Towers of Midnight

  "Well," the Amyrlin said, "I am very glad for this longer explanation, Nynaeve. Though saidin being cleansed does make it less unsettling to consider Asha'man and Aes Sedai bonding one another. I wish Rand had been willing to speak to me of that during our meeting." She said it evenly, though Siuan knew she looked on men bonding women with as much pleasure as a captain looked on a fire in his hold.

  "I suppose," Nynaeve said, lips turning down. "If it matters, Rand didn't approve the men bonding women."

  "It doesn't matter if he did or not," Egwene said. "The Asha'man are his responsibility."

  "As the Aes Sedai who chained him and beat him are yours, Mother?" Nynaeve asked.

  "Inherited from Elaida, perhaps," Egwene said, eyes narrowing just slightly.

  She was right to bring Nynaeve back, Siuan thought, taking a sip of soup. She takes his side far too often for comfort.

  Nynaeve sighed, taking her spoon to begin her soup. "I didn't mean that as a challenge, Mother. I just want to show how he thinks. Light! I didn't approve of much of what he did, particularly lately. But I can see how he got there."

  "He has changed, though," Siuan said thoughtfully. "You said so yourself."

  "Yes," Nynaeve said. "The Aiel say he's embraced death."

  "I've heard that from them, too," Egwene said. "But I looked into his eyes, and something else has changed, something inexplicable. The man I saw . . ."

  "He didn't seem like one to destroy Natrin's Barrow?" Siuan shivered as she thought of that.

  "The man I saw wouldn't need to destroy such a place," Egwene said. "Those inside would just follow him. Bend to his wishes. Because he was"

  The three fell silent.

  Egwene shook her head and took a sip of her soup. She paused, then smiled. "Well, I see the soup is good. Perhaps things aren't as bad as I thought."

  "The ingredients came from Caemlyn," Nynaeve noted. "I overheard the serving girls talking." "Oh."

  More silence.

  "Mother," Siuan said, speaking carefully. "The women are still worried about the deaths in the Tower."

  "I agree, Mother," Nynaeve said. "Sisters stare at one another with distrust. It worries me."

  "You both should have seen it before," Egwene said. "During Elaida's reign."

  "If it was worse than this," Nynaeve said, "I'm glad that I didn't." She glanced down at her Great Serpent ring. She did that a lot, recently. As a fisher with a new boat often glanced toward the docks and smiled. For all her complaints that she was Aes Sedai, and for all the fact that she'd been

  wearing that ring for a long time now, she was obviously satisfied to have passed the testing and taken the oaths.

  "It was terrible," Egwene said. "And I don't intend to let it go back to that. Siuan, the plan must be put into motion."

  Siuan grimaced. "I've been teaching the others. But I don't think this is a good idea, Mother. They're barely trained."

  "What's this?" Nynaeve asked.

  "Aes Sedai," Egwene said. "Carefully chosen and given dream ter'angreal. Siuan is showing them how Tel'aran'rhiod works."

  "Mother, that place is dangerous."

  Egwene took another sip of soup. "I believe I know that better than most. But it is necessary; we must lure the killers into a confrontation. I'll arrange for a 'secret' meeting among my most loyal Aes Sedai, in the World of Dreams, and perhaps lay clues that other people of importance will be attending. Siuan, you've contacted the Windfinders?"

  "Yes," Siuan said. "Though they want to know what you'll give them to agree to meet with you."

  "The loan of the dream ter'angreal will be enough," Egwene said dryly. "Not everything has to be a bargain."

  "To them, it often does," Nynaeve said. "But that's beside the point. You're bringing Windfinders to this meeting to lure Mesaana?"

  "Not exactly," Egwene said. "I'll see the Windfinders at the same time, in a different place. And some Wise Ones as well. Enough to hint to Mesaana assuming she's got spies watching the other groups of women who can channel that she really wants to spy on us in Tel'aran'rhiod that day.

  "You and Siuan will hold a meeting in the Hall of the Tower, but it will be a decoy to draw Mesaana or her minions out of hiding. With wards and some sisters watching from hidden places we'll be able to trap them. Siuan will send for me as soon as the trap is sprung."

  Nynaeve frowned. "It's a good plan, save for one thing. I don't like you being in danger, Mother. Let me lead this fight. I can manage it."

  Egwene studied Nynaeve, and Siuan saw some of the real Egwene. Thoughtful. Bold, but calculating. She also saw Egwene's fatigue, the weight of responsibility. Siuan knew that feeling well.

  "I'll admit you have a valid concern," Egwene said. "Ever since I let myself get captured by Elaida's cronies outside of Tar Valon, I've wondered if I become too directly involved, too directly in danger."

  "Exactly," Nynaeve said.

  "However," Egwene said, "the simple fact remains that I am the one among us who is most expert at Tel'aran'rhiod. You two are skilled, true,

  but I have more experience. In this case, I am not just the leader of the Aes Sedai, I am a tool that the White Tower must use." She hesitated. "I dreamed this, Nynaeve. If we do not defeat Mesaana here, all could be lost. All will be lost. It is not a time to hold back any of our tools, no matter how valuable."

  Nynaeve reached for her braid, but it now came only to her shoulders. She gritted her teeth at that. "You might have a point. But I don't like it."

  "The Aiel dreamwalkers," Siuan said. "Mother, you said you'll be meeting with them. Might they be willing to help? I'd feel much better about having you fight if I knew they were around to keep an eye on you."

  "Yes," Egwene said. "A good suggestion. I will contact them before we meet and make the request, just in case."

  "Mother," Nynaeve said. "Perhaps Rand "

  "This is a matter of the Tower, Nynaeve," Egwene said. "We will manage it."

  "Very well."

  "Now," Egwene continued, "we need to figure out how to spread the right rumors so that Mesaana won't be able to resist coming to listen . . ."

  Perrin hit the nightmare running. The air bent around him, and the city houses this time of the Cairhienin flat-topped variety disappeared. The road became soft beneath his feet, like mud, then turned to liquid.

  He splashed in the ocean. Water again? he thought with annoyance.

  Deep red lightning crashed in the sky, throwing waves of bloody light across the sea. Each burst revealed shadowed creatures lurking beneath the waves. Massive things, evil and sinuous in the spasming red lightning.

  People clung to the wreckage of what had once been a ship, screaming in terror and crying out for loved ones. Men on broken boards, women trying to hold their babies above the water as towering waves broke over them, dead bodies bobbing like sacks of grain.

  The things beneath the waves struck, snatching people from the surface and dragging them into the depths with splashes of fins and sparking, razor-sharp teeth. The water was soon bubbling red that didn't come from the lightning.

  Whoever had dreamed this particular nightmare had a singularly twisted imagination.

  Perrin refused to let himself be drawn in. He squelched his fear, and did not swim for one of those planks. It isn't real. It isn't real. It isn't real. Despite his understanding, part of him knew that he was going to die

  in these waters. These terrible, bloody waters. The moans of the others assaulted him, and he yearned to try to help them. They weren't real, he knew. Just figments. But it was hard.

  Perrin began to rise from the water, the waves turning back into ground. But then he cried out as something brushed his leg. Lightning crashed, breaking the air. A woman beside him slipped beneath the waves, tugged by unseen jaws. Panicked, Perrin was suddenly back in the water, there in a heartbeat, floating in a completely different place, one arm slung over a piece of wreckage.

  This happened sometimes. If he wavered for a moment if he let himself see
the nightmare as real it would pull him in and actually move him, fitting him into its terrible mosaic. Something moved in the water nearby, and he splashed away with a start. One of the surging waves raised him into the air.

  It isn't real. It isn't real. It isn't real.

  The waters were so cold. Something touched his leg again, and he screamed, then choked off as he gulped in a mouthful of salty water. IT ISN'T REAL!

  He was in Cairhien, leagues from the ocean. This was a street. Hard stones beneath. The smell of baked bread coming from a nearby bakery. The street lined with small, thin-trunked ash trees.

  With a bellowing scream, he clung to this knowledge as the people around him held to their flotsam. Perrin knotted his hands into fists, focusing on reality.

  There were cobblestones under his feet. Not waves. Not water. Not teeth and fins. Slowly, he rose from the ocean again. He stepped out of it and set his foot on the surface, feeling solid stone beneath his boot. The other foot followed. He found himself on a small, floating circle of stones.

  Something enormous surged from the waters to his left, a massive beast part fish and part monster, with a maw so wide that a man could walk into it standing upright. The teeth were as large as Perrin's hand, and they glittered, dripping blood.

  It was not real.

  The creature exploded into mist. The spray hit Perrin, then dried immediately. Around him, the nightmare bent, a bubble of reality pressing out from him. Dark air, cold waves, screaming people ran together like wet paint.

  There was no lightning he did not see it light his eyelids. There was no thunder. He could not hear it crashing. There were no waves, not in the middle of landlocked Cairhien.

  Perrin snapped his eyes open, and the entire nightmare broke apart, vanishing like a film of frost exposed to the spring sunlight. The buildings reappeared, the street returned, the waves retreated. The sky returned to the boiling black tempest. Lightning that was bright and white flashed in its depths, but there was no thunder.

  Hopper sat on the street a short distance away. Perrin walked over to the wolf. He could have jumped there immediately, of course, but he didn't like the idea of doing everything easily. That would bite at him when he returned to the real world.

  You grow strong, Young Bull, Hopper sent approvingly.

  "I still take too long," Perrin said, glancing over his shoulder. "Every time I enter, it takes me a few minutes to regain control. I need to be faster. In a battle with Slayer, a few minutes might as well be an eternity."

  He will not be so strong as these.

  "He'll still be strong enough," Perrin said. "He's had years to learn to control the wolf dream. I only just started."

  Hopper laughed. Young Bull, you started the first time you came here.

  "Yes, but I just started training a few weeks back."

  Hopper continued laughing. He was right, in a way. Perrin had spent two years preparing, visiting the wolf dream at night. But he still needed to learn as much as he could. In a way, he was glad for the delay before the trial.

  But he could not delay too long. The Last Hunt was upon them. Many of the wolves were running to the north; Perrin could feel them passing. Running for the Blight, for the Borderlands. They were moving both in the real world and in the wolf dream, but those here did not shift there directly. They ran, as packs.

  He could tell that Hopper longed to join them. However, he remained behind, as did some others.

  "Come on," Perrin said. "Let's find another nightmare."

  The Rose March was in bloom.

  That was incredible. Few other plants had bloomed in this terrible summer, and those that did had wilted. But the Rose March was blooming, and fiercely, hundreds of red explosions twisting around the garden framework. Voracious insects buzzed from flower to flower, as if every bee in the city had come here to feed.

  Gawyn kept his distance from the insects, but the scent of roses was so

  pervasive that he felt bathed in it. Once he finished his walk, his clothing would probably smell of the perfume for hours.

  Elayne was speaking with several advisors near one of the benches beside a small, lily-covered pond. She was showing her pregnancy, and seemed radiant. Her golden hair reflected the sunlight like the surface of a mirror; atop that hair, the Rose Crown of Andor looked almost plain by comparison.

  She often had much to do these days. He'd heard hushed reports of the weapons she was building, the ones she thought might be as powerful as captive damane. The bellfounders in Caemlyn had been working for straight through the nights, from what he'd heard. Caemlyn was preparing for war, the city abuzz with activity. She didn't often have time for him, though he was glad for what she could spare.

  She smiled at him as he approached, then waved off her attendants for the moment. She walked to him and gave him a fond kiss on the cheek. "You look thoughtful."

  "A common malady of mine lately," he said. "You look distracted."

  "A common malady of mine lately," she said. "There is always too much to do and never enough of me to do it.

  "If you need to "

  "No," she said, taking his arm. "I need to speak to you. And I've been told that a walk around the gardens once a day will be good for my constitution."

  Gawyn smiled, breathing in the scents of roses and mud around the pond. The scents of life. He glanced up at the sky as they walked. "I can't believe how much sunlight we've been seeing here. I'd nearly convinced myself that the perpetual gloom was something unnatural."

  "Oh, it probably is," she said nonchalantly. "A week back the cloud cover in Andor broke around Caemlyn, but nowhere else."

  "But . . . how?"

  She smiled. "Rand. Something he did. He was atop Dragonmount, I think. And then . . ."

  Suddenly, the day seemed darker. "Al'Thor again," Gawyn spat. "He follows me even here."

  "Even here?" she said with amusement. "I believe these gardens are where we first met him."

  Gawyn didn't reply to that. He glanced northward, checking the sky in that direction. Ominous dark clouds hung out there. "He's the father, isn't he?"

  "If he were," Elayne said without missing a beat, "then it would be prudent to hide that fact, wouldn't it? The children of the Dragon Reborn will be targets."

  Gawyn felt sick. He'd suspected it the moment he'd discovered the pregnancy. "Burn me," he said. "Elayne, how could you? After what he did to our mother!"

  "He did nothing to her," Elayne said. "I can produce witness after witness that will confirm it, Gawyn. Mother vanished before Rand liberated Caemlyn." There was a fond look in her eyes as she spoke of him. "Something is happening to him. I can feel it, feel him changing. Cleansing. He drives back the clouds and makes the roses bloom."

  Gawyn raised an eyebrow. She thought the roses bloomed because of al'Thor! Well, love could make a person think strange things, and when the man she spoke of was the Dragon Reborn, perhaps some irrationality was to be expected.

  They approached the pond's small dock. He could remember swimming there as a child, then getting an earful for it. Not from his mother, from Galad, though Gawyn's mother had given him a stern, disappointed look. He'd never told anyone that he'd been swimming only because Elayne had pushed him in.

  "You're never going to forget that, are you?" Elayne asked.

  "What?" he asked.

  "You were thinking of the time you slipped into the pond during Mother's meeting with House Farah."

  "Slipped? You pushed me!"

  "I did nothing of the sort," Elayne said primly. "You were showing off, balancing on the posts."

  "And you shook the dock."

  "I stepped onto it," Elayne said. "Forcefully. I'm a vigorous person. I have a forceful stride."

  "A forceful That's a downright lie!"

  "No, I'm merely stating the truth creatively. I'm Aes Sedai now. It's a talent of ours. Now, are you going to row me on the pond, or not?"

  "I . . . Row you? When did that come up?"

  "Just now. We
ren't you listening?"

  Gawyn shook a bemused head. "Fine." Behind them, several Guards-women took up posts. They were always near, often led by the tall woman who fancied herself an image of Birgitte from the stories. And maybe she did look like Birgitte at that she went by the name, anyway, and was serving as Captain-General.

  The Guards were joined by a growing group of attendants and messengers. The Last Battle approached, and Andor prepared and, unfortunately, many of those preparations required Elayne's direct attention. Though Gawyn had heard a curious story of Elayne having been carried up on the city wall in her bed a week or so back. So far, he hadn't been able to pin her down on whether that was true or not.

  He waved to Birgitte, who gave him a scowl as he led Elayne to the pond's small rowboat. "I promise not to dump her in," Gawyn called. Then, under his breath, "Though I might row 'forcefully' and upend us."

  "Oh, hush," Elayne said, settling down. "Pondwater wouldn't be good for the babies."

  "Speaking of which," Gawyn said, pushing the boat off with his toe, then stepping into it. The vessel shook precariously until he sat down. "Aren't you supposed to be walking for your 'constitution'?"

  "I'll tell Melfane I needed to take the opportunity to reform my miscreant brother. You can get away with all kinds of things if you're giving someone a proper scolding."

  "And is that what I'm getting? A scolding?"

  "Not necessarily." Her voice was somber. Gawyn shipped the oars and slipped them into the water. The pond wasn't large, barely big enough to justify a boat, but there was a serenity about being upon the water, amid the pond-runners and the butterflies.

  "Gawyn," Elayne said, "why have you come to Caemlyn?"

  "It's my home," he said. "Why shouldn't I come here?"

  "I worried about you during the siege. I could have used you in the fighting. But you stayed away."

  "I explained that, Elayne! I was embroiled in White Tower politics, not to mention the winter snows. It burns me that I couldn't help, but those women had their fingers on me."

  "I'm one of 'those women' myself, you know." She held up her hand, Great Serpent ring encircling her finger.