The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time 3)

15

The Gray Man

Outside the Amyrlin Seat’s study, Egwene and Nynaeve found the corridors empty except for an occasional serving woman, hurrying about her duties on soft-slippered feet. Egwene was grateful for their presence. The halls suddenly seemed like caverns, for all the tapestries and stonework. Dangerous caverns.

Nynaeve strode along purposefully, tugging at her braid fitfully again, and Egwene hurried to keep up. She did not want to be left alone.

“If the Black Ajah is still here, Nynaeve, and if they even suspect what we’re doing. . . . I hope you didn’t mean what you said about acting as if we are already bound by the Three Oaths. I don’t intend to let them kill me, not if I can stop it by channeling.”

“If any of them are still here, Egwene, they will know what we are doing as soon as they see us.” Despite what she was saying, Nynaeve sounded preoccupied. “Or at least they will see us as a threat, and that’s much the same thing as far as what they will do.”

“How will they see us as a threat? Nobody is threatened by someone they can order about. Nobody is threatened by someone who has to scrub pots and turn the spits three times a day. That’s why the Amyrlin is putting us to work in the kitchens. Part of the reason, anyway.”

“Perhaps the Amyrlin did not think it through,” Nynaeve said absently. “Or perhaps she did, and means something different for us than what she claims. Think, Egwene. Liandrin would not have tried to put us out of the way unless she thought we were a threat to her. I can’t imagine how, or to what, but I cannot see how it could have changed, either. If there are any Black Ajah still here, they will surely see us the same way, whether they suspect what we’re doing or not.”

Egwene swallowed. “I hadn’t thought of that. Light, I wish I were invisible. Nynaeve, if they are still after us, I will risk being stilled before I let Darkfriends kill me, or maybe worse. And I won’t believe you will let them take you, either, no matter what you told the Amyrlin.”

“I meant it.” For a moment Nynaeve seemed to rouse from her thoughts. Her steps slowed. A pale-haired novice carrying a tray rushed past. “I meant every word, Egwene.” Nynaeve went on when the novice was out of hearing. “There are other ways to defend ourselves. If there were not, Aes Sedai would be killed every time they left the Tower. We just have to reason those ways out, and use them.”

“I know several ways already, and so do you.”

“They are dangerous.” Egwene opened her mouth to say they were only dangerous to whoever attacked her, but Nynaeve plowed on over her. “You can come to like them too much. When I let out all my anger at those Whitecloaks this morning. . . . It felt too good. It is too dangerous.” She shivered and quickened her pace again, and Egwene had to step lively to catch up.

“You sound like Sheriam. You never have before. You have pushed every limit they’ve put on you. Why would you accept limits now, when we might have to ignore them to stay alive?”

“What good if it ends with us being put out of the Tower? Stilled or not, what good then?” Nynaeve’s voice dropped as if she were speaking to herself. “I can do it. I must, if I’m to stay here long enough to learn, and I must learn if I’m to—” Suddenly she seemed to realize she was speaking aloud. She shot a hard look at Egwene, and her voice firmed. “Let me think. Please, be quiet and let me think.”

Egwene held her tongue, but inside she bubbled with unasked questions. What special reason did Nynaeve have for wanting to learn more of what the White Tower could teach? What was it she wanted to do? Why was Nynaeve keeping it secret from her? Secrets. We’ve learned to keep too many secrets since coming to the Tower. The Amyrlin is keeping secrets from us, too. Light, what is she going to do about Mat?

Nynaeve accompanied her all the way back to the novices’ quarters, not turning aside to the Accepted’s quarters. The galleries were still empty, and they met no one as they climbed the spiraling ramps.

As they came up on Elayne’s room, Nynaeve stopped, knocked once, and immediately opened the door and put her head inside. Then she was letting the white door swing shut and striding toward the next, Egwene’s room. “She isn’t here yet,” she said. “I need to talk to both of you.”

Egwene caught her shoulders and pulled her to an abrupt halt. “What—?” Something tugged at her hair, stung her ear. A black blur streaked in front of her face to clang against the wall, and in the next breath Nynaeve was bearing her to the gallery floor, behind the railing.

Wide-eyed and sprawling, Egwene stared at what lay on the stone in front of her door, where it had fallen. A bolt from a crossbow. A few dark strands from her hair were tangled in the four heavy prongs, meant for punching through armor. She raised a trembling hand to touch her ear, to touch the tiniest nick, damp with a bead of blood. If I had not stopped just then. . . . If I hadn’t. . . . The quarrel would have gone right through her head, and would probably have killed Nynaeve, too. “Blood and ashes!” she gasped. “Blood and bloody ashes!”

“Watch your language,” Nynaeve admonished, but her heart was not in it. She lay peering between the white stone balusters toward the far side of the galleries. A glow surrounded her, to Egwene’s eyes. She had embraced saidar.

Hastily, Egwene tried to reach out for the One Power, too, but at first haste defeated her. Haste, and images that kept intruding on the emptiness, images of her head being ripped apart like a rotten melon by a heavy quarrel that went on to bury itself in Nynaeve. She took a deep breath and tried again, and finally the rose floated in nothingness, opened to the True Source, and the Power filled her.

She rolled onto her stomach to peer through the railing beside Nynaeve. “Do you see anything? Do you see him? I’ll put a lightning bolt through him!” She could feel it building, pressing on her to loose it. “It is a man, isn’t it?” She could not imagine a man coming into the novices’ quarters, but it was impossible to picture a woman carrying a crossbow through the Tower.

“I don’t know.” Quiet anger filled Nynaeve’s voice; her anger was always at its worst when she grew quiet with it. “I thought I saw—Yes! There!” Egwene felt the Power pulse in the other woman, and then Nynaeve was unhurriedly getting to her feet, brushing at her dress as if there were nothing more to worry about.

Egwene stared at her. “What? What did you do? Nynaeve?”

“ ‘Of the Five Powers,’ ” Nynaeve said in a lecturing tone, faintly mocking, “ ‘Air, sometimes called Wind, is thought by many to be of the least use. This is far from true.’ ” She finished with a tight laugh. “I told you there were other ways to defend ourselves. I used Air, to hold him with air. If it is a he; I could not see him clearly. A trick the Amyrlin showed me once, though I doubt she expected me to see how it was done. Well, are you going to lie there all day?”

Egwene scrambled up to hurry after her around the gallery. Before long a man did come into sight around the curve, dressed in plain brown breeches and coat. He stood facing the other way, balanced on the ball of one foot, with the other hanging in midair as i

f he had been caught in the middle of running. The man would feel as if he were buried in thick jelly, yet it was nothing but air stiffened around him. Egwene remembered the Amyrlin’s trick, too, but she did not think she could duplicate it. Nynaeve only had to see a thing done once to know how to do it herself. When she could manage to channel at all, of course.

They came closer, and Egwene’s melding with the Power vanished in shock. The hilt of a dagger stood out from the man’s chest. His face sagged, and death had already filmed his half-closed eyes. He crumpled to the gallery floor as Nynaeve loosed the trap that had held him.

He was an average-appearing man, of average height and average build, with features so ordinary Egwene did not think she would have noticed him in a group of three. She only studied him a moment, though, before realizing that something was missing. A crossbow.

She gave a start and looked about wildly. “There had to be another one, Nynaeve. Somebody took the crossbow. And somebody stabbed him. He could be out there ready to shoot at us again.”