The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  Sharp spots of red appeared in Beonin’s cheeks. “I tell you, I have betrayed n—!” She finished with a strangled grunt and put a hand to her throat as if it refused to let the lie leave her tongue. That proved she was not Black Ajah; but it proved something more.

  “You betrayed the ferrets. Are they all down in the basement cells?”

  Beonin’s eyes flashed up the corridor. Melavaire was talking with her Warder, his head bent close to hers. Squat or not, he was taller than she. Beonin’s Tervail was watching her with a worried expression. The distance was too far for any of the three to have overheard, but Beonin stepped closer and lowered her voice. “Elaida, she is having them watched, though I think the Ajahs, they keep what they see to themselves. Few sisters want to tell Elaida any more than they must. It was necessary, you understand. I could hardly return to the Tower and keep them secret. It would have been discovered eventually.”

  “Then you’ll have to warn them.” Egwene could not keep her voice clear of her disdain. This woman split hairs with a razor! She took the thinnest excuse to decide her oath no longer applied, and then she betrayed the very women she had helped choose. Blood and bloody ashes!

  Beonin remained silent for a long moment, fiddling with her shawl, but at last she said, surprisingly, “I have already warned Meidani and Jennet.” They were the two Grays among the ferrets. “I have done what I can for them. The others, they must sink or swim by themselves. Sisters have been assaulted for simply going too near another Ajah’s quarters. Me, I will not walk back to my rooms clad only in my shawl and the welts just to try—”

  “Think of it as a penance,” Egwene cut in. Light! Sisters assaulted? Things were even worse than she had thought. She had to remind herself that well-manured ground would help her seeds to grow.

  Beonin glanced up the hallway again, and Tervail took a step toward her before Beonin shook her head. Her face was smooth despite the color staining her cheeks, but inside, she must have been in turmoil. “You know I could send you to the Mistress of Novices, yes?” she said in a tight voice. “I hear you spend half of each day squealing for her. I think you would dislike more visits, yes?”

  Egwene smiled at her. Not two hours earlier she had managed to smile the moment Silviana’s strap stopped falling. This was much harder. “And who can say what I might squeal? About oaths, perhaps?” The color drained from the other woman’s cheeks, leaving her face bloodless pale. No, she did not want that getting out. “You may have convinced yourself I am no longer Amyrlin, Beonin, but it’s time to start convincing yourself that I still am. You will warn the others, whatever the cost to yourself. Tell them to stay away from me unless I send word otherwise. They’ve had more than enough attention drawn to them. But from now on, you’ll seek me out every day in case I have instructions for them. I have some now.” Quickly she listed the things she wanted them to bring up in conversation, Shemerin being stripped of the shawl, Elaida’s complicity in the disasters at the Black Tower and Dumai’s Wells, all the seeds she had been planting. They would not be planted one by one now, but broadcast by handfuls.

  “Me, I cannot speak for other Ajahs,” Beonin said when she finished, “but in the Gray, sisters speak of most of these things often. The eyes-and-ears, they are busy of late. Secrets Elaida hoped to hold, they are coming out. I am sure it must be the same in the others. Perhaps it is not necessary for me to—”

  “Warn them, and deliver my instructions, Beonin.” Egwene lifted the pole back onto her shoulders, shifting it to the most comfortable position she could find. Two or three of the Whites would use a hairbrush or slipper on her and send her to Silviana if they thought her slow. Embracing pain, even welcoming it, did not mean seeking it out unnecessarily. “Remember. It’s a penance I’ve set you.”

  “I will do as you say,” Beonin said with obvious reluctance. Her eyes hardened suddenly, but it was not for Egwene. “It would be enjoyable to see Elaida pulled down,” she said in an unpleasant voice before hurrying away to join Melavaire.

  That shocking meeting, turned into an unexpected victory, left Egwene feeling very good about the day, and no matter that Ferane did turn out to think she had been slow. The White Sitter was plump, but she had an arm as strong as Silviana’s.

  That night, she dragged herself down to the open cells after supper despite wanting her bed in the worst way. Aside from lessons and howling under Silviana’s strap—the last time just before supper—most of the rest of the day had been given to hauling water. Her back and shoulders ached. Her arms ached, her legs. She was swaying on her feet with weariness. Strangely, she had not had one of those wretched headaches since being taken prisoner, nor any of those dark dreams that left her disturbed even though she could never remember them, but she thought she might be heading for a fine headache tonight. That would make telling true dreams difficult, and she had had some fine ones lately, about Rand, Mat, Perrin, even Gawyn, though most dreams of him were just that.

  Three White sisters she knew in passing were guarding Leane: Nagora, a lean woman with pale hair worn in a roll on her nape who sat very straight to make up for her lack of stature; Norine, lovely with her large liquid eyes but often as vague as any Brown; and Miyasi, tall and plump with iron-gray hair, a stern woman who brooked no nonsense and saw nonsense everywhere. Nagora, surrounded by the light of saidar, held the shield on Leane, but they were arguing over some point of logic that Egwene could not make out from the little she heard. She could not even tell whether there were two sides to the argument, or three. There were no raised voices, no shaken fists, and their faces remained smooth Aes Sedai masks, but the coldness in their voices left no doubt that had they not been Aes Sedai, they would have been shouting if not trading blows. She might as well not have existed for all the attention they paid her entrance.

  Watching the three from the edge of her eye, she moved as close to the iron latticework as she could and gripped it with both hands to steady herself. Light, she was tired! “I saw Beonin today,” she said softly. “She’s here in the Tower. She claimed her oath to me no longer held because I was no longer the Amyrlin Seat.”

  Leane gasped and stepped near enough that she was brushing the iron bars. “She betrayed us?”

  “The inherent impossibility of dissimulated structures is a given,” Nagora said firmly. Her voice was an icy hammer. “A given.”

  “She denies it, and I believe her,” Egwene whispered. “But she admitted betraying the ferrets. Elaida is only having them watched for the moment, but I told Beonin to warn them, and she said she would. She said she had already warned Meidani and Jennet, but why would she betray them and then tell them about it? And she said she would like to see Elaida pulled down. Why would she flee to Elaida if she still wants her brought down? She as much as admitted no one else has abandoned our cause. I’m missing something, and I’m too tired to see what it is.” A yawn that she barely managed to cover with a hand cracked her jaw.

  “Dissimulated structures are implied by four of the five axioms of sixth-order rationality,” Miyasi said just as firmly. “Strongly implied.”

  “So-called sixth-order rationality has been discarded as an aberration by anyone with intellect,” Norine put in, a touch sharply. “But dissimulated structures are fundamental to any possibility of understanding what is happening right here in the Tower every day. Reality itself is shifting, changing day by day.”

  Leane glanced at the Whites. “Some always thought Elaida had spies among us. If Beonin was one, her oath to you would have held her until she could convince herself you were no longer Amyrlin. But if her reception here wasn’t what she expected, it might have changed her loyalties. Beonin was always ambitious. If she didn’t get her due as she sees matters. . . .” She spread her hands. “Beonin always expected her due and perhaps a little more.”

  “Logic is always applicable to the real world,” Miyasi said dismissively, “but only a novice would think the real world can be applied to logic. Ideals must be first principles. Not
the mundane world.” Nagora snapped her mouth shut with a dark look, as if she felt words had been snatched right off her tongue.

  Coloring faintly, Norine rose and glided away from the benches toward Egwene. The other two followed her with their eyes, and she seemed to feel their gazes, shifting her shawl uncomfortably first one way than another. “Child, you look exhausted. Go to your bed now.”

  Egwene wanted nothing more than her bed, but she had a question to be answered first. Only she had to be careful. The three Whites were all paying attention now. “Leane, do the sisters who visit you still ask the same questions?”

  “I told you to go to your bed,” Norine said sharply. She clapped her hands together as if that would somehow make Egwene obey.

  “Yes,” Leane said. “I see what you mean. Perhaps there can be a measure of trust.”

  “A small measure,” Egwene said.

  Norine planted her fists on her hips. There was little coolness in her face or her voice, and no vagueness at all about her. “Since you refuse to go to your bed, you can go to the Mistress of Novices and tell her you disobeyed a sister.”

  “Of course,” Egwene said quickly, turning to go. She had her answer—Beonin had not passed on Traveling, and that meant she likely had not passed on anything else; perhaps there could be a little trust—and besides, Nagora and Miyasi were advancing on her. The last thing she wanted was to be dragged bodily to Silviana’s study, something Miyasi at least was quite capable of. She had even stronger arms than Ferane.

  On the morning of her ninth day back in the Tower, before first light, Doesine herself came to Egwene’s small room to give her her morning dose of Healing. Outside, rain was falling with a dull roar. The two Reds who had been watching over her sleep gave her her forkroot, frowning at Doesine, and hurried away. The Yellow Sitter snorted in contempt when the door closed behind them. She used the old method of Healing that made Egwene gasp as though doused in an icy pond and left her ravenously eager for breakfast. As well as free of the pain in her bottom. That actually felt peculiar; you could adapt to anything over time, and a bruised bottom already seemed normal. But the use of the old way, the way used every time she had been given Healing since being captured, reaffirmed that Beonin had kept some secrets, though how she had managed it was still a mystery. Beonin herself had only said that most sisters thought the tales of new weaves were merely rumors.

  “You don’t mean to bloody surrender, do you, child?” Doesine said while Egwene was pulling her dress over her head. The woman’s language was very much at odds with her elegant appearance, in gold-embroidered blue with sapphires at her ears and in her hair.

  “Should the Amyrlin Seat ever surrender?” Egwene asked as her head popped out at the top of her dress. She doubled her arms behind her to do up the buttons of white-dyed horn.

  Doesine snorted again, though not in contempt, Egwene thought. “A brave course, child. Still, my wager is that Silviana will bloody well have you sitting straight and walking right before much longer.” But she left without calling Egwene down for naming herself the Amyrlin Seat.

  Egwene had yet another appointment with the Mistress of Novices before breakfast—she had not missed a day, so far—and following a determined effort to undo Doesine’s work in one go, her tears ceased as soon as Silviana’s strap stopped falling. When she lifted herself off the end of the writing table, where a leather pad was attached just for bending over, its surface worn down by who knew how many women, and her skirt and shift fell against her fiery skin, she felt no urge to flinch. She accepted the painful heat, welcomed it, warmed herself with it as she would have warmed her hands in front of a fireplace on a cold winter morning. There seemed a strong resemblance between her bottom and a blazing fireplace right at that moment. Yet looking into the mirror, she saw an unruffled face. Red-cheeked, but calm.

  “How could Shemerin have been reduced to Accepted?” she asked, wiping her tears away with her handkerchief. “I’ve inquired, and there’s no provision for it in Tower law.”

  “How often have you been sent to me because of those ‘inquiries’?” Silviana asked, hanging the split-tailed strap in the narrow cabinet alongside the leather paddle and the limber switch. “I’d think you would have given over long since.”

  “I’m curious. How, when there’s no provision?”

  “No provision, child,” Silviana said gently, as if explaining to a child in truth, “but no prohibition, either. A loophole that. . . . Well, we won’t go into that. You’d only find a way to get yourself another strapping with it.” Shaking her head, she took her seat behind the writing table and rested her hands on the tabletop. “The problem was that Shemerin accepted it. Other sisters told her to ignore the edict, but once she realized pleading wouldn’t change the Amyrlin’s mind, she moved into the Accepted’s quarters.”

  Egwene’s stomach growled loudly, anxious for breakfast, but she was not done. She was actually having a conversation with Silviana. A conversation, however odd the topic. “But why would she run away? Surely her friends didn’t stop trying to talk sense into her.”

  “Some talked sense,” Silviana said dryly. “Others. . . .” She moved her hands like the pans of a balance scale, first one up then the other. “Others tried to force her to see sense. They sent her to me nearly as often as you are sent. I treated her visits as private penances, but she lacked your—” She stopped abruptly, leaning back in her chair and studying Egwene over steepled fingers. “Well, now. You actually have me chatting. Not prohibited certainly, yet hardly proper in these circumstances. Go on to breakfast,” she said, picking up her pen and opening the silver cap of her ink jar. “I’ll mark you down for midday again, since I know you have no intention of curtsying.” The faintest hint of resignation tinged her voice.

  When Egwene entered the novices’ dining hall, the first novice to see her stood, and suddenly there was a loud scraping of benches on the colorful floor tiles as the others rose, too. They stood there at their benches in silence as Egwene walked down the center aisle toward the kitchen. Suddenly Ashelin, a plump, pretty girl from Altara, darted into the kitchen. Before Egwene reached the kitchen door, Ashelin was back with a tray in her hands that held the usual thick cup of steaming tea and plate of bread, olives and cheese. Egwene reached for the tray, but the olive-skinned girl hurried to the nearest table and set it down in front of an empty bench, offering a suggestion of a curtsy as she backed away. Lucky for her, neither of Egwene’s escorts this morning had chosen that moment to peer into the dining hall. Lucky for all those novices on their feet.

  A cushion rested on the bench in front of Egwene’s tray. A tattered thing that was more patches in different colors than original material, but still a cushion. Egwene picked it up and set it on the end of the table before sitting down. Welcoming the pain was easy. She basked in the warmth of her own fires. A soft susurration gusted through the room, a collective sigh. Only when she popped an olive into her mouth did the novices sit.

  She almost spat it out again—it was not far short of spoiled—but she was famished after her Healing, so she spat only the pit into the palm of her hand and deposited it on the plate, washing the taste away with a sip of tea. There was honey in the tea! Novices got honey only on special occasions. She tried not to smile as she cleaned her plate, and clean it she did, even picking up crumbs of bread and cheese with a dampened finger. Not smiling was difficult, though. First Doesine—a Sitter!—then Silviana’s resignation, now this. The two sisters were far more important than the novices or the honey, but they all indicated the same thing. She was winning her war.

  CHAPTER 25

  Attending Elaida

  Gold-embossed leather folder under her arm, Tarna kept to the central core of the Tower as she climbed toward Elaida’s apartments, although it meant using a seemingly endless series of staircases—twice those stairs were not located where she remembered them, but so long as she continued upward, she would reach her destination—rather than the gently spiraling cor
ridors. On the stairs, she met no one but occasional liveried servants who bowed or curtsied before hurrying on about their tasks. In either of the spiraling hallways she would have to pass the entrances to the Ajah quarters and perhaps encounter other sisters. Her Keeper’s stole allowed her to enter any Ajah’s quarters, yet she avoided all except the Red save when duty called. Among sisters of the other Ajahs she was all too aware that her narrow stole was red, all too aware of hot eyes watching her from cold faces. They did not unnerve her—little did; she took the shifting interior of the Tower in stride—but still. . . . She thought matters had not gone so far that anyone would actually attack the Keeper, yet she took no chances. Retrieving the situation was going to be a long, hard struggle, whatever Elaida thought, and an assault on the Keeper might make it irretrievable.

  Besides, not having to watch over her shoulder allowed her to think on Pevara’s troubling question, one she had not considered before suggesting the bonding of Asha’man. Who in the Red actually could be trusted with the task? Hunting men who could channel led Red sisters to look askance at all men, and a fair number hated them. A surviving brother or father might well escape hatred, a favorite cousin or uncle, but once they were all gone, so was affection. And trust. And there was another matter of trust. Bonding any man violated custom strong as law. Even with Tsutama’s blessings, who might run to Elaida when bonding Asha’man was broached? She had removed three more names from her mental list of possibilities by the time she reached the entrance to Elaida’s apartments, only two floors below the top of the Tower. After almost two weeks, her list of those she could be certain of still contained only a single name, and that one was impossible for the task.