“I am not having them walk in on me asleep in my shift.” She was awkwardly undoing the buttons down the back of her dress. Elayne went to help her, and she said, “I can manage. You get the ring out for me.”
With a sniff, Elayne pulled up her skirt to reach the small pocket she had sewn to the underside. If Nynaeve wanted to be peevish, let her; she would not respond even if Nynaeve began ranting again. There were two rings in the pocket. She left the golden Great Serpent she had been given on being raised to Accepted, and took out the stone ring.
All flecks and stripes of red and blue and brown, it was just too large to fit a finger, and flattened and twisted besides. Odd as it seemed, the ring had only one edge; a finger drawn along that edge would circle inside and out before coming back to where it began. It was a ter’angreal, and what it did was allow access to Tel’aran’rhiod, even for someone who did not have the Talent that Egwene and the Aiel dreamwalkers shared. All that was needed was to sleep with it next to your skin. Unlike the two ter’angreal they had recovered from the Black Ajah, it did not require channeling. For all Elayne knew, even a man might be able to use it.
Clad only in her linen shift, Nynaeve threaded the ring onto the leather thong with Lan’s signet and her own Great Serpent, then reknotted and hung it back around her neck before lying down atop one of the beds. Carefully tucking the rings in next to her skin, she settled her head on the pillows.
“Is there time before Egwene and the Wise Ones get there?” Elayne asked. “I can never reason out what hour it is in the Waste.”
“There is time unless she comes early, which she won’t. The Wise Ones keep her on a very short leash. It will do her good, in the long run. She was always headstrong.” Nynaeve opened her eyes, looking right at her—at her!—as if that could stand for her as well.
“Remember to tell Egwene to let Rand know that I am thinking of him.” She was not going to let the woman start a row. “Tell her to . . . tell him that I love him, and only him.” There. She had it out.
Nynaeve rolled her eyes in what was really a most offensive way. “If you wish me to,” she said dryly, snuggling herself into the pillows.
As the other woman’s breathing began to slow, Elayne pushed one of the chests against the door and sat on it to wait. She always hated waiting. It would serve Nynaeve right if she went down to the common room. Thom would probably still be there, and . . . And nothing. He was supposed to be her coachman. She wondered whether Nynaeve had thought of that before agreeing to be the maid. With a sigh, she leaned back against the door. She did hate waiting.
CHAPTER
14
Meetings
The effects of the ring ter’angreal did not startle Nynaeve anymore. She was in the place she had been thinking of when sleep closed in, the great chamber in Tear called the Heart of the Stone, within the massive fortress called the Stone of Tear. The gilded stand-lamps were unlit, but pale light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, to simply be all around her, fading into dim shadows in the distance. At least it was not hot; it never seemed hot or cold in Tel’aran’rhiod.
Huge redstone columns ran off in every direction, the vaulted dome far above lost in dim shadows along with more golden lamps hanging on golden chains. The pale floorstones beneath her feet were worn; the High Lords of Tear had come to this chamber—in the waking world, of course—only when their law and custom demanded, but they had come ever since the Breaking of the World. Centered beneath the dome was Callandor, apparently a glittering sword made of crystal, driven half its length into the stone of the floor. Just as Rand had left it.
She did not go near Callandor. Rand claimed to have woven traps around it with saidin, traps that no woman could see. She expected they would be nasty—the best of men could be vicious when they tried to be devious—nasty and just as primed for a woman as for the men who might use that sa’angreal. He had meant to guard it against those in the Tower as much as the Forsaken. Aside from Rand himself, the one who touched Callandor might die or worse.
That was a fact of Tel’aran’rhiod. What was in the waking world was here, too, although the reverse was not always so. The World of Dreams, the Unseen World, reflected the waking world, if sometimes in odd ways, and perhaps other worlds as well. Verin Sedai had told Egwene that there was a pattern woven of worlds, of the reality here and others, just as the weaving of people’s lives made up the Pattern of the Ages. Tel’aran’rhiod touched them all, yet few could enter except accidentally, for unknowing moments, during their own mundane dreams. Dangerous moments for those dreamers, though they never knew it unless they were very unlucky. Another fact of Tel’aran’rhiod was that what happened to the dreamer here happened in the waking world, too. To die in the World of Dreams was to die in fact.
She had the sensation of being watched from the dimnesses between the columns, but it did not trouble her. It was not Moghedien. Imaginary eyes; there are no watchers. I told Elayne to ignore them, and here I . . . Moghedien would certainly do more than look. Even so, she wished she were angry enough to channel. Not that she was frightened, of course. Only not angry. Not frightened at all.
The twisted stone ring felt light, as if it were trying to drift up out of her shift, reminding her that she was wearing only that. As soon as she thought of clothing herself, she was in a dress. It was a trick of Tel’aran’rhiod that she liked; in some ways channeling was unnecessary, for here she could do things that she doubted any Aes Sedai had ever done with the Power. It was not the dress she had expected, though; not good stout Two Rivers wool. The high neck trimmed in Jaerecruz lace came right up under her chin, but pale yellow silk draped her in folds that clung revealingly. How many times had she called Taraboner gowns like this indecent when she had worn them to blend into Tanchico? It seemed that she had grown more used to them than she knew.
Giving her braid a sharp pull for the waywardness of her own mind, she left the dress as it was. The gown might not be as she wanted, but she was no flighty girl to go leaping and squealing over it. A dress is a dress. She would wear it when Egwene arrived, with whichever of the Wise Ones accompanied her this time, and if any of them said a word . . . I did not come early to blather at myself about dresses!
“Birgitte?” Silence answered her, and she raised her voice, though it should not have been necessary. In this place, this particular woman could hear her own name spoken on the other side of the world. “Birgitte?”
A woman stepped out from among the columns, blue eyes calm and proudly confident, her golden hair in a long braid more intricate than Nynaeve’s own. Her short white coat and voluminous yellow silk trousers, gathered at the ankles above short boots with raised heels, were garments of more than two thousand years ago that she had taken a liking to. The arrows in the quiver at her side appeared to be silver, and so did the bow she carried.
“Is Gaidal abo
ut?” Nynaeve asked. He was usually close by Birgitte, and he made Nynaeve nervous, refusing to acknowledge her existence, scowling when Birgitte spoke to her. It had been something of a shock at first to find Gaidal Cain and Birgitte—long-dead heroes linked in so many stories and legends—in Tel’aran’rhiod. But, as Birgitte herself had said, where better for heroes bound to the Wheel of Time to await rebirth than in a dream? A dream that had existed as long as the Wheel. It was they, Birgitte and Gaidal Cain and Rogosh Eagle-eye and Artur Hawkwing and all the others, that the Horn of Valere would summon back to fight at Tarmon Gai’don.
Birgitte’s braid swung as she shook her head. “I have not seen him for some time. I think the Wheel has spun him out again. It always happens so.” Expectation and concern both touched her voice.
If Birgitte was right, then somewhere in the world a boychild had been born, a mewling babe with no knowledge of who he was, yet destined for adventures that would make new legends. The Wheel wove the heroes into the Pattern as they were needed, to shape the Pattern, and when they died they returned here to wait again. That was what it meant to be bound to the Wheel. New heroes could find themselves bound so as well, men and women whose bravery and accomplishments raised them far above the ordinary, but once bound, it was forever.
“How long do you have?” Nynaeve asked. “Years yet, surely.” Birgitte was always tied to Gaidal, had been tied in story after story, in Age after Age, of adventure and a romance that even the Wheel of Time did not break. She was always born after Gaidal; a year, or five, or ten, but after.
“I do not know, Nynaeve. Time here is not like time in the waking world. I met you here last ten days gone, as it seems to me, and Elayne only a day before. What was it for you?”
“Four days and three,” Nynaeve muttered. She and Elayne had been coming to speak with Birgitte as often as they could, though too frequently it had not been possible with Thom and Juilin sharing the camp and standing night guard. Birgitte actually remembered the War of Power, one lifetime of it anyway, and the Forsaken. Her past lives were like books fondly remembered from long ago, the more distant dimmer than the nearer, but the Forsaken stood out. Especially Moghedien.
“You see, Nynaeve? The flow of time here can shift in larger ways, too. It might be months before I am born again, or days. Here, for me. In the waking world it could be years yet before my birth.”
With an effort Nynaeve suppressed her vexation. “Then we mustn’t waste what time we have. Have you seen any of them since we last met?” There was no need to say who.