The tall woman looked her up and down in an amused way. Egwene could not be sure, but she thought the woman might have glanced a moment at the clenched fist by her side, where she still held the stone ring. “I do not think you will catch up to her. I saw her, and she was running quite fast. I suspect she is far away from here by now.”
“Aes Sedai,” Egwene began, but she was given no chance to ask which way Else had gone. Something that might have been anger, or annoyance, flashed through those black eyes.
“I have taken up enough time with you for now. I have more important matters to see to. Leave me.” She gestured back the way Egwene had come.
So strong was the command in her voice that Egwene turned and was three steps up the ramp before she realized what she was doing. Bristling, she spun back. Aes Sedai or no, I—
The gallery was empty.
Frowning, she dismissed the nearest doors—no one lived in those rooms, except possibly mice—and ran down the ramp, peered both ways, followed the curve of the gallery with her eyes all the way around. She even peered over the rail, down into the small Garden of the Accepted, and studied the other galleries, higher as well as lower. She saw two Accepted in their banded dresses, one Faolain and the other a woman she knew by sight if not name. But there was no woman in silver and white anywhere.
CHAPTER
26
Behind a Lock
Shaking her head, Egwene walked back to the doors she had dismissed. She had to go somewhere. Inside the first, the few furnishings were shapeless mounds under dusty cloths, and the air seemed stale, as if the door had not been opened in some time. She grimaced; there were mouse tracks in the dust on the floor. But no others. Two more doors, opened hastily, showed the same thing. It was no surprise. There were many more empty rooms than occupied in the Accepted’s galleries.
When she pulled her head out of the third room, Nynaeve and Elayne wer
e coming down the ramp behind her with no particular haste.
“Is she hiding?” Nynaeve asked in surprise. “In there?”
“I lost her.” Egwene peered both ways along the curving gallery again. Where did she go? She did not mean Else.
“If I had thought Else could outrun you,” Elayne said with a smile, “I’d have chased her, too, but she has always looked too plump for running to me.” Her smile was worried, though.
“We will have to find her later,” Nynaeve said, “and make sure she knows to keep her mouth shut. How could the Amyrlin trust that girl?”
“I thought I was right on top of her,” Egwene said slowly, “but it was someone else. Nynaeve, I turned my back for a moment, and she was gone. Not Else—I never even saw her!—the woman I thought was Else at first. She was just—gone, and I don’t know where.”
Elayne’s breath caught. “One of the Soulless?” She looked around hastily, but the gallery was still empty except for the three of them.
“Not her,” Egwene said firmly. “She—” I am not going to tell them she made me feel six years old, with a torn dress, a dirty face, and a runny nose. “She was no Gray Man. She was tall and striking, with black eyes and black hair. You’d notice her in a crowd of a thousand. I have never seen her before, but I think she is Aes Sedai. She must be.”
Nynaeve waited, as though for more, then said impatiently, “If you see her again, point her out to me. If you think there’s cause. We’ve no time to stand here talking. I mean to see what is in that storeroom before Else has a chance to tell the wrong person about it. Maybe they were careless. Let’s not give them a chance to correct it, if they were.”
As she fell in beside Nynaeve, with Elayne on the other side, Egwene realized she still had the stone ring—Corianin Nedeal’s ter’angreal—clutched in her fist. Reluctantly, she tucked it into her pouch and pulled the drawstrings tight. As long as I don’t go to sleep with the bloody—But that’s what I am planning, isn’t it?
But that was for tonight, and no use worrying about it now. As they made their way through the Tower, she kept an eye out for the woman in silver and white. She was not sure why she was relieved not to see her. I am a grown woman, and quite capable, thank you. Still, she was just as glad that no one they encountered looked even remotely like her. The more she thought of the woman, the more she felt there was something—wrong—about her. Light, I am starting to see the Black Ajah under my bed. Only, maybe they are under the bed.
The library stood a little apart from the tall, thick shaft of the White Tower proper, its pale stone heavily streaked with blue, and it looked much like crashing waves frozen at their climax. Those waves loomed as large as a palace in the morning light, and Egwene knew they certainly contained as many rooms as one, but all those rooms—those below the odd corridors in the upper levels, where Verin had her chambers—were filled with shelves, and the shelves filled with books, manuscripts, papers, scrolls, maps, and charts, collected from every nation over the course of three thousand years. Not even the great libraries in Tear and Cairhien held so many.
The librarians—Brown sisters all—guarded those shelves, and guarded the doors as closely, to make sure not a scrap of paper left unless they knew who took it and why. But it was not to one of the guarded entrances that Nynaeve led Egwene and Elayne.
Around the foundations of the library, lying flat to the ground in the shade of tall pecan trees, were other doors, both large and small. Laborers sometimes needed access to the storerooms beneath, and the librarians did not approve of sweating men tracking through their preserve. Nynaeve pulled up one of those, no bigger than the front door of a farmhouse, and motioned the others down a steep flight of stairs descending into darkness. When she let it down behind them, all light vanished.
Egwene opened herself to saidar—it came so smoothly that she barely realized what she was doing—and channeled a trickle of the Power that flooded through her. For a moment the mere feel of that rush surging within her threatened to overwhelm other sensations. A small ball of bluish-white light appeared, balanced in the air above her hand. She took a deep breath and reminded herself of why she was walking stiffly. It was a link to the rest of the world. The feel of her linen shift against her skin returned, of woolen stockings, and her dress. With a small pang of regret, she banished the desire to pull in more, to let saidar absorb her.
Elayne made a glowing sphere for herself at the same time, and the pair provided more light than two lanterns would have. “It feels so—wonderful, doesn’t it?” she murmured.
“Be careful,” Egwene said.
“I am.” Elayne sighed. “It just feels. . . . I will be careful.”
“This way,” Nynaeve told them sharply and brushed by to lead them down. She did not go too far ahead. She was not angry, and had to use the light the other two provided.