“I cannot kill you,” she whispered.
“I can’t. Forgive me.” She stepped forward.
“HELP ME, EGWENE!”
Light burned her to ash.
Staggering, she stepped out of the arch, neither noticing her nakedness nor caring. A shudder ran through her, and she covered her mouth with both hands. “I couldn’t, Rand,” she whispered. “I couldn’t. Please forgive me.” Light help him. Please, Light help Rand.
Cold water poured over her head.
“You are washed clean of false pride,” Elaida intoned. “You are washed clean of false ambition. You come to us washed clean, in heart and soul.”
As the Red sister turned away, Sheriam gently took Egwene’s shoulders and guided her toward the last arch. “One more, child. One more, and it is done.”
“He said they could turn him to the Shadow,” Egwene mumbled. “He said the Myrddraal and the Dreadlords could force him.”
Sheriam missed a step, and looked around quickly. Elaida was almost back to the table. The Aes Sedai surrounding the ter’angreal stared at it, seeming lost to anything else. “An unpleasant thing to talk of, child,” Sheriam said finally, and softly. “Come. One more.”
“Can they?” Egwene insisted.
“Custom,” Sheriam said, “is not to speak of what happens within the ter’angreal. A woman’s fears are her own.”
“Can they?”
Sheriam sighed, glanced at the other Aes Sedai again, then dropped her voice to a whisper and spoke swiftly. “This is something known only to a few, child, even in the Tower. You should not learn it now, if ever, but I will tell you. There is—a weakness in being able to channel. That we learn to open ourselves to the True Source means that we can be—opened to other things.” Egwene shuddered. “Calm yourself, child. It is not so easily done. It is a thing not done, so far as I know—Light send it has not been done!—since the Trolloc Wars. It took thirteen Dreadlords—Darkfriends who could channel—weaving the flows through thirteen Myrddraal. You see? Not easily done. There are no Dreadlords today. This is a secret of the Tower, child. If others knew, we could never convince them they were safe. Only one who can channel can be turned in this way. The weakness of our strength. Everyone else is as safe as a fortress; only their own deeds and will can turn them to the Shadow.”
“Thirteen,” Egwene said in a tiny voice. “The same number who left the Tower. Liandrin, and twelve more.”
Sheriam’s face hardened. “That is nothing for you to dwell on. You will forget it.” Her voice climbed to a normal volume. “The third time is for what will be. The way back will come but once. Be steadfast.”
Egwene stared at the glowing arch, stared at some far distance beyond it. Liandrin and twelve others. Thirteen Darkfriends who can channel. Light help us all. She stepped into the light. It filled her. It shone through her. It burned her to the bone, seared her to the soul. She flashed incandescent in the light. Light help me! There was nothing but the light. And the pain.
Egwene stared into the standing mirror, and was not sure whether she was more surprised by the ageless smoothness of her face or the striped stole that hung around her neck. The stole of the Amyrlin Seat.
The way back will come but once. Be steadfast.
Thirteen.
She swayed, caught at the mirror and almost toppled it and herself to the blue-tiled floor of her dressing chamber. Something is wrong, she thought. The wrongness had nothing to do with her sudden dizziness, or at least that was not what felt wrong. It was something else. But she had no idea what.
There was an Aes Sedai at her elbow, a woman with Sheriam’s high cheekbones but dark hair and concerned brown eyes, and the hand-wide stole of the Keeper on her shoulders. Not Sheriam, though. Egwene had never seen her before; she was sure she knew her as well as she knew herself. Haltingly, she put a name to the woman. Beldeine.
“Are you ill, Mother?”
Her stole is green. That means she was raised from the Green Ajah. The Keeper always comes from the same Ajah as the Amyrlin she serves. Which means if I’m the Amyrlin—if?—then I was Green Ajah, too. That thought shook her. Not that she had been Green Ajah, but that she had to reason it out. Light, something is wrong with me.
The way back will come bu. . . . The voice in her head trailed away to finish in a buzz.
Thirteen Darkfriends.
“I am well, Beldeine,” Egwene said. The name felt strange on her tongue; it felt as if she had been saying it for years. “We mustn’t keep them waiting.” Keep who waiting? She did not know, except that she felt infinitely sad about ending that wait, endlessly reluctant.
“They will be growing impatient, Mother.” There was a hesitation in Beldeine’s voice, as if she felt the same reluctance as Egwene, but for a different reason. Unless Egwene missed her guess, behind that outer calm, Beldeine was terrified.
“In that case, we had best be about it.”
Beldeine nodded, then took a deep breath before crossing the carpet to where her staff of office, topped with the snowdrop White Flame of Tar Valon, stood propped beside the door. “I suppose we must, Mother.” She took up the staff and opened the door for Egwene, then hurried ahead so that they made a procession of two, Keeper of the Chronicles leading the Amyrlin Seat.
Egwene noticed little of the corridors they took. All her attention was directed inward. What is the matter with me? Why can’t I remember? Why is so much of what I . . . almost remember wrong? She touched the seven-striped stole on her shoulders. Why am I half sure I’m still a novice?
The way back will come but on—This time it ended abruptly.
Thirteen of the Black Ajah.
She stumbled at that. It was a frightening thought, but it chilled her to the marrow beyond fear. It felt—personal. She wanted to scream, to run and hide. She felt as if they were after her. Nonsense. The Black Ajah has been destroyed. That seemed an odd thought, too. Part of her remembered something called the Great Purge. Part of her was sure no such thing had happened.
Eyes fixed ahead, Beldeine had not noticed her stumble. Egwene had to lengthen her stride to catch up. This woman is scared to her toenails. What in the Light is she taking me to?
Beldeine stopped before tall, paired doors, their dark wood each inlaid with a large silver Flame of Tar Valon. She wiped her hands on her dress, as if they were suddenly sweaty, before opening one door and leading Egwene up a straight ramp of the same silver-streaked white stone that made Tar Valon’s walls. Even here it seemed to shine.
The ramp let into a large, circular room under a domed ceiling at least thirty paces high. A raised platform ran around the outer edge of the room, fronted by steps except where this ramp and two others came out, spaced equally around the circle. The Flame of Tar Valon lay centered in the floor, surrounded by widening spirals of color, the colors of the seven Ajahs. At the opposite side of the room from where the ramp entered, a high-backed chair stood, heavy and ornately carved in vines and leaves, painted in the colors of all the Ajahs.
Beldeine rapped her staff sharply on the floor. There was a tremor in her voice. “She comes. The Watcher of the Seals. The Flame of Tar Valon. The Amyrlin Seat. She comes.”
With a rustle of skirts, shawled women on the platform got up from their chairs. Twenty-one chairs in groupings of three, each triad painted and cushioned in the same color as the fringe on the shawls of the women who stood before them.
The Hall of the Tower, Egwene thought as she crossed the floor to her chair. The Amyrlin Seat’s chair. That’s all it is. The Hall of the Tower, and the Sitters for the Ajahs. I’ve been here thousands of times. But she could not remember one of them. What am I doing in the Hall of the Tower? Light, they’ll skin me alive when they see. . . . She was not sure what it was they would see, only that she prayed they did not.
The way back will come but—
The way back will—
The way—
The Black Ajah waits. That, at least, was whole. It came from everywhere.
Why did no one else seem to hear it?
Settling in the chair of the Amyrlin Seat—the chair that was also the Amyrlin Seat—she realized she had no idea what to do next. The other Aes Sedai had seated themselves when she did, all but Beldeine, who stood beside her with the staff, swallowing nervously. They all seemed to be waiting on her.
“Begin,” she said finally.
It seemed to be enough. One of the Red Sitters stood. Egwene was shocked to recognize Elaida. At the same time she knew that Elaida was foremost of the Sitters for the Red, and her own bitterest enemy. The look on Elaida’s face as she stared across the chamber made Egwene shiver inside. It was stern and cold—and triumphant. It promised things best not thought of.
“Bring him in,” Elaida said loudly.
From one of the ramps—not the one Egwene had entered by—came the crunch of boots on stone. People appeared. A dozen Aes Sedai surrounding three men, two of them burly guards with the white teardrops of the Flame of Tar Valon on their chests, tugging the chains in which the third stumbled as if dazed.
Egwene jerked forward in her chair. The chained man was Rand. Eyes half-closed, head sagging, he seemed nearly asleep, moving only as the chains directed.
“This man,” Elaida proclaimed, “has named himself the Dragon Reborn.” There was a buzz of distaste, not as if the listeners were surprised, but as though it were not something they wanted to hear. “This man has channeled the One Power.” The buzz was louder now, disgusted and tinged with fear. “There is only one penalty for this, known and recognized in every nation, but pronounced only here, in Tar Valon, in the Hall of the Tower. I call on the Amyrlin Seat to pronounce the sentence of gentling on this man.”
Elaida’s eyes glittered at Egwene. Rand. What do I do? Light, what do I do?
“Why do you hesitate?” Elaida demanded. “The sentence has been set down for three thousand years. Why do you hesitate, Egwene al’Vere?”
One of the Green Sitters was on her feet, anger bright through her calm. “Shame, Elaida! Show respect for the Amyrlin Seat! Show respect for the Mother!”
“Respect,” Elaida answered coldly, “can be lost as well as won. Well, Egwene? Can it be you show your weakness, your unfitness for your office, at last? Can it be you will not pronounce sentence on this man?”
Rand tried to lift his head and failed.
Egwene struggled to her feet, head spinning, trying to remember she was the Amyrlin Seat with the power to command all these women, screaming that she was a novice, that she did not belong here, that something was dreadfully wrong. “No,” she said shakily. “No, I cannot! I will not—”
“She betrays herself!” Elaida’s shout drowned out Egwene’s attempt to speak. “She condemns herself out of her own mouth! Take her!”
As Egwene opened her mouth, Beldeine moved beside her. Then the Keeper’s staff struck her head.
Blackness.
First there was pain in her head. There was something hard under her back, and cold. Next came the voices. Murmurs.
“Is she still unconscious?” It was a rasp, a file on bone.
“Do not worry,” a woman said from far, far away. She sounded uneasy, afraid, and trying not to show either. “She will be dealt with before she knows what is happening to her. Then she is ours, to do with as we will. Perhaps we will give her to you for sport.”
“After you make your own use of her.”
“Of course.”
The distant voices moved further away.
Her hand brushed against her leg, touched bare, pebbly flesh. She opened her eyes a crack. She was naked, bruised, lying on a rough wooden table, in what seemed to be a disused storeroom. Splinters stuck her back. There was a metallic taste of blood in her mouth.
A cluster of Aes Sedai stood to one side of the room, talking among themselves, voices low yet urgent. The pain in her head made thinking difficult, but it seemed important to count them. Thirteen.
Another group, black-cloaked and hooded men, joined the Aes Sedai, who seemed caught between cowering and trying to dominate with their presence. One of the men turned his head to look toward the table. The dead white face within the hood had no eyes.
Egwene had no need to count the Myrddraal. She knew. Thirteen Myrddraal, and thirteen Aes Sedai. Without another thought, she screamed in pure terror. Yet even in the midst of fear that tried to split her bones, she reached out for the True Source, clawed desperately for saidar.
“She’s awake!”
“She cannot be! Not yet!”
“Shield her! Quickly! Quickly! Cut her off from the Source!”
“It’s too late! She is too strong!”
“Seize her! Hurry!”
Hands reached for her arms and legs. Pasty pale hands like slugs under rocks, ordered by minds behind pale, eyeless faces. If those hands touched her flesh, she knew she would go mad. The Power filled her.
Flames burst from Myrddraal skin, ripping through black cloth as if they were solid daggers of fire. Shrieking Halfmen crisped and burned like oiled paper. Fist-sized chunks of stone tore themselves free of the walls and whizzed across the room, producing shrieks and grunts as they thudded into flesh. The air stirred, shifted, howled into a whirlwind.
Slowly, painfully, Egwene pushed herself off the table. The wind whipped her hair and made her stagger, but she continued to drive it as she stumbled toward the door. An Aes Sedai loomed in front of her, a woman bruised and bleeding, surrounded by the glow of the Power. A woman with death in her dark eyes.
Egwene’s mind put a name to the face. Gyldan. Elaida’s closest confidante, always whispering together in corners, closeting themselves in the night. Egwene’s mouth tightened. Disdaining stones and wind, she balled up her fist and punched Gyldan between the eyes as hard as she could. The Red sister—the Black sister—crumpled as if her bones had melted.
Rubbing her knuckles, Egwene staggered out into the hall. Thank you, Perrin, she thought, for showing me how to do that. But you didn’t tell me how much it hurts when you do.
Shoving the door shut against the wind, she channeled. Stones around the doorway shivered, cracked, settled against the wood. It would not hold them for long, but anything that slowed pursuit for even a minute was worth doing. Minutes might mean life. Gathering her strength, she forced herself to break into a run. It wobbled, but at least it was a run.
She must find some clothes, she decided. A woman clothed had more authority than the same woman naked, and she was going to need every bit of authority. They would look for her first in her rooms, but she had a spare dress and shoes in her study—and another stole—and that lay not far off.
It was unnerving, trotting through empty hallways. The White Tower no longer held the numbers it once had, but there was usually someone about. The loudest sound was the slap of her bare soles on the tiles.
She hurried through the antechamber of her study to the inner room, and at last she found someone. Beldeine was sitting on the floor, head in her hands, weeping.
Egwene stopped warily, as Beldeine raised reddened eyes to meet hers. No glow of saidar surrounded the Keeper, but Egwene was still cautious. And confident. She could not see her own glow, of course, but the power—the Power—surging through her was enough. Especially when added to her secret.
Beldeine scrubbed a hand across tearstained cheeks. “I had to. You must understand. I had to. They. . . . They. . . .” She took a deep, shuddering breath; it all came out in a rush. “Three nights ago they took me while I slept and stilled me.” Her voice rose to a near shriek. “They stilled me! I cannot channel any longer!”
“Light,” Egwene breathed. The rush of saidar cushioned her against the shock. “The Light help and comfort you, my daughter. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have. . . .” She let it trail away, knowing there was nothing she could do.
“What would you have done? What? Nothing! There’s nothing you can do. But they said they could give it back to me, with the power of . . . the power of the Dark One.” Her eyes
squeezed shut, leaking tears. “They hurt me, Mother, and they made me. . . . Oh, Light, they hurt me! Elaida told me they would make me whole again, make me able to channel again, if I obeyed. That’s why I. . . . I had to!”
“So Elaida is Black Ajah,” Egwene said grimly. A narrow wardrobe stood against the wall, and in it hung a green silk dress, kept for when she had no time to return to her rooms. A striped stole hung beside the dress. She began to dress herself, quickly. “What have they done with Rand? Where have they taken him? Answer me, Beldeine! Where is Rand al’Thor?”
Beldeine huddled, lips trembling, eyes turned bleakly inward, but finally she roused herself enough to say, “The Traitor’s Court, Mother. They took him to the Traitor’s Court.”
Shivers assaulted Egwene. Shivers of fear. Shivers of rage. Elaida had not waited, not even an hour. The Traitor’s Court was used for only three purposes: executions, the stilling of an Aes Sedai, or the gentling of a man who could channel. But all of the three took an order from the Amyrlin Seat. So who wears the stole out there? Elaida, she was sure. But how could she make them accept her so quickly, with me not tried, not sentenced? There cannot be another Amyrlin until I’ve been stripped of stole and staff. And they’ll not find that easy to do. Light! Rand! She started for the door.
“What can you do, Mother?” Beldeine cried. “What can you do?” It was not clear whether she meant for Rand or for herself.
“More than anyone suspects,” Egwene said. “I never held the Oath Rod, Beldeine.” Beldeine’s gasp followed her from the room.
Egwene’s memory still played hide-and-seek with her. She knew no woman could achieve the shawl and the ring without pledging the Three Oaths with the Oath Rod firmly in hand, the ter’angreal sealing her to keep those oaths as if they had been engraved on her bones at birth. No woman became Aes Sedai without being bound to them. Yet she knew that somehow, in some fashion she could not begin to dredge up, she had done just that.
Her shoes clicked swiftly as she ran. At least she knew now why the halls were empty. Every Aes Sedai, except perhaps those she had left in the storeroom, every Accepted, every novice, even all the servants, would be gathered in the Traitor’s Court, according to custom, to watch the will of Tar Valon made fact.
The Dragon Reborn Page 27