The Wheel of Time, page 979
A great deal of the food seemed to be going onto trays, sometimes worked silver, sometimes carved wood and perhaps gilded, that women carried away through the door to the sisters’ main dining hall. Not kitchen serving women with the white Flame of Tar Valon on their bosoms, but dignified women in well-cut woolens with an occasional touch of embroidery, sisters’ personal servants who would make the long climb back to the Ajah quarters.
Any Aes Sedai could eat in her own rooms if she wished, though it meant channeling to warm the food again, yet most enjoyed company at meals. At least, they had. That steady stream of women carrying out cloth-covered trays was a confirmation that the White Tower was spiderwebbed with cracks. She should have felt pleasure at that. Elaida stood on a platform that was ready to crumble beneath her. But the Tower was home. All she felt was sadness. And anger at Elaida, too. That one deserved to be pulled down simply for what she had done to the Tower since gaining the stole and staff!
Laras gave her one long look, drawing in her chin until she had a fourth, then returned to brandishing her spoon and looking over an under-cook’s shoulder. The woman had helped Siuan and Leane escape, once, so her loyalties to Elaida were weak. Would she help another now? She was certainly making every effort to avoid looking in Egwene’s direction again. Another under-cook, who likely did not know her from any other novice, a smiling woman still working on her second chin, handed her a wooden tray with a large, stout cup of steaming tea and a thick, white-glazed plate of bread, olives and crumbly white cheese that she carried back into the dining hall.
Silence fell again, and once more every eye centered on her. Of course. They knew she had been summoned to the Mistress of Novices. They were waiting to see whether she would eat standing. She wanted very much to ease herself onto the hard wooden bench, but she made herself sit down normally. Which reignited the flames, of course. Not as strongly as before, yet strong enough to make her shift before she could stop herself. Strangely, she felt no real desire to grimace or squirm. To stand, yes, but not the other. The pain was part of her. She accepted it without struggle. She tried to welcome it, yet that still seemed beyond her.
She tore a piece of bread—there were weevils in the flour here, too, it appeared—and slowly the conversation in the room started up again, quietly because novices were expected not to make too much noise. At her table also the talk resumed, though no one made any effort to include her. That was just as well. She was not here to make friends among the novices. Nor to have them see her as one of themselves. No, her purpose was far different.
Leaving the hall with the novices after returning her tray to the kitchen, she found another pair of Reds waiting for her. One was Katerine Alruddin, vulpine in copiously red-slashed gray, a mass of raven hair falling in waves to her waist and her shawl looped over her elbows.
“Drink this,” Katerine said imperiously, extending a pewter cup in one slim hand. “All of it, mind.” The other Red, dark and square-faced, adjusted her shawl impatiently and grimaced. Apparently she disliked acting as a serving woman even by association. Or perhaps it was dislike for what was in the cup.
Suppressing a sigh, Egwene drank. The weak forkroot tea looked and tasted like water tinged a faint brown, with just a hint of mint. Almost a memory of mint rather than the taste itself. Her first cup had been soon after waking, the Red sisters on duty eager to be done with shielding and about their own business. Katerine had let the hour slip a little, yet even without this cup, she doubted she would have been able to channel very strongly for some time yet. Certainly not with enough strength to be useful.
“I don’t want to be late for my first class,” she said, handing the cup back. Katerine took it, though she seemed surprised to realize that she had. Egwene glided on after the novices before the sister could object. Or remember to call her down for failing to curtsy.
That first class, in a plain, windowless room where ten novices occupied benches for thirty or more, was every bit the disaster she expected. Not a disaster for her, however, no matter the outcome. The instructor was Idrelle Menford, a lanky, hard-eyed woman who had already been Accepted when Egwene first came to the Tower. She still wore the white dress with the seven bands of color at hem and cuffs. Egwene took a seat at the end of a bench, once again without consideration for her tenderness. That had lessened, though not very far. Drink in the pain.
Standing on a small dais at the front of the room, Idrelle looked down her long nose with more than a spark of satisfaction at seeing Egwene in white once more. It almost softened her frown, a fixture with Idrelle. “You have all gone beyond making simple balls of fire,” she told the class, “but let’s see what our new girl is capable of. She used to think a great deal of herself, you know.” Several of the novices tittered. “Make a ball of fire, Egwene. Go on, child.” A ball of fire? That was one of the earliest things novices learned. What was she about?
Opening herself to the Source, Egwene embraced saidar, let it rush into her. The forkroot allowed only a trickle, a thread where she was accustomed to torrents, yet it was the Power, and trickle or no, it brought all of the life and joy of saidar, all the heightened awareness of herself and the room around her. Awareness of herself meant her smarting bottom suddenly felt freshly slippered again, but she did not shift. Breathe in the pain. She could smell the faint aroma of soap from the novices’ morning wash, see a tiny vein pulsing on Idrelle’s forehead. Part of her wanted to clout the woman’s ear with a flow of Air, but given the amount of the Power she commanded now, Idrelle would barely feel it. Instead, she channeled Fire and Air to produce a small ball of green fire that floated in front of her. A pale, pitiful thing it was, actually transparent.
“Very good,” Idrelle said sarcastically. Ah, yes. She had just wanted to begin by showing the novices how weak Egwene’s channeling was. “Release saidar. Now, class—”
Egwene added a blue ball, then a brown, and a gray, making them spin around one another.
“Release the Source!” Idrelle said brusquely.
A yellow ball joined the others, a white, and finally, a red ball. Quickly she added rings of fire one inside the other around the whirling balls. Red came first this time, because she wanted it smallest, green last and largest. Had she been able to choose an Ajah, it would have been the Green. Seven rings of fire rotated, no two in the same direction, around seven balls of fire that carried out an intricate dance at the heart. Pale and thin they might be, yet it was an impressive display beyond dividing her flows fourteen ways. Juggling with the Power was not all that much easier than juggling with your hands.
“Stop that!” Idrelle shouted. “Stop it!” The glow of saidar enveloped the teacher, and a switch of Air struck Egwene hard across the back. “I said stop it!” The switch struck again, then again.
Egwene calmly kept the rings spinning, the balls dancing. After Silviana’s hard-swung slipper, it was easy to drink in the pain of Idrelle’s blows. If not to welcome it. Would she ever be able to smile while she was being beaten?
Katerine and the other Red appeared in the doorway. “What is going on in here?” the raven-haired sister demanded. Her companion’s eyes widened when she saw what Egwene was doing. It was very unlikely that either of them could divide their flows so far.
The novices all popped to their feet and curtsied when the Aes Sedai entered, of course. Egwene remained seated.
Idrelle spread her banded skirts looking flustered. “She won’t stop,” she wailed. “I told her to, but she won’t!”
“Stop that, Egwene,” Katerine ordered firmly.
Egwene maintained her weaves until the woman opened her mouth again. Only then did she release saidar and stand.
Katerine’s mouth snapped shut, and she took a deep breath. Her face retained its Aes Sedai serenity, but her eyes glittered. “You will run to Silviana’s study and tell her that you disobeyed your instructor and disrupted a class. Go!”
Pausing long enough to straighten her skirts—when she obeyed, she must not do so with any appearance of eagerness or haste—Egwene squeezed past the two Aes Sedai and glided up the hallway.
“I told you to run,” Katerine said sharply behind her.
A flow of Air struck her still sensitive bottom. Accept the pain. Another blow. Drink in the pain like breath. A third, hard enough to stagger her. Welcome the pain.
“Unhand me, Jezrail,” Katerine snarled.
“I’ll do no such thing,” the other sister said with a strong Tairen accent. “You go too far, Katerine. A swat or two is permitted, but punishing her further belongs to the Mistress of Novices. Light, at this rate, you’ll leave her unable to walk before she reaches Silviana.”
Katerine breathed heavily. “Very well,” she said at last. “But she can add disobeying a sister to her list of offenses. I will inquire, Egwene, so don’t think you can let it slip your mind.”
When she stepped into the Mistress of Novices’ study, Silviana’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Again so soon? Fetch the slipper from the cabinet, child, and tell me what you’ve done now.”
After two more classes and two more visits to Silviana’s study—she refused to be made mock of, and if an Accepted did not want her doing a thing better than the Accepted herself could, the woman should not ask her to do it at all—plus her foreordained midday appointment between, the stern-faced woman decided that she was to have Healing to begin each day.
“Else you’ll soon be too bruised to spank without bringing blood. But don’t think this means I am going easy on you. If you require Healing three times a day, I’ll just spank all the harder to make up. If need be, I’ll go to the strap or the switch. Because I will make your head straight, child. Believe me on that.”
Those three classes, leaving three very embarrassed Accepted, had another result. Her teaching was shifted to sessions alone with Aes Sedai, something normally reserved for Accepted. That meant climbing the long, tapestry-lined spiraling corridors to the Ajah quarters, where sisters stood at the entrances like guards. They were guards, in truth. Visitors from other Ajahs were unwelcome, to say the least. In fact, she never saw any Aes Sedai near the quarters of another Ajah.
Except for Sitters, she seldom saw sisters in the hallways outside the quarters other than in groups, always wearing their shawls, usually with Warders following close behind, but this was not like the fear that gripped the encampment outside the walls. Here it was always sisters of the same Ajah together, and when two groups passed, they cut each other dead if they did not glare. In the worst of summer the Tower remained cool, yet the air seemed feverish and gelid when sisters of different Ajahs came too close. Even the Sitters she recognized walked quickly. The few who realized who she was gave her long, studying looks, but most appeared distracted. Pevara Tazanovni, a plumply pretty Sitter for the Red, almost walked into her one day—she was not going to jump aside, even for Sitters—but Pevara hurried on as if she had not noticed. Another time Doesine Alwain, boyishly slim if elegantly dressed, did the same while deep in conversation with another Yellow sister. Neither glanced at her twice. She wished she had some idea who the other Yellow was.
She knew the names of the ten “ferrets” Sheriam and the others had sent into the Tower to try undermining Elaida, and she very much would have liked to make contact with them, but she did not know their faces, and asking after them would only draw attention to them. She hoped one of them would pull her aside or hand her a note, but none did. Her battle would have to be fought alone except for Leane unless she overheard something that put faces to some of those names.
She did not neglect Leane, of course. Her second night back in the Tower she went down to the open cells after supper despite her bone-deep weariness. Those half-dozen rooms in the first basement were where women who could channel were held if not to be closely confined. Each held a large cage of iron latticework that ran from stone floor to stone ceiling, with a space around it four paces wide and iron stand-lamps to provide light. At Leane’s cell, two Browns were sitting on benches against the wall with a Warder, a wide-shouldered man with a beautiful face and touches of white at his temples. He looked up when Egwene walked in, then returned to honing his dagger on a stone.
One of the Browns was Felaana Bevaine, slender with long yellow hair that gleamed as if she brushed it several times a day. She stopped writing in a leather-bound notebook on a lapdesk long enough to say in a raspy voice, “Oh. It’s you, is it? Well, Silviana said you can visit, child, but don’t give her anything without showing it to Dalevien or me, and don’t make any fuss.” She promptly returned to her writing. Dalevien, a stocky woman with gray streaking her short dark hair, never looked up from her comparison of the text of two books, one held open on either knee. The glow of saidar shone around her, and she was maintaining a shield on Leane, but there was no reason for her to look once it had been woven.
Egwene lost no time in rushing to thrust her hands through the iron lattice and clasp Leane’s. “Silviana told me they finally believe who you are,” she said, laughing, “but I didn’t expect to find you in such luxury.”
It was luxury only when held up alongside the small dark cells where a sister might be held for trial, with rushes on the floor for a mattress and a blanket only if you were lucky, yet Leane’s accommodations did appear reasonably comfortable. She had a small bed that looked softer than those in the novice quarters, a ladder-back chair with a tasseled blue cushion, and a table that held three books and a tray with the remains of her supper. There was even a washstand, though the white pitcher and bowl both had chips and the mirror was bubbled, and a privacy screen, opaque enough that she would be only a shadowy shape behind it, hid the chamber pot.
Leane laughed, too. “Oh, I am very popular,” she said briskly. Even the way she stood seemed languorous, the very image of a seductive Domani despite plain dark woolens, but that brisk voice remained from before she had decided to remake herself as she wanted to be. “I’ve had a steady stream of visitors all day, from every Ajah except the Red. Even the Greens try to convince me to teach them how to Travel, and they mainly want to get their hands on me because I ‘claim’ to be Green now.” She shivered much too ostentatiously for it to be real. “That would be as bad as being back with Melare and Desala. Dreadful woman, Desala.” Her smile faded away like mist in a noonday sun. “They told me they’d put you in white. Better than the alternatives, I suppose. They give you forkroot? Me, too.”
Surprised, Egwene glanced toward the sister holding the shield, and Leane snorted.
“Custom. If I weren’t shielded, I could swat a fly and not hurt it, but custom says a woman in the open cells is always shielded. But they just let you wander around otherwise?”
“Not exactly,” Egwene said dryly. “There are two Reds waiting outside to escort me to my room and shield me while I sleep.”
Leane sighed. “So. I’m in a cell, you are being watched, and we’re both full of forkroot tea.” She cast a sidelong look at the two Browns. Felaana was still intent on her writing. Dalevien turned pages in the two books on her knees and began muttering under her breath. The Warder must have intended to shave with that dagger, he was honing it so keen. His main attention seemed to be on the doorway, though. Leane lowered her voice. “So when do we escape?”
“We don’t,” Egwene told her, and related her reasons and her plan in a near whisper while watching the sisters out of the corner of her eye. She told Leane everything she had seen. And done. It was hard to tell how many times she had been spanked that day, and how she had behaved during, but necessary to convince the other woman that she would not be broken.
“I can see any sort of raid is out of the question, but I had hoped—” The Warder shifted, and Leane cut off, but he was merely sheathing his dagger. Folding his arms across his chest and stretching his legs out, he leaned back against the wall, his eyes on the doorway. He looked as if he could be on his feet in the blink of an eye. “Laras helped me escape once,” she went on softly, “but I don’t know that she would do it again.” She shivered, and there was nothing fake about it this time. She had been stilled when Laras helped her and Siuan escape. “She did it for Min more than for Siuan or me, anyway. Are you certain about this? A hard woman, Silviana Brehon. Fair, so I hear, but hard enough to break iron. Are you absolutely certain, Mother?” When Egwene said that she was, Leane sighed again. “Well, we’ll be two worms gnawing at the root then, won’t we.” It was not a question.
She visited Leane every night that exhaustion failed to drag her to her bed straight after supper, and found her astonishingly sanguine for a prisoner confined to a cell. Leane’s stream of visiting sisters was continuing, and she slipped the tidbits Egwene suggested into every conversation. Those visitors could not order an Aes Sedai punished, even one held in the open cells, though a few grew angry enough to wish they could, and besides, hearing those things from a sister carried more weight than hearing them from one they saw as a novice. Leane could even argue openly, at least until the visitors stalked out. But she reported that many did not. A few agreed with her. Cautiously, hesitantly, perhaps on one point and not others, but they agreed. Almost as important, to Leane at least, some of the Greens decided that since she had been stilled and thus was no longer Aes Sedai for a time, she had the right to ask admission to any Ajah once she was a sister again. Not all by any means, but “few” was better than “none.” Egwene began to think that Leane in her cell was having more effect than she was roaming free. Well, free after a fashion. She was not exactly jealous. This was important work they were doing, and it did not matter which of them did it better so long as it got done. But there were times when it made the trek to Silviana’s study much harder. Still, she had successes. Of a sort.
That first afternoon, in Bennae Nalsad’s cluttered sitting room—books stood in haphazard stacks everywhere on the floor tiles, and the shelves were full of bones and skulls and the preserved skins of animals, birds and snakes along with stuffed examples of some of the smaller specimens; a large brown lizard was perched on the huge skull of a bear, so still you would have thought it stuffed as well until it blinked—that first afternoon, the Shienaran Brown asked her to perform an exhaustive set of weaves one after the other. Bennae sat in a high-backed chair on one side of the brown-streaked marble fireplace, Egwene, with decided discomfort, in one on the other. She had not been invited to sit, but neither had Bennae objected.
