She bolted up, gasping, and Cowinde sat back on her heels beside the bed, head bowed in the cowl of her white woolen robe.
“Forgive me, Aes Sedai. I only meant to wake you to break the night’s fast.”
“You didn’t have to jab a hole in my ribs,” Egwene muttered, and was instantly sorry.
Irritation flared in Cowinde’s deep blue eyes, and was snuffed out, hidden behind the gai’shain mask of compliant acceptance. Sworn to obey meekly and touch no weapon for a year and a day, gai’shain accepted whatever happened, whether a rude word, a blow, even a knife in the heart very likely. Though to an Aiel, killing a gai’shain was the same as killing a child. There was no excuse; the perpetrator would be struck down by his own brother or sister. Yet, it was a mask, Egwene was certain. Gai’shain worked at it doggedly, but they were still Aiel, and a people less meek Egwene could not imagine. Even one like Cowinde, who refused to put off the white when her year and a day was done. Her refusal was an act of stubborn pride and defiance, as much as any man refusing to retreat from ten enemies. Such tangles the Aiel’s ji’e’toh got them into.
That was one reason Egwene tried to watch how she spoke to gai’shain, especially those like Cowinde. They had no way to fight back without violating everything they believed in. On the other hand, Cowinde had been a Maiden of the Spear, and would be again if she could ever be convinced to put off that robe. Forgetting the Power, she could probably tie Egwene into a knot while honing a spear at the same time.
“I do not want any breakfast,” Egwene told her. “Just go away and let me sleep.”
“No breakfast?” Amys said, necklaces and bracelets of ivory and silver and gold clicking as she ducked into the tent. She wore no rings—Aiel did not—but for the rest she had on enough to do three women with some to spare. “I thought your appetite at least had recovered fully.”
Bair and Melaine followed her in, each as bedecked with jewelry. The three were from different clans, but where most other Wise Ones who had crossed the Dragonwall stayed close to their septs, their tents were together nearby. They took places on bright, tasseled cushions at the foot of her bedding, adjusting the dark shawls Aielwomen never seemed to be without. Those not Far Dareis Mai, anyway. Amys was as white-haired as Bair, but where Bair’s grandmotherly face bore deep creases, Amys looked oddly young, perhaps because of the contrast between hair and face. She said it had been nearly as pale when she was a child.
Usually Bair or Amys took the lead, but today Melaine, sun-haired and green-eyed, spoke first. “If you stop eating, you cannot get well. We had considered letting you come to the next meeting with the other Aes Sedai—they ask every time when you will come—”
“And make wetlander fools of themselves every time,” Amys put in acidly. She was not a sour woman, but the Aes Sedai in Salidar seemed to make her so. Maybe it was just meeting Aes Sedai. By custom, Wise Ones avoided them, especially Wise Ones who could channel, like Amys and Melaine. Besides, they were not pleased that the Aes Sedai had replaced Nynaeve and Elayne at the meetings. Neither was Egwene. She suspected the Wise Ones felt they had impressed those two with the seriousness of Tel’aran’rhiod. By the fragments she heard of the meetings now, the Aes Sedai were not impressed at all. Very little impressed Aes Sedai.
“But we may have to think again,” Melaine went on calmly. She had been prickly as a thornbush before her recent marriage, but little seemed to crack her composure now. “You must not return to the dream until your body has its full strength back.”
“Your eyes are pinched,” Bair said in a concerned, reedy voice that matched her face. In many ways she was the hardest of the three, though. “Did you sleep poorly?”
“How could she otherwise?” Amys asked grumpily. “I tried to look in on her dreams three times last night, and found nothing. No one can sleep well if they do not dream.”
Egwene’s mouth went dry in a heartbeat; her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. They would have to check on the one night she was not back in her body in just a few hours.
Melaine frowned. Not at Egwene; at Cowinde, still kneeling with her head down. “There is a pile of sand near my tent,” she said with something near her old sharpness. “You will search it grain by grain until you find one red grain. If it is not the one I seek, you will have to begin again. Go now.” Cowinde merely bowed until her face touched the colorful carpets, then scampered out. Looking at Egwene, Melaine smiled pleasantly. “You seem surprised. If she will not do what is proper on her own, I will make her decide to do it. Since she claims to serve me yet, she is still my responsibility.”
Bair’s long hair swung as she shook her head. “It will not work.” She adjusted her shawl on angular shoulders. Egwene sweated in just her shift, with the sun not really up yet, but the Aiel were used to far hotter. “I have beaten Juric and Beira until my arm wearied, but however many times I tell them to take off the white, they are back in the robes before sunset.”
“It is an abomination,” Amys muttered. “Since we crossed into the wetlands, a full quarter of those whose time is done have refused to return to their septs. They twist ji’e’toh beyond its meaning.”
That was Rand’s doing. He had revealed to all what only clan chiefs and Wise Ones had known before, that once all Aiel had refused to touch weapons or do violence. Now some believed they all properly should be gai’shain. Others refused to accept Rand as the Car’a’carn because of it, and still a few each day went to join the Shaido in the mountains to the north. Some simply threw down their weapons and vanished; no one knew what came of them. Taken by the bleakness, the Aiel called it. The strangest part of it to Egwene was that none of the Aiel blamed Rand, except the Shaido anyway. The Prophecy of Rhuidean said that the Car’a’carn would take them back and destroy them. Back to what, none seemed certain, but that he would destroy them, somehow, they accepted as calmly as Cowinde had begun a task she knew was hopeless.
Right that moment Egwene would not have cared if every Aiel in Cairhien donned a white robe. Let these Wise Ones even suspect what she had been up to. . . . She would have dug through a hundred piles of sand, willingly, but she did not think she would be so lucky. Her punishment would be much worse. Once Amys had said if she failed to do exactly as she was told—the World of Dreams being too dangerous, without that promise—Amys would no longer teach her. No doubt the others would agree; that was the punishment she feared. Better a thousand piles of sand under a broiling sun.
“Do not look so shaken,” Bair chuckled. “Amys is not angry at all wetlanders, certainly not at you, who have become like a daughter of our tents. It is your sister Aes Sedai. The one called Carlinya suggested we may be holding you against your will.”
“Suggested?” Amys’ pale eyebrows climbed nearly to her hairline. “The woman said as much!”
“And learned to guard her tongue better.” Bair laughed, rocking on her scarlet cushion. “I will wager she did. When we left them, she was still yelping and trying to get those scarlet puffers out of her dress. A scarlet puffer,” she confided to Egwene, “looks much like a red adder if your eye is dull like a wetlander’s, but it is not poisonous. It does wriggle when confined, though.”
Amys sniffed. “They would have been gone if she thought of them gone. The woman learns nothing. The Aes Sedai we served in the Age of Legends could not have been such fools.” But she sounded mollified.
Melaine was chortling quite openly, and Egwene found herself giggling too. Some Aiel humor was beyond explaining, but not this. She had only met Carlinya three times, but the image of that stiff, icily supercilious woman dancing about trying to haul snakes out of her dress—it was all she could do to keep from laughing out loud.
“At least your humor is in good fettle,” Melaine said. “The head pains have not come back?”
“My head feels fine,” Egwene lied, and Bair nodded.
“Good. We were worried when they persisted. So long as you refrain from entering the dream for a while longer, they should stay
away. Do not fear you suffer any ill effect from them; the body uses pain to tell us to rest.”
That nearly made Egwene laugh again, though not in humor. Aiel ignored gaping wounds and broken bones because they could not be bothered right then. “How much longer do I have to stay out?” she asked. She hated lying to them, but she hated doing nothing even worse. The first ten days after Lanfear hit her with whatever that had been were bad enough; then she could not even think without her head splitting. Once she could, what her mother called “the itchy hands of idleness” had driven her into Tel’aran’rhiod behind the Wise Ones’ backs. You learned nothing resting. “The next meeting, you said?”
“Perhaps,” Melaine replied with a shrug. “We will see. But you must eat. If your desire for food is gone, something is wrong that we do not know.”
“Oh, I can eat.” The porridge cooking outside did smell good. “I was just being lazy, I suppose.” Getting up without wincing was a chore; her head did not like being moved yet. “I thought of some more questions last night.”
Melaine rolled her eyes in amusement. “Since, you were hurt you ask five questions for every one you asked before.”
Because she was trying to puzzle things out for herself. She could not say that, of course, so she just dug a clean shift from one of the small chests lining the tent wall and exchanged it for her sweaty one.
“Questions are good,” Bair said. “Ask.”
Egwene chose her words carefully. And went on with her dressing, casually, in the same white algode blouse and bulky wool skirt the Wise Ones wore. “Is it possible to be pulled into someone’s dream against your will?”
“Of course not,” Amys said, “not unless your touch is all thumbs.”
But right on top of her, Bair said, “Not unless there is strong emotion involved. If you try to watch the dream of someone who loves or hates you, you can be pulled in. Or if you love or hate them. That last is why we do not dare try to watch Sevanna’s dreams, or even to speak with the Shaido Wise Ones in their dreams.” It still surprised Egwene that these women, and the other Wise Ones, all visited and talked with the Shaido Wise Ones. Wise Ones were supposed to be above feuds and battles, but she would have thought opposing the Car’a’carn, vowing to kill him, took the Shaido well beyond that. “Leaving the dream of someone who hates you, or loves you,” Bair finished, “is like trying to climb from a deep pit with sheer sides.”
“There is that.” Amys seemed to recover her humor suddenly; she gave Melaine a sidelong glance. “That is why no dreamwalker ever makes the mistake of trying to watch her husband’s dreams.” Melaine stared straight ahead, face darkening. “She does not make it twice anyway,” Amys added.
Bair grinned, deepening the creases of her face, and very pointedly did not look at Melaine. “It can be quite a shock, especially if he is angry with you. If, to choose an example from air, ji’e’toh takes him away from you, and you, like some silly child, were foolish enough to tell him he would not go if he loved you.”
“This is running far afield from her question,” a crimson-faced Melaine said stiffly. Bair cackled loudly.
Egwene stifled curiosity, and amusement. She made her voice ever so offhanded. “What if you don’t try to look in?” Melaine gave her a grateful look, and she felt a twinge of guilt. Not enough that she would not ask for the whole story later, though. Anything that made Melaine blush so had to be hilarious.
“I heard of such a thing,” Bair said, “when I was young and just beginning to learn. Mora, the Wise One of Colrada Hold, trained me, and she said that if the emotion was very strong, love or hate so great it left room for nothing else, you could be drawn in merely by letting yourself be aware of the other’s dream.”
“I have never heard anything like that,” Melaine said. Amys merely looked doubtful.
“Nor have I from any save Mora,” Bair told them, “but she was a remarkable woman. It was said she was approaching her three hundredth year when she died from a bloodsnake’s bite, yet she looked as young as either of you. I was only a girl, but I remember her well. She knew many things, and could channel strongly. Other Wise Ones came from every clan to learn from her. I think love so great, or hate so, is very rare, but she said this happened to her twice, once with the first man she married, and once with a rival for her third husband’s interest.”
“Three hundred?” Egwene exclaimed, a soft knee-high boot half-laced. Surely even Aes Sedai did not live that long.
“I said that it was said,” Bair replied, smiling. “Some women age more slowly than others, like Amys here, and when it is a woman like Mora, tales are born. Someday I will tell you the story of how Mora moved a mountain. Supposedly, at least.”
“Another day?” Melaine said a touch too politely. Plainly she still smarted over whatever had happened in Bael’s dream, and over the fact the others knew. “I heard every tale of Mora when I was a child; I have them all by heart, I think. If Egwene ever finishes dressing, we must see her fed.” A gleam in her green eyes said she meant to watch every bite go down; clearly her suspicions about Egwene’s health had not been soothed. “And answer the rest of her questions.”
Frantically Egwene fumbled for another. Usually she had a slew of questions, but the events of the night had left her with just that one. If she let it remain at that, they might start wondering whether it had come because she had sneaked off to spy on someone’s dream. Another question. Not about her own odd dreams. Some of them probably had meaning, if she could ferret it out. Anaiya claimed Egwene was a Dreamer, able to foretell the course of future events, and these three women thought it might be so, but they said she had to learn it from within. Besides, she was not sure she wanted to discuss her dreams with anyone. These women already knew more than she really liked about what went on inside her head. “Ah . . . what about dreamwalkers who aren’t Wise Ones? I mean, do you ever see other women in Tel’aran’rhiod?”
“Sometimes,” Amys said, “but not often. Without a guide to teach her, a woman may not realize she does more than have vivid dreams.”
“And of course,” Bair added, “unknowing as she is, the dream may well kill her before she can learn. . . .”
Safely away from the dangerous topic, Egwene relaxed. She had received more answer than she could have hoped for. She already knew she loved Gawyn—Did you, then? a voice whispered. Were you willing to admit it?—and his dreams certainly indicated he loved her. Though of course, if men could say things waking they did not mean, they very probably could dream them. But to have the Wise Ones confirm it, that he loved her strongly enough to overwhelm anything she. . . .
No. That was to be dealt with later. She did not even have an idea where in the world he was. The important thing now was that she knew the danger. She would be able to recognize Gawyn’s dreams the next time, and avoid them. If you really want to, that small voice whispered. She hoped the Wise Ones took the color rising in her cheeks for a healthy glow. She wished she knew what her own dreams meant. If they meant anything.
Yawning, Elayne climbed onto a stone stoop so she could see over the heads of the crowd. There were no soldiers in Salidar today, but people packed the street and hung out of windows, waiting in hushed anticipation, all staring at the Little Tower. The shuffling of feet and an occasional cough from the rising dust were the only sounds. Despite the early morning heat, people barely moved beyond stirring a fan or hat to make a little breeze.
Leane stood in the gap between two thatch-roofed houses, on the arm of a tall, hard-faced man Elayne had never seen before. Very much on his arm. No doubt one of Leane’s agents. Most Aes Sedai eyes-and-ears were women, but Leane’s all seemed to be men. She kept them largely out of sight, but Elayne had noticed her once or twice patting an unfamiliar cheek, smiling up at a pair of strange eyes. She had no idea how Leane did it. Elayne was sure if she tried those Domani tricks, the fellow would think she had promised a good more than she intended, but these men took a pat and a smile from Leane and went trotting away a
s happy as if handed a chest of gold.
Elsewhere in the crowd, Elayne spotted Birgitte, wisely keeping away from her this morning. For a change that horrid Areina was nowhere to be seen. The night had been well beyond hectic, and Elayne had not gone to bed until the sky was already beginning to lighten toward gray. In truth, she would, not have gone at all if Birgitte had not told Ashmanaille she thought Elayne looked unsteady. Not a matter of how she looked at all, of course; the bond with a Warder ran both ways. So what if she had been a little tired? There had been plenty of work to do, and she could still channel more strongly than half the Aes Sedai in Salidar. That bond told her that Birgitte had not slept yet, not her! Elayne sent off to bed like a novice, while Birgitte carried the injured and cleared away wreckage all night!
A glance showed Leane alone now, squeezing into the crowd to find a good place to watch. There was no sign of the tall man.
A yawning, bleary-eyed Nynaeve climbed up beside Elayne, glaring down a leather-vested woodcutter who would have gotten there before her. Muttering to himself, the fellow shoved back into the crowd. Elayne wished Nynaeve would not do that. The yawn, not the glare. Her own jaw cracked in mimicry before she could stop it. There was some excuse for Birgitte—some, maybe; a little—but none for Nynaeve. Theodrin could not possibly expect her to have stayed awake after last night, and Elayne had heard Anaiya tell her to go to bed, yet there she was when Elayne came in, balancing herself on the stool despite its now crooked leg, head nodding every two minutes, muttering about showing Theodrin, showing everyone.
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