Elayne held her head high and met Nynaeve stare for stare. “It does not matter. Perhaps it should, but it doesn't. Perhaps I am being foolish. I do not care. I cannot change my heart to order, Nynaeve.”
Suddenly Nynaeve smiled. “I had to be sure,” she said warmly. “You must be sure. It isn't easy loving any man, but loving this man will be harder yet.” Her smile faded as she went on. “My first question still has to be answered. What do you mean to do about it? Berelain may look soft — she certainly makes men see her so! — but I do not think she is. She will fight for what she wants. And she's the kind to hold hard to something she doesn't particularly want, just because someone else does want it.”
“I would like to stuff her in a barrel,” Egwene said, gripping her goblet as if it were the First's throat, “and ship her back to Mayene. In the bottom of the hold.”
Nynaeve's braid swung as she shook her head. “All very well, but try to offer advice that helps. If you cannot, keep silent and let her decide what she must do.” Egwene stared at her, and she added, “Rand is Elayne's to deal with, now, not yours. You have stepped aside, remember.”
The remark should have made Elayne smile, but it did not. “This was all supposed to be different.” She sighed. “I thought I would meet a man, learn to know him over months or years, and slowly I would come to realize I loved him. That is the way I always thought it would be. I hardly know Rand. I've talked with him no more than half a dozen times in the space of a year. But I knew I loved him five minutes after I first set eyes on him.” Now that was foolish. Only, it was true, and she did not care if it was foolish. She would tell her mother the same to her face, and Lini. Well, perhaps not Lini. Lini had drastic ways of dealing with foolishness, and she seemed to think Elayne had not aged beyond ten. “As matters stand, though, I don't even have the right to be angry with him. Or Berelain.” But she was. I would like to slap his face till his ears ring for a year! I'd like to switch her all the way to the ship that takes her back to Mayene! Only, she did not have the right, and that made it all the worse. Infuriatingly, a plaintive tone touched her voice. “What can I do? He has never looked at me twice.”
“In the Two Rivers,” Egwene said slowly, “if a woman wants a man to know she is interested in him, she puts flowers in his hair at Bel Tame or Sunday. Or she might embroider a feastday shirt for him any time. Or make a point of asking him to dance and no one else.” Elayne gave her an incredulous look, and she hastened to add, “I am not suggesting you embroider a shirt, but there are ways to let him know how you feel.”
“Mayeners believe in speaking out.” Elayne's voice held a brittle edge. “Perhaps that is the best way. Just tell him right out. At least he'll know how I feel, then. At least I'll have some right to — ”
She snatched her spiced wine and tilted her head back, drinking. Speak out? Like some Mayener hussy! Setting the empty goblet back on the small mat, she drew a deep breath and murmured, “What will Mother say?”
“What's more important,” Nynaeve said gently, “is what you will do when we have to leave here. Whether it's Tanchico, or the Tower, or somewhere else, we will have to go. What will you do when you've just told him you love him, and you must leave him behind? If he asks you to stay with him? If you want to?”
“I will go.” There was no hesitation in Elayne's reply, but a touch of asperity. The other woman should not have had to ask. “If I must accept him being the Dragon Reborn, he must accept that I am what I am, that I have duties. I want to be Aes Sedai, Nynaeve. It isn't some idle amusement. Neither is the work we three have to do. Could you really think I would abandon you and Egwene?”
Egwene hurried to assure her that the thought had never crossed her mind; Nynaeve did the same, but slowly enough to give herself the lie.
Elayne looked from one to the other of them. “In truth, I feared you might tell me I was foolish, fretting over a thing like this when we have the Black Ajah to worry about.”
A slight flicker of Egwene's eyes said the thought had occurred to her, but Nynaeve said, “Rand is not the only one who might die next year, or next month, We might, too. Times are not what they were, and we cannot be, either. If you sit and wish for what you want, you may not see it this side of the grave.”
It was a chilling sort of reassurance, but Elayne nodded. She was not being silly. If only the Black Ajah could be settled so easily. She pressed her empty silver goblet to her forehead for the coolness. What were they to do?
Chapter 7
(Serpent and Wheel)
Playing With Fire
With the sun barely above the horizon the next morning, Egwene presented herself at the doors to Rand's chambers, followed by a footdragging Elayne. The DaughterHeir wore a longsleeved dress of pale blue silk, cut in the Tairen fashion, and pulled low after some little discussion. A necklace of sapphires like a deep morning sky, and another strand woven into her redgold curls, showed up the blue of her eyes. Despite the damp warmth, Egwene wore a plain, deep red scarf, as large as a shawl, around her shoulders. Aviendha had supplied the scarf, and the sapphires too. Surprisingly, the Aiel woman had a tidy store of such things somehow.
For all she had known they were there, Egwene gave a start when the Aiel guards glided to their feet with startling suddenness. Elayne let out a small gasp, but quickly eyed them with that regal bearing she managed so well. It seemed to have no effect on these sundark men. The six were Shae'en M'taal, Stone Dogs, and appeared relaxed for Aiel, meaning they seemed to be looking everywhere, seemed ready to move in any direction.
Egwene drew herself up in imitation of Elayne — she did wish she could do that as well as the DaughterHeir — and announced, “I. . . we... want to see how the Lord Dragon's wounds are.”
Her remark was plainly foolish, if they knew much about Healing, but that likelihood was small; few people did; and Aiel probably less than most. She had not intended to give any reason for being there — it was enough that they thought her Aes Sedai — but when the Aiel appeared almost to spring out of the black marble floor, it suddenly seemed a good idea. Not that they were making any move to stop Elayne and her, of course. But these men were all so tall, so stonefaced, and they carried those short spears and horn bows as if using them would be as natural as breathing, and as easy. With those lightcolored eyes regarding her so intently, it was all too easy to remember stories of blackveiled Aiel, without mercy or pity, of the Aiel War and the men like these who had destroyed every army sent against them until the last, who had only turned back to the Waste after fighting the allied nations to a standstill during three bloodsoaked days and nights before Tar Valon itself. She very nearly embraced saidar.
Gaul, the Stone Dogs' leader, nodded, looking down at Elayne and her with a touch of respect. He was a handsome man, in a rugged way, a little older than Nynaeve, with eyes as green and clear as polished gems and long eyelashes so dark they seemed to outline his eyes in black. “They may be troubling him. He is in a foul mood this morning.” Gaul grinned, just a quick flash of white teeth, in understanding of a temper when wounded. “He has chased off a group of these High Lords already, and threw one of them out himself. What was his name?”
“Torean,” another, even taller man replied. He had an arrow nocked, the short, curved bow held almost casually. His gray eyes rested on the two women for an instant, then went back to searching among the anteroom's columns.
“Torean,” Gaul agreed. “I thought he would slide as far as those pretty carvings...” He pointed a spear to the ring of stiffstanding Defenders. “... but he came short by three paces. I lost a good Tairen hanging, all hawks in gold thread, to Mangin.” The taller man gave a brief, contented smile.
Egwene blinked at the image of Rand physically pitching a High Lord across the floor. He had never been violent; far from it. How much had he changed? She had been too busy with Joiya and Amico, and he too busy with Moiraine or Lan or the High Lords, to do more than speak in passing, a few words about home here and there, about how the Bel Tine festival might have gone this year and what Sunday would be like. It had all been so brief. How much had he changed?
“We have to see him,” Elayne said, a slight tremor in her voice.
Gaul made a bow, grounding the point of one spear on the black marble. “Of course, Aes Sedai.”
It was with some trepidation that Egwene entered Rand's chambers, and Elayne's face spoke volumes of the effort those few steps took.
No evidence of last night's horror remained, unless it was the absence of mirrors; lighter patches marked the wall panels where those hanging there had been taken away. Not that the room came anywhere near neatness; books lay everywhere, on everything, some lying open as if abandoned in the middle of a page, and the bed was still unmade. The crimson draperies were pulled open on all the windows, facing westward toward the river that was Tear's heartvein, and Callandor sparkled like polished crystal on a huge gilded stand of surpassing gaudiness. Egwene thought the stand the ugliest thing she had ever seen decorating a room — until she glimpsed the silver wolves savaging a golden stag on the mantel above the fireplace. Scant breezes off the river kept the room surprisingly cool compared to the rest of the Stone.
Rand sat in his shirtsleeves, sprawled in a chair with one leg over the arm and a leatherbound book propped against his knee. At the sound of their footsteps, he snapped the book shut and dropped it among the others on the scrollworked carpet, bounding to his feet ready to fight. The scowl on his face faded as he took in who they were.
For the first time in the Stone, Egwene looked for changes in him and found them. How many months before then since she had seen him last? Enough for his face to have grown harder, for the openness that had once been there to fade. He moved differently, too, a little like Lan, a little like the Aiel. With his height and his reddish hair, and eyes that seemed now blue, now gray, as the light took them, he looked all too much like an Aielman, too much for comfort. But had he changed inside?
“I thought you were... someone else,” he mumbled, sharing out embarrassed glances between them. That was the Rand she knew, even to the flush that rose in his cheeks every time he looked at her or Elayne, either one. “Some...people want things I can't give. Things I will not give.” Suspicion grew on his face with shocking suddenness, and his tone hardened. “What do you want? Did Moiraine send you? Are you supposed to convince me to do what she wants?”
“Don't be a goose,” Egwene said sharply before she thought. “I do not want you to start a war!”
Elayne added in pleading tones, “We came to... to help you, if we can.” That was one of their reasons, and the easiest to bring up, they had decided over breakfast.
“You know about her plans for...” he began roughly, then made a sudden shift. “Help me? How? That is
