Knife of Dreams

by Jordan, Robert

  She started for the door, confident that Egwene would follow, and Egwene did. Attacking the other woman physically would achieve no more than another entry in the book. Forkroot. Well, she would find a way around that somehow. If not. . . . She refused to think about that.

  Katerine and Barasine were startled to say the least at hearing Elaida’s plans for Egwene, and not best pleased to learn that they would be watching her and shielding her while she slept, although Silviana told them she would arrange for other sisters to come after an hour or two.

  “Why both of us?” Katerine wanted to know, which earned her a wry glance from Barasine. If only one were sent, it surely would not be Katerine, who stood higher.

  “Firstly, because I said so.” Silviana waited until the other two Reds nodded in acceptance. They did so with obvious reluctance, but not enough to make her wait long. She had not put on her shawl to come into the hallway, and in some odd fashion, she seemed the one out of place. “And secondly, because this child is tricky, I think. I want her watched carefully awake or asleep. Which of you has her ring?”

  After a moment, Barasine produced the circle of gold from her belt pouch, muttering, “I only thought to keep it as a memento. Of the rebels being brought to heel. They’re finished, now, for sure.” A memento? It was stealing was what it was!

  Egwene reached for the ring, but Silviana’s hand got there first, and it was into her pouch that the ring went. “I’ll keep this until you have the right to wear it again, child. Now take her to the novices’ quarters and settle her in. A room should have been prepared by now.”

  Katerine resumed the shield, and Barasine reached for Egwene’s arm again, but Egwene stretched out a hand toward Silviana. “Wait. There’s something I must tell you.” She had agonized over this. It would be all too easy to reveal far more than she wanted. But she had to do it. “I have the Talent of Dreaming. I’ve learned to tell the true dreams, and to interpret some of them. I dreamt of a glass lamp that burned with a white flame. Two ravens flew out of mist, struck the lamp, and flew on. The lamp wobbled, flinging off droplets of flaming oil. Some of those burned up in midair, others landed scattered about, and the lamp still wobbled on the edge of falling. It means the Seanchan will attack the White Tower and do great harm.”

  Barasine sniffed. Katerine gave a derisive snort.

  “A Dreamer,” Silviana said flatly. “Is there anyone who can back up your claim? And if there is, how can you be sure your dream means the Seanchan? Ravens would indicate the Shadow, to me.”

  “I’m a Dreamer, and when a Dreamer knows, she knows. Not the Shadow. The Seanchan. As for who knows what I can do. . . .” Egwene shrugged. “The only one you can reach is Leane Sharif, who’s being held in the cells below.” She saw no way to bring the Wise Ones into this, not without revealing entirely too much.

  “That woman is a wilder, not—” Katerine began angrily, but her mouth snapped shut when Silviana raised a peremptory hand.

  The Mistress of Novices studied Egwene carefully, her face still an unreadable mask of calmness. “You truly believe you are what you say,” she said finally. “I do hope your Dreaming won’t cause as many problems as young Nicola’s Foretelling. If you truly can Dream. Well, I will pass along your warning. I can’t see how the Seanchan could strike at us here in Tar Valon, but watchfulness never hurts. And I’ll question this woman being held below. Carefully. And if she fails to back up your tale, then your visit to me in the morning will be even more memorable for you.” She waved her hand at Katerine. “Take her away before she hands me another nugget and keeps me from getting any sleep at all tonight.”

  This time, Katerine muttered as much as Barasine. But they both waited until they were beyond earshot of Silviana. That woman was going to be a formidable opponent. Egwene hoped embracing pain worked as well as the Wise Ones claimed. Otherwise. . . . Otherwise did not bear thinking about.

  A lean, gray-haired serving woman gave them directions to the room she had just finished making up, on the third gallery of the novices’ quarters, and hurried on after brief curtsies to the two Reds. She never so much as glanced at Egwene. What was another novice to her? It tightened Egwene’s jaw. She was going to have to make people not see her as just another novice.

  “Look at her face,” Barasine said. “I think it’s finally settling in on her.”

  “I am who I am,” Egwene replied calmly. Barasine pushed her toward the stairs that rose through the hollow column of railed galleries, lit by the fat, waning moon. A breeze sighed through, the only sound. It all seemed so peaceful. There was no light showing around any door. The novices would be asleep by now, except for those who had late chores or tasks. It was peaceful for them. Not for Egwene, though.

  The tiny, windowless room might almost have been the one she had occupied when she first came to the Tower, with its narrow bed built against the wall and a small fire burning on the little brick hearth. The lamp on the small table was lit, but it lighted little more than the tabletop, and the oil must have gone bad, because it gave off a faint, unpleasant stink. A washstand completed the furnishings, except for a three-legged stool, onto which Katerine promptly lowered herself, adjusting her skirts as though on a throne. Realizing there was nowhere for her to sit, Barasine crossed her arms beneath her breasts and frowned at Egwene.

  The room was quite crowded with three women in it, but Egwene pretended the other two did not exist as she readied herself for bed, hanging her cloak and belt and dress on three of the pegs set along one rough-plastered white wall. She did not ask for help with her buttons. By the time she laid her neatly rolled stockings atop her shoes, Barasine had settled herself cross-legged on the floor and was immersed in a small, leather-bound book that she must have carried in her belt pouch. Katerine kept her eyes on Egwene as though she expected her to make a break for the door.

  Crawling beneath the light woolen blanket in her shift, Egwene settled her head on the small pillow—not a goose down pillow, that was for sure!—and went through the exercises, relaxing her body one part at a time, that would put her to sleep. She had done that so often that it seemed no sooner had she begun, than she was asleep . . .

  . . . and floating, formless, in a darkness that lay between the waking world and Tel’aran’rhiod, the narrow gap between dream and reality, a vast void filled with a myriad of twinkling specks of light that were all the dreams of all the sleepers in the world. They floated around her, in this place with no up or down, as far as the eye could see, flickering out as a dream ended, springing alight as one began. She could recognize some at sight, put a name to the dreamer, but she did not see the one she sought.

  It was to Siuan she needed to speak, Siuan who likely knew by now that disaster had struck, who might be unable to sleep until exhaustion took her under. She settled herself to wait. There was no sense of time here; she would not grow bored with waiting. But she had to work out what to say. So much had changed since she wakened. She had learned so much. Then, she had been sure she would die soon, sure the sisters inside the Tower were a solid army behind Elaida. Now. . . . Elaida thought her safely imprisoned. No matter this talk of making her a novice again; even if Elaida really believed it, Egwene al’Vere did not. She did not consider herself a prisoner, either. She was carrying the battle into the heart of the Tower itself. If she had had lips there, she would have smiled.

  CHAPTER 1

  When Last Sounds

  The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose above the broken mountain named Dragonmount. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

  Born beneath the glow of a fat, sinking moon, at an altitude where men could not breathe, born among writhing currents heated by the fires inside the r
agged peak, the wind was a zephyr in the beginning, yet it gained in strength as it rushed down the steep, rugged slope. Carrying ash and the stench of burning sulfur from the heights, the wind roared across the sudden, snowy hills that reared from the plain surrounding the impossible height of Dragonmount, roared and tossed trees in the night.

  Eastward out of the hills the wind howled, across a large pasture encampment, a considerable village of tents and wooden walkways lining streets of frozen ruts. Soon enough the ruts would melt and the last of the snow vanish, replaced by spring rains and mud. If the encampment remained that long. Despite the hour, many among the Aes Sedai were awake, gathered in small groups warded against eavesdropping, discussing what had transpired this night. No few of those discussions were quite animated, little short of argument, and some held undeniable heat. Fists might have been shaken or worse had they not belonged to Aes Sedai. What to do next was the question. Every sister knew the news from the riverbank by now, if the details remained sketchy. The Amyrlin herself had gone in secret to seal Northharbor, and her boat had been found overturned and caught in the reeds. Survival in the swift, icy currents of the Erinin was unlikely, and hour by hour it had become more so, until certainty hardened. The Amyrlin Seat was dead. Every sister in the camp knew that her future and perhaps her life hung by a thread, not to mention the future of the White Tower itself. What to do now? Yet voices fell silent and heads came up as the fierce blast struck the camp, fluttering tent canvas like flags, pelting it with clods of snow. The sudden stink of burning sulphur hung heavy in the air, announcing where that wind had come from, and more than one Aes Sedai offered a silent prayer against evil. In moments, though, the wind had passed, and the sisters bent back to their deliberations on a future bleak enough to fit the sharp, fading stench left behind.

  On the wind roared toward Tar Valon, gaining strength as it went, shrieking over military camps near the river where soldiers and camp followers sleeping on the ground suddenly had their blankets stripped off and those in tents awoke to canvas jerking and sometimes whipping away into the darkness as tent pegs gave way or guy ropes snapped. Laden wagons rocked and toppled, and banners stood out stiff before they were uprooted, their hurtling staffs now spears that pierced whatever lay in their path. Leaning against the gale, men struggled to the horselines to calm animals that reared and screamed in fear. None knew what the Aes Sedai knew, yet the biting, sulphurous smell that filled the chill night air seemed an ill omen, and hardened men offered their prayers aloud as fervently as the beardless boys. Camp followers added their own, and loudly, armorers and farriers and fletchers, wives and laundresses and seamstresses, all clutched by the sudden fear that something darker than blackness stalked the night.

  The fierce flutter of canvas overhead, near to ripping, the babble of voices and the screams of horses, loud enough to cut through the wailing wind, helped Siuan Sanche struggle awake for the second time. The abrupt stink of burning sulphur made her eyes water, and she was grateful for it. Egwene might be able to don and doff sleep like a pair of stockings, but the same was not true for her. Sleep had been hard enough to come by after she finally made herself lie down. Once the news had reached her from the riverbank, she had been sure she never would sleep short of utter exhaustion. She had offered prayers for Leane, but all of their hopes rested on Egwene’s shoulders, and all of their hopes seemed gutted and hung up to dry. Well, she had exhausted herself with nerves and worry and pacing. Now there was hope again, and she did not dare let her leaden eyelids close for fear she would sink back into slumber and not wake till midday, if then. The ferocious wind abated, but people’s shouts and horses’ cries did not.

  Wearily, she tossed aside her blankets and stood up unsteadily. Her bedding was hardly comfortable, laid out on the canvas ground-cloth in a corner of the not-very-large square tent, yet she had come here, though it meant riding. Of course, she had been near falling down by then, and likely not in her right mind from grief. She touched the twisted ring ter’angreal hanging from a leather cord around her neck. Her first waking, every bit as hard as this one, had been to fetch that from her belt pouch. Well, the grief was vanquished now, and that was adequate to keep her moving. A sudden yawn made her jaws creak like rusty oarlocks. Barely adequate. You would have thought Egwene’s message, the fact that Egwene was alive to send a message, would be enough to banish bone-weariness. Not so, it appeared.

  Channeling a globe of light long enough to see the box-lantern on the main tent pole, she lit it with a thread of Fire. The single flame gave a very pale, flickering illumination. There were other lamps and lanterns, but Gareth went on so about how little lamp oil there was in stock. The brazier, she left unlit; Gareth was not so parsimonious with charcoal as oil—charcoal was easier to come by—but she was barely aware of the frigid air. She frowned at his bedding, still lying untouched on the other side of the tent. He surely was aware of the boat’s discovery and who it had carried. The sisters did their best to keep secrets from him, but somehow, they succeeded less often than most believed. More than once he had startled her with what he knew. Was he out there in the night organizing his soldiers for whatever the Hall decided? Or had he already departed, leaving a lost cause? No longer lost, yet he must be unaware of that.

  “No,” she muttered, feeling an odd sense of . . . treachery . . . that she had cast doubt on the man, even in her own mind. He would still be there at sunrise, and for every sunrise until the Hall commanded him to leave. Maybe longer. She did not believe he would abandon Egwene whatever the Hall commanded. He was too stubborn, proud. No; it was not that. Gareth Bryne’s word was his honor. Once given, he would not take it back unless released, whatever the cost to himself. And maybe, just maybe, he had other reasons to stay. She refused to think of that.

  Putting Gareth out of her mind—why had she come to his tent? It would have been so much easier to lie down in her own in the sisters’ camp, cramped as it was, or even to have kept the weeping Chesa company, though on second thought, that last might have been beyond her. She could not abide weeping, and Egwene’s maid would not stop—putting Gareth firmly out of her head, she ran a hasty brush through her hair, changed her shift for a fresh one, and dressed as quickly as she could in the dim light. Her plain blue wool riding dress was rumpled, and spotted with mud on the hem besides—she had gone down to see the boat for herself—but she did not take the time to clean and press it with the Power. She had to hurry.

  The tent was far from the spacious affair you would have expected of a general, so hurrying meant bumping her hip against a corner of the writing table hard enough that one of the legs almost folded before she could catch it, nearly tripping over the camp stool, the only thing approaching a chair, and barking her shins on the brass-bound chests that lay scattered about. That brought a curse that would have singed any listener’s ears. The things served double duty, seats as well as storage, and one with a flat top did for a makeshift washstand with a white pitcher and bowl. In truth, they were arrayed in a neat enough fashion, but one peculiar to him. He could find his way through that maze in pitch dark. Anyone else would break a leg trying to reach his bedding. She supposed he must have a concern for assassins, though he had never voiced it.

  Gathering her dark cloak from atop one of the chests and folding it over her arm, she paused on the point of snuffing the lantern with a flow of Air. For a moment she stared at Gareth’s second pair of boots, standing at the foot of his bedding. Channeling another small sphere of light, she moved it close to the boots. As she had thought. Freshly blacked. The bloody man insisted she work off her debt, then sneaked in behind her back—or worse, under her nose while she slept—and blacked his own bloody boots! Gareth bloody Bryne treated her like a maidservant, never so much as tried to kiss her . . . !

  She jerked upright, her mouth going taut as a mooring rope. Now where had that thought come from? No matter what Egwene claimed, she was not in love with Gareth bloody Bryne! She was not! She had too much work in front of he
r to get caught in that kind of foolishness. That’s why you stopped wearing embroidery, I suppose, a small voice whispered in the back of her head. All those pretty things, stuffed into chests because you’re afraid. Afraid? Burn her if she was afraid of him or any man!

  Carefully channeling Earth, Fire and Air just so, she laid the weave on the boots. Every last bit of the blacking, and most of the dye as well, came away and formed into a neat, glistening sphere that floated in the air, leaving the leather decidedly gray. For a moment she contemplated depositing the ball among his blankets. That would be a suitable surprise for him when he finally lay down!

  With a sigh, she pushed open the doorflap and took the ball outside into the darkness to let it splash onto the ground. The man had a short and extremely disrespectful way when she let her temper carry her too far, as she had discovered the first time she hit him over the head with the boots she was cleaning. And when he made her so angry she put salt in his tea. Quite a lot of salt, but it had not been her fault he was hurried enough to drain the cup in a gulp. To try to, at any rate. Oh, he never seemed to mind when she shouted, and sometimes he shouted back—sometimes he just smiled, which was purely infuriating!—yet he had his limits. She could have stopped him with a simple weave of Air, of course, but she had her honor as much as he had his, burn him! Anyway, she had to stay close to him. Min said so, and the girl seemed infallible. That was the only reason she had not stuffed a fistful of gold down Gareth Bryne’s throat and told him he was paid and be burned. The only reason! Besides her own honor, of course.

  Yawning, she left the dark puddle shining in the cold moonlight. If he stepped in it before it dried and tracked the mess inside, the blame would be his own and none of hers. At least the sulphur smell had faded a little. Her eyes had stopped overflowing, though what she could see was turmoil.