The Fires of Heaven (61 page)

I
nstead of returning to her own body, Egwene floated in darkness. She seemed to be darkness herself, without substance. Whether her body lay up or down or sideways from her, she did not know—there was no direction here—but she knew that it was near, that she could step into it easily. All around her in the blackness, fireflies seemingly twinkled, a vast horde fading away into unimaginable distance. Those were dreams, dreams of the Aiel in the camp, dreams of men and women across Cairhien, across the world, all glittering there.

She could pick out some among the nearer and name the dreamer, now. In one way those sparkles were just as alike as fireflies—that was what had given her so much trouble in the beginning—but in another, somehow, they now seemed as individual as faces. Rand’s dreams, and Moiraine’s, appeared muted, dimmed by the wards they had woven. Amys’ and Bair’s were bright and regular in their pulsing; they had taken their own advice, apparently. Had she not seen those, she would have been into her body in an instant. Those two could rove this darkness much more ably than she; she would not have known they were there until they pounced on her. If she ever learned to recognize Elayne and Nynaeve in the same way, she would be able to find them in that great constellation wherever they were in the world. But tonight she did not mean to observe anyone’s dream.

Carefully she formed a well-remembered image in her mind, and she
was back in
Tel’aran’rhiod,
inside the small, windowless room in the Tower where she had lived as a novice. A narrow bed was built against one white-painted wall. A washstand and a three-legged stool stood opposite the door, and the current occupant’s dresses and shifts of white wool hung with a white cloak on pegs. There could as easily have been none; the Tower had not been able to fill the novices’ quarters in many years. The floor was almost as pale as walls and clothes. Every day the novice who lived there would scrub that floor on hands and knees; Egwene had done so herself, and Elayne, in the next room. If a queen came to train in the Tower, she would start in a room like this, scrubbing the floor.

The garments were arranged differently when she glanced at them again, but she ignored that. Ready to embrace
saidar
in a heartbeat, she opened the door just enough to stick her head out. And drew a relieved breath when she found Elayne’s head coming just as slowly out of the next doorway. Egwene hoped she did not appear as wide-eyed and uncertain. She motioned hurriedly, and Elayne scurried across in novice white that became a pale gray silk riding dress as she darted inside. Egwene hated gray dresses; that was what
damane
wore.

For an instant more she stayed there, scanning the railed galleries of the novices’ quarters. Layer on layer they rose, and fell as many levels to the Novices’ Court below. Not that she really expected Liandrin or worse to be out there, but it never hurt to be careful.

“I thought this was what you meant,” Elayne said as she shut the door. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to remember what I can say in front of whom? Sometimes I wish we could just tell the Wise Ones everything. Let them know we are only Accepted, and be done with it.”

“You would be done with it,” Egwene said firmly. “I happen to be sleeping not twenty paces from them.”

Elayne shivered. “That Bair. She reminds me of Lini when I’d broken something I was not supposed to touch.”

“You wait until I introduce you to Sorilea.” Elayne gave her a doubtful look, but then, Egwene was not sure that she would have believed Sorilea herself until she met her. There was no way to do this easily. She shifted her shawl. “Tell me about meeting Birgitte. It was Birgitte, wasn’t it?”

Elayne staggered as if hit in the stomach. Her blue eyes closed for a moment, and she took a breath that must have filled her to the toes. “I cannot talk to you about that.”

“What do you mean you can’t talk? You have a tongue. Was it Birgitte?”

“I
cannot,
Egwene. You must believe me. I would if I could, but I cannot.
Perhaps . . . I can ask . . .” If Elayne had been the kind of woman to wring her hands, she would have been doing it then. Her mouth opened and closed without any words coming out; her eyes darted around the room as if seeking inspiration or aid. Taking a deep breath, she fixed an urgent blue gaze on Egwene. “Anything I say violates confidences I promised to hold. Even that. Please, Egwene. You must trust me. And you must not tell
anyone
what you . . . think you saw.”

Egwene forced the stern frown from her face. “I will trust you.” At least she knew now for a fact that she had not been seeing things.
Birgitte? Light!
“I hope that one day you will trust me enough to tell me.”

“I
do
trust you, but . . .” Shaking her head, Elayne sat down on the edge of the neatly made bed. “We keep secrets too often, Egwene, but sometimes there is a reason.”

After a moment Egwene nodded and sat next to her. “When you can,” was all she said, but her friend gave her a relieved hug.

“I told myself I was not going to ask this, Egwene. Just once I was not going to have my head full of him.” The gray riding dress became a shimmering green gown; Elayne could not possibly have been aware of how deeply the neckline swooped. “But . . . is Rand well?”

“He is alive and unharmed, if that is what you mean. I thought he was hard in Tear, but today I heard him threaten to hang men if they go against his commands. Not that they are bad orders—he won’t let anyone take food without paying, or murder people—but still. They were the first to hail him as He Who Comes With the Dawn; they followed him out of the Waste without hesitation. And he threatened them, as hard as cold steel.”

“Not a threat, Egwene. He is a king, whatever you or he or anyone else says, and a king or queen must dispense justice without fear of enemies or favor for friends. Anyone who does that has to be hard. Mother can make the city walls seem soft, sometimes.”

“He doesn’t have to be so arrogant about it,” Egwene said levelly. “Nynaeve said I should remind him he’s only a man, but I’ve not figured out how yet.”

“He
does
have to remember he is only a man. But he has a right to expect to be obeyed.” There was something of a haughty tone to Elayne’s voice, until she glanced down at herself. Then her face went crimson, and the green gown suddenly had a lace neck under her chin. “Are you sure you are not mistaking that for arrogance?” she finished in a strangled voice.

“He’s as overweening as a pig in a pea field.” Egwene shifted herself on
the bed; she remembered it as hard, but the thin mattress felt softer than what she slept on in the tent. She did not want to talk about Rand. “Are you certain this fight will not cause more trouble?” A feud with this Latelle could not make their traveling easier.

“I do not think so. Latelle’s grievance against Nynaeve was that all the unattached men were no longer hers to pick and choose from. Some women do think that way, I suppose. Aludra keeps to herself, and Cerandin wouldn’t have said boo to a goose until I started teaching her to stand up for herself, and Clarine is married to Petra. But Nynaeve has made it clear that she’ll box the ears of any man who even
thinks
he can flirt with her,
and
she apologized to Latelle, so I hope that may settle it.”

“She
apologized
?”

The other woman nodded, her face as bemused as Egwene knew her own must be. “I thought she
would
thump Luca when he told her she must—he doesn’t seem to think her injunction holds to him, by the way—but she did it, after grumping about for an hour. Muttering about you, actually.” She hesitated, giving Egwene a sidelong look. “Did you say something to her at your last meeting? She has been . . . different . . . since then, and sometimes she talks to herself. Argues, really. About you, from the little I’ve heard.”

“I said nothing that did not have to be said.” So it was holding, whatever it was that had happened between them. Either that, or Nynaeve was storing up her anger for the next time they met. She was not going to put up with the woman’s temper anymore, not now that she knew she did not have to. “You tell her from me that she is too old to be rolling about on the ground fighting. If she gets into another, I’ll have worse to say to her. You tell her that exactly. It will be worse.” Let Nynaeve chew on that until next time. Either she would be mild as a lamb . . . Or else Egwene would just have to carry through on her threat. Nynaeve might be stronger in the Power, when she could channel, but here, Egwene was. One way or another, she was finished with Nynaeve’s tantrums.

“I will tell her,” Elayne said. “You have changed, too. There seems to be something of Rand’s attitude about you.”

It took Egwene a moment to realize what she meant, helped by that amused little smile. “Don’t be silly.”

Elayne laughed aloud and gave her another hug. “Oh, Egwene, you will be Amyrlin Seat one day, when I am Queen of Andor.”

“If there is a Tower then,” Egwene said soberly, and Elayne’s laughter faded.

“Elaida cannot destroy the White Tower, Egwene. Whatever she does,
the Tower will remain. Perhaps she will not stay Amyrlin. Once Nynaeve remembers the name of that town, I will wager that we find a Tower in exile, with every Ajah but the Red.”

“I hope so.” Egwene knew she sounded sad. She wanted Aes Sedai to support Rand and oppose Elaida, but that meant the White Tower broken for sure, maybe never to be made whole again.

“I must get back,” Elayne said. “Nynaeve insists that whichever of us does not enter
Tel’aran’rhiod
remain awake, and with her headache, she needs to drink one of her herb teas and sleep. I do not know why she is so insistent. Whoever is watching can do nothing to help, and we both know enough to be perfectly safe here, now.” Her green dress flickered to Birgitte’s white coat and voluminous yellow trousers for an instant, then snapped back. “She said I wasn’t to tell you this, but she thinks that Moghedien is trying to find us. Her and me.”

Egwene did not ask the obvious question. Clearly it was something that Birgitte had told them. Why did Elayne persist in trying to keep that secret?
Because she promised to. Elayne never broke a promise in her life.
“You tell her to be careful.” Small chance that Nynaeve was sitting and waiting, if she thought one of the Forsaken was after her. She would be remembering that she had defeated the woman once, and she had always had more courage than sense. “The Forsaken are nothing to take lightly. And neither are Seanchan, even if they are supposedly just animal trainers. You tell her that.”

“I do not suppose you would listen if I told you to be careful, too.”

She gave Elayne a startled look. “I am always careful. You know that.”

“Of course.” The last thing Egwene saw as the other woman faded away was a very amused smile.

Egwene herself did not go. If Nynaeve could not remember where that gathering of Blues was, perhaps she could discover it here. It was hardly a new idea: this was not her first trip to the Tower since her last meeting with Nynaeve. She put on a copy of Enaila’s face, with flame-colored hair to her shoulders, and an Accepted’s dress with its banded hem, then formed the image of Elaida’s ornately furnished study.

It was as it had been before, though on every visit fewer of the vine-carved stools stood in that arc in front of the wide writing table. The paintings still hung above the fireplace. Egwene strode straight to the table, pushing aside that thronelike chair with its inlaid ivory Flame of Tar Valon, so she could reach the lacquered letterbox. Lifting the lid, all fighting hawks and clouds, she began scanning parchments as fast as she could.
Even so, some melted away half-read, or changed. There was no way to tell what was important and what insignificant beforehand.

Most seemed reports of failure. Still no word of where the Lord of Bashere had taken his army, and a note of frustration and worry tinging the words. That name tickled the back of her mind, but with no time to waste she pushed it firmly away and snatched up another sheet. No word on Rand’s whereabouts, either, said a cringing report filled with near panic. That was good to know, and worth the trip by itself. More than a month had passed since the last news from Tanchico by any Ajah’s eyes-and-ears, and others in Tarabon had also gone silent; the writer blamed the anarchy there; rumors that someone had taken Tanchico could not be confirmed, but the writer suggested that Rand himself was involved. Even better, if Elaida was looking in the wrong place by a thousand leagues. A confused report said that a Red sister in Caemlyn claimed to have seen Morgase at a public audience, but various Ajahs’ agents in Caemlyn said the Queen had been in seclusion for days. Fighting in the Borderlands, possibly minor rebellions in Shienar and Arafel; the parchment was gone before she reached the reason. Pedron Niall calling in Whitecloaks to Amadicia, possibly to move against Altara. A good thing that Elayne and Nynaeve had only another three days there.

The next parchment was about Elayne and Nynaeve. First the writer advised against punishing the agent who had allowed them to escape—Elaida had scratched that out in bold strokes and written “Make an example!” in the margin—and then, just when the woman began to detail the search for the pair in Amadicia, the single sheet became a fistful, a sheaf of what seemed to be builders’ and masons’ estimates for constructing a private residence for the Amyrlin Seat on the Tower grounds. More like a palace, by the number of pages.

She let the pages fall, and they vanished before they finished scattering across the tabletop. The lacquered box was closed again. She could spend the rest of her life here, she knew; there would always be more documents in the box, and they would always be changing. The more ephemeral something was in the waking world—a letter, a piece of clothing, a bowl that might be frequently moved—the less firm its reflection in
Tel’aran’rhiod.
She could not remain here too long; sleep while in the World of Dreams was not as restful as sleep undisturbed.

Hurrying out to the antechamber, she was about to reach for the neat piles of scrolls and parchments, some with seals, on the Keeper’s writing
table, when the room seemed to flicker. Before she had time to even consider what that meant, the door opened, and Galad stepped in, smiling, his brocaded blue coat fitting his shoulders perfectly, snug breeches showing the shape of his calves.