Crossroads of Twilight

  Egwene made a vexed sound. There must be two hundred or more passengers altogether on those seven ships. A few might be merchants or traders or some other sort of innocent traveler, but the low sun glittered off helmets and breastplates and steel discs sewn to leather jerkins. How many shiploads arrived each day? Whatever the number, a steady flow was pouring into the city to enlist under High Captain Chubain. “Why do men always rush so hard to kill or be killed?” she muttered irritably.

  Lord Gareth looked at her calmly. He sat his horse, a big bay gelding with a white stripe down his nose, like a statue. Some­times, she thought she knew one small part of how Siuan felt about the man. Sometimes she thought it would be worth whatever effort was needed to startle him, just to see him startled.

  Unfortunately, she knew the answer to her own question as well as he did. At least as it applied to men going soldiering. Oh, there were men enough who rushed to support a cause or defend what they thought what was right, and some who sought adven­ture, whatever they believed that was, yet the simple fact was that for carrying a pike or spear, a man could earn twice each day what he would get for walking behind another man’s plow, and half again as much if he could ride well enough to join the cavalry. Crossbowmen and archers fell in between. The man who worked for another could dream of having his own farm or shop one day, or a beginning toward one that his sons could build on, but he surely had heard a thousand tales of men soldiering for five years or ten and coming home with enough gold to set themselves up in com­fort, tales of ordinary men who rose to become generals, or lords. For a poor man, Gareth had said bluntly, staring down the point of a pike could be a better view than the hind end of somebody else’s plow horse. Even if he was far more likely to die from the pike than earn fame or fortune. A bitter way to look at it, yet she imagined that was how most of those men on the ships saw matters, too. But then, that was how she had gotten her own army. For every man who wanted to see the usurper pulled from the Amyrlin Seat, for every man who even knew for certain who Elaida was, ten if not a hundred had joined for the pay. Some of the men on the ship were raising their hands, to show the guards on the harbor walls they were not holding weapons.

  “No,” she said, and Lord Gareth sighed. His voice remained calm, but his words were hardly comforting when he spoke.

  “Mother, so long as the harbors remain open, Tar Valon will eat better than we do, and rather than growing weaker with hunger, the Tower Guard will grow larger and stronger. I very much doubt that Elaida will let Chubain rush out to attack us, as much as I wish he would. Every day you wait only adds to the butcher’s bill we’ll have to pay sooner or later. I’ve said from the start it will come to an assault, in the end, and that hasn’t changed, but every­thing else has. Have the sisters put me and my men inside the walls now, and I can take Tar Valon. It won’t be clean. It never is. But I can take the city for you. And fewer will die than if you delay.”

  A knot formed in her belly, twisted tight till she could hardly breathe. Carefully, step by step, she performed novice exercises to make it loosen. The bank contained the river, guiding without controlling. Calm settled on her, in her.

  Too many people had begun seeing the uses of gateways, and in a way, Gareth represented the worst. His business was war, and he was very good at it. As soon as he learned a gateway could take more than a small group of people at one time, he had seen the implications. Even the great walls of Tar Valon, beyond the range of any siege catapult not on a barge, and worked with the Power till the largest catapult could not mark them in any case, might as well be made of paper against an army that could Travel. But whether Gareth Bryne had learned or not, other men would seize on that idea. The Asha’man already had, it seemed. War had always been ugly, yet it was going to grow uglier.

  “No,” she repeated. “I know people are going to die before this is over.” The Light help her, she could see them dying just by clos­ing her eyes. Even more would die if she made the wrong decisions, though, and not just here. “But I have to keep the White Tower alive - against Tarmon Gai’don - to stand between the world and the Asha’man - and the Tower will die if this comes to sisters killing one another in the streets of Tar Valon.” That had already happened once. It could not be allowed a second time. “If the White Tower dies, hope dies. I shouldn’t have to tell you that again.”

  Daishar snorted and tossed his head, lunging as though he had sensed her irritation, but she reined him in firmly and slipped the looking glass into the tooled leather case hanging from her saddle. The diving birds gave up their fishing and sprang into the air as the thick chain that blocked Northharbor began to droop. It would dip beneath the surface well before the first ship reached the harbor mouth. How long ago had it been that she reached Tar Valon by that same route? Almost beyond memory, it seemed. An Age gone. It had been another woman who came ashore and was met by the Mistress of Novices.

  Gareth shook his head with a quick grimace. But then, he never gave up, did he? “You have to keep the White Tower alive, Mother, but my job is to give it to you. Unless things have changed that I don’t know about. I can see sisters whispering and looking over their shoulders even if I don’t know what it means. If you still want the Tower, it will come to an assault, better soon than late.”

  Suddenly the morning seemed darker, as though clouds had obscured the sun. Whatever she did, the dead were going to pile up like cordwood, but she had to keep the White Tower alive. She had to. When there were no good choices, you had to choose the one that seemed least wrong.

  “I’ve seen enough here,” she said quietly. With one last glance at that narrow line of smoke beyond the city, she turned Daishar toward the trees a hundred paces back from the river, where her escort waited among the evergreen leatherleaf and winter-bare beech and birch.

  Two hundred light cavalry, in boiled leather breastplates or coats covered with metal discs, would certainly have attracted notice appearing on the riverbank, but Gareth had convinced her of the necessity of these men with their slender lances and short horsebows. Without any doubt, that smoke plume on the far bank rose from burning wagons or supplies. Pinpricks, yet those pin­pricks came every night, sometimes one, sometimes two or three, till everyone looked for smoke first thing on rising. Hunting the raiders down had proved impossible, so far. Sudden snow squalls flared around the pursuers, or fierce freezing night winds, or the tracks simply vanished abruptly, the snow beyond the last hoof-print as smooth as fresh fallen. The residues of weavings made it plain enough they were being aided by Aes Sedai, and there was no point in taking a chance that Elaida had men and maybe sisters on this side of the river, too. Few things could please Elaida more than getting her hands on Egwene al’Vere.

  They were not her whole escort, of course. Besides Sheriam, her Keeper, she had ridden out with six more Aes Sedai this morning, and those who had Warders had brought them, so behind the sister eight men waited in color-shifting cloaks that rippled in queasy-making fashion when a breeze caught them and otherwise made parts of riders and horses seem to vanish into the tree trunks. Aware of the dangers - from raiders, at least - aware that their Aes Sedai were wound tight to near breaking, they watched the surrounding copse as though the cavalrymen were not there. The safety of their own Aes Sedai was their primary concern, and that they trusted to no one else. Sarin, a black-bearded stump of a man, not that short but very wide, stayed so close to Nisao that he seemed to loom over the diminutive Yellow, and Jori managed to loom over Morvrin as well, though he was actually shorter than she. As broad as Sarin, but very short even for a Cairhienin. Myrelle’s three Warders, the three she dared acknowledge, clustered around her until she could not have moved her horse without pushing one of theirs out of her way. Anaiya’s Setagana, lean and dark and as beautiful as she was plain, almost managed to surround her by himself, and Tervail, with his bold nose and scarred face, did the same with Beonin. Carlinya had no Warder, not unusual for a White, but she studied the men from the depths of her fur-lined cowl as
if thinking about rinding one.

  Not too long ago, Egwene would have hesitated to be seen with those six women. They and Sheriam had all sworn fealty to her, for various reasons, and neither they nor she wanted the fact known or even suspected. They had been her way to influence events, to the extent that she could, when everyone thought her no more than a figurehead, a girl Amyrlin the Hall of the Tower could use as it wished and no one listened to. The Hall had lost that illusion when she brought them to declare war on Elaida, finally admitting what they had been about since the day they had fled the Tower in the first place, but that only made the Hall, and the Ajahs, worry over what she would do next and try to figure out how to make sure that whatever it was met with their approval. The Sitters had been very surprised when she accepted their sug­gestion of a council, one sister from each Ajah, to advise her with their wisdom and experience. Or perhaps they thought her success with the declaration of war had gone to her head. Of course, she had just told Morvrin and Anaiya and the others to make sure they were the sisters chosen, and they retained enough prestige within their Ajahs to manage it, just. She had been listening to their advice, if not always taking it, for weeks by that time, but now there was no longer any need to arrange furtive meetings or pass messages in secret.

  It seemed, however, that there had been an addition to the party while Egwene was staring at the Tower.

  Sheriam, wearing the narrow blue stole of her office outside her cloak, managed a very formal bow from her saddle. The flame-haired woman could be incredibly formal at times. “Mother, the Sitter Delana wishes to speak with you,” she said as if Egwene could not see the stout Gray sister sitting there on a dappled mare almost as dark as Sheriam’s black-footed mount. “On a matter of some importance, so she says.” And the slight touch of asperity meant Delana had not told her what matter. Sheriam would not have liked that. She could be very jealous of her position.

  “In private, if you please, Mother,” Delana said, pushing back her dark hood to reveal hair nearly the color of silver. Her voice was deep for a woman’s, but it hardly carried the urgency of someone with important matters to speak of.

  Her presence was something of a surprise. Delana often sup­ported Egwene in the Hall of the Tower, when Sitters were quib­bling over whether a particular decision actually concerned the war against Elaida. That meant the Hall was required to support Egwene’s commands as if they had stood with the greater consen­sus, and even the Sitters who had stood for war did not half like that little fact, which made for endless quibbling. They wanted to pull Elaida down, yet left to themselves, the Hall would have done nothing but argue. Truth to tell, though, Delana’s support was not always welcome. One day she could be the very image of a Gray negotiator seeking consensus, and the next so strident in her argu­ments that every Sitter within hearing got her back up. She had been known to set the cat among the pigeons in other ways, too. No fewer than three times now, she had demanded the Hall make a formal declaration that Elaida was Black Ajah, which inevitably led to an awkward silence until someone called for the sitting to be adjourned. Few were willing to discuss the Black Ajah openly. Delana would discuss anything, from how they were to find proper clothes for nine hundred and eighty-seven novices to whether Elaida had secret supporters among the sisters, another topic that gave most sisters a case of the prickles. Which left the question of why she had ridden out so early, and by herself. She had never approached Egwene before without another Sitter or three for com­pany. Delana’s pale blue eyes gave away no more than did her smooth Aes Sedai face.

  “While we ride,” Egwene told her. “We will want a little privacy,” she added when Sheriam opened her mouth. “Stay back with the others, please.” The Keeper’s green eyes tightened in what might almost have been anger. An efficient Keeper, and eager with it, she had pinned her hopes on Egwene and made little secret that she disliked being excluded from any meeting Egwene had. Upset or not, she bowed her head in acceptance with only a small hesita­tion. Sheriam had not always known which of them commanded, but she did now.

  The land tended upward from the River Erinin, not in hills but simply rising toward the monstrous peak that loomed to the west, so massive it seemed to mock the name mountain. Dragonmount would have towered above everything else even in the Spine of the World; in the relatively flat country around Tar Valon, its white-capped crest seemed to reach the heavens, especially when a thin thread of smoke was streaming away from the jagged top as it was now. A thin thread at that height would be something else entirely, close at hand. Trees gave out less than halfway up Dragonmount, and no one had ever succeeded in reaching the crest or even coming close, though it was said the slopes were littered with the bones of those who had tried. Why anyone would try in the first place, no one could quite explain. Sometimes the long evening shadow of the mountain stretched all the way to the city. People who lived in the region were accustomed to Dragonmount dominating the sky, much as they were accustomed to the White Tower looming above the city walls and visible for miles. Both were unchanging fixtures that had always been there and always would be, but crops and crafts occupied the people’s lives, not mountains or Aes Sedai.

  In tiny hamlets often or a dozen stone houses roofed in thatch or slate, and the occasional village of a hundred, children playing in the snow or carrying buckets of water from the wells stopped to gape at the soldiers riding along the dirt tracks that passed for roads when not covered in snow. They carried no banners, but a few of the sol­diers wore the Flame of Tar Valon worked on their cloaks or coatsleeves, and the Warders’ strange cloaks named at least some of the women as Aes Sedai. Even this near the city, sisters had been an uncommon sight till recently, and they were still something to make a child’s eyes gleam. But then, the soldiers themselves probably came close in the list of marvels. The farms that fed Tar Valon covered most of the land, stone-walled fields surrounding sprawling houses and tall barns of stone or brick, with copses and coppices and thick­ets of trees between, and groups of farm children often ran a little distance parallel to the line of travel, leaping across the snow like hares. Winter chores kept most older folk indoors, but those who ventured out, heavily bundled against the cold, spared barely a glance for soldiers or Warders or Aes Sedai. Spring would be coming soon, and the plowing and planting, and what Aes Sedai did would not affect that. The Light willing, it would not.

  There was no point to guards unless they rode as if expecting an attack, and Lord Gareth had arranged a strong party of foreriders and lines of flankers, with trailers riding to the rear while he led the mass of the soldiers right behind the Warders who followed closely on the heels of Sheriam and the “council.” They all made a large, lopsided ring around Egwene, and she could almost imagine she was riding through the countryside alone with Delana if she did not look around too closely. Or if she looked beyond. Instead of pressing the Gray Sitter to speak - it was a long ride back to camp, and no one was allowed to weave a gateway where the weave might be observed; there was plenty of time to hear what Delana had to say - Egwene compared the farms they passed to those in the Two Rivers.

  Perhaps the realization that the Two Rivers was no longer home made her study them. Acknowledging the truth could never be a betrayal, yet she needed to remember the Two Rivers. You could forget who you were if you forgot where you came from, and sometimes the innkeeper’s daughter from Emond’s Field seemed a stranger to her. Any of these farms would have looked decidedly odd, set down near Emond’s Field, though she could not put a fin­ger on why, exactly. A different shape to the houses, a different slant to the roofs. And more often slate topped a house than thatch, here, when you could make out either through the snow that was often mounded on the rooftops. Of course, there was less thatch and more stone and brick in the Two Rivers now than there had been. She had seen it, in Tel’aran’rhiod. Change came so slowly you never noticed it creeping up on you, or far too fast for comfort, but it came. Nothing stayed the same, even when you thought it did. Or hoped it
would.

  “Some think you’re going to bond him your Warder,” Delana said suddenly in a quiet voice. She might have been engaging in casual conversation. Her whole attention seemed to be on arrang­ing the hood of her cloak with green-gloved hands. She rode well, blending with the motion of her mare so effortlessly that she appeared unaware of the animal. “Some think perhaps you already have. I haven’t had one myself for some time, but just knowing your Warder is there can be a comfort. If you choose the right one.”

  Egwene raised an eyebrow - she was proud that she did not gape at the woman; this was the very last topic she would have expected - and Delana added, “Lord Gareth. He spends a great deal of time with you. He’s rather older than is usual, but Greens often choose a more experienced man for their first. I know you never actually had an Ajah, yet I often think of you as a Green. I wonder, will Siuan be relieved if you bond him, or upset? Sometimes I think one, sometimes the other. Their relationship, if it can be called that, is most peculiar, yet she seems completely unembarrassed.”

  “You must ask Siuan herself about that.” Egwene’s smile had some bite in it. So did her tone, for that matter. She did not entirely understand herself why Gareth Bryne had offered her his loyalty, but the Hall of the Tower had better uses for its time than gossiping like village women. “You can tell whoever you choose that I’ve bonded no one, Delana. Lord Gareth spends time with me, as you put it, because I am the Amyrlin and he is my general. You may remind them of that, as well.” So Delana thought of her as a Green. That was the Ajah she would have chosen, though in truth, she wanted only one Warder. But Gawyn was either inside Tar Valon or else on his way to Caemlyn, and either way, she would not lay hands on him soon. She patted Daishar’s neck unnecessarily and tried to keep her smile from becoming a glare. It had been pleasant to forget the Hall, among other things, for a while. The Hall made her understand why Siuan had so often looked like a bear with a sore tooth when she was Amyrlin.