Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time 6)

Egwene turned the silver band over in her hands and tried not to shiver. Cunning work, segmented so cleverly it almost appeared solid. She had been on the other end of an a’dam once. A Seanchan device, with a silver leash connecting necklace and bracelet, but still the same. Her stomach roiled as it had not facing the Hall or the crowd; it stewed as though trying to make up for being still before. Deliberately she closed the length of silver around her wrist. She had some idea of what to expect, but she still almost jumped. The other woman’s emotions were laid out before her, her physical state, all gathered in one fenced-off portion of Egwene’s mind. Mainly there was pulsing fear, but the self-loathing she had thought she saw swelled nearly as strongly. Moghedien did not like her present appearance. Maybe she especially did not like it after a short return to her own.

Egwene thought of who it was she was looking at; one of the Forsaken, a woman whose name had been used to frighten children for centuries, a woman whose crimes deserved death a hundred times over. She thought of the knowledge in that head. She made herself smile. It was not a pretty smile; she did not mean it to be, but she did not think she could have made it one if she tried. “They’re right. I have been living with the Aiel. So if you expect me to be as gentle as Nynaeve and Elayne, put it out of your mind. Set just one foot wrong with me, and I’ll make you beg for death. Only, I won’t kill you. I will just find some way to make that face permanent. On the other hand, if you do more than put a foot wrong . . . ” She widened her smile, until it was just showing teeth.

The fear leaped so high it drowned everything else and bulged against the fence. Standing in front of the table, Moghedien clutched her skirts white-knuckle tight and trembled visibly. Nynaeve and Elayne were looking at Egwene as if they had never seen her before. Light, did they expect her to be polite to one of the Forsaken? Sorilea would stake the woman out in the sun to bring her to heel, if she did not simply slit her throat out of hand.

Egwene moved closer to Moghedien. The other woman was taller, but she cowered back against the table, knocking over the winecups on their tray and rocking the pitcher. Egwene made her voice cold; it did not have far to go. “The day I detect one lie out of you is the day I execute you myself. Now. I have considered traveling from one place to another by boring a hole, so to speak, from here to there. A hole through the Pattern, so there’s no distance between one end and the other. How well will that work?”

“Not at all, for you or any woman,” Moghedien said, breathless and quick. The fear that boiled inside was plain on her face now. “That is how men Travel.” The capital was plain; she was speaking of one of the lost Talents. “If you try, you will be sucked into . . . I don’t know what it is. The space between the threads of the Pattern, maybe. I don’t think you would live very long. I know you would never come back.”

“Traveling,” Nynaeve muttered disgustedly. “We never thought of Traveling!”

“No, we didn’t.” Elayne sounded no more pleased with herself. “I wonder what else we never thought of.”

Egwene ignored them. “Then how?” she asked softly. A quiet voice was always better than shouting.

Moghedien flinched as though she had shouted anyway. “You make the two places in the Pattern identical. I can show you how. It takes a little effort, because of the . . . the necklace, but I can — ”

“Like this?” Egwene said, embracing saidar, and wove flows of Spirit. This time she was not trying to touch the World of Dreams, but she expected something much the same if it worked. What she g

ot was quite different.

The thin curtain she wove did not produce the shimmering effect, and it lasted only a moment before snapping together in a vertical line that was suddenly a slash of silvery blue light. The light itself widened quickly — or perhaps turned; it looked that way to her — into . . . something. There in the middle of the floor was a . . . a doorway, not at all the misty view she had had of Tel’aran’rhiod from her tent, a doorway opening onto a sun-blasted land that made the worst of the drought here look lush. Stone spires and sharp cliffs loomed over a dusty yellow-clay plain cut by fissures and dotted with a few scrub bushes that had a thorny look even at a distance.

Egwene very nearly stared. That was the Aiel Waste halfway between Cold Rocks Hold and the valley of Rhuidean, a spot where it was very unlikely there would be anyone to see — or be hurt; Rand’s precautions with his special room in the Sun Palace had suggested she take some too — but she had only hoped to reach it, and she had been sure it would be seen through a shimmering curtain.

“Light!” Elayne breathed. “Do you know what you’ve done, Egwene? Do you? I think I can do it. If you repeat the weave again, I know I’ll remember.”

“Remember what?” Nynaeve practically wailed. “How did she do it? Oh, curse this cursed block! Elayne, kick my ankle. Please?”

Moghedien’s face had gone very still; uncertainty rolled through the bracelet almost as heavily as fear. Reading emotions was hardly like reading words on a page, but those two were clear. “Who . . .?” Moghedien licked her lips. “Who taught you that?”

Egwene smiled as she had seen Aes Sedai smile; at least, she hoped it conveyed mystery. “Never be too sure I don’t already know the answer,” she said coolly. “Remember. Lie to me once.” Suddenly it occurred to her how this must sound to Nynaeve and Elayne. They had captured the woman, held her captive in the most impossible circumstances, pried all sorts of information out of her. Turning to them, she gave a small, rueful laugh. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to just take over.”

“Why should you be sorry?” Elayne wore a broad smile. “You are supposed to take over, Egwene.”

Nynaeve gave her braid a yank, then glared at it. “Nothing seems to work! Why can’t I get angry? Oh, you can keep her forever, for all of me. We couldn’t take her to Ebou Dar, anyway. Why can’t I get angry? Oh, blood and bloody ashes!” Her eyes went wide as she realized what she had said, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

Egwene glanced at Moghedien. The woman was busily setting the winecups upright again and pouring wine with a smell of sweet spices, but something had come through the bracelet while Nynaeve was talking. Shock, perhaps? Maybe she would prefer the mistresses she knew to one who threatened death in almost her first breath.

A firm knock sounded at the door, and Egwene hastily released saidar, the opening to the Waste vanished. “Come.”

Siuan took one step into the study and stopped, taking in Moghedien, the bracelet on Egwene’s wrist, Nynaeve and Elayne. Shutting the door, she made a curtsy as minimal as anything from Romanda or Lelaine. “Mother, I’ve come to instruct you in etiquette, but if you would rather I returned later . . .?” Her eyebrows rose, calmly questioning.

“Go,” Egwene told Moghedien. If Nynaeve and Elayne were willing to let her run loose, the a’dam must limit her, if not as much as one with a leash. Fingering the bracelet — she hated the thing, but she intended to wear it day and night — she added, “But keep yourself available. I’ll treat trying to escape the same as a lie.” Fear gushed through the a’dam as Moghedien scurried out. That could be a problem. How had Nynaeve and Elayne lived with those torrents of dread? Still, that was for later.

Facing Siuan, she folded her arms beneath her breasts. “This won’t do, Siuan. I know everything. Daughter.”

Siuan tilted her head. “Sometimes knowing gives no advantage whatsoever. Sometimes it only means sharing the danger.”

“Siuan!” Elayne said, half-shocked and half-warning, and to Egwene’s surprise Siuan did something she had never expected to see Siuan Sanche do. She blushed.

“You can’t expect me to become somebody else overnight,” the woman muttered grumpily.

Egwene suspected Nynaeve and Elayne could help with what she had to do, but if she was really going to be Amyrlin, she had to do it alone. “Elayne, I know you want to get out of that Accepted’s dress. Why don’t you do that? And then see what you find out about lost Talents. Nynaeve, you do the same.”

A look passed between them, then they glanced at Siuan and rose to make perfect curtsies, respectfully murmuring, “As you command, Mother.” There was no evidence of any impression on Siuan; she stood watching Egwene with a wry expression while they left.

Egwene embraced saidar again, briefly, to slide her chair back into place behind the table, then adjusted her stole and sat. For a long moment she regarded Siuan silently. “I need you,” she said at last. “You know what it is to be Amyrlin, what the Amyrlin can and cannot do. You know the Sitters, how they think, what they want. I need you, and I mean to have you. Sheriam and Romanda and Lelaine may think I still wear novice white under this stole — maybe they all do — but you are going to help me show them differently. I’m not asking you, Siuan. I — will — have — your — help.” All there was to do then was wait.