Lord of Chaos (58 page)

Egwene’s eyes opened, stared at nothing. For a moment she lay on her bedding, idly fingering the Great Serpent ring on its thong around her neck. Wearing it on her hand caused too many odd looks. Easier to fit in as a student of the Wise Ones if no one thought of her as Aes Sedai. Which she was not, of course. She was Accepted, yet had pretended to be Aes Sedai so long, she sometimes almost forgot that she was not.

A bit of early sunlight crept in at the door flap, barely lighting the tent’s interior. She might as well not have slept at all, and her temples were throbbing. Since the day Lanfear had nearly killed her and Aviendha, the day the Forsaken and Moiraine had killed each other, her head always hurt after a visit to
Tel’aran’rhiod
, though never enough to be a real bother. Anyway, back home Nynaeve had taught her something of herbs, and she had managed to find a few of the right sort here in Cairhien. Sleepwell root would make her drowsy—or maybe, as weary she was, it might put her under for hours—but it would clear any vestige of a headache.

Climbing to her feet, she straightened her twisted sweat-soaked shift and padded across the layered carpets to the washbasin, a carved crystal bowl that had probably once held wine punch for some nobleman. In any case, it held plain water as well as the blue-glazed pitcher did, water that hardly felt cool at all when she splashed it on her face. Her gaze met her
own eyes in the small gilt-framed mirror propped against the dark tent wall, and her cheeks crimsoned.

“Well, what did you think would happen?” she whispered. She would not have thought it possible, but her reflection’s face grew redder.

It had only been a dream, not like
Tel’aran’rhiod
, where what happened to you was real when you woke. But she remembered everything, just as if it had been real. She thought her cheeks might burn right off. Just a dream, and Gawyn’s dream at that. He had no right to dream about her like that.

“It was all his doing,” she told her reflection angrily, “not mine! I had no choice in it!” Her mouth snapped shut ruefully. Trying to hold a man at fault for his dreams. And talking to a mirror like a goosehead.

Pausing at the door flap, she stooped to peer out. Her low tent stood on the edge of the Aiel encampment. The gray walls of Cairhien rose some two miles to the west across the bare hills, with nothing between except the charred ground where Foregate had once encircled the city. By the sharp cast to the light, the sun was just peeking over the horizon, yet Aiel already bustled among the tents.

No early rising for her this morning. After a whole night out of her body—her cheeks heated again; Light, was she going to go the rest of her life blushing over a
dream
? She was very much afraid she might—after that she could sleep until afternoon. The smell of cooking porridge was no competition for heavy eyelids.

Wearily she went back to her blankets and collapsed, rubbing her temples. She was too tired to prepare the sleepwell root, but then, she thought she was too tired for it to matter. The dull pain always faded in an hour or so; it would be gone when she woke.

Given everything, it was no surprise that Gawyn filled her dreams. Sometimes she repeated one of his, though not exactly, of course; in her versions, certain embarrassing events just did not occur, or at least were glossed over. Gawyn spent a good deal more time reciting poetry, and holding her while they watched sunrises and sunsets. He did not stumble over saying he loved her, either. And he looked as handsome as he really was. Others were all her own. Tender kisses that lasted forever. Him kneeling while she cupped his head in her hands. Some made no sense. Twice, right atop one another, she dreamed of taking him by the shoulders and trying to turn him to face the other way against his will. Once he brushed her hands away roughly; the other time, she was somehow stronger than he. The two blended together hazily. In another he began swinging a door
closed on her, and she knew if that narrowing gap of light vanished, she was dead.

Dreams tumbled through her head, not all of him, and usually nightmarish.

Perrin came and stood before her, a wolf lying at his feet, a hawk and a falcon perched on his shoulders glaring at each other over his head. Seemingly unaware of them, he kept trying to throw away that axe of his, until finally he ran, the axe floating through the air, chasing him. Again Perrin; he turned away from a Tinker and ran, faster and faster though she called for him to come back. Mat spoke strange words she almost understood—the Old Tongue, she thought—and two ravens alighted on his shoulders, claws sinking through his coat into the flesh beneath. He seemed no more aware of them than Perrin had been of the hawk and falcon, yet defiance passed across his face, and then grim acceptance. In another a woman, face shrouded in shadow, beckoned him toward great danger; Egwene did not know what, only that it was monstrous. Several concerned Rand, not all bad, but all odd. Elayne, forcing him to his knees with one hand. Elayne and Min and Aviendha, sitting in a silent circle around him, each in turn reaching out to lay a hand on him. Him walking toward a burning mountain, something crunching beneath his boots. She stirred and whimpered; the crunching things were the seals on the Dark One’s prison, shattering with his every step. She knew it. She did not need to see them to know.

Feeding on fear, her dreams became worse. The two strange women she had been seeing in
Tel’aran’rhiod
caught her and dragged her before a table full of hooded women, and when they took off their hoods, every one was Liandrin, the Black sister who had captured her in Tear. A hard-faced Seanchan woman handed her a silvery bracelet and necklace connected by a silvery leash, an
a’dam
. That made her cry out; Seanchan had put an
a’dam
on her once. She would die before letting it happen again. Rand capered through the streets of Cairhien, laughing as he blasted buildings and people with lightning and fire, and other men ran with him, hurling the Power; that awful amnesty of his had been announced in Cairhien, but surely no man would
choose
to channel. The Wise Ones caught her in
Tel’aran’rhiod
and sold her like an animal in the lands beyond the Aiel Waste; that was what they did to Cairhienin they found in the Waste. She stood outside herself, watching her face melt, her skull crack open, and dimly seen shapes poke at her with hard sticks. Poke at her. Poke. . . .

She bolted up, gasping, and Cowinde sat back on her heels beside the bed, head bowed in the cowl of her white woolen robe.

“Forgive me, Aes Sedai. I only meant to wake you to break the night’s fast.”

“You didn’t have to jab a hole in my ribs,” Egwene muttered, and was instantly sorry.

Irritation flared in Cowinde’s deep blue eyes, and was snuffed out, hidden behind the
gai’shain
mask of compliant acceptance. Sworn to obey meekly and touch no weapon for a year and a day,
gai’shain
accepted whatever happened, whether a rude word, a blow, even a knife in the heart very likely. Though to an Aiel, killing a
gai’shain
was the same as killing a child. There was no excuse; the perpetrator would be struck down by his own brother or sister. Yet, it was a mask, Egwene was certain.
Gai’shain
worked at it doggedly, but they were still Aiel, and a people less meek Egwene could not imagine. Even one like Cowinde, who refused to put off the white when her year and a day was done. Her refusal was an act of stubborn pride and defiance, as much as any man refusing to retreat from ten enemies. Such tangles the Aiel’s
ji’e’toh
got them into.

That was one reason Egwene tried to watch how she spoke to
gai’shain
, especially those like Cowinde. They had no way to fight back without violating everything they believed in. On the other hand, Cowinde had been a Maiden of the Spear, and would be again if she could ever be convinced to put off that robe. Forgetting the Power, she could probably tie Egwene into a knot while honing a spear at the same time.

“I do not want any breakfast,” Egwene told her. “Just go away and let me sleep.”

“No breakfast?” Amys said, necklaces and bracelets of ivory and silver and gold clicking as she ducked into the tent. She wore no rings—Aiel did not—but for the rest she had on enough to do three women with some to spare. “I thought your appetite at least had recovered fully.”

Bair and Melaine followed her in, each as bedecked with jewelry. The three were from different clans, but where most other Wise Ones who had crossed the Dragonwall stayed close to their septs, their tents were together nearby. They took places on bright, tasseled cushions at the foot of her bedding, adjusting the dark shawls Aielwomen never seemed to be without. Those not
Far Dareis Mai
, anyway. Amys was as white-haired as Bair, but where Bair’s grandmotherly face bore deep creases, Amys looked oddly young, perhaps because of the contrast between hair and face. She said it had been nearly as pale when she was a child.

Usually Bair or Amys took the lead, but today Melaine, sun-haired and green-eyed, spoke first. “If you stop eating, you cannot get well. We had
considered letting you come to the next meeting with the other Aes Sedai—they ask every time when you will come—”

“And make wetlander fools of themselves every time,” Amys put in acidly. She was not a sour woman, but the Aes Sedai in Salidar seemed to make her so. Maybe it was just meeting Aes Sedai. By custom, Wise Ones avoided them, especially Wise Ones who could channel, like Amys and Melaine. Besides, they were not pleased that the Aes Sedai had replaced Nynaeve and Elayne at the meetings. Neither was Egwene. She suspected the Wise Ones felt they had impressed those two with the seriousness of
Tel’aran’rhiod.
By the fragments she heard of the meetings now, the Aes Sedai were not impressed at all. Very little impressed Aes Sedai.

“But we may have to think again,” Melaine went on calmly. She had been prickly as a thornbush before her recent marriage, but little seemed to crack her composure now. “You must not return to the dream until your body has its full strength back.”

“Your eyes are pinched,” Bair said in a concerned, reedy voice that matched her face. In many ways she was the hardest of the three, though. “Did you sleep poorly?”

“How could she otherwise?” Amys asked grumpily. “I tried to look in on her dreams three times last night, and found nothing. No one can sleep well if they do not dream.”

Egwene’s mouth went dry in a heartbeat; her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. They would have to check on the one night she was not back in her body in just a few hours.

Melaine frowned. Not at Egwene; at Cowinde, still kneeling with her head down. “There is a pile of sand near my tent,” she said with something near her old sharpness. “You will search it grain by grain until you find one red grain. If it is not the one I seek, you will have to begin again. Go now.” Cowinde merely bowed until her face touched the colorful carpets, then scampered out. Looking at Egwene, Melaine smiled pleasantly. “You seem surprised. If she will not do what is proper on her own, I will make her decide to do it. Since she claims to serve me yet, she is still my responsibility.”

Bair’s long hair swung as she shook her head. “It will not work.” She adjusted her shawl on angular shoulders. Egwene sweated in just her shift, with the sun not really up yet, but the Aiel were used to far hotter. “I have beaten Juric and Beira until my arm wearied, but however many times I tell them to take off the white, they are back in the robes before sunset.”

“It is an abomination,” Amys muttered. “Since we crossed into the
wetlands, a full quarter of those whose time is done have refused to return to their septs. They twist
ji’e’toh
beyond its meaning.”

That was Rand’s doing. He had revealed to all what only clan chiefs and Wise Ones had known before, that once all Aiel had refused to touch weapons or do violence. Now some believed they all properly should be
gai’shain.
Others refused to accept Rand as the
Car’a’carn
because of it, and still a few each day went to join the Shaido in the mountains to the north. Some simply threw down their weapons and vanished; no one knew what came of them. Taken by the bleakness, the Aiel called it. The strangest part of it to Egwene was that none of the Aiel blamed Rand, except the Shaido anyway. The Prophecy of Rhuidean said that the
Car’a’carn
would take them back and destroy them. Back to what, none seemed certain, but that he would destroy them, somehow, they accepted as calmly as Cowinde had begun a task she knew was hopeless.