The ivory-backed brush slowed as she really saw herself in the washstand's cheap, bubbled mirror, Breathing raggedly, she set the brush down beside the matching comb, The dress she had chosen was thick, finely woven wool of an unadorned red so dark it seemed nearly black. Black, like an Asha'man's coat. Her distorted image stared back at her, lips writhing. Changing would be a sort of surrender. Determinedly she snatched her marten-lined gray cloak from the stand.
When she pushed aside the canvas doorflap, twenty or so sisters already occupied the long central hallway lined with canvas rooms. Here and there a few were speaking in murmurs, but the rest avoided each other's eyes, even when they belonged to the same Ajah. Fear had its presence, but it was shame that coated most faces, Akoure, a stout Gray, was staring at the hand where she normally wore her ring. Desandre, a willowy Yellow, was hiding her right hand in her armpit.
The soft conversations trailed off when Toveine appeared. Several women glared at her openly. Including Jenare and Lemai, from her own Ajah! Desandre came to herself enough to
turn her back stiffly. In the space of two days, fifty-one Aes Sedai had fallen captive to the black-coated monsters, and fifty of them blamed Toveine Gazal as though Elaida a'Roihan had no hand in the disaster at all, Except for Logain's intervention, they would have had their revenge their first night here, She did not love him for putting a stop to it and making Carniele Heal the welts left by belts, the bruises left by fists and feet. She would rather they had beaten her to death than owe him,
Putting her cloak on her shoulders, she walked proudly down the corridor, out into pale morning sunshine that suited her washed-out mood. Behind her, someone shouted acid words before the closing door cut them off. Her hands trembled as she pulled up her hood, nestling the dark fur around her face. No one got away with pushing down Toveine Goal. Even Mistress Doweel, who had crushed her into a semblance of submission over the years, learned that when her exile ended, She would show them, She would show them all!
The dormitory she shared with the others lay on the very edge of a large village, if a very strange one, A village of Asha'man. Elsewhere, so she had been told, ground was marked off for structures they claimed would dwarf the White Tower, but this was where most of them lived now. Five large, blocky stone barracks, spaced along streets as wide as anything in Tar Valon, could each hold a hundred Asha'man Soldiers. They were not full yet, the Light be thanked, but snow-covered scaffolding awaited the arrival of workmen around the thick walls of two more that were almost ready for roofing in thatch. Nearly a dozen smaller stone structures were made to hold ten Dedicated each, and another of those was under construction, too. Scattered around them stood nearly two hundred houses that might have been seen in any village, where some of the married men lived, and the families of others not far enough along in training.
Men who could channel did not frighten her. Once she had given in to panic for a moment, true, but that was beside the point. Five hundred men who could channel, however, were a scrap of bone wedged between two of her teeth where she could not free it, Five hundred! And they could Travel, some of them, A sharp scrap of bone. More, she had tramped the mile or more through the woods to the wall, That frightened her, what it signified.
Nowhere was the wall finished, nowhere more than twelve or Fifteen feet high, none of the towers or bastions more than begun. In places, she could have clambered over the piles of black stone, except for her orders not to attempt escape, The thing ran for eight miles, though, and she believed Logain when he said it was begun less than three months ago, The man held her too tightly to bother with lying. He called the wall a waste of time and effort, and perhaps it was, but it made her teeth chatter. Just three months. Made using the Power. The male half of the Power. When she thought of that black wall, she saw an implacable force that could not be stopped, an avalanche of black stone sliding down to bury the White Tower. Impossible, of course. Impossible, but when she did not dream of strangling Elaida, she dreamed of that.
There had been snowfall in the night, and a heavy blan-ket of white covered every roof, but she did not have to pick her way along the broad streets. The hard-packed dirt had been cleared, a chore of men in training before the sun came up. They used the Power for everything from filling woodboxes to cleaning their clothes! Black-clad men hurried here and there in the streets, and more were gathering in rows in front of their barracks with others calling roll in loud voices. Women bundled up against the cold walked past them, placidly carrying baskets to the quartermaster's storehouse or water buckets to the nearest fountain, though how any woman could remain, knowing what her husband was, was beyond Toveine's comprehension. Even more bizarre, children ran up and down the street, around the squares of men who could channel, shouting and laughing, rolling hoops, tossing painted balls, playing with dolls or dogs. A drop of normality that heightened the evil stench of the rest,
Ahead of her, a mounted party was approaching up the street at a walk. In the short time she had been here - the endless time - she had not seen anyone ride in the village except workmen on carts or wagons. Nor any visitors, which some of these plainly must be. Five men in black were escorting a dozen in the red coats and cloaks of the Queen's Guard, with two yellow-haired women at the front, one in a red-and-white cloak lined with black fur and the other.... Toveine's eyebrows climbed. The other wore green Kandori trousers and a coat made up as if it belonged to the Captain-General of the Guard. Her red cloak even had golden knots of rank on the shoulder! Maybe she was mistaken about the men, That one would find short shift when she encountered real Guardsmen. In any case, it was strangely early for visitors,
Each time the odd party reached one of the formations, the man in front shouted "Asha'man, attend front." and boot heels stamped on the hardened earth as the others stiffened like pillars of stone.
Pulling her hood forward better to hide her face, Toveine moved to the side of the wide street, close beside the corner of one of the smaller stone barracks. A fork-bearded old man coming out, a silver sword pin on his high collar, glanced at her curiously without slowing his stride.
What she had done struck her like a bucket of cold water, and she nearly wept. None of those strangers would spot an Aes Sedai face, now, if they could recognize one. If either of those women could channel, unlikely though that was, she would not pass close enough to tell that Toveine could, too, She fretted and fumed over how to disobey Logain, and then did everything necessary to carry out his instructions without even thinking about it!
As an act of defiance, she stopped where she was, turning to watch the visitors, Automatically, her hands checked her hood before she could snatch them to her sides. It was pitiful, and ridiculous. She knew the Asha'man guiding the party, by sight at least, a bulky man in his middle years with oily black hair, an oily smile, and eyes like augurs. None of the others, though. What could she hope to gain by this', How could she entrust a message to any of them? Even if the escort vanished, how could she get close enough to pass a message when she was forbidden to let any outsider discover the presence of Aes Sedai?
The augur-eyed fellow looked bored with his duty this morning, hardly bothering to hide his yawns behind a gloved hand. "...when we do finish here," he was saying as he rode past Toveine. "I will show you the Craft Town. Quite a bit bigger than this. We do have every kind. of craftsfolk, from masons and carpenters to metalsmiths and tailors. We can make everything we need, Lady Elayne."
"Except turnips," one of the women said in a high voice, and the other laughed.
Toveine's head jerked. She watched the riders move on down the street accompanied by shouted orders and stamping boots, Lady Elayne? Elayne Trakand? The younger of the pair might match the description she had been given. Elaida did not reveal why she was so desperate to lay her hands on one runaway Accepted, even one who might become a queen, but she never let a sister leave the Tower without orders on what to do if she encountered the girl. Be very careful, Elayne Trakand, Toveine thought. I would not like Elaida to have the satisfaction of laying hands on you.
She wanted to think on this, on whether there was some way to use the girl's presence here, but abruptly she became aware of the sensations at the back of her head. A mild contentment and a growing purpose. Logain had finished. his breakfast. He would be coming out, soon, He had told her to be there when he did.
Her feet were running before she thought. With the result that her skirts tangled in her legs, and she fell hard, knocking her breath out. Anger welled up, fury, but she scrambled to her feet and, without pausing to brush off the dust, gathered her skirts above her knees and began to run again, cloak billowing behind. Men's raucous shouts followed her down the street, and laughing children pointed as she ran past.
Suddenly a pack of dogs was around her, snarling, nipping at her heels. She leapt and spun and kicked, but they harried her. She wanted to shriek with frustration and fury. Dogs were always a bother, and she could not channel a feather to drive them off. A gray hound seized a mouth-ful of dangling skirt, pulling her sideways, Panic overwhelmed everything else. If she fell again, they would tear her to shreds.
A shouting woman in brown wool swung her heavy basket at the dog tugging Toveine's skirt, making it dodge away. A round woman's bucket caught a brindled cur in the ribs, and it ran yelping. Toveine gaped in astonishment, and for her inattention had to pull her left leg away from another dog at the cost of a piece of her sacking and a little skin. There were women all around her, flailing away at the animals with whatever they had to hand.
"Go on with you, Aes Sedai," a skinny, graying woman told her, slicing at a spotted dog with a switch, "They won't bother you more. I'd like a nice cat, myself, but cats won't abide the husband now, Go on."
Toveine did not wait to thank her rescuers, She ran, considering furiously. The women knew. If one did, they all did. But they would carry no messages, give no help to an escape, not when they were willing to remain themselves, Not if they understood what they were helping, There was that,
Just short of Logain's house, one of several down a narrower side street, she slowed and hastily let down her skirts. Eight or nine men in black coats were waiting outside, boys and oldsters and in between, but there was no sign of Logain yet. She could still sense him, full of purpose but concentrating. Reading, perhaps. She walked the rest of the way at a dignified pace, Composed and every inch an Aes Sedai, no matter the circumstances. She almost managed to forget her frantic flight from the dogs.
The house surprised her every time she saw it, Others on the street were as large and two larger, An ordinary wooden house of two stories, though the red door, shutters and window frames looked odd, Plain curtains hid the interior, but the glass in the windows was so poor she doubted she could have seen anything clearly with the curtains drawn. A house suitable for a not overly successful shopkeeper; hardly the dwelling for one of the most notorious men alive.
Briefly she wondered what was keeping Gabrelle. The other sister bonded to Logain had the same instruction she did, and until now, she had always been here first. Gabrelle was eager, studying the Asha'man as if she intended writing a book on the subject. Perhaps she did; Browns would write about anything. She put the other sister out of her mind.
Although, if Gabrelle did turn up late, she would have to find out how the woman had managed it, For now, she had her own studying.
The men outside the red door eyed her, but said nothing, even to each other. Still there was no animosity. They were simply waiting. None had a cloak, though their breath made pale feathers in front of their faces. All were Dedicated, with the silver sword. pin on their collars.
It had been the same every morning she had reported this way, though not always the same men. She knew some, knew their names at least, and sometimes a few other gleaned tidbits, Evin Vinchova, the pretty lad who had been there when Logain captured her, leaning against the corner of the house and toying with a bit of string. Donalo Sandomere, if that was his real name, with his creased farmer's face and sharply trimmed oiled beard, attempting the languid stance he thought a nobleman would assume, The Taraboner Androl Genhald, a square fellow with his heavy eyebrows drawn in thought and his hands clasped behind his back; he wore a gold signet ring, but she thought him an apprentice who had shaved his mustaches and abandoned his veil. Mezar Kurin, a Domani with gray at his temples, fingering the garnet in his left ear; he very well might be a minor noble. She was collecting a neat file of names and faces in her head. Sooner or later they would be hunted down, and every piece of information that could help identify them would be useful.
The red door opened, and the men straightened, but it was not Logan who came out.