“Stay!” Tamra barked. That iron-hard gaze studied them both. “You will tell no one about this, not for any reason. If necessary, lie. Even to a sister. Gitara died without speaking. Do you understand me?”
Moiraine nodded jerkily, and was aware of Siuan doing the same. They were not Aes Sedai, yet—they still could lie, and some did occasionally, for all their efforts to behave like full sisters—but she had never been expected to be ordered to, especially not to Aes Sedai, and never by the Amyrlin Seat.
“Good,” Tamra said tiredly. “Send—the novice on duty is named Elin?—send Elin in to me. I’ll tell her where to find Gitara’s woman.” And make sure that Elin had heard nothing through the closed door, obviously. Otherwise, the task would have been Siuan’s or Moiraine’s. “When the girl comes in, the two of you may go. And remember! Not a word! Not one!” The emphasis only drove home the peculiarity. An order from the Amyrlin Seat was to be obeyed as if on oath. There was no need to emphasize anything.
I wished to hear a Foretelling, Moiraine thought as she made her final curtsy before leaving, and what I received was a Foretelling of doom. Now, she wished very much that she had been more careful of what she wished for.
Chapter
3
Practice
The wide corridor outside the Amyrlin’s apartments was as cold as her sitting room had been, and full of drafts. Some were strong enough to ripple one or another of the long, heavy tapestries on the white marble walls. Atop the gilded stand-lamps between the bright wall hangings, the flames flickered, nearly blown out. The novices would be at their breakfast at this hour, and likely most of the other Accepted, too. For the moment, the hallways were empty save for Siuan and Moiraine. They walked along the blue runner, half the width of the corridor, taking advantage of the small protection the carpet gave from the chill of the floor tiles, a repeating pattern in the colors of all seven Ajahs. Moiraine was too stunned to speak. The faint sound of the trumpets still sounding barely registered on her.
They turned the corner into a hallway where the floor tiles were white, the runner green. To their right, another wide, tapestry-hung corridor lined with stand-lamps spiraled gently upward, toward the Ajahs’ quarters, the visible portion floored in blue and yellow, with a runner patterned in gray and brown and red. Inside each Ajah’s quarters, the Ajah’s own color predominated, and some others might be missing altogether, but in the communal areas of the Tower, the colors of all the Ajahs were used in equal proportion. Irrelevant thoughts drifted through her head. Why equal, when some Ajahs were larger than others? Had they once been the same size? How could that have been achieved? A newly raised Aes Sedai chose her Ajah freely. Yet each Ajah had quarters of the same size. Irrelevant thoughts were better than….
“Do you want breakfast?” Siuan said.
Moiraine gave a small start of surprise. Breakfast? “I could not swallow a bite, Siuan.”
The other woman shrugged. “I have no appetite myself. I just thought I’d keep you company if you wanted something.”
“I am going back to my room and try to get a little sleep, if I can settle myself. I have a novice class in two hours.” And likely more classes to teach today, if the sisters did not start returning soon. Novices could not miss classes for little things like battles or…. She did not want to think about the “or.” She would miss lessons, too, if the Aes Sedai failed to return. Accepted studied on their own for the most part, but she had a private class scheduled with Meilyn Sedai, and another with Larelle Sedai.
“Sleep would be wasting time we don’t have,” Siuan said firmly. “We’ll practice for the testing. We might have almost a month, but it could be tomorrow just as easily.”
“We cannot be sure we will be tested any time soon. Merean just said she thought we were close.”
Siuan snorted. Loudly. While she was still a novice the sisters had cleaned up her language, which had been strongly redolent of the docks and often rough with it, but they still had not managed to smooth away all the edges of her. Which was just as well. Rough edges were a part of Siuan. “When Merean says someone is close, she tests within the month, and you know it, Moiraine. We’ll practice.”
Moiraine sighed. She did not really believe she could sleep, not now, but she doubted she could concentrate very well, either. Practice took concentration. “Oh, all right, Siuan.”
The second surprise, after their friendship, had been the realization that between them, the fisherman’s daughter led and the noblewoman followed. Of course, rank in the outside world carried no rights inside the Tower. There had been two daughters of beggars who rose to be Amyrlin Seat, as well as daughters of merchants and farmers and craftsfolk, including three daughters of cobblers, but only one daughter of a ruler. Besides, Moiraine had been taught to judge people’s capabilities long before she left home. In the Sun Palace especially, you began learning that as soon as you were old enough to walk. Siuan had been born to lead. It felt surprisingly natural to follow where Siuan led.
“I wager you will be in the Hall of the Tower by the time you have worn the shawl a hundred years, and Amyrlin before fifty more,” she said, not for the first time. It brought the same reaction it always did.
“Don’t ill-wish me,” Siuan said with a scowl. “I intend to see the world. Maybe parts of it no other sister has seen. I used to watch the ships sail into Tear full of silk and ivory from Shara, and I’d wonder if any of the crew had had the nerve to sneak outside the trade ports. I would have.” Her face matched Tamra’s for determination. “Once, my father took his boat all the way downriver to the Sea of Storms, and I could hardly pull on the nets for staring south, wondering what lay beyond the horizon. I’ll see it, one day. And the Aryth Ocean. Who knows what lies west of the Aryth Ocean? Strange lands with strange customs. Maybe cities as great as Tar Valon, and mountains higher than the Spine of the World. Just think of it, Moiraine. Just think!”
Moiraine suppressed a smile. Siuan was so fierce about her intended adventures, though she would never call them that. Adventures were what took place in stories and books, not in life, as Siuan would point out to anyone who used the word. Without a doubt, though, once she had the shawl, she would be off like an arrow leaving the bow. And then they might see one another twice in ten years if not longer. That brought a pang of sadness, but she did not doubt that her own predictions would come true, as well. It did not take Foretelling. No; that was thinking in the wrong direction.
As they turned another corner and walked past a narrow marble staircase leading down, Siuan’s scowl faded, and she began studying Moiraine in sidelong glances. The floor tiles here were a vivid green, the runner de
ep yellow, and the white walls were plain and bare. The stand-lamps were not gilded in this part of the Tower, which was used more by servants than sisters.
“You’re trying to change the subject, aren’t you,” Siuan said abruptly.
“Which subject?” Moiraine asked, half laughing. “Practice or breakfast?”
“You know what subject, Moiraine. What do you think about it?”
The bubble of laugher vanished. There was no need to ask what “it” was. Exactly the thing that she did not want to think about. He is born again. She could hear Gitara’s voice in her head. The Dragon takes his first breath…. Her shiver had nothing to dowith the cold this time.
For more than three thousand years the world had waited on the Prophecies of the Dragon to be fulfilled, fearing them, yet knowing they told of the world’s only hope. And now a boychild was about to be born—very soon, perhaps, by the way Gitara had spoken—to bring those Prophecies to a conclusion. He would be born on the slopes of Dragonmount, reborn where it was said the man he had once been had died. Three thousand years ago and more, the Dark One had almost broken free into the world of humankind and brought on the War of the Shadow, which had ended only with the Breaking of the World. Everything had been destroyed, the very face of the earth changed, humanity reduced to ragged refugees. Centuries passed before the simple struggle for survival gave way to building cities and nations once more. That infant’s birth meant the Dark One would break free again, for the child would be born to face the Dark One in Tarmon Gai’don, the Last Battle. On him rested the fate of the world. The Prophecies said he was the only chance. They did not say he would win.
Maybe worse than the thought of his defeat, though, was the fact that he would channel saidin, the male half of the One Power. Moiraine did not shiver at that; she shuddered. Saidin bore the Dark One’s taint. Men still tried to channel from time to time. Some actually managed to teach themselves, and survived learning without a teacher, no easy feat. Among women, only one in four survived trying to learn on their own. Some of those men caused wars, usually false Dragons, men who claimed to be the Dragon Reborn, while others attempted to hide in ordinary lives, but unless they were caught and brought to Tar Valon to be gentled—cut off from the Power forever—every one of them went mad. That could take years, or just months, yet it was inevitable. Madmen who could tap into the One Power that turned the Wheel of Time and drove the universe. The histories were full of the horrors men like that had done. And the Prophecies said that the Dragon Reborn would bring a new Breaking of the World. Would his victory be any better than a victory by the Dark One? Yes; yes, it must be. Even the Breaking had left people alive to rebuild, eventually. The Dark One would leave only a charnel house. And in any case, prophecies did not turn aside for the wishes of Accepted. Not for the prayers of nations.
“What I think is that the Amyrlin told us not to talk about it,” she said.