The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  Sisters glided along the walkways, too, usually in pairs or even threes, usually trailed by their Warders. The flow of novices parted around them in ripples of curtsies, ripples made jagged by the stares directed at the sisters, who pretended not to notice. Very few of the Aes Sedai lacked the glow of the Power around them. Beonin came close to clicking her tongue in irritation. The novices knew that Anaiya and Kairen were dead—there had been no thought of hiding the funeral pyres—but telling them how the two sisters had died would simply have frightened them. The newest, added to the novice book in Murandy, had worn white long enough to be aware that sisters walking about filled with saidar was beyond unusual, though. Eventually that alone would frighten them, and to no purpose. The killer seemed unlikely to strike in public, with dozens of sisters about.

  Five mounted sisters riding slowly eastward, none carrying the light of saidar, caught her eye. Each was followed by a small entourage, generally a secretary, a serving woman, perhaps a serving man as well in case of heavy lifting, and some Warders. All rode with their hoods up, but she had no difficulty making out who was who. Varilin, of her own Gray, would have been tall as a man, while Takima, the Brown, was a tiny thing. Saroiya’s cloak was flamboyant with white embroidery—she must use saidar to keep it so sparkling bright—and a pair of Warders trailing Faiselle marked her as clearly as her brilliant green cloak. Which made the last, wrapped in dark gray, Magla, the Yellow. What would they find when they reached Darein? Surely not negotiators from the Tower, not now. Perhaps they thought they must go through the motions anyway. People frequently continued to go on as they had been after all purpose in it had been lost. That seldom lasted long with Aes Sedai, however.

  “They hardly seem to be together at all, do they, Beonin? You might think they just happened to be riding in the same direction.”

  So much for the cowl providing a modicum of privacy. Luckily, she was practiced at suppressing sighs, or anything else that might give away more than she wished. The two sisters who had stopped beside her were much of a height, both small-boned, dark-haired and brown-eyed, but there resemblance ended. Ashmanaille’s narrow face, with its pointed nose, seldom displayed any emotion at all. Her silk dress, slashed with silver, might have come from a tirewoman’s hands only moments before, and silver scrollwork decorated the edges of her fur-lined cloak and cowl. Phaedrine’s dark wool bore a number of creases, not to mention several stains, her woolen cloak was unadorned and needed darning, and she frowned much too often, as she was doing right then. She might have been pretty without that. An odd pair of friends, the usually unkempt Brown and the Gray who paid as much attention to her clothes as to anything else.

  Beonin glanced at the departing Sitters. They did appear to be riding in the same direction by chance more than riding together. It was a measure of her upset this morning that she had failed to note that. “Perhaps,” she said turning to face her unwanted visitors, “they are contemplating the consequences of last night, yes, Ashmanaille?” Unwelcome or not, courtesy must be observed.

  “At least the Amyrlin is alive,” the other Gray replied, “and by what I’ve been told, she will remain alive and . . . healthy. Her and Leane both.” Not even Nynaeve’s Healing of Siuan and Leane could make anyone speak of stilling with ease.

  “Alive and a captive, it is better than being beheaded, I suppose. But not a great deal better.” When Morvrin woke her to tell her the news, it had been hard to share the Brown’s excitement. Excitement for Morvrin, at least. The woman had worn a small grin. Beonin had never considered altering her plans, though. Facts, they must be faced. Egwene was a prisoner, and that was that. “Do you not agree, Phaedrine?”

  “Of course,” the Brown replied curtly. Curtly! But that was Phaedrine, always so immersed in whatever had caught her attention that she forgot how she should behave. And she was not done. “But that is not why we sought you. Ashmanaille says you have considerable acquaintance with murders.” A sudden gust of wind snatched at their cloaks, but Beonin and Ashmanaille caught theirs smoothly. Phaedrine let hers swirl behind her, eyes intent on Beonin.

  “Perhaps you have had some thoughts on our murders, Beonin,” Ashmanaille said smoothly. “Will you share them with us? Phaedrine and I have been putting our heads together, but we are getting nowhere. My own experience is more with civil matters. I know that you have gotten to the bottom of a number of unnatural deaths.”

  Of course she had thought on the murders. Was there a sister in the camp who had not? She herself could not have avoided it had she tried. Finding a murderer was a joy, far more satisfying than settling a boundary dispute. It was the most heinous of crimes, the theft of what could never be recovered, all the years that would never be lived, all that might have been done in them. And these were the deaths of Aes Sedai, which surely made it personal for every sister in the camp. She waited for a last covey of white-clad women, two with gray hair, to make their curtsies and hurry on. The number of novices on the walkways was finally beginning to thin out. The cats seemed to be following them. Novices were more free with petting than most sisters.

  “The man who stabs from greed,” she said once the novices were beyond hearing, “the woman who poisons from jealousy, they are one thing. This is quite another altogether. There are two killings, surely by the same man, but well over a week apart. That implies both the patience and the planning. The motive is unclear, yet it seems very unlikely that he chose his victims by chance. Knowing no more of him than the fact that he can channel, you must begin by looking at what ties the victims together. In this case, Anaiya and Kairen, they were both Blue Ajah. So I ask myself, what connection has the Blue Ajah with a man who can channel? The answer comes back, Moiraine Damodred and Rand al’Thor. And Kairen, she also had contact with him, yes?”

  Phaedrine’s frown deepened to near a scowl. “You cannot be suggesting he is the killer.” Really, she was getting much too far above herself.

  “No,” Beonin said coolly. “I am saying you must follow the connection. Which leads to the Asha’man. Men who can channel. Men who can channel, who know how to Travel. Men who have some reason to fear Aes Sedai, perhaps particular Aes Sedai more than others. A connection is not the proof,” she admitted reluctantly, “but it is suggestive, yes?”

  “Why would an Asha’man come here twice and each time kill one sister? That sounds as though the killer wanted those two and no others.” Ashmanaille shook her head. “How could he know when Anaiya and Kairen would be alone? You cannot think he is lurking about disguised as a workman. From all I hear, these Asha’man are far too arrogant for that. To me, it seems more likely we have an actual workman who can channel and bears a grudge of some sort.”

  Beonin sniffed dismissively. She could feel Tervail approaching. He must have run to be back so soon. “And why would he have waited until now? The last workmen, they were taken on in Murandy, more than a month ago.”

  Ashmanaille opened her mouth, but Phaedrine darted in, quick as a sparrow snatching a crumb. “He might have only just learned how. A male wilder, as it were. I’ve overheard workmen talking. As many admire the Asha’man as fear them. I’ve even heard some say they wish they had the nerve to go to the Black Tower themselves.”

  The other Gray’s left eyebrow twitched, as much as both shooting to her hairline in another woman. The two were friends, yet she could not be pleased with Phaedrine plucking the words from her mouth in that way. All she said, though, was “An Asha’man could find him, I’m sure.”

  Beonin let herself feel Tervail, waiting only a few paces behind her, now. The bond carried a steady flow of unwavering calm and patience as strong as the mountains. How she wished she could draw on that as she could on his physical strength. “That is most unlikely to happen, I’m sure you will agree,” she said thinly. Romanda and the others might have stood in favor of this nonsensical “alliance” with the Black Tower, but from that moment on they had fought like drunken cart drivers over how to implement it, how to word the agreement,
how to present it, every single detail torn apart, put back together and torn apart again. The thing was doomed, thank the Light.

  “I must go,” she told them, and turned to take Winterfinch’s reins from Tervail. His tall bay gelding was sleek and powerful and fast, a trained warhorse. Her brown mare was stocky, and not fast, yet she had always preferred endurance to speed. Winterfinch could keep going long after taller, supposedly more powerful animals gave up. Putting a foot in the stirrup, she paused with her hands on tall pommel and cantle. “Two sisters dead, Ashmanaille, and both Blues. Find sisters who knew them and learn what else they had in common. To locate the murderer, you must follow the connections.”

  “I doubt very much they will lead to Asha’man, Beonin.”

  “The important thing is that the killer is found,” she replied, pulling herself into the saddle, and turned Winterfinch away before the other woman could go on. An abrupt ending, and discourteous, but she had no more wisdom to offer, and time seemed to press down on her, now. The sun was clear of the horizon and climbing. After so long, time pressed very hard indeed.

  The ride to the Traveling ground used for departures was short, but near a dozen Aes Sedai were waiting in a line outside the tall canvas wall, some leading horses, some cloakless as if they expected to be indoors before long, and one or two wearing their shawls for some reason. About half were accompanied by Warders, several of whom wore their color-shifting cloaks. The one thing the sisters shared was that each shone with the glow of the Power. Tervail expressed no surprise at their destination, of course, but more than that, the Warder bond continued to carry steady calm. He trusted her. A silvery flash appeared inside the walls, and after sufficient time to count slowly to thirty, a pair of Greens who could not make a gateway alone entered together with four Warders leading horses. The custom of privacy already had attached itself to Traveling. Unless someone allowed you to see her weave a gateway, trying to learn where she was going was accounted akin to asking direct questions about her business. Beonin waited patiently on Winterfinch, with Tervail towering over her on Hammer. At least the sisters here respected her raised cowl. Or perhaps they had their own reasons for silence. Either way, she did not have to talk with anyone. At this moment, that would have been insupportable.

  The line in front of her dwindled quickly, and soon enough she and Tervail were dismounting at the head of a much shorter line, only three sisters. He held aside the heavy canvas flap for her to enter first. Hung between tall poles, the wall enclosed a space of nearly twenty paces by twenty where frozen slush covered the ground, an uneven surface marked by footprints and hoofprints atop one another and scored in the middle by a razor-straight line. Everyone used the middle. The ground glistened faintly, perhaps the beginning of another thaw that would turn it all to slush that might well freeze again. Spring came later here than in Tarabon, but it was on the brink.

  As soon as Tervail let the canvas fall, she embraced saidar and wove Spirit almost caressingly. This weave fascinated her, a rediscovery of something thought lost forever and surely the greatest of Egwene al’Vere’s discoveries. Every time she wove it she felt a sense of wonder, so familiar as novice and even Accepted, that had not come to her since she attained the shawl. Something new and marvelous. The vertical silvery line appeared in front of her, right atop the scoring on the ground, and suddenly became a gap that widened, the view through appearing to rotate until she was faced by a square hole in the air, more than two paces by two, that showed snow-draped oaks with heavy spreading limbs. A light breeze blew through the gateway, rippling her cloak. She had often enjoyed walking in that grove, or sitting on one of the low branches for hours reading, though never in snow.

  Tervail did not recognize it, and darted through, sword in hand, tugging Hammer behind him, the warhorse’s hooves kicking up puffs of snow on the other side. She followed a little more slowly and let the weave dissipate almost reluctantly. It truly was wondrous.

  She found Tervail looking at what rose above the treetops in the near distance, a thick pale shaft rearing against the sky. The White Tower. His face was very still, and the bond seemed filled with stillness, too. “I think me you are planning something dangerous, Beonin.” He still held his blade bared, though lowered now.

  She laid a hand on his left arm. That should be enough to reassure him; she would never have impeded his sword arm if there was any real danger. “No more dangerous than is ne. . . .”

  The words trailed off as she saw a woman some thirty paces away, walking slowly toward her through the grove of massive trees. She must have been behind a tree before. An Aes Sedai in a dress of old-fashioned cut, with straight white hair held back by a pearl-studded cap of silver wire and falling to her waist. It could not be. That strong face with its dark, tilted eyes and hooked nose was unmistakable, though. Unmistakable, but Turanine Merdagon had died when Beonin was Accepted. In midstep, the woman vanished.

  “What is it?” Tervail spun, his sword coming up, to stare in the direction she had been looking. “What frightened you?”

  “The Dark One, he is touching the world,” she said softly. It was impossible! Impossible, but she was not given to delusions or fancies. She had seen what she had seen. Her shiver had nothing to with standing ankle-deep in snow. Silently, she prayed. May the Light illumine me all of my days, and may I shelter in the Creator’s hand in the sure and certain hope of salvation and rebirth.

  When she told him about seeing a sister more than forty years dead, he did not try to dismiss it as hallucination, merely muttered his own prayer half under his breath. She felt no fear in him, though. Plenty in herself, but none in him. The dead could not frighten a man who took each day as his last. He was not so sanguine when she revealed what she intended. Part of it, anyway. She did so looking into the hand mirror and weaving very carefully. She was not as adept with Illusion as she would have liked. The face in the mirror changed as the weave settled on her. It was not a great change, but the face was no longer an Aes Sedai’s face, no longer Beonin Marinye’s face, just that of a woman who looked vaguely like her, though with much paler hair.

  “Why do you want to reach Elaida?” he demanded suspiciously. Abruptly the bond carried an edge. “You mean to get close to her then lower the Illusion, yes? She will attack you, and—No, Beonin. If it must be done, let me go. There are too many Warders in the Tower for her to know them all, and she will never expect a Warder to attack her. I can put a dagger in her heart before she knows what is happening.” He demonstrated, a short blade appearing in his right hand quick as lightning.

  “What I do, I must do myself, Tervail.” Inverting the Illusion and tying it off, she prepared several other weaves just in case matters went too far awry, inverting them also, then began another, a very complex weave that she laid on herself. That would hide her ability to channel. She had always wondered why some weaves, such as Illusion, could be placed on yourself while it was impossible to make others, such as Healing, touch your own body. When she had asked that question as Accepted, Turanine had said in that memorable deep voice, “As well ask why water is wet and sand dry, child. Put your mind on what is possible rather than why some things are not.” Good advice, yet she never had been able to accept the second part. The dead were walking. May the Light illumine me all the days of. . . . She tied off the last weave and removed her Great Serpent ring, tucking it into her belt pouch. Now she could stand beside any Aes Sedai unrecognized for what she was. “You have always trusted me to know what is best,” she went on. “Do you still?”

  His face remained as smooth as a sister’s, yet the bond brought an instant of shock. “But of course, Beonin.”

  “Then take Winterfinch and go into the city. Hire a room at an inn until I come for you.” He opened his mouth, but she raised an admonitory hand. “Go, Tervail.”

  She watched him disappear through the trees, leading both horses, then turned to face the Tower. The dead were walking. But all that mattered was that she reach Elaida. Only that.<
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  Gusts of wind rattled the casements set in the windows. The fire on the white marble hearth had warmed the air to the point that moisture condensed on the glass panes and trickled down like raindrops. Seated behind her gilded writing table with her hands calmly folded on the tabletop, Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan, the Watcher of the Seals, the Flame of Tar Valon, the Amyrlin Seat, kept a smooth face while she listened to the man in front of her rant, shoulders hunched and shaking his fist.

  “. . . did be kept bound and gagged for most of the voyage, confined day and night to a cabin better called a cupboard! For that, I demand the captain of that vessel be punished, Elaida. More, I do demand an apology from you and from the White Tower. Fortune stab me, the Amyrlin Seat does not have the right to kidnap kings any longer! The White Tower does not have that right! I do demand. . . .”

  He was repeating himself again. The man barely paused for breath. It was difficult to keep her attention on him. Her eyes wandered to the bright tapestries on the walls, the neatly arrayed red roses on white plinths in the corners. Tiresome, maintaining outward calm while enduring this tirade. She wanted to stand up and slap him. The audacity of the man! To speak so to the Amyrlin Seat! But enduring calmly served her purpose better. She would let him exhaust himself.