Fire burst fr
om the two Trollocs, a flame at every pore, bursting through black mail. Even as their mouths opened to scream, a gateway opened right where they stood. Bloody halves of burning, cleanly sliced Trolloc fell, but Rand was staring through the opening. Not into blackness, but a great columned hall with lion-carved stone panels, where a large man with wings of white in his dark hair started up in surprise from a gilded throne. A dozen men, some dressed as lords, some in breastplates, turned to see what their master was looking at.
Rand barely noticed them. “Rahvin,” he said. Or someone did. He was not sure who.
Sending fire and lightning ahead of him, he stepped through and let the gateway close behind him. He was death.
Nynaeve was having no trouble maintaining the temper that allowed her to channel a flow of Spirit to the amber sleeping woman in her pouch. Even the feel of unseen eyes could not touch her through her anger this morning. Siuan stood in front of her on a Salidar street in Tel’aran’rhiod, a street empty save for them, a few flies, and one fox that paused to look at them curiously before trotting on.
“You must concentrate,” Nynaeve barked. “You had more control than this the first time. Concentrate!”
“I am concentrating, you fool girl!” Siuan’s plain blue wool dress was suddenly silk. The seven-striped stole of the Amyrlin Seat hung around her neck, and a golden serpent bit its own tail on her finger. Frowning at Nynaeve, she did not seem aware of the change, though she had already worn the same five times today. “If there’s any difficulty, it lies in that foul-tasting brew you fed me! Faagh! I can still taste it. Like flatfish gall.” Stole and ring vanished; the silk dress’s high neck plunged low enough to show the twisted stone ring, dangling between her breasts on a fine gold chain.
“If you didn’t insist on me teaching you when you needed something to help you sleep, you wouldn’t need it.” So there had been a little sheeps-tongue root and a few other things that were not really necessary in the mix. The woman deserved to have her tongue curdled.
“You can hardly teach me when you’re teaching Sheriam and the others.” The silk paled; the neck was high again, surrounded by a white lace ruff, and a cap of pearls fitted close on Siuan’s hair. “Or would you rather I came after them? You claim you need some sleep undisturbed.”
Nynaeve quivered, fists clenched at her sides. Sheriam and the others were not the worst thing stoking her anger. She and Elayne took turns bringing them to Tel’aran’rhiod two at a time, sometimes all six in one night, and even if she was the teacher they never let her forget she was Accepted and they Aes Sedai. One sharp word when they made a foolish mistake . . . Elayne had only been sent to scrub pots once, but Nynaeve’s hands were shriveled from hot, soapy water; back where her body lay sleeping they were, anyway. But they were not the worst. Nor was the fact that she barely had a moment to spare for investigating what, if anything, could be done about stilling and gentling. Logain was more cooperative than Siuan and Leane in any case, or at least more eager. Thank the Light he understood about keeping it secret. Or thought he did; he probably believed she would Heal him eventually. No, worse than that was that Faolain had been tested and raised . . . not Aes Sedai—not without the Oath Rod, which was tight in the Tower—but to something more than Accepted. Faolain wore any dress she chose now, and if she could not wear the shawl or choose an Ajah, she had been given other authority. Nynaeve thought she had fetched more cups of water, more books—left deliberately, she was sure!—more pins and inkjars and other useless things in the last four days than she had her entire stay in the Tower. Yet even Faolain was not the worst of all. She did not even want to remember that. Her anger could have heated a house in winter.
“What’s put a hook in your gills today, girl?” Siuan had on a gown like those Leane wore, only more sheer than even Leane would ever wear in public, so thin it was hard to tell what color it was. Not the first time she had had that on today, either. What was perking around in the back of the woman’s mind? In the World of Dreams, things like these changes of clothing betrayed thoughts you might not even know you had. “You have been almost decent company until today,” Siuan continued irritably, then paused. “Until today. I see it now. Yesterday afternoon Sheriam assigned Theodrin to begin helping you break down that block you’ve built up. Is that what has your shift in a twist? You don’t like Theodrin telling you what to do? She’s a wilder, too, girl. If anyone can help you learn to channel without eating nettles first, she—”
“And what has you so jittery you can’t hold your dress still?” Theodrin—that was what really hurt. The failure. “Maybe it’s something I heard last night?” Theodrin was even-tempered, good-humored, patient; she said it could not be done in one session; her own block had taken months to demolish, and she had finally realized she was channeling long before going to the Tower. Still, failure hurt, and worst of all, if anyone ever discovered that she had cried like a baby in Theodrin’s comforting arms when she knew she was failing . . . “I heard you heaved Gareth Bryne’s boots at his head when he told you to sit down and polish them properly—he still doesn’t know Min does the polishing, does he?—so he turned you upside down and—”
Siuan’s full-armed slap rung her ears. For an instant she could only stare at the other woman, eyes going wider and wider. With a wordless shriek, she tried to punch Siuan in the eye. Tried, because somehow Siuan had tangled a fist in her hair. A moment later they were down in the dirt of the street, rolling about and screaming, flailing wildly.
Grunting, Nynaeve thought she was getting the better of it even if she did not know whether she was on the top or the bottom half the time. Siuan was trying to yank her braid out by the roots with one hand while the other pounded at her ribs or anything else it could find, but she had the other woman the same way, and Siuan’s yanking and punching were definitely growing weaker, and she herself was going to pound Siuan senseless in another minute, then snatch her bald. Nynaeve yelped as a toe caught her hard on the shin. The woman kicked! Nynaeve tried to knee her, but it was not easy in skirts. Kicking was not fighting fair!
Suddenly Nynaeve realized that Siuan was shaking. At first she thought the woman was crying. Then she realized it was laughter. Pushing herself up, she brushed strands of hair out of her face—her braid was all but undone—and glared down at the other woman. “What are you laughing at? Me? If you are . . . !”
“Not at you. At us.” Still quivering with mirth, Siuan shoved Nynaeve off her. Siuan’s hair was in wild disarray, and dust covered the plain wool dress she wore now, worn-looking and neatly darned in several places. She was barefoot, too. “Two grown women, rolling around like . . . I haven’t done that since I was . . . twelve, I think. I started thinking that all we needed would be fat Cian snatching me up by an ear to tell me girls don’t fight. I heard she once knocked down a drunken printer; I don’t know why.” Something very like giggles took her for a moment, then she quieted them and stood, brushing dust from her clothes. “If we have a disagreement, we can settle it like adult women.” And in a careful tone, “Still, it might be a good idea not to discuss Gareth Bryne.” She gave a start as the worn dress became a gown, red with black-and-gold embroidery around hem and swooping neckline.
Nynaeve sat there staring at her. What would she have done as Wisdom if she found two women rolling around in the dirt that way? If anything, the answer kept her anger at a simmer. Siuan still did not seem to realize that there was no need to brush away dust with your hands in Tel’aran’rhiod. Snatching away fingers that had been repairing her braid, Nynaeve got up quickly; before she was on her feet again, her braid hung perfect over her shoulder and her good Two Rivers woolens might have just been laundered.
“I agree,” she said. She would have made any two women she caught like that sorry they had been born even before she hauled them before the Women’s Circle. What was she doing lashing out with her fists like some fool man? First Cerandin—she did not want to think about that episode, but there it was—then Latelle, and now this. Was sh
e going to get around her block by being angry all the time? Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—that thought did nothing for her temper. “If we have disagreements, we can . . . discuss them.”
“Which I suppose means we’ll shout at one another,” Siuan said dryly. “Well, better that than the other.”
“We would not have to shout if you—!” Drawing a deep breath, Nynaeve jerked her eyes away; this was no way to begin anew. That breath caught in her throat, and she turned her head back to Siuan so quickly it seemed she had been shaking it. She hoped it did. Just for an instant, there had been a face in a window across the street. And there was a flutter in her belly, a bubble of fear, a burn of anger at being afraid. “I think we should go back now,” she said quietly.
“Go back! You said that vile concoction would put me to sleep for a good two hours, and we haven’t been here much more than half that.”
“Time works differently here.” Had it been Moghedien? The face had vanished so quickly it could have been someone dreaming herself here for an instant. If it was Moghedien, they must not—must not on any account—let her know she had been seen. They had to get away. Bubble of fear, burn of anger. “I told you. A day in Tel’aran’rhiod can be an hour in the waking world, or the other way round. We—”
“I’ve dipped better out of the bilge in a bucket, girl. You needn’t think you can get away with shortchanging me. You’ll teach me everything you teach the others, as agreed. We can go when I wake up.”
There was no time. If it had been Moghedien. Siuan’s dress was green silk now, and the Amyrlin’s stole and her Great Serpent ring were back, but for a wonder the neckline was almost as low as anything she had worn before. The ring ter’angreal hung above her breasts, somehow part of a necklace of square emeralds.
Nynaeve moved without thinking. Her hand lashed out, snatched the necklace so hard it tore free from Siuan’s neck. Siuan’s eyes widened, but as soon as the clasp broke, she vanished, and necklace and ring melted from Nynaeve’s hand. For an instant she stared at her empty fingers. What happened to someone sent out of Tel’aran’rhiod like that? Had she sent Siuan back to her sleeping body? Or to somewhere else? To nowhere?
Panic seized her. She was just standing there. Quick as thought she fled, the World of Dreams seeming to change around her.
She stood on a dirt street in a small village of wooden houses, none more than a single story. The White Lion of Andor waved from a tall staff, and a single stone dock stuck out into a broad river where a flock of long-billed birds flapped south low over the water. It all looked vaguely familiar, but it took her a moment to know where she was. Jurene. In Cairhien. And that river was the Erinin. It had been here that she and Egwene and Elayne had boarded the Darter, as badly misnamed as the Riverserpent, to continue their journey to Tear. That time seemed like something read in a book long ago.
Why had she jumped to Jurene? That was simple, and answered as soon as she thought of it. Jurene was the one place she knew well enough to leap to in Tel’aran’rhiod that she could be sure Moghedien did not know. They had been there for an hour, before Moghedien knew she existed, and she was sure neither she nor Elayne had ever mentioned it again, in Tel’aran’rhiod or awake.
But that left another question. The same one, in a way. Why Jurene? Why not step out of the Dream, wake up in her own bed, such as it was, if washing dishes and scrubbing floors on top of everything had not left her so weary she slept right on? I can still step out. Moghedien had seen her in Salidar, if that had been Moghedien. Moghedien knew Salidar now. I can tell Sheriam. How? Admit she was teaching Siuan? She was not supposed to have her hands on those ter’angreal except with Sheriam and the other Aes Sedai. How Siuan got hold of them when she wanted, Nynaeve did not know. No, she was not afraid of more hours up to her elbows in hot water. She was afraid of Moghedien. Anger burned in her belly fiercely. She wished she had some goosemint out of her scrip of herbs. I am so . . . so bloody tired of being afraid.