New Spring: The Novel

after Gitara's Foretelling, were girls and, like every other newborn, birthed within a mile of the camp. Some other Accepted was going to find the boy-child without knowing what she had found. She herself likely would not hear of it for years. Light, but it hardly seemed fair. She knew, and it meant nothing.

Coming onto midday, Moiraine looked up to find a slim young woman in dark wool standing before her with a blanket-wrapped child in the crook of her arm.

'Susa Wynn, Aes Sedai,' the woman said meekly. 'That's me. This is my Cyril,' she added, stroking the boy's head.

Moiraine might have had no experience of babies, but she could tell a child of six or seven months from a newborn. As she opened her mouth to tell the woman not to try her for a fool, Siuan laid a hand briefly on her arm. That was all-Siuan never stopped questioning the woman whose name she was writing-but it made Moiraine take another look. Susa Wynn was not slim, she was near to gaunt, with deep shadows beneath her eyes and a lost, desperate look about her. Her dress and cloak were worn and much-darned. Neatly darned, but in places there seemed to be more darning than original dress.

'The father's name?' Moiraine asked, playing for time to decide. This child was too old by far, and that was that. Except 'Jac, Aes Sedai. Jac Wynn. He?' Tears welled in the woman's sunken eyes. 'Jac died before the fighting even started. Slipped in the snow and cracked his head on a stone. Hardly seems right, to come all this way and die for slipping in the snow.' The baby began to cough, a chesty sound, and Susa bent over him anxiously.

Moiraine was not certain whether it was the child's cough, or the tears, or a dead husband, but she entered the woman's particulars carefully. The Tower could afford a hundred gold crowns for a woman and child who might die without some sort of help. The child seemed plump enough, true, but Susa clearly was starving. And Meri a'Conlin intended to frame her coins. It was all she could do not to demand to know who Jac Wynn had served. Whoever it was should never have allowed matters to come to this state! Noble blood carried as many responsibilities as rights! More, as she had been taught. On top of that, where were the woman's friends? Murandians!

'The Light bless you, Aes Sedai.' Susa tried to gulp back more tears and failed. She did not sob; the tears simply spilled down her cheeks. 'The Light shine on you forever.'

'Yes, yes,' Moiraine said gently. 'Do you have a Reader in this camp?' No, Murandians had another name for women who knew herbs and cures. What was it? Verin Sedai had lectured on the subject the first year she and Siuan were Accepted. 'A Wisdom? A Wise Woman?' At Susa 's nod, she took her purse from her belt pouch and pressed a silver penny into the woman's free hand. 'Take your child to her.'

That brought still more weeping and more thanks, and an attempt to kiss her hand that she barely avoided. Light, Susa was not her liege woman. It was hardly decent.

'With the bounty to come,' Siuan whispered once Susa had finally gone, 'the Wise Woman would have given credit.' She did not move her eyes from what she was writing in a precise hand, but what Moiraine could see of her face expressed disapproval. Siuan was very careful with the little money she had.

Moiraine sighed-done was done-and then again when she realized that a flurry of whispers was rushing along the two lines of women. Word that one of the 'Aes Sedai' had accepted Susa Wynn's child spread like wildfire in dry grass, and in no time she saw women hurrying to join the end of the line, at least one leading her child by the hand.

'My Danil, he's been real peaky lately, Aes Sedai,' the round-faced woman in front of her said with a hopeful smile. And a glint of avarice in her pale eyes. The infant cradled in her arms made happy, burbling noises. 'I surely wish I could afford to see the Wise Woman.' The woman's gray woolen dress looked almost new.

Moiraine's temper flared, and for once, she made no effort to force it down. 'I could Heal him,' she replied coolly. 'Of course, he is very young. He might not survive. Very likely not.' At that age, he certainly would not survive the rigors of Healing, and besides, that was one of the few weaves that Accepted were forbidden to make without a sister watching. A mistake with Healing could harm more than the weaver. The woman did not know any of that, however, and when Moiraine stretched out a gloved hand, she jerked back, clutching the infant protectively, her eyes nearly coming out of her head with fright.

'No, Aes Sedai. Thank you, but no. I? I'll scrape together the coin, I will.'

Temper faded-it never lasted long-and for a moment, Moiraine felt ashamed of herself. Only for a moment. The Tower could afford to be generous, yet no one could be allowed to take Aes Sedai for fools. A good part of the Tower's power came from the belief that sisters were the very opposite of fools in every way. Whispers again flashed down the lines, and the woman leading her child by the hand scurried away more quickly than she had come. At least that would not have to be dealt with. There would have been no way to avoid harsh words with someone who thought the Tower could be gulled so easily.

'Well done,' Siuan murmured, her pen scratching away. 'Very well done.'

'Danil,' Moiraine said, writing. 'And your name?' Her smile was for the compliment, but Danil's mother seemed to take it as a sign of forgiveness, offering her answers in a relieved voice. Moiraine was glad to hear it. Many people feared the White Tower, occasionally with reason-the Tower could be stern when it must-but fear was a poor tool, and one that always cut the user eventually. She had learned that long before coming to the Tower.

Once the sun passed its zenith, Siuan and she went to fetch the food from their saddlebags. There was certainly no point in asking one of Steler's men to do it. They were already squatting on their heels, making a meal from dried meat and flatbread, not far from where their mounts were tethered on one of the horselines. None looked ready to stir a foot short of being attacked. But Steler bowed his head to her and Siuan as they turned from their mounts, only the slightest bob, yet approving she thought. Men were decidedly? odd.

With less than half the women's names recorded, she expected grumbling at least, but those remaining scattered to find their own food without a single complaint. A dark woman with a Tairen accent brought a battered tin teapot filled to the brim with hot, dark tea to the table, and a pair of green mugs with cracked glazing, and a lean, gray-haired woman brought two steaming wooden tankards that gave off the scent of hot spiced wine. Her leathery face looked as though a smile had never touched it.

'Susa Wynn's too proud to take more than a little food from anybody, except for her babe,' she said, in a deep voice for a woman, as she set the tankards down. 'What you did was kindly done, and well.' With a nod, she turned and strode away across the snow, her back as straight as a Guardsman on parade. That was certainly a peculiar manner with an Aes Sedai.

'She knows who we really are,' Siuan said softly, picking up the tankard in both hands to let the warmth soak in. Moiraine did the same, gloves or no. Poor Siuan's fingers must have been freezing.

'She will not tell,' Moiraine said after a moment, and Siuan nodded. Not that the truth would cause any real problems, not with Steler and his men present, but it was better to avoid the embarrassment. To think that one of the commoners would know an Aes Sedai's face when none of the noblewomen had. An Aes Sedai's face or an Accepted's dress. Or both. 'She went to the Tower when she was young, I think.' A woman who could not be taught to channel was sent away, yet she would have seen Aes Sedai and Accepted.

Siuan gave her a sideways look, as though she had said water was wet. Sometimes it could be irritating when Siuan puzzled things out ahead of her.

They spoke little while they ate their bread and fruit and cheese. Novices were expected to keep silent during meals, and Accepted to maintain a measure of dignity, so they had grown accustomed to eating quietly. The wine they barely touched-Accepted had wine with meals, but watered, and it would never do for one of them to grow tipsy-yet Moiraine was surprised to find that she had devoured every scrap of the meal she had been certain was too much. Perhaps being out in the cold had increased her appetite.

She was folding up the cloths the food had been bundled in-and wishing there had been a few more of the dried apricots-when Siuan suddenly muttered, 'Oh, no.'

Moiraine looked up, and her heart sank.

Two sisters were riding into the camp, slowly picking their way between the tents and wagons. In the current state of affairs, women dressed in silk yet moving about the countryside without an entourage had to be sisters, and these were followed by just one man, a dark fellow in a cloak that shifted colors and blended with what lay behind him so that parts of him and parts of his black gelding seemed not to be there at all. His eyes never rested long in one place; he made the Tower guards seem half-asleep lapdogs compared to a hunting leopard. A Warder's cloak was a disconcerting sight, and murmurs rose in the camp, people gaping and pointing. The blacksmiths lowered their hammers in silence once more.