Shadow Rising, The (110 page)

Read Shadow Rising, The Online

Authors: Robert Jordan

BOOK: Shadow Rising, The
11.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Siuan’s voice was nearly as neutral. “The last I heard from them, they were safe and well. I cannot say where they are, now. Would you rather they were here, in the middle of this feeding frenzy?”
“No Aes Sedai word games,” he said softly. “Tell me where they were, straight out, so I know you speak the truth.”
“Illian,” Siuan said without hesitation. “In the city itself. They are studying with an Aes Sedai named Mara Tomanes. They should still be there.”
“Not Tear,” he murmured. For a moment he appeared to think that over. Abruptly, he said, “They say you are a Darkfriend. Black Ajah, that would be, would it not?”
“If you really believe that,” Siuan said calmly, “then strike off my head.”
Min almost screamed as his knuckles whitened on his sword hilt. Slowly she reached out and rested her fingers against his outstretched wrist, careful not to make him think she meant to do anything more than touch. It was like resting her fingers on rock. “Gawyn, you know me. You can’t think I would help the Black Ajah.” His eyes never wavered from Siuan’s face, never blinked. “Gawyn, Elayne supports her and everything she’s done. Your own sister, Gawyn.” His flesh was still stone. “Egwene believes in her, too, Gawyn.” His wrist trembled under her fingers. “I swear it, Gawyn. Egwene believes.”
His eyes flickered to her, then back to Siuan. “Why shouldn’t I drag you back by the scruff of your neck? Give me a reason.”
Siuan met his stare with a good deal more calm than Min felt. “You could do it, and I suppose my struggles wouldn’t give you much more trouble than a kitten’s. Yesterday, I was one of the most powerful women in the world. Perhaps the most powerful. Kings and queens would come if I
summoned them, even if they hated the Tower and all it stood for. Today, I’m afraid that I may have nothing to eat tonight, and that I’ll have to sleep under a bush. In the space of one day I’ve been reduced from the most powerful woman in the world to one hoping to find a farm where I might earn my keep in the fields. Whatever you think I have done, isn’t that a fitting punishment?”
“Perhaps,” he said after a moment. Min took a deep breath of relief as he resheathed his sword in a flowing motion. “But that is not why I will let you go. Elaida might take your head yet, and I cannot allow that. I want what you know to be there, if I need it.”
“Gawyn,” Min said, “come with us.” A Warder-trained swordsman might be useful in the days to come. “That way, you’d have her ready to hand to answer your questions.” Siuan’s gaze flickered to her, not really leaving Gawyn’s face and not exactly indignant; she pressed on anyway. “Gawyn, Egwene and Elayne believe in her. Can’t you believe, too?”
“Do not ask more than I can give,” he said quietly. “I will take you to the nearest gate. You would never get out without me. That’s all I can do, Min, and it is more than I should. Your arrest has been ordered; did you know that?” His eyes swung back to Siuan. “If anything happens to them,” he said in that expressionless voice, “to Egwene or my sister, I will find you, wherever you hide, and I will make sure the same happens to you.” Abruptly he stalked a dozen paces away and stood with his arms folded, head down as if he could not bear to look at them any longer.
Siuan half-raised a hand to her throat; a tiny line of red on the fair skin marked where his blade had rested. “I’ve been too long with the Power,” she said, a trifle unsteadily. “I had forgotten what it is like to face someone who can pick you up and snap you like a thread.” She peered at Leane then, as if seeing her for the first time, and touched her own face as though unsure what it looked like. “From what I have read it is supposed to take longer to fade, but perhaps Elaida’s rough treatment had something to do with it. A disguise, he called it, and it may serve for one.” She clambered awkwardly onto Bela’s back, handling the reins as if the shaggy mare were a spirited stallion. “Another advantage, it seems, to being … . I have to learn to say it without flinching. I have been stilled.” She said the words slowly and deliberately, then nodded. “There. If Leane is any guide, I’ve lost a good fifteen years, maybe more. I’ve known women who would pay any price for that. A third advantage.” She glanced at Gawyn. He still had his back turned, but she lowered her voice anyway. “Along with a certain loosening
of the tongue, shall we say? I had not thought of Mara in years. A friend of my girlhood.”
“Will you age like the rest of us, now?” Min asked as she climbed into her saddle. Better than commenting on the lie. Better just to remember that she
could
lie now. Leane mounted the third mare with smooth skill and walked her in a circle, testing her step; she had surely been on a horse before.
Siuan shook her head. “I really don’t know. No stilled woman has ever lived long enough to find out. I intend to.”
“Do you mean to go,” Gawyn asked harshly, “or sit there talking?” Without waiting for an answer, he strode off through the trees.
They heeled their mares after him, Siuan pulling her hood well forward to hide her face. Disguise or no, it seemed she was taking no chances. Leane was already shrouded as deeply in hers as she could be. After a moment, Min imitated them. Elaida wanted
her
arrested? That had to mean that she knew “Elmindreda” was Min. How long had the woman known? How long had Min been walking around thinking herself hidden while Elaida watched and smirked at her for a fool? It was a shivery thought.
As they caught up to Gawyn at a graveled path, twenty or more young men appeared, striding toward them, some perhaps a few years older than he, others little more than boys. Min suspected some of those last did not have to shave yet, at least not regularly. All carried swords at their belts or on their backs, though, and three or four had breastplates. More than one sported a bloody bandage, and most wore clothes spotted with blood. Each had the same unblinking stare as Gawyn. At the sight of him they stopped, clapping right fists to chests. Without slowing, Gawyn acknowledged the salute with a nod, and the young men fell in behind the women’s horses.
“The students?” Siuan murmured. “They also took part in the fighting?”
Min nodded, keeping her face expressionless. “They call themselves the Younglings.”
“A fitting name.” Siuan sighed.
“Some are no more than children,” Leane muttered.
Min was not about to tell them that Warders from the Blue and Green Ajahs had planned to free them before they were stilled, and might have succeeded if Gawyn had not roused the students, “children” too, and led them into the Tower to stop it. The fighting had been among the deadliest, student against teacher and no mercy, no quarter.
The tall, bronze-studded Alindrelle Gates stood open, but guarded
heavily. Some guards wore the Flame of Tar Valon on their chests; others had workmen’s coats, and mismatched breastplates and helmets. Guardsmen, and fellows who had come disguised as masons. Both sorts looked hard and resourceful, used to their weapons, but they kept apart, eyeing each other distrustfully. A grizzled officer stood out from the Tower guardsmen with his arms folded and watched Gawyn and the others approach.
“Writing materials!” Gawyn snapped. “Quickly!”
“Well, you must be these Younglings I’ve heard of,” the grizzled man said. “A fine bunch of bloody young cockerels, but I’ve had orders to let no one leave the Tower grounds. Signed by the Amyrlin Seat herself. Who do you think you are to countermand that?”
Gawyn raised his head slowly. “I am Gawyn Trakand of Andor,” he said softly. “And I mean to see these women leave, or you dead.” The other Younglings moved up behind him, spreading out to face the guards with hands on swords, unblinking, perhaps not caring that they were outnumbered.
The grizzled man shifted uneasily, and one of the others muttered, “He’s the one they say killed Hammar and Coulin.”
After a moment, the officer jerked his head toward the guardhouse, and one of the guardsmen ran inside, returning with a lapdesk, a small red stick of sealing wax burning in a brass holder at one corner. Gawyn let the man hold the desk while he scribbled furiously.
“This will let you past the bridge guards,” he said, letting a pool of red wax drip beneath his signature. He pressed his signet ring into it firmly.
“You killed Coulin?” Siuan said in a cold tone fitting her former office. “And Hammar?”
Min’s heart sank.
Be quiet, Siuan! Remember who you are now, and be quiet!
Gawyn spun to face the three women, his eyes like blue fire. “Yes,” he grated. “They were my friends, and I respected them, but they sided with … with Siuan Sanche, and I had to—” Abruptly he shoved the paper he had sealed into Min’s hand. “Go! Go, before I change my mind!” He slapped her mare, then darted to slap the other two as Min’s horse leaped through the open gates. “Go!”
Min let her horse cross the great plaza surrounding the Tower grounds at a quick trot, Siuan and Leane right behind her. The plaza was empty, and so were the streets beyond. The ring of their horses’ hooves on the paving stones echoed hollowly. Whoever had not already fled the city was hiding.
She studied Gawyn’s paper as they rode. The blob of red wax bore the imprint of a charging boar. “This just says we have permission to leave. We could use it to board a ship as well as at the bridges.” It seemed smart to be going a way no one knew, not even Gawyn. She did not really think he would change his mind, but he was brittle, ready to shatter at the wrong blow.
“That might be a good idea,” Leane said. “I always thought Galad was the more dangerous of those two, but I am no longer sure. Hammar, and Coulin … .” She shivered. “A ship would take us farther, faster than these horses can.”
Siuan shook her head. “Most of the Aes Sedai who fled will have crossed the bridges, for sure. That is the quickest way out of the city if someone might be chasing you, quicker than waiting while a ship’s crew casts off. I must stay close to Tar Valon if I’m to gather them in.”
“They won’t follow you,” Leane said in a monotone freighted with meaning. “You have no right to the stole any longer. Not even to the shawl or the ring.”
“I may no longer wear the stole,” Siuan replied just as flatly, “but I still know how to ready a crew for a storm. And since I cannot wear the stole, I must see they choose the right woman in my place. I’ll not let Elaida get away with calling herself the Amyrlin. It has to be someone strong in the Power, someone who sees things the right way.”
“Then you mean to go on aiding this … this
Dragon
!” Leane snapped.
“What else would you have me do? Curl up and die?”
Leane shuddered as if she had been struck in the face, and they rode in silence for a time. All of those fabulous buildings around them, like wind-sculpted cliffs and waves and great flights of birds, loomed frighteningly with no people in the streets save themselves, and one lone fellow who came darting around a corner up ahead, scuttling from doorway to doorway as if scouting their way for them. He did not lessen the emptiness, only emphasized it.
“What else can we do?” Leane said eventually. She rode slumped in her saddle now like a sack of grain. “I feel so … empty. Empty.”
“Find something to fill it up,” Siuan told her firmly. “Anything. Cook for the hungry, tend the sick, find a husband and raise a houseful of children. Me, I mean to see Elaida does not get away with this. I could almost forgive her, if she truly believed I had endangered the Tower. Almost, I could. Almost. But she has been filled with envy since the day I was raised
Amyrlin instead of her. That drives her as much as anything else, and for that I mean to pull her down. That is what fills me, Leane. That, and the fact that Rand al’Thor must not fall into her hands.”
“Perhaps that will be enough.” The coppery-skinned woman sounded doubtful, but she straightened. The contrast between her obvious experience and Siuan’s precarious seat on the shorter mare made her look as if she must be the leader. “But how can we even begin? We have three horses, the clothes on our backs, and whatever Min has in her purse. Hardly enough to challenge the Tower.”
“I am glad you did not decide on a husband and home. We will find other—” Siuan grimaced. “We will find Aes Sedai who fled, find what we need. We may have more than you think, Leane. Min, what does that pass Gawyn gave us say? Does it mention three women? What? Quickly, girl.”
Min glared at her back. Siuan had been peering at the darting man ahead, a large, dark-haired fellow, dressed well but plainly in somber browns. The woman sounded as if she were still Amyrlin.
Well, I wanted her to find her backbone, didn’t I?
Siuan turned to stare at her with those sharp blue eyes; somehow they seemed no less intimidating than before. “‘The bearers are authorized to depart Tar Valon on my authority,’” Min quoted hastily from memory. “‘Who impedes them will answer to me.’ Signed—”
“I know his name,” Siuan snapped. “Follow me.” She heeled Bela’s flanks, nearly losing her seat when the shaggy mare lumbered to a slow gallop. She hung on, though, bouncing awkwardly and drumming her heels for more speed.
Min exchanged one startled look with Leane, and they were both galloping after her. The man looked back at the sound of running hooves and began to run himself, but Siuan cut Bela in front of him; he bounced off the mare with a grunt. Min reached them just in time to hear Siuan say, “I did not think to meet you here, Logain.”

Other books

Background to Danger by Eric Ambler
The Somme Stations by Andrew Martin
The Cool Cottontail by John Ball
Change of Heart by T. J. Kline
Lost by Kayden McLeod
Sacred by Elana K. Arnold