Crossroads of Twilight (79 page)

In the shadows at the top of the stairs, she stopped in front of the small plain door, roughly finished on this side, in order to take hold of herself as she folded her cloak over her arm. Mesaana was one of the Chosen, but still human. Mesaana made mistakes. And she would kill Alviarin in a heartbeat if
she
made one. Grovel, obey and survive. And always be wary. She had known that long before meeting one of the Chosen. Retrieving the white Keeper’s stole from her belt pouch, she settled it around her neck and cracked the door carefully to listen. Silence, as expected. She stepped out into the Ninth Depository and closed the door behind her. On the inner side, the door was no less plain, but polished to a soft glow.

The Tower Library was divided into twelve depositories, at least insofar as the world knew, and the Ninth was the smallest, given over to texts on various forms of arithmetic, yet it was still a large chamber, a long oval with a flattened dome for a ceiling, filled with row on row of tall wooden shelves, each surrounded by a narrow walkway four paces above the seven-colored floor tiles. Tall ladders stood alongside the shelves, on wheels so they could be moved easily, both on the floor and on the walkways, and mirrored brass stand-lamps with bases so heavy that each took three or four men to move. Fire was a constant concern in the Library. The stand-lamps all burned brightly, ready to light the way for any sister who wanted to find a book or boxed manuscript, but a shelved handcart holding three large leather-cased volumes to be replaced was still in the middle of one aisle exactly where she remembered it from the last time she walked through. She did not understand why there was any need for different forms of arithmetic or why so many books had been written on them, and for all the Tower prided itself on having the greatest collection of books in the world, covering every possible topic, it seemed that most Aes Sedai agreed with her. She had never seen another sister in the Ninth Depository, the reason she used it for her entryway. At the wide arched doors, standing invitingly open, she listened until she was satisfied that the corridor beyond was empty before slipping out. Anyone would have thought it strange that she had developed an interest for the books in there.

As she hurried along the main corridors, where the floor tiles were laid in repeating rows of the Ajah colors, it came to her that the Library was more silent than usual, even counting how few Aes Sedai remained in the Tower at present. There was always a sister or two to be seen, if only the librarians—some Browns actually maintained apartments in the upper levels in addition to their rooms in the Tower—yet the huge figures carved into the corridors’ walls, fancifully garbed people and strange animals ten
feet tall or more, might have been the Library’s only inhabitants. Drafts made the intricately carved lamp wheels hanging ten paces overhead creak faintly on their chains. Her footsteps seemed unnaturally loud, casting soft echoes from the vaulted ceiling.

“May I help you?” a woman’s voice said quietly behind her.

Startled, Alviarin spun around, almost dropping her cloak, before she could catch herself. “I just wanted to walk through the Library, Zemaille,” she said, and immediately felt a stab of irritation. If she was jumpy enough to explain herself to a librarian, then she really did need to take a grip before she reported to Mesaana. She almost wanted to tell Zemaille what was happening on Tremalking, just to see whether the woman would flinch.

The bland expression on the Brown sister’s dark face did not change, but a touch of some unreadable emotion altered the pitch of her voice. Tall and very lean, Zemaille always held that outer mask of reserve and distance, but Alviarin suspected she was less shy than she pretended, and less pleasant. “That’s quite understandable. The Library is restful, and it’s a sad time for us all. And sadder still for you, of course.”

“Of course,” Alviarin repeated as if by rote. A sad time? For her in particular? She considered drawing the woman to some secluded corner where she could be questioned and disposed of, but then she noticed another Brown, a round woman even darker than Zemaille, watching them from farther down the hall. Aiden and Zemaille were weak in the Power, yet overcoming both at once would be difficult if it was possible at all. Why were they both down here on the ground floor? The pair was seldom seen, shuttling between the rooms on the upper levels they shared with Nyein, the third Sea Folk sister, and the so-called Thirteenth Depository, where the secret records were kept. All three worked there, willingly immersed to their necks in their labors. She walked on and tried to tell herself she was being skittish without reason, but that did nothing to soothe the prickling between her shoulder blades.

The lack of librarians guarding the front entrance only made the prickles grow. Librarians always stood at
every
entrance, to make sure not a scrap of paper left the library without their knowledge. Alviarin channeled to shove one of the tall carved doors open before she reached it and left it standing agape on its bronze hinges as she hurried down the wide marble stairs. The broad, oak-lined stone path that led toward the tall white shaft of the Tower had been shoveled clear, but if it had not been, she would have used the Power to melt the snow away ahead of her, let anyone think of it what they would. Mesaana had made crystal clear the price of taking
the risk that anyone might learn the weave for Traveling, or even that she knew it, else she would have Traveled from the spot. With the Tower in sight, looming over the trees and gleaming in the pale morning sunlight, she could have been there in a step. Instead, she fought the urge to run.

It was no surprise to find the Tower’s wide, tall corridors empty. A few scurrying servants with the white Flame of Tar Valon on their breasts bobbed their bows and curtsies as she passed, but they were no more use, no more important, than the drafts that made the gilded stand-lamps flicker and rippled the bright tapestries hanging on the snowy white walls. Sisters kept to their own Ajah quarters as much as possible these days, of course, and unless she encountered a member of her own heart, even seeing an Aes Sedai she knew was Black Ajah would have been useless. She knew them, but they did not know her. Besides, she was not about to reveal herself to anyone she did not have to. Perhaps some of those marvelous instruments from the Age of Legends that Mesaana talked about would allow her to question any sister immediately one day, if the woman ever actually produced them, but now it was still a matter of ciphered orders left on pillows or in secret spots. What had once seemed almost instantaneous responses now seemed interminably delayed. A stocky bald-headed serving man making his bow gulped audibly, and she smoothed her features. She prided herself on her icy detachment, always presenting a cool unruffled surface. In any event, scowling her way though the Tower was going to get her exactly nowhere.

There was one person in the Tower she was sure she knew exactly where to find, someone she could demand answers from with no fear of what the woman thought. A little caution was needed even there, of course—careless questions revealed more than most answers were worth—but Elaida would tell her anything. With a sigh, she began to climb.

Mesaana had told her of another marvel of the Age of Legends that she wished very much to see, a thing called a “lift.” The flying machines sounded much grander, of course, but it was far easier to envision a mechanical contrivance that whisked you from floor to floor. She was not really certain that buildings several times as high as the White Tower could really have existed, either—in the whole world, not even the Stone of Tear rivaled the Tower’s height—but just knowing about “lifts” made climbing up spiraling hallways and sweeping flights of stairs seem laborious.

She did pause at the Amyrlin’s study, only three levels up, but as expected, both rooms were empty, the bare writing tables polished till they shone. The rooms themselves seemed bare, with no wall hangings, no ornaments, nothing at all but the tables and chairs and unlit stand-lamps.
Elaida rarely came down from her apartments near the Tower’s peak anymore. That had seemed acceptable at one time, since it isolated the woman even more from the rest of the Tower. Few sisters made that climb willingly. Today, though, by the time Alviarin had climbed close to eighty spans, she was seriously considering making Elaida move back down.

Elaida’s waiting room was empty, of course, though a folder of papers sitting atop the writing table said someone had been there. Seeing what they contained, and deciding whether Elaida needed to be punished for having it, could wait, though. Alviarin tossed her cloak down on the writing table and pushed open the door, newly carved with the Flame of Tar Valon and awaiting the gilder, that led deeper into the apartments.

She was surprised at the surge of relief she felt at seeing Elaida sitting behind the starkly carved and gilded writing table, the seven-striped—no, six-striped, now—stole around her neck and the Flame of Tar Valon picked out in moonstones among the gold-work on the high chairback above her head. A niggling worry that she had not let surface until now had been the possibility that the woman was dead in some fool accident. That would have explained Zemaille’s comment. Choosing a new Amyrlin could have taken months, even with the rebels and everything else confronting them, but her days as Keeper would have been numbered. What surprised her more than her relief, though, was the presence of more than half the Sitters in the Hall standing in front of the writing table in their fringed shawls. Elaida
knew
better than to entertain this sort of delegation without her present. The huge gilded case clock against the wall, a vulgarly over-ornamented piece, chimed twice for High, small enameled figures of Aes Sedai popping out of tiny doors in its front as she opened her mouth to tell the Sitters that she needed to confer with the Amyrlin privately. They would leave with little hemming or hawing. A Keeper had no authority to order them out, but they knew that her authority extended beyond that her stole conferred even if they did not begin to suspect how that could be.

“Alviarin,” Elaida said, sounding surprised, before she could get a word out. The hardness of Elaida’s face softened in what almost seemed pleasure. Her mouth quirked close to a smile. Elaida had had no reasons to smile in some time. “Stand over there and be quiet until I have time to deal with you,” she said, waving an imperious hand toward a corner of the room. The Sitters shifted their feet and adjusted their shawls. Suana, a beefy woman, gave Alviarin a tight glance, and Shevan, tall as a man and angular, stared straight at her with no expression, but the others avoided meeting her eye.

Stunned, she stood stock-still on the brightly patterned silk carpet,
gaping. This could not be mere rebellion on Elaida’s part—the woman would have to be insane!—but what in the name of the Great Lord had happened to give her the nerve? What?

Elaida’s hand slapped the tabletop with a loud crack, a blow that made one of the lacquered boxes there rattle. “When I tell you to stand in the corner, Daughter,” she said in a low, dangerous voice, “I expect you to obey.” Her eyes glittered. “Or shall I summon the Mistress of Novices so these sisters can witness your ‘private’ penance?”

Heat suffused Alviarin’s face, part humiliation and part anger. To have anyone
hear
such things said, and to her face! Fear bubbled in her, too, turning her stomach to acid. A few words from her, and Elaida would stand accused of sending sisters to disaster and captivity, not once but twice. Rumors had already begun swirling about events in Cairhien; murky rumors, but growing more certain by the day. And once it was learned that on top of that, Elaida had sent fifty sisters to try to defeat hundreds of men who could channel, not even the existence of the rebel sisters wintering in Murandy with their army would keep the Amyrlin’s stole on her shoulders, or her head. She could not dare to do this. Unless . . . Unless she could discredit Alviarin as Black Ajah. That might gain her a little time. Only a little, surely, once the facts about Dumai’s Wells and the Black Tower were known, but Elaida might be ready to grasp at straws. No, it was not possible, could not
be
possible. Flight certainly was impossible. For one thing, if Elaida was ready to lay charges, flight would only confirm them. For another, Mesaana would find her and kill her if she fled. All that flashed through her head as she moved on leaden feet to stand in the corner like a penitent novice. There had to be a way to recover from this, whatever had happened. There was always a way to recover. Listening might find it for her. She would have prayed, if the Dark Lord listened to prayers.

Elaida studied her for a moment, then gave a satisfied nod. The woman’s eyes still shone with emotion, though. Lifting the lid of one of the three lacquered boxes on her table, she took out a small, age-darkened ivory carving of a turtle and stroked it between her fingers. Fondling the carvings in that box was a habit she had when she wanted to soothe her nerves. “Now,” she said. “You were explaining to me why I should enter negotiations.”

“We were not asking permission, Mother,” Suana said sharply, thrusting her chin out. She had too much chin, a square stone of it, and the arrogance to thrust it at anyone. “A decision of this sort belongs to the Hall. There is strong feeling in favor of it in the Yellow Ajah.” Which meant she
had strong feelings. She was the head of the Yellow Ajah, the First Weaver, something Alviarin knew because the Black Ajah knew all the Ajah secrets, or nearly all, and in Suana’s view, her opinions
were
her Ajah’s opinions.

Doesine, the other Yellow present, eyed Suana sideways, but said nothing. Pale and boyishly slim, Doesine looked as if she did not really want to be there, a pretty, sulky boy who had been dragged somewhere by his ear. Sitters often balked at arm-twisting from their Ajah’s head, yet it was not beyond possibility that Suana had found some way.

“Many Whites also support talks,” Ferane said, frowning distractedly at an ink stain on one plump finger. “It is the logical thing to do, under the present circumstances.” She was First Reasoner, head of the White Ajah, but less likely than Suana to take her own views for those of the entire Ajah. A little less likely. Ferane often seemed as vague as the worst of the Browns—the long black hair that framed her round face needed a brush, and part of the fringe on her shawl appeared to have been dipped carelessly in her breakfast tea—but she could catch the slightest crack in the logic of an argument. She might well have been there by herself because she simply did not believe she needed any assistance from the other White Sitters.