The Fires of Heaven

  Heaving a sigh of relief, Nynaeve hastily tucked the plaque away again. Her stomach was still fluttering.

  “If you have told everything . . .” Amys paused while Nynaeve and Elayne hurriedly said that they had. The woman’s blue eyes were incredibly penetrating. “Then we must go. I will admit there is more to be gained from these meetings than I first supposed, but I have much to do yet tonight.” She glanced at Egwene, and they vanished as one.

  Nynaeve and Elayne did not hesitate. Around them the great redstone columns changed in a blink to a small, dark-paneled room, its furnishings few, plain and sturdy. Nynaeve’s anger had been wavering, and with it her hold on saidar, but the Mistress of Novices’ study firmed both. Stubbornly defiant indeed! She hoped that Sheriam was in Salidar; it would be a pleasure to face her on an equal footing. Still, she could have wished to be somewhere else. Elayne was peering into the mirror with its flaking gilt frame, nonchalantly adjusting her hair with her hands. Only she had no need to use her hands here. She did not like being in this room either. Why had Egwene suggested meeting here? Elaida’s study might not be the most comfortable place to be, but it was better than this.

  A moment later, Egwene was there, on the other side of the broad table, eyes icy and hands on her hips as if she was the room’s rightful occupant.

  Before Nynaeve could open her mouth, Egwene said, “Have you two brainless flaptongues become witless ninnies? If I ask you to keep something to yourselves, do you immediately tell the first person you meet? Did it never occur to you that you don’t have to tell everyone everything? I thought you two were good at keeping secrets.” Nynaeve’s cheeks grew warmer; at least she could not possibly be as scarlet as Elayne. Egwene was not quite finished. “As for how I did it, I can’t teach you. You have to be a Dreamwalker. If you can touch somebody’s dreams with the ring, I don’t know how. And I doubt you can with that other thing. Try to keep your mind on what you’re doing. Salidar may be nothing like you expect. Now, I also have things to do tonight. At least try to keep your wits about you!” And she was gone so suddenly the last word almost seemed to come from empty air.

  Embarrassment ate at Nynaeve’s anger. She had nearly burst out with it after Egwene asked her not to. And Birgitte: How could you keep a secret when the other woman knew? Embarrassment won, and saidar slipped away like sand through her fingers.

  Nynaeve wakened with a jerk, the deep yellow ter’angreal firmly clutched in one hand. The gimbal-mounted lamp was turned down to a dim light. Elayne lay crowded in next to her, still asleep; the ring on its thong had slid down into the hollow of her throat.

  Muttering to herself, Nynaeve clambered over the other woman to put away the plaque, then poured a little water into the washbasin to bathe her face and neck. The water was lukewarm, but it felt cool. In the shadowy light, she thought the mirror said she was still blushing. So much for redressing the balance. If only they had met anywhere else. If only she had not flapped her tongue like a brainless girl. It would have gone better if she had been using the ring, instead of being a wraith as far as the other woman was concerned. It was all Thom and Juilin’s fault. And Uno’s. If they had not made her angry . . . No, it was Neres’ fault. He . . . She took the pitcher in both hands and washed her mouth. It was only the taste of sleep she was trying to get rid of. Nothing like boiled catfern and powdered mavinsleaf. Nothing at all.

  When she turned from the washstand, Elayne was just sitting up, untying the leather cord that held the ring. “I saw you losing saidar, so I went by Elaida’s study, but I didn’t think I should stay long in case you worried. I didn’t learn anything, except that Shemerin is to be arrested and reduced to Accepted.” She got up and tucked the ring into the box.

  “They can do that? Demote an Aes Sedai?”

  “I don’t know. I think Elaida is doing anything she wants. Egwene shouldn’t wear those Aiel clothes. They are not very becoming.”

  Nynaeve let out the breath she had been holding. Obviously Elayne wanted to ignore what Egwene had said. Nynaeve was willing to let her. “No, they certainly aren’t.” Climbing onto the bed, she scrunched over against the wall; they took turns sleeping on the outside.

  “I did not even have a chance to send a message to Rand.” Elayne got in after, and the lamp winked out. The small windows let in only dribbles of moonlight. “And one to Aviendha. If she is taking care of him for me, then she ought to take care of him.”

  “He isn’t a horse, Elayne. You don’t own him.”

  “I never said I did. How will you feel if Lan takes up with some Cairhienin woman?”

  “Don’t be silly. Go to sleep.” Nynaeve burrowed fiercely into her small pillow. Perhaps she should have sent word to Lan. All those noblewomen, Tairen as well as Cairhienin. Feeding a man honey instead of telling him the truth. He had better not forget who he belonged to.

  Below Boannda, woods closed in tightly on both sides of the river, unbroken tangles of trees and vines. Villages and farms vanished. The Eldar might as well have run through wilderness a thousand miles from human habitation. Five days out of Samara, early afternoon found Riverserpent anchored in the middle of a bend in the river, while the ship’s one boat ferried the remaining passengers to a beach of cracked dry mud bordered by low, forested hills. Even the tall willows and deep-rooted oaks showed some brown leaves.

  “There was no need to give the man that necklace,” Nynaeve said on the shore, watching the rowboat approach, crowded with four oarsmen, Juilin and the last five Shienarans. She hoped she had not been gullible; Neres had showed her his map of this stretch of the river, pointing out the mark for Salidar two miles from the water, but nothing else indicated there had ever been a village anywhere near here. The forest wall was quite unbroken. “What I paid him was quite enough.”

  “Not to cover his cargo,” Elayne replied. “Just because he’s a smuggler doesn’t mean we have a right to take it from him.” Nynaeve wondered whether she had been talking to Juilin. Probably not. It was just the law again. “Besides, yellow opals are gaudy, especially in that setting. Anyway, it was worth it, just to see his face.” Elayne giggled abruptly. “He looked at me this time.” Nynaeve tried not to, but she could not help giggling, too.

  Thom was up near the trees, trying to amuse Marigan’s two boys by juggling colored balls produced from his sleeves. Jaril and Seve stared at him silently, hardly blinking, and held on to each other. Nynaeve had not really been surprised when Marigan and Nicola asked to accompany her. Nicola might be watching Thom and laughing delightedly now, but she would have spent every moment at Nynaeve’s side had the latter allowed it. Areina wanting to come had been something of a shock, though. She was sitting off by herself on a fallen log, watching Birgitte, who was stringing her bow. All three women might be in for a shock when they discovered what was in Salidar. At least Nicola would find her sanctuary, and Marigan might even have a chance to dispense herbs if there were not too many Yellows about.

  “Nynaeve, have you thought about . . . how we’re going to be received?”

  Nynaeve looked at Elayne in astonishment. They had crossed half the world, or near enough, and defeated the Black Ajah twice. Well, they had had help in Tear, but Tanchico had been all their doing. They brought news of Elaida and the Tower she was willing to bet no one in Salidar had. And most importantly, they could help these sisters make contact with Rand. “Elayne, I won’t say they will greet us as heroes, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they kissed us before today is done.” Rand alone would be worth that.

  Two of the barefoot sailors leaped out to hold the rowboat against the current, and Juilin and the Shienarans splashed ashore as the sailors scrambled back aboard. On Riverserpent men were already hauling in the anchor.

  “Clear us a path, Uno,” Nynaeve said. “I mean to be there before dark.” From the look of the forest, all vines and dusty undergrowth, two miles might take that long. If Neres had not managed to gull her. That worried her more than anything else.

  CHAPTER
br />   50

  To Teach, and Learn

  Some four hours later, the sweat running down Nynaeve’s face had very little to do with unseasonable heat, and she was wondering whether it might not have been better if Neres had gulled them. Or refused to carry them beyond Boannda. Late-afternoon sunlight slanted sharply through windows with mostly cracked panes. Clutching her skirts in blended irritation and unease, she tried to avoid looking at the six Aes Sedai grouped around one of the sturdy tables near the wall. Their mouths moved silently as they conferred behind a screen of saidar. Elayne had her chin high, her hands folded calmly at her waist, but a tightness about her eyes and the corners of her mouth spoiled her regal air. Nynaeve was not sure she wanted to know what the Aes Sedai were saying; one stunning blow after another had knocked all her high expectations into a daze. One more shock and she thought she might scream, and she did not know whether from fury or pure hysteria.

  Very nearly everything except their clothes was laid out on that table, from Birgitte’s silver arrow in front of stout Morvrin to the three ter’angreal before Sheriam, to the gilded coffers in front of dark-eyed Myrelle. Not one of the women looked pleased. Carlinya’s face might have been carved from snow, even motherly Anaiya wore a stern mask, and Beonin’s look of constant wide-eyed startlement had a distinctly annoyed cast. Annoyed and something more. Sometimes Beonin made as if to touch the white cloth spread neatly over the cuendillar seal, but her hand always stopped and retreated.

  Nynaeve’s eyes jerked away from the cloth. She knew exactly when things had begun to go wrong. The Warders who surrounded them in the woods had been proper, if cool—once she made Uno and the Shienarans put up their swords, anyway. And Min’s warm greetings had been all laughter and hugs. But the Aes Sedai and others in the streets, caught up in their own errands, had scurried along with hardly a glance for the party being escorted in. Salidar was quite crowded, with armed men drilling in nearly every open space. The first person aside from the Warders and Min to pay any attention to them at all had been the lean Brown sister they were taken to, in what had once been the common room of this inn. She and Elayne had told the story they had agreed on to Phaedrine Sedai, or tried to. Five minutes into it, they were left standing, with strict orders not to move a foot or speak a word, even to each other. Ten more minutes, staring at one another in confusion, while all around them Accepted and white-clad novices, Warders and servants and soldiers bustled between tables where Aes Sedai pored over papers and briskly handed out orders, and then they had been hustled before Sheriam and the others so quickly Nynaeve did not think her shoes had touched the floor twice. That was when the grilling had begun, more suitable for captured prisoners than returning heroes. Nynaeve dabbed at the perspiration on her face, but as soon as she tucked the handkerchief back up her sleeve, her hands returned to their grip on her skirts.

  She and Elayne were not alone standing on the colorful silk carpet. Siuan, in a plain dress of fine blue wool, might have been there by choice if Nynaeve had not known better, her face cool, utterly composed. She seemed lost in untroubled thought. Leane at least watched the Aes Sedai, yet she appeared equally confident. In fact, somehow more self-confident than Nynaeve remembered. The copper-skinned woman looked even more willowy, too, more supple in some fashion. Perhaps it was her scandalous dress. That pale green silk was every bit as high-necked as Siuan’s, but it clung to every curve of her, and the material only managed to be opaque by a thin hair. It was their faces that truly stunned Nynaeve, though. She had never expected to find either alive, and certainly never looking so very young—no more than a few years older than she if that. They did not so much as glance at one another. In truth, she thought she detected a distinct chill between them.

  There was another difference about them, one that Nynaeve was just beginning to recognize. If everyone including Min had been ginger about it, no one made any real secret of the fact that they had been stilled. Nynaeve could feel that lack. Perhaps it was being in a room where all the other women could channel, or perhaps it was knowing they had been stilled, but for the first time she was truly conscious of the ability in Elayne and the others. And its absence from Siuan and Leane. Something had been taken from them, cut away. It was like a wound. Perhaps the worst wound a woman could suffer.

  Curiosity overcame her. What sort of wound would it be? What had been cut away? She might as well make use of the waiting, and the irritation that larded itself through her nervousness. She reached out to saidar. . . .

  “Did anyone grant you permission to channel here, Accepted?” Sheriam asked, and Nynaeve gave a start, hurriedly releasing the True Source.

  The green-eyed Aes Sedai led the others back to their mismatched chairs, arranged on the carpet in a semicircle that had the four standing women as its focus. Some of them carried things from the table. They sat staring at Nynaeve, earlier emotion swallowed in Aes Sedai calm. None of those ageless faces acknowledged the heat by so much as a single bead of moisture. Finally Anaiya said in a gently chiding voice, “You have been very long from us, child. Whatever you have learned in the interval, you have apparently forgotten much.”

  Blushing, Nynaeve curtsied. “Forgive me, Aes Sedai. I did not mean to overstep.” She hoped they thought it was shame that heated her cheeks. She had been away from them a long time. Just one day ago, she had given the orders and people jumped when she spoke. Now she was the one expected to jump. It galled.

  “You tell an interesting . . . story.” Carlinya obviously believed little of it. The White sister turned Birgitte’s silver arrow over in long slender hands. “And you acquired some strange possessions.”

  “The Panarch Amathera gave us many gifts, Aes Sedai,” Elayne said. “She seemed to think we saved her throne.” Even delivered in a perfectly level voice, that speech was a walk on thin ice. Nynaeve was not the only one irritated by their fall from freedom. Carlinya’s smooth face tightened.

  “You come with disturbing news,” Sheriam said. “And some disturbing . . . things.” Her slightly tilted eyes wandered to the table, to the silvery a’dam, and returned firmly to Elayne and Nynaeve. Since learning what it was, what it was for, most of the Aes Sedai had treated it like a live red adder. Most had.

  “If the thing does what these children claim,” Morvrin said absently, “we need to study it. And if Elayne really believes she can make a ter’angreal. . . .” The Brown sister shook her head. Her real attention was on the flattened stone ring, all flecked and striped in red and blue and brown, that she held in one hand. The other two ter’angreal lay on her broad lap. “You say that this came from Verin Sedai? How is it this was never mentioned to us before?” That was not directed at Nynaeve or Elayne, but at Siuan.

  Siuan frowned, but not the fierce frown Nynaeve remembered. It held a touch of diffidence, as if she knew she was speaking to her superiors, and so did her voice. That was another change Nynaeve could hardly believe. “Verin never told me of it. I would very much like to ask her a few questions.”

  “And I have questions about this.” Myrelle’s olive face darkened as she unfolded a familiar paper—why had they ever kept that?— and read aloud. “ ‘What the bearer does is done at my order and by my authority. Obey, and keep silent, at my command. Siuan Sanche, Watcher of the Seals, Flame of Tar Valon, The Amyrlin Seat.’ ” She crumpled the paper and its seal in her fist. “Hardly something to be handed out to Accepted.”

  “At the time, I did not know who I could trust,” Siuan said smoothly. The six Aes Sedai stared at her. “It was within my authority then.” The six Aes Sedai did not blink. Her voice took on a thread of exasperated pleading. “You cannot call me to account for doing what I had to do when I had a perfect right to do it. When the boat’s sinking, you plug the hole with what you can find.”

  “And why did you not tell us?” Sheriam asked quietly, but with a hint of steel. As Mistress of Novices she had never raised her voice, though sometimes you wished she would. “Three Accepted—Accepted!—sent out of th
e Tower chasing thirteen full sisters of the Black Ajah. Do you use babies to plug the hole in your boat, Siuan?”

  “We are hardly babies,” Nynaeve told her heatedly. “Several of those thirteen are dead, and we thwarted their plans twice. In Tear, we—”

  Carlinya cut her off like an icy knife. “You have told us all about Tear, child. And Tanchico. And defeating Moghedien.” Her mouth twisted wryly. She had already said that Nynaeve had been a fool to come within a mile of one of the Forsaken, that she was lucky to have escaped with her life. That Carlinya did not know how right she was—they certainly had not told everything—only made Nynaeve’s stomach clench tighter. “You are children, and lucky if we decide not to spank you. Now hold your peace until you are called on to speak.” Nynaeve flushed heavily, hoping they took it for embarrassment, and held her peace.

  Sheriam had never taken her eyes from Siuan. “Well? Why have you never mentioned sending three children out to hunt lions?”

  Siuan drew a deep breath, but folded her hands and ducked her head penitently. “There seemed no point, Aes Sedai, with so much else of importance. I have held nothing back, when there was the faintest reason for telling. Every scrap I knew of the Black Ajah, I told. I’ve not known where these two were or what they were up to for some time. The important thing is that they are here now, and with those three ter’angreal. You must realize what it means to have access to Elaida’s study, to her papers, if only in bits. You’d never have known that she knows where you are until it was too late, except for that.”

  “We realize that,” Anaiya said, eyeing Morvrin, who was still frowning at the ring. “It is just that perhaps the means of it takes us a little by surprise.”