The Path of Daggers

of it. Horses whinnied and danced and rolled their eyes, and Windfinders shouted curses in voices that could have been heard over a gale. One of them knocked a serving man flat with her fist, and three more stable folk were trying to catch mounts that had gotten free.

There was also what she had expected to see, if Nynaeve was no longer keeping her private watch. Lan stood by his black warhorse, Mandarb, dividing his gaze between the treeline, the gateway, and Nynaeve. Birgitte came striding out of the woods shaking her head, and a moment later, Cieryl, trotted from the trees, but with no sense of urgency. There was nothing out there to threaten or inconvenience them.

Nynaeve was watching her, eyebrows raised high.

'I didn’t say anything,' Elayne said. Her hand closed on something small, wrapped in rotting cloth that might have been white once. Or brown. She knew immediately what was inside.

'A good thing for you,' Nynaeve grumbled, not quite far enough under her breath. 'I can’t abide women who poke their noses into other people’s business.' Elayne let it pass without so much as a start; she was proud that she did not have to bite her tongue.

Stripping away the decayed cloth revealed a small amber brooch in the shape of a turtle. It looked like amber, anyway, and it might been amber once, but when she opened herself to the Source through it, saidar rushed into her, a torrent compared to what she could draw safely on her own. Not a strong angreal, but far better than nothing. With it, she could handle twice as much of the Power as Nynaeve, and Nynaeve herself would do better still. Releasing the extra flow of saidar, she slipped the brooch into her belt pouch with a smile of delight and went back to searching. Where there was one, there might be more. And now that she had one to study, she might be able to reason out how to make an angreal. That was something she had wished for. It was all she could do not to take the brooch out again and begin probing it right there.

Vandene had been eyeing Nynaeve and her for some time, and now she heeled her slab-sided gelding over to them and dismounted. The groom at the packhorse’s head managed a decent if awkward curtsy, more than she had for Elayne or Nynaeve. 'You’re being careful,' Vandene said to Elayne, 'and that’s very good. But it might be better to leave these things alone until they’re in the Tower.'

Elayne’s mouth tightened. In the Tower? Until they could be examined by someone else, was what she meant. Someone older and supposedly more experienced. 'I do know what I’m doing, Vandene. I have made ter’angreal, after all. Nobody else living has done that.' She had taught the basics to some sisters, but no one had managed the trick of it by the time she left for Ebou Dar.

The older Green nodded, flipping her reins idly against the palm of her riding glove. 'Martine Janata also knew what she was doing, so I understand,' she said casually. 'She was the last sister to really make a business of studying ter’angreal. She did it for over forty years, almost from the time she reached the shawl. She was careful, too, so I was told. Then one day, Martine’s maid found her unconscious on the floor of her sitting room. Burned out.' Even in a conversational tone, those words were a sharp slap. Vandene’s voice did not alter a hair, though. 'Her Warder was dead from the shock. Not unusual in cases like that. When Martine came to, three days later, she couldn’t recall what she had been working with. She couldn’t remember the preceding week at all. That was more than twenty-five years ago, and no one since has had the nerve to touch any of the ter’angreal that were in her rooms. Her notes mentioned every last one, and everything she had discovered was innocuous, innocent, even frivolous, but…' Vandene shrugged. 'She found something she wasn’t expecting.'

Elayne peeked at Birgitte, and found Birgitte looking back at her. She did not need to see the worried frown on the other woman’s face; it was mirrored in her mind, in the small patch of her mind that was Birgitte and in the rest. Birgitte felt her worry, and she felt Birgitte’s, until sometimes it was hard to say which was which. She risked more than herself. But she did know what she was doing. More than anyone else there, at least. And even if none of the Forsaken appeared, they needed all the angreal she could find.

'What happened to Martine?' Nynaeve asked quietly. 'Afterward, I mean.' She could seldom hear of anyone being hurt without wanting to Heal them; she wanted to Heal everything.

Vandene grimaced. She might have been the one to bring up Martine, but Aes Sedai did not like talking about women who had been burned out or stilled. They did not like remembering them. 'She vanished once she was well enough to slip out of the Tower,' she said hurriedly. 'The important thing to remember is that she was cautious. I never met her, but I’ve been told she treated every ter’angreal as if she had no idea what it might do next, even the one that makes the cloth for Warders’ cloaks, and nobody has ever been able to make that do anything else. She was careful, and it did her no good.'

Nynaeve laid an arm across the nearly empty pannier. 'Maybe you really should,' she began.

'No-o-o-o!' Merilille shrieked.

Elayne spun, instinctively opening herself through the angreal again, only half conscious of saidar flooding into Nynaeve and Vandene. The glow of the Power sprang up around every woman in the clearing who could embrace the Source. Merilille was straining forward in her saddle, eyes bulging, one hand reaching toward the gateway. Elayne frowned. There was nothing there except Aviendha, and the last four Warders, startled in the middle of walking away, searching for the threat with swords half-drawn. Then she realized what Aviendha was doing and nearly lost saidar in her shock.

The gateway trembled as Aviendha carefully picked apart the weave that had made it. It shivered and flexed, the edges wavering. The last flows came loose, and instead of winking out, the opening shimmered, the view through it of the courtyard fading away until it evaporated like mist in the sun.

'That is impossible!' Renaile said incredulously. An astonished murmur of agreement broke out among the Windfinders. The Kinswomen gaped at Aviendha, mouths working soundlessly.

Elayne nodded slowly in spite of herself. Clearly it was possible, but one of the first things she had been told as a novice was that never, ever, under any circumstances was she to try what Aviendha had just done. Picking apart a weave, any weave, rather than simply letting it dissipate, could not be done, she had been told, not without inevitable disaster. Inevitable.

'You fool girl!' Vandene snapped, her face a thunderhead. She strode toward Aviendha dragging her gelding behind. 'Do you realize what you almost did? One slip — one! — and there’s no saying what the weave will snap into, or what it will do! You could have completely destroyed everything for a hundred paces! Five hundred! Everything! You could have burned yourself out and — '

'It was necessary,' Aviendha cut in. A babble erupted from the mounted Aes Sedai crowding around her and Vandene, but she glared at them and raised her voice over theirs. 'I know the dangers, Vandene Namelle, but it was necessary. Is this another thing you Aes Sedai cannot do? The Wise Ones say any woman can learn, if she is taught, some women more and some less, but any woman, if she can pick out embroidery.' She did not quite sneer. Not quite.

'This is not embroidery, girl!' Merilille’s voice was deep winter ice. 'Whatever so- called training you received among your people, you cannot possibly know what you are playing with! You will promise me — swear to me! — that you will never do this again!'

'Her name should be in the novice book,' Sareitha said firmly, glaring across the Bowl still held firmly to her bosom. 'I’ve always said it. She should be entered in the book.' Careane nodded, her stern gaze measuring Aviendha for a novice dress.

'That might not be necessary for the moment,' Adeleas told Aviendha, leaning forward in her saddle, 'but you must let yourself be guided by us.' The Brown sister’s tone was much milder than the others’, yet she was not making a suggestion.

A month or so earlier, Aviendha might have begun to wilt under all that Aes Sedai disapproval, but not now. Elayne hurriedly pushed in among the horses before her friend decided to draw the knife she was fondling. Or to do something worse. 'Maybe somebody should ask why she thought it was necessary,' she said, slipping an arm around Aviendha’s shoulders as much to keep her arms at her sides as for comfort.

Aviendha did not quite include her in the exasperated look she gave the other sisters. 'This leaves no residue,' she said patiently. Too patiently. 'The residues of a weave this large might be read two days from now.'