The chances the determined woman was Black Ajah were as great as with the other, but then again, either could be from Salidar. Or both, though Egwene had never seen them together, or with anyone from Salidar. For that matter, either could be from the Tower itself. Divisions enough there for one side to be spying on another, and sooner or later the Tower Aes Sedai would learn of Tel’aran’rhiod if they had not already. The two strangers presented nothing but questions without answers. The only thing Egwene could think to do was avoid them.
Of course, she tried to avoid everyone in the World of Dreams of late. She had taken to looking over her shoulder, to thinking somebody was sneaking up behind her, to seeing things. She thought she had caught glimpses of Rand, of Perrin, even Lan, half-seen out of the corner of her eye. Imagination, of course, or maybe the chance touch of their dreams, but on top of everything else, it had her jumpy as a cat in a dogyard.
She frowned — or would have, had she a face. One of those lights looked . . . Not familiar; she did not know it. But it seemed to . . . attract her. Wherever her gaze shifted, it came back to that same sparkling pinpoint.
Perhaps she could try finding Salidar again. That meant waiting for Nynaeve and Elayne to leave Tel’aran’rhiod — she knew their dreams by sight, of course; in her sleep, she thought with a silent giggle — and so far, a dozen attempts to locate Salidar that way had produced as much result as trying to get through the ward around Rand’s dreams. Distance and location here really bore no relation to anything in the waking world; Amys said there was no distance or location here. On the other hand, it was as good as any —
Startlingly, the pinpoint her gaze kept returning to began to drift toward her, swelling until what had been a distant star quickly became a full white moon. A spark of fear lit inside her. Touching a dream, peeking inside, was easy — a finger to the surface of water, a touch so light that the water rose to the finger but the surface was never broken — yet it was all supposed to be at her volition. A dreamwalker sought the dream; the dream did not seek her. She willed it to go away, willed the starry scape to move. Only that one light moved, expanding to fill her vision with white light.
Frantically she tried to pull away. White light. Nothing but white light, absorbing her . . .
She blinked, staring in amazement. Around her stretched a forest of great white columns. Most of it seemed fuzzy, indistinct, especially what was far away, but one thing sharp and real was Gawyn, trotting across the white-tiled floor toward her in a plain green coat, anxiety and relief mingled on his face. It was nearly Gawyn’s face, anyway. Gawyn might not be as gorgeous as his half-brother Galad, but he was still a handsome man, yet this face seemed . . . ordinary. She tried to move and could not, not to any extent. Her back was to one of the columns, and chains held her wrists above her head.
This must be Gawyn’s dream. Out of all of those countless points of light, she had stopped near his. And somehow been drawn in. How was a question for later. Now she wanted to know why he would dream of holding her captive. Firmly she fixed the truth in her mind. This was a dream, someone else’s dream. She was herself, not whatever it was he wanted her to be. She did not accept the reality of anything here. Nothing here touched the true her. Those truths repeated like a chant in her head. It made thinking of anything else difficult, but so long as she held them hard she could risk staying. At least, long enough to find out what peculiar oddities the man had rolling around in his head. Holding her captive!
Abruptly a huge gout of flame bloomed on the floor tiles, and acrid yellow smoke billowed. Rand stepped out of that inferno garbed in gold-embroidered red like a king, facing Gawyn, and the fire and smoke vanished. Only it hardly seemed Rand at all. The real Rand was of a height and size with Gawyn, but this image overtopped Gawyn by a head. The face was just vaguely Rand’s, coarser and harder than it should be, the cold face of a murderer. This man wore a sneer. “You will not have her,” he snarled.
“You will not keep her,” Gawyn replied calmly, and suddenly both men held swords.
Egwene gaped. Not Gawyn holding her prisoner. He dreamed of rescuing her! From Rand! Time to leave this madness. She concentrated on being outside, back in the darkness, looking at this from the outside. Nothing happened.
Swords met with a clash, and the two men danced a deadly dance. Deadly if it had not been a dream, anyway. It was all nonsense. Dreaming a swordfight, of all things. And it was not a nightmare; everything looked normal, if fuzzy, not washed in color. “A man’s dreams are a maze even he cannot know,” Bair had told her once.
Egwene closed her eyes, focused her entire mind. Outside. She was outside, looking in. No room for anything else in her head. Outside, looking in. Outside, looking in. Outside!
She opened her eyes once more. The fight was reaching its climax. Gawyn’s blade drove into Rand’s chest, and as Rand sagged, the steel pulled free, swept in a shining arc. Rand’s head spun across the floor almost to her feet; it came to rest staring up at her. A scream bubbled in her throat before she could quell it. A dream. Just a dream. But those dead staring eyes seemed very real.
Then Gawyn was in front of her, sword back in its scabbard. Rand’s head and body were gone. Gawyn reached for the manacles holding her, and they were gone, too.
“I knew you would come,” she breathed, and gave a start. She was herself! She could not give in to this, not for a moment, or she would be well and truly trapped.
Smiling, Gawyn scooped her up into his arms. “I am glad you knew it,” he said. “I would have come sooner if I could. I should never have left you in danger so long. Can you forgive me?”
“I can forgive you anything.” There were two Egwenes now, one snuggling contentedly in Gawyn’s arms as he carried her down a palace corridor lined with colorful tapestries and great mirrors in ornately gilded frames, the other riding in the back of the first’s head.
This was becoming serious. Concentrate as hard as she would on being outside, she stayed there, watching through the eyes of a second her. Hurriedly she stifled curiosity as to what Gawyn dreamed about her. That sort of interest was dangerous. She accepted none of this! But none of it changed.
The corridor appeared quite real where she looked, though what was seen from the corner of her eye seemed hazy. Her own image glimpsed in a mirror caught her attention; she would have twisted to stare at it as they passed, but she was only a passenger in the head of the woman of Gawyn’s dreams. The woman reflected for that instant had been her — there was no feature she could have pointed to and said it differed in the slightest from her real face — but somehow the whole was . . . Beautiful was the only word. Stunningly so. Was that how Gawyn saw her?
No! No curiosity! Outside!
Between one stride and the next the corridor became a hillside carpeted in wildflowers, their scent rich on a soft breeze. The real Egwene gave a mental start. Had she done that? The barrier between her and the other thinned. She focused furiously. It was not real; she refused to accept it; she was herself. Outside. She wanted to be outside, looking in.
Gently Gawyn laid her down on a cloak already spread there on the hillside, in the manner of things in dreams. Kneeling beside her, he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, let his fingers trail back to the corner of her mouth. Focusing on anything was very hard. She might have no control over the body she rode in, but she felt what it did, and his fingers seemed to make sparks jump.
“My heart is yours,” he intoned softly, “my soul, my everything.” His coat was scarlet now, elaborately worked in gold leaves and silver lions. He made grand gestures, touching head or heart. “When I think of you, there is no room for any other thought. Your perfume fills my brain and sets my blood afire. My heart pounds till I could not hear the world crack apart. You are my sun and my moon and my stars, my heaven and earth, more precious to me than, life or breath or — ” Abruptly he stopped, grimacing. “You sound a fool,” he muttered to himself.
Egwene would have disagreed had she had any control
over her vocal cords. It was very nice hearing those things, even if they were a bit over the top. Just a bit.
When he grimaced, she felt a loosening, but
Flick.
Gently Gawyn laid her down on a cloak already spread there on the hillside, in the manner of things in dreams. Kneeling beside her, he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, let his fingers trail back to the corner of her mouth. She might have no control over the body she rode in, but she could feel what it felt, and his fingers seemed to make sparks jump.
No! She could not let herself accept any part of his dream!
His face was a map of pain, his coat stark gray. His hands rested on his knees in fists. “I have no right to speak to you as I might wish,” he said stiffly. “My brother loves you. I know Galad is in agony with fear for you. He is a Whitecloak at least half because he thinks the Aes Sedai have misused you. I know he — ” Gawyn’s eyes squeezed shut. “Oh, Light, help me!” he moaned.
Flick.
Gently Gawyn laid her down on a cloak already spread there on the hillside, in the manner of things in dreams. Kneeling beside her, he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, let his fingers trail back to the corner of her mouth.
No! She was losing the little control she had! She had to get out! What are you afraid of? She was not sure whether that was her thought or the other Egwene’s. The barrier between them was gauze now. This is Gawyn. Gawyn.
“I love you,” he said hesitantly. In the green coat again, still less handsome than he really was, he plucked at one of his buttons before letting his hand drop. He looked at her as though afraid of what he might see on her face, hiding it, but not well. “I have never said that to another woman, never wanted to say it. You have no idea how hard it is to say to you. Not that I don’t want to,” he added hastily, flinging a hand toward her, “but to say it, with no encouragement, is like tossing aside my sword and baring my chest for a blade. Not that I think you would — Light! I can’t say this properly. Is there any chance that you . . . might come . . . in time . . . to feel some . . . regard . . . for me? Something . . . more than friendship?”
“You sweet idiot,” she laughed softly. “I love you” I love you, echoed in the part of her that was really her. She felt the barrier vanishing, had a moment to realize she did not care, and then there was only one Egwene again, an Egwene who happily twined her arms around Gawyn’s neck.
Sitting on the stool in the dim moonlight, Nynaeve stuffed a yawn back into her mouth with her knuckles and blinked eyes that felt full of sand. This was going to work; oh, yes, it was. She would fall asleep saying hello to Theodrin, if not before! Her chin sank, and she jerked herself to her feet. The stool had begun feeling like stone — her bottom had gone numb — but that discomfort was apparently not enough anymore. Perhaps a walk outside. Arms outstretched, she felt her way to the door.
Abruptly a distant scream shattered the night, and as it did, the stool struck her hard in the back, knocking her against the rough door with a startled scream of her own. Stunned, she stared at the stool, lying on its side on the floor now, one leg shoved awry.
“What is it?” Elayne cried, coming bolt upright in her bed.
More screams and shouts sounded through Salidar, some from inside their own house, and a vague rumble and clatter that seemed to come from everywhere. Nynaeve’s empty bed rattled, then slid a foot across the floor. Elayne’s heaved, nearly tossing her out.
“A bubble of evil.” Nynaeve was startled at how cool she sounded. There was no point leaping about and flapping her arms, but inside she was doing just that. “We have to wake anybody who’s still asleep.” She did not know how anyone could sleep through this racket, but those who did could die before they knew it.
Not waiting for a reply, she hurried out and pushed open the next door down the hall — and ducked as a white washbasin hurtled through the space where her head had been to smash against the wall behind her. Four women shared this room, in two beds a little larger than her own. Now one bed lay with its legs in the air, two women trying to crawl from beneath it. On the other, Emara and Ronelle, another Accepted, thrashed and made choking sounds, wrapped tight in their own bedsheet.
Nynaeve grabbed the first woman out from under the overturned bed, a gaping skinny serving woman named Mulinda, and shoved her toward the door. “Go! Wake anybody in the house still sleeping, and help anybody you can! Go!” Mulinda went, stumbling, and Nynaeve hauled her trembling sleeping companion to her feet. “Help me, Satina. Help me with Emara and Ronelle.”
Trembling she might have been, but the plump woman nodded and set to with a will. It was not just a matter of unwinding the sheet, of course. The thing seemed alive, like a vine that would tighten until it crushed what it held. Nynaeve and Satina together barely peeled it away from the two women’s throats; then the pitcher leaped from the washstand to crash against the ceiling, Satina jumped and lost her hold, and the sheet snapped out of Nynaeve’s hands, right back where it had been. The two women’s struggles were weakening; one made a rattling noise in her throat, the other no sound at all. Even by the little moonlight that came through the window their faces seemed swollen and dark.
Seizing the sheet again with both hands, Nynaeve opened herself to saidar, and found nothing. I’m surrendering, burn you! I am surrendering! I need the Power! Nothing. The bed shimmied against her knees, and Satina squeaked. “Don’t just stand there!” Nynaeve snapped. “Help me!”
Abruptly the sheet jerked out of her grip once more, but instead of winding around Emara and Ronelle again, it pulled the other way so hard they tumbled over one another, nearly blurring as it unwound. Noticing Elayne in the doorway, Nynaeve closed her mouth with a click of teeth. The sheet hung from the ceiling. The Power. Of course.
“Everybody’s awake,” Elayne said, handing her a robe. She already had one over her own shift. “A few bruises and scrapes, one or two nasty cuts to be seen to when there’s time, and I think everybody is going to have bad dreams for a few days, but that’s the extent of it. Here.” Screams and shouts still rang through the night. Satina jumped again as Elayne let the sheet fall, but it just lay there on the floor. The overturned bed shifted, though, creaking. Elayne bent over the groaning women on the bed. “I think they’re dizzy, mainly. Satina, help me get them on their feet.”
Nynaeve glowered at the robe in her hands. Well they might be dizzy, spun about like tops. Light, but she was useless. Rushing in like a fool to take charge. Without the Power, she was just useless.
“Nynaeve, could you give me a hand?” Elayne held a swaying Emara upright, while Satina was more than half-carrying Ronelle to the door. “I think Emara’s going to sick up, and it better be outside. I think the chamber pots are broken.” The smell said she was right. Pottery grated against the floor, trying to slither out from under the overturned bed.
Nynaeve thrust her arms angrily into her robe. She could sense the Source now, a warm glow just out of sight, but she deliberately ignored it. She had done without the Power for years. She could do without it now. Lifting Emara’s free arm over her shoulder, she helped guide the moaning woman toward the street. They almost made it.
When they got outside after wiping Emara’s mouth, everyone else was already huddled together in front of the house in robes or whatever they had slept in. The still full moon, hanging in a clear sky, gave a bright light. People were spilling out of the other houses in a bedlam of bellows and shrieks. One board in a fence rattled, then another. A bucket suddenly went bouncing down the street. A cart loaded with firewood abruptly rolled forward, shafts plowing shallow furrows in the hard ground. Smoke began to rise a house down the way, and voices began shouting for water.
The dark shape of someone lying in the street drew Nynaeve. One of the nightwatchmen, by the flickering lantern near his outstretched hand. She could see his staring eyes glittering in the moonlight, the blood covering his face, the dent in the side of his head where something had struck him like an axe. She felt his thr
oat for a pulse anyway. She wanted to howl with fury. People should die after a long life, in their own beds, surrounded by family and friends. Anything else was waste. Pure miserable waste!
“So you’ve found saidar tonight, Nynaeve. Good.”
Nynaeve jumped, and stared up at Anaiya. She did hold saidar, she realized. And useless even with it. Rising, she wearily dusted her knees and tried not to look at the dead man. If she had been quicker, could it have made a difference?
The glow of the Power surrounded Anaiya, but not only her; the single light enveloped as well two more fully clothed Aes Sedai, an Accepted in a robe, and three novices, two in their shifts. One of those in her shift was Nicola. Nynaeve could see other glowing groups, dozens and dozens of them, moving in the street. Some seemed all Aes Sedai, but most not.
“Open yourself to linking,” Anaiya went on. “And you, Elayne, and . . . What is wrong with Emara and Ronelle?” On learning they were just dizzy, she muttered something under her breath, then told them to find a circle and link with it as soon as their heads were steady. Hurriedly she chose out four more Accepted from the cluster around Elayne. “Sammael — if it is him instead of one of the others — will learn we are far from helpless. Quickly now. Embrace the Source, but hold yourself at the point of embracing. You are open and yielding.”
“This isn’t one of the Forsaken,” Nynaeve began, but the motherly Aes Sedai cut her off firmly.
“Don’t argue, child, just open yourself. We have expected an attack, if not exactly like this, and planned for it. Quickly, child. There is no time to squander on idle chatter.”
Snapping her mouth shut, Nynaeve tried to put herself on that brink where you embraced saidar, on the moment of surrender. It was not easy. Twice she felt the Power flow not just into her, but through her into Anaiya, and twice it snapped back. Anaiya’s mouth tightened; she stared at Nynaeve as though thinking she did it on purpose. The third time was like being seized by the scruff of the neck. Saidar swept through Nynaeve to Anaiya, and when she attempted to pull back — it was her, she realized, not the flow itself — her flow was held, melting into a larger.