The Gathering Storm

by Robert Jordan

  Aviendha blinked again, so tired it was hard to think. It defied reason that the Domani used merchants as leaders in the first place. How could a merchant lead people? Did not merchants have to focus on their wares? It was ridiculous. Would the wetlanders ever stop shocking her with their strange ways?

  And why was Melaine asking her about this now of all times?

  “His plan seems a good one, Wise One,” Aviendha said. “Yet the spears do not like being used for kidnapping. I think the Car’a’carn should have spoken in terms of offering protection—forced protection—for the merchants. The chiefs would have responded better to being told they were protecting rather than kidnapping.”

  “They would be doing the very same thing, no matter what you call it.”

  “But what you call a thing is important,” Aviendha said. “It is not dishonest if both definitions are true.”

  Melaine’s eyes twinkled, and Aviendha caught a hint of a smile on her lips. “What else do you think of the meeting?”

  “Rand al’Thor still seems to think that the Car’a’carn can make demands like a wetlander king. This is my shame. I failed to explain the right way.”

  Melaine waved a hand. “You have no shame there. We all know how bullheaded the Car’a’carn is. The Wise Ones have tried as well, and none have been able to train him correctly.”

  So. That wasn’t the reason for her dishonor before the Wise Ones. What was it then? Aviendha ground her teeth in frustration, then forced herself to continue. “Regardless, he needs to be reminded. Again and again. Rhuarc is a wise and patient man, but not all clan chiefs are so. I know that some of the others wonder if their decision to follow Rand al’Thor was an error.”

  “True,” Melaine said. “But look at what happened to the Shaido.”

  “I did not say they were right, Wise One,” Aviendha said. A group of soldiers were hesitantly trying to pry up the glassy black mound. It appeared to have fused to the ground. Aviendha lowered her voice. “They are wrong to question the Car’a’carn, but they are speaking to one another. Rand al’Thor needs to realize that they will not accept offense after offense from him without end. They may not turn against him like the Shaido, but I would not put it past Timolan—for instance—to simply return to the Three-fold Land and leave the Car’a’carn to his arrogance.”

  Melaine nodded. “Do not worry. We are aware of this . . . possibility.”

  That meant Wise Ones had been sent to soothe Timolan, who was chief of the Miagoma Aiel. It would not be the first time. Did Rand al’Thor know how hard the Wise Ones worked behind his back to maintain Aiel loyalty? Probably not. He saw them all as one homogeneous group, sworn to him, to be used. That was one of Rand’s great weaknesses. He could not see that Aiel, like other people, did not like being used as tools. The clans were far less tightly knit than he believed. Blood feuds had been put aside for him. Couldn’t he understand how incredible that was? Couldn’t he see how tenuous that alliance continued to be?

  But not only was he a wetlander by birth, he was not a Wise One. Few Aiel themselves saw the work the Wise Ones did in a dozen different areas. How simple life had seemed when she had been a Maiden! It would have dazzled her to know how much went on beyond her sight.

  Melaine stared blindly at the broken building. “A remnant of a remnant,” she said, as if to herself. “And if he leaves us burned and broken, like those boards? What will become of the Aiel then? Do we limp back to the Three-fold Land and continue as we did before? Many will not want to leave. These lands offer too much.”

  Aviendha blinked at the weight of those words. She had rarely given thought to what would happen after the Car’a’carn was finished with them. She was centered on the now, upon regaining her honor and being there to protect Rand al’Thor at the Last Battle. But a Wise One could not just think of the now or the tomorrow. She had to think of the years ahead and the times that would be brought upon the winds.

  A remnant of a remnant. He had broken the Aiel as a people. What would become of them?

  Melaine glanced back at Aviendha, her face softening. “Go to the tents, child, and rest. You look like a sharadan that has crawled on his belly across three days of sand.”

  Aviendha looked down at her arms, seeing the flakes of ash from the burnings. Her clothing was soaked and stained, and she suspected that her face was just as filthy. Her arms ached from carrying the stones all day. Once she acknowledged the fatigue, it seemed to crash upon her like a windstorm. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to remain upright. She would not shame herself by collapsing! But she did turn to leave, as instructed.

  “Oh, and Aviendha,” Melaine called. “We will discuss your punishment tomorrow.”

  She turned in shock.

  “For not finishing with the stones,” Melaine said, surveying the wreckage again. “And for not learning quickly enough. Go.”

  Aviendha sighed. Another round of questions, and another undeserved punishment. There was a correlation of some sort. But what?

  She was too exhausted to think about it for now. All she wanted was her bed, and she found herself treacherously recalling the soft, luxurious mattresses back in the palace of Caemlyn. She forced those thoughts out of her mind. Sleep that soundly, muffled in pillows and down comforters, and you’d be too relaxed to wake if someone tried to kill you in the night! How had she let Elayne convince her to sleep in one of those soft-feathered death traps?

  Another thought occurred to her as she pushed that one away—a treacherous one. A thought of Rand al’Thor, resting in his room. She could go to him. . . .

  No! Not until she had her honor back. She would not go to him as a beggar. She would go to him as a woman of honor. Assuming that she could ever figure out what she was doing wrong.

  She shook her head and trotted toward the Aiel camp at the side of the green.

  CHAPTER 12

  Unexpected Encounters

  Egwene walked the cavernous halls of the White Tower, lost in thought. Her two Red keepers trailed along behind. They seemed a little sullen these days. Elaida ordered them to stay with Egwene more and more often; though the individuals changed, there were almost always two with her. And yet, it seemed that they could sense that Egwene considered them to be attendants rather than guards.

  It had been well over a month since Siuan had conveyed her disturbing news in Tel’aran’rhiod, but still Egwene thought about it. The events were a reminder that the world was coming apart. This was a time when the White Tower should have been a source of stability. Instead, it divided against itself while Rand al’Thor’s men bonded sisters. How could Rand have allowed such a thing? There was obviously little left of the youth with whom she’d grown up. Of course, there was little of the youthful Egwene left either. Gone were the days when the two of them had seemed destined to end up married, living on a little farm in the Two Rivers.

  That, oddly, led her to thinking of Gawyn. How long had it been since she’d last seen him, stealing kisses in Cairhien? Where was he now? Was he safe?

  Keep focused, she told herself. Clean the patch of floor you’re working on first before you move on to the rest of the house. Gawyn could look after himself; he’d done a competent job of that in the past. Too competent, in some cases.

  Siuan and the others would deal with the Asha’man matter. The other news was far more disturbing. One of the Forsaken, in the camp? A woman, yet channeling saidin instead of saidar? Egwene would have called it impossible, once. Yet she had seen ghosts in the halls of the White Tower, and the corridors seemed to rearrange on a daily basis. This was just another sign.

  She shivered. Halima had touched Egwene, supposedly massaging her headaches away. Those headaches disappeared as soon as Egwene had been captured; why hadn’t she considered that Halima might have been causing them? What else had the woman been plotting? What hidden knots would the Aes Sedai stumble over, what traps had she laid?

  One section of the floor at a time. Clean what you could reach, then move on.
Siuan and the others would have to deal with Halima’s plots, too.

  Egwene’s backside hurt, but the pain was growing increasingly irrelevant to her. Sometimes she laughed when beaten, sometimes not. The strap was unimportant. The greater pain—what had been done to Tar Valon—was far more demanding. She nodded to a group of white-clothed novices as they passed her in the hallway, and they bobbed down in curtsies. Egwene frowned, but didn’t chastise them—she just hoped that they wouldn’t draw penances from the trailing Reds for showing deference to Egwene.

  Her goal was the quarters of the Brown Ajah, the section that was now down in the wing. Meidani had taken her time volunteering to train Egwene today. The command had finally come today, weeks after the first dinner with Elaida. Oddly, however, Bennae Nalsad had also offered to give her instruction this day. Egwene hadn’t spoken to the Shienaran Brown since that first conversation, some weeks before. She’d never repeated lessons with the same woman twice. And yet, the name had been given to her in the morning as the first of the day’s visits.

  When she reached the east wing, which now held the Brown sector of the Tower, her Red minders reluctantly took up positions in the hallway outside, waiting for her return. Elaida probably would have liked them to stay with Egwene, but after the Reds themselves had been so exacting in protecting their boundary, there was little chance of another Ajah—even the mild Browns—letting a pair of Red sisters infiltrate their quarters. Egwene hurried her pace as she entered the section with brown tiled floors, passing bustling women in nondescript, muted dresses. It was going to be a full day, with her appointments with sisters, her scheduled beatings, and her regular novice load of scrubbing floors or other chores.

  She arrived at Bennae’s door, but hesitated there. Most sisters agreed to train Egwene only when forced into the duty, and the experience was often unpleasant. Some of Egwene’s teachers disliked her because of her affiliation with the rebels, others were annoyed by how easily she could craft weaves, and still others were infuriated to find that she would not show them respect like a novice.

  These “lessons,” however, had been among Egwene’s best chances to sow seeds against Elaida. She’d planted one of those during her first visit with Bennae. Had it begun to sprout?

  Egwene knocked, and then entered at the call to come in. The sitting room inside was cluttered with the refuse of scholarship. Stacks and stacks of books—like miniature city towers—leaned against one another. Skeletons of various creatures were mounted in various states of construction; the woman owned enough bones to populate a menagerie. Egwene shivered when she noticed a full human skeleton in the corner, held upright and bound together with threads, some detailed notations written directly on the bones in black ink.

  There was barely room to walk and only one clear place to sit—Bennae’s own stuffed chair, the armrests worn with a twin set of depressions, doubtless where the Brown’s arms had rested during countless late-night reading sessions. The low ceiling felt lower for the several mummified fowl and astronomical contraptions which hung above. Egwene had to duck her head beneath a model of the sun in order to reach the place where Bennae stood rifling through a stack of leather-bound volumes.

  “Ah,” she said as she noticed Egwene. “Good.” Slender in a bony sort of way, she had dark hair that was streaked with gray from age. The hair was in a bun, and she—like many Browns—wore a simple dress that hadn’t been fashionable for a century or two.

  Bennae moved over to her stuffed sitting chair, ignoring the stiffer chairs by the hearth—both of those had accumulated stacks of papers since Egwene’s previous visit. Egwene cleared off a stool, placing the dusty skeleton of a rat on the floor between two stacks of books about the reign of Artur Hawkwing.

  “Well, I suppose we should get on with your instruction, then,” Bennae said, settling back in her chair.

  Egwene kept her face calm. Had Bennae requested an opportunity to train Egwene again? Or had she been forced into it? Egwene could see an unsophisticated Brown sister getting repeatedly roped into a duty that nobody else wanted.

  At Bennae’s request, Egwene performed a number of weaves, work far beyond the skill of most novices but easy for Egwene, even with her power dampened by forkroot. She tried to tease out the Brown’s feelings on the relocation of her quarters, but Bennae—like most of the Browns Egwene had spoken to—preferred to avoid that topic.

  Egwene did some more weaves. After a time, she wondered just what the point of the meeting was. Hadn’t Bennae asked her to demonstrate most of these very same weaves during her previous visit?

  “Very well,” Bennae said, getting herself a cup of tea from a pot warming on a small coal brazier. She didn’t offer any tea to Egwene. “You are skilled enough at that. But I wonder. Do you have the sharpness of mind, the ability to deal with difficult situations, that an Aes Sedai is required to have?”

  Egwene said nothing, though she did pointedly pour herself some tea. Bennae did not object.

  “Let’s see . . .” Bennae mused. “Suppose that you were in a situation where you were in conflict with some members of your own Ajah. You have happened upon information you weren’t supposed to know, and your Ajah’s leaders are quite upset with you. Suddenly, you find yourself being sentenced to some most unpleasant duties, as if they are trying to sweep you under the rug and forget about you. Tell me, in this situation, how would you react?”

  Egwene almost choked on her tea. The Brown wasn’t very subtle. She had begun asking about the Thirteenth Depository, had she? And that had landed her in trouble? Few were supposed to know about the secret histories that Egwene had mentioned so casually during her previous visit here.

  “Well,” Egwene said, sipping her tea, “let me approach it with a clear mind. Best to view it from the perspective of the Ajah’s leaders, I should think.”

  Bennae frowned faintly. “I suppose.”

  “Now, in this situation you describe, can we assume that these secrets have been entrusted to the Ajah for safekeeping? Ah, good. Well, from their perspective, important and careful plans have been upset. Think of how it must look. Someone has learned secrets they should not. That whispers of a disturbing leak somewhere among your most trusted members.”

  Bennae paled. “I suppose I could see that.”

  “Then the best way to handle the situation would be twofold,” Egwene said, taking another sip of tea. It tasted terrible. “First, the leaders of the Ajah would have to be reassured. They need to know that it wasn’t their fault that the information leaked. If I were the hypothetical sister in trouble—and if I’d done nothing wrong—I’d go to them and explain. That way they could stop searching for the one who let information slip.”

  “But,” Bennae said, “that probably won’t help the sister—the hypothetical one in trouble—get out of her punishments.”

  “It couldn’t hurt,” Egwene said. “Likely, she’s being ‘punished’ to keep her out of the way while the Ajah leaders search for a traitor. When they know there isn’t one, they’ll be more likely to look at the fallen sister’s situation with empathy—particularly after she’s offered them a solution.”

  “Solution?” Bennae asked. Her teacup sat in her fingers, as if forgotten. “And which solution would you offer?”

  “The best one: competence. Obviously, some people among the Ajah know these secrets. Well, if this sister were to prove her trustworthiness and her capability, perhaps the leaders of her Ajah would realize the best place for her is as one of the caretakers of the secrets. An easy solution, if you consider it.”

  Bennae sat thoughtfully, a small mummified finch spinning slowly on its cord directly above her. “Yes, but will it work?”

  “It is certainly better than serving in some forgotten storeroom cataloguing scrolls,” Egwene said. “Unjust punishment sometimes cannot be avoided, but it is best never to let others forget that it is unjust. If she simply accepts the way people treat her, then it won’t be long before they assume she deserves the position
they’ve placed her in.” And thank you, Silviana, for that little bit of advice.

  “Yes,” Bennae said, nodding. “Yes, I do suppose that you are correct.”

  “I am always willing to help, Bennae,” Egwene said in a softer voice, turning back to her tea. “In, of course, hypothetical situations.”

  For a moment, Egwene worried that she’d gone too far in calling the Brown by her name. However, Bennae met her eyes, then actually went so far as to bow her head just slightly in thanks.

  If the hour spent with Bennae had been isolated, Egwene would still have found it remarkable. However, she was shocked to discover—upon leaving Bennae’s lair of a room—a novice waiting with a message instructing her to attend Nagora, a White sister. Egwene still had time before her meeting with Meidani, so she went. She couldn’t ignore a summons from a sister, though she would undoubtedly have to do extra chores later to make up for skipping the floor scrubbing.

  At the meeting with Nagora, Egwene found herself being trained in logic—and the “logical puzzles” presented sounded very similar to a request for help in dealing with a Warder who was growing frustrated with his increasing age and inability to fight. Egwene gave what help she could, which Nagora declared to be “logic without flaw” before releasing her. After that, there was another message, this one from Suana, one of the Sitters of the Yellow Ajah.

  A Sitter! It was the first time Egwene had been ordered to attend one of them. Egwene hurried to the appointment and was admitted by a maidservant. Suana’s quarters looked more like a garden than proper rooms. As a Sitter, Suana could demand quarters with windows, and she made full use of her inset balcony as an herb garden. But beyond that, she had mirrors positioned to reflect light into the room, which was overgrown with small potted trees, shrubs growing in large basins of earth, and even a small garden for carrots and radishes. Egwene noticed with displeasure a small pile of rotted tubers in one container, likely just harvested but somehow already spoiled.