“What was that all about?” Nynaeve asked, and Siuan gave a start.
“None of your business is what it was,” she snapped, smoothing her dress. You would have thought Nynaeve had sneaked up on her purposely. The woman always took everything personally.
“Let it pass,” Nynaeve said levelly. She was not going to let herself be led off down a side trail. “What I won’t let pass is studying you.” She was going to do something useful today if it killed her. Siuan opened her mouth, looking around. “No, I don’t have Marigan, and right now, I don’t need her. You’ve let me near you twice—twice!—since I found a clue that something in you might be Healed. I mean to study you today, and if I don’t, I will tell Sheriam you’re disobeying her orders to make yourself available. I swear I will!”
For a moment she thought the other woman was going to dare her to do her worst, but at last Siuan said grudgingly, “This afternoon. I am busy this morning. Unless you think what you want is more important than helping your Two Rivers friend?”
Nynaeve stepped closer. No one in the street was paying them any mind beyond a glance in passing, but she lowered her voice anyway. “What are they planning about him? You keep saying they haven’t made up their minds what to do, but they must have come to some conclusion by now.” If they had, Siuan would know of it, whether she was supposed to or not.
Abruptly Leane was there, and Nynaeve might as well not have spoken. Siuan and Leane glared at one another, stiff-backed as two strange cats in a small room.
“Well?” Siuan muttered with a tight jaw.
Leane sniffed, and her curls swung as she tossed her head. A sneer twisted her lips, yet her words did not match expression or tone. “I tried to talk them out of it,” she spat, but softly. “Only they had not listened to you enough to even consider it. You won’t be meeting the Wise Ones tonight.”
“Fishguts!” Siuan growled, and turning on her heel, she stalked away, but no more quickly than Leane in the opposite direction.
Nynaeve almost threw up her hands in frustration. Talking as if she were not there, as if she did not know exactly what they were talking about. Ignoring her. Siuan had better appear this afternoon as promised, or she would find a way to wring her out and hang her up to dry! She jumped as a woman spoke behind her.
“Those two should be sent to Tiana for a sound switching.” Lelaine stepped up beside Nynaeve, looking first after Siuan then Leane. Going around sneaking up on people! There was no sign of Logain or Burin or the Altaran nobles. The Blue sister shifted her shawl. “They are not what they were, of course, but one would think they could retain a little decorum. It will not do if they actually come to hair-pulling in the street.”
“Sometimes people just rub one another the wrong way,” Nynaeve said. Siuan and Leane worked so hard to maintain their fiction, the least she could do was support it. How she hated people sneaking up on her.
Lelaine eyed Nynaeve’s hand on her braid, and she snatched it away. Too many knew about that habit; a habit she had tried hard to break. But what the Aes Sedai said was “Not when it impinges on the dignity of Aes Sedai, child. Women who serve Aes Sedai should show some reserve in public however silly they are in private.” There was certainly nothing to be said to that; nothing safe, anyway. “Why did you come in where I was showing Logain just now?”
“I thought the room was empty, Aes Sedai,” Nynaeve said hastily. “I’m sorry. I hope I did not disturb you.” That was no answer—she could hardly say she had been hiding from Myrelle—but the slender Blue only met her eyes for a moment.
“What do you think Rand al’Thor will do, child?”
Nynaeve blinked in confusion. “Aes Sedai, I haven’t seen him in half a year. All I know is what I’ve heard here. Is the Hall . . . ? Aes Sedai, what has the Hall decided about him?”
Scrutinizing Nynaeve’s face, Lelaine pursed her lips. Those dark eyes, seeming to see inside your head, were quite unsettling. “A remarkable coincidence. You come from the same village as the Dragon Reborn, and so does that other girl, Egwene al’Vere. Great things were expected when she became a novice. Do you have any idea where she is?” She did not wait for an answer. “And the other two young men, Perrin Aybara and Mat Cauthon. Both ta’veren as well, so I understand. Remarkable, indeed. Then there is you, with your extraordinary discoveries despite your limitations. Wherever Egwene is, does she also venture where none of us have gone? All of you have occasioned a good deal of discussion among the sisters, as you may imagine.”
“I hope they say good things,” Nynaeve said slowly. There had been many questions about Rand since coming to Salidar, especially since the embassy left for Caemlyn—some Aes Sedai seemed able to speak of little else to her—but this seemed something different. That was the trouble with talking to Aes Sedai. Half the time you could not be sure what they meant or what they were after.
“Do you still have hopes of Healing Siuan and Leane, child?” Nodding as if Nynaeve had answered, Lelaine sighed. “Sometimes I think Myrelle is right. We indulge you too much. Whatever your discoveries, perhaps we should put you in Theodrin’s charge until your block against channeling at will is broken. Considering what you have done in the last two months, think what you could do then.” Gripping her braid unconsciously, Nynaeve tried to get a word in edgewise, a carefully framed protest, but Lelaine ignored the attempt. Which was probably for the best. “You do Siuan and Leane no favors, child. Let them forget who and what they were and be content with who and what they are. From the way they behave, the only thing that keeps them from forgetting completely is you, and your foolish attempts to Heal what cannot be Healed. They are no longer Aes Sedai. Why hold out false hope?”
There was a hint of compassion in her voice, and a tinge of contempt too. Those not Aes Sedai were less, after all, and Siuan and Leane’s ruse had definitely painted them among the least. Plus, of course, no few here in Salidar blamed the Tower’s troubles on Siuan, on her plotting while Amyrlin. Very likely they believed she deserved everything that had happened to her and more.
What had been done complicated the whole thing, though. Stilling was rare. Before Siuan and Leane, no woman had been tried and stilled in one hundred and forty years, and none burned out in at least a dozen. A stilled woman usually tried to get as far from Aes Sedai as she could. No doubt if Lelaine had been stilled, she would want to forget being Aes Sedai if she could. No doubt she would like to forget that Siuan and Leane had been, too, that all that had been taken away from them. If they could be seen as two women never able to channel, never Aes Sedai, a good many Aes Sedai would be more comfortable.
“Sheriam Sedai has given me permission to try,” Nynaeve said as firmly as she dared to a full sister. Lelaine held her eyes until she let her gaze drop. Her knuckles whitened around her braid before she could let go, but she kept her face smooth. Trying to trade stares with an Aes Sedai was a woolhead’s trick for an Accepted.
“We are all fools sometimes, child, yet a wise woman learns to limit how often. Since you seem to have finished breakfast, I suggest you rid yourself of that mug and find something to do before you find yourself in hot water instead. Have you ever considered cutting your hair short? No matter. Off with you.”
Nynaeve dropped a curtsy, but it was being made to the Aes Sedai’s back before she reached the bottom of it. Safe from Lelaine’s eyes, she glowered at the woman. Cut her hair? She lifted her braid and shook it at the retreating Aes Sedai. That she had waited until it was safe made her furious, though if she had not waited she would almost certainly be on her way to join Moghedien at the laundry, with a stop to see Tiana on the way. Months sitting here in Salidar doing nothing—for all practical purposes it seemed she was, no matter what she and Elayne managed to pull out of Moghedien—amid Aes Sedai who did nothing except talk and wait while the world went on its way to ruin without them, and Lelaine thought she should cut her hair! She had pursued the Black Ajah, been captured and escaped, captured one of the Forsaken in turn—well, none of t
hem knew that—helped the Panarch of Tarabon regain her throne however briefly, and now all she did was sit and take credit for what she could shake loose from Moghedien. Cut her hair? She might as well shave herself bald for all the good it would do!
She caught sight of Dagdara Finchey striding through the throng, as wide as any man in the street and taller than most, and the round-faced Yellow made her angry, too. One reason she had chosen to remain in Salidar was to study with the Yellows, for they knew more of Healing than anyone else; everyone said so. But if any of them knew more than she already did, they were not sharing it with a mere Accepted. The Yellows should have been the most welcoming to her desire to Heal anything and everything, even stilling, but they were the least. Dagdara would have had her scrubbing floors from sunup to sundown until she gave up “foolish notions and wasting time” if Sheriam had not intervened, while Nisao Dachen, a diminutive Yellow with eyes that could drive nails, refused to even speak to Nynaeve as long as she persisted in trying to “alter how the Pattern has been woven.”
To top it all off, her weather sense still told her a storm was on its way, closer now, while the cloudless sky and burning sun taunted her.
Muttering to herself, she tucked the clay mug into the back of a passing woodcart and set off weaving through the crowded street. There was nothing to do except keep moving until Moghedien was free, and the Light knew how long that would be. A whole morning wasted, added to a string of wasted days.
Many of the Aes Sedai nodded and smiled at her, but by the simple expedient of smiling back apologetically and quickening her step for a few paces as if hurrying somewhere, she avoided stopping for the inevitable questions about what new things they might expect out of her. In her present mood she might just tell them exactly what she thought, which would be foolish in the extreme. Doing nothing. Asking her what Rand was going to do. Telling her to cut her hair. Bah!
Of course, they were not all smiles. Not only did Nisao look right through Nynaeve; Nynaeve had to step nimbly out of the way before the tiny woman walked right over her. And a haughty, pale-haired Aes Sedai with a prominent chin, guiding a tall roan gelding through the crowd, cast a sharp blue-eyed frown at her as she rode by. Nynaeve did not recognize her. The woman was perfectly neat in a riding dress of pale gray silk, but the light linen dustcloak folded in front of her saddle spoke of travel and named her a new arrival. Adding to the likelihood that she was new come, the lanky green-coated Warder at her heels on a tall gray warhorse looked uneasy. Warders never looked uneasy, but Nynaeve supposed joining a rebellion against the Tower might make for an exception. Light! Even new arrivals came ready to put her back up!
And then there was scar-faced Uno, his head shaven except for a topknot and his missing eye covered by a patch painted with a hideous glaring red replacement. Pausing in the leather-lunged flaying of an abashed young man in plate-and-mail armor who stood holding the reins of a horse with a lance lashed to the saddle, Uno directed a warm grin in Nynaeve’s direction. Well, it would have been warm without the eyepatch. Nynaeve’s grimace made him blink and hurry back to dressing down the soldier.
It was not Uno or his eyepatch that soured her stomach. Not exactly. He had accompanied her and Elayne to Salidar, and once promised to steal horses—“borrow,” he called it—if they wanted to leave. No chance of that now. Uno wore a band of golden braid on the cuffs of his worn dark coat now; he was an officer, training heavy cavalry for Gareth Bryne, and much too caught up in it to bother himself with Nynaeve. No, that was not true. If she said she wanted to go, he would procure horses in a matter of hours, and she would ride with an escort of top-knotted Shienarans who had given their allegiance to Rand and were only in Salidar because she and Elayne brought them there. Only, she would have to admit she had been wrong in deciding to stay, admit she had been lying all those times she had told him she was happy right where she was. Making those admissions was just beyond her. Uno’s main reason for staying was that he thought he should look after her and Elayne. He would hear no admissions from her!
The whole thought of leaving Salidar was a new one, sparked by Uno, and it set her thinking fiercely. If only Thom and Juilin had not gone jaunting off to Amadicia. Not that they had made the trip for the fun of it, really. Back in the days when it seemed the Aes Sedai here might really do something, they had volunteered to scout out what was going on across the river. Meaning to penetrate as far as Amador itself, they had been gone well over a month, and would not return for days more at best. They were not the only scouts, of course; even Aes Sedai and Warders had been sent, though most of those were aimed farther west, at Tarabon. A show of doing something, and the delay before any could return with word, was a good excuse to wait. Nynaeve wished she had not let the two men go. Neither would have, had she said no.
Thom was an old gleeman, though he had once been considerably more, and Juilin a thief-taker from Tear, both competent men who knew how to handle themselves in strange places, and handy in a number of ways. They had accompanied her and Elayne to Salidar, too, and neither would have asked questions if told she wanted to leave. Undoubtedly they would have said a good deal behind her back, but not to her face, the way Uno would.
It was galling to admit that she really needed them, but she was not sure she knew how to go about stealing a horse. In any case, an Accepted would be noticed fooling around the horses, in the stables as much as out on the soldiers’ picket lines, and if she changed out of the banded white dress, she would certainly be seen and reported before she got anywhere near a horse. Even if she managed it, she would be pursued. Runaway Accepted, like runaway novices, were almost always brought back to face punishment that erased any thought of a second attempt. When you began training to be Aes Sedai, Aes Sedai were not finished with you until they said they were.
It was not fear of punishment that held her, of course. What was a switching or two against the chance of being killed by the Black Ajah, or facing one of the Forsaken? It was just a matter of whether she really wanted to go. Where would she go, for instance? To Rand, in Caemlyn? Egwene in Cairhien? Would Elayne come? Certainly, if they went to Caemlyn. Was it a desire to do something, or fear that Moghedien was going to be discovered? The punishment for running away would not be a patch on that! She had reached no conclusion when she rounded a corner and found herself looking at Elayne’s novice class, gathered in an open space between two thatch-roofed stone houses where the fallen-in ruins of a third had been cleared away.
More than twenty white-clad women sat on low stools in a semicircle, watching Elayne guide two of their number through an exercise. The glow of saidar surrounded all three women. Tabiya, a green-eyed freckle-faced girl of sixteen or so, and Nicola, a slender black-haired woman Nynaeve’s age, were unsteadily passing a small flame back and forth. It wavered and sometimes vanished for an instant when one was too slow to catch it up from the other and maintain it. In her present mood, Nynaeve could clearly see the flows they wove.
Eighteen novices had been whisked away when Sheriam and the rest fled—Tabiya was one of those—but most in this group were like Nicola, newly recruited since the Aes Sedai established themselves in Salidar. Nicola was not the only woman there older than usual for a novice; a good half were. When Nynaeve and Elayne went to the Tower, Aes Sedai rarely tested women much older than Tabiya—Nynaeve had been remarked for her age as much as for being a wilder—but perhaps in desperation, the Aes Sedai here had expanded their testing to women even a year or two beyond Nynaeve. The result was that Salidar now held more novices than the White Tower had for years. That success had made the Aes Sedai send sisters out across Altara in a village-by-village search.
“Do you wish you were teaching that class?”
The voice at her shoulder made Nynaeve’s stomach turn over. Twice in one morning. She wished she had some goosemint in her belt pouch. If she kept letting herself be taken by surprise, she was going to end up sorting papers for a Brown yet.
Of course, the apple-cheeked D
omani woman was not Aes Sedai. Back in the Tower, Theodrin would have been raised to the shawl already, but here she had been raised to something more than Accepted, less than a full sister. She wore her Great Serpent ring on her right hand not her left, and a green dress that went well with her bronze coloring, but she could not choose an Ajah or wear the shawl.
“I have better things to be about than teaching a bunch of thickheaded novices.”
Theodrin only smiled at the tartness in Nynaeve’s voice. She was quite nice, really. “A thickheaded Accepted to teach thickheaded novices?” Usually, she was nice. “Well, once we have you where you can channel without being ready to thump their heads, you will be teaching novices too. And I would not be surprised if you were raised soon after, the things you’ve been discovering. You know, you have never told me what your trick was.” Wilders almost always had some trick they had learned, the first unveiling of the ability to channel. The other thing most wilders had in common was a block, something they had built up in their minds to hide their channeling even from themselves.
Nynaeve kept her face smooth with an effort. To be able to channel whenever she wanted. To be raised Aes Sedai. Neither would remedy the problem of Moghedien, but she would be able to go where she wanted then, study as she wanted without anyone telling her this or that simply could not be Healed. “People got well when they shouldn’t. I would get so mad that somebody was going to die, that everything I knew about herbs wasn’t enough . . .” she shrugged. “And they got well.”
“Much better than mine.” The slender woman sighed. “I could make a boy want to kiss me, or not want to. My block was men, not anger.” Nynaeve looked at her incredulously, and Theodrin laughed. “Well, it was emotion, too. If there was a man present, and I liked or disliked him a great deal, I could channel. If I felt neither one way nor the other, or there wasn’t a man at all, I might as well have been a tree so far as saidar was concerned.”
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