“Now let me see. What do I have to fear from you? The stories out of Cairhien are the talk of the Tower, but even if sisters really were obeying the al’Thor boy, which I for one cannot believe, everyone blames Coiren. She had the responsibility of bringing him here, and she has as good as been tried and convicted, in the minds of the sisters.” Elaida stopped in front of Alviarin, hemming her into the corner. That smile never touched her eyes. She smiled, and her eyes glittered. Alviarin could not break away from that gaze. “In the last week, we’ve heard a good many things about the ‘Black Tower,’ as well.” Elaida’s lips twisted in disgust around the name. “It seems there are even more men than you supposed. But everyone thinks Toveine must have had the sense to learn that before she attacked. There has been a good deal of discussion over it. If she comes dragging back here defeated, she will harvest the blame. So your threats . . .”
Alviarin staggered into the wall, blinking away spots, before she even realized that the other woman had slapped her. Her cheek already felt swollen. The glow of saidar had surrounded Elaida, and the shield settled on Alviarin before she could twitch, cutting her off from the Power. But Elaida did not intend to use the Power. She drew back a fist. Still smiling.
Slowly, the woman drew a deep breath and let her hand fall. She did not remove the shield, however. “Would you really use that?” she asked in an almost mild tone.
Alviarin’s hand sprang away from the hilt of her belt knife. Grabbing it had been a reflex, but even if Elaida had not been holding the Power, killing her when so many Sitters knew they were together would have been as good as killing herself. Still, her face burned when Elaida sniffed contemptuously.
“I look forward to seeing your neck stretched on the headsman’s block for treason, Alviarin, but until I have the proof I need, there are still a few things I can do. Do you remember how many times you had Silviana come to give me private penance? I hope you do, because you are going to take ten for every day I suffered. And, oh, yes.” With a jerk, she pulled the Keeper’s stole roughly from Alviarin’s neck. “Since no one could find you when the rebels arrived, I asked the Hall to remove you as Keeper. Not the full Hall, of course. You may still have a little influence there. But it was surprisingly easy to gain the consensus from those who were sitting that day. A Keeper is supposed to be with her Amyrlin, not wandering off on her own. On second thought, you may not have any influence at all, since it turns out you were hiding in the city all along. Or did you sail back to find disaster, and actually think you could recover something from the ruins?
“No matter. It might have been better for you to leap on the first ship you could find leaving Tar Valon. But I must admit, the thought of you scuttling from village to village ashamed to show your face to another sister pales beside the pleasure I’ll take seeing you suffer. Now get out of my sight before I decide it should be the birch rather than Silviana’s strap.” Tossing the white stole to the floor, she turned her back and released saidar, gliding toward her chair as if Alviarin had ceased to exist.
Alviarin did not leave, she fled, running with the feel of the Darkhounds’ breath on the back of her neck. She had barely been able to think since she heard the word treason. That word, echoing in her head, made her want to howl. Treason could only mean one thing. Elaida knew, and she was searching for proof. The Dark Lord have mercy. But he never did. Mercy was for those afraid to be strong. She was not afraid. She was a skin stuffed to bursting with terror.
Back down through the Tower she fled, and if there was so much as a servant in the hallways, she did not see him. Horror blinded her eyes to anything not directly in her path. All the way back down to the sixth level she ran, to her own apartments. At least, she supposed they were still hers for the moment. The rooms with their balcony overlooking the great square in front of the Tower went with the office of Keeper. For the moment, it was enough that she still had rooms. And a chance to live.
The furnishings were still the Domani pieces left by the previous occupant, all pale striped wood inlaid with pearlshell and amber. In the bedchamber, she threw open one of the wardrobes and fell to her knees, pushing aside dresses to rummage in the back for a small chest, a box less than two hands square, that had been hers for many years. The carving on the box was intricate but clumsy, rows of varied knots apparently done by a carver with more ambition than skill. Her hands shook as she carried it to a table, and she set it down to wipe clammy palms on her dress. The trick to opening the box was simply a matter of spreading her fingers as wide as they would go to press simultaneously at four knots in the carving, no two alike. The lid lifted slightly, and she threw it back, revealing her most precious possession wrapped in a small bundle of brown cloth to keep it from rattling if a maid shook the box. Most Tower servants would not risk stealing, but most did not mean all.
For a moment, Alviarin only stared at the package. Her most precious possession, a thing from the Age of Legends, but she had never dared use it before. Only in the worst emergency, Mesaana had said, the most desperate need, yet what need could be more dire than this? Mesaana said the thing could take hammer blows without breaking, but she undid the wrappings with the care she would have used with a piece of fine blown glass, revealing a ter’angreal, a brilliant red rod no larger than her forefinger, utterly smooth except for a few fine lines worked into the surface in a sinuous interconnecting pattern. Embracing the Source, she touched that pattern with hair-thin flows of Fire and Earth at two of the interconnections. That would not have been necessary in the Age of Legends, but something called the “standing flows” no longer existed. A world where almost any ter’angreal could be used by people unable to channel seemed odd beyond comprehension. Why had it been allowed?
Pressing one end of the rod hard with her thumb—the One Power was not enough, by itself—she sat down heavily and leaned against the chair’s low back, staring at the thing in her hand. It was done. She felt hollow, now, a vast empty space with fears fluttering through the darkness like enormous bats.
Instead of rewrapping the ter’angreal, she tucked it into her belt pouch and got up long enough to stuff the box back into the wardrobe. Until she knew she was safe, she did not intend to let that rod out of her possession. But then all she could do was sit and wait, rocking back and forth with her hands clasped between her knees. She could not stop rocking any more than she could stop the low moans that trickled between her teeth. Since the founding of the Tower, no sister had ever been charged with being Black Ajah. Oh, there had been suspicions by individual sisters, and from time to time Aes Sedai had died to make sure those suspicions never went further, but never had it come to official charges. If Elaida was willing to speak openly of the headsman’s block, she must be close to bringing charges. Very close. Black sisters had been made to disappear, too, when suspicions grew too great. The Black Ajah remained hidden whatever the cost. She wished she could stop moaning.
Suddenly the light in the room dimmed, enveloping the chamber in swirling twilight shadows. The sunlight at the casements seemed unable to penetrate beyond the glass panes. Alviarin was on her knees in a breath, eyes down. She trembled with wanting to pour out her fears, but with the Chosen, the forms must be followed. “I live to serve, Great Mistress,” she said, and nothing more. She could not waste a moment, much less an hour screaming in pain. Her hands were clutched together to keep them from shaking.
“What is your grave emergency, child?” It was a woman’s voice, but a voice of crystal chimes. Displeased chimes. Only displeased. Angry chimes might have meant death on the spot. “If you think I will raise a finger to get the Keeper’s stole back for you, you are sadly mistaken. You can still do what I wish done, with a little extra effort. And you may consider your penances with the Mistress of Novices a small punishment from me. I did warn you about pushing Elaida quite so hard.”
Alviarin swallowed her protests. Elaida was not a woman to bend without hard pushing. Mesaana had to know that. But protests could be dangerous, with the
Chosen. Many things were dangerous, with the Chosen. In any case, Silviana’s strap was a trifle compared to the headsman’s axe.
“Elaida knows, Great Mistress,” she breathed, raising her eyes. In front of her stood a woman of light-and-shadow, clothed in light-and-shadow, all stark blacks and silvery whites that flowed from one to the other and back. Silver eyes frowned from a face of smoke, with silver lips drawn in a tight line. It was only Illusion, and really not done any better than Alviarin could have. A flash of green silk skirt embroidered with elaborate bands of bronze showed as Mesaana glided across the Domani carpet. But Alviarin could not see the weaves that made the Illusion any more than she had felt those the woman had used to arrive or cast the room in shadows. For all she could sense, Mesaana could not channel at all! The lust for those two secrets usually cut at her, but today she hardly noticed. “She knows I am Black Ajah, Great Mistress. If she has uncovered me, then she has had someone digging deep. Dozens of us may be at risk, perhaps all of us.” Best to make a threat as large as possible if you wanted to be sure of a response. It might even be so.
But Mesaana’s response was a dismissive wave of one now-silver hand. Her face glowed like a moon around eyes blacker than coals. “That is ridiculous. Elaida cannot decide from one day to the next whether she even believes the Black Ajah exists. You are just trying to save yourself a little pain. Perhaps a little more will instruct you in your error.” Alviarin began to plead as Mesaana raised that hand higher, and a weave she remembered much too well formed in the air. She had to make the woman understand!
Abruptly, the shadows in the room lurched. Everything seemed to shift sideways as the darkness thickened in midnight lumps. And then the darkness was gone. Startled, Alviarin found herself with her begging hands stretched up toward a blue-eyed woman of flesh and blood, garbed in bronze-embroidered green. A tantalizingly familiar woman who looked just short of her middle years. She had known Mesaana walked the Tower disguised as one of the sisters, though no Chosen she had met showed any sign of agelessness, but she could not match that face to any name. And she realized something else, as well. That face was afraid. Hiding it, but afraid.
“She’s been very useful,” Mesaana said, not sounding afraid at all, in a voice that tugged the edge of recognition, “and now I will have to kill her.”
“You were always . . . overly wasteful,” replied a harsh voice, like rotten bone crumbling underfoot.
Alviarin fell over in shock at the tall shape of a man in sinuous black armor, all overlapping plates like the scales of a snake, standing in front of one window. It was not a man, though. That bloodless face had no eyes, just smooth dead white skin where they should have been. She had encountered Myrddraal before, in the service of the Dark Lord, and even managed to meet their eyeless gazes without giving way to the terror those stares engendered, but this one made her scrabble back across the floor until her back jarred a leg of the table. Lurks were alike as two raindrops, tall and lean and identical, but this one stood a head taller, and fear seemed to radiate from it, soaking into her bones. Unthinking, she reached for the Source. And nearly screamed. The Source was gone! She was not shielded; there was simply nothing there for her to embrace! The Myrddraal looked at her and smiled. Lurks never smiled. Never. Her breath came in ragged panting.
“She can be useful,” the Myrddraal rasped. “I would not want the Black Ajah destroyed.”
“Who are you to challenge one of the Chosen?” Mesaana demanded contemptuously, then ruined the effect by licking her lips.
“Do you think Hand of the Shadow is just a name?” The Myrddraal’s voice no longer grated. Hollow, it seemed to boom down caverns from some unimaginable distance. The creature grew as it spoke, swelling in size till its head brushed the ceiling, over two spans up. “You were summoned, and you did not come. My hand reaches far, Mesaana.”
Shaking visibly, the Chosen opened her mouth, perhaps to plead, but suddenly black fire flashed around her, and she screamed as her clothing fell away in dust. Bands of black flame bound her arms to her sides, wrapped tight around her legs, and a seething ball of black appeared in her mouth, forcing her jaws wide. She writhed there, standing naked and helpless, and the look in her rolling eyes made Alviarin want to soil herself.
“Do you want to know why one of the Chosen must be punished?” The voice was a bone-grating rasp once more, the Myrddraal seemingly only a too-tall Lurk, but Alviarin was not fooled. “Do you want to watch?” it asked.
She should go facedown on the floor, grovel for her life, but she could not move. She could not look away from that eyeless stare. “No, Great Lord,” she managed with a mouth as dry as dust. She knew. It could not be, but she knew. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, she realized.
The Myrddraal smiled again. “Many have fallen from great heights for wanting to know too much.”
It flowed toward her—no; not it—the Great Lord, clothed in the skin of a Myrddraal, flowed toward her. He walked on legs, yet there was no other description for the way he moved. The pale, black-clad shape bent toward her, and she would have shrieked when he touched a finger to her forehead. She would have shrieked if she could have summoned any sound at all. Her lungs were airless sacks. The touch burned like red-hot iron. Vaguely, she wondered why she did not smell her own flesh burning. The Great Lord straightened, and the searing pain dwindled, vanished. Her terror did not lessen in the slightest, though.
“You are marked as mine,” the Great Lord rasped. “Mesaana will not harm you, now. Unless I give her permission. You will find who threatens my creatures here and deliver them to me.” He turned away from her, and the dark armor fell from his body. She was startled when it hit the carpeted floor tiles with a crash of steel rather than simply vanishing. He was clothed in black, and she could not have said whether it was silk or leather or something else. The darkness of it seemed to drink the light from the room. Mesaana began to thrash in her bonds, keening shrilly past the gag in her mouth. “Go now,” he said, “if you wish to live another hour.” The sound coming from Mesaana rose to a despairing scream.
Alviarin did not know how she got out of her rooms—she could not understand how she was upright when her legs felt like water—but she found herself running through the corridors, skirts pulled to her knees and running as hard as she could. Suddenly the head of a wide staircase loomed in front of her, and she barely managed to stop from running right out into the air. Sagging against the wall, shaking, she stared down the curving flight of white marble steps. In her mind, she could see her body breaking as it crashed down the stairway.
Breathing raggedly, in hoarse, raw-throated pants, she put a trembling hand to her forehead. Her thoughts tumbled one over another, as she would have down the stairs. The Great Lord had marked her as his. Her fingers slid across smooth unblemished skin. She had always prized knowledge—power grew from knowledge—but she did not want to know what was happening in the rooms she had left. She wished she did not know that anything was happening. The Great Lord had marked her, but Mesaana would find a way to kill her, for knowing that. The Great Lord had marked her and given her a command. She could live, if she found who was hunting the Black Ajah. Straightening her back with an effort, she hurriedly scrubbed at the tears on her cheeks with the heels of her palms. She could not pull her eyes away from the stairs falling away in front of her. Elaida surely suspected her, but if there was no more to it than that, she could always manufacture a hunt. It just had to include Elaida herself as a threat to be extinguished. Delivered to the Great Lord. Her fingers fluttered to her forehead again. She had the Black Ajah at her command. Smooth, unblemished skin. Talene had been there, in Elaida’s rooms. Why had she looked at Yukiri and Doesine that way? Talene was Black, though she did not know that Alviarin was, of course. Would any mark show in a mirror? Was there something that others could see? If she had to manufacture a scheme for Elaida’s supposed hunters, Talene might be a place to start. She tried to trace the route any message would have taken from
heart to heart before it reached Talene, but she could not stop staring down the stairs, seeing her body bounce and break its way to the bottom. The Great Lord had marked her.
CHAPTER
22
One Answer
Pevara waited with a touch of impatience while the slim little Accepted placed the rimmed silver tray on a side table and uncovered the dish of cakes. A short woman with a serious face, Pedra was not being laggard, or resentful over having to spend the morning fetching and carrying for a Sitter, just precise and careful. Those were useful qualities, to be encouraged. Still, when the accepted asked whether she should pour the wine, Pevara said crisply, “We will do for ourselves, child. You may wait in the anteroom.” She almost told the young woman to go back to her studies.
Pedra spread her banded white skirts in a graceful curtsy without any sign of being flustered the way Accepted often were when a Sitter showed snappishness. All too frequently, Accepted took any bite in a Sitter’s tone as an opinion on their fitness for the shawl, as if Sitters had no other concerns.
Pevara waited until the door closed behind Pedra and the latch clicked before nodding approvingly. “That one will be raised Aes Sedai soon,” she said. It was satisfying when any woman attained the shawl, but especially when the woman had appeared unpromising to begin with. Small pleasures seemed the only ones available, these days.
“Not one of ours, though, I think” was the reply from her surprising guest, who turned from a study of the row of painted miniatures of Pevara’s dead family that stood in a line on the wave-carved marble mantel above the fireplace. “She’s uncertain about men. I believe they make her nervous.”
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