“Poor Else,” Egwene murmured, and the balls of light became more lively above her hands. Min laughed.
The door banged open, caught by the wind. Egwene gave a yelp and let the balls vanish before she saw it was only Elayne.
The golden-haired Daughter-Heir of Andor pushed the door shut and hung up her cloak on a peg. “I just heard,” she said. “The rumors are true. King Galldrian is dead. That makes it a war of succession.”
Min snorted. “Civil war. War of succession. A lot of silly names for the same thing. Do you mind if we don’t talk about it? That’s all we hear. War in Cairhien. War on Toman Head. They may have caught the false Dragon in Saldaea, but there’s still war in Tear. Most of it is rumors, anyway. Yesterday, I heard one of the cooks saying she’d heard Artur Hawkwing was marching on Tanchico. Artur Hawkwing!”
“I thought you did not want to talk about it,” Egwene said.
“I saw Logain,” Elayne said. “He was sitting on a bench in the Inner Court, crying. He ran when he saw me. I cannot help feeling sorry for him.”
“Better he cries than the rest of us, Elayne,” Min said.
“I know what he is,” Elayne said calmly. “Or rather, what he was. He isn’t anymore, and I can feel sorry for him.”
Egwene slumped back against the wall. Rand. Logain always made her think of Rand. She had not dreamed about him in months, now, not the kind of dreams she had had on the River Queen. Anaiya still made her write down everything she dreamed, and the Aes Sedai checked them for signs, or connections to events, but there was never anything about Rand except dreams that, Anaiya said, meant she missed him. Oddly, she felt almost as if he were not there any longer, as if he had ceased to exist, along with her dreams, a few weeks after reaching the White Tower. And I sit thinking about how nicely Galad walks, she thought bitterly. Rand has to be all right. If he’d been caught and gentled, I’d have heard something.
That sent a chill through her, as it never failed to do, the thought of Rand being gentled, Rand weeping and wanting to die as Logain did.
Elayne sat down beside her on the bed, tucking her feet up under her. “If you are mooning over Galad, Egwene, you will have no sympathy from me. I’ll have Nynaeve dose you with one of those horrible concoctions she’s always talking about.” She frowned at Nynaeve, who had taken no notice of her entrance. “What is the matter with her? Don’t tell me she has started sighing after Galad, too!”
“I wouldn’t bother her.” Min leaned toward the two of them and lowered her voice. “That skinny Accepted Irella told her she was as clumsy as a cow and had half the Talents, and Nynaeve clouted her ear.” Elayne winced. “Exactly,” Min murmured. “They had her up to Sheriam’s study before you could blink, and she hasn’t been fit to live with since.”
Apparently Min had not dropped her voice enough, for there was a growl from Nynaeve. Suddenly the door whipped open once more, and a gale howled into the room. It did not ruffle the blankets on Egwene’s bed, but Min and the stool toppled, to roll against the wall. Immediately the wind died, and Nynaeve stood with a stricken look on her face.
Egwene hurried to the door and peeked out. The noonday sun was burning off the last reminders of last night’s rainstorm. The still-damp balcony around the Novices’ Court was empty, the long row of doors to novices’ rooms all shut. The novices who had taken advantage of the freeday to enjoy themselves in the gardens were no doubt catching up on their sleep. No one could have seen. She closed the door and took her place beside Elayne again as Nynaeve helped Min to her feet.
“I’m sorry, Min,” Nynaeve said in a tight voice. “Sometimes my temper. . . . I can’t ask you to forgive me, not for this.” She took a deep breath. “If you want to report me to Sheriam, I will understand. I deserve it.”
Egwene wished she had not heard that admission; Nynaeve could grow prickly over such things. Searching for something on which to focus, something Nynaeve could believe she had had her attention on, she found herself touching saidar once more, and began juggling the balls of light again. Elayne quickly joined her; Egwene saw the glow form around the Daughter-Heir even before three tiny balls appeared above her hands. They began to pass the little glowing spheres back and forth in increasingly intricate patterns. Sometimes one winked out as one girl or the other failed to maintain it as it came to her, then winked back a little altered in color or size.
The One Power filled Egwene with life. She smelled the faint rose aroma of soap from Elayne’s morning bath. She could feel the rough plaster of the walls, the smooth stones of the floor, as well as she could the bed where she sat. She could hear Min and Nynaeve breathe, much less their quiet words.
“If it comes to forgiving,” Min said, “maybe you should forgive me. You have a temper, and I have a big mouth. I will forgive you if you forgive me.” With murmurs of “forgiven” that sounded meant on both sides, the two women hugged. “But if you do it again,” Min said with a laugh, “I might clout your ear.”
“Next time,” Nynaeve replied, “I will throw something at you.” She was laughing, too, but her laughter ceased abruptly as her eye fell on Egwene and Elayne. “You two stop that, or there will be someone going to the Mistress of Novices. Two someones.”
“Nynaeve, you wouldn’t!” Egwene protested. When she saw the look in Nynaeve’s eyes, though, she hastily severed all contact with saidar. “Very well. I believe you. There’s no need to prove it.”
“We have to practice,” Elayne said. “They ask more and more of us. If we did not practice on our own, we would never keep up.” Her face showed calm composure, but she had let go of saidar as hastily as Egwene herself had.
“And what happens when you draw too much,” Nynaeve asked, “and there’s no one there to stop you? I wish you were more afraid. I am. Don’t you think I know what it is like for you? It’s always there, and you want to fill yourself with it. Sometimes it is all I can do to make myself stop; I want all of it. I know it would burn me to a crisp, and I want it anyway.” She shivered. “I just wish you were more afraid.”
“I am afraid,” Egwene said with a sigh. “I’m terrified. But it doesn’t seem to help. What about you, Elayne?”
“The only thing that terrifies me,” Elayne said airily, “is washing dishes. It seems as if I have to wash dishes every day.” Egwene threw her pillow at her. Elayne pulled it off her head and threw it back, but then her shoulders slumped. “Oh, very well. I am so scared I don’t know why my teeth are not chattering. Elaida told me I’d be so frightened that I would want to run away with the Traveling People, but I did not understand. A man who drove oxen as hard as they drive us would be shunned. I am tired all the time. I wake up tired and go to bed exhausted, and sometimes I’m so afraid that I will slip and channel more of the Power than I can handle that I. . . .” Peering into her lap, she let the words trail off.
Egwene knew what she had not spoken. Their rooms lay right next to each other, and as in many of the novice rooms, a small hole had long ago been bored through the wall between, too small to be seen unless you knew where to look, but useful for talk after the lamps were extinguished, w
hen the girls could not leave their rooms. Egwene had heard Elayne crying herself to sleep more than once, and she had no doubt that Elayne had heard her own crying.
“The Traveling People are tempting,” Nynaeve agreed, “but wherever you go, it will not change what you can do. You cannot run from saidar.” She did not sound as if she liked what she was saying.
“What do you see, Min?” Elayne said. “Are we all going to be powerful Aes Sedai, or will we spend the rest of our lives washing dishes as novices, or. . . .” She shrugged uncomfortably as if she did not want to voice the third alternative that came to mind. Sent home. Put out of the Tower. Two novices had been put out since Egwene came, and everyone spoke of them in whispers, as if they were dead.
Min shifted on her stool. “I don’t like reading friends,” she muttered. “Friendship gets in the way of the reading. It makes me try to put the best face on what I see. That’s why I don’t do it for you three anymore. Anyway, nothing has changed about you that I can. . . .” She squinted at them, and suddenly frowned. “That’s new,” she breathed.
“What?” Nynaeve asked sharply.