Authors: Robert Jordan
Nynaeve’s knees sagged. “It was an accident! I swear! I didn’t mean to!”
Sheriam gave her a hard shake without slowing a step. “Don’t be a fool, child. You may just have done the impossible.”
“You believe me? You believe me! Why didn’t you say something when Nisao and Varilin and—Why didn’t you say something?”
“I said ‘may,’ child.” Sheriam’s voice was depressingly neutral.
“Another possibility,” Myrelle said, “is that your brain has swollen from strain.” Her lidded eyes regarded Nynaeve. “You would be surprised at the number of Accepted, and even novices, who claim they’ve rediscovered some lost Talent, or found a new. When I was a novice, an Accepted named Echiko was so convinced she knew how to fly, she leaped from the top of the Tower.”
Head spinning, Nynaeve looked from one woman to the other. Did they believe her or not? Did they really think her
mind
had bent?
What under the Light are they going to do to me?
She tried to find words to convince them—she was not lying, not crazy; she
had
Healed Logain—but her
mouth was still working soundlessly when they hurried her into the Little Tower.
Not until they entered what had been a private dining room, a long chamber where now a narrow table stood with chairs behind it near one wall, did Nynaeve realize they had gained a train of followers. More than a dozen Aes Sedai entered on their heels, Nisao folding her arms tightly beneath her breasts, and Dagdara with her chin thrust forward as though meaning to walk through a wall, Shanelle and Therva and. . . . All Yellow Ajah, save Sheriam and Myrelle. That table suggested a magistrate’s chamber; that line of grim faces spoke of a trial. Nynaeve swallowed hard.
Sheriam and Myrelle left her standing and walked over to the table to confer quietly, their backs to her. When they turned again, their faces were unreadable.
“You claim that you Healed Logain.” There was a hint of contempt in Sheriam’s voice. “You claim you Healed a gentled man.”
“You must believe me,” Nynaeve protested. “You said you did.” She jumped as something unseen struck her hard across the hips.
“Remember yourself, Accepted,” Sheriam said coldly. “Do you make this claim?”
Nynaeve stared at the woman. Sheriam was the one crazed, bouncing back and forth this way. Still, she managed a respectful “Yes, Aes Sedai.” Dagdara snorted like canvas ripping.
Sheriam gestured to quiet a murmur among the Yellows. “And you did it by accident, you say. If that’s the case, I suppose there is no chance of you showing proof by doing it again.”
“How could she?” Myrelle said, looking amused. Amused! “If she fumbled her way into it blindly, how could she possibly repeat it? But that would not matter unless she actually did the thing in the first place.”
“Answer me!” Sheriam snapped, and that invisible switch struck again. This time Nynaeve managed not to leap. “Is there any chance you can remember even part of what you did?”
“I remember, Aes Sedai,” she said sullenly, tensing for another blow. It did not come, but she could see the glow of
saidar
around Sheriam now. That glow seemed threatening.
A small commotion at the door, and Carlinya and Beonin pushed through the line of Yellow sisters, one shoving Siuan ahead of her, the other Leane. “They did not want to come,” Beonin announced in an exasperated tone. “Can you believe that they tried to tell us that they were busy?”
Leane was as blank-faced as any Aes Sedai, but Siuan darted sullen, angry looks at everybody, especially Nynaeve.
Finally Nynaeve understood. Finally everything came together. The Yellow sisters’ presence. Sheriam and Myrelle believing, then not believing, threatening her, snapping at her. It was all apurpose, all to make her angry enough to work her Healing on Siuan and Leane, to prove herself to the Yellows. No. By their faces, they were here to see her fail, not succeed. She made no effort to hide the firm tug she gave her braid. In fact, she did it again, in case anyone had missed the first time. She wanted to smack
all
their faces. She wanted to dose them with a concoction of herbs that would make them sit down on the floor and cry like babies just from the smell. She wanted to yank their hair out and strangle them with it, to—
“Do I have to put up with this nonsense?” Siuan growled. “I have important work to do, but if it were only heading fish it would be more im—”
“Oh, shut up,” Nynaeve broke in testily. One step, and she seized Siuan’s head in both hands as if she intended to break the woman’s neck. She had believed that nonsense, even the barrel! They had manipulated her like a puppet!
Saidar
filled her, and she channeled as she had with Logain, blending all of the Five Powers. She knew what she was looking for this time, that almost-not-there-at-all sense of something cut. Spirit and Fire to mend the break, and. . . .
For a moment Siuan only stared, expressionless. Then the glow of
saidar
enveloped her. Gasps filled the room. Slowly Siuan leaned forward and kissed Nynaeve on either cheek. A tear leaked down her face, then another, and abruptly Siuan was weeping, hugging herself and shaking; the gleaming aura around her faded away. Sheriam quickly folded her into comforting arms; Sheriam looked as though she might cry too.
The rest of the room was staring at Nynaeve. The shock shining through all that Aes Sedai serenity was quite satisfying, and the disgruntlement too. Shanelle’s eyes, pale blue in a dark pretty face, seemed about to fall out of her head. Nisao’s mouth hung open, until she saw Nynaeve looking at her and snapped it shut.
“What made you think of using Fire?” Dagdara asked in a strangled voice that sounded entirely too high for such a big woman. “And Earth? You used Earth. Healing is Spirit, Water and Air.” That opened the flood-gate, questions from every throat, but they were all the same question really, just phrased differently.
“I don’t know why,” Nynaeve replied when she found an opening. “It just seemed right. I’ve almost always used everything.” Which produced a round of admonitions. Healing was Spirit, Water and Air. It was dangerous to experiment with Healing; a mistake could kill not only you but your patient. She said nothing in reply, but the warnings died off quickly in rueful glances and smoothed skirts; she had not killed anyone, and she had Healed what they said could not be Healed.
Leane wore such a hopeful smile that it was almost painful. Nynaeve approached her with a smile of her own, masking the smoldering irritation inside. The Yellow Ajah and all its vaunted knowledge of Healing that she had been ready to beg on her knees to share. She knew more of Healing than any of them! “Watch carefully, now. You’ll not get another chance soon to see it done.”
She felt the joining clearly as she channeled, though she still could not have said what it was she had joined. It felt different than with Logain—it had with Siuan as well—but as she kept telling herself, men and women
were
different.
Light, I’m lucky this works on them as well as it did on him!
That brought up an uncomfortable line of speculation. What if some things had to be Healed differently in men than in women? Maybe she did not know so very much more than the Yellows after all.
Leane’s reaction differed from Siuan’s. No tears. She embraced
saidar
and smiled beatifically, then released it, though the smile remained. Then she flung her arms around Nynaeve and hugged her till her ribs creaked, whispering, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” over and over.
A murmur rose among the Yellows, and Nynaeve prepared to bask in their compliments. She would accept their apologies gracefully. Then she heard what they were saying.
“. . . used Fire and Earth as if she were trying to bore a hole through stone.” That from Dagdara.
“A smoother touch would be better,” Shanelle agreed.
“. . . see where Fire might be useful in problems with the heart,” Therva said, tapping her long nose. Beldemaine, a plump Arafellin with silver bells in her hair, nodded thoughtfully.
“. . . if the Earth were combined with Air just so, you see. . . .”
“. . . Fire woven into Water. . . .”
“. . . Earth blended with the Water. . . .”
Nynaeve gaped. They had forgotten her completely. They thought they could do what she had just showed them better than she could!
Myrelle patted her arm. “You did very well,” she murmured. “Don’t
worry; they will be all praises later. Right now, they are still a little taken aback.”
Nynaeve sniffed loudly, but none of the Yellows seemed to notice. “I hope this at least means I don’t have to scrub pots anymore.”
Sheriam’s head whipped around with a startled expression. “Why, child, whatever gave you that notion?” She still had an arm around Siuan, who was dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief in considerable embarrassment. “If anyone could break any rule they chose, do whatever they chose, and escape punishment merely by doing some good to balance it, the world would be chaos.”
Nynaeve sighed heavily. She should have known.
Stepping out from the other Yellows, Nisao cleared her throat, and in passing shot Nynaeve a glare that could only be called accusatory. “I suppose this means we will have to gentle Logain again.” She sounded as though she wanted to deny any of it had happened.
Heads began nodding, and then Carlinya spoke, like an icicle stabbed into the room. “Can we?” Every eye turned to her, but she went on calmly, coolly. “Ethically, can we consider supporting a man who can channel, a man trying to gather other men who can, while at the same time we go on as before, gentling those we find? Practically, what effect will it have on him when he learns? Distressing as it may be, as matters stand, he will see us as separate from the Tower, and more importantly, from Elaida and the Red Ajah. If we gentle even one man, we may lose that distinction, and with it our chance to gain a hold on him before Elaida does.”
Silence cloaked the room when she stopped. Aes Sedai exchanged troubled looks, and those directed at Nynaeve made Nisao’s look laudatory. Sisters had died in capturing Logain, and even if he was safely shielded again, she had given them him to deal with all over again, and a worse pickle besides.
“I think you should go,” Sheriam said softly.
Nynaeve was not about to argue. She made her curtsies as quickly and carefully as she could, and did her best not to run in leaving.
Outside, Elayne rose from the stone step. “I’m sorry, Nynaeve,” she said, brushing her skirt. “I was so excited, I blurted out everything to Sheriam before I realized Romanda and Delana were there.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Nynaeve said heavily, starting down the crowded street. “It would have gotten out sooner or later.” It just was not fair, though.
I did something they said couldn’t be done, and I still have to scrub pots!
“Elayne, I don’t care what you say; we have to go. Carlinya was talking
about getting a ‘hold’ on Rand. This lot won’t be any better than Elaida. Thom or Juilin will get horses for us, and Birgitte can just bite her elbow.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late,” Elayne said miserably. “Word is spreading already.”
Larissa Lyndel and Zenare Ghodar swooped down from opposite directions like hawks on either side of Nynaeve. Larissa was a bony woman whose plainness almost overcame Aes Sedai agelessness, Zenare slightly plump and haughty enough for two queens, but both wore faces of eager anticipation. They were Yellow Ajah, though neither had been in the room when she Healed Siuan and Leane.
“I want to see you go through everything step by step, Nynaeve,” Larissa said, laying hold of an arm.
“Nynaeve,” Zenare said, seizing the other arm, “I wager that I will find a hundred things you never thought of, if you repeat the weave often enough.”
Salita Toranes, Tairen and almost as dark as one of the Sea Folk, seemed to pop out of nowhere. “Others ahead of me, I see. Well, burn my soul if I’ll wait in line.”
“I was here first, Salita,” Zenare said firmly. And tightened her grip.
“
I
was first,” Larissa said, tightening hers.
Nynaeve shot a look of pure horror at Elayne, and got commiseration in return, and a shrug. This was what Elayne had meant about too late. She would not have a waking moment to herself after this.
“. . . angry?” Zenare was saying. “I know fifty ways at the front of my head to make her angry enough to chew rocks.”
“
I
can think of a
hundred
,” Larissa said. “
I
intend to break her block if it’s the last thing I do.”
Magla Daronos shouldered her way into the group, and she had the shoulders for it. She looked as if she worked the sword, or a blacksmith’s hammer. “You will break it, Larissa? Hah! I do have several ways in mind already to draw it out of her.”
Nynaeve just wanted to scream.
It was all Siuan could do not to embrace
saidar
and hold it, but she thought she might start crying again. That would never do. Besides, it would seem like some fool novice’s display to the women crowding around her in the waiting room. Every expression of wonder and delight, every warm welcome as if she had been away for years, came as balm, especially from those
who had been friends before she became Amyrlin, before time and duty pulled them apart. Lelaine and Delana wrapped their arms around her as they had not in long years. Moiraine had been the only one closer, the only one beside Leane she had managed to keep after donning the stole, and duty had helped keep them together.
“It is so good to have you back,” Lelaine laughed.
“So very good,” Delana murmured warmly.
Siuan laughed, and had to scrub tears from her cheeks. Light, what was the matter with her? She had not wept this easily as a child!
Maybe it was just joy, at regaining
saidar
, at all the warmth around her. The Light knew, altogether it was enough to unsettle anybody. She had never dared dream this day might come, and now that it had, she held nothing against any of these women, not their cold distance before, not their insistence that she remember her place. The line between Aes Sedai and not Aes Sedai was clear—she had insisted on it before she was stilled, and it went without saying that she would again—and she knew how stilled women had to be dealt with for their own good and the good of those who could still channel. Had had to be dealt with. How strange it was that that would never be so again.