The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  Simple perhaps, yet for above a week Moiraine’s focus might slip at any time, sitting at supper or walking down a corridor, and she would let out a gasp as the cold suddenly rushed in and bit down three times as hard as before she began the meditation. In public, all that huffing attracted stares from other sisters. She very much feared she was gaining a reputation as a dreamer. And as a constant blusher. It was hardly to be borne. Needless to say, Siuan picked up the trick straightaway and never shivered again that Moiraine saw.

  The Feast of Lights came to mark the turning of the year, and for two days every window in Tar Valon shone brightly from twilight till dawn. In the Tower, servants entered chambers that had been unused for centuries, to light lamps and make sure they burned the whole two days. It was a joyous celebration, with processions of citizens carrying lamps through the night-cloaked streets and merry gatherings that frequently lasted until sunrise in even the poorest homes, but it filled Moiraine with sadness. Chambers unused for centuries. The White Tower was dwindling, and she could not see what was to be done about it. But then, if women who had worn the shawl two hundred years or more could find no solution, why should she be able to?

  Many sisters received ornately inscribed invitations to balls during the feast, and quite a number accepted. Aes Sedai could like dancing as well as any other woman. Moiraine got invitations, too, from Cairhienin nobles of two dozen Houses and almost as many merchants wealthy enough to rub shoulders with the nobility. Only the Hall’s plans for her could have placed so many powerful Cairhienin in the city at one time. She tossed the stiff white cards into the fireplace unanswered. A dangerous move in Daes Dae’mar, with no way to tell how it might be interpreted, but she was not playing the Game of Houses. She was hiding.

  Surprisingly, their first dresses were delivered early on the first day of the feast. Either Tamore was eager for her gratuity, or more likely, she thought they would want the garments for feastday festivities. She came with two of her assistants to see whether any adjustments were necessary, but none were. Tamore was excellent at what she did. Moiraine had been right, though. The darkest of her six was in a hue little deeper than sky blue, and only two were embroidered, which meant nearly everything else would be. She would have to keep on wearing the woolens the Ajah had given her a while longer. At least all of her riding dresses would be dark. Even Tamore could not ask for a riding dress in too light a hue. Siuan’s dresses, only one divided for riding, displayed all the elegance Tamore was capable of, making them suitable for a palace despite being wool, but they emphasized her bosom and hips quite strongly. Siuan affected not to notice, or perhaps did not. She really cared very little about clothing.

  Some things were not easy for Siuan, either. She returned from Cetalia’s apartments with a face that grew stiffer by the day. Every day she became more prickly and irritable, but she refused to reveal what the problem was, and even snapped at Moiraine when she persisted in asking. That was worrying; she could count on the fingers of one hand, with fingers left over, the times Siuan had gotten angry with her in six years. The day Tamore delivered the dresses, however, Siuan joined her for tea in her rooms before going down to supper, but instead of taking a cup, she flung herself down in a leaf-carved armchair and folded her arms angrily beneath her breasts. Her face was anything but stiff, and her eyes were blue fire.

  “That bloody fangfish of a woman will be the bloody death of me yet,” she growled. That half a week had undone every scrap of the sisters’ hard work with her language. “Fish guts! She expects me to jump like a spawning redtail! I never jumped so fast when I was a—!” She gave a strangled grunt and her eyes popped as the First Oath clamped down. Coughing, her face turning pale, she pounded a fist on her chest. Moiraine hastily poured a cup of tea, but it was minutes before Siuan could drink. Her mind must have been racing for her to come that close.

  “Well, not when I was Accepted, anyway,” she muttered once she could speak again. “From the moment I arrive it’s ‘Find this, Siuan’ and ‘Do that, Siuan’ and ‘Aren’t you finished yet, Siuan?’ Cetalia snaps her fingers and bloody well expects me to jump.”

  “That is how things are,” Moiraine said judiciously. The situation could have been much worse, but Siuan’s mind apparently had changed on that point, and she did not want to start an argument. “It will not last forever, and only a handful of sisters stand so high above us.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Siuan grumbled. “You don’t have bloody Cetalia snapping her fingers at you.”

  That was true, yet it hardly meant her task was easy. The new lessons left her little free time, but she had hoped distributing the bounty would allow her to search among the camps that still remained. Instead, for two or three hours each morning she sat in a windowless room, on the eighth level of the Tower, just large enough for a plain writing table and two straight-backed chairs. Mirrored stand-lamps of unadorned brass stood in the four corners, giving a good and very necessary light. Lacking them, the chamber would have been twilight dark at noon. Normally, a senior clerk sat there, but whoever that was, she or he had left no imprint on the room at all. Only inkwell, pen tray, sand jar and a small white bowl of alcohol for cleaning the pens sat on the table, and the pale stone walls were bare.

  The considerably larger outer room was crowded by rows of high, narrow writing desks and tall stools, but as soon as she arrived, the clerks formed a line that stretched from her writing table and nearly circled their own room, bringing her lists of women who had received the bounty and reports on arrangements to send the money to women who had already left. The number of those reports was distressing. Few camps remained, and the last were melting away like frost in sunlight. None of the clerks used her second chair, only stood respectfully while she read each page and signed her approval at the bottom, then curtsied or bowed and made way for the next without a word. Very quickly she began to think it really might be possible to die of boredom.

  She tried to make them arrange the distribution faster—the Tower’s vast resources could have seen to it in a week, surely; the Tower held hundreds more clerks—but clerks worked at their own pace. They even seemed to slow down after her suggestion of speed. She considered begging Tamra to release her from the task, but why put her herself to useless effort? What better way to keep her shackled in Tar Valon until the Hall’s schemes came to fruition? Boredom and frustration. Still, she had her plan. That helped, a bit. Slowly, a conviction settled in her. If worse came to worst, she would run, whatever penance that earned her. Any penance lay in the future, and must end eventually. The Sun Throne would be a sentence for life.

  The day after the Feast of Lights, Ellid was summoned to her testing, though Moiraine only heard of it after. The beautiful Accepted who wanted to become a Green failed to come out of the ter’angreal. There was no announcement; the White Tower never flaunted its failures, and a woman dying in her test was counted a great failure on the Tower’s part. Ellid simply disappeared, and her belongings were taken away. There was a day of mourning, however, and Moiraine wore white ribbons in her hair and tied a long, lace-edged white silk kerchief around each arm so they dangled to her wrists. She had never liked Ellid, but the woman deserved her grief.

  Not every sister who was strong enough to make them jump showed any desire to do so. Elaida avoided them, or at least they did not see her again before hearing she had left to return to Andor. Even so, learning she was gone was a relief. She stood as high as they would one day, and could have made their lives a misery almost as badly as she had when they were novice and Accepted. Perhaps worse. The petty errands novice and Accepted took as expected would have been near a penance for them as Aes Sedai. Perhaps more than near.

  Lelaine, who stood as high as Elaida and was a Sitter to boot, had them to tea several times, to ease the strain of the first weeks as she put it. Siuan got on very well with her, though she made Moiraine a little nervous with that penetrating gaze. It always seemed that Lelaine knew more of you than she reve
aled, that you had no secrets with her. But then, Siuan appeared unable to understand Moiraine’s liking for Anaiya. It was not the Healing. Anaiya was warm and open, and made you feel that all would come out well in the end. Almost any conversation with Anaiya turned out comforting. Moiraine thought that in time she might become as close a friend as Leane, if not so close as Siuan.

  That friendship with Leane took up right where it had left off, for her and Siuan both, and brought with it Adine Canford, a plump, blue-eyed woman with short-cut black hair who displayed not a hint of arrogance despite being Andoran. Of course, she was not very strong in the Power. It really was becoming second nature to consider that. They renewed acquaintance with sisters of other Ajahs who had been Accepted with them and found that in some cases friendship revived within a few words and in others had shrunk to mere amity, while a few had grown too accustomed to the gap between Aes Sedai and Accepted to close it again now they wore the shawl, too. It was enough. Friends lightened many burdens, even those they did not know of.

  Friends or no friends, though, the days passed with glacial slowness. Meilyn finally departed the Tower, and then Kerene, followed in turn by Aisha, Ludice and Valera, but Moiraine’s relief that the search was under way at last was tempered by frustration at being kept out of it. Siuan began to grow interested in her job, to the point where her complaints started to seem more for the form of the thing. She headed off to Cetalia’s rooms earlier than need be, and often remained until the second or third sitting of supper. Moiraine had no such buffer. Her nightmares continued, of the babe in the snow and the faceless man and the Sun Throne, although not as frequently, save the last. Ever as bad, though. She banished most of the lace and ruffles from her rooms, which required only a visit to a cushionmaker and a small wait for their alteration by twos and threes. Not all, because of Anaiya’s obvious if silent disappointment at seeing them go, so her bed remained an ocean of froth that made Siuan giggle with delight. But she spent more time in her other rooms, so the bed it had to be. After numerous efforts, she managed to bake a pie without burning it black, but Aeldra took one bite and turned pale green. Siuan produced a fish pie that the gray-haired sister declared quite tasty, only within the hour she was running for the privy and required Healing. No one accused them of doing anything deliberate, which they had not, but Anaiya and Kairen thought it an excellent repayment for greediness.

  Only a week after Ellid, on High Chasaline, Sheriam was tested and passed. Technically, Siuan was the newest Blue by a hair, but Cetalia refused to lose her services for even a few hours, so it was Moiraine who laid the shawl on the fire-haired Saldaean’s shoulders when she chose the Blue the following day, and escorted her beaming back to the Blue quarters for the welcome. Where Siuan managed to nip in for the sixth kiss. Sheriam was a very good cook, and loved to bake.

  It was the Day of Reflection in Cairhien, yet Moiraine could not manage to dwell on her sins and faults. She and Siuan had regained a friend they had feared might be lost for a year. Siuan even suggested bringing Sheriam into their search, and talking her out of it required hours. It was not that Moiraine feared Sheriam would expose them to Tamra, but Sheriam had been one of the biggest gossips in the Accepted’s quarters. She never told what she promised to keep hidden, yet she would be unable to resist giving hints of such a juicy secret, hints that she had a secret, as Siuan should have known very well. Let others know you possessed a secret, and some would work to learn it; that was a fact of nature. Sometimes Siuan did not known the meaning of caution. Sometimes? No; never.

  Sisters began to talk of a resurgence in the Tower, with so many passing for the shawl in so short a time, and perhaps another one or two who might very soon. By custom, none spoke of Ellid, but Moiraine thought of her. One woman dead and three raised to the shawl in the space of two weeks, but the only novice to test for Accepted in that time had failed and been sent away, and not one name was added to the novice book, while above twenty novices too weak ever to reach the shawl were put out. Those chambers would remain unused for centuries more at this rate. Until they were all unused. Siuan tried to soothe her, but how could she be happy when the White Tower was destined to become a monument to the dead?

  Three days later, Moiraine wished she had spent the Day of Reflection properly. She was not superstitious, but failure to do so always brought ill luck to someone you cared for, so it was said. She was at the second sitting of breakfast, slowly eating her porridge and fretting over the boredom of torture by clerk to come, when Ryma Galfrey glided into the dining hall. Slim and elegant in yellow-slashed green, much of a height with Moiraine, she was not one of those Moiraine needed to defer to, but she had a regal bearing accentuated by the rubies in her hair like a crown, and a haughty cast typical of Yellows to her face. Startlingly, she wove Air and Fire to make her voice clearly audible in every corner of the dining hall.

  “Last night, Tamra Ospenya, the Watcher of the Seals, the Flame of Tar Valon, the Amyrlin Seat, died in her sleep. May the Light shine on her soul.” Her voice was perfectly self-possessed, as though she had announced it would rain that day, and she waited only long enough to run a cool eye over the room to make sure her words had been absorbed before leaving.

  A buzz of talk started up immediately at the other tables, but Moiraine sat stunned. Aes Sedai died before their time as often as anyone else, and sisters did not grow feeble with the years—death came in apparent full good health—yet this was so unexpected that she felt hit on the head by a hammer. The Light illumine Tamra’s soul, she prayed silently. The Light illumine her soul. Surely it would. What would happen to the search for the boychild now? Nothing, of course. Tamra’s chosen searchers knew their task; they would inform the new Amyrlin of their task. Perhaps the new Amyrlin would release her from her own labor, if she got to the woman before the Hall informed her of their scheme.

  Self-disgust immediately stabbed her heart, and she pushed the bowl of porridge away, all appetite gone. A woman she admired with all her soul had died, and she thought of advantage in it! Daes Dae’mar truly was ingrained in her bones, and maybe all the darkness of the Damodreds.

  She very nearly asked Merean for a penance, but the Mistress of Novices might give her something that would hold her in Tar Valon longer. Considering that just added to her guilt. So she set her own penance. Only one dress she owned came close to the white of grieving, the blue so pale it seemed more white tinged with blue, and she put that on for Tamra’s funeral rites. Tamore had embroidered the garment front and back and sleeves with a fine, intricate blue mesh that looked innocent enough until she actually donned the dress. Then it seemed as blatant as what the seamstress herself had worn. No, not seemed; it was. She very nearly wept after examining herself in the stand-mirror.

  Siuan blinked at the sight of her in the corridor outside their rooms. “Are you sure you want to wear that?” She sounded half-strangled. Long white ribbons were tied in her hair, and longer tied around her arms. The passing sisters all wore variations of the same. Aes Sedai never put on full mourning, except for Whites, who did not consider it so.

  “Sometimes a penance is required,” Moiraine replied, deliberately moving her shawl down into the crooks of her elbows, and Siuan asked no more. There were questions one asked, and questions one did not. That was strong custom. And friendship.

  Wearing their shawls, every sister residing in the Tower gathered at a secluded clearing in a woody part of the Tower grounds, where Tamra’s body lay on a bier, sewn into a simple blue shroud. The morning air was more than brisk—Moiraine was aware of that despite feeling no urge to shiver—and even the surrounding oaks were still leafless beneath a gray sky, their thick twisted limbs suitable framing for a funeral. Moiraine’s garment earned more than a few raised eyebrows, but the sisters’ disapproval was part of her penance. Mortification of the Spirit was always the hardest to endure. Strangely, the Whites all wore glossy black ribbons, yet it must have been an Ajah custom, for it garnered no frowns or stares from the oth
er sisters. They must have seen it before. Any who wished were allowed to speak a prayer or a few words in memory, and most did. Only the Sitters spoke among the Reds, and then in very few words, but perhaps that was custom as well.

  Moiraine made herself go forward and stand before the bier, shawl loosely draped, exposing herself, knowing she would be the focus of every eye. The hardest to bear. “May the Light illumine Tamra’s soul, brightly as she deserved, and may she shelter in the Creator’s hand until her rebirth. The Light send her a radiant rebirth. I cannot think of any woman I admired more than Tamra. I admire her and honor her still. I always will.” Tears welled in her eyes, and not from the humiliation that stabbed her like long thorns. She had never really known Tamra—novices and Accepted never really knew sisters, much less the Amyrlin Seat—but, oh, Light, she would miss her.

  According to Tamra’s wishes, her body was consumed by flows of Fire, and her ashes scattered across the grounds of the White Tower by the sisters of the Ajah she had been raised from, the Ajah to which she had returned in death. Moiraine was not alone in weeping. Aes Sedai serenity could not armor against all things.

  The rest of the day she wore that shaming dress, and that night burned it. She would never have been able to look at it again without remembering.

  Until a new Amyrlin was raised, the Hall of the Tower reigned over the Tower, but there were increasingly strict measures in the law to insure they did not dally too long, and by the evening after Tamra’s funeral, Sierin Vayu had been raised from the Gray. An Amyrlin was supposed to grant indulgences and relief from penances on the day she assumed the stole and the staff. None came from Sierin, and in the space of half a week, every last male clerk in the Tower had been dismissed without a character, supposedly for flirting with novices or Accepted, or for “inappropriate looks and glances,” which could have meant anything. Even men so old their grandchildren had children went, and some who had no liking for women at all. No one commented on it, however. No one dared, not where it might come to Sierin’s ears.