The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  CHAPTER

  34

  A Silver Arrow

  Elayne had the cooking that evening, which meant that none of the food was simple, despite the fact that they were eating on stools around a cookfire, with crickets chirping in the surrounding woods, and now and again some night-bird’s thin, sad cry in the deepening darkness. The soup was served cold and jellied, with chopped green ferris sprinkled on top. The Light knew where she had found ferris, or the tiny onions she put in with the peas. The beef was sliced nearly thin enough to see through and wrapped around something made from carrots, sweetbeans, chives and goatcheese, and there was even a small honeycake for dessert.

  It was all tasty, though Elayne fretted that nothing was exactly the way it should be, as if she thought she could duplicate the cooks’ work in the Royal Palace in Caemlyn. Nynaeve was fairly sure the girl was not fishing for compliments. Elayne would always brush away compliments and tell you exactly what was not right: Thom and Juilin grumbled about there being so little beef, but Nynaeve noticed that they not only ate every scrap but looked disappointed when the last pea was gone. When she cooked, for some reason they always seemed to eat at one of the other wagons. When one of them made supper, it was always stew or else meat and beans so full of dried peppers that your tongue blistered.

  They did not eat alone, of course. Luca saw to that, bringing his own stool and placing it right next to her, his red cloak spread to best effect and his long legs stretched out so that his calves showed well, above his turned-down boots. He was there almost every night. Oddly, the only nights he missed were when she cooked.

  It was interesting, really, having his eyes on her when a woman as pretty as Elayne was there, but he did have his motives. He sat altogether too close—tonight she moved her stool three times, but he followed without missing a word or seeming to notice—and he alternated comparing her with various flowers, to the blossoms’ detriment, ignoring the black eye he could not miss without being blind, and musing over how beautiful she would be in that red dress, with compliments on her courage thrown in. Twice, he slipped in suggestions that they take a stroll by moonlight, hints so veiled that she was not entirely sure that was what they were until she thought about it.

  “That gown will frame your unfolding bravery to perfection,” he murmured in her ear, “yet not a quarter so well as you display yourself, for night-blooming dara lilies would weep with envy to see you stroll beside the moonlit water, as I would do, and make myself a bard to sing your praises by this very moon.”

  She blinked at him, working that out. Luca seemed to believe she was fluttering her lashes; she accidentally hit him in the ribs with her elbow before he could nibble her ear. At least that seemed to be his intention, even if he was coughing now and claiming he had swallowed a cake crumb the wrong way. The man was certainly handsome—Stop that!—and he did have a shapely calf—What are you doing, looking at his legs?—but he must think her a brainless ninny. It was all in aid of his bloody show.

  She moved her stool again while he was trying to get his breath back; she could not move it far without making it clear that she was running from him, though she held her fork ready in case he followed again. Thom studied his plate as though more than a smear remained on the white glaze. Juilin whistled tunelessly and nearly silently, peering into the dying fire with false intensity. Elayne looked at her and shook her head.

  “It was so pleasant of you to join us,” Nynaeve said, and stood up. Luca stood when she did, a hopeful look in his eye along with the shine of the firelight. She set her plate atop the one in his hand. “Thom and Juilin will be grateful for your help with the dishes, I am sure.” Before his mouth finished falling open, she turned to Elayne. “It is late, and I expect we’ll be moving across the river early.”

  “Of course,” Elayne murmured, with just the hint of a smile. And she put her plate atop Nynaeve’s before following her into the wagon. Nynaeve wanted to hug her. Until she said, “Really, you should not encourage him.” Lamps mounted in wall brackets sprang alight.

  Nynaeve planted her fists on her hips. “Encourage him! The only way I could encourage him less would be to stab him!” Sniffing for emphasis, she frowned at the lamps. “Next time, use one of Aludra’s firesticks. Strikers. You are going to forget one day and channel where you shouldn’t, and then where will we be? Running for our lives with a hundred Whitecloaks after us.”

  Stubborn to a fault, the other woman refused to be diverted. “I may be younger than you, but sometimes I think I know more of men than you ever will. For a man like Valan Luca, that coy little flight of yours tonight was only asking him to keep pursuing you. If you would snap his nose off the way you did the first day, he might give up. You don’t tell him to stop, you do not even ask! You kept smiling at him, Nynaeve. What is the man supposed to think? You haven’t smiled at anyone in days!”

  “I am trying to hold my temper,” Nynaeve muttered. Everybody complained about her temper, and now that she was trying to control it, Elayne complained about that! It was not that she was fool enough to be taken in by his compliments. She certainly was not so big a fool as that. Elayne laughed at her, and she scowled.

  “Oh, Nynaeve. ‘You cannot hold the sun down at dawn.’ Lini could have been thinking of you.”

  With an effort Nynaeve smoothed her face. She could too hold her temper. Didn’t I just prove it out there? She held out her hand. “Let me have the ring. He will want to cross the river early tomorrow, and I want at least some real sleep after I’m done.”

  “I thought I would go tonight.” Concern touched Elayne’s voice. “Nynaeve, you’ve been entering Tel’aran’rhiod practically every night except the meetings with Egwene. That Bair intends to pick a bone with you, by the way. I had to tell them why you weren’t there yet again, and she says you should not need rest however often you enter, unless you are doing something wrong.” Concern became firmness, and the younger woman planted her fists on her hips. “I had to listen to a lecture that was meant for you, and it was not pleasant, with Egwene standing there nodding her head to every word. Now, I really think that tonight I should—”

  “Please, Elayne.” Nynaeve did not lower her outstretched hand. “I have questions for Birgitte, and her answers might make me think of more.” She did have, sort of; she could always think of questions for Birgitte. It had nothing to do with avoiding Egwene, and the Wise Ones. If she visited Tel’aran’rhiod so often that Elayne always went to the meetings with Egwene, that was simply how it fell out.

  Elayne sighed, but fished the twisted stone ring from the neck of her dress. “Ask her again, Nynaeve. It is very difficult facing Egwene. She saw Birgitte. She doesn’t say anything, but she looks at me. It is worse when we meet again after the Wise Ones have gone. She could ask then, and she still doesn’t, and that makes it far worse.” She frowned as Nynaeve transferred the small ter’angreal to the leather cord around her own neck, with Lan’s heavy ring and her Great Serpent. “Why do you suppose none of the Wise Ones ever come with her then? We don’t learn very much in Elaida’s study, but you would think they would at least want to see the Tower. Egwene doesn’t even want to talk about it in front of them. If I seem to come close, she gives me such a look that you’d think she meant to hit me.”

  “I think they want to avoid the Tower as much as possible.” And wise they were indeed for that. If not for Healing, she would avoid it, and Aes Sedai, too. She was not becoming Aes Sedai; she was just hoping to learn more of Healing. And to help Rand, certainly. “They are free women, Elayne. Even if the Tower was not in the mess it is, would they really want Aes Sedai traipsing through the Waste, scooping them up to carry back to Tar Valon?”

  “I suppose that is it.” Elayne’s tone said she could not understand it, though. She thought the Tower wonderful, and could not see why any woman would want to evade Aes Sedai. Sealed to the White Tower forever, they said when they put that ring on your finger. And they meant it. Yet the fool girl did not see it as onerous at
all.

  Elayne helped her undress, and she stretched out on her narrow bed in her shift, yawning. It had been a long day, and it was surprising how tiring standing still could be when someone unseen was hurling knives at you. Idle thoughts drifted through her head as she closed her eyes. Elayne had claimed she was practicing when she had acted the fool with Thom. Not that the fond-father-and-favorite-daughter they tried on now was much less foolish to watch. Maybe she could practice herself, just a bit, with Valan. Now, that was foolish. Men’s eyes might wander—Lan’s had better not!—but she knew how to be constant. She was simply not going to wear that dress. Far too much bosom.

  Vaguely, she heard Elayne say, “Remember to ask her again.”

  Sleep took her.

  She stood outside the wagon, in the night. The moon was high, and drifting clouds cast shadows over the camp. Crickets chirruped, and the night-birds called. The lions’ eyes shone as they watched her from their cages. The white-faced bears were dark sleeping mounds behind the iron bars. The long picket line stood empty of horses, Clarine’s dogs were not on their leashes beneath her and Petra’s wagon, and the space where the s’redit stood in the waking world was bare. She had come to understand that only wild creatures had reflections here, but whatever the Seanchan woman claimed, it was hard to think that those huge gray animals had been domesticated so long that they were no longer wild.

  Abruptly she realized that she was wearing the dress. Blazing red, far too snug around the hips for decency, and a square neck cut so low she thought she might pop out. She could not imagine any woman but Berelain donning it. For Lan, she might. If they were alone. She had been thinking of Lan when she drifted off. I was, wasn’t I?

  In any case, she was not about to let Birgitte see her in the thing. The woman claimed to be a soldier, and the more time Nynaeve spent with her, the more she realized that some of her attitudes—and comments—were as bad as any man’s. Worse. A combination of Berelain and a tavern brawler. The comments did not come out all the time, but they certainly did whenever Nynaeve allowed idle thoughts to put her in anything like this dress. She changed to good stout Two Rivers wool, dark, with a plain shawl she did not need, her hair decently braided again, and opened her mouth to call Birgitte.

  “Why did you change?” the woman said, stepping out from the shadows to lean on her silver bow. Her intricate golden braid hung over her shoulder, and moonlight shone on her bow and arrows. “I remember wearing a gown that could have been twin to that, once. It was only to attract attention so Gaidal could sneak by—the guards’ eyes bulged like frogs’—but it was fun. Especially when I wore it dancing with him later. He always hates dancing, but he was so intent on keeping any other man from getting close that he danced every dance.” Birgitte laughed fondly. “I won fifty gold solids from him that night at spin, because he stared so much he never looked at his tiles. Men are peculiar. It was not as if he had never seen me—”

  “That’s as may be,” Nynaeve cut in primly, wrapping the shawl firmly around her shoulders.

  Before she could add her question, Birgitte said, “I have found her,” and all thought of the question fled.

  “Where? Did she see you? Can you take me to her? Without her seeing?” Fear fluttered in Nynaeve’s belly—a fat lot Valan Luca would say about her courage if he could see her now—but she was sure it would turn to anger as soon as she saw Moghedien. “If you can bring me close . . .” She trailed off as Birgitte raised a hand.

  “I cannot think she saw me, or I doubt I would be here now.” She was all seriousness now; Nynaeve found it much easier to be around her when she showed this side of being a soldier. “I can take you close for a moment, if you want to go, but she is not alone. At least . . . You will see. You must be silent, and you must take no action against Moghedien. There are other Forsaken. Perhaps you could destroy her, but can you destroy five of them?”

  The fluttering in Nynaeve’s middle spread to her chest. And her knees. Five. She should ask what Birgitte had seen or heard and let it go at that. Then she could return to her bed and . . . But Birgitte was looking at her. Not questioning her courage, only looking. Ready to do this thing if she said. “I will be silent. And I won’t even think of channeling.” Not with five Forsaken together. Not that she could have channeled a spark at that moment. She stiffened her knees to keep them from knocking. “Whenever you are ready.”

  Birgitte hefted her bow and put a hand on Nynaeve’s arm . . .

  . . . and Nynaeve’s breath caught in her throat. They were standing on nothing, infinite blackness all around, no way to tell up from down, and in every direction a fall that would last forever. Head spinning, she made herself look where Birgitte pointed.

  Below them, Moghedien also stood on darkness, garbed nearly as black as what surrounded her, bent and listening intently. And as far below her, four huge, high-backed chairs, each different, sat on an expanse of glistening white-tiled floor floating in the blackness. Strangely, Nynaeve could hear what those in the chairs said as well as if she had been among them.

  “. . . never been a coward,” a plumply pretty, sun-haired woman was saying, “so why begin?” Seemingly attired in silvery-gray mist and sparkling gems, she lounged in a chair of ivory worked so it appeared made of naked acrobats. Four carved men held it aloft, and her arms rested along the backs of kneeling women; two men and two women held a white silk cushion behind her head, while above more were contorted into shapes Nynaeve did not believe a human body could attain. She blushed when she realized that some were performing more than acrobatic tricks.

  A compact man of middling height, with a livid scar across his face and a square golden beard, leaned forward angrily. His chair was heavy wood, carved with columns of armored men and horses, a steel-gauntleted fist clasping lighting at the back’s peak. His red coat made up for the lack of gilding on the chair, for golden scrollwork rolled across his shoulders and down his arms. “No one names me coward,” he said harshly. “But if we continue as we are, he will come straight for my throat.”

  “That has been the plan from the beginning,” said a woman’s melodious voice. Nynaeve could not see the speaker, hidden behind the towering back of a chair that seemed all snow-white stone and silver.

  The second man was large and darkly handsome, with white wings streaking his temples. He toyed with an ornate golden goblet, leaning back in a throne. That was the only possible word for the gem-encrusted thing; a mere hint of gold showed here and there, but Nynaeve would not have doubted that it was solid gold beneath all those glittering rubies and emeralds and moonstones; it had an air of weight quite apart from its massive size. “He will concentrate on you,” the big man said in a deep voice. “If need be, one close to him will die, plainly at your order. He will come for you. And while he is fixed on you alone, the three of us, linked, will take him. What has changed to alter any of that?”

  “Nothing has changed,” the scarred man growled. “Least of all, my trust for you. I will be part of the link, or it ends now.”

  The golden-haired woman threw back her head and laughed. “Poor man,” she said mockingly, waving a beringed hand at him. “Do you think he would not notice that you were linked? He has a teacher, remember. A poor one, but not a complete fool. Next you will ask to include enough of those Black Ajah children to take the circle beyond thirteen, so you or Rahvin must have control.”

  “If Rahvin trusts us enough to link when he must allow one of us to guide,” the melodious voice said, “you can display an equal trust.” The big man looked into his goblet, and the mist-clad woman smiled faintly. “If you cannot trust us not to turn on you,” the unseen woman continued, “then trust that we will be watching each other too closely to turn. You agreed to all of this, Sammael. Why do you begin to quibble now?”

  Nynaeve gave a start as Birgitte touched her arm . . .

  . . . and they were back among the wagons, with the moon shining through the clouds. It seemed almost normal compared to where they had been.r />
  “Why . . . ?” Nynaeve began, and had to swallow. “Why did you bring us away?” Her heart leaped into her throat. “Did Moghedien see us?” She had been so intent on the other Forsaken—on the mingled strangeness and commonplaceness of them—that she had forgotten to keep an eye on Moghedien. She heaved a fervent sigh when Birgitte shook her head.

  “I never took my gaze from her for more than a moment, and she never moved a muscle. But I do not like being so exposed. If she had looked up, or one of the others . . .”

  Nynaeve wrapped her shawl tightly around her shoulders and still shivered. “Rahvin and Sammael.” She wished she did not sound hoarse. “Did you recognize the others?” Of course Birgitte had; it was a foolish way to phrase it, but she was shaken.

  “Lanfear was the one hidden by her chair. The other was Graendal. Do not think her a fool because she lolls in a chair that would make a Senje no-room keeper blush. She is devious, and she uses her pets in rites to cause the roughest soldier I ever knew to swear celibacy.”

  “Graendal is devious,” Moghedien’s voice said, “but not devious enough.”

  Birgitte whirled, silver bow coming up, silver arrow almost flying to nock—and abruptly hurtled thirty paces through the moonlight to crash against Nynaeve’s wagon so hard that she bounced back five and lay in a crumpled heap.

  Desperately Nynaeve reached for saidar. Fear streaked through her anger, but there was anger enough—and it ran into an invisible wall between her and the warm glow of the True Source. She almost howled. Something seized her feet, jerking them backward and up off the ground; her hands flew up and back until wrists met ankles above her head. Her clothes became powder that slid from her skin, and her braid dragged her head back until the braid rested on her bottom. Frantic, she tried to step out of the dream. Nothing happened. She hung doubled in midair like some netted creature, every muscle strained to its limit. Tremors ran through her; her fingers twitched feebly, brushing her feet. She thought if she tried to move anything else, her back would break.