Knife of Dreams

  Bennae stared at her for a long moment, then raised the cup to her lips. She spluttered as soon as the tea touched her tongue, and began dabbing at the spots on her dress with a delicate, lace-edged handkerchief. "The Great Winter War," she said huskily as she set the cup on the floor beside her chair, "began late in the year six hundred seventy-one. . . ." She did not mention secret records or mutinies again, but she did not have to. More than once during the lesson she trailed off, frowning at something beyond Egwene, and Egwene had little doubt what it was.

  Later that day, Lirene Doirellin said, "Yes, Elaida made a vital mistake there," pacing up and down in front of her sitting room's fireplace. The Cairhienin sister was only a little shorter than Egwene, but the nervous way her eyes darted gave her the air of a hunted thing, a sparrow fearful of cats and convinced there were lots of cats in the vicinity. Her dark green skirts had only four discreet slashes of red, though she had been a Sitter once. "That proclamation of hers, on top of trying to kidnap him, could not have been better calculated to keep the al'Thor boy as far from the Tower as he can stay. Oh, she has made mistakes, Elaida has."

  Egwene wanted to ask about Rand and the kidnapping— kidnapping?—but Lirene left no opening as she went on about Elaida’s many mistakes, all the while pacing back and forth, her eyes darting and her hands twisting unconsciously. Egwene was unsure whether or not that session could be called a success, but at least it was not a failure. And she had learned something. Not all of her forays went so well, of course.

  "This is not a discussion," Pritalle Nerbaijan said. Her tone was utterly calm, yet her tilted green eyes were heated. Her rooms looked more those of a Green than a Yellow, with several bared swords hanging on the walls and a silk tapestry showing men fighting Trollocs. She was gripping the hilt of the dagger at her woven silver belt. Not a simple belt knife; a dagger with a blade near a foot long and an emerald capping its pommel. Why she had agreed to lecture Egwene was a mystery, given her dislike of teaching. Perhaps because it was Egwene. "You are here for a lesson on the limits of power. A very basic lesson, suitable for a novice."

  Egwene wanted to shift on the three-legged stool that Pritalle had given her for a seat, but instead she concentrated on the smarting, focused on drinking it in. On welcoming it. The day had already seen three visits to Silviana, and she could sense a fourth coming, with the midday meal an hour off yet. "I merely said that if Shemerin could be reduced from Aes Sedai to Accepted then Elaida's power has no limits. At least, she thinks it doesn't. But if you accept that, then it really doesn't."

  Pritalle's grip tightened on the dagger's hilt until her knuckles showed white, yet she seemed unaware. "Since you think you know better than I," she said coolly, "you can visit Silviana when we finish." A partial success, perhaps. Egwene did not think Pritalle's anger was for her.

  "I expect proper behavior out of you," Serancha Colvine told her firmly another day. The word to describe the Gray sister was "pinched." A pinched mouth, and a pinched nose that constantly seemed to be detecting a bad smell. Even her pale blue eyes seemed pinched with disapproval. She might well have been pretty otherwise. "Do you understand?"

  "I understand," Egwene said, sitting down on the stool that had been placed in front of Serancha's high-backed chair. The morning was cool, and a small fire burned on the stone hearth. Drink in the pain. Welcome the pain.

  "An incorrect response," Serancha said. "The correct response would have been a curtsy and 'I understand, Serancha Sedai.' I intend to make a list of your failures for you to carry to Silviana when we're done. We'll begin again. Do you understand, child?"

  "I understand." Egwene said without rising. Aes Sedai serenity or no Aes Sedai serenity, Serancha's face turned purple. In the end, her list covered four pages in a tight, cramped hand. She spent more time writing than she did lecturing! Not a success.

  And then there was Adelorna Bastine. The Saldaean Green somehow managed stateliness in spite of being slim and no taller than Egwene, and she had a regal, commanding air that might have been intimidating had Egwene let it. "I hear you make trouble." she said, picking up an ivory-backed hairbrush from a small inlaid table beside her chair. "If you try to make trouble with me, you'll learn that I know how to use this."

  Egwene did learn, without trying. Three times she went across Adelorna's lap, and the woman did indeed know how to use a hairbrush for more than brushing her hair. That managed to stretch an hour lecture to two.

  "May I go now?" Egwene said at last, calmly drying her cheeks as well as she could with a handkerchief that was already damp. Breathe in the pain. Absorb the fire. "I'm supposed to fetch water up for the Red, and I don't want to be late."

  Adelorna frowned at her hairbrush before returning it to the table that Egwene had overset twice with her kicking. Then she frowned at Egwene, studying her as if trying to see inside her skull. "I wish Cadsuane were in the Tower," she murmured. "I think she'd find you a challenge." There seemed a touch of respect in her voice.

  That day was a turning point in some ways. For one thing, Silviana decided that Egwene was to receive Healing twice each day.

  "You seem to invite being beaten, child. It's pure stubbornness, and I won't put up with it. You will face reality. The next time you visit me, we'll see how you like the strap." The Mistress of Novices folded Egwene's shift over her back, then paused. "Are you smiling? Did I say something amusing?"

  "I just thought of something funny," Egwene said. "Nothing of consequence." Not of consequence to Silviana, anyway. She had realized how to welcome the pain. She was fighting a war, not a single battle, and every time she was beaten, every time she was sent to Silviana, it was a sign that she had fought another battle and refused to yield. The pain was a badge of honor. She howled and kicked as hard as ever during that slippering, but while she was drying her cheeks afterward, she hummed quietly to herself. It was easy to welcome a badge of honor.

  Attitudes among the novices began to shift by the second day of her captivity. It seemed that Nicola—and Areina, who was working in the stables and often came to visit Nicola; they seemed so close that Egwene wondered whether they had become pillow-friends, always with their heads together and smiling mysterious smiles— Nicola and Areina had regaled them all with tales of her. Very inflated tales. The two women had made her seem a combination of every legendary sister in the histories, along with Birgitte Silverbow and Amaresu herself, carrying the Sword of the Sun into battle. Half of them seemed in awe of her, the others angry with her for some reason or outright scornful. Foolishly, some tried to emulate her behavior in their classes, but a flurry of visits to Silviana quelled that. At the midday meal of the third day, nearly two dozen novices ate standing up and red-faced with embarrassment, Nicola among them. And Alvistere, surprisingly. That number dropped to seven at supper, and on the fourth day, only Nicola and the Cairhienin girl did so. And that was the end of that.

  She expected some might resent the fact that she continued to refuse to bend while they had been put back on the straight and narrow so quickly, but to the contrary, it only seemed to decrease the number who were angry or scornful and increase the respect. No one tried to become her friend, which was just as well. White dress or no white dress, she was Aes Sedai, and it was improper for an Aes Sedai to befriend a novice. There was too much risk the girl would start feeling above herself and get into trouble for it.

  Novices began coming to her for advice, for help learning their lessons, though. Only a handful at first, but the number grew day by day. She was willing to help them learn, which was usually just a matter of strengthening a girl's confidence or convincing a young woman that caution was wise, or taking them patiently through the steps of a weave that was giving trouble. Novices were forbidden to channel without an Aes Sedai or Accepted present, though they nearly always did in secret anyway, but she was a sister. She refused to help more than one at a time, however. Word of groups would surely leak out, and she would not be the only one sent to Silviana. She would ma
ke that trip as often as necessary, but she did not want to earn it for others. And as for advice. . . . With the novices kept strictly clear of men, advice was easy. Though strains between pillow-friends could be as harsh as anything men ever caused.

  One evening, returning from yet another session with Silviana, she overheard Nicola talking to two novices who could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen. Egwene hardly remembered being that young. It seemed a lifetime ago. Marah was a stocky Murandian with mischievous blue eyes, Namene a tall, slim Domani who giggled incessantly.

  "Ask the Mother," Nicola said. A few of the novices had taken to calling Egwene that, though never where anyone not wearing white could hear. They were foolish, but not utter fools. "She's always willing to give advice."

  Namene giggled nervously and wriggled. "I wouldn't want to bother her."

  "Besides," Marah said, a lilt in her voice, "they say she always gives the same advice, she does."

  "And good advice it is, too." Nicola held up one hand to tick off fingers. "Obey the Aes Sedai. Obey the Accepted. Work hard. Then work harder."

  Gliding on toward her room, Egwene smiled. She had been unable to make Nicola behave properly while she was openly Amyrlin, but it seemed she might have succeeded while masquerading as a novice herself. Remarkable.

  There was one more thing she could do for them: comfort them. Impossible as it seemed at first, the interior of the Tower sometimes changed. People got lost trying to find rooms they had been to dozens of times. Women were seen walking out of walls, or into them, often in dresses of old-fashioned cut, sometimes in bizarre garb, dresses that seemed simply lengths of brightly colored cloth folded around the body, embroidered ankle-length tabards worn over wide trousers, stranger things still. Light, when could any woman have wanted to wear a dress that left her bosom completely exposed?

  Egwene was able to discuss it with Siuan in Tel'aran'rhiod, so she knew that these things were signs of the approach of Tarmon Gai'don. An unpleasant thought, yet there was nothing to be done about it. What was, was, and it was not as if Rand himself was not a herald of the Last Battle. Some of the sisters in the Tower must have known what it all meant, too, but wrapped up in their own affairs they made no effort to comfort novices who were weeping with fright. Egwene did.

  "The world is full of strange wonders," she told Coride, a pale-haired girl who was sobbing facedown on her bed. Only a year younger than herself, Coride was most definitely still a girl despite a year and a half in the Tower. "Why be surprised if some of those wonders appear in the White Tower? What better place?" She never mentioned the Last Battle to these girls. That was hardly likely to be any comfort.

  "But she walked into a wall!" Coride wailed, raising her head. Her face was red and blotchy, and her cheeks glistened damply. "A wall! And then none of us could find the classroom, and Pedra couldn't either, and she got cross with us. Pedra never gets cross. She was frightened, too!"

  "I'll wager Pedra didn't start crying, though." Egwene sat down on the edge of the girl's bed, and was pleased that she did not wince. Novice mattresses were not noted for softness. "The dead can't harm the living, Coride. They can't touch us. They don't even seem to see us. Besides, they were initiates of the Tower or else servants here. This was their home as much as it is ours. And as for rooms or hallways not being where they're supposed to be, just remember that the Tower is a place of wonders. Remember that, and they won't frighten you."

  It seemed feeble to her, but Coride wiped her eyes and swore she would never be frightened again. Unfortunately, there were a hundred and two like her, not all so easily comforted. It was enough to make Egwene angrier at the sisters in the Tower than she already had been.

  Her days were not all lessons and comforting novices and being punished by the Mistress of Novices, though the last did take up an unfortunate amount of each day. Silviana had been right to doubt that she would have much free time. Novices were always given chores. Often it was make-work, since the Tower had well over a thousand serving men and women without counting laborers, but physical work helped build character, so the Tower had always believed. Plus, it helped keep the novices too tired to think of men, supposedly. She was loaded down with chores beyond what the novices were given, though. Some were assigned by sisters who considered her a runaway, others by Silviana in the hope that weariness would dull the edge of her "rebellion."

  Daily, after one meal or another, she scrubbed dirty pots with coarse salt and a stiff brush in the workroom off the main kitchen. From time to time Laras would put her head in, but she never spoke. And she never used her long spoon, even when Egwene was massaging the small of her back, aching from being head-down in a large kettle, rather than scrubbing. Laras dealt out smacks aplenty to scullions and undercooks who tried to play pranks on Egwene, as was customary with novices sent to work in the kitchen. Supposedly that was just because, as she announced loudly every time she gave a thwack, they had plenty of time to play when they were not supposed to be working, but Egwene noticed that Laras was not so quick when someone goosed one of the true novices or tipped a cup of cold water down the back of her neck. It seemed she did have an ally of sorts. If she could only figure out how to make use of her.

  She hauled water in buckets hanging from the ends of a pole balanced across her shoulders, to the kitchen, to the novices' quarters, to the Accepted's quarters, all the way up to the Ajah's quarters. She carried meals to sisters in their rooms, raked garden paths, pulled weeds, ran errands for sisters, attended Sitters, swept floors, mopped floors, scrubbed floors on her hands and knees, and that was only a partial list. She never shirked at these tasks, and only in part because she would not give anyone an excuse to call her lazy. In a way, she viewed them as penance for not having prepared properly before turning the harbor chain to cuendillar. Penances were to be borne with dignity. As much dignity as anyone can have while scrubbing a floor, anyway.

  Besides, visiting the Accepted's quarters gave her a chance to see how they viewed her. There were thirty-one in the Tower, but at any given time some were teaching novices and others taking lessons of their own, so she seldom found more than ten or twelve in their rooms around the nine-tiered well surrounding a small garden. Word of her arrival always spread quickly, though, and she never lacked an audience.

  At first, many of them tried to overwhelm her with orders, especially Mair, a plump blue-eyed Arafellin, and Asseil, a slim Taraboner with pale hair and brown eyes. They had been novices when she came to the Tower, and already jealous of her quick rise to Accepted when she left. With them, every second sentence was fetch that, or carry this there. For all of them she was the "novice" who had caused so much difficulty, the "novice" who thought she was the Amyrlin Seat. She carried pails of water till her back ached, uncomplaining, yet she refused to obey their commands. Which earned her more visits to the Mistress of Novices, of course. As the days passed, as her continual trips to Silviana's study showed no effect, however, that flow of commands dwindled and finally ceased. Even Asseil and Mair had not really been trying to be mean, only to behave as they thought they should in the circumstances, and they were at a loss as to what to do with her.

  Some of the Accepted showed signs of fright at the dead walking and the interior of the Tower changing, and whenever she saw a bloodless face or teary eyes she would say the same things she told the novices. Not addressing the woman directly, which might have gotten her back up rather than soothing her, but as if talking to herself. It worked as well with Accepted as with novices. Many gave a start when she began, or opened their mouths as though to tell her to be quiet, yet none did, and she always left a thoughtful expression behind. The Accepted continued to come out onto the stone-railed galleries when she entered, but they watched her in silence as though wondering what she was. Eventually she would teach them what she was. Them and the sisters. too.

  Attending Sitters and sisters, a woman in white standing quietly in the corner quickly became part of the furniture even when she was not
orious. If they noticed her, they changed their conversation, yet she overheard many snippets, often of plots to avenge some slight given or wrong done by another Ajah. Oddly, most of the sisters seemed to see the other Ajahs inside the Tower as more their enemies than they did the sisters in the camp outside the city, and the Sitters were not much better. It made her want to slap them. True, it boded well for relations when the other sisters returned to the Tower, but still. . . .

  She did pick up other things. The unbelievable disaster that had befallen an expedition sent against the Black Tower. Some of the sisters seemed not to believe it, yet they appeared to be trying to convince themselves it could not have happened. More sisters captured after a great battle and somehow forced to swear fealty to Rand. She had already had inklings of that, and she could not like it any more than she did sisters being bonded by Asha'man. Being ta'veren or the Dragon Reborn was no excuse. No Aes Sedai had ever before sworn fealty to any man. The sisters and Sitters argued over who was to blame, with Rand and the Asha'man at the head of the list. But one name came up again and again. Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan. They talked of Rand, too, of how to find him before Tarmon Gai'don. They knew it was coming despite their failure to console the novices and Accepted, and they were desperate to lay hands on him.

  Sometimes she risked a comment, a mention of Shemerin being stripped of the shawl against all custom, a suggestion that Elaida's edict regarding Rand was the best way in the world to make him dig in his heels. She offered sympathy for the sisters captured by the Asha'man, for those taken at Dumai's Wells—with Elaida's name dropped in—or regretted the neglect that saw garbage rotting in the once pristine streets of Tar Valon. There was no need to mention Elaida there; they knew who was responsible for Tar Valon. At times, those comments earned her still more trips to Silviana's study, and more chores besides, yet surprisingly often they did not. She made careful note of the sisters who merely told her to be quiet. Or better still, said nothing. Some even nodded agreement before they caught themselves. Some of those chores led to interesting encounters.