The Dragon Reborn (30 page)

Egwene floundered for an answer that the Aes Sedai would accept. It was said that Elaida could hear a lie, sometimes. “It . . . it was Mat. He is very sick.” She tried to choose her words carefully, to say nothing that was not true, yet give an impression far from truth.
Aes Sedai do it all the time
. “We went to. . . . We brought him back to be Healed. If we hadn’t, he would die. The Amyrlin is going to Heal him.”
I hope
. She made herself continue to meet the Red Aes Sedai’s gaze, willed herself not to shift her feet guiltily. From Elaida’s face, there was no way to tell whether she believed a word.

“That is enough, Egwene,” Nynaeve said. Elaida’s penetrating look shifted to her, but she gave no sign of being affected by it. She met the Aes Sedai’s eyes without blinking. “Forgive me for interrupting, Elaida Sedai,” she said smoothly, “but the Amyrlin Seat said our transgressions were to be put behind us and forgotten. As part of making a new beginning, we are not even to speak of them. The Amyrlin said it should be as if they never happened.”

“She said that, did she?” Still nothing in Elaida’s voice or on her face told whether she believed or not. “Interesting. You can hardly forget entirely when your punishment has been announced to the entire Tower. Unprecedented, that. Unheard of, for less than stilling. I can see why you
are eager to put it all behind you. I understand you are to be raised to the Accepted, Elayne. And Egwene. That is hardly punishment.”

Elayne glanced at the Aes Sedai as though for permission to speak. “The Mother said we were ready,” she said. A touch of defiance entered her voice. “I have learned, Elaida Sedai, and grown. She would not have named me to be raised if I had not.”

“Learned,” Elaida said musingly. “And grown. Perhaps you have.” There was no hint in her tone whether she thought this was good. Her gaze shifted back to Egwene and Nynaeve, searching. “You returned with this Mat, a youth from your village. There was another young man from your village. Rand al’Thor.”

Egwene felt as if an icy hand had suddenly gripped her stomach.

“I hope he is well,” Nynaeve said levelly, but her hand was a fist gripping her braid. “We have not seen him in some time.”

“An interesting young man.” Elaida studied them as she spoke. “I met him only once, but I found him—most interesting. I believe he must be
ta’veren
. Yes. The answers to many questions may rest in him. This Emond’s Field of yours must be an unusual place to produce the two of you. And Rand al’Thor.”

“It is just a village,” Nynaeve said. “Just a village like any other.”

“Yes. Of course.” Elaida smiled, a cold quirk of her lips that twisted Egwene’s stomach. “Tell me about him. The Amyrlin has not commanded you to be silent about him also, has she?”

Nynaeve gave her braid a tug. Elayne studied the carpet as if something important were hidden in it, and Egwene racked her brain for an answer.
She can hear lies, they say. Light, if she can really hear a lie. . . .
The moment stretched on, until finally Nynaeve opened her mouth.

At that instant the door opened again. Sheriam regarded the room with a measure of surprise. “It is well I find you here, Elayne. I want all three of you. I had not expected you, Elaida.”

Elaida stood, arranging her shawl. “We are all curious about these girls. Why they ran away. What adventures they had while gone. They say the Mother has commanded them not to speak of it.”

“As well not to,” Sheriam said. “They are to be punished, and that should be an end to it. I have always felt that when punishment is done, the fault that caused it should be erased.”

For a long moment the two Aes Sedai stood looking at each other, no expression on either smooth face. Then Elaida said, “Of course. Perhaps I will speak to them another time. About other matters.” The look she gave
to the three women in white seemed to Egwene to carry a warning, and then she was slipping past Sheriam.

Holding the door open, the Mistress of Novices watched the other Aes Sedai go down the gallery. Her face was still unreadable.

Egwene let out a long breath, and heard echoes from Nynaeve and Elayne.

“She threatened me,” Elayne said incredulously, and half to herself. “She threatened me with stilling, if I don’t stop being—
willful
!”

“You mistook her,” Sheriam said. “If being willful were a stilling offense, the list of the stilled would have more names on it than you could learn. Few meek women ever achieve the ring and the shawl. That is not to say, of course, that you must not learn to act meekly when it is required.”

“Yes, Sheriam Sedai,” they all three said almost as one, and Sheriam smiled.

“You see? You can give the appearance of meekness, at least. And you will have plenty of opportunity to practice before you earn your way back into the Amyrlin’s good graces. And mine. Mine will be harder to achieve.”

“Yes, Sheriam Sedai,” Egwene said, but this time only Elayne spoke with her.

Nynaeve said, “What of . . . the body, Sheriam Sedai? The . . . the Soulless? Have you discovered who killed him? Or why he entered the Tower?”

Sheriam’s mouth tightened. “You take one step forward, Nynaeve, and then a step back. Since from Elayne’s lack of surprise, you have obviously told her of it—
after I told you not to speak of the matter!
—then there are exactly seven people in the Tower who know a man was killed today in the novices’ quarters, and two of them are men who know no more than that. Except that they are to keep their mouths shut. If an order from the Mistress of Novices carries no weight with you—and if that is so, I will correct you—perhaps you will obey one from the Amyrlin Seat. You are to speak of this to no one except the Mother or me. The Amyrlin will not have more rumors piled on those we must already contend with. Do I make myself clear?”

The firmness of her voice produced a chorus of “Yes, Sheriam Sedai”—but Nynaeve refused to stop at that. “Seven, you said, Sheriam Sedai. Plus whoever killed him. And maybe they had help getting into the Tower.”

“That is no concern of yours.” Sheriam’s level gaze included them all. “I will ask whatever questions must be asked about this man. You will forget you know anything at all about a dead man. If I discover you are doing anything else. . . . Well, there are worse things than scrubbing pots to
occupy your attention. And I will not accept any excuses. Do I hear any more questions?”

“No, Sheriam Sedai.” This time, Nynaeve joined in, to Egwene’s relief. Not that she felt very much relief. Sheriam’s watchful eye would make it doubly hard to carry out a search for the Black Ajah. For a moment she felt like laughing hysterically.
If the Black Ajah doesn’t catch us, Sheriam will
. The urge to laugh vanished.
If Sheriam isn’t Black Ajah herself
. She wished she could make that thought go away.

Sheriam nodded. “Very well, then. You will come with me.”

“To where?” Nynaeve asked, and added, “Sheriam Sedai,” only an instant before the Aes Sedai’s eyes narrowed.

“Have you forgotten,” Sheriam said in a tight voice, “that in the Tower, Healing is always done in the presence of those who bring their sick to us?”

Egwene thought that the Mistress of Novices’s stock of patience with them was about used up, but before she could stop herself, she burst out, “Then she
is
going to Heal him!”

“The Amyrlin Seat herself, among others, will see to him.” Sheriam’s face held no more expression than her voice. “Did you have reason to doubt it?” Egwene could only shake her head. “Then you waste your friend’s life standing here. The Amyrlin Seat is not to be kept waiting.” Yet despite her words, Egwene had the feeling the Aes Sedai was in no hurry at all.

Lamps on iron wall brackets lit the passages deep beneath the Tower, where Sheriam took them. The few doors they passed were shut tight, some locked, some so cunningly worked that they remained unseen until Egwene was right on top of them. Dark openings marked most of the crossing hallways, while down others she could only see the dim glow of distant lights spaced far apart. She saw no other people. These were not places even Aes Sedai often came. The air was neither cool nor warm, but she shivered anyway, and at the same time felt sweat trickling down her back.

It was down here, in the depths of the White Tower, that novices went through their last test before being raised to Accepted. Or put out of the Tower, if they failed. Down here, Accepted took the Three Oaths after passing their final test. No one, she realized, had ever told her what happened to an Accepted who failed. Down here, somewhere, was the room where the Tower’s few
angreal
and
sa’angreal
were kept, and the places where the
ter’angreal
were stored. The Black Ajah had struck at those storerooms. And if some of the Black Ajah were lying in wait in one of those dark side corridors, if Sheriam were leading them not to Mat, but to. . . .

She gave a squeak when the Aes Sedai stopped suddenly, then colored when the others looked at her curiously. “I was thinking about the Black Ajah,” she said weakly.

“Do not think of it,” Sheriam said, and for once she sounded like the Sheriam of old, kindly if firm. “The Black Ajah will not be your worry for years to come. You have what the rest of us do not: time before you must deal with it. Much time, yet. When we enter, stay against the wall and keep silent. You are allowed here as a benevolence, to attend, not to distract or interfere.” She opened a door covered in gray metal worked to look like stone.

The square room within was spacious, its pale stone walls bare. The only furnishing was a long stone table draped with a white cloth, in the middle of the room. Mat lay on that table, fully clothed save for coat and boots, eyes closed and face so gaunt that Egwene wanted to cry. His labored breathing made a hoarse whistle. The Shadar Logoth dagger hung sheathed at his belt, the ruby capping its hilt seeming to gather light, so it glowed like some fierce red eye despite the illumination of a dozen lamps, magnified by the pale walls and white-tiled floor.

The Amyrlin Seat stood at Mat’s head, and Leane at his feet. Four Aes Sedai stood down one side of the table, and three down the other. Sheriam joined the three. One of them was Verin. Egwene recognized Serafelle, another Brown sister, and Alanna Mosvani, of the Green Ajah, and Anaiya, of the Blue, which was Moiraine’s Ajah.

Alanna and Anaiya had each taught her some of her lessons in opening herself to the True Source, in how to surrender to
saidar
in order to control it. And between her first arrival in the White Tower and her departure, Anaiya must have tested her fifty times to see if she was a Dreamer. The tests had shown nothing one way or the other, but plain-faced, kindly Anaiya, with that warm smile that was her only beauty, had kept calling her back for more tests, as implacable as a boulder rolling downhill.

The rest were unknown to her, except for one cool-eyed woman she thought was a White. The Amyrlin and the Keeper wore their stoles, of course, but none of the others had anything to mark them out except Great Serpent rings and ageless Aes Sedai faces. None of them acknowledged the presence of Egwene and the other two by so much as a glance.

Despite the outward calm of the women around the table, Egwene thought she saw signs of uncertainty. A tightness to Anaiya’s mouth. A slight frown on Alanna’s darkly beautiful face. The cool-eyed woman kept smoothing her pale blue dress over her thighs without seeming to realize what she was doing.

An Aes Sedai Egwene did not know set a plain, polished wooden box, long and narrow, on the table and opened it. From its nest in the red silk
lining, the Amyrlin took out a white, fluted wand the length of her forearm. It could have been bone, or ivory, but was neither. No one alive knew what it was made of.

Egwene had never seen the wand before, but she recognized it from a lecture Anaiya had given the novices. One of the few
sa’angreal
, and perhaps the most powerful, that the Tower possessed.
Sa’angreal
had no power of their own, of course—they were merely devices for focusing and magnifying what an Aes Sedai could channel—but with that wand, a strong Aes Sedai might be able to crumple the walls of Tar Valon.