The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time 3)

“Calm yourself,” Nynaeve said, but she peered both ways along the gallery, jerking at her braid. “Just be calm, and we will figure out what to—” Her words cut off at the sound of steps on the ramp leading up to their level.

Egwene’s heart pounded, seemingly in her throat. Eyes fastened on the head of the ramp, she desperately strove to touch saidar again, but for her that required calm, and her heartbeats shattered calm.

Sheriam Sedai stopped at the top of the ramp, frowning at what she saw. “What in the name of the Light has happened here?” She hurried forward, her serenity gone for once.

“We found him,” Nynaeve said as the Mistress of Novices knelt beside the corpse.

Sheriam put a hand to the man’s chest, and jerked it back twice as fast, hissing. Steeling herself visibly, she touched him again, and maintained the Touch longer. “Dead,” she muttered. “As dead as it is possible to be, and more.” When she straightened, she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her fingers. “You found him? Here? Like this?”

Egwene nodded, sure that if she spoke, Sheriam would hear the lie in her voice.

“We did,” Nynaeve said firmly.

Sheriam shook her head. “A man—a dead man, at that!—in the novices’ quarters would be scandal enough, but this . . . !”

“What makes him different?” Nynaeve asked. “And how could he be more than dead?”

Sheriam took a deep breath, and gave them each a searching look. “He is one of the Soulless. A Gray Man.” Absently, she wiped her fingers again, her eyes going back to the body. Worried eyes.

“The Soulless?” Egwene said, a tremor in her voice, at the same time that Nynaeve said, “A Gray Man?”

Sheriam glanced at them, a look as penetrating as it was brief. “Not a part of your studies, yet, but you seem to have gone beyond the rules in a great many ways. And considering you found this. . . .” She gestured to the corpse. “The Soulless, the Gray Men, give up their souls to serve the Dark One as assassins. They are not really alive, after that. Not quite dead, but not truly alive. And despite the name, some Gray Men are women. A very few. Even among Darkfriends, only a handful of women are stupid enough to make that sacrifice. You can look right at them and hardly notice them, until it is too late. He was as much as dead while he walked. Now, only my eyes tell me that what is lying there ever lived at all.” She gave them another long look. “No Gray Man has dared enter Tar Valon since the Trolloc Wars.”

“What will you do?” Egwene asked. Sheriam’s brows rose, and she quickly added, “If I may ask, Sheriam Sedai.”

The Aes Sedai hesitated. “I suppose you may, since you had the bad luck to find him. It will be up to the Amyrlin Seat, but with everything that has happened, I believe she will want to keep this as quiet as is possible. We do not need more rumors. You will speak of this to none but me, or to the Amyrlin, should she mention it first.”

“Yes, Aes Sedai,” Egwene said fervently. Nynaeve’s voice was cooler.

Sheriam appeared to take their obedience for granted. She gave no sign of having heard them. Her attention was all on the dead man. The Gray Man. The Soulless. “There will be no hiding the fact that a man was killed here.” The glow of the One Power suddenly surrounded her, and just as abruptly, a long, low dome covered the body on the floor, grayish and so opaque that it was hard to see there was a body under it. “But this will keep anyone else from touching him who can discover his nature. I must have this removed before the novices come back.”

Her tilted green eyes regarded them as if she had just remembered their presence. “You two go, now. To your room, I think, Nynaeve. Considering what you are already facing, if it became known you were involved in this, even on the edge of it. . . . Go.”

Egwene curtsied, and tugged at Nynaeve’s sleeve, but Nynaeve said, “Why did you come up here, Sheriam Sedai?”

For a moment Sheriam looked startled, but on the instant she frowned. Fists on her hips, she regarded Nynaeve with all the firmness of her office. “Does the Mistress of Novices now need an excuse for coming to the novices’ quarters, Accepted?” she said softly. “Do Accepted now question Aes Sedai? The Amyrlin means to make something of you two, but whether she does or not, I will teach you manners, at least. Now, the pair of you, go, before I haul you both down to my study, and not for the appointment the Amyrlin Seat has already set for you.”

A sudden thought came to Egwene. “Forgive me, Sheriam Sedai,” she said quickly, “but I must fetch my cloak. I feel cold.” She rushed away, around the gallery before the Aes Sedai could speak.

If Sheriam found that crossbow bolt in front of her door, there would be too many questions. No pretending they had only found the man, that he had no connection to her, then. But when she reached the door to her room, the heavy bolt was gone. Only the jagged chip in the stone beside the door said it had ever been there.

Egwene’s skin crawled. How could anyone take it without one of us seeing. . . . Another Gray Man! She had embraced saidar before she knew it, only the sweet flow of the Power inside her telling her what she had done. Even so, it was one of the hardest things she had ever done, opening that door and going into her room. There was no one there. She snatched the white cloak off its peg and ran out, anyway, and she did not release saidar until she was halfway back to the others.

Something more had passed between the women while she was gone. Nynaeve was attempting to appear meek, and succeeding only in looking as if she had a sour stomach. Sheriam had her fists on her hips and was tapping her foot irritably, and the stare she was giving Nynaeve, like green millstones ready to start grinding barley flour, took in Egwene equally.

“Forgive me, Sheriam Sedai,” she said hastily, dropping a curtsy and settling her cloak on her shoulders at the same time. “This . . . finding a dead man—a . . . a Gray Man!—it made me cold. If we may go now?”

At Sheriam’s tight nod of dismissal, Nynaeve made a bare curtsy. Egwene seized her arm and hustled her away.

“Are you trying to make more trouble for us?” she demanded when they were two levels down. And safely out of earshot of Sheriam, she hoped. “What else did you say to her, to make her glare like that? More questions, I suppose? I hope you learned something worth making her mad at us.”

“She would not say anything,” Nynaeve muttered. “We must ask questions if we are to do any good, Egwene. We will have to take a few chances, or we’ll never learn anything.”

Egwene sighed. “Well, be a little more circumspect.” From the set of Nynaeve’s face, the other woman had no intention of going easy or avoiding risks. Egwene sighed again. “The crossbow bolt was gone, Nynaeve. It must have been another Gray Man who took it.”

“So that is why you. . . . Light!” Nynaeve frowned and gave a sharp tug to her braid.

After a time Egwene said, “What was that she did to cover the . . . the body?” She did not want to think of it as a Gray Man; that reminded her there was another one out there. She did not want to think of anything at all, right then.