The Gathering Storm

dress.

'Ten days, you say?' Daigian said. 'Are you certain?'

Nynaeve was. She paid attention to the weather; that was one of the duties of a village Wisdom. She was Aes Sedai now, but that didn't mean she stopped being who she was. The weather was always there, in the back of her mind. She could sense the rain, sun, or snow in the wind's whispers.

Lately, however, the sensations hadn't been like whispers at all. More like distant shouts, growing louder. Or like waves crashing against one another, still far to the north, yet harder and harder to ignore.

'Well,' Daigian said, 'I'm certain this isn't the only time in history that it has been cloudy for ten days!'

Nynaeve shook her head, tugging on her braid. 'It's not normal,' she said. 'And those overcast skies aren't the storm I'm talking about. It's still distant, but it's coming. And it is going to be terrible. Worse than any I've ever seen. Far worse.'

'Well, then,' Daigian said, sounding slightly uncomfortable, 'we will deal with it when it arrives. Are you going to sit down so that we can continue?'

Nynaeve glanced at the plump Aes Sedai. Daigian was extremely weak in the Power. The White might just be the weakest Aes Sedai that Nynaeve had ever met. By traditional—yet unspoken—rules, that meant that Nynaeve should be allowed to take the lead.

Unfortunately, Nynaeve's position was still questionable. Egwene had raised her to the shawl by decree, just as she'd raised Elayne: there had been no testing, nor had Nynaeve sworn on the Oath Rod. To most—even those who accepted Egwene's place as the true Amyrlin— those omissions made Nynaeve something less than Aes Sedai. Not an Accepted, but hardly equal to a sister.

The sisters with Cadsuane were particularly bad, as they hadn't declared for either the White Tower or the rebels. And the sisters sworn to Rand were worse; most were still loyal to the White Tower, not seeing a problem with supporting both Elaida and Rand. Nynaeve still wondered what Rand had been thinking, allowing sisters to swear fealty to him. She'd explained his mistake to him on several occasions—quite rationally— but talking to Rand these days was like talking to a stone. Only less effective and infinitely more infuriating.

Daigian was still waiting for her to sit. Rather than provoke a contest of wills, Nynaeve did so. Daigian was still suffering from having lost her Warder—Eben, an Asha'man—during the fight with the Forsaken. Nynaeve had spent that fight completely absorbed by providing Rand with immense amounts of saidar to weave.

Nynaeve could still remember the sheer joy—the awesome euphoria, strength, and sheer feel of life—that had come from drawing that much power. It frightened her. She was glad the ter'angreal she'd used to touch that power had been destroyed.

But the male ter'angreal was still intact: an access key to a powerful sa'angreal. As far as Nynaeve knew, Rand had not been able to persuade Cadsuane to return it to him. As well she shouldn't. No human being, not even the Dragon Reborn, should channel that much of the One Power. The things one could be tempted to do. . . .

She'd told Rand that he needed to forget about the access key. Like talking to a stone. A big, red-haired, iron-faced idiot of a stone. Ny-naeve harrumphed to herself. That caused Daigian to raise an eyebrow. The woman was quite good at controlling her grief, though Nynaeve— whose room in the Domani mansion was beside Daigian's—heard the woman crying to herself at night. It was not easy to lose one's Warder.

Lan. , . .

No, best not to think of him at the moment. Lan would be fine. Only at the end of his journey of thousands of miles would he be in danger. It was there he intended to throw himself at the Shadow like a lone arrow loosed at a brick wall . . .

No! she thought to herself. He will not be alone. I saw to that.

'Very well,' Nynaeve said, forcing herself to focus, 'let us continue.' She showed no deference to Daigian. She was doing this woman a favor, distracting her from her grief. That was how Corele had explained it, anyway. It wasn't, certainly, for Nynaeve's benefit that they met. She had nothing to prove. She was Aes Sedai, no matter what the others thought or implied.

This was all just a ruse to help Daigian. That was it. Nothing else.

'Here is the eighty-first weave,' the White said. The glow of saidar sprang up around her, and she channeled, crafting a very complex weave of Fire, Air and Spirit. Complex, but useless. The weave created three burning rings of fire in the air which glowed with unusual light, but what was the point of that? Nynaeve already knew how to make fireballs and balls of light; why waste time learning weaves that repeated what she already knew, only in a far more complicated way? And why did each ring have to be a slightly different color?

Nynaeve waved an indifferent hand, repeating the weave exactly. 'Honestly,' she said, 'that one seems the most useless of the bunch! What is the point of all of these?'

Daigian pursed her lips. She said nothing, but Nynaeve knew that Daigian thought that this all should be far more difficult for Nynaeve than it was. Eventually, the woman spoke. 'You cannot be told much about the testing. The only thing I can say is that you will need to repeat these weaves exactly, and do so while undergoing extreme distraction. When the time comes, you will understand.'

'I doubt it,' Nynaeve said flatly, copying the weave three times over while she spoke. 'Because—as I believe I've told you a dozen times already—I'm not going to be taking the test. I'm already Aes Sedai.'

'Of course you are, dear.'

Nynaeve ground her teeth. This had been a bad idea. When she'd approached Corele—supposedly a member of Nynaeve's own Ajah—the woman had refused to acknowledge her as an equal. She'd been pleasant about it, as Corele often was, but the implication had been clear. She'd even seemed sympathetic. Sympathetic! As if Nynaeve needed her pity. She had suggested that if Nynaeve knew the hundred weaves each Accepted learned for the test to become Aes Sedai, it might help with her credibility.

The problem was, this placed Nynaeve in a situation where she was all but treated as a student again. She did see the use in knowing the hundred weaves—she'd spent far too short a time studying them, and virtually every sister knew it. However, by accepting the lessons, she hadn't meant to imply that she saw herself as a student!

She reached for her braid, but stopped herself. Her visible expressions of emotion were another factor in how she was treated by the other Aes Sedai. If only she had that ageless face! Bah!

Daigian's next weave made a popping sound in the air, and once again the weave itself was needlessly complex. Nynaeve copied it with barely a thought, committing it to memory at the same time.

Daigian stared at the weave for a moment, a distant look on her face.

'What?' Nynaeve asked testily.

'Hmm? Oh, nothing. I just . . . the last time I made that weave, I used it to startle ... I ... never mind.'

Eben. Her Warder had been young, maybe fifteen or sixteen, and she had been very fond of him. Eben and Daigian had played games together like a boy and an elder sister rather than Aes Sedai and Warder.

A youth of only sixteen, Nynaeve thought, dead. Did Rand have to recruit them so young?

Daigian's face grew stiff, controlling her emotions far better than Nynaeve would have been able to.

Light send that I'm never in the same situation, she thought. At least not for many, many years. Lan wasn't her Warder yet, but she meant to have him as soon as possible. He was already her husband, after all. It still angered her that Myrelle had the bond.

'I might be able to help, Daigian,' Nynaeve said, leaning forward, laying her hand on the other woman's knee. 'If I were to attempt a Healing, perhaps. . . .'

'No,' the woman said curtly.

'But—'

'I doubt you could help.'

'Anything can be Healed,' Nynaeve said stubbornly, 'even if we don't know how yet. Anything save death.'

'And what would you do, dear?' Daigian asked. Nynaeve wondered if she refused to call her by name on