Long before the sitting ended, in spite of the cloak folded beneath her, Egwene’s bottom was quite numb from the hard wooden bench. After listening to endless discussion, she wished her ears were numb, as well. Sheriam, forced to stand, had begun shifting her feet as if wishing for a chair. Or maybe just to sit down on the carpets. Egwene could have left, freeing herself and Sheriam. Nothing required the Amyrlin to stay, and at best her comments were listened to politely. After which the Hall galloped off in its own direction. This had nothing to do with the war, and with the bit between their teeth, the Hall was not about to let her get a hand on the reins. She could have walked out at any time—with a slight interruption in the discussions for the required ceremonies—but if she did, she feared that first thing in the morning she might be handed a fully fledged plan, one the Sitters were already carrying out, and her with no idea what was coming until she read it. At least, that was her fear in the beginning.
Who spoke at the greatest length was no surprise, not any longer. Magla and Saroiya, Takima and Faiselle and Varilin, each fretting visibly when another Sitter had the floor. Oh, they accepted the decision of the Hall, at least on the surface. There was nothing else for them to do except resign their chairs; however hard the Hall might be willing to struggle for consensus if need be, once a course of action was decided, by whatever consensus, then everyone was expected to follow, or at the very least not hinder. That was the rub. What, exactly, constituted hindrance? None of the five spoke against a Sitter from her own Ajah, of course, but the other four leaped to their feet when any Sitter took her bench again, and all five if the Sitter was Blue. And whoever got the floor spoke very persuasively as to why the previous speaker’s suggestions were utterly wrong and perhaps a recipe for disaster. Not that there was any real sign of collusion that Egwene could see. They eyed each other as warily as they did anyone else, frowned at each other as hard if not harder and, plainly, trusted none of the others to make her arguments.
In any event, little of what was suggested came close to conformity. The Sitters disagreed on how many sisters should be sent to the Black Tower and how many from each Ajah, on when those sisters were to be sent, what they must demand, what they should be allowed to agree to and what ordered to refuse entirely. In a matter this delicate, any error could lead to disaster. On top of which, every Ajah except the Yellow considered itself uniquely qualified to provide the leadership of the mission, from Kwamesa’s insistence that the goal was negotiating a treaty, of sorts, to Escaralde’s claim that historical knowledge was a necessity for such an unprecedented undertaking. Berana even pointed out that an agreement of this nature must be reached by absolute rationality; dealing with the Asha’man was sure to inflame passions, and anything except cold logic would surely lead to disaster on the spot. She grew rather heated about it, in fact. Romanda did want the party led by a Yellow, yet since it hardly seemed there would be any great need for Healing, she was reduced to a stubborn insistence that anyone else might be swayed by her Ajah’s special interests and forget the point of what they were doing.
Sitters of the same Ajah supported one another only to the extent of not openly opposing, and no two Ajahs were willing to stand together on much beyond the fact that they had agreed to send an embassy to the Black Tower. Whether it should be called an embassy remained in dispute, even by some who had stood in its favor at the start. Moria herself seemed taken aback by the very idea.
Egwene was not the only one who found the constant argument and counterargument wearing, the points chopped so fine that nothing remained and everything had to begin over. Sisters drifted away from behind the benches. Others replaced them and then drifted away in turn after a few hours. By the time Sheriam uttered the ritual “Depart now in the Light,” night had descended, and only a few dozen remained besides Egwene and the Sitters, several of whom sagged as though they had been run through a mangle like damp bed-linens. And nothing at all had been decided except that more talk was necessary before anything could be decided.
Outside, a pale half-moon hung in a velvet-black sky dusted with glittering stars, and the air was bitter cold. Her breath curling a pale mist in the darkness, Egwene walked away from the Hall smiling as she listened to the Sitters scattering behind her, some still arguing. Romanda and Lelaine were walking together, but the Yellow’s clear high voice rose perilously close to shouting, and the Blue’s was not far behind. They usually argued when forced into one another’s company, but this was the first time Egwene had seen them choose it when they did not have to. Sheriam halfheartedly offered to fetch the reports on wagon repairs and fodder that she had asked for that morning, but the weary-eyed woman did not attempt to hide her relief when Egwene sent her off to her bed. With a hurried curtsy, she went scurrying away into the night clutching her cloak around her. Most of the tents stood dark, shadows in the moonlight. Few sisters remained awake long after nightfall. Lamp-oil and candles were never in generous supply.
For the moment, delay suited Egwene perfectly, but that was not the only reason for her smile. Somewhere in all that argument, her headache had gone away entirely. She would have no difficulty at all going to sleep this night. Halima always remedied that, yet her dreams were always troubled after one of Halima’s massages. Well, few of her dreams were light, but these were darker than any others, and, strangely, she could never remember anything except that they were dark and troubled. Doubtless both things came from some remnant of the pains that Halima’s fingers would not reach, yet the last was disturbing in itself. She had learned to remember every dream. She had to remember every dream. Still, with no headache tonight, she should have no problems, and dreaming was the least of what she had to do.
Like the Hall and her study, her tent stood in a little clearing with its own strip of wooden walkway, the nearest tents a dozen spans off to give the Amyrlin a bit of privacy. At least, that was how the spacing was explained. It might even have been the truth, now. Egwene al’Vere was certainly not irrelevant anymore. The tent was not large, short of four paces on a side, and crowded inside, with four brass-bound chests full of clothing stacked against one wall, two cots and a tiny round table, a bronze brazier, a washstand, a stand-mirror and one of the few real chairs in the camp. A simple piece with a little plain carving, it took up entirely too much room, but it was comfortable, and a great luxury when she wanted to curl her feet beneath her and read. When she had time to read anything for pleasure. The second cot was Halima’s, and she was surprised to see the woman was not already there waiting on her. The tent was not unoccupied, however.
“You had nothing but bread for breakfast, Mother,” Chesa said in a mildly accusing voice as Egwene ducked through the entry flaps. Not far from stout in her plain gray dress, Egwene’s maid was sitting on the tent’s stool, darning stockings by the light of an oil lamp. She was a pretty woman, without a touch of gray in her hair, yet sometimes it seemed that Chesa had been in her employ forever rather than just since Salidar. She certainly took all the liberties of an old servant, including the right to scold. “You ate nothing at all midday, as far as I can learn,” she went on, holding up a snowy silk stocking to study the patch she was making in the heel, “and your dinner’s gone cold there on the table an hour ago at least. Nobody’s asked me, but if they did, I’d say those heads of yours come from not eating. You’re much too skinny.”
With that, she finally put the stocking down atop her mending basket and rose to take Egwene’s cloak. And to exclaim that Egwene was cold as ice. That was another cause of headaches, in her book. Aes Sedai went around ignoring freezing cold or steaming heat, but your body knew whether you did or not. Best to bundle up warm. And wear red shifts. Everyone knew red was warmest. Eating helped, too. An empty belly always led to shivering. You never saw her shivering, now did you?
“Thank you, Mother,” Egwene said lightly, which earned a soft snort of laughter. And a shocked look. For all her liberties, Chesa was a stickler for the proprieties to make Aledrin seem lax. The spirit, anyway, if often not the letter. “I don’t have a headache tonight, thanks to that tea of yours.” Maybe it had been the tea. Vile as that tasted, as a cure, it was no worse than sitting through a session of the Hall lasting more than half a day. “And I’m not very hungry, really. A roll will be enough.”
Of course, it was not quite so simple as that. The relationship between mistress and servant was never simple. You lived in one another’s sleeve, and she saw you at your worst, knew all your faults and foibles. There was no such thing as privacy from your maid. Chesa muttered and grumbled under her breath the whole time she was helping Egwene undress, and in the end, wrapped in a robe—red silk, to be sure, edged with frothy Murandian lace and embroidered with summery flowers; a gift from Anaiya—Egwene let her remove the linen cloth covering the tray on the little round table.
The lentil stew was a congealed mass in the bowl, but a little channeling fixed that, and with the first spoonful, Egwene discovered she did have some appetite. She ate every scrap, and the piece of blue-veined white cheese, and the somewhat shriveled olives, and the two crusty brown rolls, though she had to pick weevils out of both. Since she did not want to fall asleep too quickly, she drank only one cup of the spiced wine, which needed reheating, too, and had a slight bitterness for it, but Chesa beamed with approval as if she had cleaned the tray. Peering at the dishes, empty except for the olive pits and a few crumbs, she realized she had, at that.
Once she was in her narrow cot, two soft woolen blankets and a goose-down comforter pulled to her chin, Chesa took up the dinner tray, but she paused at the tent’s entrance. “Do you want me to come back, Mother? If you get one of your heads . . . Well, that woman’s found company, or she’d be here by now.” There was open scorn in “that woman.” “I could brew another pot of tea. I got it from a peddler who said it was sovereign for aching heads. And joints, and belly upsets, too.”
“Do you really think she’s a lightskirt, Chesa?” Egwene murmured. Already warm under her covers, she felt drowsy. She wanted sleep, but not just yet. Heads and joints and bellies? Nynaeve would laugh herself sick to hear that. Perhaps it had been all those chattering Sitters who chased her headache away after all. “Halima does flirt, I suppose, but I don’t think it’s ever gone beyond flirting.”
For a moment Chesa was silent, pursing her lips. “She makes me . . . uneasy, Mother,” she said finally. “There’s something just not right about that Halima. I feel it every time she’s around. It’s like feeling somebody sneaking up behind me, or realizing there’s a man watching me bathe, or . . . ” She laughed, but it was an uncomfortable sound. “I don’t know how to describe it. Just, not right.”
Egwene sighed and snuggled deeper under the covers. “Good night, Chesa.” Channeling briefly, she extinguished the lamp, plunging the tent into pitch blackness. “You go sleep in your own bed tonight.” Halima might be upset to come and find someone else on her cot. Had the woman really broken a man’s arm? The man must have provoked her somehow.
She wanted dreams tonight, untroubled dreams—at least, dreams she could recall; few of her dreams were what anyone would call untroubled—but she had another sort of dream to enter first, and for that, it had been some time since she needed to be asleep. Nor did she need one of the ter’angreal the Hall guarded so closely. Slipping into a light trance was no harder than deciding to do so, especially as tired as she was, and . . .
. . . bodiless, she floated in an endless blackness, surrounded by an endless sea of lights, an immense swirl of tiny pinpoints glittering more sharply than stars on the clearest night, more numerous than the stars. Those were the dreams of all the people in the world, of people in all the worlds that were or could be, worlds so strange she could not begin to comprehend them, all visible here in the tiny gap between Tel’aran’rhiod and waking, the infinite space between reality and dreams. Some of those dreams, she recognized at a glance. They all looked the same, yet she knew them as surely as she did the faces of her sisters. Some, she avoided.
Rand’s dreams were always shielded, and she feared he might know when she tried to peek in. The shield would keep her from seeing anything, anyway. A pity she could not tell where someone was from their dreams; two points of light could be side-by-side here, and the dreamers a thousand miles apart. Gawyn’s dreams tugged at her, and she fled. His dreams held their own dangers, not least because part of her wanted very much to sink into them. Nynaeve’s dreams gave her pause, and the desire to put the fear of the Light into the fool woman, but Nynaeve had managed to ignore her so far, and Egwene would not sink to pulling her into Tel’aran’rhiod against her will. That was the sort of thing the Forsaken did. It was a temptation, though.
Moving without moving, she searched for one particular dreamer. One of two, at least; either would do. The lights seemed to spin around her, to sweep past so fast that they blurred into streaks while she floated motionless in that starry sea. She hoped that at least one of those she hunted was asleep already. The Light knew, it was late enough for anyone. Vaguely aware of her body in the waking world, she felt herself yawn and curl her legs up beneath her covers.
Then she saw the point of light she sought, and it swelled in her sight as it rushed toward her, from a star in the sky to a full moon to a shimmering wall that filled her vision, pulsing like a breathing thing. She did not touch it, of course; that could lead to all sorts of complications even with this dreamer. Besides, it would be embarrassing to slide into someone’s dream accidentally. Reaching out with her will across the hair-fine space that remained between her and the dream, she spoke cautiously, so she would not be heard in a shout. She had no body, no mouth, but she spoke.
Elayne, it’s Egwene. Meet me at the usual place. She did not think anyone could eavesdrop, not without her knowing, yet there was no point in taking unneeded chances.
The pinprick winked out. Elayne had wakened. But she would remember, and know the voice had not been just part of a dream.
Egwene moved . . . sideways. Or perhaps it was more like completing a step that she had paused halfway through. It felt like both. She moved, and . . .
. . . she was standing in a small room, empty save for a scarred wooden table and three straight-back chairs. The two windows showed deep night outside, yet there was light of an odd sort, different from moonlight or lamplight or sunlight. It did not seem to come from anywhere; it just was. But it was more than enough to see that sad, sorry little room clearly. The dusty wall-panels were riddled by beetles, and broken panes in the windows had allowed snow to drift in atop a litter of twigs and dead leaves. At least, there was snow on the floor sometimes, and twigs and leaves sometimes. The table and chairs remained where they stood, but whenever she glanced away, the snow might be gone when she looked back, the twigs and brown leaves in different places as if scattered by a wind. They even shifted while she was looking, simply here then there. That no longer seemed any odder to her than the feel of unseen eyes watching. Neither was truly real, just the way things were in Tel’aran’rhiod. A reflection of reality and a dream, all jumbled together.
Everywhere in the World of Dreams felt empty, but this room had the hollow emptiness that only came from a place that was truly abandoned in the waking world. Not so many months past, this little room had been the Amyrlin’s study, the inn that held it was called the Little Tower, and the village of Salidar, reclaimed from the encroaching forest had bustled, the heart of resistance to Elaida. Now, if she walked outside, she would see saplings thrusting through the snow in the middle of those streets that had been so painfully cleared. Sisters did Travel to Salidar still, to visit the dovecotes, all jealous that a pigeon sent by one of their eyes-and-ears might fall into another’s hands, but only in the waking world.
Going to the dovecotes here would be as useless as wishing for the pigeons to find you by a miracle. Tame animals seemed to have no reflections in the World of Dreams, and nothing done here could touch the waking world. Sisters with access to the dream ter’angreal had other places to visit than a deserted village in Altara, and certainly no one else had reason to come here in the dream, either.
This was one of the places in the world Egwene could be sure no one would catch her by surprise. Too many others turned out to have eavesdroppers. Or bone-deep sadness. She hated seeing what had become of the Two Rivers since she left.
Waiting for Elayne to appear, she tried to quell her impatience. Elayne was not a dreamwalker; she needed to use a ter’angreal. And she would want to tell Aviendha where she was going, no doubt. Still, as the minutes stretched out, Egwene found herself pacing the rough floorboards irritably. Time flowed differently here. An hour in Tel’aran’rhiod could be minutes in the waking world, or the other way around. Elayne could be moving like the wind. Egwene checked her clothing, a gray riding dress with elaborate green embroidery on the bodice and in broad bands on the divided skirts—had she been thinking of the Green Ajah?—a simple silver net to catch her hair. Sure enough, the Amyrlin’s long narrow stole hung around her neck. She made the stole vanish, then after a moment, allowed it to return. It was a matter of letting it come back, not consciously thinking of it. The stole was part of how she thought of herself, now, and it was as Amyrlin that she needed to speak to Elayne.
The woman who finally appeared in the room, though, just flashing into existence, was not Elayne but Aviendha, surprisingly garbed in silver-embroidered blue silk, with pale lace at her wrists and throat. The heavy bracelet of carved ivory she wore seemed as much out of place with that dress as the dream ter’angreal that dangled from a leather cord around her neck, a strangely twisted stone ring flecked with color.
“Where is Elayne?” Egwene asked anxiously. “Is she all right?”
The Aiel woman gave a startled glance at herself, and abruptly she was in a dark bulky skirt and white blouse, with a dark shawl draped over her shoulders and a dark kerchief folded around her temples to hold the reddish hair that now hung to her waist, longer than in life, Egwene suspected. Everything was mutable in the World of Dreams. A silver necklace appeared around her neck, complicated strands of intricately worked discs that the Kandori called snowflakes, a gift from Egwene herself what seemed a very long time ago. “She could not make this work,” Aviendha said, the ivory bracelet sliding on her wrist as she touched the twisted ring that still hung from its strip of leather, above the necklace now. “The flows kept slipping away from her. It is the babes.” Suddenly, she grinned. Her emerald eyes seemed almost to shine. “She has a wonderful temper, sometimes. She threw the ring down and jumped up and down on it.”
Egwene sniffed. Babes? So there was to be more than one. Oddly, Aviendha took it in stride that Elayne was with child, though Egwene was convinced the woman loved Rand, too. Aiel ways were peculiar, to say the least. Egwene would not have thought it of Elayne, though! And Rand! No one had actually said he was the father, and she could hardly ask something like that, but she could count, and she very much doubted that Elayne would lie with another man. She realized that she was wearing stout woolens, dark and heavy, and a shawl much thicker than Aviendha’s. Good Two Rivers garments. The sort of clothes a woman would wear to sit in the Women’s Circle. Say, when some fool woman had let herself get with child and showed no sign of marrying. A deep, relaxing breath, and she was back in her green-embroidered riding dress. The rest of the world was not the same as the Two Rivers. Light, she had come far enough to know that much. She did not have to like it, but she had to live with it.
“As long as she and the . . . babes . . . are well.” Light, how many? More than one could present difficulties. No; she was not going to ask. Elayne surely had the best midwife in Caemlyn. Best just to change the subject quickly. “Have you heard from Rand? Or Nynaeve? I have some words for her, running off with him that way.”
“We have heard from neither,” Aviendha replied, adjusting her shawl as carefully as any Aes Sedai avoiding her Amyrlin’s eyes. Was her tone careful, too?
Egwene clicked her tongue, vexed with herself. She really was beginning to see conspiracies everywhere and suspicions in everything. Rand had gone into hiding, and that was that. Nynaeve was Aes Sedai, free to do as she wished. Even when the Amyrlin commanded, Aes Sedai often found a way to do exactly as they wished anyway. But the Amyrlin was still going to set Nynaeve al’Meara down hard, once she laid hands on her. As for Rand . . . “I’m afraid trouble is heading your way,” she said.
A fine silver teapot appeared on the table, on a hammered silver tray with two delicate green porcelain cups. A thread of steam rose from the spout. She could have made the tea appear already in the cups, yet pouring seemed part of offering someone tea, even ephemeral tea with no more reality than a dream. You could die of thirst trying to drink what you found in Tel’aran’rhiod, much less what you made, but this tea tasted as if the leaves had come from a new cask and she had put in just the right amount of honey. Taking a seat on one of the chairs, she sipped hers as she explained what had happened in the Hall and why.
After the first words, Aviendha held her cup on her fingertips without drinking and watched Egwene without blinking. Her dark skirts and pale blouse became the cadin’sor, coat and trousers of gray and brown that would fade into shadows. Her long hair was suddenly short, and hidden by a shoufa, the black veil hanging down her chest. Incongruously, the ivory bracelet still hung from her wrist although Maidens of the Spear did not wear jewelry.
“All of this because of the beacon we felt,” she muttered, half to herself, when Egwene finished. “Because they think the Shadowsouled have a weapon.” An odd way to put it.
“What else can it be?” Egwene asked, curious. “Did one of the Wise Ones say something?” It had been a long time since she believed that Aes Sedai possessed all knowledge, and sometimes the Wise Ones revealed pockets of information that could startle the most stolid sister.
Aviendha frowned, and her clothing changed back to the skirt and blouse and shawl, then after a moment to the blue silk and lace, this time with both the Kandori necklace and the ivory bracelet. The dream ring remained on its cord, of course. A shawl appeared around her shoulders. The room was winter cold, yet it hardly seemed that gauzy layer of pale blue lace could provide any warmth. “The Wise Ones are as uncertain as your Aes Sedai. Not as frightened, though, I think. Life is a dream, and everyone wakes eventually. We dance the spears with Leafblighter,” that name for the Dark One had always seemed strange to Egwene, coming as it did from the treeless Waste, “but no one enters the dance certain they will live, or win. I do not think the Wise Ones would consider any alliance with the Asha’man. Is this wise?” she added cautiously. “From what you said, I cannot be certain whether you wish it.”
“I don’t see any other choice,” Egwene said reluctantly. “That hole is three miles across. This is the only hope we have that I can see.”
Aviendha peered into her tea. “And if the Shadowsouled possessed no weapon?”
Suddenly, Egwene realized what the other woman was doing. Aviendha was in training to be a Wise One, and garments or no, she was being a Wise One. Likely that was the reason for the shawl. Part of Egwene wanted to smile. Her friend was changing from the often hotheaded Maiden of the Spear she had first come to know. Another part of her remembered that the Wise Ones did not always have the same goals as Aes Sedai. What sisters valued deeply sometimes meant nothing to the Wise Ones. It made her sad, that she must think of Aviendha as a Wise One instead of just a friend. A Wise One who would see what was good for the Aiel rather than what was good for the White Tower. Still, the question was a good one.
“We do have to deal with the Black Tower sooner or later, Aviendha, and Moria was right; there are already too many Asha’man for any thought of gentling them all. And that’s if we dared think of gentling them before the last Battle. Maybe a dream will show me another way, but none has so far.” None of her dreams had showed her anything useful, so far. Well, not really. “This does give us at least the beginning of a way to handle them. In any case, it’s going to happen. If the Sitters can agree on anything besides the fact they have to try for an agreement. So we must live with it. It might even be for the best, in the long run.”
Aviendha smiled into her teacup. Not an amused smile; she seemed relieved, for some reason. Her voice was serious, though. “You Aes Sedai always think men are fools. Quite often, they are not. More often than you think, at least. Take a care with these Asha’man. Mazrim Taim is far from a fool, and I think he is a very dangerous man.”
“The Hall is aware of that,” Egwene said dryly. That he was dangerous, certainly. The other might be worth pointing out. “I don’t know why we’re even discussing this. It’s out of my hands. The important thing is that eventually sisters will decide the Black Tower is no longer any reason to stay away from Caemlyn, if we’re going to talk with them anyway. Next week or tomorrow, you’ll find sisters popping in just to look in on Elayne and see how the siege is going. What we have to decide is how to keep what we want hidden, hidden. I have a few suggestions, and I hope you have more.”
The notion of strange Aes Sedai appearing in the Royal Palace agitated Aviendha to the point that she flashed from blue silk to cadin’sor to woolen skirt and algode blouse and back again as they talked, though she appeared not to notice. Her face remained smooth enough to suit any sister. She certainly had nothing to worry about if the visiting Aes Sedai uncovered the Kinswomen, or the captive sul’dam and damane, or the bargain with the Sea Folk, but likely she was concerned about the repercussions on Elayne.
The Sea Folk not only made the cadin’sor appear, but a round bull-hide buckler lying beside her chair with three short Aiel spears. Egwene considered asking whether there was any special problem with the Windfinders—any problem beyond the usual, that was—yet she held her tongue. If Aviendha did not mention it, then the matter was something she and Elayne wanted to handle themselves. Surely she would have said something if it was anything Egwene should know about. Or would she?
Sighing, Egwene set her cup on the table, where it promptly disappeared, and rubbed her eyes with her fingers. Suspicion truly was part of her bones, now. And she was unlikely to survive long without it. At least she did not always have to act on her suspicions, not with a friend.
“You are tired,” Aviendha said, once again in the white blouse and dark skirt and shawl, a concerned Wise One with sharp green eyes. “You do not sleep well?”
“I sleep well,” Egwene lied, managing a smile. Aviendha and Elayne had their own worries without letting them know about her headaches. “I can’t think of anything more,” she said, rising. “Can you? Then we’re done,” she went on when the other woman shook her head. “Tell Elayne to take care of herself. You take care of her. And her babes.”
“I will,” Aviendha said, now in the blue silk. “But you must take care of yourself. I think you use yourself too hard. Sleep well and wake,” she said gently, the Aiel way of saying good night, and she was gone.
Egwene frowned at the spot where her friend had vanished. She was not using herself too hard. Only as hard as she needed to. She slipped back to her body and discovered that it was sound asleep.
That did not mean that she was asleep, or not exactly. Her body slumbered, breathing slow and deep, but she let herself slip only far enough under for dreams to come. She could just have waited until she woke and recalled the dreams then as she wrote them into the little leather-bound book that she kept at the bottom of one her clothing chests, tucked under thin linen shifts that would not be taken out till well into spring. But observing the dreams as they came saved time. She thought it might help her decipher what they meant. At least, those that were more than ordinary night fancies.
There were plenty of those, often featuring Gawyn, a tall beautiful man who took her in his arms and danced with her and made love with her. Once, even in her dreams, she had shied away from thoughts of making love with him. She had blushed to think about it awake. That seemed so foolish, now, so childish. She would bond him as her Warder one day, somehow, and she would marry him, and make love to him until he cried for mercy. Even in her sleep, she giggled at that. Other dreams were not so pleasant. Wading through waist-deep snow with trees thick all around her, knowing she had to reach the edge of the forest. But even when she glimpsed the end of the trees ahead, one blink and it receded into the distance, leaving her to flounder on. Or she was pushing a great millstone up a steep hill, but every time she was almost to the top, she slipped and fell and watched the huge stone roll back to the bottom, so she had to trudge back down and begin again, only every time, the hill was higher than before. She knew enough of dreams to know where those came from even if they had no special meaning. None beyond the fact that she was tired and had a seemingly endless task in front of her, anyway. There was no help for it, though. She felt her body jerking at the laborious dreams, and tried to soothe her muscles, make them relax. This sort of half-sleep was little better than none, and less if she spent the whole night thrashing around on her cot. Her efforts worked, a little. At least she only twitched through a dream of being forced to pull a cart jammed full of Aes Sedai down a muddy road.
Other dreams came, betwixt and between.
Mat stood on a village green, playing at bowls. The thatch-roofed houses were vague, in the manner of dreams—sometimes the roofs were slate; sometimes the houses seemed of stone, sometimes wood—but he was sharp and clear, dressed in a fine green coat and that wide-brimmed black hat, just as he had been the day he rode into Salidar. There was not another human being in sight. Rubbing the ball between his hands, he took a short run and casually rolled it across the smooth grass. All nine pins fell, scattered as if they had been kicked. Mat turned and picked up another ball, and the pins were back upright. No, there was a fresh set of pins. The old still lay where they had fallen. He hurled the ball again, a lazy underhanded bowl. And Egwene wanted to scream. The pins were not turned pieces of wood. They were men, standing there watching the ball roll toward them. None moved until the ball sent them flying. Mat turned to pick up another ball, and there were more new pins, new men, standing in orderly formation among the men lying sprawled on the ground as if dead. No, they were dead. Unconcerned, Mat bowled.
It was a true dream; she knew that long before it faded. A glimpse of a future that might come to pass, a warning of what should be watched for. True dreams were always possibilities, not certainties—she often had to remind herself of that; Dreaming was not Foretelling—but this was a dire possibility. Every one of those human pins had represented thousands of men. Of that, she was certain. And an Illuminator was part of it. Mat had met an Illuminator once, but that was long ago. This was something more recent. The Illuminators were scattered, their guildhouses gone. One was even working her craft with a traveling show that Elayne and Nynaeve had traveled with for a time. Mat might find an Illuminator anywhere. Still, it was only a possible future. Bleak and bloodstained, but only possible. Yet she had dreamed of it at least twice. Not the same dream, exactly, but always the same meaning. Did that make it more likely to come to pass? She would have to ask the Wise Ones to find out, and she was increasingly reluctant to do that. Every question she asked revealed something to them, and their goals were not hers. To save what they could of the Aiel, they would let the White Tower be ground to dust. She had more than any one people, any one nation, to think of.
More dreams.
She was struggling up a narrow, rocky path along the face of a towering cliff. Clouds surrounded her, hiding the ground below and the crest above, yet she knew that both were very far away. She had to place her feet very carefully. The path was a cracked ledge barely wide enough for her to stand on with one shoulder pressed against the cliff, a ledge littered with stones as large as her fist that could turn under a misplaced step and send her hurtling over the edge. It almost seemed this was like the dreams of pushing millstones and pulling carts, yet she knew it was a true dream.
Abruptly, the ledge dropped away from under her with the crack of crumbling stone, and she caught frantically at the cliff, fingers scrabbling to find a hold. Her fingertips slid into a tiny crevice, and her fall stopped with a jolt that wrenched her arms. Feet dangling into the clouds, she listened to the falling stone crash against the cliff until the sound faded to nothing without the stone ever hitting the ground. Dimly, she could see the broken ledge to her left. Ten feet away, it might as well have been a mile off for all the chance she had of reaching it. In the other direction, the mists hid whatever remained of the path, but she thought it had to be farther away still. There was no strength in her arms. She could not pull herself up, only hang there by her fingertips until she fell. The edge of the crevice seemed as sharp as a knife under her fingers.
Suddenly a woman appeared, clambering down the sheer side of the cliff out of the clouds, making her way as deftly as if she were walking down stairs. There was a sword strapped to her back. Her face wavered, never settling clearly, but the sword seemed as solid as the stone. The woman reached Egwene’s level and held out one hand. “We can reach the top together,” she said in a familiar drawling accent.
Egwene pushed the dream away as she would have a viper. She felt her body thrash, heard herself groan in her sleep, but for a moment she could do nothing. She had dreamed of the Seanchan before, of a Seanchan woman somehow tied to her, but this was a Seanchan who would save her. No! They had put a leash on her, made her damane. She would as soon die as be saved by a Seanchan! A very long time passed before she could address herself to calming her sleeping body. Or maybe it only seemed a long time. Not a Seanchan; never that!
Slowly, the dreams returned.
She was climbing another path along a cliff shrouded in clouds, but this was a broad ledge of smoothly paved white stone, and there were no rocks underfoot. The cliff itself was chalky white and as smooth as if polished. Despite the clouds, the pale stone almost gleamed. She climbed quickly and soon realized that the ledge was spiraling around. The cliff was actually a spire. No sooner did that thought occur than she was standing on the top of it, a flat polished disc walled by mist. Not quite flat, though. A small white plinth stood centered in that circle, supporting an oil-lamp made of clear glass. The flame on that lamp burned bright and steady, without flickering. It was white, too.
Suddenly a pair of birds flashed out of the mist, two ravens black as night. Streaking across the spire-top, they struck the lamp and flew on without so much as a pause. The lamp spun and wobbled, dancing around atop the plinth, flinging off droplets of oil. Some of those drops caught fire in midair and vanished. Others fell around the short column, each supporting a tiny, flickering white flame. And the lamp continued to wobble on the edge of falling.
Egwene woke in darkness with a jolt. She knew. For the first time, she knew exactly what a dream meant. But why would she dream of a Seanchan woman saving her, and then of the Seanchan attacking the White Tower? An attack that would shake the Aes Sedai to their core and threaten the Tower itself. Of course, it was only a possibility. But the events seen in true dreams were more likely than other possibilities.
She thought she was considering calmly, but at a rough rustle of canvas from the entry flaps, she very nearly embraced the True Source. Hastily she ran through novice exercises to compose herself, water flowing over smooth stones, wind blowing through high grass. Light, she had been frightened. It took two to achieve any sort of calm. She opened her mouth to ask who was there.
“Asleep?” Halima’s voice muttered softly. She sounded wound up tight, almost excited. “Well, I wouldn’t mind a good night’s sleep myself.”
Listening to the woman undress for bed in the dark, Egwene lay very still. If she let her know she was awake, she would have to talk with her, and at the moment, that would be embarrassing. She was fairly certain that Halima had found herself company, if not for the whole night. Halima could do as she wished, of course, but Egwene was still disappointed. Wishing that she had remained asleep, she found herself slipping under once more, and this time, she did not try to stop halfway. She would remember any dreams that came, and she did need some actual sleep.
Chesa came bright and early to bring her breakfast on a tray and help her dress. Actually, it was early and not bright at all. There was only the merest hint of sunlight, and the lamps’ light was necessary to see anything. The embers in the brazier had died down during the night, of course, and the cold that hung in the air felt gray. There might be a chance of more snow today. Halima wriggled into her silk shift and dress, making laughing jokes about how she would like to have a maid while Chesa was doing up the rows of buttons that ran down Egwene’s back. The plump woman wore a set face, ignoring Halima altogether. Egwene said nothing. She said nothing very determinedly. Halima was not her servant. She had no right to set standards for the woman.
Just as Chesa finished the last of the tiny buttons and gave Egwene’s arm a pat, Nisao ducked into the tent, letting in a fresh wave of cold air. The brief glimpse afforded before the flaps fell behind her showed that it was still gray outside. Definitely a chance of snow.
“I must speak to the Mother alone,” she said, holding her cloak around her as if she already felt the snow. Such a firm tone was unusual from the small woman.
Egwene nodded to Chesa, who curtsied, but still cautioned, “Now don’t let your breakfast get cold,” on her way out of the tent.
Halima paused, eyeing Nisao and Egwene both, before scooping up her cloak from where it lay in an untidy heap at the foot of her cot. “I suppose Delana has work for me,” she said, sounding irritated.
Nisao frowned at the woman’s back as she left, but without saying anything she embraced saidar and wove a ward against eavesdropping around her and Egwene. Without asking permission. “Anaiya and her Warder are dead,” she said. “Some of the workmen bringing in sacks of coals last night heard a noise, like someone thrashing around, and for a wonder, they all went running to see what it was. They found Anaiya and Setagana lying in the snow, dead.”
Egwene sat down slowly on her chair, which did not feel particularly comfortable at the moment. Anaiya, dead. She had had no beauty except her smile, but when she smiled, it warmed everything around her. A plain-faced woman who loved lace on her robes. Egwene knew she should feel sadness for Setagana, too, but he had been a Warder. If he had survived Anaiya, it was unlikely he would have lived long. “How?” she said. Nisao would not have woven that ward just to tell her Anaiya was dead.
Nisao’s face tightened, and despite the ward, she looked over her shoulder as if she feared someone might be listening at the entry flaps. “The workmen thought they had eaten badly preserved mushrooms. Some farmers are careless in gathering what they intend to sell, and the wrong sort can paralyze your lungs or make your throat swell up, so you die struggling for air.” Egwene nodded impatiently. She had grown up in a country village, after all. “Everyone seemed willing to accept that,” Nisao went on, but she did not hurry. Hands twisting and flexing on the edges of her cloak, she appeared reluctant to reach her conclusion. “There were no wounds, no injuries of any sort. No reason to think it was anything but a greedy farmer selling bad mushrooms. But . . . ” She sighed, glancing over her shoulder again, and lowered her voice. “I suppose it was all the talk of the Black Tower in the Hall today. I tested for resonance. They were killed with saidin.” A grimace of disgust crossed her face. “I think someone just wove solid flows of Air around their heads and let them smother.” Shuddering, she drew her cloak closer.
Egwene wanted to shudder, too. She was surprised she did not. Anaiya, dead. Smothered. A deliberately cruel way of killing, used by someone who had hoped to leave no traces. “Have you told anyone, yet?”
“Of course not,” Nisao said indignantly. “I came to you straightaway. As soon as I knew you’d be awake, at least.”
“A pity. You will have to explain why you delayed. We can’t keep this secret.” Well, Amyrlins had kept darker secrets, for the good of the Tower as they saw it. “If we have a man who can channel among us, then the sisters need to be on their guard.” A man who could channel hiding among the workmen or soldiers seemed unlikely, but less so than one coming there just to kill a single sister and her Warder. Which raised another question. “Why Anaiya? Was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time, Nisao? Where did they die?”
“Near the wagons on the south side of camp. I don’t know why they were there that time of night. Unless Anaiya was going to the privies and Setagana thought she need guarding even there.”
“Then you’re going to find out for me, Nisao. What were Anaiya and Setagana doing out when everybody else was asleep? Why were they killed? This, you will keep secret. Until you can give me reasons, no one but the two of us is to know you’re looking for any.”
Nisao’s mouth opened and closed. “If I must, I must,” she muttered only half under her breath. She was not really suited to keeping deep secrets, and she knew it. The last she had tried to keep had led directly to her having to swear fealty to Egwene. “Will this put a stop to talk about an agreement with the Black Tower?”
“I doubt it,” Egwene said wearily. Light, how could she be weary already? The sun was not fully up yet. “Either way, I think it is going to be another very long day.” And the best she could find to hope for in it was that she could make it to another night without a headache.