The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time 4)

One of the doors to the Amyrlin’s chambers opened, and a young man with red-gold hair came stalking out, nearly striding into Min and her escort. Tall and straight and strong in his blue coat thickly embroidered with gold on sleeves and collar, Gawyn of House Trakand, son of Queen Morgase of Andor, looked every inch the proud young lord. A furious young lord. There was no time to drop her head; he was staring down into her hood, right into her face.

His eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed to slits of blue ice. “So you are back. Do you know where my sister and Egwene have gone?”

“They are not here?” Min forgot everything in a rising flood of panic. Before she knew what she was doing she had seized his sleeves, peering up at him urgently, and forced him back a step. “Gawyn, they started for the Tower months ago! Elayne and Egwene, and Nynaeve, too. With Verin Sedai and … . Gawyn, I … I … .”

“Calm yourself,” he said, gently undoing her grip on his coat. “Light! I didn’t mean to frighten you so. They arrived safely. And would not say a word of where they had been, or why. Not to me. I suppose there’s scant hope you will?” She thought she kept her face straight, but he took one look and said, “I thought not. This place has more secrets than … . They’ve vanished again. And Nynaeve, too.” Nynaeve was almost an offhand addition; she might be one of Min’s friends, but she meant nothing to him. His voice began to roughen once more, growing tighter by the second. “Again without a word. Not a word! Supposedly they’re on a farm somewhere as penance for running away, but I cannot find out where. The Amyrlin won’t give me a straight answer.”

Min flinched; for a moment, streaks of dried blood had made his face a grim mask. It was like a double hammer blow. Her friends were gone—it had eased her coming to the Tower, knowing they were here—and Gawyn was going to be wounded on the day the Aes Sedai died.

Despite all she had seen since entering the Tower, despite her fear, none of it had really touched her personally until now. Disaster striking the Tower would spread far from Tar Valon, yet she was not of the Tower and never could be. But Gawyn was someone she knew, someone she liked, and he was going to be hurt more than the blood told, hurt somehow deeper than wounds to his flesh. It hit her that if catastrophe seized the Tower, not only distant Aes Sedai would be harmed, women she could never feel close to, but her friends as well. They were of the Tower.

In a way she was glad Egwene and the others were not there, glad she could not look at them and perhaps see signs of death. Yet she wanted to look, to be sure, to look at her friends and see nothing, or see that they would live. Where in the Light were they? Why had they gone? Knowing those three, she thought it possible that if Gawyn did not know where they were, it was because they did not want him to know. It could be that.

Suddenly she remembered where she was and why, and that she was not alone with Gawyn. Sahra seemed to have forgotten she was taking Min to the Amyrlin; she seemed to have forgotten everything but the young lord, making calf-eyes that he was not noticing. Even so, there was no use pretending any longer to be a stranger to the Tower. She was at the Amyrlin’s door; nothing could stop her now.

“Gawyn, I don’t know where they are, but if they are doing penance on a farm, they’re probably all sweat, and mud to their hips, and you are the last one they will want to see them.” She was not much easier about their absence than Gawyn was, in truth. Too much had happened, too much was happening, too much with ties to them, and to her. But it was not impossible they had been sent off for punishment. “You won’t help them by making the Amyrlin angry.”

“I don’t know that they are on a farm. Or even alive. Why all this hiding and sidestepping if they’re just pulling weeds? If anything happens to my sister … . Or to Egwene … .” He frowned at the toes of his boots. “I am supposed to look after Elayne. How can I protect her when I don’t know where she is?”

Min sighed. “Do you think she needs looking after? Either of them?” But if the Amyrlin had sent them somewhere, maybe they did. The Amyrlin was capable of sending a woman into a bear’s den with nothing but a switch if it suited her purposes. And she would expect the woman to come back with a bearskin, or the bear on a leash, as instructed. But telling Gawyn that would only inflame his temper and his worries. “Gawyn, they have pledged to the Tower. They won’t thank you for meddling.”

“I know Elayne isn’t a child,” he said patiently, “even if she does bounce back and forth between running off like one and p

laying at being Aes Sedai. But she is my sister, and beyond that, she is Daughter-Heir of Andor. She’ll be queen, after Mother. Andor needs her whole and safe to take the throne, not another Succession.”

Playing at being Aes Sedai? Apparently he did not realize the extent of his sister’s talent. The Daughter-Heirs of Andor had been sent to the Tower to train for as long as there had been an Andor, but Elayne was the first to have enough talent to be raised to Aes Sedai, and a powerful Aes Sedai at that. Very likely he also did not know Egwene was just as strong.

“So you will protect her whether she wants it or not?” She said it in a flat voice meant to let him know he was making a mistake, but he missed the warning and nodded agreement.

“That has been my duty since the day she was born. My blood shed before hers; my life given before hers. I took that oath when I could barely see over the side of her cradle; Gareth Bryne had to explain to me what it meant. I won’t break it now. Andor needs her more than it needs me.”

He spoke with a calm certainty, an acceptance of something natural and right, that sent chills through her. She had always thought of him as boyish, laughing and teasing, but now he was something alien. She thought the Creator must have been tired when it came time to make men; sometimes they hardly seemed human. “And Egwene? What oath did you take about her?”

His face did not change, but he shifted his feet warily. “I’m concerned about Egwene, of course. And Nynaeve. What happens to Elayne’s companions might happen to Elayne. I assume they’re still together; when they were here, I seldom saw one without the others.”

“My mother always told me to marry a poor liar, and you qualify. Except that I think someone else has first claim.”

“Some things are meant to be,” he said quietly, “and some never can. Galad is heartsick because Egwene is gone.” Galad was his half-brother, the pair of them sent to Tar Valon to train under the Warders. That was another Andoran tradition. Galadedrid Damodred was a man who took doing the right thing to the point of a fault, as Min saw it, but Gawyn could see no wrong in him. And he would not speak his feelings for a woman Galad had set his heart on.

She wanted to shake him, shake some sense into him, but there was no time now. Not with the Amyrlin waiting, not with what she had to tell the Amyrlin waiting. Certainly not with Sahra standing there, calf-eyes or no calf-eyes. “Gawyn, I am summoned to the Amyrlin. Where can I find you, when she is done with me?”

“I will be in the practice yard. The only time I can stop worrying is when I am working the sword with Hammar.” Hammar was a blademaster, and the Warder who taught the sword. “Most days I’m there until the sun sets.”

“Good, then. I will come as soon as I can. And try to watch what you say. If you make the Amyrlin angry with you, Elayne and Egwene might share in it.”

“That I cannot promise,” he said firmly. “Something is wrong in the world. Civil war in Cairhien. The same and worse in Tarabon and Arad Doman. False Dragons. Troubles and rumors of troubles everywhere. I don’t say the Tower is behind it, but even here things are not what they should be. Or what they seem. Elayne and Egwene vanishing isn’t the whole of it. Still, they are the part that concerns me. I will find out where they are. And if they have been hurt … . If they are dead … .”

He scowled, and for an instant his face was that bloody mask again. More: a sword floated above his head, and a banner waved behind it. The long-hilted sword, like those most Warders used, had a heron engraved on its slightly curved blade, symbol of a blademaster, and Min could not say whether it belonged to Gawyn or threatened him. The banner bore Gawyn’s sigil of the charging White Boar, but on a field of green rather than the red of Andor. Both sword and banner faded with the blood.

“Be careful, Gawyn.” She meant it two ways. Careful of what he said, and careful in a way she could not explain, even to herself. “You must be very careful.”

His eyes searched her face as if he had heard some of her deeper meaning. “I … will try,” he said finally. He put on a grin, almost the grin she remembered, but the effort was plain. “I suppose I had better get myself back to the practice yard if I expect to keep up with Galad. I managed two out of five against Hammar this morning, but Galad actually won three, the last time he bothered to come to the yard.” Suddenly he appeared to really see her for the first time, and his grin became genuine. “You ought to wear dresses more often. It’s pretty on you. Remember, I will be there till sunset.”

As he strode away with something very close to the dangerous grace of a Warder, Min realized she was smoothing the dress over her hip and stopped immediately. The Light burn all men!

Sahra exhaled as if she had been holding her breath. “He is very good-looking, isn’t he?” she said dreamily. “Not as good-looking as Lord Galad, of course. And you really know him.” It was half a question, but only half.

Min echoed the novice’s sigh. The girl would talk with her friends in the novices’ quarters. The son of a queen was a natural topic, especially when he was handsome and had an air about him like the hero in a gleeman’s tale. A strange woman only made for more interesting speculation. Still, there was nothing to be done about it. At any rate, it could hardly cause any harm now.