Frantically, Seaine cast around for what reason would have these four this deep into the bedrock of Tar Valon. What could tie them together? Their Ajahs—all of the Ajahs—truly were at one another’s throats. All four had been handed penances by Elaida. No Sitter could enjoy Labor, especially when everyone knew exactly why she was scrubbing floors or pots, yet that was hardly a bond. What else? None were nobly born. Saerin and Yukiri were the daughters of innkeepers, Talene of farmers, while Doesine’s father had been a cutler. Saerin had been trained first by the Daughters of Silence, the only one of that lot to reach the shawl. Absolutely useless drivel. Suddenly, something did strike her, and dried her throat. Saerin with her temper often barely in rein. Doesine, who had actually run away three times as a novice, though she had only once made it as far as the bridges. Talene, who might have earned more punishments than any other novice in the history of the Tower. Yukiri, always the last Gray to join her sisters’ consensus when she wanted to go another way, the last to join the Hall’s, for that matter. All four were considered rebels, in a way, and Elaida had humiliated every one. Could they be thinking they had made a mistake, standing to depose Siuan and raise Elaida? Could they have found out about Zerah and the others? And if so, what did they intend to do?
Mentally, Seaine prepared herself to weave saidar, though without much hope that she could escape. Pevara matched Saerin and Yukiri in strength, but she herself was weaker than any here save Doesine. She prepared herself, and Talene stepped forward and burst all of her logical deductions to flinders.
“Yukiri noticed you two sneaking about together, and we want to know why.” Her surprisingly deep voice held heat despite the ice that seemed to coat her face. “Did the heads of your Ajahs set you a secret task? In public, the Ajahs’ heads snarl at one another worse than anyone else, but they’ve been sneaking off into corners to talk, it seems. Whatever they’re scheming, the Hall has a right to know.”
“Oh, do give over, Talene.” Yukiri’s voice was always an even bigger surprise than Talene’s. The woman looked a miniature queen, in dark silver silk with ivory lace, but she sounded a comfortable country woman. She claimed the contrast helped in negotiations. She smiled at Seaine and Pevara, a monarch perhaps unsure how gracious she should be. “I saw the pair of you sniffing about like ferrets at the hencoop,” she said, “but I held my tongue—you might be pillow friends, for all I know, and whose business is that but yours?—I held my tongue till Talene here started yelping about who’s been huddling in corners. I’ve seen a bit of huddling in corners myself, and I suspect some of those women might head their Ajahs as well, so. . . . Sometimes six and six make a dozen, and sometimes they make a mess. Tell us if you can, now. The Hall does have a right.”
“We are not leaving until you do tell,” Talene put in even more heatedly than before.
Pevara snorted and folded her arms. “If the head of my Ajah spoke two words to me, I’d see no reason to tell you what they were. As it happens, what Seaine and I were discussing has nothing to do with the Red or the White. Snoop elsewhere.” But she did not release saidar. Neither did Seaine.
“Bloody useless and I bloody knew it,” Doesine muttered from her place by the door. “Why I ever flaming let you talk me into this. . . . Just as bloody well nobody else knows, or we’d have sheepswallop all over faces for the whole bloody Tower to see.” At times she had a tongue like a boy, too, a boy who needed his mouth washed out.
Seaine would have stood to leave if she had not feared her knees would betray her. Pevara did stand, and raised an impatient eyebrow at the women between her and the door.
Saerin fingered her knife hilt and eyed them quizzically, not shifting a step. “A puzzle,” she murmured. Suddenly she glided forward, her free hand dipping into Seaine’s lap so quickly that Seaine gasped. She tried to keep the Oath Rod hidden, but the only result was that she ended with Saerin holding the Rod waist high with one hand while she held the other end and a fistful of her skirts. “I enjoy puzzles,” Saerin said.
Seaine let go and adjusted her dress; there seemed nothing else to do.
The appearance of the Rod produced a momentary babble as nearly everyone spoke at once.
“Blood and fire,” Doesine growled. “Are you down here raising new bloody sisters?”
“Oh, leave it with them, Saerin,” Yukiri laughed right on top of her. “Whatever they’re up to, it’s their own business.”
Atop both, Talene barked, “Why else are they sneaking about—together!—if it isn’t to do with the Ajah heads?”
Saerin waved a hand, and after a moment gained quiet. All present were Sitters, but she had the right to speak first in the Hall, and her forty years counted for something, too. “This is the key to the puzzle, I think,” she said, stroking the Rod with her thumb. “Why this, after all?” Abruptly the glow of saidar surrounded her, too, and she channeled Spirit to the Rod. “Under the Light, I will speak no word that is not true. I am not a Dark-friend.”
In the silence that followed, a mouse sneezing would have sounded loud.
“Am I right?” Saerin said, releasing the Power. She held the Rod out toward Seaine.
For the third time, Seaine retook the Oath against lying, and for the second time repeated that she was not of the Black. Pevara did the same with frozen dignity. And eyes sharp as an eagle’s.
“This is ridiculous,” Talene said. “There is no Black Ajah.”
Yukiri took the Rod from Pevara and channeled. “Under the Light, I will speak no word that is not true. I am not Black Ajah.” The light of saidar around her winked out, and she handed the Rod to Doesine.
Talene frowned in disgust. “Stand aside, Doesine. I for one will not put up with this filthy suggestion.”
“Under the Light, I will speak no word that is not true,” Doesine said almost reverently, the glow around her like a halo. “I am not of the Black Ajah.” When matters were serious, her tongue was as clean as any Mistress of Novices could have wished. She extended the Rod to Talene.
The golden-haired woman started back as from a poisonous snake. “Even to ask this is a slander. Worse than slander!” Something feral moved in her eyes. An irrational thought, perhaps, but that was what Seaine saw. “Now move out of my way,” Talene demanded with all the authority of a Sitter in her voice. “I am leaving!”
“I think not,” Pevara said quietly, and Yukiri nodded slowly in agreement. Saerin did not stroke her knife hilt; she gripped it till her knuckles went white.
Riding through the deep snows of Andor, floundering through them, Toveine Gazal cursed the day she was born. Short and slightly plump, with smooth copper skin and long glossy dark hair, she had seemed pretty to many over the years, but none had ever called her beautiful. Certainly none would now. The dark eyes that had once been direct now bored into whatever she looked at. That was when she was not angry. She was angry today. When Toveine was angry, serpents fled.
Four other Reds rode—floundered—at her back, and behind them twenty of the Tower Guard in dark coats and cloaks. None of the men liked it that their armor was stowed away on the packhorses, and they watched the forest lining both sides of the road as though expecting attack any moment. How they thought to cross three hundred miles of Andor unnoticed, wearing coats and cloaks with the Flame of Tar Valon shining bright on them, Toveine could not imagine. The journey was almost done, though. In another day, perhaps two with roads knee-deep in snow on the horses, she would join with nine other parties exactly like hers. Not all of the sisters in them were Red, unfortunately, but that did not trouble her overmuch. Toveine Gazal, once a Sitter for the Red, would go into the histories as the woman who destroyed this Black Tower.
She was sure Elaida thought her grateful for the chance, called back from exile and disgrace, given the opportunity for redemption. She sneered, and if a wolf had been looking into the deep hood of her cloak, it might have quailed. What had been done twenty years ago was necessary, and the Light burn all those who muttered that the Blac
k Ajah must have been involved. It had been necessary and right, but Toveine Gazal had been driven from her chair in the Hall, and forced to howl for mercy under the birch, with the assembled sisters watching, and even novices and Accepted witnessing that Sitters, too, lay beneath the law, though they were not told what law. And then she had been sent to work these last twenty years on the isolated Black Hills farm of Mistress Jara Doweel, a woman who considered an Aes Sedai serving penance in exile no different from any other hand laboring in sun and snow. Toveine’s hands shifted on her reins; she could feel the calluses. Mistress Doweel—even now, she could not think of the woman without the honorific she had demanded—Mistress Doweel believed in hard work. And discipline as tight as any novice faced! She had no mercy on anyone who tried to shirk the backbreaking labor that she herself shared, and less than none for a woman who sneaked away to comfort herself with a pretty boy. That had been Toveine’s life for fifteen years. And Elaida had slipped through the cracks uncaught, danced her way to the Amyrlin Seat that Toveine had once dreamed of for herself. No, she was not grateful. But she had learned to wait her chance.
Abruptly, a tall man in a black coat, dark hair falling to his shoulders, spurred his horse out of the forest into the road ahead of her, spraying snow. “There’s no point struggling,” he announced firmly, raising a gloved hand. “Surrender peacefully, and no one will be hurt.”
It was neither his appearance nor his words that made Toveine rein up short, letting the other sisters gather beside her. “Take him,” she said calmly. “You had better link. He has me shielded.” It seemed one of these Asha’man had come to her. How convenient of him.
Abruptly she realized that nothing was happening and took her eyes from the fellow to frown at Jenare. The woman’s pale, square face seemed absolutely bloodless. “Toveine,” she said unsteadily, “I also am shielded.”
“I am shielded, too,” Lemai breathed in disbelief, and the others chimed in, increasingly frantic. All shielded.
More men in black coats appeared from among the trees, their horses stepping slowly, all around. Toveine stopped counting at fifteen. The Guards muttered angrily, waiting on a sister’s command. They knew nothing yet except that a band of rogues had waylaid them. Toveine clicked her tongue in irritation. These men could not all channel, of course, but apparently every Asha’man who could do so had come against her. She did not panic. Unlike some of the sisters with her, these were not the first men who channeled that she had confronted. The tall man began riding toward her, smiling, apparently thinking they had obeyed his ridiculous order.
“At my command,” she said quietly, “we will break in every direction. As soon as you are far enough away that the man loses the shield,” men always thought they had to be able to see to hold their weaves, which meant that they did have to, “turn back and help the Guards. Ready yourselves.” She raised her voice to a shout. “Guardsmen, fight them!”
Roaring, the Guardsmen surged forward, waving their swords and no doubt thinking to surround and protect the sisters. Pulling her mare around to the right, Toveine dug in her heels and crouched low over Sparrow’s neck, dodging between startled Guardsmen, then between two very young men in black coats who gaped at her in astonishment. Then she was into the trees, urging more speed, snow spraying wildly, careless of whether the mare broke a leg. She liked the animal, but more than a horse would die today. Behind her, shouts. And one voice, roaring through all the cacophony. The tall man’s voice.
“Take them alive, by order of the Dragon Reborn! Harm an Aes Sedai, and you’ll answer to me!”
By order of the Dragon Reborn. For the first time, Toveine felt fear, an icicle worming into her middle. The Dragon Reborn. She thrashed Sparrow’s neck with the reins. The shield was still on her! Surely there were enough trees between them already to block the cursed men’s sight of her! Oh, Light, the Dragon Reborn!
She grunted as something struck her across the middle, a branch where there was no branch, snatching her out of the saddle. She hung there watching Sparrow plow off at as much of a gallop as the snow allowed. She hung there. In the middle of the air, arms trapped at her sides, feet dangling a pace or more above the ground. She swallowed. Hard. It had to be the male part of the Power holding her up. She had never been touched by saidin before. She could feel the thick band of nothing snug around her middle. She thought she could feel the Dark One’s taint. She quivered, fighting down screams.
The tall man reined his horse to a halt in front of her, and she floated down to sit sideways in front of his saddle. He did not seem particularly interested in the Aes Sedai he had captured, though. “Hardlin!” he shouted. “Norley! Kajima! One of you bloody young louts come here now!”
He was very tall, with shoulders an axe-handle wide. That was how Mistress Doweel would have put it. Just short of his middle years, handsome in a brooding, rugged fashion. Not at all like the pretty boys Toveine liked, eager and grateful and so easily controlled. A silver sword decorated the tall collar of his black wool coat on one side, with a peculiar creature in gold and red enamel on the other. He was a man who could channel. And he had her shielded and a prisoner.
The shriek that burst from her throat startled even her. She would have held it back if she could, but another leaped out behind it, higher still, and another even higher, another and another. Kicking wildly, she flung herself from side to side. Useless against the Power. She knew that, but only in a tiny corner of her mind. The rest of her howled at the top of her lungs, howled wordless pleas for rescue from the Shadow. Screaming, she struggled like a mad beast.
Dimly she was aware of his horse plunging and dancing as her heels drummed its shoulder. Dimly she heard the man talking. “Easy, you lump-eared sack of coal! Calm down, sister. I’m not going to—Easy, you spavined mule! Light! My apologies, sister, but this is how we learn to do it.” And then he kissed her.
She had only a heartbeat to realize his lips were touching hers, then sight vanished, and warmth flooded through her. More than warmth. She was melted honey inside, bubbling honey, rushing toward the boil. She was a harpstring, vibrating faster and faster, vibrating to invisibility and faster still. She was a thin crystal vase, quivering on the brink of shattering. The harpstring broke; the vase shattered.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
At first, she did not realize that sound had come from her gaping mouth. For a moment, she could not think coherently. Panting, she stared up at the male face above her, wondering who it belonged to. Yes. The tall man. The man who could—
“I could have done without the extra bit,” he sighed, patting the horse’s neck; the animal snorted, but it no longer leaped about, “yet I suppose it is necessary. You’re hardly a wife. Be calm. Don’t try to escape, don’t attack anyone in a black coat, and don’t touch the Source unless I give you permission. Now, what’s your name?”
Unless he gave permission? The effrontery of the man!
“Toveine Gazal,” she said, and blinked. Now, why had she answered him?
“There you are,” another black-coated man said, splashing his horse through the snow to them. This one would be much more to her liking—if he could not actually channel, at least. She doubted this pink-cheeked lad shaved more than twice in the week. “Light, Logain!” the pretty boy exclaimed. “Did you take a second one? The M’Hael won’t like that! I don’t think he likes us taking any! Maybe it won’t matter, though, you two being so close and all.”
“Close, Vinchova?” Logain said wryly. “If the M’Hael had his way, I’d be hoeing turnips with the new boys. Or buried under the field,” he added in a mutter she did not think he meant to be heard.
However much he heard, the pretty boy laughed with incredulous disbelief. Toveine barely heard him. She was gazing up at the man looming over her. Logain. The false Dragon. But he was dead! Stilled and dead! And holding her before his saddle with a casual hand. Why was she not screaming, or striking at him? Even her belt knife would do, this near. Yet she had no desire a
t all to reach for the ivory haft. She could, she realized. That band around her middle was gone. She could at least slip down off the horse and try to—She had no desire to do that, either.
“What did you do to me?” she demanded. Calmly. At least she had managed to hold on to that!
Turning his horse to ride back to the road, Logain told her what he had done, and she put her head against that wide chest, not caring at all how big he was, and wept. She was going to make Elaida pay for this, she vowed. If Logain ever let her, she would. That last was an especially bitter thought.
CHAPTER
27
The Bargain
Seated cross-legged in a heavily gilded, high-backed chair, Min tried to lose herself in the leather-bound copy of Herid Fel’s Reason and Unreason lying open on her knees. It was not easy. Oh, the book itself was mesmerizing; Master Fel’s writings always swept her into worlds of thought she had not dreamed of while working in stables. She very much regretted the sweet old man’s death. She hoped to find a clue in his books to why he had been killed. Her dark ringlets swung as she shook her head and tried to apply herself.
The book was fascinating, but the room was oppressive. Rand’s small throne room in the Sun Palace was thick with gilt from the wide cornices to the tall mirrors on the walls replacing those Rand had smashed, from the two rows of chairs like the one she sat in to the dais at the head of the rows and the Dragon Throne atop the dais. That was a monstrosity, in the style of Tear as imagined by Cairhienin craftsmen, resting on the backs of a pair of Dragons with two more Dragons for the arms and others climbing the back, all with large sunstones for eyes, the whole glittering with gilt and red enamel. A huge golden, wavy-rayed Rising Sun set in the polished stone floor only added to the sense of heaviness. At least the fires blazing in two great fireplaces, tall enough for her to walk into, gave a pleasing warmth, especially with snow spilling down outside. And these were Rand’s rooms; the comfort of that alone outweighed any amount of oppression. An irritating thought. This was Rand’s room if he ever deigned to return. A very irritating thought. Being in love with a man seemed to consist largely of a great many irritating admissions to yourself!
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