The Gathering Storm

by Robert Jordan

  “Nonsense,” Suana said. “Whites are too emotionless; we don’t want to alienate sisters, we want to bring them together. Heal them! Why, a Yellow—”

  “You’re all forgetting something,” Serancha interjected. “What is needed now? A reconciliation. The Gray Ajah is the one that has spent centuries practicing the art of negotiation. Who better to deal with a divided Tower, and the Dragon Reborn himself?”

  Adelorna gripped the armrests of her chair and straightened her back. The others were growing tense as well. As Adelorna opened her mouth to speak, Jesse cut her off.

  “Enough!” she interjected. “Are we just going to squabble as the Hall has been doing all morning? Each Ajah offering its own members, and the others summarily rejecting them?”

  The room fell silent again. It was true; the Hall had been in session for hours and had only just gone into a short recess. No one Ajah was close to getting enough support for one of its candidates. The Sitters would not stand for anyone not of their own Ajah; there was too much animosity between them. Light, but this was a mess!

  “Ideally, it should be one of us five,” Ferane said. “That makes sense.”

  The five looked at each other, and Jesse could read their answers to that in their eyes. They were the Ajah heads, the most powerful women in the world. Right now, they were balanced in power, and while they trusted each other more than most, there was no way any of them would allow the elevation of another Ajah head to the Amyrlin Seat. It would give the woman far too much power. After the failure of their plan, trust was wearing very thin.

  “If we don’t decide soon,” Suana noted, “the Hall may take the decision from us.”

  “Bah.” Adelorna waved a hand. “They’re so divided they can’t agree on what color the sky is. The Sitters have no idea what they’re doing.”

  “At least some of us didn’t choose Sitters who were years too young to be placed in the Hall,” Ferane said.

  “Oh?” Adelorna said. “And you got around that how, Ferane? By choosing yourself as a Sitter?”

  Ferane’s eyes widened with rage. It was not a good idea to rile that woman’s temper.

  “We all made mistakes,” Jesse said quickly. “Many sisters we chose were odd. We wanted women who would do exactly as we said, but instead we got a group of squabbling brats with inflated opinions of themselves, too immature for more temperate minds to influence.”

  Adelorna and Ferane made a point of not looking at each other.

  “This still leaves us with a problem,” Suana said. “We need an Amyrlin. Healing must begin quickly, whatever the cost.”

  Serancha shook her head. “I honestly can’t think of a single woman that a sufficient number of Sitters would support.”

  “I can,” Adelorna said softly. “She was mentioned in the Hall several times today. You know of whom I speak. She is young, and her circumstances are unusual, but everything is unusual at the moment.”

  “I don’t know,” Suana said, frowning. “She was mentioned, yes, but by those whose motives I don’t trust.”

  “Saerin seems quite taken with her,” Jesse admitted.

  “She’s too young,” Serancha said. “Weren’t we just berating ourselves for choosing Sitters who lacked the necessary experience?”

  “She is young, yes,” Ferane noted, “but you have to admit, there’s a certain . . . flair to her. I hardly think that anyone in the Tower stood up to Elaida as effectively as she. And while in such a position as she was, no less!”

  “You’ve heard the reports of her actions during the attack,” Adelorna said. “I can confirm that they are true. I was there with her for most of it.”

  Jesse started at this. She hadn’t realized that Adelorna had been on the twenty-second level during the fighting. “Surely some of what was said is exaggeration.”

  Adelorna shook her head grimly. “No. It isn’t. It sounds incredible . . . but it . . . well, it happened. All of it.”

  “The novices all but worship her,” Ferane said. “If the Sitters will not stand for someone of another Ajah, what of a woman who never picked an Ajah? A woman who has some experience—however unjustified—in holding the very position we are discussing?”

  Jesse found herself nodding. But how had the young rebel gained such respect from Ferane and Adelorna?

  “I am uncertain,” Suana said. “It seems like another rash decision.”

  “Didn’t you yourself say that we had to heal the Tower, no matter what the cost?” Adelorna asked. “Can you honestly think of a better way to bring the rebels back to us?” She turned to Serancha. “What is the best method of appeasing an offended party? Would it not be to give some ground to them, acknowledge what they have done right?”

  “She has a point,” Suana admitted. She grimaced, then downed the rest of her tea in one gulp. “Light, but she’s right, Serancha. We have to do it.”

  The Gray looked at each of them in turn. “You aren’t foolish enough to assume this woman will be led by the nose, are you? I won’t stand for this if we’re simply trying to create another puppet. That plan failed. It failed miserably.”

  “I doubt we’ll find ourselves in that situation again,” Ferane said, smiling faintly. “This one . . . is not the type to be bullied. Just look at how she dealt with Elaida’s restrictions.”

  “Yes,” Jesse found herself saying, to her own surprise. “Sisters, if we agree to this, it will end our dream of ruling from the shadows. For better or worse, we’ll be setting up an Amyrlin of strength.”

  “I, for one,” Adelorna said, “think that’s a splendid idea. It’s been too long.”

  One by one, the others agreed.

  Siuan stood, unmoving, beneath the boughs of a small oak. The tree had been engulfed by the camp, and its shade had become a favored location for Accepted and novices taking lunches. There were none doing so at the moment; the sisters, showing remarkably good judgment this time, had set them tasks to keep them from congregating around the tent where the Hall was meeting.

  And so Siuan stood alone, watching as Sheriam pulled the flaps to the large pavilion closed. She was able to attend now that Egwene was back. It was easy to sense when the ward against eavesdropping was woven, Sealing the meeting to the Flame and excluding prying ears.

  A hand fell on Siuan’s shoulder. She didn’t jump; she’d sensed Bryne approaching. The general walked with stealth, although there was no need. He was going to make an excellent Warder.

  He stepped up beside her, hand still comfortably on her shoulder, and she allowed herself the luxury of taking just a small step closer to him. His height and sturdiness felt good beside her. Like knowing that though the sky stormed and the sea raged, your hull was caulked and your sail crafted of the strongest cloth.

  “What do you think she will tell them?” Bryne asked, his voice subdued.

  “I honestly have no idea. She could call for my stilling, I suppose.”

  “I doubt that she will,” Bryne asked. “She is not the vengeful type. Besides, she knows that you did what you felt you had to. For her own good.”

  Siuan grimaced. “Nobody likes being disobeyed, least of all the Amyrlin. I will pay for last night, Bryne. You’re right that it probably won’t be in a public way, but I worry that I’ve lost the girl’s trust.”

  “And was it worth the cost?”

  “Yes,” Siuan said. “She didn’t realize how close this band was to slipping away from her. And we couldn’t know that she’d be safe within the Tower during the attack. If there’s one thing my time in the White Tower taught me, it’s that there is a time for gathering and planning, but one also has to act. You can’t always wait for certainty.”

  She could feel Bryne’s smile through the bond. Light, but it was good to have a Warder again. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed that comforting knot of emotions in the back of her mind. That stability. Men thought differently from women, and things she found complicated and baffling, Bryne saw as straightforward and simple. Make you
r decision and go. There was a helpful clarity to his way of reasoning. Not that he was simple—just less inclined to regret decisions he’d already made.

  “And what of the other costs?” Bryne added.

  She could feel his hesitation, his worry. She turned to him, smiling in amusement. “You’re a fool, Gareth Bryne.”

  He frowned.

  “Bonding you was never a cost,” she said. “Whatever else happens because of this fiasco, that aspect of the night’s events were pure profit on my part.”

  He chuckled. “Well, I’ll have to make extra certain that my second demand is more unreasonable, then.”

  Fish guts, Siuan thought. She’d almost forgotten about that. Burning unlikely that Bryne would, though. “And when, precisely, are you going to make this unreasonable demand of me?”

  He didn’t respond immediately, instead looking down at her, rubbing his chin. “You know,” he said, “I think I actually understand you now, Siuan Sanche. You are a woman of honor. It’s just that nobody else’s requirements of you can ever be more harsh or more demanding than your own requirements of yourself. You owe such a self-imposed debt to your own sense of duty that I doubt any mortal being could pay it back.”

  “You make me sound centered on myself,” she said.

  “At least I’m not comparing you to a boar again.”

  “So you do think I’m self-centered!” she said. Burn him! He could probably sense that she was actually bothered by his statement, rather than making argument for the sake of it. Burn him again!

  “You’re a driven woman, Siuan Sanche,” he said. “Driven to save the world from itself. That’s how you can shrug off an oath or an order so easily.”

  Siuan took a deep breath. “This conversation grew very tedious very quickly, Gareth Bryne. Are you going to tell me that other demand, or are you going to make me wait?”

  He studied her stone face thoughtfully. “Well, frankly, I’m planning to demand that you marry me.”

  She blinked in surprise. Light! The bond said that he was honest.

  “But only after you feel the world can care for itself. I won’t agree to it before then, Siuan. You’ve given your life to something. I’ll see that you survive through it; I hope that once you’re done, you’ll be willing to give your life to something else instead.”

  She reined in her shock. She wouldn’t let a fool man make her speechless. “Well,” she forced herself to say. “I see you have some sense after all. We shall see if I agree to this ‘demand’ of yours or not. I will think on it.”

  Bryne chuckled as she turned around to regard the pavilion, waiting for Egwene’s reappearance. He could sense the truth from inside her, just as she could sense it from him. Light! Now she knew why Greens married their Warders so often. Feeling his affection for her while she felt the same for him made her giddy.

  He was a fool of a man. And she no less a fool of a woman. She shook her head ruefully, but she did let herself lean back against him softly as they waited, and he replaced his hand on her shoulder. Soft, not forceful. Willing to wait. He did understand her.

  Egwene stood before a group of smooth faces that were far too good at hiding their anxiety. By custom, she had ordered Kwamesa to weave the ward against eavesdropping, as the sharp-nosed Gray was the youngest among the Sitters in the large tent. It looked almost empty with so few places taken. A dozen women, two from each Ajah—there would have been three of each, but the Ajahs had all sent one Sitter with the envoy to the Black Tower. The Grays had already replaced Delana with Naorisa Cambral.

  Twelve Sitters, along with Egwene and one other. Egwene did not look at Sheriam, who sat in her place to the side. Sheriam had seemed troubled as she entered. Did she realize what Egwene knew? She couldn’t. If she had, she’d never have come to the meeting.

  Still, knowing she was there—and knowing what she was—made Egwene nervous. In the chaos of the Seanchan attack, Siuan hadn’t been able to watch Sheriam. Why did the Keeper wear a bandage on her left hand? Egwene didn’t believe her excuse of an accident while riding, her little finger getting caught in her reins. Why had she refused Healing? Blast Siuan! Instead of watching Sheriam, she’d come to kidnap Egwene!

  The Hall grew still, the women waiting to see what Egwene’s response would be to her “freedom.” Romanda, gray-streaked hair up in a bun, sat primly in a yellow dress. She oozed satisfaction, while Lelaine—on the opposite side of the room—sulked while trying to act pleased at Egwene’s return. After what Egwene had been through in the White Tower, this squabbling felt ridiculously petty.

  Egwene took a deep breath, then embraced the Source. It felt so good! No bitter forkroot to squeeze her power to a trickle, no need to reach through other women to lend her strength. No need for a sa’angreal. Sweet though the fluted wand’s power had been, being strong in and of herself was even more satisfying.

  Several of the women frowned at the action, and not a few of them embraced the Source themselves, as if by reflex, looking about as if for danger.

  “There will be no need for that,” Egwene said to the women. “Not yet. Please release the Source.”

  They were hesitant, but—ostensibly—they accepted her as Amyrlin. One by one their power winked away. Egwene did not release it herself.

  “I am very glad to see that you returned safely, Mother,” Lelaine said. She skirted the Three Oaths by adding the word “safely.”

  “Thank you,” Egwene said calmly.

  “You said that there were important revelations to make,” Varilin added. “Is this regarding the Seanchan attack?”

  Egwene reached to the pouch on her skirt and pulled its contents free. A smooth white rod with the numeral three inscribed on it in the script of the Age of Legends, near the base. There were several gasps.

  Egwene wove Spirit into the Rod, then spoke in a clear voice. “I vow that I will speak no word that is not true.” She felt the oath fall over her like a physical thing, her skin growing tighter, prickling. It was easy to ignore; the pain was nothing compared with what she had been through. “I vow that I will make no weapon for one man to kill another. I vow that I will never use the One Power as a weapon except against Darkfriends and Shadowspawn, or in the last extreme of defending my life or that of my Warder or of another sister.”

  The Hall was silent. Egwene released her weave. Her skin felt so odd! As if someone had pinched the excess up at the base of her neck and along her spine, yanking it and binding it in place.

  “Let it no longer be thought that I can avoid keeping the Three Oaths,” Egwene announced. “Let it no longer be breathed that I am not fully Aes Sedai.” None of them said anything about her not having taken the test to gain the shawl. She would see to that another day. “And now that you’ve seen me use the Oath Rod and know that I cannot lie, I will tell you something. During my time in the White Tower, a sister came to me and confided that she was Black Ajah.”

  The women’s eyes bulged, and several gasped quietly.

  “Yes,” Egwene said. “I know we don’t like to speak of them, but can any of us honestly claim that the Black Ajah does not exist? Can you hold to the oaths while saying that you’ve never considered the possibility—even the likelihood—of there being Darkfriends among us?”

  Nobody dared to. The tent felt hot despite the early hour. Stuffy. None of them sweated, of course—they knew the age-old trick of avoiding that.

  “Yes,” Egwene said, “It is shameful, but it is a truth that we—as the leaders of our people—must admit. Not in public; but among ourselves there is no avoiding it. I have seen firsthand what distrust and quiet politicking can do to a people. I will not see the same disease infect us here. We are of different Ajahs, but we are single in purpose. We need to know that we can trust one another implicitly, because there is very little else in this world that can be trusted.”

  Egwene looked down at the Oath Rod, which she’d fetched early in the morning from Saerin. She rubbed her thumb on it. I wish you’d been able to
find this when you visited, Verin, she thought. Perhaps it wouldn’t have saved you, but I would have liked to try. I could use your aid.

  Egwene looked up. “I am not a Darkfriend,” she announced to the room. “And you know it cannot be a lie.”

  The Sitters looked perplexed. Well, they would soon see the point.

  “It is time for us to prove ourselves,” Egwene said. “Some clever women in the White Tower hit upon this idea, and I intend to expand it. We will each in turn use the Oath Rod to release ourselves from the Three Oaths, then reswear them in turn. Once we are all bound, we will be able to promise that we are not servants of—”

  Sheriam embraced the Source. Egwene had been anticipating that. She slammed a shield between Sheriam and the Source, causing the woman to gasp. Berana cried out in shock, and several other women embraced the Source, looking this way and that.

  Egwene turned and met Sheriam’s eyes. The woman’s face was nearly as red as her hair, and she was breathing in and out quickly. Like a captured rabbit, its leg in a snare, eyes wide with fright. She clutched her bandaged hand.

  Oh, Sheriam, Egwene thought. I had hoped that Verin was wrong about you.

  “Egwene?” Sheriam asked uncomfortably. “I was just—”

  Egwene stepped forward. “Are you Black Ajah, Sheriam?”

  “What? Of course not!”

  “Do you consort with the Forsaken?”

  “No!” Sheriam said, glancing to the sides.

  “Do you serve the Dark One?”

  “No!”

  “Have you been released from your oaths?”

  “No!”

  “Do you have red hair?”

  “Of course not, I never—” She froze.

  And thank you for that trick as well, Verin, Egwene thought with a mental sigh.

  The tent grew very, very still.

  “I misspoke, of course,” Sheriam said, sweating nervously. “I didn’t know what question I was answering. I can’t lie, of course. None of us can. . . .”

  She trailed off as Egwene held out the Oath Rod. “Prove it, Sheriam. The woman who came to me in the Tower gave me your name as a leader among the Black Ajah.”