A Crown of Swords

by Robert Jordan

  Merana had met her once before, or at least listened to her and been spoken to, when she was a novice. Sisters had come from every Ajah to see the woman, filled with an awe they could not hide. Once Cadsuane Melaidhrin had been the standard by which every new entry into the novice books was judged. Until Elayne Trakand, none had come to the White Tower in her lifetime who could match that standard, much less surpass it. In more ways than one, her like had not walked among Aes Sedai for a thousand years. A refusal to accept selection as a Sitter was unheard of, yet it was said she had refused, and at least twice. It was said she had spurned being raised head of the Green Ajah, too. It was said she once vanished from the Tower for ten years because the Hall intended to raise her Amyrlin. Not that she had ever spent a day more in Tar Valon than absolutely necessary. Word of Cadsuane came to the Tower, stories to make sisters gape, adventures to make those who dreamed of the shawl shiver. She would end a legend among Aes Sedai. If she was not already.

  The shawl had graced Merana’s shoulders for over twenty-five years when Cadsuane announced her retirement from the world, her hair already solid gray, and everyone assumed her long dead when the Aiel War erupted another twenty-five years on, but before the fighting was three months old, she reappeared, accompanied by two Warders, men long in the tooth yet still hard as iron. It was said Cadsuane had had more Warders over the years than most sisters had shoes. After the Aiel retreated from Tar Valon, she retired once more, but some said, more than half-seriously, that Cadsuane would never die so long as even a spark of adventure remained in the world.

  And that is the sort of nonsense that novices babble, Merana reminded herself firmly. Even we die eventually. Yet Cadsuane was still Cadsuane. And if she was not one of those sisters who had appeared in the city after al’Thor was taken, the sun would not set tonight. Merana moved her arms to adjust her shawl and realized it was hanging on a peg in her room. Ridiculous. She needed no reminders of who she was. If only it had been someone other than Cadsuane . . .

  A pair of Wise Ones standing in the mouth of a crossing corridor watched them pass, cold pale eyes in stony faces beneath their dark head scarves. Edarra and Leyn. Both could channel, and quite strongly; they might have risen high had they gone to the Tower as girls. Cadsuane went by without seeming to notice the wilders’ disapprobation. Annoura did, frowning and muttering, slender braids swaying as she shook her head. Merana kept her own eyes on the floor tiles.

  Undoubtedly it would fall to her now, explaining to Cadsuane the . . . compromise . . . that had been worked out with the Wise Ones last night, before she and the others were brought to the palace. Annoura did not know — she was no part of it — and Merana had small hope that Rafela or Verin would appear, or anyone else she might somehow foist the duty onto. It was a compromise, in a way, and perhaps the best that could be expected under the circumstances, yet she strongly questioned whether Cadsuane would see it so. She wished she did not have to be the one to convince her. Better to pour tea for those cursed men for a month. She wished she had not been so free with her tongue with young al’Thor. Knowing why he had made her serve tea was no balm for being sealed off from every advantage she might have gained from it. She would rather think she had been caught in some ta’veren swirling of the Pattern than believe that a young man’s eyes, like polished blue-gray gems, had set her babbling from pure fright, but either way, she had handed all the advantage to him on a tray. She wished . . .

  Wishing was for children. She had negotiated countless treaties, many of which had actually accomplished what was intended; she had ended three wars and stopped two dozen more before they began, faced kings and queens and generals and made them see reason. Even so . . . She found herself promising that she would not utter one word of complaint no matter how often that man made her play the maidservant if only Seonid would pop around the next corner, or Masuri, or Faeldrin, or anyone at all. Light! If only she could blink her eyes and find that everything since leaving Salidar had been a bad dream.

  Surprisingly, Cadsuane led them straight to the small room that Bera and Kiruna shared, deep in the bowels of the palace. Where the servants lived. A tight window, set high in the wall yet level with the paving stones of a courtyard outside, let in a little stream of light, but the room seemed murky. Cloaks and saddlebags and a few dresses hung from pegs in the cracked, yellowing plaster walls. Gouges marred the bare wooden floor, though some effort had been made to smooth them. A tiny battered round table stood in one corner, and an equally beaten washstand in another, with a chipped basin and pitcher. Merana eyed the small bed. It did not look that much narrower than the one she was forced to share with Seonid and Masuri, two doors farther down. That room was larger by perhaps a pace each way, but not meant for three. Coiren and the others still held in the Aiel tents probably were much more comfortable as prisoners.

  Neither Bera nor Kiruna was present, but Daigian was, a plump, pale woman who wore a thin silver chain in her long black hair, with a round moonstone dangling in the middle of her forehead. Her dark Cairhienin dress bore four thin stripes of color across the bodice, and she had added slashes in the skirts, white for her Ajah. A younger daughter of one of the lesser Houses, she had always minded Merana of a pouter pigeon. When Cadsuane entered, Daigian rose on her toes expectantly.

  There was only one chair in the room, little more than a stool with an excuse of a back. Cadsuane took that and sighed. “Tea, please. Two sips of what that boy poured, and I could have used my tongue to sole a shoe.”

  The glow of saidar immediately surrounded Daigian, though faintly, and a dented tin teapot rose from the table, flows of Fire heating the water as she opened a small brass-bound tea chest.

  With no other choice for place to sit, Merana settled onto the bed, adjusting her skirts and shifting on the lumpy mattress while she tried to order her thoughts. This might well be as important a negotiation as she had ever undertaken. After a moment, Annoura joined her, perching on the lip of the mattress.

  “I take it by your presence, Merana,” Cadsuane said abruptly, “that tales of the boy submitting to Elaida are false. Don’t look so surprised, child. Did you think I didn’t know your . . . associations?” She gave that word such a twist, it sounded as filthy as any soldier’s expletive. “And you, Annoura?”

  “I am here only to advise Berelain, though the truth of it is, she ignored my advice by coming in the first place.” The Taraboner woman held her head up, voice confident. She was rubbing her thumbs for all she was worth, though. She could not do well at the negotiating table if she was that transparent. “For the rest,” she said carefully, “I have reached no decision as yet.”

  “A wise decision, that,” Cadsuane murmured, with a pointed look at Merana. “It seems that in the last few years far too many sisters have forgotten they possess brains, or discretion. There was a time when Aes Sedai reached their decisions after calm deliberation, with the good of the Tower always in the front of their thoughts. Just remember what the Sanche girl got from meddling with al’Thor, Annoura. Walk too near a forge-fire, and you can be burned badly.”

  Merana lifted her chin, working her neck to ease its tightness. Realizing what she was doing, she made herself stop. The woman did not stand that far above her. Not really. Just higher than any other sister. “If I may ask . . . ”Too diffident, but worse to stop and start over. “ . . . what are your intentions, Cadsuane?” She struggled to maintain dignity. “Obviously, you have been . . . holding yourself aside . . . until now. Why have you decided to . . . approach . . . al’Thor at this particular time? You were . . . rather undiplomatic . . . with him.”

  “You might as well have slapped his face,” Annoura put in, and Merana colored. Of the two of them, Annoura should have been having the harder time with Cadsuane by far, but she was not the one stumbling over her words.

  Cadsuane shook her head in pitying style. “If you want to see what a man is made of, push him from a direction he doesn’t expect. There’s good metal in that boy, I
think, but he’s going to be difficult.” Steepling her fingers, she peered across them at the wall, musing to herself. “He has a rage in him fit to burn the world, and he holds it by a hair. Push him too far off balance . . . Phaw! Al’Thor’s not so hard yet as Logain Ablar or Mazrim Taim, but a hundred times as difficult, I fear.” Hearing those three names together clove Merana’s tongue to the roof of her mouth.

  “You have seen Logain and Taim both?” a staring Annoura said. “Taim, he is following al’Thor, so I hear.” Merana managed to swallow a relieved sigh. Tales of Dumai’s Wells had not had time to spread yet. They would, though.

  “I do have ears to catch rumors, too, Annoura,” Cadsuane said acerbically. “Though I could wish I didn’t, for what I hear of that pair. All my work thrown away to be done over. Others’ as well, but I did my share. And then there are these blackcoats, these Asha’man.” Taking a cup from Daigian, she smiled warmly and murmured thanks. The round-cheeked White seemed ready to curtsy, though all she did was retreat to a corner and fold her hands. She had been longer a novice, and Accepted, than anyone in living memory, barely allowed to remain in the Tower, gaining the ring by a fingernail and the shawl by an eyelash. Daigian was always self-effacing around other sisters.

  Breathing the steam from her teacup, Cadsuane went on, suddenly chatting pleasantly. “It was Logain, practically on my doorstep, that lured me away from my roses. Phaw! A scuffle at a sheep fair could have lured me from those Light-cursed plants. What’s the point if you use the Power, but do it without, and you grow ten thousand thorns for every — Phaw! I actually considered taking the oath as a Hunter, if the Council of Nine would allow it. Well. It was a nice few months, chasing down Logain, but once he was taken, escorting him to Tar Valon appealed as much as the roses. I wandered a bit, to see what I could find, perhaps a new Warder, though it’s a bit late for that in any fairness to the man, I suppose. Then I heard of Taim, and I was off to Saldaea as fast I could ride. There’s nothing for a bit of excitement like a man who can channel.” Abruptly her voice hardened, and her gaze. “Were either of you involved in that . . . vileness . . . right after the Aiel War?”

  Despite herself, Merana gave a confused start. The other woman’s eyes spoke of the block and the headsman’s axe. “What vileness? I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  That accusing glare hit Annoura so hard, she almost fell off the bed. “The Aiel War?” she gasped, steadying herself. “The years after, I spent trying to make the so-called Grand Coalition more than a name.”

  Merana looked at Annoura with interest. A good many of the Gray Ajah had scurried from capital to capital after, the war, in a futile effort to hold together the alliance that had formed against the Aiel, but she had never known Annoura was one of them. She could not be that bad a negotiator if she was. “So did I,” she said. Dignity. Since setting out after al’Thor from Caemlyn, she had not retained much of that. The few scraps remaining were too precious to lose. She made her voice calm, and firm. “What vileness do you mean, Cadsuane?”

  The gray-haired woman simply waved the question away, as though she had never spoken the word.

  For a moment, Merana wondered whether Cadsuane’s wits might be wandering. She had never heard of it happening to a sister, but most Aes Sedai did go into retreat at the close of their lives, far from the stratagems and turbulence that none but sisters ever knew. Far from everyone, often as not. Who could say what befell them before the end? One look at the clear, steady gaze regarding her over that teacup quickly disabused her of any such notion. Anyway, twenty-year-old vileness, whatever it had been, certainly could not hold a candle to what the world confronted now. And Cadsuane still had not answered her original questions. What did she intend? And why now?

  Before Merana could ask again, the door opened and Bera and Kiruna were herded in by Corele Hovian, a boyishly slim Yellow with thick black eyebrows and a mass of raven hair that gave her something of a wild appearance no matter how neatly she dressed, and she always dressed for a country dance, with masses of embroidery on her sleeves and bodice and up the sides of her skirts. There was barely room to move, with so many people in this confined space. Corele never failed to seem amused, whatever happened, but now she wore a wide smile somewhere between disbelief and outright laughter. Kiruna’s eyes flashed in a face of frozen arrogance, while Bera fumed, mouth tight and forehead creased. Until they saw Cadsuane. Merana supposed that for them, it must be as if she had found herself face to face with Alind Dyfelle or Sevlana Meseau or even Mabriam en Shereed. Their eyes bulged. Kiruna’s jaw dropped.

  “I thought you were dead,” Bera breathed.

  Cadsuane sniffed irritably. “I am growing tired of hearing that. The next imbecile I hear it from is going to yelp for a week.” Annoura began studying the toes of her slippers.

  “You’ll never guess where I found these two,” Corele said in her lilting Murandian accent. She tapped the side of her upturned nose, the way she did when about to tell a joke, or what she saw as one. Spots of color appeared in Bera’s cheeks, and larger in Kiruna’s. “Bera there was sitting meek as a mouse under the eyes of half a dozen of those Aiel wilders, who told me bold as you please that she couldn’t come with me until Sorilea — oh, now that woman’s a harridan to give you nightmares, she is — I couldn’t have Bera until Sorilea was done with her private chat with the other apprentice. Our darling Kiruna, there.”

  It was no longer a matter of spots. Kiruna and Bera reddened to their hair, refusing to meet anyone’s eye. Even Daigian stared at them.

  Relief surged through Merana in wonderful waves. She would not have to be the one to explain how the Wise Ones had interpreted that wretched al’Thor’s orders that the sisters were to obey them. They were not really apprentices; there were no lessons involved, of course. What could a great lot of wilders, savages at that, teach Aes Sedai? It was just that the Wise Ones liked to know where everyone fit. Just? Bera or Kiruna could tell how al’Thor had laughed — laughed! — and said it made no difference to him and he expected them to be obedient pupils. No one was having an easy time bending her neck, least of all Kiruna.

  Yet Cadsuane did not demand explanations. “I expected a dog’s dinner,” she said dryly, “but not a bucket from the midden. Let me see if I have the straight of it. You children who stand in rebellion against a lawfully raised Amyrlin have now somehow associated yourselves with the al’Thor boy, and if you are taking orders from these Aiel women, I assume you take his as well.” Her grunt was disgusted enough for a mouthful of rotten plums. Shaking her head, she peered into her teacup, then fixed the pair again. “Well, what’s one treason more or less? The Hall can put you on your knees from here to Tarmon Gai’don for penance, but they can only take your heads once. What of the rest, out in the Aiel camp? All Elaida’s, I suppose. Have they also . . . apprenticed . . . themselves? None of us have been allowed as close as the first row of tents. These Aiel seem to have no love of Aes Sedai.”

  “I do not know, Cadsuane,” Kiruna answered, so red-faced she appeared about to catch fire. “We have been kept apart.” Merana’s eyes widened. She had never before heard Kiruna sound deferential.

  Bera, on the other hand, drew a deep breath. She already stood straight, yet she seemed to straighten herself for an unpleasant task. “Elaida is not — ” she began heatedly.

  “Elaida is overambitious, as near as I can make out,” Cadsuane broke in, leaning forward so abruptly that Merana and Annoura both started back on the bed, though she was not looking at them, “and she may be a catastrophe simmering, but she is still the Amyrlin Seat, raised by the Hall of the Tower in full accordance with the laws of the Tower.”

  “If Elaida is a lawful Amyrlin, why have you not obeyed her order to return?” All that betrayed Bera’s lack of composure was the stillness of her hands on her skirts. Only a marked effort to keep from clutching or smoothing could hold them so motionless.

  “So one of you has a little backbone.” Cadsuane laughed softly, b
ut her eyes did not look mirthful at all. Leaning back, she sipped her tea. “Now sit down. I have a great many more questions.”

  Merana and Annoura rose, offering their places on the bed, but Kiruna simply stood peering at Cadsuane worriedly, and Bera glanced at her friend, then shook her head. Corele rolled her blue eyes, grinning broadly for some reason, but Cadsuane did not seem to care.

  “Half the rumors I hear,” she said, “concern the Forsaken being loose. It would hardly be a surprise, with all else, but do you have any evidence, for or against?”

  Before very long, Merana was glad to be sitting; before very long, she knew what laundry felt going through the laundress’s mangle. Cadsuane did all the questioning, dodging from topic to topic so you never knew what was coming next. Corele held her peace except for chuckling now and then or shaking her head, and Daigian did not even do that, of course. Merana caught the worst, her and Bera and Kiruna, yet Annoura was certainly not spared. Every time Berelain’s advisor relaxed, thinking she was in the clear, Cadsuane skewered her anew.

  The woman wanted to know everything, from the al’Thor boy’s authority with the Aiel to why a Sea Folk Wavemistress was anchored in the river, from whether Moiraine truly was dead to whether the boy really had rediscovered Traveling and whether Berelain had bedded him or had any intention of it. What Cadsuane thought of the answers was impossible to say, except once, when she learned that Alanna had bonded al’Thor, and how. Her mouth compressed to a thin line and she frowned a hole though the wall, but while everyone else expressed disgust, Merana thought of Cadsuane saying she had considered taking another Warder herself.