The Path of Daggers

the stairs from behind. Given her promise, she had no other choice. Reanne’s face was aghast. Alise and stout Sumeko, still wearing her red belt, watched thoughtfully.

In the days that followed, whether laboring along a snow-covered road on their horses, walking the streets of a village, or trying to find room for everyone at a farm, Renaile kept Merilille at her heels except when she told her off to follow another Windfinder. The glow of saidar surrounded the Gray sister and her escort almost constantly, and Merilille demonstrated weaves unceasingly. The pale Cairhienin was markedly shorter than any of the dark Sea Folk women, but at first Merilille managed to stand taller by the sheer force of Aes Sedai dignity. Soon, though, she began to wear a permanently startled expression. Elayne learned that when they all had beds to sleep in, which they did not always, Merilille was sharing with Pol, her maid, and the two apprentice Windfinders, Talaan and Metarra. What that said of Merilille’s status, Elayne was not sure. Clearly, the Windfinders did not put her on a level with the apprentices. They just expected her to do as she was told, when she was told, with no delays or equivocations.

Reanne remained appalled at the turn of events, but Alise and Sumeko were not the only ones among the Kin to watch closely, not the only ones to nod thoughtfully. And suddenly, another problem came to Elayne’s notice. The Kinswomen saw Ispan made more and more malleable in her captivity, but she was the prisoner of other Aes Sedai. The Sea Folk were not Aes Sedai, and Merilille not a prisoner, yet she was starting to jump when Renaile issued a command, or, for that matter, when Dorile, or Caire, or Caire’s blood-sister Tebreille did. Each of those was Windfinder to a clan Wavemistress, and none of the others made her hop with such alacrity, but that was enough. More and more of the Kin slid from horrified gaping to thoughtful observation. Perhaps Aes Sedai were not a different flesh after all. If Aes Sedai were just women like themselves, why should they subject themselves once more to the rigors of the Tower, to Aes Sedai authority and Aes Sedai discipline? Had they not survived very well on their own, some for more years than any of the older sisters were quite ready to believe? Elayne could practically see the idea forming in their heads.

When she mentioned it to Nynaeve, though, Nynaeve just muttered, 'About time some of the sisters learned what it’s like trying to teach a woman who thinks she knows more than her teacher. Those who have a chance at a shawl will still want it, and for the rest, I don’t see why they shouldn’t grow some backbone.' Elayne refrained from mentioning Nynaeve’s complaints about Sumeko, who had certainly grown backbone; Sumeko had criticized several of Nynaeve’s Healing weaves as 'clumsy,' and Elayne had thought Nynaeve was going to have apoplexy on the spot. 'In any case, there’s no need to tell Egwene about this. If she’s there. Any of it. She has enough on her plate.' Without doubt, 'any of it' referred to Merilille and the Windfinders.

They were in their shifts, seated on their bed on the second floor of The New Plow, with the twisted-ring dream ter’angreal hanging about their necks, Elayne’s on a simple leather cord, Nynaeve’s alongside Lan’s heavy signet ring on a narrow golden chain. Aviendha and Birgitte, still fully dressed, sat on two of their clothing chests. Standing guard, they called it, until she and Nynaeve returned from the World of Dreams. Both wore their cloaks until they could climb under the blankets. The New Plow was definitely not new; cracks spidered across the plastered walls, and unfortunate drafts crept in everywhere.

The room itself was small, and the chests and stacked bundles left room for little beyond the bed and washstand. Elayne knew she had to present herself properly in Caemlyn, but sometimes she felt guilty, with her belongings on pack animals when most others had to make do with what they could carry on their backs. Nynaeve certainly never showed any regrets over her chests. They had been sixteen days on the road, the full moon outside the narrow window shone on a white blanket of snow that would make traveling tomorrow slow even if the sky remained clear, and Elayne thought another week to Caemlyn was an optimistic estimate.

'I have enough sense not to remind her,' she told Nynaeve. 'I don’t want my nose snapped off again.'

That was a mild way of putting it. They had not been in Tel’aran’rhiod since informing Egwene, the night after leaving the estate, that the Bowl had been used. Reluctantly, they also had told her of the bargain they had been forced into with the Sea Folk, and found themselves facing the Amyrlin Seat with the striped stole on her shoulders. Elayne knew it was necessary and right — a Queen’s closest friend among her subjects knew she was the Queen as well as a friend, had to know — but she had not enjoyed her friend telling them in a heated voice that they had behaved like witless loobies who might have brought ruin down on all their heads. Especially when she herself agreed. She had not liked hearing that the only reason Egwene did not set them both a penance that would curl their hair was that she could not afford to have them waste the time. Necessary and right, though; when she sat on the Lion Throne, she would still be Aes Sedai, and subject to the laws and rules and customs of Aes Sedai. Not for Andor — she would not give her land to the White Tower — but for herself. So, unpleasant as it had been, she accepted her castigation calmly. Nynaeve had writhed and stammered with embarrassment, protested and all but pouted, then apologized so profusely that Elayne hardly believed it was the same woman she knew. Quite rightly, Egwene had remained the Amyrlin, cool in her displeasure even while giving pardon for their mistakes. At best, tonight could not be pleasant or comfortable if she was there.

But when they dreamed themselves into the Salidar of Tel’aran’rhiod, into the room in the Little Tower that had been called the Amyrlin’s Study, she was not there, and the only sign she had visited since their meeting was some barely visible words roughly scratched on a beetle-riddled wall panel, as if by an idle hand that did not want to spend the effort to carve deeply.

STAY IN CAEMLYN

And a few feet away:

KEEP SILENT AND BE CAREFUL

Those had been Egwene’s final instructions to them. Go to Caemlyn, and stay there until she could puzzle out how to keep the Hall from salting all of them down and nailing them into a barrel. A reminder they had no way to erase.

Embracing saidar, Elayne channeled to leave her own message, the number fifteen seemingly scratched on the heavy table that had been Egwene’s writing desk. Inverting the weave and tying it off meant that only someone who ran her fingers across the numerals would realize they were not really there. Perhaps it would not take fifteen days to reach Caemlyn, but more than a week, she was certain.

Nynaeve strode to the window and peered out both ways, careful not to put her head out through the open casement. It was night out there as in the waking world, a full moon gleaming on bright snow, though the air did not feel cold. No one else should be there except them, and if anyone was, it was someone to avoid. 'I hope she isn’t having trouble with her plans,' she muttered.

'She told us not to mention those even to each other, Nynaeve. ‘A secret spoken finds wings.’' That had been another of Lini’s many favorites.

Nynaeve grimaced over her shoulder, then returned to peering down the narrow alley. 'It’s different for you. I tended her as a child, changed her swaddling, smacked her bottom a time or two. And now I have to leap when she snaps her fingers. It’s hard.'

Elayne could not help herself. She snapped her fingers.

Nynaeve spun so fast that she blurred, her face pop-eyed with horror. Her dress blurred, too, from blue riding silks to an Accepted’s banded white to what she referred to as good, stout Two Rivers wool, dark and thick. When she realized Egwene was not there, had not been listening, she almost fainted with relief.

When they stepped back to their bodies and woke long enough to tell the others they could come to bed, Aviendha certainly thought it a good joke, and Birgitte laughed as well. Nynaeve had her revenge, though. The next morning, she woke Elayne with an icicle. Elayne’s shrieks woke everybody else in the whole village.

Three days later, the first explosion came.

Chapter 21 (Dragon)