“A riot here?” Nynaeve said sharply. The immediate neighborhood of the inn had been one of the few calm areas in the city.
“Not to worry,” Rendra said soothingly. “Perhaps they want food. I will tell them where Bayle Domon’s soup kitchen is, and they will go away.”
The noise did die down after a while, and Rendra sent up some wine. Not until the serving man was leaving, with a sulky look on his face, did Elayne realize it was the young man with the beautiful brown eyes. The man had begun reacting to her coldest stares as if they were smiles. Did the fool think she had time to notice him now?
Waiting and pacing, pacing and waiting. Cerindra turned out to be a tirewoman dismissed for theft; not at all grateful for not being imprisoned, she would make any accusation against Amathera that was suggested to her. A fellow who claimed to have proof that Amathera was Aes Sedai and Black Ajah also claimed that the same documents proved King Andric the Dragon Reborn. The group of women whom Amathera used to meet in secret were friends Andric despised, and the shocking discovery that she financed several smuggling craft led nowhere. Almost every noble but the King himself had a finger in smuggling. Every trail ended that way. The worst Thom could discover was that Amathera had convinced two handsome young lords that each was the true love of her life and Andric only a means to an end. On the other hand, she had given audiences in the Panarch’s Palace to various lords, both alone and in company with various women recognizable as Liandrin and others on the list, and reportedly asked and accepted their advice for her decisions. Ally, or captive?
When Juilin came back, a good three hours after sunset, spinning a thumb-thick staff of ridged wood and muttering about some pale-haired fellow who had tried to rob him, Thom and Domon were already slumped disconsolately at the table with Egeanin.
“This will be Falme again,” Domon growled at the air. The stout cudgel he had acquired somewhere lay in front of him, and he wore a short sword at his belt now. “Aes Sedai. The Black Ajah. Meddling with the Panarch. If we do no find something tomorrow, I do mean to take myself out of Tanchico. The next day for certain, if my own sister do ask me to stay!”
“Tomorrow,” Thom said wearily, elbows on the table and chin on fists. “I am too tired to think straight any longer. I found myself listening to a laundryman from the Panarch’s Palace who claims he has heard Amathera singing bawdy songs, the sort you hear in the roughest taverns on the docks. I actually listened to him.”
“For me,” Juilin said, reversing a chair to straddle it, “I mean to look on tonight. I found a roofman who says the woman he keeps company with was another of Amathera’s tirewomen. According to him, Amathera discharged all of her tirewomen without warning the same evening she was invested Panarch. He will take me to talk with her after he finishes some business of his own at a merchant’s house.”
Nynaeve moved to the end of the table, fists on hips. “You will not be going anywhere tonight, Juilin. The three of you will be taking turns guarding our door.” The men protested volubly, of course, all together.
“I do have my own trade to keep up, and if I must spend my days asking questions for you … .”
“Mistress al’Meara, this woman is the first person I have found who’s actually seen Amathera since she was raised … .”
“Nynaeve, I’ll hardly be able to find a rumor tomorrow, much less trace it, if I spend the night playing at … .”
She let them argue themselves out. When they began to trail off, obviously thinking her convinced, she said, “Since we have nowhere else to keep the Seanchan woman, she will have to sleep with us. Elayne, will you ask Rendra to have a pallet made up? On the floor will do nicely.” Egeanin glanced at her, but said nothing.
The men were neatly boxed; either they refused flatly, and openly broke their word to do as Nynaeve said, or else argued on, sounding as if they were whining. They glowered and spluttered—and acquiesced.
Rendra was clearly surprised they requested only a pallet, but accepted the tale that Egeanin feared to risk the streets at night. She did look miffed when Thom seated himself in the hall beside their door. “Those fellows, they did not get inside however hard they tried. I told you the soup kitchen would take them away, yes? Guests at the Three Plum Court have no need for the bodyguards on their rooms.”
“I am sure not,” Elayne told her, gently trying to push her out with the door. “It’s just that Thom and the others do worry so. You know how men are.” Thom shot her a hawkish stare beneath those thick white eyebrows, but Rendra sniffed, agreeing that she did indeed know, and let Elayne shut the door.
Nynaeve immediately turned to Egeanin, who was spreading her pallet on the far side of the bed. “Take off your clothes, Seanchan. I want to be sure you don’t have another knife hidden away.”
Egeanin calmly stood and undressed down to her linen shift. Nynaeve searched through her dress thoroughly, then insisted on searching Egeanin as well, and none too gently. Finding nothing did not seem to soothe her.
“Hands behind your back, Seanchan. Elayne, bind her.”
“Nynaeve, I don’t think she—”
“Bind her with the Power, Elayne,” Nynaeve said roughly, “or I’ll cut strips from her dress and bind her hands and heels. You remember how she handled those fellows in the street. Probably her own hirelings. She could probably kill us in our sleep with her bare hands.”
“Really, Nynaeve, with Thom outside—”
“She’s Seanchan! Seanchan, Elayne!” She sounded as if she hated the dark-haired woman for a personal wrong, which made no sense. Egwene had been in their hands, but not Nynaeve. The set of her jaw said she meant to have her way, with the Power or with ropes if she could find them.
Egeanin had already placed her wrists together in the small of her back, compliant if not meek. Elayne wove a flow of Air around them and tied it off; at least it would be more comfortable than bindings cut out of her dress. Egeanin flexed her arms slightly, testing the bonds she could not see, and shivered. She could as easily have broken steel chains. Shrugging, she laid herself down awkwardly on the pallet and turned her back to them.
Nynaeve began undoing her own dress. “Let me have the ring, Elayne.”
“Are you sure, Nynaeve?” She looked at Egeanin in a significant manner. The woman seemed to be paying no attention to them.
“She’ll not go running to betray us tonight.” Pausing to pull the dress over her head, Nynaeve sat on the edge of the bed in her thin silk Taraboner shift to roll down her stockings. “Tonight is the agreed night. Egwene will expect one of us, and it is my turn. She will be worried if neither of us appears.”
Elayne fished the leather cord around her neck out of the bosom of her dress. The stone ring, all flecks and stripes in blue and brown and red, lay snuggled against the golden serpent eating its own tail. Unknotting the string long enough to hand the ter’angreal to Nynaeve, she retied and replaced it. Nynaeve strung the stone ter’angreal with her own Great Serpent ring and Lan’s heavy gold ring, let them hang between her breasts.
“Give me an hour after you are certain I’m asleep,” she said, stretching out atop the blue coverlet. “It should take no longer than that. And keep an eye on her.”
“What can she do bound, Nynaeve?” Elayne hesitated before adding, “I don’t think she would try to harm us if she were loose.”
“Don’t you dare!” Nynaeve raised her head to glare at Egeanin’s back, then lay back on the pillows again. “An hour, Elayne.” Closing her eyes, she wriggled to make herself more comfortable. “That should be more than enough,” she murmured.
Hiding a yawn behind her hand, Elayne brought the low stool to the foot of the bed, where she could watch Nynaeve, and Egeanin, too, though that hardly seemed necessary. The woman lay huddled on her pallet with her knees up, hands securely fastened. It had been a strangely tiring day considering that they had never left the inn. Nynaeve was already muttering softly in her sleep. With her elbows jutting out.
Egeanin lifted her
head and looked over her shoulder. “She hates me, I think.”
“Go to sleep.” Elayne stifled another yawn.
“You do not.”
“Don’t be too sure of yourself,” she said firmly. “You are taking this very calmly. How can you be so calm?”
“Calm?” The other woman’s hands moved involuntarily, twisting at her Air-woven bonds. “I am so terrified I could weep.” She did not sound it. Yet it sounded the simple truth.
“We won’t harm you, Egeanin.” Whatever Nynaeve wanted, she would see to that. “Go to sleep.” After a moment Egeanin’s head lowered.
An hour. It was right not to worry Egwene needlessly, but she wished that hour could be spent on their problem instead of wandering uselessly in Tel’aran’rhiod. If they could not find out whether Amathera was prisoner or captive … . Set that aside; I won’t puzzle it out here. Once they did find out, how could they get inside the palace with all those soldiers about, and the Civil Watch, not to mention Liandrin and the others?
Nynaeve had started snoring softly, a habit she denied even more heatedly than she did flinging her elbows about. Egeanin appeared to be taking the long, slow breaths of deep sleep. Yawning into the back of her hand, Elayne shifted on the hard wooden seat and began planning how to sneak into the Panarch’s Palace.
CHAPTER 52
Need
For a moment Nynaeve stood in the Heart of the Stone not seeing it, not thinking of Tel’aran’rhiod at all. Egeanin was Seanchan. One of those vile people who had put a collar on Egwene’s neck and tried to put one on hers. Knowing it still made her feel hollow. Seanchan, and she had snaked her way into Nynaeve’s affections. True friends had seemed so few and far between since leaving Emond’s Field. To find a new one, then lose her in this way … .
“I hate her for that worst of all,” she growled, folding her arms tightly. “She made me like her, and I cannot stop, and I hate her for it!” Said aloud, it made no sense at all. “I do not have to make sense.” She laughed quietly, with a rueful shake of her head. “I am supposed to be Aes Sedai.” But not to be wool-gathering like a fool girl.
Callandor sparkled, the crystal sword rising out of the floorstones beneath the great dome, and the massive redstone columns ran off in shadowed rows through that odd, dim light that came from everywhere. Easy to remember the feel of being watched, to imagine it again. If it had been imagination before. If it was now. Anything might be hiding back in there. A good stout stick appeared in her hands as she peered among the columns. Where was Egwene? Just like the girl to keep her waiting. All that murkiness. For all she knew, something could be about to jump out at—
“That is an odd dress, Nynaeve.”
Just stifling a yelp, she spun around heavily, rattling metallically, heart thumping in her throat. Egwene stood on the other side of Callandor with two women in bulky skirts and dark shawls over white blouses, snowy hair held by folded scarves falling to their waists. Nynaeve swallowed, hoping none of them noticed, tried to make herself breathe normally again. Sneaking up on her that way!
One of the Aiel women she knew from Elayne’s description; Amys’s face was much too young for such hair, but apparently it had been almost silver even as a child. The other, thin and bony, had pale blue eyes in a leathery, wrinkled face. That must be Bair. The tougher of the two, in Nynaeve’s opinion now that she saw them, not that this Amys looked very—Odd dress? I rattled?
Staring down at herself, she gasped. Her dress looked vaguely like a Two Rivers garment; if Two Rivers women wore dresses fashioned from steel mail, with pieces of plate armor like those she had seen in Shienar. How did men run about and jump into saddles in these things? It dragged at her shoulders as if it weighed a hundred pounds. The good stick was metal now, and spiked at the end like a shiny steel sandburr. Without touching her head she knew she had on some sort of helmet. Blushing furiously, she concentrated, changed it all to good Two Rivers woolens and a walking staff. It felt good to have her hair back in one proper braid, hanging over her shoulder.
“Uncontrolled thoughts are troublesome when you walk the dream,” Bair said in a thin, strong voice. “You must learn to control them if you mean to continue.”
“I can control my thoughts very well, thank you,” Nynaeve said crisply. “I—” Bair’s voice was not all that was thin. The Two Wise Ones seemed … misty, almost, and Egwene, in a pale blue riding dress, was very nearly transparent. “What’s the matter with you? Why do you look that way?”
“You try entering Tel’aran’rhiod while half-asleep in a saddle,” Egwene said dryly. She seemed to flicker. “It is morning in the Three-fold Land, and we are on the move. I had to talk Amys into letting me come at all, but I was afraid you would be worried.”
“It is a difficult enough task without the horse,” Amys said, “sleeping shallowly when you wish to be awake. Egwene has not learned it entirely yet.”
“I will,” Egwene said with an irritated determination. She was always too hasty and stubborn in her desire to learn; if these Wise Ones did not hold on to the scruff of her neck she would very likely jump into all sorts of trouble.
Nynaeve stopped worrying about Egwene and trouble as the younger woman began to speak of Trollocs and Draghkar attacking Cold Rocks Hold. Seana, a Wise One dreamwalker, among the dead. Rand hurrying the Taardad Aiel toward this Alcair Dal, apparently in violation of all custom, sending out runners to bring more septs. The boy was confiding his intentions to no one, the Aiel were jumpy, and Moiraine was ready to bite the heads off nails. Moiraine’s frustration would have been some relief—she had hoped he could escape that woman’s influence somehow—if Egwene had not frowned so worriedly.
“I don’t know whether it is madness or design,” Egwene finished. “I could almost bear it either way if I knew. Nynaeve, I’ll admit it isn’t prophecy, or Tarmon Gai’don, that makes me anxious right now. Maybe it is foolish, but I promised Elayne to look after him, and I do not know how.”
Nynaeve walked around the crystal sword to put an arm around her. At least she felt solid, even if she did look a reflection in a foggy mirror. Rand’s sanity. There was nothing she could do about that, no comfort she could offer. Egwene was the one there to see him. “The best you can do for Elayne is to tell him to read what she wrote. She worries about it sometimes; she won’t talk, but I think she’s afraid she said more than she should have. If he believes she is totally besotted, he’s more likely to feel the same, which will not hurt her in the least. At least we have some good news in Tanchico. Some.” When she explained, though, it barely seemed to justify “some.”
“So you still don’t know what it is they’re after,” Egwene said after she finished, “but even if you did, they are on top of it and still might find it first.”
“Not if I can help it.” Nynaeve fixed the two Wise Ones with a firm, level look. From what Elayne said of Amys’s reluctance to give anything but warnings, she would need firmness to deal with them. The pair was so hazy a strong puff might blow them away like fog. “Elayne thinks you know all sorts of tricks with dreams. Is there any way I could get into Amathera’s dreams to see if she is a Darkfriend?”
“Foolish girl.” Bair’s long hair swung as she shook her head. “If Aes Sedai, a foolish girl still. To step into another’s dream is very dangerous unless she knows you and expects you. It is her dream, not as here. There, this Amathera will control all. Even you.”
She had been sure that was the way. It was irritating to learn differently. And “foolish girl”?
“I am not a girl,” she snapped. She wanted to yank her braid, but clenched a fist at her side instead; for some reason, pulling at her hair felt strangely uncomfortable of late. “I was Wisdom of Emond’s Field before I … became Aes Sedai …” She hardly stumbled over the lie at all now. “ … and I told women as old as you when to sit down and be quiet. If you know how to help me, say so instead of giving me foolish maunderings about what is dangerous. I know danger when I see it.”
Abrup
tly she realized her single braid had split in two, one over each ear, red ribbons woven through to make tassels on the ends. Her skirt was so short it showed her knees, she wore a loose white blouse like the Wise Ones, and her shoes and stockings were gone. Where had this come from? She had surely never thought of wearing anything like it. Egwene put a hasty hand over her mouth. Was she aghast? Surely not smiling.
“Uncontrolled thoughts,” Amys said, “can be very troublesome indeed, Nynaeve Sedai, until you learn.” Despite her bland tone, her lips quirked in barely masked amusement.
Nynaeve kept her face smooth with an effort. They could not have had anything to do with it. They can’t have! She struggled to change back, and it was a struggle, as though something held her as she was. Her cheeks grew hotter and hotter. Suddenly, just at the point when she was ready to break down and ask advice, or even help, her clothes and hair were as they had been. She wriggled her toes gratefully in good stout shoes. It had just been some odd, stray thought. In any case, she was not about to voice any suspicions; they looked far too amused as it was, even Egwene. I am not here for some fool contest. I just won’t dignify them.
“If I cannot enter her dream, can I bring her into the World of Dreams? I need some way to talk to her.”
“We would not teach you that if we knew how,” Amys said, hitching her shawl angrily. “It is an evil thing you ask, Nynaeve Sedai.”
“She would be as helpless here as you in her dream.” Bair’s thin voice sounded like an iron rod. “It has been handed down among dreamwalkers since the first that no one must ever be brought into the dream. It is said that that was the way of the Shadow in the last days of the Age of Legends.”
Nynaeve shifted her feet under those hard stares; realizing she had an arm around Egwene, she held still. She was not about to let Egwene think they had made her uneasy. Not that they had. If she thought of being hauled before the Women’s Circle before she was chosen Wisdom, it was nothing at all to do with the Wise Ones. Firmness was what was … . They stared at her. Hazy or not, these women could duel Siuan Sanche stare for stare. Especially Bair. Not that they intimidated her, but she could see the point of being reasonable. “Elayne and I need help. The Black Ajah is sitting on top of something that can harm Rand. If they find it before we do, they may be able to control him. We need to find it first. If there is anything you can do to help, anything you can tell me … . Anything at all.”