Nynaeve stood there in an Accepted’s white dress with the banded hem, impatient beside Siuan and Leane. She had the silver bracelet, too, though it would not work from here to the waking world; it still held Moghedien, but Nynaeve, out of her body, would not be feeling anything through it. Leane was regally slim, though in Elayne’s opinion her barely opaque Domani gown of thin silk detracted from her elegance. The color kept shifting, too; that sort of thing happened until you learned what you were doing here. Siuan was better. She wore a simple dress of blue silk, with a scooped neck just low enough to show the twisted ring on a necklace. On the other hand, lace trim sometimes appeared on the dress and the necklace changed from a plain silver chain to elaborate pieces with rubies or firedrops or emeralds set in gold, with earrings to match, then back to the plain chain.
That was the original ring hanging around Siuan’s neck; she appeared as solid as any of the buildings. To herself, Elayne looked just as solid, but she knew that to the others she seemed slightly misty, like Nynaeve and Leane. You almost thought you might see the moonlight through them. That was what using a copy did. She could sense the True Source, but as she was, saidar felt tenuous; if she tried to channel, that would be meager too. With the ring Siuan wore, it would not be so, but that was the price of having secrets someone else knew and you did not dare have exposed. Siuan trusted the original more than Elayne’s copies, so she wore it—or sometimes Leane did—while Elayne and Nynaeve, who could use saidar, made do.
“Where are they?” Siuan demanded. Her neckline swooped up and down. The dress was green, now, the necklace a strand of fat moonstones. “It’s bad enough they want to stick an oar into my work and row as they please; now they make me wait.”
“I do not know why it upsets you for them to come along,” Leane told her. “You like watching them make mistakes. They do not know half of what they think they do.” For a moment her gown slid dangerously close to transparency; a close torque of fat pearls appeared around her neck and vanished. She did not notice. She had even less experience here than Siuan.
“I need some real sleep,” Siuan muttered. “Bryne tries to run me breathless. But I have to wait on the pleasure of women who’ll spend half the night remembering how to walk. Not to mention being lumbered with these two.” She frowned at Elayne and Nynaeve, then rolled her eyes skyward.
Nynaeve gripped her braid firmly, a sure indication of temper working. For once, Elayne agreed with her wholeheartedly. It was more than difficult being a teacher with pupils who thought they knew more than they did and were far more likely to call down the teacher than the teacher was to get away with calling them down. Of course, the others were far worse than Siuan or Leane. Where were the others?
Movement appeared up the street. Six women, surrounded by the glow of saidar, who did not vanish. As usual, Sheriam and the rest of her council had dreamed themselves into their own bedchambers and walked out. Elayne was not sure how far they understood the attributes of Tel’aran’rhiod yet. In any case, they often insisted on doing things their own way even when there was a better. Who could know better than an Aes Sedai?
The six Aes Sedai truly were beginners in Tel’aran’rhiod, and their dresses changed every time Elayne looked at them. First one was wearing the embroidered Aes Sedai shawl, fringed in the color of her Ajah and with the white Flame of Tar Valon a bold teardrop on the back, then four were, then none. Sometimes it was a light traveling cloak, as to keep dust off, with the Flame on back and left breast. Their ageless faces showed no signs of the heat, of course—Aes Sedai never did—and no sign they were aware of how their clothes were changing, either.
They were as misty as Nynaeve or Leane. Sheriam and the others put more faith in dream ter’angreal that required channeling than in the rings. They just did not seem willing to believe that Tel’aran’rhiod had nothing to do with the One Power. At least Elayne could not tell which were using her copies. Somewhere about them three would have a small disc of what had once been iron, scribed on both sides with a tight spiral and powered by a flow of Spirit, the only one of the Five Powers that could be channeled in your sleep. Except here, anyway. The other three would be carrying small plaques once amber, with a sleeping woman worked inside each. Even if she had all six ter’angreal in front of her, Elayne would not have been able to pick out the two originals; those copies had gone very well. Just the same, it was still copying.
As the Aes Sedai came down the dirt street together, she heard the tail end of their conversation, though she could not make head nor foot of it.
“. . . will scorn our choice, Carlinya,” fiery-haired Sheriam was saying, “but they will scorn any choice we make. We might as well stay by our decision. You do not need me to list reasons again.”
Morvrin, a stout Brown sister with gray-streaked hair, snorted. “After all our work with the Hall, we would have a hard time changing their minds now.”
“As long as no ruler scoffs, why should we care?” Myrelle said heatedly. The youngest of the six, not many years Aes Sedai, she sounded decidedly irritated.
“What ruler would dare?” Anaiya asked, much like a woman asking what child would dare track mud on her carpets. “In any case, no king or queen knows enough of what passes among Aes Sedai to understand. Only the sisters’ opinions need concern us, not theirs.”
“What worries me,” Carlinya replied coolly, “is that if she is easily guided by us, she may be as easily guided by others.” The pale, almost black-eyed White was always cool, some would say icy.
Whatever they were talking about, it was nothing they wanted to discuss in front of Elayne or the others; they fell silent just before reaching them.
Siuan and Leane’s reaction to the newcomers had been to turn their backs on each other sharply, as if they had been having words interrupted by the Aes Sedai’s arrival. For Elayne’s part, she quickly checked her dress. It was the proper banded white. She did not know how she felt about that, appearing in the right dress without thought; she would have wagered that Nynaeve had had to change her garb after appearing. But then, Nynaeve was far more intrepid than she, struggling against limits that she herself acquiesced to. How could she ever manage to rule Andor? If her mother was dead. If.
Sheriam, slightly plump and with high cheekbones, turned tilted green eyes on Siuan and Leane. For a moment she wore a blue-fringed shawl. “If you two cannot learn to get along, I vow I’ll send both of you to Tiana.” It had the sound of something said often a
