They were in their shifts, seated on their bed on the second floor of The New Plow, with the twisted-ring dream ter’angreal hanging about their necks, Elayne’s on a simple leather cord, Nynaeve’s alongside Lan’s heavy signet ring on a narrow golden chain. Aviendha and Birgitte, still fully dressed, sat on two of their clothing chests. Standing guard, they called it, until she and Nynaeve returned from the World of Dreams. Both wore their cloaks until they could climb under the blankets. The New Plow was definitely not new; cracks spidered across the plastered walls, and unfortunate drafts crept in everywhere.
The room itself was small, and the chests and stacked bundles left room for little beyond the bed and washstand. Elayne knew she had to present herself properly in Caemlyn, but sometimes she felt guilty, with her belongings on pack animals when most others had to make do with what they could carry on their backs. Nynaeve certainly never showed any regrets over her chests. They had been sixteen days on the road, the full moon outside the narrow window shone on a white blanket of snow that would make traveling tomorrow slow even if the sky remained clear, and Elayne thought another week to Caemlyn was an optimistic estimate.
“I have enough sense not to remind her,” she told Nynaeve. “I don’t want my nose snapped off again.”
That was a mild way of putting it. They had not been in Tel’aran’rhiod since informing Egwene, the night after leaving the estate, that the Bowl had been used. Reluctantly, they also had told her of the bargain they had been forced into with the Sea Folk, and found themselves facing the Amyrlin Seat with the striped stole on her shoulders. Elayne knew it was necessary and right — a Queen’s closest friend among her subjects knew she was the Queen as well as a friend, had to know — but she had not enjoyed her friend telling them in a heated voice that they had behaved like witless loobies who might have brought ruin down on all their heads. Especially when she herself agreed. She had not liked hearing that the only reason Egwene did not set them both a penance that would curl their hair was that she could not afford to have them waste the time. Necessary and right, though; when she sat on the Lion Throne, she would still be Aes Sedai, and subject to the laws and rules and customs of Aes Sedai. Not for Andor — she would not give her land to the White Tower — but for herself. So, unpleasant as it had been, she accepted her castigation calmly. Nynaeve had writhed and stammered with embarrassment, protested and all but pouted, then apologized so profusely that Elayne hardly believed it was the same woman she knew. Quite rightly, Egwene had remained the Amyrlin, cool in her displeasure even while giving pardon for their mistakes. At best, tonight could not be pleasant or comfortable if she was there.
But when they dreamed themselves into the Salidar of Tel’aran’rhiod, into the room in the Little Tower that had been called the Amyrlin’s Study, she was not there, and the only sign she had visited since their meeting was some barely visible words roughly scratched on a beetle-riddled wall panel, as if by an idle hand that did not want to spend the effort to carve deeply.
STAY IN CAEMLYN
And a few feet away:
KEEP SILENT AND BE CAREFUL
Those had been Egwene’s final instructions to them. Go to Caemlyn, and stay there until she could puzzle out how to keep the Hall from salting all of them down and nailing them into a barrel. A reminder they had no way to erase.
Embracing saidar, Elayne channeled to leave her own message, the number fifteen seemingly scratched on the heavy table that had been Egwene’s writing desk. Inverting the weave and tying it off meant that only someone who ran her fingers across the numerals would realize they were not really there. Perhaps it would not take fifteen days to reach Caemlyn, but more than a week, she was certain.
Nynaeve strode to the window and peered out both ways, careful not to put her head out through the open casement. It was night out there as in the waking world, a full moon gleaming on bright snow, though the air did not feel cold. No one else should be there except them, and if anyone was, it was someone to avoid. “I hope she isn’t having trouble with her plans,” she muttered.
“She told us not to mention those even to each other, Nynaeve. ‘A secret spoken finds wings.’ ” That had been another of Lini’s many favorites.
Nynaeve grimaced over her shoulder, then returned to peering down the narrow alley. “It’s different for you. I tended her as a child, changed her swaddling, smacked her bottom a time or two. And now I have to leap when she snaps her fingers. It’s hard.”
Elayne could not help herself. She snapped her fingers.
Nynaeve spun so fast that she blurred, her face pop-eyed with horror. Her dress blurred, too, from blue riding silks to an Accepted’s banded white to what she referred to as good, stout Two Rivers wool, dark and thick. When she realized Egwene was not there, had not been listening, she almost fainted with relief.
When they stepped back to their bodies and woke long enough to tell the others they could come to bed, Aviendha certainly thought it a good joke, and Birgitte laughed as well. Nynaeve had her revenge, though. The next morning, she woke Elayne with an icicle. Elayne’s shrieks woke everybody else in the whole village.
Three days later, the first explosion came.
Chapter 21
Answering the Summons
* * *
The great winter tempests called the cemaros continued to roll up out of the Sea of Storms, harsher than any in memory. Some said this year the cemaros was trying to make up for the months of delay. Lightning crackled across the skies, enough to make the darkness patchy at night. Wind lashed the land and rain flailed it, turning all but the hardest roads to rivers of mud. Sometimes the mud froze after nightfall, but sunrise always brought a thaw, even under a gray sky, and the ground became bogs once more. Rand was surprised at how much all that hampered his plans.
The Asha’man he had sent for came quickly, at midmorning the next day, riding out of a gateway into a driving downpour that obscured the sun so, it might as well have been twilight. Through the hole in the air, snow fell back in Andor, fat white flakes swirling about thickly and hiding what lay behind them. Most of the men in the short column were bundled in heavy black cloaks, but the rain seemed to slip around them and their horses. It was not obvious, yet anyone who noticed would look twice, if not three times. Keeping dry required only a simple weave, so long as you did not mind flaunting what you were. But then, the black-and-white disc worked on a crimson circle on the breast of their cloaks did that. Even half-hidden by the rain, there was a pride about them, an arrogance in the way they sat their saddles. A defiance. They gloried in what they were.
Their commander, Charl Gedwyn, was a few years older than Rand, of middling height and wearing the Sword and Dragon, like Torval, on a very well cut, high-collared coat of the best black silk. His sword was mounted lushly with silver, his silver-worked sword belt fastened with a silver buckle shaped in a clenched fist. Gedwyn termed himself Tsorovan’m’hael; in the Old Tongue, Storm Leader, whatever that was supposed to mean. It seemed appropriate to the weather, at least.
Even so, he stood just inside the entrance to Rand’s ornate green tent and scowled out at the cascading rain. A guard of mounted Companions encircled the tent, no more than thirty paces away, yet they were barely visible. They might have been statues, ignoring the torrent.
“How do you expect me to find anyone in this?” Gedwyn muttered, glancing back over his shoulder at Rand. A tick late, he added, “My Lord Dragon.” His eyes were hard and challenging, but they always were, whether looking at a man or a fence-post. “Rochaid and I brought eight Dedicated and forty Soldiers, enough to destroy an army or cow ten kings. We might even make an Aes Sedai blink,” he said wryly. “Burn me, the pair of us could do a fair job alone. Or you could. Why do you need anyone else?”
“I expect you to obey, Gedwyn,” Rand said coldly. Storm Leader? And Manel Rochaid, Gedwyn’s second, called himself Baijan’m’hael, Attack Leader. What was Taim up to, creating new ranks? The important thing was that the man made weapons. The important thing was that the weapons stayed sane long enough to be used. “And I don’t expect you to waste time questioning my orders.”
“As you command, my Lord Dragon,” Gedwyn muttered. “I’ll send men out immediately.” With a curt salute, fist to chest, he strode out into the storm. The deluge bent away from him, sheeting down the small shield he wove around himself. Rand wondered whether the man suspected how close he had come to dying when he seized saidin without warning.
You must kill him before he kills you, Lews Therin giggled. They will, you know. Dead men can’t betray anyone. The voice in Rand’s head turned wondering. But sometimes they don’t die. Am I dead? Are you?
Rand pushed the words down to a fly’s buzzing, just on the edge of notice. Since his reappearance inside Rand’s head, Lews Therin seldom went silent unless forced. The man seemed madder than ever most of the time, and usually angrier as well. Stronger sometimes, too. That voice invaded Rand’s dreams, and when he saw himself in a dream, it was not always himself at all that he saw. It was not always Lews Therin, either, the face he had come to recognize as Lews Therin’s. Sometimes it was blurred, yet vaguely familiar, and Lews Therin seemed startled by it, too. That was an indication how far the man’s madness went. Or maybe his own.
Not yet, Rand thought. I can’t afford to go mad yet.