Knife of Dreams (85 page)

Egwene knew from the start that her strange captivity would be difficult, yet she believed that embracing pain as the Aiel did would be the easiest part. After all, she had been beaten severely when she paid her
toh
to the Wise Ones for lying, strapped by one after another in turn, so she had experience. But embracing pain did not mean just giving way to it rather than fighting. You had to draw the pain inside of you and welcome it as a part of you. Aviendha said you must be able to smile and laugh with joy or sing while the worst of the pain still gripped you. That was not so easy at all.

That first morning before dawn, in Silviana’s study, she did her best while the Mistress of Novices plied a hard-soled slipper on her bared bottom. She made no effort to stifle her sobs when they came, or later her wordless howls. When her legs wanted to kick, she allowed them to flail until the Mistress of Novices trapped them under one of hers, awkwardly because of Silviana’s skirts, and then she let her toes drum the floor while her head tossed wildly. She tried to draw the pain inside her, to drink it in like breath. Pain was as much a part of life as breathing. That was how the Aiel saw life. But, oh, Light, it hurt!

When she was finally allowed to straighten, after what seemed a very long time, she flinched when her shift and dress fell against her flesh. The white wool seemed heavy as lead. She attempted to welcome the scalding
heat. It was hard, though. So very hard. Still, it seemed that her sobbing stopped very quickly of its own accord, and her flow of tears dried up rapidly. She did not snivel or writhe. She studied herself in the mirror on the wall, with its fading gilt. How many thousands of women had peered into that mirror over the years? Those who were disciplined in this room were always required to study their own reflection afterward and think over why they had been punished, but that was not why she did it. Her face was still red, yet already it looked . . . calm. Despite the painful heat in her bottom, she actually felt calm. Perhaps she should try singing? Perhaps not. Plucking a white linen handkerchief from her sleeve, she carefully dried her cheeks.

Silviana studied her with a look of satisfaction before replacing the slipper in the narrow cabinet opposite the mirror. “I think I got your attention from the start, or I’d have gone harder,” she said dryly, patting the bun on the back of her head. “I doubt I will see you again soon in any case. You may like to know that I asked questions as you requested. Melare had already begun asking. The woman
is
Leane Sharif, though the Light knows how. . . .” Trailing off, shaking her head, she pulled her chair back around behind the writing table and sat. “She was most anxious about you, more so than about herself. You may visit her in your free time. If you have any free time. I’ll give instructions. She’s in the open cells. And now you had better run if you want anything to eat before your first class.”

“Thank you,” Egwene said, and turned toward the door.

Silviana sighed heavily. “No curtsy, child?” Dipping her pen in the silver-mounted ink jar, she began to write in the punishment ledger, a neat, precise hand. “I will see you at midday. It seems you will eat both of your first two meals back in the Tower standing.”

Egwene could have left it there, but in the night, while waiting for the Sitters to gather in the Hall in
Tel’aran’rhiod
, she had decided on the fine line she must walk. She meant to fight, yet she had to do it while appearing to go along. To some extent, at least. Within the limits she set herself. Refusing every order would mean appearing merely obstinate—and perhaps would get her confined to a cell, where she would be useless—but some commands she must not obey if she was to maintain any scrap of dignity. And that, she had to do. More than scraps. She could not allow them to deny who she was, however hard they insisted. “The Amyrlin Seat curtsies to no one,” she said calmly, knowing full well the reaction she would get.

Silviana’s face hardened, and she took up her pen again. “I will see you
at the dinner hour, as well. I suggest you leave without speaking further, unless you wish to end spending the entire day over my knee.”

Egwene left without speaking. And without curtsying. A fine line, like a wire suspended over a deep pit. But she had to walk it.

To her surprise, Alviarin was pacing up and down in the hall outside, wrapped in her white-fringed shawl and hugging herself, staring at something in the unseen distance. She knew the woman was no longer Elaida’s Keeper, if not why she had been removed so suddenly. Spying in
Tel’aran’rhiod
gave only glimpses and snatches; it was an uncertain reflection of the waking world in so many ways. Alviarin must have heard her yowling, but strangely, Egwene felt no shame. She was fighting an odd battle, and in battle, you took wounds. The normally icy White did not appear so cool today. In fact, she seemed quite agitated, her lips parted and her eyes hot. Egwene offered her no courtesies, yet Alviarin only gave her a baleful glare before entering Silviana’s study. A fine line.

A little down the corridor, a pair of Reds stood watching, one round-faced, the other slender, both cool-eyed, with shawls draped along their arms so the long red fringe was displayed prominently. Not the same pair who had been there when she woke, but they were not present by happenstance. They were not precisely guards, and then again, they were not precisely not guards. She did not curtsy to these, either. They watched her without expression.

Before she had taken more than half a dozen steps along the red-and-green floor tiles, she heard a woman’s pained howling start up behind her, hardly muffled at all by the heavy door to Silviana’s study. So Alviarin was taking a penance, and not doing well to be shrieking at the top of her lungs so soon. Unless she also was trying to embrace pain, which seemed unlikely. Egwene wished she knew
why
Alviarin was undergoing penance, if it
was
an imposed penance. A general had scouts and eyes-and-ears to inform him on his enemy. She had only her own eyes and her own ears, and what little she could learn in the Unseen World. Any scrap of knowledge might prove useful, though, so she must dig for every one possible.

Breakfast or no breakfast, she returned to her tiny room in the novice quarters long enough to wash her face in cool water at the washstand and comb her hair. That comb, which had been in her belt pouch, was among the few personal belongings she retained. In the night, the clothes she had been wearing when captured vanished, replaced by novice white, but the dresses and shifts that hung from pegs on the white wall truly were hers. Stored away when she was raised Accepted, they still carried small tags
stitched with her name sewn into their hems. The Tower was never wasteful. You never knew when a new girl would fit an old set of clothes. But having nothing to wear save novice white did not make her a novice, whatever Elaida and the others believed.

Not until she was sure that her face was no longer red and she looked as collected as she felt did she leave. When you had few weapons, your appearance could be one. The same two Reds were waiting on the railed gallery to shadow her.

The dining hall where novices ate lay on the lowest level of the Tower, to one side of the main kitchen. It was a large white-walled chamber, plain though the floor tiles showed all the Ajah colors, and filled with tables, each of which could accommodate six or eight women on small benches. A hundred or more white-clad women were sitting at those tables, chattering away over breakfast. Elaida must be very set up over their number. The Tower had not held so many novices in years. Doubtless even news of the Tower breaking had been enough to put the thought of going to Tar Valon into some heads. Egwene was not impressed. These women filled barely half the dining hall if that, and there was another like it one floor up, closed now for centuries. Once she gained the Tower, that second kitchen would be opened again, and the novices still would need to eat by shifts, something unknown since well before the Trolloc Wars.

Nicola caught sight of her as soon as she walked in—the woman appeared to have been watching for her—and nudged the novices to either side. Silence slid across the tables in a wave, and every head turned as Egwene glided down the central aisle. She looked neither to left nor right.

Halfway to the kitchen door, a short slim novice with long dark hair suddenly stuck out a foot and tripped her. Catching her balance just short of falling on her face, she turned coolly. Another skirmish. The young woman had the pale look of a Cairhienin. This close, Egwene could be sure that she would be tested for Accepted unless she had other failings. But the Tower was good at rooting out such things. “What is your name?” she said.

“Alvistere,” the young woman replied, her accent confirming her face. “Why do you want to know? So you can carry tales to Silviana? It will do you no good. Everyone will say they saw nothing.”

“A pity, that, Alvistere. You want to become Aes Sedai and give up the ability to lie, yet you want others to lie for you. Do you see any inconsistency in that?”

Alvistere’s face reddened. “Who are you to lecture me?”

“I am the Amyrlin Seat. A prisoner, but still the Amyrlin Seat.”
Alvistere’s big eyes widened, and whispers buzzed through the room as Egwene walked on to the kitchen. They had not believed she would still claim the title while garbed in white and sleeping among them. As well to disabuse them of that notion quickly.

The kitchen was a large, high-ceilinged room with gray-tiled floors, where the roasting spits in the long stone fireplace were still but the iron stoves and ovens radiated enough heat that she would have begun perspiring immediately had she not known how to ignore it. She had labored in this kitchen often enough, and it seemed certain she would again. Dining halls surrounded it on three sides, for the Accepted and for Aes Sedai as well as novices. Laras, the Mistress of the Kitchens, was waddling about sweaty-faced in a spotless white apron that could have made three novice dresses, waving her long wooden spoon like a scepter as she directed cooks and under-cooks and scullions who scurried for her as fast as they would have for any queen. Perhaps faster. A queen would be unlikely to give anyone a smack with her scepter for moving too slowly.

A great deal of the food seemed to be going onto trays, sometimes worked silver, sometimes carved wood and perhaps gilded, that women carried away through the door to the sisters’ main dining hall. Not kitchen serving women with the white Flame of Tar Valon on their bosoms, but dignified women in well-cut woolens with an occasional touch of embroidery, sisters’ personal servants who would make the long climb back to the Ajah quarters.

Any Aes Sedai could eat in her own rooms if she wished, though it meant channeling to warm the food again, yet most enjoyed company at meals. At least, they had. That steady stream of women carrying out cloth-covered trays was a confirmation that the White Tower was spiderwebbed with cracks. She should have felt pleasure at that. Elaida stood on a platform that was ready to crumble beneath her. But the Tower
was
home. All she felt was sadness. And anger at Elaida, too. That one deserved to be pulled down simply for what she had done to the Tower since gaining the stole and staff!

Laras gave her one long look, drawing in her chin until she had a fourth, then returned to brandishing her spoon and looking over an under-cook’s shoulder. The woman had helped Siuan and Leane escape, once, so her loyalties to Elaida were weak. Would she help another now? She was certainly making every effort to avoid looking in Egwene’s direction again. Another under-cook, who likely did not know her from any other novice, a smiling woman still working on her second chin, handed her a wooden
tray with a large, stout cup of steaming tea and a thick, white-glazed plate of bread, olives and crumbly white cheese that she carried back into the dining hall.

Silence fell again, and once more every eye centered on her. Of course. They knew she had been summoned to the Mistress of Novices. They were waiting to see whether she would eat standing. She wanted very much to ease herself onto the hard wooden bench, but she made herself sit down normally. Which reignited the flames, of course. Not as strongly as before, yet strong enough to make her shift before she could stop herself. Strangely, she felt no real desire to grimace or squirm. To stand, yes, but not the other. The pain was part of her. She accepted it without struggle. She tried to welcome it, yet that still seemed beyond her.

She tore a piece of bread—there were weevils in the flour here, too, it appeared—and slowly the conversation in the room started up again, quietly because novices were expected not to make too much noise. At her table also the talk resumed, though no one made any effort to include her. That was just as well. She was not here to make friends among the novices. Nor to have them see her as one of themselves. No, her purpose was far different.

Leaving the hall with the novices after returning her tray to the kitchen, she found another pair of Reds waiting for her. One was Katerine Alruddin, vulpine in copiously red-slashed gray, a mass of raven hair falling in waves to her waist and her shawl looped over her elbows.

“Drink this,” Katerine said imperiously, extending a pewter cup in one slim hand. “All of it, mind.” The other Red, dark and square-faced, adjusted her shawl impatiently and grimaced. Apparently she disliked acting as a serving woman even by association. Or perhaps it was dislike for what was in the cup.

Suppressing a sigh, Egwene drank. The weak forkroot tea looked and tasted like water tinged a faint brown, with just a hint of mint. Almost a memory of mint rather than the taste itself. Her first cup had been soon after waking, the Red sisters on duty eager to be done with shielding and about their own business. Katerine had let the hour slip a little, yet even without this cup, she doubted she would have been able to channel very strongly for some time yet. Certainly not with enough strength to be useful.