Eyes fixed ahead, Beldeine had not noticed her stumble. Egwene had to lengthen her stride to catch up. This woman is scared to her toenails. What in the Light is she taking me to?
Beldeine stopped before tall, paired doors, their dark wood each inlaid with a large silver Flame of Tar Valon. She wiped her hands on her dress, as if they were suddenly sweaty, before opening one door and leading Egwene up a straight ramp of the same silver-streaked white stone that made Tar Valon’s walls. Even here it seemed to shine.
The ramp let into a large, circular room under a domed ceiling at least thirty paces high. A raised platform ran around the outer edge of the room, fronted by steps except where this ramp and two others came out, spaced equally around the circle. The Flame of Tar Valon lay centered in the floor, surrounded by widening spirals of color, the colors of the seven Ajahs. At the opposite side of the room from where the ramp entered, a high-backed chair stood, heavy and ornately carved in vines and leaves, painted in the colors of all the Ajahs.
Beldeine rapped her staff sharply on the floor. There was a tremor in her voice. “She comes. The Watcher of the Seals. The Flame of Tar Valon. The Amyrlin Seat. She comes.”
With a rustle of skirts, shawled women on the platform got up from their chairs. Twenty-one chairs in groupings of three, each triad painted and cushioned in the same color as the fringe on the shawls of the women who stood before them.
The Hall of the Tower, Egwene thought as she crossed the floor to her chair. The Amyrlin Seat’s chair. That’s all it is. The Hall of the Tower, and the Sitters for the Ajahs. I’ve been here thousands of times. But she could not remember one of them. What am I doing in the Hall of the Tower? Light, they’ll skin me alive when they see. . . . She was not sure what it was they would see, only that she prayed they did not.
The way back will come but—
The way back will—
The way—
The Black Ajah waits. That, at least, was whole. It came from everywhere.
Why did no one else seem to hear it?
Settling in the chair of the Amyrlin Seat—the chair that was also the Amyrlin Seat—she realized she had no idea what to do next. The other Aes Sedai had seated themselves when she did, all but Beldeine, who stood beside her with the staff, swallowing nervously. They all seemed to be waiting on her.
“Begin,” she said finally.
It seemed to be enough. One of the Red Sitters stood. Egwene was shocked to recognize Elaida. At the same time she knew that Elaida was foremost of the Sitters for the Red, and her own bitterest enemy. The look on Elaida’s face as she stared across the chamber made Egwene shiver inside. It was stern and cold—and triumphant. It promised things best not thought of.
“Bring him in,” Elaida said loudly.
From one of the ramps—not the one Egwene had entered by—came the crunch of boots on stone. People appeared. A dozen Aes Sedai surrounding three men, two of them burly guards with the white teardrops of the Flame of Tar Valon on their chests, tugging the chains in which the third stumbled as if dazed.
Egwene jerked forward in her chair. The chained man was Rand. Eyes half-closed, head sagging, he seemed nearly asleep, moving only as the chains directed.
“This man,” Elaida proclaimed, “has named himself the Dragon Reborn.” There was a buzz of distaste, not as if the listeners were surprised, but as though it were not something they wanted to hear. “This man has channeled the One Power.” The buzz was louder now, disgusted and tinged with fear. “There is only one penalty for this, known and recognized in every nation, but pronounced only here, in Tar Valon, in the Hall of the Tower. I call on the Amyrlin Seat to pronounce the sentence of gentling on this man.”
Elaida’s eyes glittered at Egwene. Rand. What do I do? Light, what do I do?
“Why do you hesitate?” Elaida demanded. “The sentence has been set down for three thousand years. Why do you hesitate, Egwene al’Vere?”
One of the Green Sitters was on her feet, anger bright through her calm. “Shame, Elaida! Show respect for the Amyrlin Seat! Show respect for the Mother!”
“Respect,” Elaida answered coldly, “can be lost as well as won. Well, Egwene? Can it be you show your weakness, your unfitness for your office, at last? Can it be you will not pronounce sentence on this man?”
Rand tried to lift his head and failed.
Egwene struggled to her feet, head spinning, trying to remember she was the Amyrlin Seat with the power to command all these women, screaming that she was a novice, that she did not belong here, that something was dreadfully wrong. “No,” she said shakily. “No, I cannot! I will not—”
“She betrays herself!” Elaida’s shout drowned out Egwene’s attempt to speak. “She condemns herself out of her own mouth! Take her!”
As Egwene opened her mouth, Beldeine moved beside her. Then the Keeper’s staff struck her head.
Blackness.
First there was pain in her head. There was something hard under her back, and cold. Next came the voices. Murmurs.
“Is she still unconscious?” It was a rasp, a file on bone.
“Do not worry,” a woman said from far, far away. She sounded uneasy, afraid, and trying not to show either. “She will be dealt with before she knows what is happening to her. Then she is ours, to do with as we will. Perhaps we will give her to you for sport.”