The Dragon Reborn twot-3

by Robert Jordan

  "I know several ways already, and so do you."

  "They are dangerous." Egwene opened her mouth to say they were only dangerous to whoever attacked her, but Nynaeve plowed on over her. "You can come to like them too much. When I let out all my anger at those Whitecloaks this morning… It felt too good. It is too dangerous." She shivered and quickened her pace again, and Egwene had to step lively to catch up.

  "You sound like Sheriam. You never have before. You have pushed every limit they've put on you. Why would you accept limits now, when we might have to ignore them to stay alive?"

  "What good if it ends with us being put out of the Tower? Stilled or not, what good then?" Nynaeve's voice dropped as if she were speaking to herself. "I can do it. I must, if I'm to stay here long enough to learn, and I must learn if I'm to — " Suddenly she seemed to realize she was speaking aloud. She shot a hard look at Egwene, and her voice firmed. "Let me think. Please, be quiet and let me think."

  Egwene held her tongue, but inside she bubbled with unasked questions. What special reason did Nynaeve have for wanting to learn more of what the White Tower could teach? What was it she wanted to do? Why was Nynaeve keeping it secret from her? Secrets. We've learned to keep too many secrets since coming to the Tower. The Amyrlin it keeping secrets from us, too. Light, what is she going to do about Mat?

  Nynaeve accompanied her all the way back to the novices' quarters, not turning aside to the Accepted's quarters. The galleries were still empty, and they met no one as they climbed the spiraling ramps.

  As they came up on Elayne's room, Nynaeve stopped, knocked once, and immediately opened the door and put her head inside. Then she was letting the white door swing shut and striding toward the next, Egwene's room. "She isn't here yet," she said. "I need to talk to both of you."

  Egwene caught her shoulders and pulled her to an abrupt halt. "What —?" Something tugged at her hair, stung her ear. A black blur streaked in front of her face to clang against the wall, and in the next breath Nynaeve was bearing her to the gallery floor, behind the railing.

  Wide-eyed and sprawling, Egwene stared at what lay on the stone in front of her door, where it had fallen. A bolt from a crossbow. A few dark strands from her hair were tangled in the four heavy prongs, meant for punching through armor. She raised a trembling hand to touch her ear, to touch the tiniest nick, damp with a bead of blood. If I had not stopped just then… If I hadn't… The quarrel would have gone right through her head, and would probably have killed Nynaeve, too. "Blood and ashes!" she gasped. "Blood and bloody ashes!"

  "Watch your language," Nynaeve admonished, but her heart was not in it. She lay peering between the white stone balusters toward the far side of the galleries. A glow surrounded her, to Egwene's eyes. She had embraced saidar.

  Hastily, Egwene tried to reach out for the One Power, too, but at first haste defeated her. Haste, and images that kept intruding on the emptiness, images of her head being ripped apart like a rotten melon by a heavy quarrel that went on to bury itself in Nynaeve. She took a deep breath and tried again, and finally the rose floated in nothingness, opened to the True Source, and the Power filled her.

  She rolled onto her stomach to peer through the railing beside Nynaeve. "Do you see anything? Do you see him? I'll put a lightning bolt through him!" She could feel it building, pressing on her to loose it. "It is a man, isn't it?" She could not imagine a man coming into the novices' quarters, but it was impossible to picture a woman carrying a crossbow through the Tower.

  "I don't know." Quiet anger filled Nynaeve's voice; her anger was always at its worst when she grew quiet with it. "I thought I saw — Yes! There!" Egwene felt the Power pulse in the other woman, and then Nynaeve was unhurriedly getting to her feet, brushing at her dress as if there were nothing more to worry about.

  Egwene stared at her. "What? What did you do? Nynaeve?"

  " 'Of the Five Powers,' " Nynaeve said in a lecturing tone, faintly mocking, " 'Air, sometimes called Wind, is thought by many to be of the least use. This is far from true.' " She finished with a tight laugh. "I told you there were other ways to defend ourselves. I used Air, to hold him with air. If it is a he; I could not see him clearly. A trick the Amyrlin showed me once, though I doubt she expected me to see how it was done. Well, are you going to lie there all day?"

  Egwene scrambled up to hurry after her around the gallery. Before long a man did come into sight around the curve, dressed in plain brown breeches and coat. He stood facing the other way, balanced on the ball of one foot, with the other hanging in midair as if he had been caught in the middle of running. The man would feel as if he were buried in thick jelly, yet it was nothing but air stiffened around him. Egwene remembered the Amyrlin's trick, too, but she did not think she could duplicate it. Nynaeve only had to see a thing done once to know how to do it herself. When she could manage to channel at all, of course.

  They came closer, and Egwene's melding with the Power vanished in shock. The hilt of a dagger stood out from the man's chest. His face sagged, and death had already filmed his half-closed eyes. He crumpled to the gallery floor as Nynaeve loosed the trap that had held him.

  He was an average-appearing man, of average height and average build, with features so ordinary Egwene did not think she would have noticed him in a group of three. She only studied him a moment, though, before realizing that something was missing. A crossbow.

  She gave a start and looked about wildly. "There had to be another one, Nynaeve. Somebody took the crossbow. And somebody stabbed him. He could be out there ready to shoot at us again."

  "Calm yourself," Nynaeve said, but she peered both ways along the gallery, jerking at her braid. "Just be calm, and we will figure out what to —" Her words cut off at the sound of steps on the ramp leading up to their level.

  Egwene's heart pounded, seemingly in her throat. Eyes fastened on the head of the ramp, she desperately strove to touch saidar again, but for her that required calm, and her heartbeats shattered calm.

  Sheriam Sedai stopped at the top of the ramp, frowning at what she saw. "What in the name of the Light has happened here?" She hurried forward, her serenity gone for once.

  "We found him," Nynaeve said as the Mistress of Novices knelt beside the corpse.

  Sheriam put a hand to the man's chest, and jerked it back twice as fast, hissing. Steeling herself visibly, she touched him again, and maintained the Touch longer. "Dead," she muttered. "As dead as it is possible to be, and more." When she straightened, she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her fingers. "You found him? Here? Like this?"

  Egwene nodded, sure that if she spoke, Sheriam would hear the lie in her voice.

  "We did," Nynaeve said firmly.

  Sheriam shook her head. "A man — a dead man, at that! — in the novices' quarters would be scandal enough, but this…!"

  "What makes him different?" Nynaeve asked. "And how could he be more than dead?"

  Sheriam took a deep breath, and gave them each a searching look. "He is one of the Soulless. A Gray Man." Absently, she wiped her fingers again, her eyes going back to the body. Worried eyes.

  "The Soulless?" Egwene said, a tremor in her voice, at the same time that Nynaeve said, "A Gray Man?"

  Sheriam glanced at them, a look as penetrating as it was brief. "Not a part of your studies, yet, but you seem to have gone beyond the rules in a great many ways. And considering you found this…" She gestured to the corpse. "The Soulless, the Gray Men, give up their souls to serve the Dark One as assassins. They are not really alive, after that. Not quite dead, but not truly alive. And despite the name, some Gray Men are women. A very few. Even among Darkfriends, only a handful of women are stupid enough to make that sacrifice. You can look right at them and hardly notice them, until it is too late. He was as much as dead while he walked. Now, only my eyes tell me that what is lying there ever lived at all." She gave them another long look. "No Gray Man has dared enter Tar Valon since the Trolloc Wars."

  "What will you do?" Egwene
asked. Sheriam's brows rose, and she quickly added, "If I may ask, Sheriam Sedai."

  The Aes Sedai hesitated. "I suppose you may, since you had the bad luck to find him. It will be up to the Amyrlin Seat, but with everything that has happened, I believe she will want to keep this as quiet as is possible. We do not need more rumors. You will speak of this to none but me, or to the Amyrlin, should she mention it first."

  "Yes, Aes Sedai," Egwene said fervently. Nynaeve's voice was cooler.

  Sheriam appeared to take their obedience for granted. She gave no sign of having heard them. Her attention was all on the dead man. The Gray Man. The Soulless. "There will be no hiding the fact that a man was killed here." The glow of the One Power suddenly surrounded her, and just as abruptly, a long, low dome covered the body on the floor, grayish and so opaque that it was hard to see there was a body under it. "But this will keep anyone else from touching him who can discover his nature. I must have this removed before the novices come back."

  Her tilted green eyes regarded them as if she had just remembered their presence. "You two go, now. To your room, I think, Nynaeve. Considering what you are already facing, if it became known you were involved in this, even on the edge of it… Go."

  Egwene curtsied, and tugged at Nynaeve's sleeve, but Nynaeve said, "Why did you come up here, Sheriam Sedai?"

  For a moment Sheriam looked startled, but on the instant she frowned. Fists on her hips, she regarded Nynaeve with all the firmness of her office. "Does the Mistress of Novices now need an excuse for coming to the novices' quarters, Accepted?" she said softly. "Do Accepted now question Aes Sedai? The Amyrlin means to make something of you two, but whether she does or not, I will teach you manners, at least. Now, the pair of you, go, before I haul you both down to my study, and not for the appointment the Amyrlin Seat has already set for you."

  A sudden thought came to Egwene. "Forgive me, Sheriam Sedai," she said quickly, "but I must fetch my cloak. I feel cold." She rushed away, around the gallery before the Aes Sedai could speak.

  If Sheriam found that crossbow bolt in front of her door, there would be too many questions. No pretending they had only found the man, that he had no connection to her, then. But when she reached the door to her room, the heavy bolt was gone. Only the jagged chip in the stone beside the door said it had ever been there.

  Egwene's skin crawled. How could anyone take it without one of us seeing… Another Gray Man! She had embraced saidar before she knew it, only the sweet flow of the Power inside her telling her what she had done. Even so, it was one of the hardest things she had ever done, opening that door and going into her room. There was no one there. She snatched the white cloak off its peg and ran out, anyway, and she did not release saidar until she was halfway back to the others.

  Something more had passed between the women while she was gone. Nynaeve was attempting to appear meek, and succeeding only in looking as if she had a sour stomach. Sheriam had her fists on her hips and was tapping her foot irritably, and the stare she was giving Nynaeve, like green millstones ready to start grinding barley flour, took in Egwene equally.

  "Forgive me, Sheriam Sedai," she said hastily, dropping a curtsy and settling her cloak on her shoulders at the same time. "This… finding a dead man — a… a Gray Man! — it made me cold. If we may go now?"

  At Sheriam's tight nod of dismissal, Nynaeve made a bare curtsy. Egwene seized her arm and hustled her away.

  "Are you trying to make more trouble for us?" she demanded when they were two levels down. And safely out of earshot of Sheriam, she hoped. "What else did you say to her, to make her glare like that? More questions, I suppose? I hope you learned something worth making her mad at us."

  "She would not say anything," Nynaeve muttered. "We must ask questions if we are to do any good, Egwene. We will have to take a few chances, or we'll never learn anything."

  Egwene sighed. "Well, be a little more circumspect." From the set of Nynaeve's face, the other woman had no intention of going easy or avoiding risks. Egwene sighed again. "The crossbow bolt was gone, Nynaeve. It must have been another Gray Man who took it."

  "So that is why you… Light!" Nynaeve frowned and gave a sharp tug to her braid.

  After a time Egwene said, "What was that she did to cover the… the body?" She did not want to think of it as a Gray Man; that reminded her there was another one out there. She did not want to think of anything at all, right then.

  "Air," Nynaeve replied. "She used Air. A neat trick, and I think I see how to make something useful with it."

  The use of the One Power was divided into the Five Powers: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit. Different Talents required different combinations of the Five Powers. "I don't understand some of the ways the Five Powers are combined. Take Healing. I can see why it requires Spirit, and maybe Air, but why Water?"

  Nynaeve rounded on her. "What are you babbling about? Have you forgotten what we're doing?" She looked around. They had reached the Accepted's quarters, a stack of galleries lower than the novices' quarters, surrounding a garden rather than a court. There was no one in sight except for another Accepted, hurrying along on another level, but she lowered her voice. "Have you forgotten the Black Ajah?"

  "I am trying to forget it," Egwene said fiercely. "For a little while, anyway. I am trying to forget that we just left a dead man. I'm trying to forget that he almost killed me, and that he has a companion who might try it again." She touched her ear; the drop of blood had dried, but the nick still hurt. "We are lucky we aren't both dead right now."

  Nynaeve's face softened, but when she spoke her voice held something of the time when she had been the Wisdom of Emond's Field, saying words that had to be said for someone's own good. "Remember that body, Egwene. Remember that he tried to kill you. Kill us. Remember the Black Ajah. Remember them all the time. Because if you forget, just once, the next time, it may be you lying dead."

  "I know," Egwene sighed. "But I do not have to like it."

  "Did you notice what Sheriam did not mention?"

  "No. What?"

  "She never wondered who stabbed him. Now, come on. My room is just down here, and you can put your feet up while we talk."

  Chapter 16

  (Lion Rampant)

  Hunters Three

  Nynaeve's room was considerably larger than the novice rooms. She had a real bed, not one built into the wall, two ladder-back armchairs instead of a stool, and a wardrobe for her clothes. The furnishings were all plain, suitable for a middling successful farmer's house, but compared to the novices, the Accepted lived in luxury. There was even a small rug, woven with scrolls of yellow and red on blue. The room was not empty when Egwene and Nynaeve entered.

  Elayne stood in front of the fireplace, arms crossed beneath her breasts and eyes red at least partly from anger. Two tall young men sprawled in the chairs, all arms and legs. One, with his dark green coat undone to show a snowy shirt, shared Elayne's blue eyes and red-gold hair, and his grinning face marked him plainly as her brother. The other, Nynaeve's age and with his gray coat neatly buttoned, was slender and dark of hair and eye. He rose, all sure confidence and lithely muscled grace, when Egwene and Nynaeve came in. He was, Egwene thought not for the first time, the most handsome man she had ever seen. His name was Galad.

  "It is good to see you again," he said, taking her hand. "I have worried much over you. We have worried much."

  Her pulse quickened, and she took back her hand before he should feel it. "Thank you, Galad," she murmured. Light, but he's beautiful. She told herself to stop thinking that way. It was not easy. She found herself smoothing her dress, wishing he were seeing her in silk instead of this plain white wool, perhaps even one of those Domani dresses Min had told her of, the ones that clung and seemed so thin you thought they must be transparent even though they were not. She flushed furiously and banished the image from her mind, willed him to look away from her face. It did not help that half the women in the Tower, from scullery maids to Aes Sedai themselves, looked a
t him as if they had the same thoughts. It did not help that his smile seemed for her alone. In fact, his smile made it worse. Light, if he even suspected what I was thinking, I'd die!

  The golden-haired young man leaned forward in his chair. "The question is, where have you been? Elayne dodges my questions as if she has a pocket full of figs and doesn't want me to have any."

  "I have told you, Gawyn," Elayne said in a tight voice, "it is none of your affair. I came here," she added to Nynaeve, "because I did not want to be alone. They saw me, and followed. They would not take no for an answer."

  "Wouldn't they," Nynaeve said flatly.

  "But it is our affair, sister," Galad said. "Your safety is very much our affair." He looked at Egwene, and she felt her heart jump. "The safety of all of you is very important to me. To us."

  "I am not your sister," Elayne snapped.

  "If you want company," Gawyn told Elayne with a smile, "we can do as well as any. And after what we went through just to be here, we deserve some explanation of where you've been. I would rather let Galad thump me all over the practice yard all day than face Mother again for a single minute. I'd rather have Coulin mad at me." Coulin was Master of Arms, and kept a tight discipline among the young men who came to train at the White Tower whether they aspired to become Warders or just to learn from them.

  "Deny the connection if you will," Galad told Elayne gravely, "but it is still there. And Mother put your safety in our hands."

  Gawyn grimaced. "She'll have our hides, Elayne, if anything happens to you. We had to talk fast, or she'd have hauled us back home with her. I have never heard of a queen sending her own sons to the headsman, but Mother sounded ready to make an exception if we don't bring you home safely."