Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time 6)

Shift.

It was not an ordinary storeroom. Shelves lined the walls and made two short rows out in the floor, neatly lined with boxes of various sizes and shapes, some plain wood, some carved or lacquered, with things wrapped in cloth, with statuettes and figurines, and peculiar shapes seemingly of metal or glass, crystal or stone or glazed porcelain. Nynaeve needed no more to know they must be objects of the One Power, ter’angreal most likely, perhaps some angreal and sa’angreal. Such a disparate collection, stored away so tidily, could not be anything else in the Tower.

“I don’t think there is any point to going further here,” Elayne said dejectedly. “I don’t know how we could ever get anything out of here.”

Nynaeve gave her braid a short tug. If there really was something here they could use — there had to be, unless the Wise Ones had lied — then there had to be a way to reach it in the waking world. Angreal and the like were not heavily guarded; usually, when she had been in the Tower, only by a lock and a novice. The door here was made of heavy planks with a heavy black iron lock set in it. No doubt it was fastened, but she fixed it in her mind as undone and pushed.

The door swung open into a guardroom. Narrow beds stacked one atop another lined one wall, and racked halberds lined another. Beyond a heavy, battered table ringed by stools was another door, iron-strapped, with a small grille set in it.

As she turned back to Elayne she was suddenly, aware that the door was shut again. “If we can’t get to what we need here, maybe we can somewhere else. I mean, maybe something else will do. At least we have a hint now. I think these are ter’angreal nobody has found how to use yet. That’s the only reason they would be guarded like this. It could be dangerous even to channel close to them.”

Elayne gave her a wry look. “But if we try again, won’t it just bring us right back here? Unless . . . Unless the Wise Ones told you how to exclude a place from the search.”

They had not — they had not been eager to tell her anything at all — but in a place where you open a lock by thinking it was open, anything should be possible. “That’s exactly what we do. We fix it in our heads that what we want isn’t in Tar Valon.” Frowning at the shelves, she added, “And I’ll wager it is a ter’angreal nobody knows how to use.” Though how that would convince the Hall to support Rand, she could not imagine.

“We need a ter’angreal that isn’t in Tar Valon,” Elayne said as if convincing herself. “Very well. We go on.”

She held out her hands, and after a moment Nynaeve took them. Nynaeve was not sure how she had become the one to insist on continuing. She wanted to leave Salidar, not find a reason to stay. But if it assured that the Salidar Aes Sedai would support Rand . . .

Need. A ter’angreal. Not in Tar Valon. Need.

Shift.

Wherever they were, the dawn-lit city was certainly not Tar Valon. Not twenty paces away the broad paved street became a white stone bridge with statues at either end, arching over a stone-lined canal. Fifty paces the other way stood another. Slender, balcony-ringed towers stood everywhere, like spears driven through round slice

s of ornate confection. Every building was white, the doorways and windows large pointed arches, sometimes double or triple arches. On the grander buildings long balconies of white-painted wrought iron, with intricate wrought-iron screens to hide any occupants, looked down on the streets and canals, and white domes banded with scarlet or gold rose to points as sharp as the towers.

Need. Shift.

It might as well have been a different city. The street was narrow and unevenly paved, hemmed in on both sides by buildings five and six stories high, their white plaster flaked away in many places to expose the brick beneath. There were no balconies here. Flies buzzed about, and it was hard to say whether it was still dawn because of the shadows down on the ground.

They exchanged looks. It seemed unlikely they would find a ter’angreal here, but they had gone too far to stop now. Need.

Shift.

Nynaeve sneezed before she could open her eyes, and again as soon as they were open. Every shift of her feet kicked up swirls of dust. This storeroom was not at all like that in the Tower. Chests, crates and barrels crowded the small room, piled every which way atop one another, with barely an aisle left between, and all under a thick layer of dust. Nynaeve sneezed so hard she thought her shoes would come off — and the dust vanished. All of it. Elayne wore a small smug smile. Nynaeve said nothing, only fixed the room firmly in her mind without dust. She should have thought of that.

Looking over the jumble, she sighed. The room was no larger than the one where their bodies lay sleeping in Salidar, but searching through all that . . . “It will take weeks.”

“We could try again. It might at least show which things to look through.” Elayne sounded as doubtful as Nynaeve felt.

Still, it was as good a suggestion as any. Nynaeve closed her eyes, and once more came the shift.

When she looked again, she was standing at the end of the aisle away from the door, facing a square wooden chest taller than her waist. The iron straps seemed all rust, and the chest itself looked to have spent the last twenty years being beaten with hammers. A less likely repository for anything useful, especially a ter’angreal, Nynaeve could not imagine. But Elayne was standing right beside her, staring at the same chest.

Nynaeve put a hand on the lid — the hinges would open smoothly — and pushed it up. There was not even the hint of a squeal. Inside, two heavily rusted swords and an equally brown breastplate with a hole eaten through it lay atop a tangle of cloth-wrapped parcels and what seemed to be the refuse from somebody’s old clothespress and a couple of kitchens.

Elayne fingered a small kettle with a broken spout. “Not weeks, but the rest of the night, anyway.”

“Once more?” Nynaeve suggested. “It could not hurt.” Elayne shrugged. Eyes shut. Need.

Nynaeve reached out, and her hand came down on something hard and rounded, covered with crumbling cloth. When she opened her eyes, Elayne’s hand was right next to hers. The younger woman’s grin nearly split her face in two.

Getting it out was not easy. It was not small, and they had to shift tattered coats and dented pots and parcels that crumbled to reveal figurines and carved animals and all sorts of rubbish. Once they had it out, they had to hold it between them, a wide flattish disc wrapped in rotted cloth. With the cloth stripped away, it turned out to be a shallow bowl of thick crystal, more than two feet across and carved deeply inside with what appeared to be swirling clouds.

“Nynaeve,” Elayne said slowly, “I think this is . . . “

Nynaeve gave a start and nearly dropped her side of the bowl as it suddenly turned a pale watery blue and the carved clouds shifted slowly. A heartbeat later, the crystal was clear again, the carved clouds still. Only she was certain the clouds were not the same as they had been.