Lord of Chaos

  Nynaeve frowned worriedly, but Elayne was pure indignation. “You can’t let them get away with trying to . . . to bully you. You are the Amyrlin. The Amyrlin tells the Hall what to do, not the other way around. You have to stand up and make them see the Amyrlin Seat.”

  Egwene’s laugh had a touch of bitterness. Had it only been last night that she was so defiant about being bullied? “That will take a little time, Elayne. You see, I finally understood why they chose me. Part is for Rand, I think. Maybe they believe he’ll be more amenable if he sees me wearing the stole. The other part is because they remember that novice. A woman — no; a girl! — who’s so used to doing as she’s told that there will be no trouble making her do as they want.” She fingered the striped stole around her neck. “Well, whatever their reasons, they chose me Amyrlin, and since they did, I mean to be Amyrlin, but I have to be careful, at first anyway. Maybe Siuan made the Hall jump every time she frowned” — she wondered whether that had ever been true — “but if I try that, I might just be the first Amyrlin ever deposed the day after she was raised.”

  Elayne looked dumbfounded, but Nynaeve nodded slowly. Perhaps being Wisdom and dealing with the Women’s Circle back home had given her more insight into how the Amyrlin Seat and the Hall of the Tower actually worked together than all of Elayne’s training to be Queen.

  “Elayne, once word spreads and rulers know about me, I can begin making the Hall realize they chose an Amyrlin, not a puppet, but until then, they really could take this stole away as fast as they gave it. I mean, if I’m not really Amyrlin, then it isn’t hard to push me aside. There might be a few mutters, but I have no doubt they could smooth those over fast enough. If anyone outside Salidar ever heard somebody named Egwene al’Vere was raised Amyrlin, it would just be one of those peculiar rumors that grow up around Aes Sedai.”

  “What are you going to do?” Elayne asked quietly. “You are not going to accept it meekly.” That made Egwene smile wholeheartedly. It was not a question, but a firm statement of fact.

  “No, I am not.” She had listened to a number of Moiraine’s lectures to Rand about the Game of Houses. Back then, she had thought the Game absurd, and worse than underhanded. Now she hoped she could remember everything she had heard. The Aiel always said, ‘Use the weapons you have.’ “It may help that they’re trying to fit me for three different leashes. I can pretend to be pulled by one or another, depending on which is closest to what I want to do. Once in a while I can just do what I want, the way I did raising you two, but not very often yet.” Squaring her shoulders, she met their gazes levelly. “I would like to say I raised you because you deserved it, but the truth is, I did it because you’re my friends, and because I hope as full sisters you can help me. I certainly don’t know who else I can trust except you two. I will send you to Ebou Dar as soon as I can, but before and after, you are who I can discuss things with. I know you will tell me the truth. That trip to Ebou Dar may not take as long as you might think. You two have made all sorts of discoveries, so I hear, but if I can puzzle a few things out, I may have one of my own.”

  “That will be wonderful,” Elayne said, but she sounded almost absentminded.

  Chapter 37

  When Battle Begins

  * * *

  The silence was very peculiar, and Egwene did not understand at all. Elayne looked at Nynaeve, then they both looked at Nynaeve’s slim silver bracelet. Nynaeve shifted her gaze to Egwene, wide-eyed, and quickly put it on the floor.

  “I have a confession,” she said in a near whisper. Her voice never rose, but words spilled out in a rush. “I captured Moghedien.” Without raising her eyes, she lifted her wrist with the bracelet. “This is an a’dam. We’re holding her prisoner, and nobody knows. Except Siuan and Leane and Birgitte. And now you.”

  “We had to,” Elayne said, leaning forward urgently. “They’d have executed her, Egwene. I know she deserves it, but her head is full of knowledge, things we hardly dream of. That’s where all of our discoveries came from. Except Nynaeve’s Healing Siuan and Leane and Logain, and my ter’angreal. They would have killed her without waiting to learn anything!”

  Questions whirled through Egwene’s head dizzyingly. They had captured one of the Forsaken? How? Elayne had made an a’dam? Egwene shivered, barely able to look at the thing. It looked nothing like the a’dam she knew far too well. Even with that, how had they managed to keep one of the Forsaken hidden among so many Aes Sedai? One of the Forsaken, prisoner. Not tried and executed. As suspicious as Rand had become, if he ever discovered that, he would never trust Elayne again.

  “Bring her here,” she managed to say hollowly. Nynaeve bounced out of her chair and ran. The noises of celebration, laughter and music and song, swelled for a moment before the door banged shut behind her. Egwene rubbed her temples. One of the. Forsaken. “That is quite a secret to keep.”

  Elayne’s cheeks colored. Why under the Light . . .? Of course.

  “Elayne, I have no intention of asking about . . . anybody I’m not supposed to know about.”

  The golden-haired woman actually jumped. “I . . . I may be able to talk. Later. Tomorrow. Maybe. Egwene, you have to promise me you won’t say anything — not to anybody! — unless I say so. No matter what you . . . what you see.”

  “If that’s what you want.” Egwene did not understand why the other woman was so agitated. Not really. Elayne had a secret that Egwene shared, only Egwene had found out by accident, and ever since they had both been pretending it was still Elayne’s secret alone. She had met with Birgitte, the hero out of legend, in Tel’aran’rhiod; maybe she still did. Wait, that was what Nynaeve had said. Birgitte knew about Moghedien. Did she mean the woman waiting in Tel’aran’rhiod for the Horn of Valere to call her back? Nynaeve knew the secret that Elayne had refused to admit to Egwene even where she was caught out? No. This was not going to turn into a round of accusations and denials.

  “Elayne, I am the Amyrlin — really the Amyrlin — and I already have plans. The Wise Ones who channel handle a good many of their weaves differently from Aes Sedai.” Elayne already knew about the Wise Ones, though come to think of it, Egwene did not know whether the Aes Sedai did; the other Aes Sedai, now. “Sometimes what they do is more complicated or more crude, but at times it’s simpler than we were taught in the Tower and works just as well.”

  “You want Aes Sedai to study with the Aiel?” Elayne’s mouth quirked in amusement. “Egwene, they’ll never agree to that, not if you live a thousand years. I suppose they’ll want to test Aiel girls for novices when they find out, though.”

  Shifting on her cushions, Egwene hesitated. Aes Sedai studying with the Wise Ones. As apprentices? It would never happen, but Romanda and Lelaine especially might benefit from a little ji’e’toh. And Sheriam, and Myrelle, and . . . She found a more comfortable way to sit and gave up her fancies. “I doubt the Wise Ones will agree to Aiel girls becoming novices.” They might have once, possibly, but certainly not now. Now it would be as much as Egwene could expect for them to speak civilly to Aes Sedai. “I thought some sort of association. Elayne, there are fewer than a thousand Aes Sedai. If you include those who remain in the Waste, I think there are more Wise Ones who can channel than there are Aes Sedai. Maybe many more. Anyway, they don’t miss a one with the spark born in her.” How many women had died on this side of the Dragonwall, because they suddenly could channel, maybe without realizing what they were doing at all, and had no one to teach them? “I want to bring in more women, Elayne. What about women who can learn, but no Aes Sedai found them before they were thought too old for novices? I say, if she wants to learn, let her try, even if she’s forty or fifty or her grandchildren have grandchildren.”

  Elayne hugged herself laughing. “Oh, Egwene, the Accepted will just love teaching those novice classes.”

  “They’ll have to learn how,” Egwene said firmly. She did not see the problem. Aes Sedai had always said you could be too old for a novice, but if you wanted to learn . . . They had
changed their minds partway already; in the crowd she had seen faces older than Nynaeve’s above novice white. “The Tower has always been severe about excluding people, Elayne. If you aren’t strong enough, you’re put out. Refuse to take a test, and you’re sent away. Fail a test, and out. They should be allowed to stay if they want.”

  “But the tests are to make sure you’re strong enough,” Elayne protested. “Not just in the One Power; in yourself. Surely you don’t want Aes Sedai who will break the first time they come under pressure? Or Aes Sedai who can barely channel?”

  Egwene sniffed. Sorilea would have been put out of the Tower without ever being tested for Accepted. “Maybe they can’t be Aes Sedai, but that doesn’t mean they are useless. After all, they’re already trusted to use the Power with at least some discretion, or they wouldn’t be sent off into the world. My dream is for every woman who can channel to be connected to the Tower somehow. Every last one.”

  “The Windfinders?” Elayne winced when Egwene nodded.

  “You didn’t betray them, Elayne. I can’t believe they kept their secret as long as they did.”

  Elayne sighed heavily. “Well, what’s done is done. ‘You can’t put honey back in the comb.’ But if your Aiel get special protection, the Sea Folk should too. Let the Windfinders teach their girls. No Sea Folk women bundled off by Aes Sedai whatever they will.”

  “Done.” Egwene spat on her palm and held out her hand, and after a moment Elayne spat on hers and grinned as they clasped to seal the bargain.

  Slowly that grin faded. “Is this about Rand and his amnesty, Egwene?”

  “In part. Elayne, how could the man be so . . .?” There was no way to finish that, and no answer anyway. The other woman nodded a touch sadly, in understanding or agreement or both.

  The door opened, and a sturdy woman in dark wool appeared, a silver tray in her hands with three silver cups and a long-necked silver wine pitcher. Her face was worn, a farmwife’s face, but her dark eyes glittered as she studied Egwene and Elayne with a shifting gaze. Egwene had just a moment to feel surprise that the woman wore a close-fitting silver necklace despite her drab dress, and then Nynaeve entered behind her, shutting the door. She must have run like the wind, because she had found time to exchange the Accepted’s dress for a dark blue silk embroidered with golden scrolls around the neckline and hem. It was not nearly so low-cut as what Berelain wore, but still considerably lower than Egwene expected to see on Nynaeve.

  “This is ‘Marigan,’” Nynaeve said, drawing her braid over her shoulder in a practiced motion. Her Great Serpent ring shone golden on her right hand.

  Egwene started to ask why she emphasized the name so, then abruptly realized that “Marigan’s” necklace was a match for the bracelet on Nynaeve’s wrist. She could not help staring. The woman certainly did not look anything like she expected one of the Forsaken to look. She said as much, and Nynaeve laughed.

  “Watch, Egwene.”

  She did more than watch; she nearly leaped out of her chair, and she did embrace saidar. As soon as Nynaeve spoke, the glow had surrounded “Marigan.” Only for an instant, but before it faded, the woman in the plain wool dress changed completely. Actually they were rather small changes, but they added up to a different woman, handsome rather than beautiful but not at all worn, a woman who was proud, even regal. Only the eyes remained the same, glittering, but no matter how they shifted, Egwene could believe this woman was Moghedien.

  “How?” was all she said. She listened carefully as Nynaeve and Elayne explained about weaving disguises and inverting weaves, but she watched Moghedien. She was proud, and full of herself, full of being herself again.

  “Put her back,” Egwene said when the explanations were done. Again the glow of saidar lasted only moments, and once it faded, there were no weaves that she could see. Moghedien was plain and worn again, a country woman who had led a hard life and looked older, than her years. Those black eyes glittered at Egwene, filled with hate, and maybe self-loathing as well.

  Realizing she still held saidar, Egwene felt foolish for a moment. Neither Nynaeve nor Elayne had embraced the Source. But then, Nynaeve was wearing that bracelet. Egwene stood, never taking her gaze from Moghedien, and held out her hand. If anything, Nynaeve seemed eager to have the thing off her wrist, which Egwene could understand.

  Handing the bracelet over, Nynaeve said, “Put the tray on the table, Marigan. And be on your best behavior. Egwene has been living with the Aiel.”

  Egwene turned the silver band over in her hands and tried not to shiver. Cunning work, segmented so cleverly it almost appeared solid. She had been on the other end of an a’dam once. A Seanchan device, with a silver leash connecting necklace and bracelet, but still the same. Her stomach roiled as it had not facing the Hall or the crowd; it stewed as though trying to make up for being still before. Deliberately she closed the length of silver around her wrist. She had some idea of what to expect, but she still almost jumped. The other woman’s emotions were laid out before her, her physical state, all gathered in one fenced-off portion of Egwene’s mind. Mainly there was pulsing fear, but the self-loathing she had thought she saw swelled nearly as strongly. Moghedien did not like her present appearance. Maybe she especially did not like it after a short return to her own.

  Egwene thought of who it was she was looking at; one of the Forsaken, a woman whose name had been used to frighten children for centuries, a woman whose crimes deserved death a hundred times over. She thought of the knowledge in that head. She made herself smile. It was not a pretty smile; she did not mean it to be, but she did not think she could have made it one if she tried. “They’re right. I have been living with the Aiel. So if you expect me to be as gentle as Nynaeve and Elayne, put it out of your mind. Set just one foot wrong with me, and I’ll make you beg for death. Only, I won’t kill you. I will just find some way to make that face permanent. On the other hand, if you do more than put a foot wrong . . . ” She widened her smile, until it was just showing teeth.

  The fear leaped so high it drowned everything else and bulged against the fence. Standing in front of the table, Moghedien clutched her skirts white-knuckle tight and trembled visibly. Nynaeve and Elayne were looking at Egwene as if they had never seen her before. Light, did they expect her to be polite to one of the Forsaken? Sorilea would stake the woman out in the sun to bring her to heel, if she did not simply slit her throat out of hand.

  Egwene moved closer to Moghedien. The other woman was taller, but she cowered back against the table, knocking over the winecups on their tray and rocking the pitcher. Egwene made her voice cold; it did not have far to go. “The day I detect one lie out of you is the day I execute you myself. Now. I have considered traveling from one place to another by boring a hole, so to speak, from here to there. A hole through the Pattern, so there’s no distance between one end and the other. How well will that work?”

  “Not at all, for you or any woman,” Moghedien said, breathless and quick. The fear that boiled inside was plain on her face now. “That is how men Travel.” The capital was plain; she was speaking of one of the lost Talents. “If you try, you will be sucked into . . . I don’t know what it is. The space between the threads of the Pattern, maybe. I don’t think you would live very long. I know you would never come back.”

  “Traveling,” Nynaeve muttered disgustedly. “We never thought of Traveling!”

  “No, we didn’t.” Elayne sounded no more pleased with herself. “I wonder what else we never thought of.”

  Egwene ignored them. “Then how?” she asked softly. A quiet voice was always better than shouting.

  Moghedien flinched as though she had shouted anyway. “You make the two places in the Pattern identical. I can show you how. It takes a little effort, because of the . . . the necklace, but I can — ”

  “Like this?” Egwene said, embracing saidar, and wove flows of Spirit. This time she was not trying to touch the World of Dreams, but she expected something much the same if it worked. What she g
ot was quite different.

  The thin curtain she wove did not produce the shimmering effect, and it lasted only a moment before snapping together in a vertical line that was suddenly a slash of silvery blue light. The light itself widened quickly — or perhaps turned; it looked that way to her — into . . . something. There in the middle of the floor was a . . . a doorway, not at all the misty view she had had of Tel’aran’rhiod from her tent, a doorway opening onto a sun-blasted land that made the worst of the drought here look lush. Stone spires and sharp cliffs loomed over a dusty yellow-clay plain cut by fissures and dotted with a few scrub bushes that had a thorny look even at a distance.

  Egwene very nearly stared. That was the Aiel Waste halfway between Cold Rocks Hold and the valley of Rhuidean, a spot where it was very unlikely there would be anyone to see — or be hurt; Rand’s precautions with his special room in the Sun Palace had suggested she take some too — but she had only hoped to reach it, and she had been sure it would be seen through a shimmering curtain.

  “Light!” Elayne breathed. “Do you know what you’ve done, Egwene? Do you? I think I can do it. If you repeat the weave again, I know I’ll remember.”

  “Remember what?” Nynaeve practically wailed. “How did she do it? Oh, curse this cursed block! Elayne, kick my ankle. Please?”

  Moghedien’s face had gone very still; uncertainty rolled through the bracelet almost as heavily as fear. Reading emotions was hardly like reading words on a page, but those two were clear. “Who . . .?” Moghedien licked her lips. “Who taught you that?”

  Egwene smiled as she had seen Aes Sedai smile; at least, she hoped it conveyed mystery. “Never be too sure I don’t already know the answer,” she said coolly. “Remember. Lie to me once.” Suddenly it occurred to her how this must sound to Nynaeve and Elayne. They had captured the woman, held her captive in the most impossible circumstances, pried all sorts of information out of her. Turning to them, she gave a small, rueful laugh. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to just take over.”