The Dragon Reborn (37 page)

“Egwene? Egwene, I can’t—” He cut off with a loud groan.

Steadfast
.

She stiffened her back and kept walking, but she could not keep the tears from rolling down her cheeks. Rand’s groans built to a scream, drowning Joiya’s laughter. From the corner of her eye, Egwene saw Tam coming, running as hard as he could.

He can’t help
, she thought, and tears became wracking sobs.
There is nothing he can do. But I could. I could
.

She stepped into the light, and was consumed.

Trembling and sobbing, Egwene stepped out of the arch, the same by which she had entered, memory cascading back with Sheriam’s face confronting her. Cold clear water washed away her tears as Elaida slowly emptied a
silver chalice over her head. Her weeping went on; she did not think it would ever end.

“You are washed clean,” Elaida pronounced, “of what sin you may have done, and of those done against you. You are washed clean of what crime you may have committed, and of those committed against you. You come to us washed clean and pure, in heart and soul.”

Light
, Egwene thought as the water ran down her body,
let it be so. Can water wash away what I did?
“Her name was Joiya,” she told Sheriam between sobs. “Joiya. Nothing can be worth what I just . . . what I. . . .”

“There is a price to become Aes Sedai,” Sheriam replied, but the sympathy was back in her eyes, stronger than before. “There is always a price.”

“Was it real? Did I dream it?” Weeping swallowed what she wanted to say.
Did I leave him to die? Did I leave my baby?

Sheriam put an arm around her shoulders, began guiding her around the circle of arches. “Every woman I have ever watched come out of there has asked that question. The answer is, no one knows. It has been speculated that perhaps some of those who do not come back chose to stay because they found a happier place, and lived out their lives there.” Her voice hardened. “If it is real, and they stayed from choice, then I hope the lives they live are far from happy. I have no sympathy for any who run from their responsibilities.” The edge on her tone softened slightly. “Myself, I believe it is not real. But the danger is. Remember that.” She stopped in front of the next glow-filled arch. “Are you ready?”

Shifting her feet, Egwene nodded, and Sheriam took her arm away.

“The second time is for what is. The way back will come but once. Be steadfast.”

Egwene trembled.
Whatever happens, it cannot be worse than the last. It cannot be
. She stepped into the glow.

She stared down at her dress, blue silk sewn with pearls, all dusty and torn. Her head came up, and she took in the ruins of a great palace around her. The Royal Palace of Andor, in Caemlyn. She knew that, and wanted to scream.

The way back will come but once. Be steadfast
.

The world was not the way she wanted it, no way that she could think of without wanting to cry, but all her tears had been cried away long ago, and the world was as it was. Ruin was what she expected to see.

Careless of making more rips in her dress but as careful of sound as a
mouse, she climbed one of the piles of rubble and peered into the curving streets of the Inner City. As far as she could see in every direction lay ruin and desolation, buildings that looked as if they had been torn apart by madmen, thick plumes of smoke rising from the fires still burning. There were people in the streets, bands of armed men prowling, searching. And Trollocs. The men shied away from the Trollocs, and the Trollocs snarled at them and laughed, harsh guttural laughter. But they knew each other, worked together.

A Myrddraal came striding down the street, its black cloak swaying gently with its steps even when the wind gusted to drive dust and rubbish past it. Men and Trollocs alike cowered under its eyeless stare. “Hunt!” Its voice sounded like something long dead crumbling. “Do not stand there shivering! Find him!”

Egwene slipped back down the pile of jumbled stones as silently as she could.

The way back will come but once. Be steadfast
.

She stopped, afraid the whisper had come from Shadowspawn. In some way, though, she was sure it had not. Glancing back over her shoulder, half fearful of seeing the Myrddraal standing where she had just been, she hurried onward and into the ruined palace, climbing over fallen timbers, squeezing between heavy blocks of collapsed masonry as she made her way. Once she stepped on a woman’s arm, sticking out from under a mound of plaster and bricks that had been an interior wall and perhaps part of the floor above. She noticed the arm as little as she noticed the Great Serpent ring on one finger. She had trained herself not to see the dead buried in the refuse heap Trollocs and Darkfriends had made of Caemlyn. She could do nothing for the dead.

Forcing her way through a narrow gap where part of the ceiling had fallen, she found herself in a room half buried under what had stood above it. Rand lay with a heavy beam pinning him across the waist, his legs hidden beneath the stone blocks that filled half the room. Dust and sweat coated his face. He opened his eyes when she came near him.

“You came back.” He forced the words out in a hoarse rasp. “I was afraid—No matter. You have to help me.”

She sank wearily to the floor. “I could lift that beam easily with Air, but as soon as it moves, everything else will come down on top of you. On top of both of us. I cannot manage all of it, Rand.”

His laugh was bitter and painful, and cut off almost as soon as it began. Fresh sweat glistened on his face, and he spoke with an effort. “I could
shift the beam myself. You know that. I could shift that and the stones above, all of them. But I have to let go of myself to do it, and I can’t trust that. I cannot trust—” He stopped, wheezing for breath.

“I do not understand,” she said slowly. “Let go of yourself? What can’t you trust?”
The way back will come but once. Be steadfast
. She rubbed her hands roughly over her ears.

“The madness, Egwene. I am—actually—holding it—at bay.” His gasping laugh made her skin prickle. “But it takes everything I have just to do that. If I let go, even a little, even for an instant, the madness will have me. I won’t care what I do then. You have to help me.”

“How, Rand! I’ve tried everything I know. Tell me how, and I will do it.”

His hand flopped out, fell just short of a dagger lying in the dust bare-bladed. “The dagger,” he whispered. His hand made a painful journey back to his chest. “Here. In the heart. Kill me.”

She stared at him, at the dagger, as if they were both poisonous serpents. “No! Rand, I will not. I cannot! How could you ask such a thing?”

Slowly his hand crept back toward the dagger. His fingers came short again. He strained, moaning, brushed it with a fingertip. Before he could try again, she kicked it away from him. He collapsed with a sob.

“Tell me why,” she demanded. “Why would you ask me to—to murder you? I will Heal you, I will do anything to get you out of there, but I cannot kill you. Why?”

“They can turn me, Egwene.” His breathing was so tortured, she wished she could weep. “If they take me—the Myrddraal—the Dreadlords—they can turn me to the Shadow. If madness has me, I cannot fight them. I won’t know what they are doing till it is too late. If there is even a spark of life left when they find me, they can still do it. Please, Egwene. For the love of the Light. Kill me.”

“I—I can’t, Rand. Light help me, I cannot!”

The way back will come but once. Be steadfast
.

She looked over her shoulder, and a silver arch filled with white light took up most of the open space among the rubble.

“Egwene, help me.”

Be steadfast
.

She stood and took a step toward the arch. It was right there in front of her. One more step, and. . . .

“Please, Egwene. Help me. I can’t reach it. For the love of the Light, Egwene, help me!”

“I cannot kill you,” she whispered.

“I can’t. Forgive me.” She stepped forward.

“HELP ME, EGWENE!”

Light burned her to ash.

Staggering, she stepped out of the arch, neither noticing her nakedness nor caring. A shudder ran through her, and she covered her mouth with both hands. “I couldn’t, Rand,” she whispered. “I couldn’t. Please forgive me.”
Light help him. Please, Light help Rand
.

Cold water poured over her head.

“You are washed clean of false pride,” Elaida intoned. “You are washed clean of false ambition. You come to us washed clean, in heart and soul.”

As the Red sister turned away, Sheriam gently took Egwene’s shoulders and guided her toward the last arch. “One more, child. One more, and it is done.”

“He said they could turn him to the Shadow,” Egwene mumbled. “He said the Myrddraal and the Dreadlords could force him.”

Sheriam missed a step, and looked around quickly. Elaida was almost back to the table. The Aes Sedai surrounding the
ter’angreal
stared at it, seeming lost to anything else. “An unpleasant thing to talk of, child,” Sheriam said finally, and softly. “Come. One more.”

“Can they?” Egwene insisted.

“Custom,” Sheriam said, “is not to speak of what happens within the
ter’angreal
. A woman’s fears are her own.”

“Can they?”

Sheriam sighed, glanced at the other Aes Sedai again, then dropped her voice to a whisper and spoke swiftly. “This is something known only to a few, child, even in the Tower. You should not learn it now, if ever, but I will tell you. There is—a weakness in being able to channel. That we learn to open ourselves to the True Source means that we can be—opened to other things.” Egwene shuddered. “Calm yourself, child. It is not so easily done. It is a thing not done, so far as I know—Light send it has not been done!—since the Trolloc Wars. It took thirteen Dreadlords—Darkfriends who could channel—weaving the flows through thirteen Myrddraal. You see? Not easily done. There are no Dreadlords today. This is a secret of the Tower, child. If others knew, we could never convince them they were safe. Only one who can channel can be turned in this way. The weakness of our
strength. Everyone else is as safe as a fortress; only their own deeds and will can turn them to the Shadow.”

“Thirteen,” Egwene said in a tiny voice. “The same number who left the Tower. Liandrin, and twelve more.”

Sheriam’s face hardened. “That is nothing for you to dwell on. You will forget it.” Her voice climbed to a normal volume. “The third time is for what will be. The way back will come but once. Be steadfast.”

Egwene stared at the glowing arch, stared at some far distance beyond it.
Liandrin and twelve others. Thirteen Darkfriends who can channel. Light help us all
. She stepped into the light. It filled her. It shone through her. It burned her to the bone, seared her to the soul. She flashed incandescent in the light.
Light help me!
There was nothing but the light. And the pain.

Egwene stared into the standing mirror, and was not sure whether she was more surprised by the ageless smoothness of her face or the striped stole that hung around her neck. The stole of the Amyrlin Seat.

The way back will come but once. Be steadfast
.

Thirteen
.

She swayed, caught at the mirror and almost toppled it and herself to the blue-tiled floor of her dressing chamber.
Something is wrong
, she thought. The wrongness had nothing to do with her sudden dizziness, or at least that was not what felt wrong. It was something else. But she had no idea what.

There was an Aes Sedai at her elbow, a woman with Sheriam’s high cheekbones but dark hair and concerned brown eyes, and the hand-wide stole of the Keeper on her shoulders. Not Sheriam, though. Egwene had never seen her before; she was sure she knew her as well as she knew herself. Haltingly, she put a name to the woman. Beldeine.

“Are you ill, Mother?”

Her stole is green. That means she was raised from the Green Ajah. The Keeper always comes from the same Ajah as the Amyrlin she serves. Which means if I’m the Amyrlin—if?—then I was Green Ajah, too
. That thought shook her. Not that she had been Green Ajah, but that she had to reason it out.
Light, something is wrong with me
.

The way back will come bu. . . .
The voice in her head trailed away to finish in a buzz.

Thirteen Darkfriends
.

“I am well, Beldeine,” Egwene said. The name felt strange on her
tongue; it felt as if she had been saying it for years. “We mustn’t keep them waiting.”
Keep who waiting?
She did not know, except that she felt infinitely sad about ending that wait, endlessly reluctant.

“They will be growing impatient, Mother.” There was a hesitation in Beldeine’s voice, as if she felt the same reluctance as Egwene, but for a different reason. Unless Egwene missed her guess, behind that outer calm, Beldeine was terrified.

“In that case, we had best be about it.”

Beldeine nodded, then took a deep breath before crossing the carpet to where her staff of office, topped with the snowdrop White Flame of Tar Valon, stood propped beside the door. “I suppose we must, Mother.” She took up the staff and opened the door for Egwene, then hurried ahead so that they made a procession of two, Keeper of the Chronicles leading the Amyrlin Seat.

Egwene noticed little of the corridors they took. All her attention was directed inward.
What is the matter with me? Why can’t I remember? Why is so much of what I . . . almost remember wrong?
She touched the seven-striped stole on her shoulders.
Why am I half sure I’m still a novice?

The way back will come but on
—This time it ended abruptly.

Thirteen of the Black Ajah
.

She stumbled at that. It was a frightening thought, but it chilled her to the marrow beyond fear. It felt—personal. She wanted to scream, to run and hide. She felt as if they were after her.
Nonsense. The Black Ajah has been destroyed
. That seemed an odd thought, too. Part of her remembered something called the Great Purge. Part of her was sure no such thing had happened.