The Path of Daggers

Abruptly she became aware that they were no longer alone in the tent. Two flaxen-haired Maidens had entered with a black-robed woman a hand shorter than either. They were half-holding her upright. At one side stood Tialin, a lanky redhead wearing a grim expression behind the light of saidar, shielding the black-robed prisoner. The sister’s hair hung in sweat-soaked ringlets to her shoulders and strands that clung to her face, which bore so much dirt that Verin did not recognize her at first. High cheekbones, but not very high, a nose with just the hint of a hook to it, and the slightest tilt to the brown eyes… Beldeine. Beldeine Nyram. She had instructed the girl in a few novice classes.

'If I may ask,' she said carefully, 'why was she brought? I asked for another.' Beldeine had no Warder despite being Green — she had been raised to the shawl barely three years ago, and Greens were often especially choosy about their first — but if they started bringing whoever they selected, the next might have two or three Warders. She thought she could deal with two more today, but not if either had even one Warder. And she doubted they would give her a second chance at any of them.

'Katerine Alruddin escaped last night,' Tialin nearly spat, and Verin gasped.

'You let her escape?' she burst out without thinking. Tiredness gave no excuse, but the words spilled from her tongue before she could stop them. 'How could you be so foolish? She’s Red! And neither a coward nor weak in the Power! The Car’a’carn could be in danger! Why were we not told of this when it happened?'

'It was not discovered until this morning,' one of the Maidens growled. Her eyes could have been polished sapphires. 'A Wise One and two Cor Darei were poisoned, and the gai’shain who brought them drink was found with his throat cut.'

Aeron arched an eyebrow at the Maiden coldly. 'Did she speak to you, Carahuin?' Both Maidens suddenly became engrossed in the task of keeping Beldeine on her feet. Aeron merely glanced at Tialin, but the red-haired Wise One lowered her gaze. Verin was the next recipient of those attentions. 'Your concern for Rand al’Thor does you… honor,' Aeron said grudgingly. 'He will be guarded. You have no need to know more. Or so much.' Abruptly her tone hardened. 'But apprentices do not use that tone with Wise Ones, Verin Mathwin Aes Sedai.' The last words were a sneer.

Smothering a sigh, Verin all but fell into another deep curtsy, a part of her wishing she were even as slim as she had been on arriving in the White Tower. She was not really constructed for all this bending and bobbing. 'Forgive me, Wise One,' she said humbly. Escaped! The circumstances made everything plain, to her if not to the Aiel. 'Apprehension must have loosened my wits.' A pity she had no way to make sure Katerine met with a fatal accident. 'I will do my best to remember in the future.' Not so much as the flicker of an eyelash told whether Aeron accepted that. 'May I assume her shield, Wise One?'

Aeron nodded without looking at Tialin, and Verin quickly embraced the Source, taking up the shield Tialin released. It never ceased to amaze her that women who could not channel gave orders so freely to women who could. Tialin was not much weaker in the Power than Verin, yet she watched Aeron nearly as warily as the Maidens did, and when the Maidens hurried out of the tent at a gesture of Aeron’s hand, leaving Beldeine wavering where she stood, Tialin was only a step behind.

Aeron did not go, however, not immediately. 'You will not speak of Katerine Alruddin to the Car’a’carn,' she said. 'He has enough to occupy his thoughts without giving him trifles to worry over.'

'I will say nothing to him about her,' Verin agreed quickly. Trifles? A Red with Katerine’s strength was no trifle. Perhaps a note. It needed thought.

'Be certain to hold your tongue, Verin Mathwin, or you will use it to howl.'

There seemed nothing to say to that, so Verin concentrated on meekness and docility, making yet another curtsy. Her knees wanted to groan.

Once Aeron departed, Verin allowed herself a sigh of relief. She had been afraid Aeron intended to remain. Gaining permission to be alone with the prisoners had required nearly as much effort as getting Sorilea and Amys to decide they needed to be questioned, and by someone intimate with the White Tower. If they ever learned they had been guided to that decision… It was a worry for another day. She seemed to be piling up a great many of those.

'There’s enough water to wash your face and hands, at least,' she told Beldeine mildly. 'And if you wish, I will Heal you.' Every sister she had interviewed had carried at least a few welts. The Aiel did not beat the prisoners except for spilling water or balking at a task — the haughtiest words of defiance earned only scornful laughter, if that — but the black-robed women were herded like animals, a tap of the switch for go or turn or stop, and a harder tap if they did not obey quickly enough. Healing made other things easier, too.

Filthy, sweaty, wavering like a reed in the wind, Beldeine curled her lip. 'I would rather bleed to death than be Healed by you!' she spat. 'Maybe I should have expected to see you groveling to these wilders, these savages, but I never thought you would stoop to revealing Tower secrets! That ranks with treason, Verin! With rebellion!' She grunted contemptuously. 'I suppose if you didn’t shy at that, you’ll stop at nothing! What else have you and the others taught them besides linking?'

Verin clicked her tongue irritably, not bothering to set the young woman straight. Her neck ached from looking up at Aiel — for that matter, even Beldeine stood a hand or more taller than she — her knees ached from curtsying, and entirely too many women who should know better had flung blind contempt and foolish pride at her today. Who should know better than an Aes Sedai that a sister had to wear many faces in the world? You could not always overawe people, or bludgeon them, either. Besides, far better to behave as a novice than be punished like one, especially when it earned you only pain and humiliation. Even Kiruna had to see the sense of that eventually.

'Sit down before you fall down,' she said, suiting her own words. 'Let me guess what you’ve been doing today. By all that dirt, I’d say digging a hole. With your bare hands, or did they let you use a spoon? When they decide it’s finished, they will just make you fill it again, you know. Now, let me see. Every part I can see of you is grubby, but that robe is clean, so I expect they had you digging in your skin. Are you sure you don’t want Healing? Sunburn can be painful.' She filled another cup with water and wafted it across the tent on a flow of Air to hover in front of Beldeine. 'Your throat must be parched.'

The young Green stared unsteadily at the cup for a moment; then suddenly her legs gave way and she collapsed onto a cushion with a bitter laugh. 'They… water me frequently.' She laughed again, though Verin could not see the joke. 'As much as I want, so long as I swallow it all.' Studying Verin angrily, she paused, then went on in a tight voice. 'That dress looks very nice on you. They burned mine; I saw them. They stole everything except this.' She touched the golden Great Serpent around her left forefinger, a bright golden gleam among the dirt. 'I suppose they couldn’t find quite enough nerve for that. I know what they’re trying to do, Verin, and it won’t work. Not with me, not with any of us!'

She was still on her guard. Verin set the cup down on the flowered carpet beside Beldeine, then took up her own and sipped before speaking. 'Oh? What are they trying to do?'

This time, the other woman’s laugh was brittle as well as harsh. 'Break us, and you know it! Make us swear oaths to al’Thor, the way you did. Oh, Verin, how could you? Swearing fealty! And worse, to a man, to him! Even if you could bring yourself to rebel against the Amyrlin Seat, against the White Tower…' She made the two sound much the same. '…how could you do that!'

For a moment Verin wondered whether things would be better if the women now held in the Aiel camp had been caught up as she had been, a woodchip in the millrace of Rand al’Thor’s ta’veren swirl, words pouring from her mouth before they had time to form in her brain. Not words she could never have said on her own — that was not how ta’veren affected you — but words she might possibly have said one time in a thousand under those circumstances, one time in ten thousand. No, the arguments had been long and hot over whether oaths given in that way had to be kept; and the arguments over how to keep them still continued. Much better as it was. Absently she fingered a hard shape inside her belt pouch, a small brooch, a translucent stone carved into what appeared to be a lily with too many petals. She never wore it, but it had not been out of her reach in nearly fifty years.

'You are da’tsang, Beldeine. You must have heard that.' She did not need Beldeine’s curt nod; telling the despised one was part of Aiel law, like pronouncing sentence. That much she knew, if very little more. 'Your clothes, and anything else that would burn, were put to the fire because no Aiel would own