Crossroads of Twilight (76 page)

The lentil stew was a congealed mass in the bowl, but a little channeling fixed that, and with the first spoonful, Egwene discovered she did have some appetite. She ate every scrap, and the piece of blue-veined white cheese, and the somewhat shriveled olives, and the two crusty brown rolls, though she had to pick weevils out of both. Since she did not want to fall asleep too quickly, she drank only one cup of the spiced wine, which needed reheating, too, and had a slight bitterness for it, but Chesa beamed with approval as if she had cleaned the tray. Peering at the dishes, empty except for the olive pits and a few crumbs, she realized she had, at that.

Once she was in her narrow cot, two soft woolen blankets and a goose-down comforter pulled to her chin, Chesa took up the dinner tray, but she paused at the tent’s entrance. “Do you want me to come back, Mother? If you get one of your heads . . . Well, that woman’s found company, or she’d be here by now.” There was open scorn in “that woman.” “I could brew another pot of tea. I got it from a peddler who said it was sovereign for aching heads. And joints, and belly upsets, too.”

“Do you really think she’s a lightskirt, Chesa?” Egwene murmured. Already warm under her covers, she felt drowsy. She wanted sleep, but not just yet. Heads
and
joints
and
bellies? Nynaeve would laugh herself sick to hear that. Perhaps it had been all those chattering Sitters who chased her headache away after all. “Halima does flirt, I suppose, but I don’t think it’s ever gone beyond flirting.”

For a moment Chesa was silent, pursing her lips. “She makes me . . . uneasy, Mother,” she said finally. “There’s something just not right about that Halima. I feel it every time she’s around. It’s like feeling somebody sneaking up behind me, or realizing there’s a man watching me bathe, or . . .” She laughed, but it was an uncomfortable sound. “I don’t know how to describe it. Just, not right.”

Egwene sighed and snuggled deeper under the covers. “Good night, Chesa.” Channeling briefly, she extinguished the lamp, plunging the tent into pitch blackness. “You go sleep in your own bed tonight.” Halima might be upset to come and find someone else on her cot. Had the woman
really
broken a man’s arm? The man
must
have provoked her somehow.

She wanted dreams tonight, untroubled dreams—at least, dreams she could recall; few of her dreams were what anyone would call untroubled—but she had another sort of dream to enter first, and for that, it had been some time since she needed to be asleep. Nor did she need one of the
ter’angreal
the Hall guarded so closely. Slipping into a light trance was no harder than deciding to do so, especially as tired as she was, and . . .

. . . bodiless, she floated in an endless blackness, surrounded by an endless sea of lights, an immense swirl of tiny pinpoints glittering more sharply than stars on the clearest night, more numerous than the stars. Those were the dreams of all the people in the world, of people in all the worlds that were or could be, worlds so strange she could not begin to comprehend them, all visible here in the tiny gap between
Tel’aran’rhiod
and waking, the infinite space between reality and dreams. Some of those dreams, she recognized at a glance. They all looked the same, yet she knew them as surely as she did the faces of her sisters. Some, she avoided. Rand’s dreams were always shielded, and she feared he might know when she tried to peek in. The shield would keep her from seeing anything, anyway. A pity she could not tell where someone was from their dreams; two points of light could be side-by-side here, and the dreamers a thousand miles apart. Gawyn’s dreams tugged at her, and she fled. His dreams held their own dangers, not least because part of her wanted very much to sink into them. Nynaeve’s dreams gave her pause, and the desire to put the fear of the Light into the fool woman, but Nynaeve had managed to ignore her so far, and Egwene would not sink to pulling her into
Tel’aran’rhiod
against her will. That was the sort of thing the Forsaken did. It was a temptation, though.

Moving without moving, she searched for one particular dreamer. One of two, at least; either would do. The lights seemed to spin around her, to sweep past so fast that they blurred into streaks while she floated motionless in that starry sea. She hoped that at least one of those she hunted was asleep already. The Light knew, it was late enough for anyone. Vaguely aware of her body in the waking world, she felt herself yawn and curl her legs up beneath her covers.

Then she saw the point of light she sought, and it swelled in her sight as it rushed toward her, from a star in the sky to a full moon to a shimmering wall that filled her vision, pulsing like a breathing thing. She did not touch it, of course; that could lead to all sorts of complications even with this dreamer. Besides, it would be embarrassing to slide into someone’s dream accidentally. Reaching out with her will across the hair-fine space that remained between her and the dream, she spoke cautiously, so she would not be heard in a shout. She had no body, no mouth, but she spoke.

E
LAYNE, IT’S
E
GWENE
. M
EET ME AT THE USUAL PLACE
. She did not think anyone could eavesdrop, not without her knowing, yet there was no point in taking unneeded chances.

The pinprick winked out. Elayne had wakened. But she would remember, and know the voice had not been just part of a dream.

Egwene moved . . . sideways. Or perhaps it was more like completing a step that she had paused halfway through. It felt like both. She moved, and . . .

. . . she was standing in a small room, empty save for a scarred wooden table and three straight-back chairs. The two windows showed deep night outside, yet there was light of an odd sort, different from moonlight or lamplight or sunlight. It did not seem to come from anywhere; it just was. But it was more than enough to see that sad, sorry little room clearly. The dusty wall-panels were riddled by beetles, and broken panes in the windows had allowed snow to drift in atop a litter of twigs and dead leaves. At least, there was snow on the floor sometimes, and twigs and leaves sometimes. The table and chairs remained where they stood, but whenever she glanced away, the snow might be gone when she looked back, the twigs and brown leaves in different places as if scattered by a wind. They even shifted while she was looking, simply here then there. That no longer seemed any odder to her than the feel of unseen eyes watching. Neither was truly real, just the way things were in
Tel’aran’rhiod.
A reflection of reality and a dream, all jumbled together.

Everywhere in the World of Dreams felt empty, but this room had the hollow emptiness that only came from a place that was truly abandoned in the waking world. Not so many months past, this little room had been the Amyrlin’s study, the inn that held it was called the Little Tower, and the village of Salidar, reclaimed from the encroaching forest had bustled, the heart of resistance to Elaida. Now, if she walked outside, she would see saplings thrusting through the snow in the middle of those streets that had been so painfully cleared. Sisters did Travel to Salidar still, to visit the dovecotes, all jealous that a pigeon sent by one of their eyes-and-ears might fall into another’s hands, but only in the waking world. Going to the dovecotes here would be as useless as wishing for the pigeons to find you by a miracle. Tame animals seemed to have no reflections in the World of Dreams, and nothing done here could touch the waking world. Sisters with access to the dream
ter’angreal
had other places to visit than a deserted village in Altara, and certainly no one else had reason to come here in the dream, either. This was one of the places in the world Egwene could be sure no one would catch her by surprise. Too many others turned out to have eavesdroppers. Or bone-deep sadness. She hated seeing what had become of the Two Rivers since she left.

Waiting for Elayne to appear, she tried to quell her impatience. Elayne was not a dreamwalker; she needed to use a
ter’angreal.
And she would want to tell Aviendha where she was going, no doubt. Still, as the minutes stretched out, Egwene found herself pacing the rough floorboards irritably. Time flowed differently here. An hour in
Tel’aran’rhiod
could be minutes in the waking world, or the other way around. Elayne could be moving like the wind. Egwene checked her clothing, a gray riding dress with elaborate green embroidery on the bodice and in broad bands on the divided skirts—had she been thinking of the Green Ajah?—a simple silver net to catch her hair. Sure enough, the Amyrlin’s long narrow stole hung around her neck. She made the stole vanish, then after a moment, allowed it to return. It was a matter of letting it come back, not consciously thinking of it. The stole was part of how she thought of herself, now, and it was as Amyrlin that she needed to speak to Elayne.

The woman who finally appeared in the room, though, just flashing into existence, was not Elayne but Aviendha, surprisingly garbed in silver-embroidered blue silk, with pale lace at her wrists and throat. The heavy bracelet of carved ivory she wore seemed as much out of place with that dress as the dream
ter’angreal
that dangled from a leather cord around her neck, a strangely twisted stone ring flecked with color.

“Where is Elayne?” Egwene asked anxiously. “Is she all right?”

The Aiel woman gave a startled glance at herself, and abruptly she was in a dark bulky skirt and white blouse, with a dark shawl draped over her shoulders and a dark kerchief folded around her temples to hold the reddish hair that now hung to her waist, longer than in life, Egwene suspected. Everything was mutable in the World of Dreams. A silver necklace appeared around her neck, complicated strands of intricately worked discs that the Kandori called snowflakes, a gift from Egwene herself what seemed a very long time ago. “She could not make this work,” Aviendha said, the ivory bracelet sliding on her wrist as she touched the twisted ring that still hung from its strip of leather, above the necklace now. “It is the babes.” Suddenly, she grinned. Her emerald eyes seemed almost to shine. “She has a wonderful temper, sometimes. She threw the ring down and jumped up and down on it.”

Egwene sniffed. Babes? So there was to be more than one. Oddly, Aviendha took it in stride that Elayne was with child, though Egwene was convinced the woman loved Rand, too. Aiel ways were peculiar, to say the least. Egwene would not have thought it of Elayne, though! And Rand! No one had actually said he was the father, and she could hardly ask something like that, but she could count, and she
very
much doubted that Elayne
would lie with another man. She realized that she was wearing stout woolens, dark and heavy, and a shawl much thicker than Aviendha’s. Good Two Rivers garments. The sort of clothes a woman would wear to sit in the Women’s Circle. Say, when some fool woman had let herself get with child and showed no sign of marrying. A deep, relaxing breath, and she was back in her green-embroidered riding dress. The rest of the world was not the same as the Two Rivers. Light, she had come far enough to know that much. She did not have to like it, but she had to live with it.

“As long as she and the . . . babes . . . are well.” Light, how many? More than one could present difficulties. No; she was not going to ask. Elayne surely had the best midwife in Caemlyn. Best just to change the subject quickly. “Have you heard from Rand? Or Nynaeve? I have some words for her, running off with him that way.”

“We have heard from neither,” Aviendha replied, adjusting her shawl as carefully as any Aes Sedai avoiding her Amyrlin’s eyes. Was her tone careful, too?

Egwene clicked her tongue, vexed with herself. She really was beginning to see conspiracies everywhere and suspicions in everything. Rand had gone into hiding, and that was that. Nynaeve was Aes Sedai, free to do as she wished. Even when the Amyrlin commanded, Aes Sedai often found a way to do exactly as they wished anyway. But the Amyrlin was still going to set Nynaeve al’Meara down hard, once she laid hands on her. As for Rand . . . “I’m afraid trouble is heading your way,” she said.

A fine silver teapot appeared on the table, on a hammered silver tray with two delicate green porcelain cups. A thread of steam rose from the spout. She could have made the tea appear already in the cups, yet pouring seemed part of offering someone tea, even ephemeral tea with no more reality than a dream. You could die of thirst trying to drink what you found in
Tel’aran’rhiod,
much less what you made, but this tea tasted as if the leaves had come from a new cask and she had put in just the right amount of honey. Taking a seat on one of the chairs, she sipped hers as she explained what had happened in the Hall and why.

After the first words, Aviendha held her cup on her fingertips without drinking and watched Egwene without blinking. Her dark skirts and pale blouse became the
cadin’sor,
coat and trousers of gray and brown that would fade into shadows. Her long hair was suddenly short, and hidden by a
shoufa,
the black veil hanging down her chest. Incongruously, the ivory bracelet still hung from her wrist although Maidens of the Spear did not wear jewelry.

“All of this because of the beacon we felt,” she muttered, half to herself,
when Egwene finished. “Because they think the Shadowsouled have a weapon.” An odd way to put it.

“What else can it be?” Egwene asked, curious. “Did one of the Wise Ones say something?” It had been a long time since she believed that Aes Sedai possessed all knowledge, and sometimes the Wise Ones revealed pockets of information that could startle the most stolid sister.

Aviendha frowned, and her clothing changed back to the skirt and blouse and shawl, then after a moment to the blue silk and lace, this time with both the Kandori necklace and the ivory bracelet. The dream ring remained on its cord, of course. A shawl appeared around her shoulders. The room was winter cold, yet it hardly seemed that gauzy layer of pale blue lace could provide any warmth. “The Wise Ones are as uncertain as your Aes Sedai. Not as frightened, though, I think. Life is a dream, and everyone wakes eventually. We dance the spears with Leafblighter,” that name for the Dark One had always seemed strange to Egwene, coming as it did from the treeless Waste, “but no one enters the dance certain they will live, or win. I do not think the Wise Ones would consider any alliance with the Asha’man. Is this wise?” she added cautiously. “From what you said, I cannot be certain whether you wish it.”