as though seeking . . . guidance, perhaps. She was sure she had not imagined it. Could she have? A very small seed of hope. There must be something more. She needed a threat to the Black, or the Great Lord would withdraw his protection.
Angrily, she pulled her hand away from her forehead.
She never considered using the small ter’angreal she had hidden away to call Mesaana. For one thing, one very important thing, the woman surely intended to kill her, very likely despite the Great Lord’s protection. On the instant, if that protection were lost. She had seen Mesaana’s face, knew of her humiliation. No woman would let that pass, especially not one of the Chosen. Every night she dreamed of killing Mesaana, often daydreamed of how to manage it successfully, yet that must wait on finding her without the woman knowing herself found. In the meanwhile, she needed more proof. It was possible that neither Mesaana nor Shaidar Haran would see Talene as verification of anything. Sisters had panicked and run in the past, if rarely, and assuming Mesaana and the Great Lord were ignorant of that would be dangerous.
In turn she touched the ciphered message and the clear copy to the lamp flame and held each by a corner until they had burned nearly to her fingers before dropping them atop the ashes in the bowl. With a smooth black stone that she kept as a paperweight, she crushed the ashes and stirred them about. She doubted that anyone could reconstitute words from ash, but even so. . . .
Still standing, she deciphered the other two messages and learned that Yukiri and Doesine both slept in rooms warded against intrusion. That was unsurprising—hardly a sister in the Tower slept without warding these days—but it meant kidnapping either would be difficult. That was always easiest when carried out in the depths of the night by sisters of the woman’s own Ajah. It might yet turn out those glances were happenstance, or imagination. She needed to consider the possibility.
With a sigh, she gathered more of the small books from the chest and gently eased herself onto the goose down cushion on the chair at the writing table. Not gently enough to stop a wince as her weight settled, though. She stifled a whimper. At first, she had thought the humiliation of Silviana’s strap far worse than the pain, but the pain no longer really faded. Her bottom was a mass of bruises. And tomorrow, the Mistress of Novices would add to them. And the day after that, and the day after. . . . A bleak vision of endless days howling under Silviana’s strap, of fighting to meet the eyes of sisters who knew all about the visits to Silviana’s study.
Trying to chase those thoughts away, she dipped a good steel-nibbed pen and began to write out ciphered orders on thin sheets of paper. Talene must be found and brought back, of course. For punishment and execution, if she had simply panicked, and if she had not, if she had somehow found a way to betray her oaths. . . . Alviarin clung to that hope while she commanded a close watch put on Yukiri and Doesine. A way had to be found to take them. And if they were caught up in chance and imagination, something could still be manufactured from whatever they said. She would guide the flows in the circle. Something could be made.
She wrote furiously, unaware that her free hand had risen to her forehead, searching for the mark.
Afternoon sunlight slanted through the tall trees on the ridge above the vast Shaido encampment, dappling the air, and songbirds trilled on the branches overhead. Redbirds and bluejays flashed by, slashes of color, and Galina smiled. Heavy rain had fallen in the morning, and the air still held a touch of coolness beneath sparse, slowly drifting white clouds. Likely her gray mare, with its arched neck and lively step, had been the property of a noblewoman, or at the least a wealthy merchant. No one else but a sister could have afforded such a fine animal. She enjoyed these rides on the horse she had named Swift, because one day it would carry her swiftly to freedom; just as she enjoyed this time alone to dwell on what she would do once she had her freedom. She had plans for repaying those who had failed her, beginning with Elaida. Thinking about those plans, about their eventual fruition, was most enjoyable.
At least, she enjoyed her rides so long as she managed to forget that the privilege was as much a mark of how thoroughly Therava owned her, as were the thick white silk robe she wore and her firedrop-studded belt and collar. Her smile faded into a grimace. Adornments for a pet that was allowed to amuse itself when not required to amuse its ow
ner. And she could not remove those jeweled markers, even out here. Someone might see. She rode here to get away from the Aiel, yet they could be encountered in the forest, too. Therava might learn of it. Difficult as it was to admit to herself, she feared the hawk-eyed Wise One to her bones. Therava filled her dreams, and they were never pleasant. Often she woke sweat-soaked and weeping. Waking from those nightmares was always a relief, whether or not she managed to get any sleep for the rest of the night.
There was never any order against escape on these rides, an order she would have had to obey, and that lack produced its own bitterness. Therava knew she would return, no matter how she was mistreated, in the hope that some day the Wise One might remove that cursed oath of obedience. She would be able to channel again, when and as she wished. Sevanna sometimes made her channel to perform menial tasks, or just to demonstrate that she could command it, but that occurred so seldom that she hungered for even that chance to embrace saidar. Therava refused to let her so much as touch the Power unless she begged and groveled, but then refused her permission to channel a thread. And she had groveled, abased herself completely, just to be granted that scrap. She realized that she was grinding her teeth, and forced herself to stop.
Perhaps the Oath Rod in the Tower could lift that oath from her as well as the nearly identical rod in Therava’s possession, yet she could not be sure. The two were not identical. It was only a difference in marking, yet what if that indicated that an oath sworn on one was particular to that rod? She dared not leave without Therava’s rod. The Wise One often left it lying in the open in her tent, but you will never pick that up, she had said.
Oh, Galina could touch that wrist-thick white rod, stroke its smooth surface, yet however hard she strained, she could not make her hand close on it. Not unless someone handed it to her. At least, she hoped that would not count as picking the thing up. It had to be so. Just the thought that it might not be filled her with bleakness. The yearning in her eyes when she gazed at the rod brought Therava’s rare smiles.
Does my little Lina want to be free of her oath? she would say mockingly. Then Lina must be a very good pet, because the only way I will consider freeing you is for you to convince me that you will remain my pet even then.
A lifetime of being Therava’s plaything and the target for her temper? A surrogate to be beaten whenever Therava raged against Sevanna? Bleakness was not strong enough to describe her feelings on that. Horror was more like it. She feared she might go mad if that happened. And equally, she feared there might be no escape into madness.
Mood thoroughly soured, she shaded her eyes to check the height of the sun. Therava had merely said that she would like her back before dark, and a good two hours of daylight remained, but she sighed with regret and immediately turned Swift downslope through the trees toward the camp. The Wise One enjoyed finding ways to enforce obedience without direct commands. A thousand ways to make her crawl. For safety, the woman’s slightest suggestion must be taken as a command. Being a few minutes late brought punishments that made Galina cringe at the memories. Cringe and heel the mare to a faster pace through the trees. Therava accepted no excuses.
Abruptly an Aielman stepped out in front of her from behind a thick tree, a very tall man in cadin’sor with his spears thrust through the harness that held his bowcase on his back and his veil hanging on his chest. Without speaking, he seized her bridle.
For an instant, she gaped at him, then drew herself up indignantly. “Fool!” she snapped. “You must know me by now. Release my horse, or Sevanna and Therava will take turns removing your skin!”
These Aiel usually showed little on their faces, yet she thought his green eyes widened slightly. And then she screamed as he seized the front of her robe in a huge fist and jerked her from the saddle.
“Be silent, gai’shain,” he said, but as though he cared nothing for whether she obeyed.
At one time she would have had to, but once they realized that she obeyed any order from anyone, there had been too many who enjoyed sending her on foolish errands that kept her occupied when Therava or Sevanna wanted her. Now, she need obey only certain Wise Ones and Sevanna, so she kicked and flailed and screamed in desperate hope of attracting someone who knew she belonged to Therava. If only she were allowed to carry a knife. Even that would have been a help. How could this man not recognize her, or at least know what her jeweled belt and collar meant? The encampment was immense, as filled with people as many large cities, yet it seemed that everyone could point out Therava’s pet wetlander. The woman would have this fellow skinned, and Galina meant to enjoy every minute of watching.
All too quickly it became apparent that a knife would have been no use at all. Despite her struggles, the brute handled her easily, pulling her cowl down over her head, blinding her, then stuffing as much of it as he could into her mouth before binding it there. Then he flipped her face down and bound her wrists and ankles tightly. As easily as if she had been a child! She still thrashed, but it was wasted effort.
“He wanted some gai’shain that aren’t Aiel, Gaul, but a gai’shain in silk and jewels, and out riding?” a man said, and Galina stiffened. That was no Aielman. Those were the accents of Murandy! “Sure and that’s none of your ways, is it?”
“Shaido.” The word was spat out like a curse.
“Well, we still need to find a few more if he’s to learn anything useful. Maybe more than a few. There are tens of thousands of folks in white down there, and she could be anywhere among them.”
“I think maybe this one can tell Perrin Aybara what he needs to know, Fager Neald.”
If she had stiffened before, now she froze. Ice seemed to form in her stomach, and in her heart. Perrin Aybara had sent these men? If he attacked the Shaido trying to rescue his wife, he would be killed, destroying her leverage with Faile. The woman would not care what was revealed, with her man dead, and the others had no secrets they feared having known. In horror, Galina saw her hopes of obtaining the rod melting away. She had to stop him. But how?
“And why would be you thinking that, Gaul?”
“She is Aes Sedai. And a friend of Sevanna, it seems.”
“Is she, now?” the Murandian said in a thoughtful tone. “Is she that?”
Strangely, neither man sounded the least uneasy over laying hands on an Aes Sedai. And the Aielman apparently had done so fully aware of what she was. Even if he was a renegade Shaido, he had to be ignorant of the fact that she could not channel without permission. Only Sevanna and a handful of the Wise Ones knew that. This was all growing more confusing by the moment.
Suddenly she was lifted into the air and laid on her belly. Across her own saddle, she realized, and the next moment she was bouncing on the hard leather, one of the men using a hand to keep her from falling as the mare began to trot.
“Let us go to where you can make us one of your holes, Fager Neald.”
“Just the other side of the slope, Gaul. Why, I’ve been here so often, I can make a gateway nearly anywhere at all. Do you Aiel run everywhere?”
A gateway? What was the man blathering about? Dismissing his nonsense, she considered her options, and found none good. Bound like a lamb for market, gagged so she would not be heard ten paces away if she shrieked her lungs out, her chances of escape were nonexistent unless some of the Shaido sentries intercepted her captors. But did she want them to? Unless she reached Aybara, she had no way to stop him from ruining everything. On the other hand, how many days off did his camp lie? He could not be very near, or the Shaido would have found him by now. She knew scouts had been making sweeps as far as ten miles from the camp. However many days were required to reach him, it would take as many to return. Not merely minutes late, but days late.
Therava would not kill her for it. Just make her wish she were dead. She could explain. A tale of being captured by brigands. No, just a pair; it was hard enough to believe two men had gotten this near the encampment, much less a band of brigands. Unable to channel, she had needed time to
escape. She could make the tale convincing. It might persuade Therava. If she said. . . . It was useless. The first time Therava had punished her for being late, it had been because her cinch broke and she had had to walk back leading her horse. The woman had not accepted that excuse, and she would not accept being kidnapped, either. Galina wanted to weep. In fact, she realized that she was weeping, hopeless tears she was helpless to stop.
The horse halted, and before she could think, she convulsed wildly, trying to fling herself off the saddle, screaming as loudly as her gag permitted. They had to be trying to avoid sentries. Surely Therava would understand if the sentries returned with her and her captors, even if she was late. Surely she could find a way to handle Faile even with her husband dead.
A hard hand smacked her rudely. “Be silent,” the Aielman said, and they began to trot again.
Her tears began again, too, and the silk cowl covering her face grew damp. Therava was going to make her howl. But even while she wept, she began to work on what she would say to Aybara. At least she could salvage her chances of obtaining the rod. Therava was going to. . . . No. No! She needed to concentrate on what she could do. Images of the cruel-eyed Wise One holding a switch or a strap or binding cords reared in her mind, but every time she forced them down while she went over every question Aybara might ask and what answers she would give him. On what she would say to make him leave his wife’s safety in her hands.
In none of her calculations had she expected to be lifted down and stood upright no more than an hour after being captured.
“Unsaddle her horse, Noren, and picket it with the others,” the Murandian said.
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