Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time 11)

Egwene performed each weave as asked until Bennae casually asked for the weave for Traveling, and then she merely smiled and folded her hands in her lap. The sister leaned back and adjusted her deep brown silk skirts a hair. Bennae's eyes were blue and sharp, her dark hair, caught in a silver net, liberally streaked with gray. Ink stains marked two of her fingers, and another smudged the side of her nose. She held a porcelain cup of tea, but she had not offered any to Egwene.

"I think there is little of the Power that remains for you to learn, child, especially considering your wonderful discoveries." Egwene inclined her head, accepting the compliment. Some of those things truly were her discoveries, and it hardly mattered now in any case. "But that hardly means you have nothing to learn. You had few novice classes before you were. ..." The Brown frowned at Egwene's white dress and cleared her throat. "And fewer lessons as . . . well, later. Tell me if you can, what mistakes did Shein Chunla make that caused the Third War of Garen's Wall? What were the causes of the Great Winter War between Andor and Cairhien? What caused the Weikin Rebellion and how did it end? Most of history seems to be the study of wars, and the important parts of that are how and why they began and how and why ended. A great many wars would never have taken place if people had paid attention to the mistakes others had made. Well?"

"Shein didn't make any mistakes," Egwene said slowly, "but you're right. I do have a lot to learn. I don't even know the names of those other wars." Rising, she poured herself a cup of tea from the silver pitcher on the side table. Aside from the ropework silver tray, the tabletop held a stuffed lynx and the skull of a serpent. That was as big as a man's skull!

Bennae frowned, but not for the tea. She hardly seemed to notice that. "What do you mean Shein didn't make any mistakes, child? Why, she bungled the situation as badly as ever I've heard of."

"Well before the Third War of Garen's Wall," Egwene said, returning to her chair, "Shein was doing exactly as the Hall told her and nothing they didn't." She might be lacking in other areas of history, but Siuan had tutored her thoroughly in the mistakes made by other Amyrlins. And this particular question gave her an opening. Sitting down normally took a great effort.

"What are you talking about?"

"She tried running the Tower with an iron hand, never a compromise on anything, running roughshod over any opposition. The Hall grew tired of it, but they couldn't settle on a replacement, so rather than deposing her, they did worse. They left her in place and forced a penance on her whenever she tried to issue an order of any kind. Any kind at all." She knew she was going on, sounding as if she were the one giving a lecture, but she had to get it all out. Not easing herself on the hard wood of the chair seat was difficult

. Welcome the pain. "The Hall ran Shein and the Tower. But they mishandled a great deal themselves, largely because each Ajah had its own goals and there was no hand to shape them into a goal for the Tower. Shein's reign was marked by wars all over the map. Eventually, the sisters themselves got tired of the Hall's bungling. In one of the six mutinies in Tower history, Shein and the Hall were pulled down. I know she supposedly died in the Tower of natural causes, but, in fact, she was smothered in her bed in exile fifty-one years later after the discovery of a plot to put her back on the Amyrlin Seat."

"Mutinies?" Bennae said incredulously. "Six of them? Exiled and smothered?"

"It's all recorded in the secret histories, in the Thirteenth Depository. Though I suppose I shouldn't have told you that." Egwene took a sip of tea and grimaced. It was all but rancid. No wonder Bennae had not touched hers.

"Secret histories? A thirteenth Depository? If such a thing existed, and I think I would know, why should you not have told me?"

"Because by law the existence of the secret histories as well as their contents can be known only to the Amyrlin, the Keeper, and the Sitters. Them and the librarians who keep the records, anyway. Even the law itself is part of the Thirteenth Depository, so I guess I shouldn't have told that either. But if you can gain access somehow, or ask someone who knows and will tell you, you'll find out I'm right. Six times in the history of the Tower, when the Amyrlin was dangerously divisive or dangerously incompetent and the Hall failed to act, sisters have risen up to remove her." There. She could not have planted the seed deeper with a shovel. Or driven it home more bluntly with a hammer.

Bennae stared at her for a long moment, then raised the cup to her lips. She spluttered as soon as the tea touched her tongue, and began dabbing at the spots on her dress with a delicate, lace-edged handkerchief. "The Great Winter War," she said huskily as she set the cup on the floor beside her chair, "began late in the year six hundred seventy-one. . . ." She did not mention secret records or mutinies again, but she did not have to. More than once during the lesson she trailed off, frowning at something beyond Egwene, and Egwene had little doubt what it was.

Later that day, Lirene Doirellin said, "Yes, Elaida made a vital mistake there," pacing up and down in front of her sitting room's fireplace. The Cairhienin sister was only a little shorter than Egwene, but the nervous way her eyes darted gave her the air of a hunted thing, a sparrow fearful of cats and convinced there were lots of cats in the vicinity. Her dark green skirts had only four discreet slashes of red, though she had been a Sitter once. "That proclamation of hers, on top of trying to kidnap him, could not have been better calculated to keep the al'Thor boy as far from the Tower as he can stay. Oh, she has made mistakes, Elaida has."

Egwene wanted to ask about Rand and the kidnapping— kidnapping?—but Lirene left no opening as she went on about Elaida’s many mistakes, all the while pacing back and forth, her eyes darting and her hands twisting unconsciously. Egwene was unsure whether or not that session could be called a success, but at least it was not a failure. And she had learned something. Not all of her forays went so well, of course.

"This is not a discussion," Pritalle Nerbaijan said. Her tone was utterly calm, yet her tilted green eyes were heated. Her rooms looked more those of a Green than a Yellow, with several bared swords hanging on the walls and a silk tapestry showing men fighting Trollocs. She was gripping the hilt of the dagger at her woven silver belt. Not a simple belt knife; a dagger with a blade near a foot long and an emerald capping its pommel. Why she had agreed to lecture Egwene was a mystery, given her dislike of teaching. Perhaps because it was Egwene. "You are here for a lesson on the limits of power. A very basic lesson, suitable for a novice."

Egwene wanted to shift on the three-legged stool that Pritalle had given her for a seat, but instead she concentrated on the smarting, focused on drinking it in. On welcoming it. The day had already seen three visits to Silviana, and she could sense a fourth coming, with the midday meal an hour off yet. "I merely said that if Shemerin could be reduced from Aes Sedai to Accepted then Elaida's power has no limits. At least, she thinks it doesn't. But if you accept that, then it really doesn't."

Pritalle's grip tightened on the dagger's hilt until her knuckles showed white, yet she seemed unaware. "Since you think you know better than I," she said coolly, "you can visit Silviana when we finish." A partial success, perhaps. Egwene did not think Pritalle's anger was for her.

"I expect proper behavior out of you," Serancha Colvine told her firmly another day. The word to describe the Gray sister was "pinched." A pinched mouth, and a pinched nose that constantly seemed to be detecting a bad smell. Even her pale blue eyes seemed pinched with disapproval. She might well have been pretty otherwise. "Do you understand?"

"I understand," Egwene said, sitting down on the stool that had been placed in front of Serancha's high-backed chair. The morning was cool, and a small fire burned on the stone hearth. Drink in the pain. Welcome the pain.

"An incorrect response," Serancha said. "The correct response would have been a curtsy and 'I understand, Serancha Sedai.' I intend to make a list of your failures for you to carry to Silviana when we're done. We'll begin again. Do you understand, child?"

"I understand." Egwene said without rising. Aes Sedai serenity or no Aes Sedai serenity, Serancha's face turned purple. In the end, her list covered four pages in a tight, cramped hand. She spent more time writing than she did lecturing! Not a success.

And then there was Adelorna Bastine. The Saldaean Green somehow managed stateliness in spite of being slim and no taller than Egwene, and she had a regal, commanding air that might have been intimidating had Egwene let it. "I hear you make trouble." she said, picking up an ivory-backed hairbrush from a small inlaid table beside her chair. "If you try to make trouble with me, you'll learn that I know how to use this."

Egwene did learn, without trying. Three times she went across Adelorna's lap, and the woman did indeed know how to use a hairbrush for more than brushing her hair. That managed to stretch an hour lecture to two.

"May I go now?" Egwene said at last, calmly drying her cheeks as well as she could with a handkerchief that was already damp. Breathe in the pain. Absorb the fire. "I'm supposed to fetch water up for the Red, and I don't want to be late."

Adelorna frowned at her hairbrush before returning it to the table that Egwene had overset twice with her kicking. Then she frowned at Egwene, studying her as if trying to see inside her skull. "I wish Cadsuane were in the Tower," she murmured. "I think she'd find you a challenge." There seemed a touch of respect in her voice.

That day was a turning point in some ways. For one thing, Silviana decided that Egwene was to receive Healing twice each day.

"You seem to invite being beaten, child. It's pure stubbornness, and I won't put up with it. You will face reality. The next time you visit me, we'll see how you like the strap." The Mistress of Novices folded Egwene's shift over her back, then paused. "Are you smiling? Did I say something amusing?"

"I just thought of something funny," Egwene said. "Nothing of consequence." Not of consequence to Silviana, anyway. She had realized how to welcome the pain. She was fighting a war, not a single battle, and every time she was beaten, every time she was sent to Silviana, it was a sign that she had fought another battle and refused to yield. The pain was a badge of honor. She howled and kicked as hard as ever during that slippering, but while she was drying her cheeks afterward, she hummed quietly to herself. It was easy to welcome a badge of honor.

Attitudes among the novices began to shift by the second day of her captivity. It seemed that Nicola—and Areina, who was working in the stables and often came to visit Nicola; they seemed so close that Egwene wondered whether they had become pillow-friends, always with their heads together and smiling mysterious smiles— Nicola and Areina had regaled them all with tales of her. Very inflated tales. The two women had made her seem a combination of every legendary sister in the histories, along with Birgitte Silverbow and Amaresu herself, carrying the Sword of the Sun into battle. Half of them seemed in awe of her, the others angry with her for some reason or outright scornful. Foolishly, some tried to emulate her behavior in their classes, but a flurry of visits to Silviana quelled that. At the midday meal of the third day, nearly two dozen novices ate standing up and red-faced with embarrassment, Nicola among them. And Alvistere, surprisingly. That number dropped to seven at supper, and on the fourth day, only Nicola and the Cairhienin girl did so. And that was the end of that.