The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  “Drink it all,” Nynaeve muttered. “Swords! Swords and muscles and no brains!”

  “We are not going to destroy you,” Elayne said firmly, and Aviendha nodded.

  “As you say, Aes Sedai. But the old stories are all clear on one point. We must never fight Aes Sedai. If you bring your lightnings and your balefire against me, I will dance with them, but I will not harm you.”

  “Stabbing people,” Nynaeve growled. She lowered Dailin’s head, and laid a hand on the woman’s brow. Dailin’s eyes had closed again. “Stabbing women!” Aviendha shifted her feet and frowned again, and she was not alone among the Aiel.

  “Balefire,” Egwene said. “Aviendha, what is balefire?”

  The Aiel woman turned her frown on her. “Do you not know, Aes Sedai? In the old stories, Aes Sedai wielded it. The stories make it a fearsome thing, but I know no more. It is said we have forgotten much that we once knew.”

  “Perhaps the White Tower has forgotten much, too,” Egwene said. I knew of it in that . . . dream, or whatever it was. It was as real as Tel’aran’rhiod. I’d gamble with Mat on that.

  “No right!” Nynaeve snapped. “No one has a right to tear bodies so! It is not right!”

  “Is she angry?” Aviendha asked uneasily. Chiad and Bain and Jolien exchanged worried looks.

  “It is all right,” Elayne said.

  “It is better than all right,” Egwene added. “She is getting angry, and it is much better than all right.”

  The glow of saidar surrounded Nynaeve suddenly—Egwene leaned forward, trying to see, and so did Elayne—and Dailin started up with a scream, eyes wide open. In an instant, Nynaeve was easing her back down, and the glow faded. Dailin’s eyes slid shut, and she lay there panting.

  I saw it, Egwene thought. I . . . think I did. She was not sure she had even been able to make out all the many flows, much less the way Nynaeve had woven them together. What Nynaeve had done in those few seconds had seemed like weaving four carpets at once while blindfolded.

  Nynaeve used the bloody bandages to wipe Dailin’s stomach, smearing away bright red new blood and black crusts of dried old. There was no wound, no scar, only healthy skin considerably paler than Dailin’s face.

  With a grimace, Nynaeve took the bloody cloths, stood up, and threw them into the river. “Wash the rest of that off of her,” she said, “and put some clothes back on her. She’s cold. And be ready to feed her. She will be hungry.” She knelt by the water to wash her hands.

  CHAPTER

  39

  Threads in the Pattern

  Jolien put an unsteady hand to where the wound had been in Dailin’s middle; when she touched smooth skin, she gasped as if she had not believed her own eyes.

  Nynaeve straightened, drying her hands on her cloak. Egwene had to admit that good wool did better for a towel than silk or velvet. “I said wash her and get some clothes on her,” Nynaeve snapped.

  “Yes, Wise One,” Jolien said quickly, and she, Chiad, and Bain all leaped to obey.

  A short laugh burst from Aviendha, a laugh almost at the edge of tears. “I have heard that a Wise One in the Jagged Spire sept is said to be able to do this, and one in the Four Holes sept, but I always thought it was boasting.” She drew a deep breath, regaining her composure. “Aes Sedai, I owe you a debt. My water is yours, and the shade of my septhold will welcome you. Dailin is my second-sister.” She saw Nynaeve’s uncomprehending look and added, “She is my mother’s sister’s daughter. Close blood, Aes Sedai. I owe a blood debt.”

  “If I have any blood to spill,” Nynaeve said dryly, “I will spill it myself. If you wish to repay me, tell me if there is a ship at Jurene. The next village south of here?”

  “The village where the soldiers fly the White Lion banner?” Aviendha said. “There was a ship there when I scouted yesterday. The old stories mention ships, but it was strange to see one.”

  “The Light send it is still there.” Nynaeve began putting away her folded papers of powdered herbs. “I have done what I can for the girl, Aviendha, and we must go on. All that she needs now is food and rest. And try not to let people stick swords in her.”

  “What comes, comes, Aes Sedai,” the Aiel woman replied.

  “Aviendha,” Egwene said, “feeling as you do about rivers, how do you cross them? I am sure there is at least one river nearly as big as the Erinin between here and the Waste.”

  “The Alguenya,” Elayne said. “Unless you went around it.”

  “You have many rivers, but some have things called bridges where we had need to cross, and others we could wade. For the rest, Jolien remembered that wood floats.” She slapped the trunk of a tall whitewood. “These are big, but they float as well as a branch. We found dead ones and made ourselves a . . . ship . . . a little ship, of two or three lashed together to cross the big river.” She said it matter-of-factly.

  Egwene stared in wonder. If she were as afraid of something as the Aiel obviously were of rivers, could she make herself face it the way they did? She did not think so. What about the Black Ajah, a small voice asked. Have you stopped being afraid of them? That is different, she told it. There’s no bravery in that. I either hunt them, or else I sit like a rabbit waiting for a hawk. She quoted the old saying to herself. “It is better to be the hammer than the nail.”

  “We had best be on our way,” Nynaeve said.

  “In a moment,” Elayne told her. “Aviendha, why have you come all this way and put up with such hardship?”

  Aviendha shook her head disgustedly. “We have not come far at all; we were among the last to set out. The Wise Ones nipped at me like wild dogs circling a calf, saying I had other duties.” Suddenly she grinned, gesturing to the other Aiel. “These stayed back to taunt me in my misery, so they said, but I do not think the Wise Ones would have let me go if they had not been there to companion me.”

  “We seek the one foretold,” Bain said. She was holding a sleeping Dailin so Chiad could slip a shirt of brown linen onto her. “He Who Comes With the Dawn.”

  “He will lead us out of the Three-fold Land,” Chiad added. “The prophecies say he was born of Far Dareis Mai.”

  Elayne looked startled. “I thought you said the Maidens of the Spear were not allowed to have children. I am sure I was taught that.” Bain and Chiad exchanged those looks again, as if Elayne had come near truth and yet missed it once more.

  “If a Maiden bears a child,” Aviendha explained carefully, “she gives the child to the Wise Ones of her sept, and they pass the child to another woman in such a way that none knows whose child it is.” She, too, sounded as if she were explaining that stone is hard. “Every woman wants to foster such a child in the hope she may raise He Who Comes With the Dawn.”

  “Or she may give up the spear and wed the man,” Chiad said, and Bain added, “There are sometimes reasons one must give up the spear.”

  Aviendha gave them a level look, but continued as if they had not spoken. “Except that now the Wise Ones say he is to be found here, beyond the Dragonwall. ‘Blood of our blood mixed with the old blood, raised by an ancient blood not ours.’ I do not understand it, but the Wise Ones spoke in such a way as to leave no doubts.” She paused, obviously choosing her words. “You have asked many questions, Aes Sedai. I wish to ask one. You must understand that we look for omens and signs. Why do three Aes Sedai walk a land where the only hand without a knife in it is a hand too weak with hunger to grasp the hilt? Where do you go?”

  “Tear,” Nynaeve said briskly, “unless we stay here talking until the Heart of the Stone crumbles to dust.” Elayne began adjusting the cord of her bundle and the strap of her scrip for walking, and after a moment Egwene did the same.

  The Aiel women were looking at one another, Jolien frozen in the act of closing Dailin’s gray-brown coat. “Tear?” Aviendha said in a cautious tone. “Three Aes Sedai walking through a troubled land on their way to Tear. This is a strange thing. Why do you go to Tear, Aes Sedai?”

  Egwene glanced at Nynaeve
. Light, a moment ago they were laughing, and now they’re as tense as they ever were.

  “We hunt some evil women,” Nynaeve said carefully. “Darkfriends.”

  “Shadowrunners.” Jolien twisted her mouth around the word as if she had bitten into a rotten apple.

  “Shadowrunners in Tear,” Bain said, and as if part of the same sentence Chiad added, “And three Aes Sedai seeking the Heart of the Stone.”

  “I did not say we were going to the Heart of the Stone,” Nynaeve said sharply. “I merely said I did not want to stay here till it falls to dust. Egwene, Elayne, are you ready?” She started out of the thicket without waiting for an answer, walking staff thumping the ground and long strides carrying her south.

  Egwene and Elayne made hasty goodbyes before following after her. The four Aiel on their feet stood watching them go.

  When the two of them were a little way beyond the trees, Egwene said, “My heart almost stopped when you named yourself. Weren’t you afraid they might try to kill you, or to take you prisoner? The Aiel War was not that long ago, and whatever they said about not harming women who don’t carry spears, they looked ready enough to use those spears on anything, to me.”

  Elayne shook her head ruefully. “I have just learned how much I do not know about the Aiel, but I was taught that they do not think of the Aiel War as a war at all. From the way they behaved toward me, I think maybe that much of what I learned is truth. Or maybe it was because they think I am Aes Sedai.”

  “I know they are strange, Elayne, but no one can call three years of battles anything but a war. I do not care how much they fight among themselves, a war is a war.”

  “Not to them. Thousands of Aiel crossed the Spine of the World, but apparently they saw themselves more like thief-takers, or headsmen, come after King Laman of Cairhien for the crime of cutting down Avendoraldera. To the Aiel, it was not a war; it was an execution.”

  Avendoraldera, according to one of Verin’s lectures, had been an offshoot of the Tree of Life itself, brought to Cairhien some five hundred years ago as an unprecedented offer of peace from the Aiel, given along with the right to cross the Waste, a right otherwise given to none but peddlers, gleemen, and the Tuatha’an. Much of Cairhien’s wealth had been built on the trade in ivory and perfumes and spices and, most of all, silk, from the lands beyond the Waste. Not even Verin had any idea of how the Aiel had come by a sapling of Avendesora—for one thing, the old books were clear that it made no seed; for another, no one knew where the Tree of Life was, except for a few stories that were clearly wrong, but surely the Tree of Life could have nothing to do with the Aiel—or of why the Aiel had called the Cairhienin the Watersharers, or insisted their trains of merchant wagons fly a banner bearing the trefoil leaf of Avendesora.

  Egwene supposed, grudgingly, that she could understand why they had started a war—even if they did not think it was one—after King Laman cut down their gift to make a throne unlike any other in the world. Laman’s Sin, she had heard it called. According to Verin, not only had Cairhien’s trade across the Waste ended with the war, but those Cairhienin who ventured into the Waste now vanished. Verin claimed they were said to be “sold as animals” in the lands beyond the Waste, but not even she understood how a man or a woman could be sold.

  “Egwene,” Elayne said, “you know who He Who Comes With the Dawn must be, don’t you?”

  Staring at Nynaeve’s back still well ahead of them, Egwene shook her head—Does she mean to race us to Jurene?—then almost stopped walking. “You do not mean—?”

  Elayne nodded. “I think so. I do not know much of the Prophecies of the Dragon, but I have heard a few lines. One I remember is, ‘On the slopes of Dragonmount shall he be born, born of a maiden wedded to no man.’ Egwene, Rand does look like an Aiel. Well, he looks like the pictures I have seen of Tigraine, too, but she vanished before he was born, and I hardly think she could have been his mother anyway. I think Rand’s mother was a Maiden of the Spear.”

  Egwene frowned in thought as she hurried along, running everything she knew of Rand’s birth through her head. He had been raised by Tam al’Thor after Kari al’Thor died, but if what Moiraine said was true, they could not be his real mother and father. Nynaeve had sometimes seemed to know some secret about Rand’s birth. But I will bet I couldn’t pry it out of her with a fork!

  They caught up to Nynaeve, Egwene glowering as she thought, Nynaeve staring straight ahead toward Jurene and that ship, and Elayne frowning at the pair of them as if they were two children sulking over who should have the larger piece of cake.

  After a time of silent strides, Elayne said, “You handled that very well, Nynaeve. The Healing, and the rest, too. I do not think they ever doubted you were Aes Sedai. Or that we all were, because of the way you bore yourself.”

  “You did do a good job,” Egwene said after a minute. “That was the first time I have ever really watched what is done during a Healing. It makes making lightning look like mixing oatcake.”

  A surprised smile appeared on Nynaeve’s face. “Thank you,” she murmured, and reached over to give Egwene’s hair a little tug the way she had when Egwene was a little girl.

  I am not a little girl any longer. The moment passed as quickly as it had come, and they went on in silence once more. Elayne sighed loudly.

  They covered another mile, or a little more, swiftly, despite swinging in from the river to go around the thickets along the bank. Nynaeve insisted on staying well clear of the trees. Egwene thought it was silly to think more Aiel would be hiding in the copses, but the swing inland did not add much distance to what they had to cover; none of the growths were very big.

  Elayne watched the trees, though, and she was the one who suddenly screamed, “Look out!”

  Egwene jerked her head around; men were stepping out from among the trees, slings whirling ’round their heads. She reached for saidar, and something struck her head, and darkness drank everything.

  Egwene could feel herself swaying, feel something moving under her. Her head seemed to be nothing but pain. She tried to raise a hand to her temples, but something dug into her wrists, and her hands did not move.

  “—better than lying there all day waiting for dark,” a man’s rough voice said. “Who knows if another ship would come by close in? And I don’t trust that boat. It leaks.”

  “You do better hope Adden does believe you did see those rings before you did decide,” another man said. “He does want fat cargoes, not women, I think.” the first man muttered something coarse about what Adden could do with his leaky boat, and the cargoes, too.

  Her eyes opened. Silver-flecked spots danced across her vision; she thought she might be going to throw up on the ground swaying past under her head. She was tied across the back of a horse, her wrists and ankles joined by a rope running under its belly, her hair hanging down.

  It was still daylight. She craned her neck to look around. So many rough-dressed men on horses surrounded her that she could not see whether Nynaeve and Elayne had been captured, as well. Some of the men wore bits of armor—a battered helmet, or a dented breastplate, or a jerkin sewn all over with metal scales—but most wore only coats that had not been cleaned in months, if ever. From the smell, the men had not cleaned themselves in months, either. They all wore swords, at their waists or on their backs.

  Rage hit her, and fear, but most of all white-hot anger. I won’t be a prisoner. I won’t be bound! I won’t! She reached for saidar and the pain nearly lifted the top of her head; she barely stifled a moan.

  The horse paused for a moment of shouts and the creak of rusty hinges, then went ahead a little further, and the men began to dismount. As they moved apart, she could see something of where they were. A log palisade surrounded them, built atop a large, round earthen mound, and men with bows stood guard on a wooden walk built just high enough for them to see over the rough-hewn ends of the logs. One low, windowless log house seemed to be built into the mounded dirt under the wall. There was no other struc
ture beyond a few lean-to sheds. Aside from the men and horses that had just entered, the rest of the open space was filled with cook fires, and tethered horses, and more unwashed men. There must have been at least a hundred. Caged goats and pigs and chickens filled the air with squeals and grunts and clucks that blended with coarse shouts and laughter to make a din that pierced her head.

  Her eyes found Nynaeve and Elayne, bound head down across saddleless horses as she was. Neither seemed to be stirring; the very end of Nynaeve’s braid dragged across the dirt as her horse stirred. A small hope faded; that one of them might be free, to help whoever was held escape. Light, I cannot stand to be a prisoner again. Not again. Gingerly, she tried reaching for saidar again. The pain was not so bad this time—merely as if someone had dropped a rock on her head—but it shattered the emptiness before she could even think of a rose.

  “One of them’s awake!” a man’s panicked voice shouted.

  Egwene tried to hang limp and look unthreatening. How in the Light could I look threatening tied up like a sack of meal! Burn me, I have to buy time. I have to! “I will not harm you,” she told the sweaty-faced fellow who came running toward her. Or she tried to tell him. She was not sure how much she had actually said before something crashed into her head again and darkness rolled over her in a wave of nausea.

  Waking was easier the next time. Her head still hurt, but not as much as it had, though her thoughts did seem to spin dizzily. At least my stomach isn’t. . . . Light, I’d better not think of that. There was a taste of sour wine and something bitter in her mouth. Strips of lamplight showed through horizontal cracks in a crudely made wall, but she lay in darkness, on her back. On dirt, she thought. The door did not seem to fit well either, but it looked all too sturdy.

  She pushed herself to her hands and knees, and was surprised to find she was not tied in any way. Except for that one wall of unpeeled logs, the others all seemed to be of rough stone. The light through the cracks was enough to show her Nynaeve and Elayne lying sprawled on the dirt. There was blood on the Daughter-Heir’s face. Neither of them moved except for the rise and fall of their chests as they breathed. Egwene hesitated between trying to wake them immediately and seeing what lay on the other side of that wall. Just a peek, she told herself. I might as well see what we have guarding us before I wake them.