“I just thought of something funny,” Egwene said. “Nothing of consequence.” Not of consequence to Silviana, anyway. She had realized how to welcome the pain. She was fighting a war, not a single battle, and every time she was beaten, every time she was sent to Silviana, it was a sign that she had fought another battle and refused to yield. The pain was a badge of honor. She howled and kicked as hard as ever during that slippering, but while she was drying her cheeks afterward, she hummed quietly to herself. It was easy to welcome a badge of honor.
Attitudes among the novices began to shift by the second day of her captivity. It seemed that Nicola—and Areina, who was working in the stables and often came to visit Nicola; they seemed so close that Egwene wondered whether they had become pillow-friends, always with their heads together and smiling mysterious smiles— Nicola and Areina had regaled them all with tales of her. Very inflated tales. The two women had made her seem a combination of every legendary sister in the histories, along with Birgitte Silverbow and Amaresu herself, carrying the Sword of the Sun into battle. Half of them seemed in awe of her, the others angry with her for some reason or outright scornful. Foolishly, some tried to emulate her behavior in their classes, but a flurry of visits to Silviana quelled that. At the midday meal of the third day, nearly two dozen novices ate standing up and red-faced with embarrassment, Nicola among them. And Alvistere, surprisingly. That number dropped to seven at supper, and on the fourth day, only Nicola and the Cairhienin girl did so. And that was the end of that.
She expected some might resent the fact that she continued to refuse to bend while they had been put back on the straight and narrow so quickly, but to the contrary, it only seemed to decrease the number who were angry or scornful and increase the respect. No one tried to become her friend, which was just as well. White dress or no white dress, she was Aes Sedai, and it was improper for an Aes Sedai to befriend a novice. There was too much risk the girl would start feeling above herself and get into trouble for it.
Novices began coming to her for advice, for help learning their lessons, though. Only a handful at first, but the number grew day by day. She was willing to help them learn, which was usually just a matter of strengthening a girl’s confidence or convincing a young woman that caution was wise, or taking them patiently through the steps of a weave that was giving trouble. Novices were forbidden to channel without an Aes Sedai or Accepted present, though they nearly always did in secret anyway, but she was a sister. She refused to help more than one at a time, however. Word of groups would surely leak out, and she would not be the only one sent to Silviana. She would make that trip as often as necessary, but she did not want to earn it for others. And as for advice. . . . With the novices kept strictly clear of men, advice was easy. Though strains between pillow-friends could be as harsh as anything men ever caused.
One evening, returning from yet another session with Silviana, she overheard Nicola talking to two novices who could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen. Egwene hardly remembered being that young. It seemed a lifetime ago. Marah was a stocky Murandian with mischievous blue eyes, Namene a tall, slim Domani who giggled incessantly.
“Ask the Mother,” Nicola said. A few of the novices had taken to calling Egwene that, though never where anyone not wearing white could hear. They were foolish, but not utter fools. “She’s always willing to give advice.”
Namene giggled nervously and wriggled. “I wouldn’t want to bother her.”
“Besides,” Marah said, a lilt in her voice, “they say she always gives the same advice, she does.”
“And good advice it is, too.” Nicola held up one hand to tick off fingers. “Obey the Aes Sedai. Obey the Accepted. Work hard. Then work harder.”
Gliding on toward her room, Egwene smiled. She had been unable to make Nicola behave properly while she was openly Amyrlin, but it seemed she might have succeeded while masquerading as a novice herself. Remarkable.
There was one more thing she could do for them: comfort them. Impossible as it seemed at first, the interior of the Tower sometimes changed. People got lost trying to find rooms they had been to dozens of times. Women were seen walking out of walls, or into them, often in dresses of old-fashioned cut, sometimes in bizarre garb, dresses that seemed simply lengths of brightly colored cloth folded around the body, embroidered ankle-length tabards worn over wide trousers, stranger things still. Light, when could any woman have wanted to wear a dress that left her bosom completely exposed?
Egwene was able to discuss it with Siuan in Tel’aran’rhiod, so she knew that these things were signs of the approach of Tarmon Gai’don. An unpleasant thought, yet there was nothing to be done about it. What was, was, and it was not as if Rand himself was not a herald of the Last Battle. Some of the sisters in the Tower must have known what it all meant, too, but wrapped up in their own affairs they made no effort to comfort novices who were weeping with fright. Egwene did.
“The world is full of strange wonders,” she told Coride, a pale-haired girl who was sobbing facedown on her bed. Only a year younger than herself, Coride was most definitely still a girl despite a year and a half in the Tower. “Why be surprised if some of those wonders appear in the White Tower? What better place?” She never mentioned the Last Battle to these girls. That was hardly likely to be any comfort.
“But she walked into a wall!” Coride wailed, raising her head. Her face was red and blotchy, and her cheeks glistened damply. “A wall! And then none of us could find the classroom, and Pedra couldn’t either, and she got cross with us. Pedra never gets cross. She was frightened, too!”
“I’ll wager Pedra didn’t start crying, though.” Egwene sat down on the edge of the girl’s bed, and was pleased that she did not wince. Novice mattresses were not noted for softness. “The dead can’t harm the living, Coride. They can’t touch us. They don’t even seem to see us. Besides, they were initiates of the Tower or else servants here. This was their home as much as it is ours. And as for rooms or hallways not being where they’re supposed to be, just remember that the Tower is a place of wonders. Remember that, and they won’t frighten you.”
It seemed feeble to her, but Coride wiped her eyes and swore she would never be frightened again. Unfortunately, there were a hundred and two like her, not all so easily comforted. It was enough to make Egwene angrier at the sisters in the Tower
