The Path of Daggers (49 page)

She nodded, releasing him. That casual question about the Tower Guard hurt. He was aware that the Hall and the Ajahs told her what they wanted her to know and no more. “I suppose you’re right,” she said evenly. “There’ll be no time for rest once we reach Tar Valon. Send your fastest riders. There won’t be any difficulty, will there? Pelivar and Arathelle will hear them out?” She did not feign the touch of anxiety. More than her plans might be ruined if they had to fight now.

Bryne’s tone did not alter a whit that she could tell, but somehow, he sounded soothing. “So long as there is light enough for them to see the white feathers, they’ll recognize a truce and listen. I’d better go, Mother. It’s a long way and hard riding, even for men with extra horses.”

As soon as the tentflap fell behind him, Egwene let out a long breath. Her shoulders were tight, and she expected her head to start aching any moment. Bryne usually made her feel relaxed, absorbing his sureness. Tonight, she had had to manipulate him, and she thought he knew it. He was very observant for a man. But too much was at stake to trust him more, until he made an open declaration. Maybe an oath like the one Myrelle and the others had given. Bryne followed the Amyrlin, and the army followed Bryne. If he thought she was going to throw men away uselessly, a few words from him could hand her to the Hall trussed like a pig on a platter. She drank deeply, feeling the warmth of the spiced wine spread through her.

“Better for us if they believed,” she muttered. “I wish there was something
for
them to believe. If I do nothing else, Siuan, I hope at least I can free us from the Three Oaths.”

“No!” Siuan barked. She sounded scandalized. “Even trying could be disastrous, and if you succeeded. . . . The Light help us, if you succeeded, you would destroy the White Tower.”

“What are you talking about? I try to follow the Oaths, Siuan, since we’re stuck with them—for now—but the Oaths won’t help us against the Seanchan. If sisters have to be in danger of their lives before they can fight back, it’s only a matter of time before we are all dead or collared.” For a moment she could feel the
a’dam
around her throat again, turning her into a dog on a leash. A well-trained and obedient dog. She was glad of the darkness, now, hiding her trembles. Shadows obscured Siuan’s face, save for a soundlessly working jaw.

“Don’t you look at me like that, Siuan.” It was easier to be angry than afraid, easy to mask fear in anger. She would
never
be collared like that again! “You’ve taken every advantage since you were freed from the Oaths. If you hadn’t lied in your teeth, we’d all be in Salidar, without an army, sitting on our hands and waiting for a miracle. Well, you would be. They’d never have summoned me to be Amyrlin without your lie about Logain and the Reds. Elaida would reign supreme, and in a year, nobody would remember how she usurped the Amyrlin Seat.
She’d
destroy the Tower, for sure. You know she’d mishandle everything about Rand. I would not be surprised if she had tried to kidnap him by now, except that she’s concerned with us. Well, maybe not kidnap, but she’d have done something. Likely, Aes Sedai would be fighting Asha’man today, and never mind Tarmon Gai’don waiting over the horizon.”

“I have lied when it seemed necessary,” Siuan breathed. “When it seemed expedient.” Her shoulders hunched, and she sounded as though she were confessing crimes she did not want to admit to herself. “Sometimes I think it’s become too easy for me to decide that it’s necessary and expedient. I’ve lied to almost everyone. Except you. But don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me. To nudge you toward a decision, or away from one. It wasn’t wanting to keep your trust that stopped me.” Siuan’s hand stretched out in the dark, pleading. “The Light knows what your trust and friendship mean to me, but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t knowing that you’d have the hide off me in strips, or send me away, if you found out. I realized that I had to hold on to the Oaths with somebody, or I’d lose myself completely. So I don’t lie to you, or to Gareth Bryne, whatever it costs. And as soon I can, Mother, I will swear the Three Oaths on the Oath Rod again.”

“Why?” Egwene asked quietly. Siuan had considered lying to her? She
would
have had her hide for that. But her anger was gone. “I don’t condone lying, Siuan. Not normally. It’s just that sometimes, it really is necessary.” Her time with the Aiel flashed through her mind. “So long as you’re willing to pay for it, anyway. I’ve seen sisters take on penance for smaller things. You are one of the first of a new sort of Aes Sedai, Siuan, free and unbound. I believe you when you say you won’t lie to me.” Or to Lord Bryne? Odd, that. “Why give up your freedom?”

“Give up?” Siuan laughed. “I’ll be giving up nothing.” Her back straightened, and her voice began to gain strength, and then passion. “The Oaths are what make us more than simply a group of women meddling in the affairs of the world. Or seven groups. Or fifty. The Oaths hold us together, a stated set of beliefs that bind us all, a single thread running through every sister, living or dead, back to the first to lay her hands on the Oath Rod.
They
are what make us Aes Sedai, not
saidar
. Any wilder can channel. Men may look at what we say from six sides, but when a sister says, ‘This is so,’ they
know
it’s true, and they trust. Because of the Oaths. Because of the Oaths, no queen fears that sisters will lay waste to her cities. The worst villain knows he’s safe in his life with a sister unless he tries to harm her. Oh, the Whitecloaks call them lies, and some people have strange ideas about what the Oaths entail, but there are very few places an Aes Sedai cannot go, and be listened to, because of the Oaths. The Three Oaths are what it is to
be
Aes Sedai, the
heart
of being Aes Sedai. Throw that on the rubbish heap, and we’ll be sand washing away in the tide. Give up? I will be gaining.”

Egwene frowned. “And the Seanchan?” What it was to be Aes Sedai. Almost from the day she first arrived in Tar Valon, she had worked to be Aes Sedai, but she had never really thought about what it was that
made
a woman Aes Sedai.

Once more Siuan laughed, though this time it was a touch wry, and weary. She shook her head, and darkness or no, looked tired. “I don’t know, Mother. The Light help me, I don’t. But we survived the Trolloc Wars, and Whitecloaks, and Artur Hawkwing, and everything in between. We can find a way to deal with these Seanchan. Without destroying ourselves.”

Egwene was not so sure. Many of the sisters in camp thought the Seanchan were such a danger that besieging Elaida should wait. As if waiting would not cement Elaida on the Amyrlin Seat. Many others seemed to think that simply uniting the White Tower again, at whatever price, would make the Seanchan vanish. Survival lost some of its attraction if it was survival on a leash, and Elaida’s would not be much less confining than the Seanchan’s. What it was to
be
Aes Sedai.

“There’s no need to keep Gareth Bryne at arm’s length,” Siuan said suddenly. “The man’s a walking tribulation, it’s true. If he doesn’t count as penance for my lies, being flayed alive wouldn’t do. One of these days, I’ll box his ears every morning and twice at evenings, on general principle, but you can tell him everything. It would help, if he understood. He’s taking
you
on trust, and it ties his stomach in knots, wondering whether you know what you’re doing. He doesn’t let on, but I see.”

Suddenly, pieces clicked in Egwene’s mind like a blacksmith’s puzzle coming undone. Shocking pieces. Siuan was in
love
with the man! Nothing else made sense. Everything she knew between them altered. Not necessarily for the better. A woman in love often put her brains on the shelf when she was around the man in question. As she herself was all too well aware. Where
was
Gawyn? Was he well? Was he warm? Enough of that. Too much, in light of what she had to say. She put on her best Amyrlin’s voice, sure and in command. “You can box Lord Bryne’s ears or bed him, Siuan, but you
will
watch yourself with him. You will
not
let slip things he mustn’t know yet. Do you understand me?”

Siuan jerked stiffly erect. “I’m not in the habit of letting my tongue flap like a torn sail, Mother,” she said heatedly.

“I’m very glad to hear it, Siuan.” Despite their looking only a few years apart, Siuan was old enough to be her mother yet at that moment Egwene felt as though their ages had been reversed. This might be the first time that Siuan had ever had to manage with a man not as Aes Sedai, but as a woman.
A few years of thinking I loved Rand
, Egwene thought wryly,
a few months of dangling by my toes for Gawyn, and I know all there is to know
.

“I think we’re done here,” she went on, slipping an arm through Siuan’s. “Almost. Come.”

The walls of the tent had seemed little protection, yet stepping outside brought a renewed assault by winter’s teeth. The moonlight was almost bright enough to read by, reflected off the snow, but that glow seemed cold. Bryne had vanished as if he had never been. Leane appeared long enough to say she had seen no one, her slimness swallowed in layers of wool, then hurried off into the night looking about her. No one knew of any connection between Leane and Egwene, and everyone thought Leane and Siuan were practically at daggers’ points.

Gathering her cloak as best she could one-handed, Egwene focused on ignoring the icy chill as she and Siuan walked in the opposite direction from Leane. Ignoring the chill, and keeping an eye out for anyone who happened to be out. Not that anyone who was outside now was likely to be there by happenstance.

“Lord Bryne was right,” she told Siuan, “about it being better if Pelivar and Arathelle believed those stories. Or at least if they were uncertain. Too uncertain to fight, or do anything except talk. Do you think they would welcome a visit from Aes Sedai? Siuan, are you listening to me?”

Siuan gave a start, and stopped staring into the distance ahead of them. She had been walking ahead without missing a step, but now she slipped and nearly sat down in the frozen path, barely regaining her balance in time to keep from pulling Egwene down. “Yes, Mother. Of course I’m listening. They might not be exactly welcoming, but I doubt they’ll turn sisters away.”

“Then I want you to wake Beonin, Anaiya, and Myrelle. They are to ride north inside the hour. If Lord Bryne expects a reply as soon as tomorrow evening, time is short.” A pity she had not found out exactly where this other army was located, but asking Bryne might have roused suspicion. Finding it should not be too hard for Warders, and those three sisters had five between them.

Siuan listened in silence to her instructions. Not only those three were to be rooted out of their sleep. Come dawn, Sheriam and Carlinya, Morvrin and Nisao would all know what to say over breakfast. Seeds had to be planted, seeds that could not have been placed earlier for fear of them sprouting too soon, but now they had all too little time to grow.

“It will be a pleasure to haul them out of their blankets,” Siuan said when she was done. “If I have to tramp around in this. . . .” Releasing Egwene’s arm, she started to turn away, then stopped, her face serious, even grim. “I know you want to be a second Gerra Kishar—or maybe Sereille Bagand. You have it in you to match either. But be careful you don’t turn out to be another Shein Chunla. Good night, Mother. Sleep well.”

Egwene stood watching her go, a cloak-shrouded figure sometimes skidding on the path and muttering angrily almost loud enough to make out. Gerra and Sereille were remembered as among the greatest Amyrlins. Both had raised the influence and prestige of the White Tower to levels seldom equaled since before Artur Hawkwing. Both controlled the Tower itself, too, Gerra by skillfully playing one faction in the Hall against another, Sereille by the sheer force of her will. Shein Chunla was another matter, one who had squandered the power of the Amyrlin Seat, alienating most of the sisters in the Tower. The world believed that Shein had died in office, close on four hundred years ago, but the deeply hidden truth was that she had been deposed and sent into exile for life. Even the secret histories treaded lightly in certain areas, yet it was fairly obvious that, after the fourth plot to restore her to the Amyrlin Seat was uncovered, the sisters guarding Shein had smothered her in her sleep with a pillow. Egwene shivered, and told herself it was the cold.

Turning, she began making her slow way back to her tent alone. Sleep well? The fat moon hung low in the sky, and there were hours yet till sunrise, but she was not sure she was going to be able to sleep at all.