The Fires of Heaven (118 page)

Two of the barefoot sailors leaped out to hold the rowboat against the current, and Juilin and the Shienarans splashed ashore as the sailors scrambled back aboard. On
Riverserpent
men were already hauling in the anchor.

“Clear us a path, Uno,” Nynaeve said. “I mean to be there before dark.” From the look of the forest, all vines and dusty undergrowth, two miles might take that long. If Neres had not managed to gull her. That worried her more than anything else.

S
ome four hours later, the sweat running down Nynaeve’s face had very little to do with unseasonable heat, and she was wondering whether it might not have been better if Neres had gulled them. Or refused to carry them beyond Boannda. Late-afternoon sunlight slanted sharply through windows with mostly cracked panes. Clutching her skirts in blended irritation and unease, she tried to avoid looking at the six Aes Sedai grouped around one of the sturdy tables near the wall. Their mouths moved silently as they conferred behind a screen of
saidar.
Elayne had her chin high, her hands folded calmly at her waist, but a tightness about her eyes and the corners of her mouth spoiled her regal air. Nynaeve was not sure she wanted to know what the Aes Sedai were saying; one stunning blow after another had knocked all her high expectations into a daze. One more shock and she thought she might scream, and she did not know whether from fury or pure hysteria.

Very nearly everything except their clothes was laid out on that table, from Birgitte’s silver arrow in front of stout Morvrin to the three
ter’angreal
before Sheriam, to the gilded coffers in front of dark-eyed Myrelle. Not one of the women looked pleased. Carlinya’s face might have been carved from snow, even motherly Anaiya wore a stern mask, and Beonin’s look of constant wide-eyed startlement had a distinctly annoyed cast. Annoyed and something
more. Sometimes Beonin made as if to touch the white cloth spread neatly over the
cuendillar
seal, but her hand always stopped and retreated.

Nynaeve’s eyes jerked away from the cloth. She knew exactly when things had begun to go wrong. The Warders who surrounded them in the woods had been proper, if cool—once she made Uno and the Shienarans put up their swords, anyway. And Min’s warm greetings had been all laughter and hugs. But the Aes Sedai and others in the streets, caught up in their own errands, had scurried along with hardly a glance for the party being escorted in. Salidar was quite crowded, with armed men drilling in nearly every open space. The first person aside from the Warders and Min to pay any attention to them at all had been the lean Brown sister they were taken to, in what had once been the common room of this inn. She and Elayne had told the story they had agreed on to Phaedrine Sedai, or tried to. Five minutes into it, they were left standing, with strict orders not to move a foot or speak a word, even to each other. Ten more minutes, staring at one another in confusion, while all around them Accepted and white-clad novices, Warders and servants and soldiers bustled between tables where Aes Sedai pored over papers and briskly handed out orders, and then they had been hustled before Sheriam and the others so quickly Nynaeve did not think her shoes had touched the floor twice. That was when the grilling had begun, more suitable for captured prisoners than returning heroes. Nynaeve dabbed at the perspiration on her face, but as soon as she tucked the handkerchief back up her sleeve, her hands returned to their grip on her skirts.

She and Elayne were not alone standing on the colorful silk carpet. Siuan, in a plain dress of fine blue wool, might have been there by choice if Nynaeve had not known better, her face cool, utterly composed. She seemed lost in untroubled thought. Leane at least watched the Aes Sedai, yet she appeared equally confident. In fact, somehow more self-confident than Nynaeve remembered. The copper-skinned woman looked even more willowy, too, more supple in some fashion. Perhaps it was her scandalous dress. That pale green silk was every bit as high-necked as Siuan’s, but it clung to every curve of her, and the material only managed to be opaque by a thin hair. It was their faces that truly stunned Nynaeve, though. She had never expected to find either alive, and certainly never looking so very young—no more than a few years older than she if that. They did not so much as glance at one another. In truth, she thought she detected a distinct chill between them.

There was another difference about them, one that Nynaeve was just
beginning to recognize. If everyone including Min had been ginger about it, no one made any real secret of the fact that they had been stilled. Nynaeve could feel that lack. Perhaps it was being in a room where all the other women could channel, or perhaps it was knowing they had been stilled, but for the first time she was truly conscious of the ability in Elayne and the others. And its absence from Siuan and Leane. Something had been taken from them, cut away. It was like a wound. Perhaps the worst wound a woman could suffer.

Curiosity overcame her. What sort of wound would it be? What had been cut away? She might as well make use of the waiting, and the irritation that larded itself through her nervousness. She reached out to
saidar.
. . .

“Did anyone grant you permission to channel here, Accepted?” Sheriam asked, and Nynaeve gave a start, hurriedly releasing the True Source.

The green-eyed Aes Sedai led the others back to their mismatched chairs, arranged on the carpet in a semicircle that had the four standing women as its focus. Some of them carried things from the table. They sat staring at Nynaeve, earlier emotion swallowed in Aes Sedai calm. None of those ageless faces acknowledged the heat by so much as a single bead of moisture. Finally Anaiya said in a gently chiding voice, “You have been very long from us, child. Whatever you have learned in the interval, you have apparently forgotten much.”

Blushing, Nynaeve curtsied. “Forgive me, Aes Sedai. I did not mean to overstep.” She hoped they thought it was shame that heated her cheeks. She
had
been away from them a long time. Just one day ago,
she
had given the orders and people jumped when she spoke. Now she was the one expected to jump. It galled.

“You tell an interesting . . . story.” Carlinya obviously believed little of it. The White sister turned Birgitte’s silver arrow over in long slender hands. “And you acquired some strange possessions.”

“The Panarch Amathera gave us many gifts, Aes Sedai,” Elayne said. “She seemed to think we saved her throne.” Even delivered in a perfectly level voice, that speech was a walk on thin ice. Nynaeve was not the only one irritated by their fall from freedom. Carlinya’s smooth face tightened.

“You come with disturbing news,” Sheriam said. “And some disturbing . . . things.” Her slightly tilted eyes wandered to the table, to the silvery
a’dam,
and returned firmly to Elayne and Nynaeve. Since learning what it was, what it was for, most of the Aes Sedai had treated it like a live red adder. Most had.

“If the thing does what these children claim,” Morvrin said absently, “we need to study it. And if Elayne really believes she can make a
ter’angreal.
. . .” The Brown sister shook her head. Her real attention was on the flattened stone ring, all flecked and striped in red and blue and brown, that she held in one hand. The other two
ter’angreal
lay on her broad lap. “You say that this came from Verin Sedai? How is it this was never mentioned to us before?” That was not directed at Nynaeve or Elayne, but at Siuan.

Siuan frowned, but not the fierce frown Nynaeve remembered. It held a touch of diffidence, as if she knew she was speaking to her superiors, and so did her voice. That was another change Nynaeve could hardly believe. “Verin never told me of it. I would very much like to ask her a few questions.”

“And
I
have questions about
this
.” Myrelle’s olive face darkened as she unfolded a familiar paper—why had they ever kept that?— and read aloud. “ ‘What the bearer does is done at my order and by my authority. Obey, and keep silent, at my command. Siuan Sanche, Watcher of the Seals, Flame of Tar Valon, The Amyrlin Seat.’ ” She crumpled the paper and its seal in her fist. “Hardly something to be handed out to Accepted.”

“At the time, I did not know who I could trust,” Siuan said smoothly. The six Aes Sedai stared at her. “It was within my authority then.” The six Aes Sedai did not blink. Her voice took on a thread of exasperated pleading. “You cannot call me to account for doing what I had to do when I had a perfect right to do it. When the boat’s sinking, you plug the hole with what you can find.”

“And why did you not tell us?” Sheriam asked quietly, but with a hint of steel. As Mistress of Novices she had never raised her voice, though sometimes you wished she would. “Three Accepted—Accepted!—sent out of the Tower chasing thirteen full sisters of the Black Ajah. Do you use babies to plug the hole in your boat, Siuan?”

“We are hardly babies,” Nynaeve told her heatedly. “Several of those thirteen are dead, and we thwarted their plans twice. In Tear, we—”

Carlinya cut her off like an icy knife. “You have told us all about Tear, child. And Tanchico. And defeating Moghedien.” Her mouth twisted wryly. She had already said that Nynaeve had been a fool to come within a mile of one of the Forsaken, that she was lucky to have escaped with her life. That Carlinya did not know how right she was—they certainly had not told everything—only made Nynaeve’s stomach clench tighter. “You
are
children, and lucky if we decide not to spank you. Now hold your peace until you
are called on to speak.” Nynaeve flushed heavily, hoping they took it for embarrassment, and held her peace.

Sheriam had never taken her eyes from Siuan. “Well? Why have you never mentioned sending three children out to hunt lions?”

Siuan drew a deep breath, but folded her hands and ducked her head penitently. “There seemed no point, Aes Sedai, with so much else of importance. I have held nothing back, when there was the faintest reason for telling. Every scrap I knew of the Black Ajah, I told. I’ve not known where these two were or what they were up to for some time. The important thing is that they are here now, and with those three
ter’angreal.
You must realize what it means to have access to Elaida’s study, to her papers, if only in bits. You’d never have known that she knows where you are until it was too late, except for that.”

“We realize that,” Anaiya said, eyeing Morvrin, who was still frowning at the ring. “It is just that perhaps the means of it takes us a little by surprise.”

“Tel’aran’rhiod,”
Myrelle breathed. “Why, it has become no more than a matter for scholarly discussion in the Tower, almost a legend. And Aiel Dreamwalkers. Who would have imagined that Aiel Wise Ones could channel, much less this?”

Nynaeve wished they had been able to keep that secret—like Birgitte’s true identity and a few other things they had managed to hold back—but it was difficult to keep things from slipping out when you were being questioned by women who could bore holes in stone with a look when they wanted. Well, she supposed she should be glad they had managed to hang on to what they had. Once
Tel’aran’rhiod
had been mentioned, and that they had entered it, a mouse would have treed cats before these women stopped asking questions.

Leane took a half-step forward, not looking at Siuan. “The
important
thing is that with these
ter’angreal
you can talk to Egwene, and through her to Moiraine. Between them, you can not only keep an eye on Rand al’Thor, you should be able to influence him even in Cairhien.”

“Where he went from the Aiel Waste,” Siuan said, “where I predicted he would be.” If her eyes and words were directed at the Aes Sedai, her astringent tone was plainly meant for Leane, who grunted.

“Much good that did. Two Aes Sedai sent off to the Waste chasing ducks.”

Oh, yes, there was very definitely a chill there.

“Enough, children,” Anaiya said, very much as if they really were children
and she a mother used to their petty squabbles. She eyed the other Aes Sedai meaningfully. “It will be a very good thing to be able to talk with Egwene.”