He felt Aviendha’s eyes on the back of his neck, heard a rasping sound. Sitting cross-legged against the tent wall, she was drawing her belt knife along a honing stone and watching him.
When Nalesean entered with Daerid and Talmanes, he greeted them with, “We are going to tickle some Aes Sedai under the chin, rescue a mule, and put a snip-nosed girl on the Lion Throne. Oh, yes. That’s Aviendha. Don’t look at her crosswise, or she’ll try to cut your throat and probably slit her own by mistake.” The woman laughed as if he had made the funniest joke in the world. She did not stop sharpening her knife, though.
For a moment Egwene could not understand why the pain had stopped increasing. Then she pushed herself up from the carpets of her tent and stood, sobbing so hard she quivered. She wanted very much to blow her nose. She did not know how long she had been crying that hard; she only knew she felt on fire from the top of her hips to the backs of her knees. Standing still was a problem she barely mastered. The shift she had thought of as scant protection had been discarded some time back. Tears rolled down her face, and she stood there and bawled.
Sorilea and Amys and Bair regarded her soberly, and they were not the only ones, though most of the rest were sitting about on cushions or stretched out, talking and enjoying tea served by a slender gai’shain. A woman, thank the Light. They were all women, Wise Ones and apprentices, women Egwene had told she was Aes Sedai. She was grateful that just letting them think she was did not count; she could not have survived that! It was the telling, the spoken lie, but there had been surprises. Cosain, a lean yellow-haired Spine Ridge Miagoma, had said gruffly that Egwene had no toh toward her but she would stay for the tea, and so had Estair. Aeron, on the other hand, seemed to want to cut her in two, and Surandha . . .
Trying to blink away the haze of tears, Egwene glanced toward Surandha. She was sitting with three Wise Ones, chatting and occasionally looking in Egwene’s direction. Surandha had been absolutely merciless. Not that any of them had gone easy. The belt Egwene had found in one of her chests was thin and supple, but twice as wide as her hand, and these women all had strong arms. A half-dozen or so strokes from each added up.
Egwene had never felt so ashamed in her life. Not that she was naked and red-faced and weeping like a baby. Well, the weeping was part. Not even that they had all watched her strapped, when not taking their own turns. What shamed her was that she had taken it so badly. An Aiel child would have been more stoic. Well, a child would never have had to face it, but the principle was the simple truth.
“Is it over?” Was that thick, unsteady voice really hers? How these women would laugh if they knew how carefully she had gathered her courage.
“Only you know the worth of your honor,” Amys said flatly. She held the belt dangling at her side, using the wide buckle as a handle. The murmur of conversation had ceased.
Egwene drew a long, shaking breath through her sobs. All she had to do was say it was done, and it was. She could have said enough after one blow from each woman. She could . . .
Wincing, she knelt and stretched herself out on the carpets. Her hands went beneath Bair’s skirts to grasp the woman’s bony ankles through her soft boots. This time she would hold on to her courage. This time she would not cry out. This time she would not kick, or thrash about, or . . . The belt had not hit her yet. Raising her head, she blinked her eyes clear to glare at them. “What are you waiting for?” Her voice still shook, but there was more than a note of anger too. Making her wait on top of everything else? “I have a journey to make tonight, in case you’ve forgotten. Get on with it.”
Amys tossed the belt down beside Egwene’s head. “This woman has no toh toward me.”
“This woman has no toh toward me.” That was Bair’s thin voice.
“This woman has no toh toward me,” Sorilea said forcefully. Bending, she smoothed damp hair from Egwene’s face. “I knew you were Aiel in your heart. Do not be overproud now, girl. You have met your toh. Get up before we think you are boasting.”
Then they were helping her to her feet, hugging her and wiping away her tears, holding a handkerchief for her to finally blow her nose. The other women gathered around, each announcing that this woman had no toh toward her before adding her own hugs and smiles. It was the smiles that were the biggest shock; Surandha beamed at her as brightly as ever. But of course. Toh did not exist once it was met; whatever earned it might as well never have happened. A bit of Egwene that was not wrapped up in ji’e’toh thought that maybe what she had said at the end helped, too, as well as getting back down in the first place. Perhaps she had not faced it with the indifference of an Aiel in the beginning, but at the end, Sorilea was right. She had been Aiel in her heart. She thought a part of her heart always would be Aiel.
The Wise Ones and apprentices left slowly. Apparently they should remain the rest of the night or longer, all laughing and talking with Egwene, but that was just custom, not ji’e’toh, and with Sorilea’s help she managed to convince them that she just did not have the time. At last it was only her, Sorilea and the two dream walkers. All the hugs and smiles had slowed her tears to a trickle, and if her lips still trembled no matter what she did, she could still smile. In truth, she wanted to cry again, if for a different reason. Partly for a different reason; she was on fire.
“I am going to miss all of you so much.”
“Nonsense.” Sorilea snorted for emphasis. “If you have luck, they will tell you you can never be Aes Sedai now. Then you can return to us. You will be my apprentice. In three or four years, you will have your own hold. I even know the husband for you. My greatdaughter Amaryn’s youngest greatson, Taric. He will be a clan chief one day, I think, so you must watch for a sister-wife to be his roofmistress.”
“Thank you.” Egwene laughed. It seemed she had something to fall back on if the Hall in Salidar did send her away.
“And Amys and I will meet you in Tel’aran’rhiod,” Bair said, “and tell you what we know of events here, and with Rand al’Thor. You will go your own way in the World of Dreams now, but if you wish it, I will still teach you.”
“I do wish it.” If the Hall let her anywhere near Tel’aran’rhiod. But then, they could not keep her out; whatever they did, they could not do that. “Please keep a close eye on Rand and the Aes Sedai. I don’t know what he is playing, but I’m sure it is more dangerous than he thinks.”
Amys said nothing about more teaching, of course. She had given her word on a course of action, and even meeting toh did not erase that. Instead, she said, “I know Rhuarc will regret not being here tonight. He has gone north to look at the Shaido for himself. Do not be afraid your toh toward him must go unmet. He will give you the opportunity when you meet once more.”
Egwene gaped, and covered by blowing her nose for what seemed the tenth time. She had forgotten all about Rhuarc. Of course, nothing said she had to pay her obligation to him in the same way. Maybe her heart was at least partly Aiel, but for a moment her mind sought frantically for another method. There had to be one. And she would have plenty of time to find it before seeing him again. “I will be very grateful,” she said faintly. And there was Melaine, too. And Aviendha. Light! She had thought she was done with it. Her feet kept shifting no matter how hard she tried to hold still. There had to be another way.
Bair opened her mouth, but Sorilea cut her off. “We must let her clothe herself. She has a journey to begin.” Bair’s thin neck stiffened, and Amys’ mouth turned down. Clearly neither liked what Egwene was going to try any more than before.
Maybe they meant to stay and try talking her out of it, but Sorilea began muttering only half under her breath about fools who tried to stop a woman from doing what she thought she had to do. The younger pair straightened their shawls — Bair had to be seventy or eighty, but she certainly still was younger than Sorilea — gave Egwene a farewell hug and left with murmurs of, “May you always find water and shade.”
Sorilea waited only a moment longer. “Think on Taric. I should have
asked him to the sweat tent so you could see him. Until you can, remember this. We are always more afraid than we wish to be, but we can always be braver than we expect. Hold on to your heart, and the Aes Sedai cannot harm what is really you, your heart. They are not nearly so far above us as we believed. May you always find water and shade, Egwene. And always remember your heart.”
Alone, Egwene merely stood for a time, staring at nothing and thinking. Her heart. Perhaps she did have more courage than she thought. She had done what she had to do here; she had been Aiel. In Salidar, she was going to need that. Aes Sedai methods differed from the Wise Ones’ in some respects, but they would not go easy if they knew she had called herself Aes Sedai. If they knew. She could not imagine why else they would summon her so coldly, but Aiel did not surrender before battle was joined.
With a start she came to herself. If I’m not going to surrender before fighting, she thought wryly, I might as well get on to the battle.
Chapter 34
Journey to Salidar
* * *
Egwene washed her face. Twice. Then she found her saddlebags and filled them. Her ivory comb and brush and mirror went in, and her sewing box — a small, finely gilded casket that likely had held some lady’s jewels once — plus a white cake of rose-perfumed soap and clean stockings and shifts and handkerchiefs and a host of things, until the leather sides bulged and she could hardly buckle the flaps down. Several dresses and cloaks, an Aiel shawl, remained to make a bundle, which she tied neatly with a cord. That done, she looked around for anything else she might want to take. It was all hers. Even the tent had been given to her, but that was certainly too bulky, as were the carpets and cushions. Her crystal washbasin was beautiful, and far too heavy. The same for the chests, though several had beautiful work on the strapping and lovely carving.
Only then, thinking about the chests of all things, did she realize she was trying to put off the hardest bit of getting ready. “Courage,” she said dryly. “Heart of an Aiel.”
It turned out to be quite possible to put on stockings without sitting down, so long as you did not mind hopping around. Stout shoes followed, good if she had to walk far, and a silk shift, white and soft. Then the dark green riding dress, with its narrow divided skirts. Unfortunately that fit quite snugly over the hips, enough to remind her, unnecessarily, that she would not enjoy sitting for a while.
There was no point going outside. Bair and Amys were probably in their own tents, but she had no intention of risking the chance one of them might see her do this. It would be like slapping them. If it worked, that was. If not, she had a very long ride ahead of her.
Nervously rubbing her fingers over her palms, she embraced saidar, letting it fill her. And shifted her feet. Saidar made you more aware of everything, including your own body, which she would just as soon have missed right then. Trying something new, something no one had ever tried before that she knew, should have been done slowly and carefully, but for once she wanted to be rid of the Source. She channeled briskly, flows of Spirit, woven just so.
The air shimmered in the middle of the tent along her weave, cloaking the other side in mistiness. If she was right, she had just created a place where the interior of her tent was so similar to its reflection in Tel’aran’rhiod that there was no difference at all right there. One was the other. But there was only one way to be sure.
Tossing the saddlebags over her shoulder, she took the bundle under one arm and stepped through the weave, then let go of saidar.
She was in Tel’aran’rhiod. All it took to tell her was that the lamps that had been lit were no longer burning, yet there was a sort of light. Things moved slightly between one glance and the next, the washbasin, a chest. She was in Tel’aran’rhiod in the flesh. It felt no different than when she came in a dream.
She ducked outside. A three-quarter moon shone down on tents where no fire burned and no one moved, on a Cairhien that seemed oddly distant and clouded in shadow. All that remained was the problem of actually getting to Salidar. She had thought about that. A great deal depended on whether she had as much control in the flesh as when she was part of the World of Dreams.
Fixing in her mind what she would find, she walked around the tent — and smiled. There stood Bela, the short shaggy mare she had ridden out of the Two Rivers a lifetime ago. Only a dream-Bela, but the stout mare tossed her nose and whickered at sight of her.
Egwene dropped her burdens and flung her arms around the horse’s head. “I’m glad to see you again, too,” she whispered. That dark liquid eye looking at her was Bela’s, reflection or no.
Bela wore the high-cantled saddle she had imagined, too. Comfortable for long travel normally, but not soft. Egwene eyed the thing askance, wondering how it would look padded; then she had a thought. You could change anything in Tel’aran’rhiod if you knew how, even yourself. If she had enough control to make Bela while in the flesh . . . She concentrated on herself.
With a smile she fastened the saddlebags and bundle behind the saddle and climbed up herself, settling quite comfortably. “It isn’t cheating,” she told the mare. “They would not expect me to ride all the way to Salidar like that.” Well, come to think of it, maybe they would. Even so, Aiel heart or no Aiel heart there were limits. Turning Bela, she heeled the mare’s ribs gently. “I need to be as quick as I can, so you will need to run like the wind.”
Before she had time to chuckle at the image that came to mind of plump Bela running like the wind, the mare was doing so. The landscape blurred, streaking by. For a moment Egwene clung to the pommel of the saddle, her mouth hanging open. It was as if Bela’s every trotting step carried them miles. With the first she had an instant to realize they were on the riverbank below the city, with ships floating out on the dark waters amid streaks of moonlight, and even as she tried to jerk at the reins, to stop Bela running headlong into the river, another step took them into thicketed hills.
Egwene threw back her head and laughed. This was marvelous! Except for the blurring, there was little real sensation of speed; her hair hardly had time to stream back in the wind of that rush before it was gone, only to come again a moment later. Bela’s gait felt the same plodding trot she recalled, but the sudden leap of everything around her was exhilarating, one moment a village street, moon-dark and silent, the next a country road winding through hills, the next a meadow with hay standing almost to Bela’s shoulders. Egwene only paused now and again to orient herself — no trouble at all with that marvelous map in her head, the one the woman with Siuan’s name had made — and otherwise let Bela trot. Villages and towns appeared and vanished in a blur, great cities — one she thought sure was Caemlyn, walls silvery white in the night — and once, in forested hills, the head and shoulders of a huge statue rearing out of the earth, a remnant of some land lost in history, appearing so suddenly at Bela’s side with a weathered grimace that Egwene nearly screamed, only it was gone before she could. The moon did not move at all between leaps, and hardly any as they sped along. A day or two to reach Salidar? That was what Sheriam had said. The Wise Ones were right. Everyone had believed for so long that Aes Sedai knew everything that Aes Sedai believed it, too. She was going to prove them wrong tonight, but it was not likely they would take any real notice of her proof. They knew.
After a time, when she was sure she was somewhere well into Altara, she began letting Bela make smaller jumps, reining her in more often, even riding normally for a bit, especially if there was a village nearby. Sometimes a night-shrouded inn had a sign that named the village, the Marella Inn or the Ionin Spring Inn, and moonlight added to the odd sense of light in Tel’aran’rhiod made reading them easy. Bit by bit she became absolutely certain where she was in relation to Salidar and began to take still smaller leaps, then none at all, only letting Bela trot normally through forest where tall trees had killed most of the undergrowth and drought most of the rest.
Still, she was surprised when a considerable village appeared suddenly, silent and dark in the moonl
ight. It had to be the right place, though.
At the edge of the thatch-roofed stone houses, she dismounted and took down her belongings. It was late, but people might still be about in the waking world. No need to startle them by popping out of the air. If an Aes Sedai saw that and mistook what she was, she might have no chance to face the Hall.
“You did run like the wind,” she murmured, hugging Bela a last time. “I wish I could take you with me.” A useless fancy, of course. What was made in Tel’aran’rhiod could exist only there. This was not really Bela, after all. Even so, she felt a twinge of regret as she turned her back — she would not stop imagining Bela; let her exist as long as she could — and wove her shimmering curtain of Spirit. Head high, she stepped through, ready to face whatever came with her Aiel heart.
One step she took, and came up short with a sharp, wide-eyed, “Oh!” The changes she had made in Tel’aran’rhiod existed in the real world no more than Bela did. The flames returned with a rush, and with them, it was almost as though Sorilea spoke to her. If you take what you did to meet your toh and make it so it might as well never have happened, how have you met toh? Remember your Aiel heart, girl.
Yes. She would remember. She was here to do battle whether the Aes Sedai knew it or not, ready to fight for the right to be Aes Sedai, ready to face . . . Light, what?
There were people in the streets, a few moving between houses where lighted windows made golden pools. Walking a little gingerly, Egwene approached a wiry woman with a white apron and a harried expression. “Excuse me. My name is Egwene al’Vere. I am Accepted” — the woman gave her riding dress a sharp look — “and I’ve just arrived. Can you direct me to Sheriam Sedai? I need to find her.” Very likely Sheriam was asleep already, but if she was, Egwene intended to wake her. She had been told to come as soon as possible, and Sheriam was going to know she was here.