Lord of Chaos twot-6 Page 26

  None of the three Aes Sedai so much as glanced in her direction. They just exchanged glances and went on with what they were doing. Perhaps they had forgotten her, but then again, perhaps not. Aes Sedai did what they did. If she was to be shielded from Elaida, that was an Aes Sedai decision, and if they decided for some reason to hand her to Elaida bound hand and foot, that was their choice too. "The pike does not ask the frog’s permission before dining," as she remembered Lini saying.

  Elaida’s response to Rand’s amnesty was evident in the condition of the report. Elayne could almost see her crumpling the sheet of paper in her fist, starting to rip it apart, then coldly smoothing it out and adding it to the box. Elaida’s rages were almost always cold. She had not written anything on that document, but scrawled biting words on another enumerating the Aes Sedai in the Tower, made clear she was almost ready to declare publicly that any who did not obey her order to return were traitors. Sheriam and the other two discussed the possibility calmly. However many sisters intended to obey, some would have far to travel; some might not even have received the summons yet. In any case, such a decree would confirm to the world all the rumors of a divided Tower. Elaida must be near panic to consider such a thing, or else maddened beyond reason.

  A sliver of cold slid down Elayne’s backbone, and nothing to do with whether Elaida was fearful or engaged. Two hundred ninety four Aes Sedai in the Tower, supporting Elaida. Nearly one-third of all Aes Sedai, almost as many as had gathered in Salidar. It might be that the best that could be expected was for the rest to split down the middle as well. After a great rush in the beginning, the numbers coming into Salidar had slowed to a trickle. Perhaps the flow to the Tower had dwindled as well. It could be hoped.

  For a time they did their searching in silence, then Beonin exclaimed, "Elaida, she has sent emissaries to Rand al’Thor." Elayne leaped to her feet, and barely held her tongue at a clutching gesture from Siuan, spoiled a little by her failure to make the cat’s-cradle disappear first.

  Sheriam reached for the single sheet, but it became three before her hand touched it. "Where is she sending them?" she asked at the same time Myrelle asked, "When did they leave Tar Valon?" Serenity hung on by its fingernails.

  "To Cairhien," Beonin said. "And I did not see when, if it was mentioned. But they certainly will go on to Caemlyn as soon as they discover where he is."

  Even so, that was good; it might take a month or more to travel from Cairhien to Caemlyn. The Salidar embassy would reach him first, surely. Elayne had a ragged map tucked away beneath her mattress back in Salidar, and every day she marked off how far she thought they might have traveled toward Caemlyn. The Gray sister was not finished. "It seems that Elaida, she means to offer him support. And an escort to the Tower." Sheriam’s eyebrows rose.

  "That is preposterous." Myrelle’s olive cheeks darkened. "Elaida was Red." An Amyrlin was of all Ajahs and none, yet no one could simply abandon where they came from.

  "That woman will do anything," Sheriam said. "He might find the White Tower’s support attractive."

  "Perhaps we can send a message to Egwene through the Aiel women?" Myrelle suggested in a doubtful tone.

  Siuan gave a loud, and very phony, cough, but Elayne had had all she could stand. Warning Egwene was vital, of course — Elaida’s people would surely drag her back to the Tower if they discovered her in Cairhien, and not to a pleasant reception — but the rest…! "How can you think Rand would listen to anything Elaida says? Do you think he does not know she was Red Ajah, and what that means? They aren’t going to offer him support, and you know it. We have to warn him!" There was a contradiction in that, and she knew it, but worry had hold of her tongue. If anything happened to Rand, she would die.

  "And how do you suggest that we do that, Accepted?" Sheriam asked coolly.

  Elayne was afraid she must look like a fish, with her mouth hanging open. She had not a clue what answer to give. She was saved suddenly by distant screaming, followed by wordless shouts from the anteroom. She was closest to the door, but she ran through with the others on her heels.

  The room was empty except for the Keeper’s writing table, with its piles of papers and stacks of scrolls and documents, and a row of chairs against one wall where Aes Sedai would sit while waiting to speak to Elaida. Anaiya, Morvrin and Carlinya were gone, but one of the tall outer doors was still swinging shut. A woman’s frantic screams rolled through the narrowing opening. Sheriam, Myrelle and Beonin almost knocked Elayne down in their haste to reach the hall. They might have appeared misty, but they felt solid enough.

  "Be careful," Elayne shouted, yet there was really nothing to do but gather her skirts and follow as quickly as possible with Siuan. They stepped into a scene from nightmare. Literally.

  Some thirty paces to their right, the tapestry-hung corridor suddenly widened into a stony cavern that seemed to stretch forever, lit in dim patches by the red glow of scattered fires and braziers. There were Trollocs everywhere, great manlike shapes, their all-too-human faces distorted by bestial muzzles and snouts and beaks, sporting horns or tusks or feathered crests. Those in the distance appeared more indistinct than the nearest, only half-formed, while the nearest were giants twice as tall as a man, even larger than any real Trolloc, all clad in leather and black spiked mail, howling and capering around cookfires and cauldrons, racks and strange spiked frames and metal shapes.

  It really was a nightmare, though larger than any Elayne had heard of from Egwene or the Wise Ones. Once freed of the mind that created them, such things sometimes drifted through the World of Dreams and sometimes latched on to a particular spot. Aiel dreamwalkers destroyed each as a matter of course whenever they found one, but they — and Egwene — had told her the best thing to do was avoid any she saw altogether. Unfortunately, Carlinya apparently had not listened when she and Nynaeve passed that on.

  The White sister was bound and hanging by her ankles from a chain that disappeared into darkness overhead. To Elayne’s eyes the glow of saidar still surrounded her, but Carlinya writhed frantically and screamed as she was slowly lowered headfirst toward a great bubbling black kettle of boiling oil.

  Even as Elayne ran into the corridor, Anaiya and Morvrin halted at the border where hallway abruptly became cavern. For all of a heartbeat, they halted, then suddenly their hazy forms seemed to elongate toward the boundary, like smoke drawn into a chimney. No sooner had they touched it than they were inside, Morvrin shouting as two Trollocs turned great iron wheels that stretched her out tighter and tighter, Anaiya dangling by her wrists as Trollocs danced about her, flogging her with metal-tipped whips that tore long rents in her dress.

  "We must link," Sheriam said, and the glow surrounding her merged with that around Myrelle and Beonin. Even so, it did not come near the brightness of that around a single woman in the waking world, a woman who was not a misty dream.

  "No!" Elayne shouted urgently. "You mustn’t accept it as real. You must treat it as —" She seized Sheriam’s arm, but the flow of Fire the three had woven, tenuous even with them linked, touched the dividing line between dream and nightmare. The weave vanished there as if the nightmare had absorbed it, and in the same instant the three Aes Sedai became drawn out, mist caught in a wind. They had time only for startled yells before they touched the boundary and vanished. Sheriam reappeared inside, her head sticking up from a dark metal bell shape. Trollocs turned handles and jerked levers on the outside, and Sheriam’s red hair flailed wildly as she shrieked in rising crescendos. Of the other two there was no sign, but Elayne thought she could hear more screaming in the distance, someone wailing "No!" over and over, another shrieking for help.

  "Do you remember what we told you about dispelling nightmares?" Elayne asked.

  Eyes fixed on the scene in front of her, Siuan nodded. "Deny its reality. Try to fix things in your mind as they would be without it."

  That had been Sheriam’s mistake, all the Aes Sedai’s mistake probably. By trying to channel against the nightmare they
had accepted it as real, and that acceptance had pulled them into it as surely as walking in, leaving them helpless unless they remembered what they had forgotten. Which they showed no sign of doing. The climbing shrieks augured into Elayne’s ears.

  "The corridor," she muttered, trying to form in her head how it had been when she saw it last. "Think of the corridor the way you remember it."

  "I’m trying, girl," Siuan growled. "It isn’t working."

  Elayne sighed. Siuan was right. Not a line of the scene before them so much as wavered. Sheriam’s head was almost vibrating above the metal shroud that enclosed the rest of her. Morvrin’s howls came in strained pants; Elayne almost thought she could hear the woman’s joints being pulled apart. Carlinya’s hair, hanging below her, was almost touching the roiling surface of the hot oil. Two women were not enough. The nightmare was too big.

  "We need the others," she said.

  "Leane and Nynaeve? Girl, if we knew where to find them, Sheriam and the rest would be dead before…" She trailed off, staring at Elayne. "You don’t mean Leane and Nynaeve, do you? You mean Sheriam and…" Elayne only nodded; she was too frightened to speak. "I don’t think they can hear us from here, or see us. Those Trollocs haven’t even glanced our way. That means we have to try from inside." Elayne nodded again. "Girl," Siuan said in a toneless voice, "you have a lion’s courage, and maybe a fisherbird’s sense." With a heavy sigh, she added, "But I don’t see any other way myself."

  Elayne agreed with her about everything except the courage. If she had not had her knees locked, she would have been in a heap on the floor tiles, patterned in all the colors of the Ajahs. She realized she had a sword in her hand, a great gleaming length of steel, absolutely useless even had she known how to wield it. She let it fall, and it vanished before reaching the floor. "Waiting isn’t helping anything," she muttered. Much longer, and the little courage she had managed to scrape together would surely evaporate. Together she and Siuan stepped toward the boundary. Elayne’s foot touched that dividing line, and suddenly she felt herself being pulled in, sucked like water through a tube.

  One instant she was standing in the hallway, staring at the horrors, the next she was lying on her belly on rough gray stone, wrists and ankles tightly tied in the small of her back, and the horrors were all around her. The cavern stretched endless in every direction; the Tower corridor no longer seemed to exist. Screams filled the air, echoing from rocky walls and a ceiling dripping stalactites. A few paces from her a huge black cauldron stood steaming over a roaring fire. A boar-snouted Trolloc, complete with tusks, was tossing in lumps that seemed to be unidentifiable roots. A cookpot. Trollocs ate anything. Including people. She thought of her hands and feet free, but the coarse rope still dug into her flesh. Even the pale shadow of saidar had vanished; the True Source no longer existed for her, not here. A nightmare in truth, and she was well and truly caught.

  Siuan’s voice cut through the screams in a pained moan. "Sheriam, listen to me!" The Light alone knew what was being done to her; Elayne could not see any of the others. Only hear them. "This is a dream! Aah… aaaaaaah! Th-think how it should be!"

  Elayne took it up. "Sheriam, Anaiya, everybody, listen to me! You must think of the corridor as it was! As it really is! This is only real as long as you believe it!" She set the image of the corridor in her head firmly, colored tiles in ordered rows and gilded stand-lamps and brilliant woven tapestries. Nothing changed. The screams still echoed. "You must think of the corridor! Hold it in your minds, and it will be real! You can defeat this if you try!" The Trolloc looked at her; it had a thick sharp-pointed knife in its hand now. "Sheriam, Anaiya, you have to concentrate! Myrelle, Beonin, concentrate on the corridor!" The Trolloc heaved her on to her side. She tried to wriggle away, but a massive knee held her in place effortlessly while the thing began slicing at her clothes like a hunter skinning a deer carcass. Desperately she held on to the image of the hallway. "Carlinya, Morvrin, for the love of the Light, concentrate! Think of the corridor! The corridor! All of you! Think of it hard!" Grunting something in a harsh language never meant for a human tongue, the Trolloc flipped her facedown again and knelt on her, thick knees crushing her arms against her back. "The corridor!" she screamed. It tangled heavy fingers in her hair, yanked her head back. "The corridor! Think of the corridor!" The Trolloc’s blade touched her tight-stretched neck beneath her left ear. "The corridor! The corridor!" The blade began to slide.

  Suddenly she was staring at colored floor tiles under her nose. Clapping hands to her throat, marveling that they were free to move, she felt wetness and brought her fingers up to stare at them. Blood, but only a tiny smear. A shudder rippled through her. If that Trolloc had succeeded in cutting her throat… No Healing could have cured that. Shuddering again, she pushed slowly to her feet. It was the Tower hallway outside the Amyrlin’s study, with no sign of Trollocs or caverns.

  Siuan was there, looking a mass of bruises in a torn dress, and the Aes Sedai, misty forms of near ruin. Carlinya was in the best shape, and she stood wide-eyed and shaking, fingering dark hair that now ended frizzily a hand from her scalp. Sheriam and Anaiya seemed to be weeping heaps of bloody rags. Myrelle huddled in on herself, white-faced, naked and covered with long red scratches and welts. Morvrin moaned every time she moved, and she moved unnaturally, as though her joints did not work properly anymore. Beonin’s dress appeared to have been clawed to shreds, and she was panting on her knees, more wide-eyed than ever, holding on to the wall to keep from falling over.

  Abruptly Elayne realized that her own dress and shift were hanging from her shoulders, neatly sliced open down the front. A hunter skinning a deer carcass. She shivered so hard she almost fell. Repairing the garments was a simple matter of thought, but she was not sure how long it would take to repair her memories.

  "We must go back," Morvrin said, kneeling awkwardly between Sheriam and Anaiya. Despite her stiffness and groans, she sounded as stolid as ever. "There is Healing to be done, and none here can manage it as we are."

  "Yes." Carlinya touched her short hair again. "Yes, it might be best if we returned to Salidar." Her voice was a decidedly unsteady version of its normal iciness.

  "I will stay a little while, if no one objects," Siuan told them. Or rather suggested, in that ill-fitting humble voice. Her dress was whole again, but the bruises remained. "I might learn a little more that’s useful. All that’s wrong with me are a few lumps, and I’ve had worse falling in a boat."

  "You look more as if someone had dropped a boat on you," Morvrin told her, "but the choice is yours."

  "I will stay, too," Elayne said. "I can help Siuan, and I wasn’t hurt at all." She was aware of the nick on her throat every time she swallowed.

  "I don’t need any help," Siuan said, at the same time that Morvrin said in an even firmer voice, "You kept your head very well tonight, child. Don’t spoil it now. You are coming with us."

  Elayne nodded grumpily. Arguing would get her nowhere except into hot water. You would have thought the Brown sister was the teacher here, and Elayne the pupil. They probably thought she had stumbled into the nightmare the same way they did. "Remember, you can step out of the dream straight into your own body. You do not have to go back to Salidar first." There was no way of telling whether they heard her. Morvrin had turned away as soon as she nodded.

  "Be easy, Sheriam," the stout woman said soothingly. "We will be back in Salidar in a few moments. Be easy, Anaiya." Sheriam at least had stopped crying, though she still moaned in pain. "Carlinya, will you help Myrelle? Are you ready, Beonin? Beonin?" The Gray raised her head and stared at Morvrin a moment before nodding.

  The six Aes Sedai vanished.

  With a last glance at Siuan, Elayne was only a moment behind, but she did not go to Salidar. Someone would very likely be coming to Heal the scrape on her neck, if they had noticed it, but for a little while they would be concerned with six Aes Sedai who would wake looking as if they had been pushed through some monstrous clockworks. Elayne had
those few minutes, and another destination in mind.

  The Grand Hall in her mother’s palace in Caemlyn did not appear around her with any ease. There was a feel of resistance before she stood on a red-and-white tiled floor beneath the great arched roof, between rows of massive white columns. Once more light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The huge windows overhead, depicting the White Lion of Andor alternating with the earliest queens of the realm and scenes of great Andoran victories, were indistinct with the night outside.

  Immediately she saw the difference from what she knew that had made coming here difficult. On the dais at the end of the hall where the Lion Throne should have stood was instead a grandiose monstrosity made of Dragons sparkling gold and red in gilt and enamel, with sunstones for their eyes. Her mother’s throne had not been removed from the chamber. It stood on a kind of pedestal, behind and above the monstrous thing.

  Elayne walked slowly down the hall and climbed the white marble stairs to stare up at the gilded throne of Andoran Queens. The White Lion of Andor, picked out in moonstones against a field of rubies on the back, would have stood above her mother’s head.

  "What are you doing, Rand al’Thor?" she whispered harshly. "What do you think you are doing?"

  She was terribly afraid that he was bungling matters without her there to guide him between the pitfalls. True, he had handled the Tairens well enough, and apparently the Cairhienin, but her people were different, bluff and straightforward, with a dislike of being maneuvered or bullied. What had worked in Tear or Cairhien could blow up in his face like an Illuminator’s display of fireworks.