“Aes Sedai,” Amys said, “you can make a request for help sound a demand.” Nynaeve’s mouth tightened—demand? She had all but begged. Demand, indeed!—but the Aiel woman did not seem to notice. Or chose to ignore it. “Yet a danger to Rand al’Thor . . . . We cannot allow the Shadow to have that. There is a way.”
“Dangerous.” Bair shook her head vigorously. “This young woman knows less than Egwene did when she came to us. It is too dangerous for her.”
“Then maybe I could—” Egwene began, and the two cut her off as one.
“You are going to complete your training; you are too eager to go beyond what you know,” Bair said sharply at the same time Amys said, not the slightest bit softer, “You are not there in Tanchico, you do not know the place, and you cannot have Nynaeve’s need. She is the hunter.”
Under those iron eyes, Egwene subsided sulkily, and the two Wise Ones looked at each other. Finally Bair shrugged and lifted her shawl up around her face; clearly she washed her hands of the entire matter.
“It is dangerous,” Amys said. They made it sound as if breathing was dangerous in Tel’aran’rhiod.
“I—!” Nynaeve cut off as Amys’s eyes actually grew harder; she would not have thought it possible. Keeping a firm image of her clothes as they were—of course they had had nothing to do with that; it simply seemed wise to make sure her dress remained as it was—she changed what she had been going to say. “I will be careful.”
“It is not possible,” Amys told her flatly, “but I do not know another way. Need is the key. When there are too many people for the hold, the sept must divide, and the need is for water at the new hold. If no location with water is known, one of us may be called to find one. The key then is the need for a proper valley or canyon, not too far from the first, with water. Concentrating on that need will bring you near to what you want. Concentrating on the need again will bring you closer. Each step brings you nearer, until at last you are not only in the valley, but standing beside where water is to be found. It may be harder for you, because you do not know exactly what you are seeking, though the depth of need may make up for it. And you know already in a rough fashion where it lies, in this palace.
“The danger is this, and you must be aware of it.” The Wise One leaned toward her intently, driving her words home with a tone as sharp as her gaze. “Each step is made blind, with eyes closed. You cannot know where you will be when you open your eyes. And finding the water does no good if you are standing in a den of vipers. The fangs of a mountain king kill as quickly in the dream as waking. I think these women Egwene speaks of will kill more quickly than the snake.”
“I did that,” Egwene exclaimed. Nynaeve felt her jump as the Aiel women’s eyes went to her. “Before I met you,” she said hastily. “Before we went to Tear.”
Need. Nynaeve felt warmer toward the Aiel women now that one of them had given her something she could use. “You must keep a close eye on Egwene,” she told them, hugging the younger woman to show she meant it fondly. “You are right, Bair. She will try to do more than she knows how. She has always been that way.” For some reason Bair arched a white eyebrow at her.
“I do not find her so,” Amys said in a dry voice. “She is a biddable student, now. Is that not so, Egwene?”
Egwene’s mouth set in a stubborn line. These Wise Ones did not know her well if they believed a Two Rivers woman would call herself biddable. On the other hand, she did not say anything. That was unexpected. As hard a lot as Aes Sedai, it appeared, these Aielwomen.
Her hour was slipping away, and impatience bubbled to try this method now; if Elayne woke her, it might take hours to get back to sleep. “In seven days,” she said, “one of us will meet you here again.”
Egwene nodded. “In seven days, Rand will have shown himself to the clan chiefs as He Who Comes With the Dawn, and the Aiel will all be behind him.” The Wise Ones’ eyes shifted slightly, and Amys adjusted her shawl; Egwene did not see it. “The Light knows what he means to do then.”
“In seven days,” Nynaeve said, “Elayne and I will have taken whatever Liandrin is hunting away from the lot of them.” Or else, very likely, the Black Ajah would have it. So the Wise Ones were not more certain the Aiel would follow Rand than Egwene was of his plans. No certainty anywhere. But no point in burdening Egwene with more doubts, either. “When one of us sees you next, we’ll have laid them by the heels and stuffed them all in sacks to cart to the Tower for trial.”
“Try to be careful, Nynaeve. I know you don’t know how to, but try anyway. Tell Elayne I said so, too. She isn’t as . . . bold . . . as you are, but she can come close.” Amys and Bair each laid a hand on Egwene’s shoulder, and they were gone.
Try to be careful? Fool girl. She was always careful. What had Egwene been about to say rather than bold? Nynaeve folded her arms tightly in lieu of pulling her braid. Maybe better she did not know.
She realized she had not told Egwene about Egeanin. Perhaps best not to stir up Egwene’s memories of her captivity. Nynaeve could remember all too well the other woman’s nightmares for weeks after she was freed, waking up screaming that she would not be chained. Much the best to let it lie. It was not as if Egwene need ever meet the Seanchan woman. Burn that woman! Burn Egeanin to ash! Burn her!
“This is not using my time wisely,” she said aloud. The words echoed through the tall columns. With the other women gone, they looked even more foreboding than before, more a hiding place for unseen watchers and things that jumped out at you. Time to be away.
First, though, she changed her hair to a tassel of long narrow braids, her dress to clinging folds of dark green silk. A transparent veil covered her mouth and nose, fluttering slightly when she breathed. With a grimace she added beads of green jade woven into the thin plaits. Should any of the Black sisters be using their stolen ter’angreal to enter the World of Dreams and see her in the Panarch’s Palace, they would think her only a Taraboner woman who had dreamed herself there in more ordinary fashion. Some knew her by sight, though. Lifting a handful of bead-strung braids, she smiled. Pale honey. She had not realized that was possible. I wonder what I look like. Could they still know me?
Suddenly a tall stand-mirror stood beside Callandor. In the glass, her big brown eyes widened in shock, her rosebud of a mouth fell open. She had Rendra’s face! Her features flickered back and forth, eyes and hair flashing darker then lighter; straining, she settled them as the innkeeper’s. No one would know her now. And Egwene thought she did not know how to be careful.
Closing her eyes, she concentrated on Tanchico, on the Panarch’s Palace, on need. Something dangerous to Rand, to the Dragon Reborn, need . . . . Around her, Tel’aran’rhiod shifted; she felt it, a sliding lurch, and opened her eyes eagerly to see what she had found.
It was a bedchamber, as big as any six at the Three Plum Court, the white plaster walls worked in painted friezes, golden lamps hanging from the ceiling by gilded chains. The tall posts of the bed spread carved limbs and leaves in a canopy above the mattresses. A woman well short of her middle years stood stiffly with her back to one of the posts at the foot of the bed; she was really quite lovely, in that pouty-mouthed way that Nynaeve herself had adopted. Atop her dark braids sat a crown of golden trefoil leaves among rubies and pearls with a moonstone larger than a goose egg, and around her neck hung a broad stole, dangling to her knees and embroidered along its length with trees. Aside from crown and stole she wore only a glistening coat of sweat.
Her tremulous eyes were fixed on the woman lying at her ease on a low couch. The second woman’s back was to Nynaeve, as misty as Egwene had been earlier. She was short and slight, dark hair flowing loose to her shoulders, wide-skirted gown of pale yellow silk definitely not Taraboner. Nynaeve did not have to see her face to know it had large blue eyes and a foxlike shape, or see the bonds of Air holding the woman against the bedpost to know she was looking at Temaile Kinderode.
“ . . . learn so much when you use your dreams instead of wasting sl
eep,” Temaile was saying with a Cairhienin accent, laughing. “Are you not enjoying yourself? What shall I teach you next? I know. ‘I Have Loved a Thousand Sailor Men.’ ” She waggled an admonishing finger. “Be sure you learn all the words properly, Amathera. You know I would not want to—What are you gaping at?”
Abruptly Nynaeve realized the woman against the bedpost—Amathera? The Panarch?—was staring straight at her. Temaile shifted lazily as though to turn her head.
Nynaeve clamped her eyes shut. Need.
Shift.
Letting herself sag against the narrow column, Nynaeve gulped air as if she had run twenty miles, not even wondering where she was. Her heart pounded like a wild drum. Speak of landing in a vipers’ den. Temaile Kinderode. The Black sister Amico had said enjoyed causing pain, enjoyed it enough to have made one of the Black Ajah comment. And her not able to channel a spark. She could have ended up decorating a bedpost beside Amathera. Light! She shivered, seeing it. Calm yourself, woman! You are out of there, and even if Temaile saw you, she saw a honey-haired woman who vanished, just a Taraboner who dreamed herself into Tel’aran’rhiod for a moment. Surely Temaile could not have been aware of her long enough to sense she could channel; even when she could not do it, the ability was there to be felt by one who shared it. Only a moment. Not long enough, with luck.
At least she knew Amathera’s situation now. The woman was certainly no ally of Temaile. This method of searching had already repaid use. But not enough, not yet. Controlling her breathing as best she could, she looked around.
Rows of the thin white columns ran the length and breadth of a huge chamber nearly as wide as it was long, with smooth polished white floorstones below and gilded bosses on the ceiling high above. A thick rope of white silk ran all the way around the room on waist-high posts of dark polished wood, except where it would have blocked the doorways with double-pointed arches. Stands and open cabinets lined the walls, and the bones of peculiar beasts, with more display cases out in the floor, also roped off. The main exhibition hall of the palace, from Egwene’s description. What she sought must be in this very chamber. Her next step would not be as blind as the first; there were certainly no vipers, no Temailes, here.
A handsome woman suddenly appeared beside a glass case with four carved legs out in the middle of the floor. She was no Taraboner, with her dark hair falling in waves to her shoulders, yet that was not what made Nynaeve gape. The woman’s dress seemed to be mist, sometimes silvery and opaque, sometimes gray and so thin as to show her limbs and body clearly. From wherever she had dreamed herself here, she assuredly had a vivid imagination to conceive that! Even the scandalous Domani dresses she had heard of surely could not equal this.
The woman smiled at the glass case, then continued on up the hall, stopping on the far side to study something Nynaeve could not make out, something dark atop a white stone stand.
Frowning, Nynaeve released her grip on a fistful of honey-colored braids. The woman would disappear at any moment; few dreamed themselves into Tel’aran’rhiod for long. Of course, it did not matter if the woman saw her; she was certainly no one on their list of Black sisters. And yet she seemed somehow . . . . Nynaeve realized she had taken hold of a handful of braids again. The woman . . . . Of its own accord her hand pulled—hard—and she stared at it in amazement; her knuckles were white, her hand quivering. It was almost as if thinking of that woman . . . . Arm shaking, her hand tried to yank her hair out of her scalp. Why under the Light?
The mist-clad woman still stood in front of the distant white pedestal. Trembling spread from Nynaeve’s arm into her shoulder. She had certainly never seen the woman before. And yet . . . . She tried to open her fingers; they only clamped down harder. Surely she never had. Shivering from head to toe, she hugged herself with the one arm she had free. Surely . . . . Her teeth wanted to chatter. The woman seemed . . . . She wanted to weep. The woman . . . .
Images burst into her head, exploding; she slumped against the column beside her as if they had physical force; her eyes bulged. She saw it again. The Chamber of Falling Blossoms, and that sturdily handsome woman surrounded by the glow of saidar. Herself and Elayne, babbling like children, fighting to be first to answer, pouring out everything they knew. How much had they told? It was difficult to bring out details, but she dimly remembered keeping some things back. Not because she wanted to; she would have told the woman anything, done anything she asked. Her face heated with shame, and anger. If she had managed to hide any scraps, it was only because she had been so—eager!—to answer the last question asked that she passed over earlier.
It makes no sense, a small voice said in the back of her head. If she’s a Black sister I don’t know about, why did she not hand us over to Liandrin? She could have. We’d have gone with her like lambs.
Cold rage would not let her listen. A Black sister had made her dance like a puppet and then told her to forget. Ordered her to forget. And she had! Well, now the woman would find out what it was like to face her ready and forewarned!
Before she could reach for the True Source, Birgitte was suddenly beside the next column in that short white coat and wide yellow trousers gathered at the ankle. Birgitte, or some woman dreaming she was Birgitte, with golden hair in an elaborate braid. A warning finger pressed against her lips, she pointed at Nynaeve, then urgently toward one of the double-arched doorways behind them. Bright blue eyes compelling, she vanished.
Nynaeve shook her head. Whoever the woman was, she had no time. Opening herself to saidar, she turned, filled to overflowing with the One Power and righteous wrath. The woman clothed in mist was gone. Gone! Because that golden-haired fool had distracted her! Perhaps that one was still about, waiting for her. Wrapped in the Power, she strode through the doorway the woman had indicated.
The golden-haired woman was waiting in a brightly carpeted hallway where unlit golden lamps gave off the scent of perfumed oil. She held a silver bow now, and a quiver of silver arrows hung at her waist.
“Who are you?” Nynaeve demanded furiously. She would give the woman a chance to explain herself. And then teach her a lesson she would not soon forget! “Are you the same fool who shot at me in the Waste, claiming she was Birgitte? I was about to teach a member of the Black Ajah manners when you let her get away!”
“I am Birgitte,” the woman said, leaning on her bow. “At least, that is the name you would know. And the lesson might have been yours, here as surely as in the Three-fold Land. I remember the lives I have lived as if they were books well-read, the longer gone dimmer than the nearer, but I remember well when I fought at Lews Therin’s side. I will never forget Moghedien’s face, any more than I will forget the face of Asmodean, the man you almost disturbed at Rhuidean.”
Asmodean? Moghedien? That woman was one of the Forsaken? A Forsaken in Tanchico. And one at Rhuidean, in the Waste! Egwene would certainly have said something if she knew. No way to warn her, not for seven days. Anger—and saidar—surged in her. “What are you doing here? I know that you all vanished after the Horn of Valere called you, but you are . . . .” She trailed off, a trifle flustered at what she had been about to say, but the other woman calmly finished for her.
“Dead? Those of us who are bound to the Wheel are not dead as others are dead. Where better for us to wait until the Wheel weaves us out in new lives than in the World of Dreams?” Birgitte laughed suddenly. “I begin to talk as if I were a philosopher. In almost every life I can remember I was born a simple girl who took up the bow. I am an archer, no more.”
“You’re the heroine of a hundred tales,” Nynaeve said. “And I saw what your arrows did at Falme. Seanchan channeling did not touch you. Birgitte, we face near a dozen of the Black Ajah. And one of the Forsaken as well, it seems. We could use your help.”
The other woman grimaced, embarrassed and regretful. “I cannot, Nynaeve. I cannot touch the world of flesh unless the Horn calls me again. Or else the Wheel weaves me out. If it did this moment, you would find only an infant mewling at
her mother’s breast. As for Falme, the Horn had called us; we were not there as you were, in the flesh. That is why the Power could not touch us. Here, all is part of the dream, and the One Power could destroy me as easily as you. More easily. I told you; I am an archer, a sometime soldier, no more.” Her complex golden braid swung as she shook her head. “I do not know why I am explaining. I should not even be talking to you.”
“Why not? You’ve spoken to me before. And Egwene thought she saw you. That was you, wasn’t it?” Nynaeve frowned. “How do you know my name? Do you just know things?”
“I know what I see and hear. I have watched you, and listened, whenever I could find you. You and the other two women, and the young man with his wolves. According to the precepts, we may speak to none who know they are in Tel’aran’rhiod. And yet, evil walks the dream as well as the world of flesh; you who fight it attract me. Even knowing I can do almost nothing, I find myself wanting to help you. But I cannot. It violates the precepts, precepts which have held me for so many turns of the Wheel that in my oldest, faintest memories I know I had already lived a hundred times, or a thousand. Speaking to you violates precepts as strong as law.”
“It does,” said a harsh, male voice.
Nynaeve jumped and almost lashed out with the Power. The man was dark and strongly muscled, with the long hilts of two swords thrusting above his shoulders as he strode the few paces from where he had appeared to Birgitte. With what she had heard from Birgitte, the swords were enough to name him as Gaidal Cain, but where fair, golden-haired Birgitte was as beautiful as in the stories, he was definitely not. In fact, he was perhaps as ugly a man as Nynaeve had ever seen, his face wide and flat, his heavy nose too big, and his mouth a gash, far too broad. Birgitte smiled at him, though; her touch on his cheek held more than fondness. It was a surprise to see he was the shorter. Stocky and muscled as he was, powerful in his movements, he gave the impression of being taller than he was.
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