Lord of Chaos twot-6 Page 40

  The sound of Elayne’s breathing slowed, Nynaeve snuggled into her small pillow with a tiny sigh, and…

  … she stood at the foot of her empty bed, looking at a misty Elayne in the not quite light of night in Tel’aran’rhiod. No one to see them here. Sheriam or one of her circle might be about, or Siuan or Leane. True, the pair of them had a right to visit the World of Dreams, but on tonight’s quest neither wanted to answer questions. Elayne apparently saw it as a hunt; consciously or not, she had togged herself out like Birgitte, in green coat and white trousers. She blinked at the silver bow in her hand, and it vanished along with the quiver.

  Nynaeve checked her own garments and sighed. A blue silk ball gown, embroidered with golden flowers around the low neckline and in twined lines down the full skirt. She could feel velvet dancing slippers on her feet. What you wore in Tel’aran’rhiod did not really matter, but whatever had possessed her mind to choose this? "You realize this might not work," she said, changing to good plain Two Rivers woolens and stout shoes. Elayne had no right to smile that way. A silver bow. Ha! "We’re supposed to have some idea at least of what we’re looking for, something about it."

  "It will have to do, Nynaeve. According to you, the Wise Ones said the stronger the need the better, and we surely need something, or the help we promised Rand is going to vanish except for whatever Elaida is willing to give. I won’t let that happen, Nynaeve. I will not."

  "Put your chin down. Neither will I, if there’s anything we can do about it. We might as well get on with this." Linking hands with Elayne, Nynaeve closed her eyes. Need. She hoped some part of her had some notion what it was they needed. Maybe nothing would happen. Need. Suddenly everything seemed to slide around her; she felt Tel’aran’rhiod tilt and swoop.

  Her eyes sprang open immediately. Each step using need was taken blind, of necessity, and while each took you closer to what you sought, any one could drop you down in a pit of vipers, or a lion disturbed at its kill could bite your leg off.

  There were no lions, yet what there was was disturbing. It was bright midday, but that did not bother her; time flowed differently here. She and Elayne were holding hands in a cobblestone street, surrounded by buildings of brick and stone. Elaborate cornices and friezes decorated houses and shops alike. Ornate cupolas decorated tile rooftops, and bridges of stone or wood arched across the street, sometimes three or four stories up. Heaps of garbage, old clothes and broken furniture stood piled on street corners, and rats scurried about by the score, sometimes pausing to chitter fearless challenges at them. People dreaming themselves to the brink of Tel’aran’rhiod flickered in and out of existence. A man fell shrieking from one of the bridges and vanished before he hit the cobblestones. A howling woman in a torn dress ran a dozen paces toward them before she too winked out. Truncated screams and shouts echoed through the streets, and sometimes coarse laughter with a maniacal edge.

  "I don’t like this," Elayne said in a worried tone.

  In the distance, a great bone-white shaft reared above the city, far overtopping other towers, many of them linked by bridges that made those where they were seem low. They were in Tar Valon, in the part where Nynaeve had caught a glimpse of Leane last time. Leane had not been very forthcoming about what she had been doing; increasing the awe and legend of the mysterious Aes Sedai, she had claimed with a smile.

  "It doesn’t matter," Nynaeve said stoutly. "Nobody in Tar Valon even knows about the World of Dreams. We won’t run into anybody." Her stomach turned over as a bloody-faced man suddenly appeared, staggering toward them. He had no hands, only spurting stumps.

  "That was not what I meant," Elayne muttered.

  "Let’s be on about it." Nynaeve closed her eyes. Need.

  Shift.

  They were in the Tower, in one of the tapestry-hung curving hallways. A plump novice-clad girl popped into existence not three paces away, her big eyes going wider when she saw them. "Please," she whimpered. "Please?" And was gone.

  Suddenly Elayne gasped, "Egwene!"

  Nynaeve whirled around but the passage was empty.

  "I saw her," Elayne insisted. "I know I did."

  "I suppose she can touch Tel’aran’rhiod in an ordinary dream like anyone else," Nynaeve told her. "Let’s just get on with what we’re here for." She was beginning to feel more than uneasy. They linked hands again. Need.

  Shift.

  It was not an ordinary storeroom. Shelves lined the walls and made two short rows out in the floor, neatly lined with boxes of various sizes and shapes, some plain wood, some carved or lacquered, with things wrapped in cloth, with statuettes and figurines, and peculiar shapes seemingly of metal or glass, crystal or stone or glazed porcelain. Nynaeve needed no more to know they must be objects of the One Power, ter’angreal most likely, perhaps some angreal and sa’angreal. Such a disparate collection, stored away so tidily, could not be anything else in the Tower.

  "I don’t think there is any point to going further here," Elayne said dejectedly. "I don’t know how we could ever get anything out of here."

  Nynaeve gave her braid a short tug. If there really was something here they could use — there had to be, unless the Wise Ones had lied — then there had to be a way to reach it in the waking world. Angreal and the like were not heavily guarded; usually, when she had been in the Tower, only by a lock and a novice. The door here was made of heavy planks with a heavy black iron lock set in it. No doubt it was fastened, but she fixed it in her mind as undone and pushed.

  The door swung open into a guardroom. Narrow beds stacked one atop another lined one wall, and racked halberds lined another. Beyond a heavy, battered table ringed by stools was another door, iron-strapped, with a small grille set in it.

  As she turned back to Elayne she was suddenly, aware that the door was shut again. "If we can’t get to what we need here, maybe we can somewhere else. I mean, maybe something else will do. At least we have a hint now. I think these are ter’angreal nobody has found how to use yet. That’s the only reason they would be guarded like this. It could be dangerous even to channel close to them."

  Elayne gave her a wry look. "But if we try again, won’t it just bring us right back here? Unless… Unless the Wise Ones told you how to exclude a place from the search."

  They had not — they had not been eager to tell her anything at all — but in a place where you open a lock by thinking it was open, anything should be possible. "That’s exactly what we do. We fix it in our heads that what we want isn’t in Tar Valon." Frowning at the shelves, she added, "And I’ll wager it is a ter’angreal nobody knows how to use." Though how that would convince the Hall to support Rand, she could not imagine.

  "We need a ter’angreal that isn’t in Tar Valon," Elayne said as if convincing herself. "Very well. We go on."

  She held out her hands, and after a moment Nynaeve took them. Nynaeve was not sure how she had become the one to insist on continuing. She wanted to leave Salidar, not find a reason to stay. But if it assured that the Salidar Aes Sedai would support Rand…

  Need. A ter’angreal. Not in Tar Valon. Need.

  Shift.

  Wherever they were, the dawn-lit city was certainly not Tar Valon. Not twenty paces away the broad paved street became a white stone bridge with statues at either end, arching over a stone-lined canal. Fifty paces the other way stood another. Slender, balcony-ringed towers stood everywhere, like spears driven through round slices of ornate confection. Every building was white, the doorways and windows large pointed arches, sometimes double or triple arches. On the grander buildings long balconies of white-painted wrought iron, with intricate wrought-iron screens to hide any occupants, looked down on the streets and canals, and white domes banded with scarlet or gold rose to points as sharp as the towers.

  Need. Shift.

  It might as well have been a different city. The street was narrow and unevenly paved, hemmed in on both sides by buildings five and six stories high, their white plaster flaked away in many places to expose the bri
ck beneath. There were no balconies here. Flies buzzed about, and it was hard to say whether it was still dawn because of the shadows down on the ground.

  They exchanged looks. It seemed unlikely they would find a ter’angreal here, but they had gone too far to stop now. Need.

  Shift.

  Nynaeve sneezed before she could open her eyes, and again as soon as they were open. Every shift of her feet kicked up swirls of dust. This storeroom was not at all like that in the Tower. Chests, crates and barrels crowded the small room, piled every which way atop one another, with barely an aisle left between, and all under a thick layer of dust. Nynaeve sneezed so hard she thought her shoes would come off — and the dust vanished. All of it. Elayne wore a small smug smile. Nynaeve said nothing, only fixed the room firmly in her mind without dust. She should have thought of that.

  Looking over the jumble, she sighed. The room was no larger than the one where their bodies lay sleeping in Salidar, but searching through all that… "It will take weeks."

  "We could try again. It might at least show which things to look through." Elayne sounded as doubtful as Nynaeve felt.

  Still, it was as good a suggestion as any. Nynaeve closed her eyes, and once more came the shift.

  When she looked again, she was standing at the end of the aisle away from the door, facing a square wooden chest taller than her waist. The iron straps seemed all rust, and the chest itself looked to have spent the last twenty years being beaten with hammers. A less likely repository for anything useful, especially a ter’angreal, Nynaeve could not imagine. But Elayne was standing right beside her, staring at the same chest.

  Nynaeve put a hand on the lid — the hinges would open smoothly — and pushed it up. There was not even the hint of a squeal. Inside, two heavily rusted swords and an equally brown breastplate with a hole eaten through it lay atop a tangle of cloth-wrapped parcels and what seemed to be the refuse from somebody’s old clothespress and a couple of kitchens.

  Elayne fingered a small kettle with a broken spout. "Not weeks, but the rest of the night, anyway."

  "Once more?" Nynaeve suggested. "It could not hurt." Elayne shrugged. Eyes shut. Need.

  Nynaeve reached out, and her hand came down on something hard and rounded, covered with crumbling cloth. When she opened her eyes, Elayne’s hand was right next to hers. The younger woman’s grin nearly split her face in two.

  Getting it out was not easy. It was not small, and they had to shift tattered coats and dented pots and parcels that crumbled to reveal figurines and carved animals and all sorts of rubbish. Once they had it out, they had to hold it between them, a wide flattish disc wrapped in rotted cloth. With the cloth stripped away, it turned out to be a shallow bowl of thick crystal, more than two feet across and carved deeply inside with what appeared to be swirling clouds.

  "Nynaeve," Elayne said slowly, "I think this is…"

  Nynaeve gave a start and nearly dropped her side of the bowl as it suddenly turned a pale watery blue and the carved clouds shifted slowly. A heartbeat later, the crystal was clear again, the carved clouds still. Only she was certain the clouds were not the same as they had been.

  "It is," Elayne exclaimed. "It’s a ter’angreal. And I will bet anything it has something to do with weather. But I’m not quite strong enough to work it by myself."

  Gulping a breath, Nynaeve tried to make her heart stop pounding. "Don’t do that! Don’t you realize you could still yourself, meddling with a ter’angreal when you don’t know what it does?"

  The fool girl had the nerve to give her a surprised stare. "That is what we came to look for, Nynaeve. And do you think there is anyone who knows more about ter’angreal than I do?"

  Nynaeve sniffed. Just because the woman was right did not mean she should not have given a little warning. "I’m not saying it isn’t wonderful if this can do something about the weather — it is — but I don’t see how it can be what we need. This won’t shift the Hall one way or the other about Rand."

  "‘What you need isn’t always what you want,’" Elayne quoted. "Lini used to say that when she wouldn’t let me go riding, or climb trees, but maybe it holds here."

  Nynaeve sniffed again. Maybe it did, but right now she wanted what she wanted. Was that so much to ask?

  The bowl faded out of their hands, and it was Elayne’s turn to give a start, muttering about never getting used to that. The chest was closed, too.

  "Nynaeve, when I channeled into the bowl, I felt… Nynaeve, it isn’t the only ter’angreal in this room. I think there are angreal, too, maybe even sa’angreal."

  "Here?" Nynaeve said incredulously, staring around the cluttered little room. But if one, why not two? Or ten, or a hundred? "Light, don’t channel again! What if you make one of them do something by accident? You could still — "

  "I do know what I am doing, Nynaeve. Really, I do. The next thing we have to do is find out exactly where this room is."

  That proved to be no easy task. Though the hinges seemed solid masses of rust, the door was no impediment, not in Tel’aran’rhiod. The problems began after that. The dim narrow corridor outside had only one small window at its end, and that showed nothing but a peeling white-plastered wall across the street. Climbing down cramped flights of stone-faced stairs did no good. The street outside could have been the first they had seen in this quarter of the city, wherever that was, all the buildings as near alike as made no difference. The tiny shops along the street had no signs, and the only thing marking inns were blue-painted doors. Red seemed to indicate a tavern.

  Nynaeve strode off searching for some landmark, something to pinpoint their location. Something to say what the city was. Every street she came to seemed like the last, but she quickly found a bridge, plain stone, unlike the others she had seen, and lacking statues. The center of its arch showed her only the canal, meeting others in both directions, more bridges, more buildings with flaking white plaster.

  Suddenly she realized she was alone. "Elayne." Silence, except for the echo of her voice. "Elayne? Elayne!"

  The golden-haired woman popped around a corner near the foot of the bridge. "There you are," said Elayne. "This place makes a rabbit warren look well planned. I turned my head for an instant, and you were gone. Did you find anything?"

  "Nothing." Nynaeve glanced down the canal again before joining Elayne. "Nothing at all useful."

  "At least we can be sure where we are. Ebou Dar. It must be." Elayne’s short coat and wide trousers became a green silk gown with spills of lace dangling over her hands, a, high elaborately embroidered collar, and a narrow neckline deep enough to show considerable cleavage. "I can’t think of another city with so many canals except Illian, and this is certainly not Illian."

  "I should hope not," Nynaeve said faintly. It had never even occurred to her that a blind search might take them into Sammael’s lair. Her own dress had changed, she realized, to a deep blue silk suitable for traveling, complete with a linen dustcloak. She made the cloak vanish, but left the rest.

  "You would like Ebou Dar, Nynaeve. Ebou Dari Wise Women know more about herbs than anybody. They can cure anything. They have to, because Ebou Dari fight duels over a sneeze, noble or common, men or women." Elayne giggled. "Thom says there used to be leopards here, but they left because they found Ebou Dari too touchy to live with."

  "That’s all very well," Nynaeve told her, "but they can run each other through as much as they want for all I care. Elayne, we might as well have put the rings away and just slept. I couldn’t walk back to that room from here if I was to receive the shawl when I got there. If only there was some way to make a map…" She grimaced. As well ask for wings in the waking world; if they could take a map out of Tel’aran’rhiod, they could take the bowl.

  "Then we will just have to come to Ebou Dar and search," Elayne said firmly. "In the real world. At least we know what part of the city to look in."

  Nynaeve brightened. Ebou Dar lay only a few hundred miles down the Eldar from Salidar. "That sounds a very good
notion. And it will get us away before everything falls on our heads."

  "Really, Nynaeve. Is that still the most important thing to you?"

  "It is one important thing. Can you think of anything else to do here?" Elayne shook her head. "Then we might as well go back. I’d like a little real sleep tonight." There was no telling how much time had passed in the waking world while you were in Tel’aran’rhiod; sometimes an hour there was an hour here, sometimes a day, or more. Luckily, it did not seem to work the other way, or at least not as much anyway, or you might starve to death sleeping.

  Nynaeve stepped out of the dream…

  … and her eyes popped open, staring into her pillow, which was as sweat-damp as she. Not a breath of air stirred through the open window. Silence had fallen over Salidar, the loudest sound the thin cries of night herons. Sitting up, she untied the cord around her neck and unstrung the twisted stone ring, pausing for a moment to finger Lan’s thick gold ring. Elayne stirred, then sat up yawning and channeled a stub of candle alight.

  "Do you think it will do any good?" Nynaeve asked quietly.

  "I do not know." Elayne stopped to muffle a yawn behind her hand. How could the woman manage to look pretty yawning, with her hair a mess and a red wrinkle from a pillow marring one cheek? That was a secret Aes Sedai ought to investigate. "What I do know is that bowl may be able to do something about the weather. I know a cache of ter’angreal and angreal has to be put in the right hands. It’s our duty to hand them over to the Hall. To Sheriam, anyway. I know if it doesn’t make them support Rand, I’ll keep hunting until I find something that does. And I know I want to sleep. Could we talk about this in the morning?" Without waiting for an answer, she doused the candle, curled up again and was breathing the deep, slow breaths of sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  Nynaeve stretched out again, staring at the ceiling through the darkness. At least they would be on their way to Ebou Dar soon. Tomorrow, maybe. A day or two, at most, to ready themselves for the journey and stop a passing riverboat. At least…